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Business Reinvention: Disruption and Chaos a Natural Process [Podcast]

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Disruption is constant; by definition, it drives in business reinvention — and never more than it has over the past year. And yet, some companies and people have thrived within all the chaos. In this episode of #WorkTrends, we’re discussing exactly how some organizations and their leaders have taken unforeseen chaos and turned it into a benefit they can leverage.

This is about more than “turning lemons into lemonade.” This is about competitive advantage.

Our Guest: Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva, the “Reinvention Queen”

On our latest episode of the #WorkTrends podcast, Dr. Nadya — a renowned consultant, 4-time TEDx talker and 3-time author — joined us to provide insights on how the best organizations embrace chaos as they reinvent themselves. Her latest book, The Chief Reinvention Officer Handbook: How to Thrive in Chaos, is available now.

Dr. Nadya explained why disruption, chaos, and crisis — certainly constants in almost every business over the past 12 months — were actually a good thing. I then asked how business leaders can get more comfortable with chaos. Her answer helps us understand why we must look at change differently:

“In general, we don’t mind change. If you think about when a healthy baby is born, we love change. And you don’t need to offer that baby a bonus to start walking. They start walking because they like trying new things. But we educate our kids out of the love of change very early because we adults want to live in a stable world. Stories and proverbs tell us that change is bad, stability is good, and we should hold on to things that we have.” Dr. Nadya summed up this portion of our conversation succinctly when she said:

“We are not born averse to change. But we are educated to associate change with a threat.”

Business Reinvention: The Best Kind of Change

Dr. Nadya went on to say that for leaders and organizations to embrace change, we must forget what we think we know. “The solution is to start unlearning some of this learned behavior,” she said. “We must help our teams unlearn that behavior as well. Just launching that discussion will send the team in the right direction.”

From there, Dr. Nadya said, we must redefine “reinvention.”

“We are in an era where we must reinvent every two or three years — or less — to survive. Reinvention can no longer be a project; it’s a process — a cycle of renewal. Just like nature reinvents on a regular basis. You don’t see a tree standing in the fall and saying, ‘I’m not going to let go of the leaves I worked so hard to produce. I’m not going to let go of this process. I worked so hard to put this process together,” she said. Then she added:

“Nature invents and reinvents in a cyclical fashion, and today’s businesses must do the same.”

If you know me, you know I thrive on change. Still, this conversation helped put the willingness to embrace change in a different light. Be sure to listen in and then help your team or organization embrace business reinvention. 

To learn more about Dr. Nadya’s work, connect with her on LinkedIn.

 

Photo: Danielle MacInnes

10 Tips to Stabilize Employee Experience During the Pandemic

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In an outlook where the future looks bleak, only true leaders guide their team through the storm and come out stronger on the other side. And only the best leaders will focus on employee experience during that storm.

That leader needs to be you.

During an unprecedented crisis such as COVID-19, your leadership becomes even more valuable. With so much uncertainty, your employees will look to you now more than ever for stability.

How Can You Maintain a Positive Employee Experience?

Here’s how you can provide stability for employees while keeping your business operating at maximum efficiency…

1. Foster Transparent Communications

During times of crisis, transparency becomes essential. If your employees think your business is in trouble, they’ll feel anxious.

As the person in charge, you need to keep everyone in the loop. That means sending regular updates about how the business is doing, what problems you’re running into, what you’re doing to deal with them, and more.

2. Keep Communications Positive and Hopeful

Since employees will be expecting to hear from you often, make sure any communications you send out don’t make your employees feel anxious any further.

For example, if you have daily or weekly meetings, start them off by talking about successes within the company. After all, recognizing your employees’ efforts becomes even more important during times of turbulence. And those people and teams recognized will certainly appreciate being recognized, a key aspect in improving overall employee experience.

3. Offer Ways for Your Employees to Relieve Stress

Since the lines between the office and home have become blurred, it can be a smart move to provide your team with ways to relieve stress such as:

  • Providing your employees with additional time off and breaks if needed.
  • Setting up team virtual game nights or remote “after-office” clubs. (That said, make sure to be considerate of parents and others who may not have the same flexibility with evening get-togethers.)
  • Encouraging your team to talk to each other about how they’re handling all the changes. Make it easier to share how colleagues in similar positions are managing — what’s working, what’s not.

Happy employees tend to be better at their jobs. Helping your team relieve stress shows them you care, and it can foster in-office ties.

4. Adjust Your Internal Processes to the “New Normal”

Nothing is the same as it was months ago, so the internal processes that help you deliver products/services and accomplish tasks also need to adapt to the new normal.

For example, now might not be the best time for performance reviews as few people may be thriving during the pandemic.

5. Be Empathetic and Patient with Your Team

The pandemic and near-global quarantines have had a massive impact on most people’s mental health. One of the key reasons is that a lot of employees don’t know if they’ll have a job in a month or two.

On top of being transparent about how things are going within the business, you also need to be patient with your team. Few people are performing at 100% now, so empathy is key.

Don’t simply assume you have empathy. Chat with three to five trusted people for their honest feedback and ask if they perceive a sincere effort to accommodate the team.

6. Ramp Up Employee Feedback

Although you may know your industry inside and out, your team probably has insights that you might not have considered.

If you want to stay ahead of the curve, encourage everyone who works for you to come forward with any feedback they might have. The best way to do that is to provide multiple channels for inbound feedback.

7. Set Up New Channels for Inbound Feedback

Some examples of the types of channels you can set up to encourage employee feedback include:

By providing multiple channels, you increase the chance employees will share concerns and also information about protocol violations.

8. Promote New Safety Protocols

If part of your team isn’t working remotely, then it’s your job to enforce security protocols.

That means giving your team all the information they need to perform their job safely without adding to their stress levels.

So don’t make it sterile and forgettable. Promote your safety protocols in a fun way that’s “on-brand” and will click with your employees.

9. Help Your Team Recalibrate Expectations

Although it’s your job to ensure that employees don’t feel anxious, you also need to be forthcoming about what the pandemic might mean for the employee experience now and in the future.

Some companies are putting off raises others are cutting hours, and more. Being transparent about what the business is going through will help your team keep their expectations in line.

Your team will have the confidence to adjust if they see a transparent management that is doing everything to keep the ship afloat. And that confidence will become a huge element in their employee experience.

10. Recognize the Small Things

Now more than ever, your employees need to know that you recognize the work and effort they’re putting in.

Without people showing up to work every day (even if it’s from their living room) your company wouldn’t survive. By fostering an environment where hard work is recognized and praised, you can help your team weather the storm.

Your Leadership Can Make the Biggest Difference

No industry is coming out of the pandemic unscathed. So how good your footing is after everything is said and done will depend on the level of stability instilled into your employee experience during these times.

By fostering transparency, encouraging employee engagement, and by being more empathetic, you can ensure that your team knows you’re on their side.

Photo: You X Ventures

Don’t Sacrifice Talent To Survive a Crisis

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Nobody needs to tell you that we’re in hard times. A pandemic is sweeping the nation, a trail of personal and economic devastation behind it, and frightening uncertainty ahead. Businesses are struggling to figure out the best path to survival. For many leaders, the impulse is, understandably, to lessen their organizations’ financial load with layoffs.

The good news is that eventually, through the efforts of courageous health care workers and our technology, we will defeat the virus, and life and work will return to a version of normal. And many economists predict that when this happens, our mothballed world economy will snap back to life, unleashing a wave of pent-up demand.

Will your company survive and be ready for this?

After all, consider what happened post 9/11. After the attacks, the world economy reeled, oil prices surged, and the stock markets plunged as the world braced for war in the Middle East. Many companies, fearful about the future, indulged in a layoff binge, slashing their workforce without thought to who their top talent was, or what current and future skills the organization might need to remain viable and recover with the economy.

But then the economy quickly rebounded, and the downturn turned out to be what economists call a “V-shaped recession.” The sharp decline in GDP was followed by an almost equally sharp increase in business activity. At this point, companies found that the talent they let go was desperately needed. They scrambled, and the result was a massive hiring binge to fill the gap that they themselves created.

The fact is that fundamentally, there was nothing significantly wrong with the underlying economics on September 11th, 2001. The economic downturn was not caused by normal business cycle considerations, the firing binge was followed by a scramble to replenish a depleted workforce.

Today, the pandemic is cutting a swath through what otherwise had been a robust economy, so the mistakes of 9/11 are a cautionary tale.

If you are among the business leaders queuing up the pink slips in reaction to this unprecedented crisis, I urge you to stop, take a breath, and think your next steps through — lest you sacrifice valuable employees in your rush for short-term relief.

While I understand some companies are in crisis and don’t have the luxury of time to pause for analysis, most do have the wherewithal, and I would argue, a duty to their workforce and, if public, their shareholders to proceed with wisdom and caution.

So instead of rushing to throw off what might feel like human ballast, consult with your HR executives to put together a strategic workplace plan, or crisis plan, by performing a three-dimensional review of your current workforce, considering more than headcount and cost. Instead of responding in panic only to the here and now, look ahead, 6 to 18 months in the future, and decide:

  • What skills your people have today and what your organization will need
  • How to ensure you have an adequate supply of these skills and where to deploy them
  • Your succession plan for key leaders

Upon sober reflection of these needs, you probably will find that you can keep most of your workforce in place, and you will be ready to make clear decisions based on your data and forecasts. Additionally, doing a strategic workforce crisis plan will set you up for the future by seeing how you can maximize the productivity of the workforce you have. From this plan you will be in position to drive higher performance and workforce engagement, creating what I call “PEIP capability,” where PEIP = People Engagement, Innovation and Performance.

PEIP is a strategic capability that not only creates higher performance, it creates a more engaged workplace, which naturally leads to greater productivity. Who doesn’t want to work in an organization that wants to optimize employees and work with their skills and their career aspirations? A workplace that tries to align people to what they do best? An engaged workplace is a fun place to work, but it is also a competitive advantage. Some of the highest performing companies, such as Google, Microsoft, Accenture, IBM, and SAP, have implemented PEIP strategies to create competitive advantage, and this is reflected in their people engagement scores as well as share-price performance.

PEIP can also help future-proof your organization. New smart technologies and AI perme.ating the workplace create another opportunity for the workforce and the organization to align the right people with the right skills to harness new technology. This creates a “turbo-charging” effect, driving more engagement, innovation, and productivity, as well as return on investment on IT spend.   

We are at the fork in the road — once again. It’s a scary time, but rife with opportunity for companies that respond with foresight. We can do as we have done for decades before and continue the hire/fire binge, or we can step back and be more strategic and thoughtful in addressing the current crisis, while at the same time positioning our businesses to thrive in the future — whatever it brings.

Workplace Violence: Be Safe & Sound, But Be Prepared: #TChat Recap

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Most victims of violence feel powerless and alone.  I’d argue most bystanders and witnesses feel the same.

Most of us want to believe that folks are basically decent, not monsters that erupt at work or at home or anywhere and take lives with them.

It can’t happen here.

Which is why many employers don’t plan for workplace violence until there’s violence, unfortunately. And even then…

In a Workforce Management article titled Waking Up to the Risks of Workplace Violence, the author writes:

In one recent training class, a senior HR leader told me he had no issues of workplace violence.

Yet, as we continued to talk, it emerged that a man had come into the company’s Midwest office looking for his girlfriend. He wanted to hurt her, and when he couldn’t find her, he pulled out a gun and shot five employees.
Stunned, I turned back to the senior leader and asked if he knew about it. “That was different; it was more of a domestic violence issue that took place at our plant.” The amazing part of this discussion was that we were in Oklahoma City, the site of one of the worst incidents of workplace violence in U.S. history.
The lesson is that violence that occurs in the workplace is workplace violence whether it takes place between spouses/domestic partners, between co-workers, by a third-party with a relationship to the organization (client, partner, etc.) or in conjunction with the commission of other crimes.

And that’s critical to understand — violence is violence is violence and companies need to be prepared.
That was what #TChat was all about last night — the dark side of workplace culture, violence and what to do and not do.  You can read the transcript here and here were last night’s questions:
  • Q1:  How does everyday violence & security breaches (like Wikileaks) impact workplace culture policies?
  • Q2:  How does your org address workplace violence during onboarding – and at other times?
  • Q3:  What is HR’s role in workplace violence intervention, prevention and post-incident?
  • Q4:  What is the CEO’s role in addressing workplace violence before it occurs, when it occurs and after?
  • Q5:  Under OSHA, employers are responsible for providing a safe and healthy workplace. Discuss.
  • Q6:  How can EAPs be designed to provide maximal workplace/domestic violence assistance?
  • Q7:  How effective are your org’s workplace incivility, bullying and violence prevention programs
  • Q8:  If a colleague is threatened with violence at work from anyone, what should you do and why?

As per usual, we had a great group of HR and business professionals participating and sharing their knowledge.  It was refreshing to hear from some organizations that bake incivility, bullying and workplace violence awareness and prevention right into their hiring, onboarding and ongoing employee performance activities, whether they have an EAP or not.  A special thank you to Felix Nater for sharing his workplace violence expertise.

Along those lines, here are some ways to enlist your employees’ help in ensuring that your workplace is a violence-free zone (from the Corporate Alliance to End Partner Violence website):

  • Empower employees to take a stand—as caring co-workers and as your company’s ambassadors.
  • Let employees know they will not be penalized for seeking help—for themselves, their families, or co-workers in need.
  • In conjunction with your human resources department and EAP program (if available), offer counseling and referral for both victims of partner violence and abusers.
  • Help employees recognize the signs of a troublesome or abusive relationship and know where to turn for assistance, for themselves and for co-workers.
  • Invite local resource groups, such as local shelters, counseling groups and/or law enforcement representatives to make a presentation to your company. Most groups are happy to provide speakers and information to interested parties. (National Domestic Violence Awareness Month in October is a great time to do this!)
  • Give each employee access to brochures and flyers to distribute to their schools, religious organizations, clubs, and other civic or social groups.
  • Invite interested employees to form a communications task force, working within the guidelines established by your cross-functional steering committee to implement your partner violence communications plan.

You can also review all the information we shared in the pre-TChat posts:

Be safe and sound, but be prepared.



Workplace Violence & Security Risks: #TChat Preview

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Originally posted by Matt Charney, one of #TChat’s moderators, on MonsterThinking Blog

“The Dark Side of Workplace Culture: Workplace Violence and Security Risks,” the theme of this week’s #TChat, is one we don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about until we’re forced to by tragedy.

The reaction to workplace violence and security risk tends to be largely reactive, but the consequences demand organizations take proactive steps to preempt, and prevent, occurrences of what’s sadly become a reality in our new world of work.

According to the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, 1 million workers are assaulted and 1000 are murdered every year from workplace violence; in fact, homicide is the leading cause of death for women in the workplace.

“The problem is that when some sort of violent outbreak does occur at work, we always hear things like, ‘It was just a matter of time,’ or ‘We knew something like this was going to happen,’ says Gary Lalicki, VP of Clinical Operations at Health Management Systems of America, one of the nation’s leading providers of employee assistance programs (EAPs).  “Well, if that’s the case, the question that has to be answered is, ‘why didn’t you tell anyone about this?’”

As Kevin Grossman writes in “The dark side of Workplace Culture — workplace violence and security risks, the reason is often related to an attitude of, “Don’t ask, don’t tell … you don’t want your employer to know for fear of losing your job. Employers don’t want to know for fear of potential violence in the workplace.”

“Employers have a legal duty to seek to identify and prevent everyone in the workplace from becoming victims of violence,” says Lalicki.  “Employees also have a responsibility to assist in keeping their environments safe and secure by reporting any behavior in others that may lead to incidents of violence.”

According to Lalicki, these red flags include:

  • White collar males: 91.6% of shootings on the job are committed by men; 38% of all shootings in workplace happened in “white collar” situations, making up 30% of all fatal shootings at work.
  • Laid Off: 24% of workplace shooters were laid off or fired (although Lalicki says there’s been no increase in workplace violence during the recent recession)
  • Loner: A pathological blamer or complainer whose perpetual frustration has strained work relationships and reduced productivity
  • Sudden Changes: A previously dependable, punctual and productive employee whose tardiness and absences begin to increase substantially; sudden change in health or hygiene
  • Relationships: A coworker involved in a troubled, work-related romantic situation.  13% of shootings in the workplace involved a former or current intimate relationship.

The good news, Grossman writes, “today there are thankfully so many more resources available and more and more companies have workplace violence and/or intimate partner violence programs and/or EAPs (employee assistance programs).”

While most companies offer Employee Assistance Programs, these resources are often underutilized or misunderstood by employees.

“EAPs can help any employer group have a healthier workforce, but it’s up to HR and Senior Leadership to develop training and communications which promote the company’s employee assistance program,” Lalicki says.  “Companies need to stress that these resources are completely free, confidential, and most importantly, that these programs work.”

Join #TChat tonight at 8 PM ET/5 PM PT as we discuss workplace violence and the solutions available for HRs, senior leaders and employees alike to prevent it.  The good news is, just joining the conversation’s an important first step.

“The big problem with workplace violence,” says Lalicki, “Is that we’re too afraid to talk about it.  But the risks of not talking about it are a whole lot scarier.”

#TChat Questions and Recommended Reading: 1.31.11

Here are the questions we’ll be discussing, along with some background reading, to help prepare and inform the #TChat conversation.  While this isn’t mandatory to get in on tonight’s #TChat action, we suggest checking out these articles by top career advice and talent management thought leaders to better understand workplace violence, security risks and how to prevent them:

Q1:  How does everyday violence and security breaches affect workplace culture today?

Read: When Violence Strikes the Workplace by Sarah Needleman

Q2:  How does your org address workplace violence during onboarding – and at other times?

Read: Waking Up to the Risks of Workplace Violence by Tucker Miller

Q3:  What is HR’s role in workplace violence intervention and prevention? Who else should be involved?

Read: Keeping the Workplace Safe Amid Crisis by Kate Rogers

Q4:  If a colleague is threatened with violence at work from anyone, what should you do and why?

Read: Workplace Violence: The 5 Most Important Tips Women Need to Know To Protect Themselvesby Lisa Quast 

Q5:  If you have an EAP, how do they provide workplace/domestic violence assistance?

Read: Domestic Violence: Workplace Policies and Management Strategies by Kim Wells (Executive Director, Corporate Alliance to End Partner Violence) and Stacey Pastel Dougan, Esq.

Research: Domestic Violence Awareness Handbook USDA Safety, Health & Employee Welfare Division

Q6:  What are the most effective ways to minimize workplace incivility, bullying and violence?

Read: Workplace Bullying: US Employers’ Progress on Epidemic Problem by Randi Barenholtz and Denise Kay, Esq., SPHR

Q7:  Under OSHA, employers are responsible for providing a safe and healthy workplace. Discuss.

Read: Employment Policies: Clean Up Your Compliance Act by Melanie Berkowitz, Esq.

Q8:  What is the role of leadership in addressing workplace violence when it occurs and before it occurs?

Read: Leadership and Workplace Violence by John Ikeda

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Our Monster social media team supports the effort behind #TChat and its mission of sharing “ideas to help your business and your career accelerate – the right people, the right ideas, at the right time.”

We’ll be joining the conversation live every Tuesday night as co-hosts with Kevin Grossman and Meghan M. Biro from 8-9 PM E.T. via @monster_works and @MonsterWW.  Hope to see you tonight at 8 PM ET for #TChat!