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Worktech Can Work Better: Employers, What’s Your Plan?

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Over the years, worktech solutions of all types have repeatedly promised to transform the workplace. Still, employers aren’t so sure. In fact, it can feel like an impossible dream if your tech stack has ballooned into a jumble of loosely coupled platforms, applications, tools, and data.

Sound familiar? If so, it’s time to rethink how you tie together all the elements in your worktech ecosystem. But sorting through an alphabet soup of platforms — ATS, HCM/HRIS, ERP, CMS, TMS, LMS, LXP, and more — can be arduous.

Of course, that’s only the tip of the iceberg. You’ll also need to consider sub-level features that reach across systems. For example, is SSO fully deployed? Are you prepared to support enterprise-wide video or XR capabilities? Can you leverage APIs or SFTP for data sharing? And how will you demonstrate ROI to your CHRO?

The potential pitfalls are rampant, but employers don’t have a choice. To attract and retain high-quality people in today’s competitive talent market, a stellar employee experience is crucial. And the right worktech plays a central role in bringing that vision to life.

What’s Behind This Worktech Challenge?

Three factors:

1. An Overwhelming Array of Options

The landscape is massive. Thousands of HR tech solutions are available. The learning tech segment, alone, includes hundreds of platforms. And each system offers its own unique set of features.

For example, in the learning space, you can find platforms focused on content creation and curation, skills and competencies development, microlearning, training resource management, learning analytics, and much more. Similarly, among applicant tracking systems, features may include resume parsing, candidate screening, interview scheduling, job board integration, AI-based chatbots, and so on.

This barely scratches the surface of worktech functionality. Yet even more features are on the way, thanks to advances in generative AI, process automation, predictive analytics, and other machine learning-driven capabilities.

In other words, the options are overwhelming. And the landscape is becoming even more complex. Any organization could spend years trying to find clarity in the noise this saturated market generates.

2. A Disjointed Experience

Another challenge involves existing legacy infrastructures that result from ad-hoc purchasing decisions. Too many organizations suffer from a proliferation of systems, selected in silos, to address specific business needs over time.

What’s more, if decision-makers embrace the “sunk cost” fallacy, they’re likely to hold on to existing technology. But this only causes disjointed infrastructures to persist.

Highly cohesive digital experiences come from minimizing the need to toggle between technologies. Also, by combining data with actionable insights, you can ensure that system administrators don’t become full-time reporting specialists.

Every platform in your worktech stack needs to be flexible, so you can seamlessly integrate, share, and synchronize data. This ensures your ecosystem will scale and reduces disruptions in an otherwise harmonious employee experience.

3. Functional Silos

Talent, HR, and learning teams typically work in parallel, but not together. They don’t communicate or collaborate on the tools decision-makers invest in. This only compounds the proliferation of work tech tools and flawed sunk-cost logic.

The result? Perhaps your ATS doesn’t share data with your HRIS, so they don’t work together seamlessly. Your LMS may not sync with your LXP. Or your LXP may not share data with your HRIS. The potential disconnects grow with each incremental system you add.

Ultimately, you’ll find multiple dead ends, isolated data sets, and organizational blind spots. All these issues drain productivity. In fact, estimates say employees waste as much as five work weeks each year, just toggling between applications.

Obviously, this causes frustration for employees. It also harms platform engagement and adoption. Even worse, it contributes to employee dissatisfaction, disengagement, and even turnover.

So, What’s the Solution?

1. Take the Long View

As you choose platforms and vendors, let your long-term interests guide you. Look as far into the future as possible. Aligning worktech with your long-term strategy helps ensure it will support you well beyond the initial contract. Here are several “future-proofing” tips:

  • Be sure each platform and application is designed to integrate beyond its own proprietary products.
  • Select vendors with robust research and development resources. You should expect to see tangible examples of recent innovations. Evaluate each vendor’s recent product releases to understand how frequently and effectively the solution has improved over time.
  • Vendors may also help you look ahead by sharing a brief overview of their product roadmap. And if you both sign non-disclosure agreements, you can more freely discuss how well a vendor’s product strategy aligns with your organization’s objectives and expectations.
  • Don’t hesitate to ask specific questions about innovations of interest to you. For example, these days, generative AI, process automation, and other machine-learning capabilities are hot topics. Vendors who are ahead of the curve won’t hesitate to respond. Those who continuously adapt and innovate are far more likely to keep up when the next disruptive enabling technology or killer app enters the worktech space. The best vendors can demonstrate a consistent track record of advances and a clear vision for the future.

With so much at stake, you don’t want to leave these decisions to chance. If you don’t have sufficient expertise or bandwidth to develop a game plan or identify appropriate platforms, you may want to rely on an independent IT solutions architect or Consultant for insight and advice.

2. Pick the Best Worktech Providers

Speaking of vendor selection, choosing the right partners can be a bit of a minefield. You can find numerous suggestions and “top 10” lists for any flavor of HR platform. But keep in mind that each of those lists is based on the author’s point of view. Are your goals and their criteria aligned?

Ultimately, nothing beats conducting your own thorough research to learn about various platforms, understand each vendor’s use cases, and verify the results their customers have achieved.

No solution will be perfect. But some will be a better fit for your business. When engaging with a new vendor, I look for green flags like these:

  • The company has a clear mission and vision, with industry-leading partnerships and evidence of consistent, sustainable growth.
  • Sales representatives ask numerous intelligent questions about your specific needs.
  • You have access to a comprehensive demo or trial period, so you can test the platform.
  • They readily share user experience details – how they optimize UX and how this contributes to overall tech stack efficiency.

Ultimately, you’re looking for partners who will serve as an extension of your team and celebrate your wins. When they are invested in your success, everything else falls into place.

3. Focus on Open Platforms

Why does this matter? Open platforms are not just a work tech feature, they are the way forward. And they are proven. Many well-established enterprise tech stacks already depend on open systems. Atlassian, WordPress, and Zendesk are all examples of open platforms that support millions of businesses, globally.

The strength of open platforms comes from the flexibility of publicly available Application Programming Interfaces that make it easy for systems to exchange data. By leveraging APIs, your IT team and development partners can efficiently build desired functionality into your platforms, and continue to customize as your needs evolve.

Open Means Freedom to Explore Options

With an open platform, you aren’t limited to the functions, products, or partners defined by your chosen vendor. You have more latitude to experiment with various work technologies so you can configure the best solution for your business needs.

For example, at some point, you’ll probably want to build on the core capabilities in your LMS. Perhaps you want to offer a dedicated talent intelligence marketplace to improve internal mobility, or a coaching app for high-potential talent, or a just-in-time learning experience for frontline workers. Open systems make it possible to add these enhancements incrementally.

Closed Means More Complexity and Cost

On the other hand, a closed platform is just the opposite. Closed systems limit you to a predefined set of available data, features, developers, and partners. Any changes or additions require a skilled external developer or solutions integrator with access to proprietary knowledge and tools — and a budget to match.

All things considered, an open ecosystem makes sense for most organizations. This gives you the flexibility to decide for yourself which functionality works best for your workforce, along with the freedom to implement changes while preserving your core investment. You can prove and disprove the effectiveness of different platforms with relative ease because your technology foundation is integration-friendly.

The Result: Worktech That Works

Talent, HR, and Learning Working Together — Not Alongside

Your organization’s various “people” functions may already be collaborating. After all, most software buying cycles now involve stakeholders from HR, Learning, IT, the C-Suite, and others.

However, nothing is more valuable than ongoing visibility into related organizational functions, and direct communication with counterparts in those business areas. This helps you better understand others’ buying priorities. Plus, it helps you recognize where others’ teams, platforms, and efforts can be more fully aligned for more effective, cost-efficient operations, overall.

You may even discover that one team’s problem could be solved by another team’s platform.

For example, nearly every HR team is grappling with how to attract the talent they need in today’s tight labor market. Most organizations rely on relatively costly recruiting solutions to solve internal skills shortages. Still, many roles remain unfilled. Yet upskilling from within saves an estimated 72-90% over the cost of hiring new talent.

Now, think of this challenge from the perspective of a worktech ecosystem where platforms are integrated and working cohesively.

One solution could be to closely connect a talent intelligence marketplace with an employee upskilling platform. This lets you consolidate and mobilize valuable skills data, so you can efficiently identify which employees have desired proficiencies and which are strong upskilling candidates.

As a result, your organization could save time and money, while also improving business productivity and performance. Ultimately, this could move your organization forward in using skills as a strategic factor that improves workforce agility, innovation, and responsiveness.

Of course, this is only one example of the benefits that come from an open, integrated worktech game plan. Many more opportunities are getting attention from organizations these days. What workforce challenges are you ready to tackle with this approach?

Rightsizing Your Workforce in the Face of Economic Change

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Businesses everywhere are still grappling with tremendous change, as pandemic aftershocks continue to roll through the global economy. Although most Covid-era restrictions are behind us, organizations large and small are still dealing with significant people-related issues. Workforce capacity planning is just one piece of this complex, multi-faceted puzzle. But if you’re an employer, rightsizing your workforce has likely become one of your top priorities during these turbulent times.

One of the most serious repercussions of the pandemic involves talent — or the lack thereof. Companies aren’t able to hire enough skilled workers to meet their operational needs. This inability to attract and retain qualified talent — coupled with inflation — is driving compensation higher. In fact, according to the March 2023 U.S. employment cost index, civilian wages continue to increase, up 5.0% over the past year. And depending on the industry, some workers are asking for even more.

This means employers are having to get creative when attracting and sourcing talent. For example, some are focused on rightsizing their workforce to maintain operational efficiency while qualified workers are in short supply. And many companies are downsizing and upsizing simultaneously, as they adjust to continuously changing industry challenges and trends.

Effective Workforce Rightsizing Isn’t Only About Efficiency

For numerous organizations, workforce rightsizing involves reliance on contingent workers. This can be a smart choice. Contractors and temporary workers often provide the flexibility needed to operate efficiently and effectively, even when market demand shifts or business priorities change. This strategy is also attractive because it helps protect internal employees and their core responsibilities.

Even so, a flexible workforce might not be enough to weather a negative business cycle. It may also be necessary to make the difficult decision to lay off existing employees. Obviously, the most challenging aspect of downsizing is deciding which employees to lay off.

Is it best to make these decisions based on individual performance? What role should seniority play? And how can you be sure your remaining team will have the skills, knowledge, experience and motivation to sustain your business through tough times and support future growth?

If layoffs are followed by a hiring freeze, there’s the additional question of how to retain remaining employees. What will you do if critical contributors decide to resign? The last thing you want to do during a business downturn is jeopardize a product launch, revenue goals, or customer experience.

It’s important to recognize that drastic workforce adjustments can trigger problems with stress, morale, and engagement. Naturally, staff members who aren’t laid off are likely to soon wonder, “Is more bad news on the way?” or “Am I next?”

Even in an era known for record levels of voluntary resignations, job loss is foremost on employees’ minds. In fact, it is the top concern among 85% of people, according to the Edelman 2022 Trust Barometer. Concerns like this can prompt even the most loyal team members to start hunting for a new job. And without proactive intervention from leaders, this kind of “flight” response can spread and upend your organization’s efforts to regain stability.

Rightsizing Your Workforce: 4 Key Strategies

When rightsizing your staff, finding the right balance isn’t easy. It’s even more difficult when you need to downsize one department while upsizing another.

You can certainly be upfront about your intentions — and you should be. Transparency and clear communication are essential when managing change. However, you can’t afford to lose sight of the fundamental challenge every organization must face. You must determine the best way to anticipate and respond to potential business fluctuations. Here are a few ideas that can help:

1. Include Contingent Workers in Your Plan

By definition, contingent workers serve as supplements to your core employee base. They generally work on a project-by-project basis. As such, adding contingent workers to your plan offers significant flexibility when rightsizing your team becomes necessary.

In fact, 63% of organizations told SAP Fieldglass that contingent workers enable greater organizational agility. What’s more, 62% believe contingent workers are essential for filling key IT and digital skills gaps. For example, when companies experience a sudden influx of work, they can call on this scalable talent pool for quick access to the right capabilities.

2. Be Strategic About Any Hiring Freeze

When initiating a hiring freeze, one of the biggest mistakes companies make is to halt all recruitment activities and contingencies, entirely. It’s important to continue hiring-related processes. This way, when the need for additional help arises, you can more easily pick up where you left off and maintain operational continuity.

Even if incremental roles are temporary, you’ll be better able to tap into the skills needed to support critical business objectives. In fact, 61% of companies told SAP Fieldglass that contingent workers help accelerate their speed to market. In other words, relying on flexible staffing can actually help you continue to scale during a hiring freeze.

3. Treat Skills Development as a Long-Term Investment

Don’t be shortsighted about talent recruitment or development. Focusing only on the skills you need now can leave you scrambling to fill critical roles down the line. In addition to the skills and competencies you need today, emphasize what will be essential for your business in the next few years.

Investing in professional development also gives you a chance to leverage learning and growth opportunities in your recruitment efforts. It can help your job openings stand out in today’s environment, where jobseekers value employers that emphasize learning and career advancement.

4. Leverage a Talent Marketplace

Essentially, a talent marketplace is a system that helps employers align talent with open roles. It can work one of two ways:

  • Internally, you can use this kind of system to facilitate employee mobility, helping individuals pursue different roles based on their skillset. Or you can redefine and reorganize an employee’s existing role so it better aligns with your organization’s changing needs. This process can be especially helpful during a hiring freeze.
  • Externally, a talent marketplace can help organizations open the door to freelance, temporary, or gig workers who are qualified for hard-to-fill roles. Think of it as creating a larger, more agile talent pool that lets you secure the right skills at the right time, while saving costs typically associated with recruiting and hiring internal employees.

Final Notes on Rightsizing Your Workforce

Pandemic aftershocks are still reverberating through the business world — and organizations will continue to be disrupted by unexpected external factors. As a result, smart employers are staying open to more agile workforce planning and management strategies.

Today’s successful employers are already rethinking the way they recruit, hire, manage, lead, compensate, and redeploy talent. Rightsizing your workforce is just one piece of this larger puzzle, but it can make a significant impact on your organization’s long-term success.

WorkTech Tools: Your Quick Guide to Productivity in the New Year

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When the pandemic suddenly forced millions of people to work remotely, employers weren’t sure what to do next. Because the transition was nearly instantaneous, this shift wasn’t easy. But eventually, many people adapted to remote work and learned how to operate effectively in virtual team settings.

Indeed, only 9 months after the Covid lockdown began, Upwork estimated that 42% of U.S. employees were still working from home, and nearly 70% of managers said work was progressing much more smoothly.

What helped individuals and organizations move forward efficiently through tough times? In part, successful teams turned to best-of-breed productivity tools.

Great WorkTech Tools Make a Difference

Now, nearly 3 years later, great worktech tools matter more than ever, as employers strive to offer people continued flexibility in how they get work done.

Effective managers have learned that some applications are especially useful at helping individuals and teams prioritize tasks, manage their time, collaborate, and explain important work concepts with job aids.

That’s why we’ve compiled a list of 5 worktech tools to help optimize individual and team performance and productivity, going forward.

5 Applications Worth Considering:

 

1. Slack: Communication and Collaboration

What worktech tools can help your teams improve productivity in 2023? Learn about Slack and more in this article

Source: Slack

Slack facilitates communication and collaboration among teams by consolidating messages, file sharing and chat activity in a central digital workspace. This lets people organize conversations by topic so they can avoid repetition and confusion while simultaneously conveying information to other group members. It also supports direct conversations with individuals and subsets within a group.

Because these conversations happen asynchronously, everyone can check updates and move discussions forward when it’s convenient for them. And with all related communication available in one place, individuals can easily revisit and refresh their understanding of tasks and stay up-to-date with the latest status. This leads to better team results.

Some of Slack’s IRC-style features include:

  • Personalized chat rooms (channels), for topics, private groups and direct messaging
  • Searchable content, including conversations, people, files and more
  • Emoji buttons to add flair and personality

Also, this tool is compatible with most applications that enable file and document sharing, which makes project workflow management and version control highly efficient.

Slack’s free plan lets users view and search their most recent 10,000 messages. Graduated paid plans give users the opportunity to add more functionality as their reach and requirements grow. 

2. Hubstaff: Time Tracking

What worktech tools should you consider for workforce productivity in 2023? Learn about Hubstaff

Source: Hubstaff

Hubstaff has operated as a virtual team for nearly 20 years. The company uses its own experience to design and deliver a workforce management software suite that helps businesses spend less time tracking workgroup activity and more time focusing on company growth and success.

This platform bundles time-tracking and proof-of-work functionality with project management, automated payroll management and more – all designed to streamline remote work management.

With its time-tracking software, Hubstaff can help dozens of team members work remotely. Despite being in different locations, employees can collaborate and coordinate effectively by leveraging these features:

  • Online timesheets
  • Time reporting
  • Randomized screenshots 
  • Mouse movement tracking to supervise team activity and engagement

Hubstaff is highly effective at helping remote leaders analyze team efficiency and encourage accountability. If you want to try before you buy, a 14-day free trial is available with limited features.

3. Trello: Project Management

What worktech tools can improve your productivity in 2023? Learn about Trello and other applications

Source: Trello

Next on our list of top productivity tools is Trello. This online list-making application is built on the Japanese-inspired Kanban (visual signal) model. Developed by a subsidiary of Atlassian, Trello is a highly adaptable project management tool.

Trello helps track project progress across multiple stages. It is useful in multiple contexts, from lesson planning, school bulletin boards and gaming to web design, real estate management and law office case administration.

With Tello, users can:

  • Create customized task boards featuring columns with various task status options (such as To Do, In Progress, Pending Approval, Done)
  • Set deadlines for each task
  • Move tasks between columns as they progress
  • Add multiple people to cards and use the message feature to communicate with the group simultaneously

Trello offers three business plans – standard, premium, and enterprise – as well as a free plan for individuals and small teams.

4. Evernote: Note-Taking

What worktech tools can improve your productivity in 2023? Learn about Evernote and other applications

Source: Evernote

Evernote is a popular note-taking application that helps team members easily organize and share notes. It lets users create, save and archive ideas and resources in a variety of formats, including audio, video and saved web content and reference links. Notes are archived as virtual notebooks that users can label, annotate, search, edit and export.

With Evernote, people can also:

  • Sync notes across various devices so they’re available to multiple team members, simultaneously
  • Read digital media in a way that looks and feels just like physical documents
  • Integrate group note management with workflows in email and team productivity apps such as Slack, Salesforce and Microsoft Teams

Evernote offers free usage with limited monthly features, and paid plans with expanded storage capacity and enhanced features.

5. RescueTime: Reduce Work Distractions

What worktech tools can improve your productivity in 2023? Learn about RescueTime and other applications

Source: RescueTime

Last but not least is RescueTime, an application built by remote workers for remote workers. RescueTime is designed to help minimize distractions so people can focus on work and improve individual and team productivity. It does this by recording your digital device usage and time spent engaging with various applications and websites.

The company’s mission is to support better work-life balance by helping people:

  • Continuously track their time on websites and apps, so they’re more aware of how they use their time and can adjust their habits for greater efficiency
  • Minimize wasted time by encouraging successful productivity strategies

This app lets users manually modify its default settings to fit individual goals and preferences. A free 30-day trial is available, while the paid version helps users:

  • Set goals 
  • Activate “Focus Time” (block distracting alerts, applications and websites)
  • Record offline events

Which WorkTech Tools are Right for Your Team?

The number of productivity tools has exploded in recent years. Certainly, they can help team members work more effectively together. But too many tools – or the wrong ones – can be counterproductive. Pointless or unpopular tools can actually discourage people, disrupt workflows and decrease output.

So, before adding to your worktech stack, always research and test your selections. Start by asking your team for recommendations. They’re close to the action, so they’re likely to have good ideas. Plus, if you implement solutions recommended by team members, they’re more likely to adopt them and encourage others to do so.

Also, be sure to think about the best way to roll out new tools. Avoid overwhelming people with too many options all at once. Instead, prioritize and introduce tools over time, so everyone can learn about them and integrate them into their workflow. This also gives you time to determine the impact of each incremental step forward.

No matter what, keep driving toward improvement. Eventually, you’ll see more people working more collaboratively and effectively while meeting more deadlines. And ideally, wherever your people are located, they will feel more engaged, efficient and comfortable contributing to your organization’s success.

How Knowledge Workers Really Spend Their Time

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Despite the lip service organizations give to reducing productivity-killing emails and unnecessary meetings to help workers focus on what matters, the problem of workplace distraction may be getting worse.

U.S. workers say they spend only 40 percent of their workday on their primary tasks, and that they’re often distracted by emails, meetings and administrative tasks, according to the fascinating 2019 The State of Work report released by Workfront, a provider of cloud-based work management solutions.

According to the survey, emails and pointless meetings topped the list of things that keep knowledge workers from getting work done. And 63 percent of respondents agreed with the statement “If I had more time to just think my productivity would improve.”

“The [employers] that are effective in giving time back to their people win on a lot of different levels,” says Workfront spokesman Chris O’Neal. “Not only is their performance better overall, they are able to get to market faster because they’re focused on the right things.”

Let’s dive into the survey results.

How We Spend Our Time

The survey covers 2,010 U.S. workers, all of whom are employed by a company with at least 500 employees, work on a computer and collaborate with other people on projects. Here’s how they reported spending their work day:

  • 40 percent — Performing the primary duties of my job.
  • 16 percent — Emails.
  • 12 percent — Administrative tasks.
  • 10 percent — Useful and/or productive meetings.
  • 8 percent — Wasteful meetings.
  • 8 percent — Interruptions for nonessential tasks.
  • 6 percent — Everything else.

Interestingly, baby boomers reported spending a greater percentage of their week on their primary job duties (45 percent) compared with Generation X (38 percent) and millennials (34 percent).

When asked what gets in the way of work, wasteful meetings topped the list, mentioned by 62 percent of respondents. Other major productivity-killing factors included:

  • 55 percent — Excessive emails.
  • 41 percent — Unexpected phone calls.
  • 35 percent — Excessive oversight.
  • 34 percent — Lack of standard processes for workflow.
  • 29 percent — Poor work prioritization methods at my company.
  • 25 percent — Lack of collaboration within my team.

Struggling to Innovate

The survey indicates that while a healthy majority of organizations value innovation and regularly ask employees to do it, they aren’t carving out the appropriate time for workers to actually focus on on this task.

While 64 percent of workers surveyed said their workplace asks employees to think of how they can do things in a completely new way, nearly the same amount — 58 percent — said they’re already swamped with day-to-day tasks and they can’t think beyond their to-do list.

“From the top down employees are being told ‘This is part of why we hired you,’ but from [employees’] point of view they’re saying ‘They’re not allowing me to do that,’ ” O’Neal says.

Looking at Solutions

One-third of workers say the single biggest thing that would help them do more with less is if their employer instituted better processes.

“As individuals we say ‘Let me be free, don’t put shackles on me,’ ” O’Neal says. “But what we’ve come to find out is without process, we’re really exposed to a lot of this busywork. We don’t have enough data to say no to things. When you have too many ways to do one thing, there’s no real way to do anything.”

Another 26 percent of respondents said being able to block out time in their calendar to actually get work done is a top factor. Having fewer meetings to get through the week, having a central place to see all the work the team is doing and setting objectives for the entire organization ranked as top solutions to more productivity.

O’Neal says that in recent years the report has recorded an interesting shift on automation among workers, away from a fear of disruption and toward a more optimistic view that it will actually enable productivity.

In the 2019 report, on average workers said 37 percent of their day-to-day job duties are already automated. About 70 percent of respondents said automation will give them more time for primary job responsibilities, while about a third of workers said people will be competing with robots, machines and AI for jobs in the not-too-distant future.

“The majority of folks in our data now say they look forward to more workplace automation because they feel it will give them more time back to do the real critical-thinking types of work they want to do rather than the mundane repetitive tasks they have to do now,” he says.

Why I Won’t Play Pokémon Go

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Do you struggle to maintain concentration? Technology and its foreboding “nowhere to hide” mindset has certainly not helped. Thankfully, there are ways we can limit workplace distractions without having to abandon our smartphones.

Unlike most smartphone owners, I have not downloaded the app sensation, Pokémon Go. While I am typically first in line to consume pop culture, I’m familiar enough with my bad habits to know that the minute this game is uploaded to my phone, I would become obsessed to the point of atrophy. Case in point, I am still haunted by the wasteful Candy Crush summer of 2012.

My refusal to play Pokémon Go certainly puts me in the minority. A recent study from MFour Mobile Research, has found that a third of U.S. Android smartphone users have downloaded this game, surpassing Twitter as the most popular current mobile app. For those of you who are not familiar, Pokémon Go is a virtual scavenger hunt. Players explore the real world with their smartphones, hunting for 151 different cartoon characters at grocery stores, parks, and coffees shops. Did I mention that they are also playing Pokémon Go at work, as if our team needs another distraction.

Office workers are interrupted approximately every eleven minutes, academic studies have found. Once distracted, it takes an average of 25 minutes to return to the original task, says Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California.

Another study, published by Carnegie Mellon, measured the amount of brainpower lost when someone is interrupted. Two subject groups were tasked with reading a passage and completing a test—one merely did the assignment, while the other was told they “might be contacted for further instructions” at any moment via instant message. When the second group thought they were going to be interrupted but weren’t, they were 14% less likely to answer correctly. When they were interrupted, their scores dropped another 6%.

Distractions steal our time, hurt our productivity, impede our creativity, and damage our efficiency. Even worse, many of our distractions are our own fault, making them wholly avoidable. Larry Rosen, author of iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession with Technology and Overcoming Its Hold on Us, states that these self-induced distractions are becoming more prevalent and difficult to manage. There is a compulsion to check email, text, social media, and games like Pokémon Go. “We might be in the middle of a meeting but if we don’t check in we start feeling anxious,” Rosen says.

To effectively manage self-inflicted interruptions, we must build our ability to concentrate and minimize distractions. Here are a few tricks that (along with discipline) may work:

  • Take tech breaks. Give yourself a pre-determined amount of time to read through social media or hunt down a Pikachu. Then, silence devices and set the timer. Until the buzzer sounds, you work on that one assignment. No flipping through emails, responding to tweets, or switching screens.
  • Be less accessible. Close your door and tape a sign saying “Do Not Disturb. Genus at Work?” Do this at a set time throughout the week to ensure you are allowing yourself time to work undisturbed.
  • Hide. If your workspace is too distracting, find somewhere else to work. Leave your phone in your desk and retreat to a less visible area.
  • Stop pop ups. On your smartphone, tablet, and laptop turn off the notifications that interrupt you throughout the day. This includes banners, sounds, vibrations, and badges.
  • Get help. If motivation is the issue, download apps like Freedom and Zero Willpower that will block alerts and social media access at the times of your choosing.

Don’t fall victim to the Pokémons lurking around each corner. They want to break your concentration and take you off task. If you can control the urge, you remain the hunter; however, if you succumb to their temptation, they are now hunting you. You and your team do not have to become prey to a bunch of pocket monsters. Fight the distractions so you can spend time on things that really matter… like Tetris.

 

Photo Credit: Like_the_Grand_Canyon Flickr via Compfight cc

Office Space: Work in Progress #TChat Recap

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Every organization needs the right balance of caves and commons. What that precise balance is depends on what the organization’s particular goals and challenges are, and more granularly, what the immediate situation of a work team is.
—Leigh Thompson, Harvard Business Review

This week, the TalentCulture community took on “The Office” as our primary topic. No, we didn’t talk about today’s finale of the long-running TV show. Instead, we focused on real-world workspace — what our physical environment means to us, how it influences our mood and behavior, and the role it plays in our creativity and productivity as individuals, teams and organizations. (For highlights from the #TChat Twitter event, see the Storify slideshow at the end of this post.)

Special Guests: Workspace Wizards

Perhaps no other company understands the concept of workspace better than Steelcase. That’s why we invited experts from that company to share their insights at this week’s #TChat events. If you think of Steelcase as a file cabinet manufacturer, think again. It’s now a global leader in design and furnishings for business, healthcare and education markets. I’m familiar with Steelcase from its work with schools. Just as office space shapes business behavior, classroom configuration has an impact on student learning.

This brief video of the Steelcase “Learning Lab” is a great way to see how Steelcase views workspace:

Key Takeaway: “Place” Matters

Yesterday’s #TChat Twitter conversation was the live-action conclusion to our deep dive into workspace issues and ideas. We seemed to agree on one key point:  These days, “workspace” is often determined by our location at any given moment. Many of us are in constant motion, and we take our work along for the ride — for better or worse. That means flexibility and choice are essential.

But all of us have a primary spot that we call “ours” — even if it’s in a bedroom corner. So, throughout the Twitter chat, many participants (including me) shared pictures of our workspace, or our vision of the ideal setting. Not surprisingly, those images are as diverse as the hundreds of #TChat participants who join us each week! One of my favorites is the Pons Huot Office, shared by Katja Matosevic. (Check out the #TChat Highlights Slideshow below for more, or look at this Forbes gallery of 10 Cool Office Spaces.)

Are you inspired yet? Read on!

#TChat Week-in-Review

SAT 5/11

Sneak Peek: Organizational Pyschologist and #TChat Ambassador, Dr. Marla Gottschalk, helped us frame the week’s theme in her TalentCulture blog post, “Your Workspace: How’s It Working For You?”

SUN 5/12

Forbes.com Post: TalentCulture CEO, Meghan M. Biro identified “5 Habits Of Leaders Who Create Workspace Culture” in her weekly Forbes column.

MON 5/13

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Listen to the #TChat Radio recording now

#TChat Preview: Our community manager, Tim McDonald, posted a detailed the week’s theme and key questions in a preview post: “If These Workspace Walls Could Talk.”

TUE 5/14

#TChat Radio: Chris Congdon, Director of Research Communications at Steelcase, offered fascinating perspectives about the human psychological and physical factors that influence workspace design. In particular, she focused on the importance of choice in satisfying diverse preferences and multiple work modes.

WED 5/15

Related Post: Sourcing specialist and #TChat Ambassador, Ashley Lauren Perez, offered another spin on workspace design — specifically its role in supporting talent acquisition and retention. Read her post, “Employer Brands: Big-Company Ideas for the Rest of Us.”

#TChat Twitter: The community conversation was so fast and furious that once again, we trended on Twitter! Did you get in on the action? If not (or if you want a refresh), see highlights in the slideshow below:

#TChat Twitter Highlights Slideshow: “If These Workspace Walls Could Talk”

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Closing Notes & What’s Ahead

SPECIAL THANKS: Again, thanks to Chris Congdon and Steelcase for sharing your perspectives on workspace design and organizational culture. It feels like this discussion has only just begun!

NOTE TO BLOGGERS: Did this week’s events prompt you to write about workspace issues? We’re happy to share your thoughts. Just post a link on Twitter (include #TChat or @TalentCulture), or insert a comment below, and we’ll pass it along.

WHAT’S AHEAD: Next week — reward yourself! Join us for events focused on recognition and employee engagement, with special guests, Stan Phelps founder of 9 Inch Marketing, and S. Max Brown, Principal of Leadership Directives at Rideau Recognition Management Institute.

Until then, as always, the World of Work conversation continues each day. So join us on the #TChat Twitter stream, or on our new LinkedIn discussion group. And feel free to explore other areas of our redesigned website. The lights are always on at TalentCulture, and your ideas and opinions are always welcome.

We’ll see you on the stream!

 Photo: Thanks to Tom Bolt for the Einstein inspiration

Humans as a Service: Sneak Peek Videos

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Software as a Service (SaaS). It’s no longer a new concept in the world of work. But have you heard of the new variation on that term — Humans as a Service? What is this really about? How and when will it gain traction? And what does it mean for professionals who focus on the “people” side of business?

This is what human capital innovation experts Jason Averbook, and Richie Etwaru will explore with the TalentCulture community throughout the coming week. Both of our guests bring a unique perspective to the discussion, as you can see in their “sneak peek” videos below.

Take a look. What do you think of this concept? We hope you’ll join us at #TChat forums throughout the week and voice your questions, concerns and ideas.

Economy Shifts From “Buying” to “Subscribing”

Jason Averbook, Chief Business Innovation Officer at Appirio, sees Humans as a Service as a logical next step in the shift from a “buy” to a “subscription” economy:

Looking at “Cloud” as Both a Noun and a Verb

Richie Etwaru, Group VP of Cloud and Digital Innovation at Cegedim Relationship Management, sees no boundaries as business moves toward “everything” as a service:

Join us at #TChat events this week, and let’s explore the potential of “Humans as a Service” together:

NOTE: If you don’t see the videos above in this post, you can watch them on YouTube:

HR Rock Stars & Business Speed: #TChat Preview

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Few companies understand the value of going slow to go fast, especially in today’s inter-connected, always-on workplace. So we’re told to pick up the pace, not slow things down, to move at the speed of business. HR is often chided for not moving fast enough, especially in the recruiting and hiring process.

Here at TalentCulture World of Work, however, I wonder about the wisdom of trying to force speed across large, complex organizations comprising individuals with different skills, intellectual abilities, interests and value systems. Do the “5 Ways to Rock Star HR Leadership” require us to move as fast as the rock stars on radio live? My guess is probably not.

Then there’s the employee handbook side of things, where processes and policies are written down, ostensibly to add structure, but really to limit risk. Most adults are self-regulating creatures. Maybe 5 to 10 percent can’t manage their time well, but that small percentage forces a load of policy and process on the rest of the group. We’d argue that the more policy you have, the less trust and productivity you’ll have, but no doubt some will disagree.

So this week we’re going to look at speed — the speed of business, what HR can do to pick up the pace, and the role of metrics, measurement, technology and process in speeding up HR. Here are our questions for this week’s #TChat forum:

Q1: What exactly is the “speed of business” Why do we penalize HR for not moving at it?

Q2: “If it wasn’t for those pesky humans”: Why do we need HR to regulate ourselves?

Q3: How can leadership (including HR) help reduce need to self-regulate & create cultures of trust & productivity?

Q4: What metrics should leadership (including HR) focus on to move at the speed of business & why?

Q5: Tech only moves @ the speed of biz if humans do too, so what kind of tech helps us meet in the middle?

So if you’re into speed, or even  if you’re built for comfort, not for speed, join us Wednesday night, Oct. 10, from 7-8pm ET (6-7pm CT, 4-5pm PT, or wherever you are) to talk about what (if anything) is needed to bring HR up to the speed of business. Yours truly (@MeghanMBiro) will be your moderator. Joining us, too, will be Kevin W. Grossman (@KevinWGrossman), the rest of the #TChat posse, and you. Fast or slow, innovator or laggard, please weigh in on our discussion. We look forward to chatting.

Image Credit: Stock.xchng

Workplace Presenteeism Redefined

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The majority of organizations today have employee support programs to help with workplace absenteeism.

Examples include sick days, short term disability, long term disability, return-to-work, workplace accommodation, vacation, emergency family care, and the list goes on. The goals of these programs are to reduce costs to employers, improve employee productivity and ultimately top and bottom line financial results.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, American businesses lose an average of 2.8 million work days each year due to unplanned absences, which costs employers more than $74 million. Some thought circles put this number close to $200 million. Regardless, the numbers are staggering, and with our aging population and increasing life expectancy these numbers will continue to escalate.

But…

The figures above deal with workplace absenteeism ONLY, and not workplace presenteeism. What’s the difference? We’ve defined absenteeism to be the employee being absent from work due to health reasons. According to Dr. Gary Cooper, who pioneered the term “presenteeism” in the mid-90’s, this is where employees show up for work even if they are too sick, stressed, or distracted to be productive.

There is an underlying medical issue that is causing the employee to be unproductive at work.  They’re physically there but not really THERE!  The result?  Poor productivity and performance, which often negatively influences colleagues and peers.

The above definition of presenteeism originally coined by Dr. Cooper focuses on health being the reason for non-performance and productivity at work. There are many reasons why presenteeism exists, and through my experience and research, I would argue that our mental states are the key drivers of presenteeism. Corporations have spent so much time, money and resources reducing absenteeism that it has created a culture of fear and anxiety towards being absent from work. Businesses have even gone as far as rewarding employees for not taking sick days, or using sick-related benefits. This has pushed us to behave and act in ways that are in fact more detrimental to our own physical health, and personal productivity and performance.  At the end of the day, we are scared to death of not satisfying the “butt in chair” optic.

The Canadian Mental Health Association of Ontario provides a more precise and detailed description of the reasons for presenteeism, which relate to stress and sub-par psychological state of mind.

Case in Point…

With our world literally turning itself upside down every single day; natural disasters, gigantic hostile takeovers, corporate cuts, war, political upheaval, the technological explosion, WE are scared to death. We have bills to pay, mouths to feed and simply staying alive and covering basic survival needs has never been more at the forefront of everything we do and think about. Decisions are made so quickly, and through our natural “fight or flight” human responses, our actions are dictated by our emotions. Simply put, we’re afraid of being pushed aside or marginalized in the workplace.

Let’s Add a Twist…

We’ve been talking about presenteeism defined as being at work when sick or unhealthy. I am jumping out on a limb here and am going to argue that presenteeism is also about being at work when you ARE perfectly healthy but spending time doing other things completely unrelated to helping your company achieve and succeed on its business objectives.  What about people that are physically there but simply wasting time by choice?

This Doesn’t Make Any Sense…

My explanation… we are unbelievably connected socially through technological means with anyone, anywhere, and at anytime.  We are a culture of “checking in” (e.g. FourSquare, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, email, blog and the list goes on). When using a laptop we typically have multiple screens open at once, flipping back and forth constantly from Hootsuite to email to LinkedIn to Facebook to blogs. Our iPod’s are raging 24-7, mobile phones buzzing constantly from incoming texts, emails, tweets or phone calls, and this is all happening at 10,000 miles an hour. Our attention spans are probably 10,000% shorter than they were just 10 years ago and our concentration levels are limited to the 10 seconds of complete silence we actually get in a given day. Our social connections, technological “connectedness” and instant and constant real-time communication habits result in our available time that should be spent on work is being eaten up doing other things and being unproductive.

The Point? Perfectly healthy people are wasting incredible amounts of time at work, as are unhealthy people. This is ALL presenteeism to me!

What Are the Costs?

I made the argument that technological waste needs to be part of the definition of presenteeism. Research does exist to show that presenteeism is significantly greater than absenteeism but currently I would consider the research a bit sketchy because a) it only deals with presenteeism that is related to medical issues, and b) the statistics are all over the place. Research has been done, primarily in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia.

The Journal of Occupation and Environmental Medicine argues that “presenteeism costs employers as much as 3 times the dollar amount as absenteeism in terms of lost productivity”.

Statistics Canadaargues that “productivity lost from presenteeism was 7.5 times greater than productivity loss from absenteeism”. They also argue that “stress related health problems could increase the ratio to 15 times greater”.

Canadian Occupational Safety provides a good perspective on the problem of presenteeism and argues that it is 4 times bigger than absenteeism in terms of hours lost. The COS also includes research completed from Watson Wyatt Canada that puts the ratio of presenteeism to absenteeism between 2.5 and 8.6 times, with the top 3 medical causes of presenteeism being depression, fatigue and insomnia.

Another Wrinkle in the Cost Argument…

If you have heard me speak in the past or follow my blog, you have likely heard me talk confidently about the positive correlation that exists between employee engagement and business results. The more engaged your workforce is the more successful you will be in achieving your corporate strategic objectives. In terms of a definition for employee engagement there are many, but I have typically used something close to the following:

“An intimate emotional connection that an employee feels for the company they work for that propels them to exert greater discretionary effort in their work”.

Now throw in what I have talked about regarding presenteeism into the mix. Do you think perfectly healthy employees that are physically at work but choosing to do other things is an example of strong engagement? I didn’t think so. Earlier I threw around a bunch of figures for what presenteeism costs business today, and nowhere in this research do these numbers reflect what employee disengagement caused by presenteeism costs. I am NOT going to try and take a stab at what this number may be but the point here is it would be profoundly staggering and it’s a huge problem.

Conclusion…

Pis a much more costly problem than absenteeism, yet corporations focus mostly on reducing absenteeism. I also argue that the current definition of presenteeism only relates to medical reasons, but should include lost productivity and performance as a result of perfectly healthy employees doing things completely unrelated to the business.

These other things are directly related to technology and our “check in everything now and now” mentalities. I also argue that presenteeism is a significant drain on employee engagement, which strongly correlates to business results.  Finally, presenteeism is a huge problem, and by taking on a more accurate understanding of what presenteeism is, the problem is epidemic-like and should be the focus of organizational improvements today.

Taking Work-Life Balance By The Horns

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(Editor’s Note: All of us in the TalentCulture community mourn the loss of our dear friend, brilliant colleague and mindful mentor, Judy Martin, who passed away unexpectedly on January 31, 2014. Her message and her life are a lesson for us all. We will forever fondly remember her humor, warmth and wisdom.)

A colleague recently told me she was suffering from anxiety about heading back to work, after a week off.  In gory detail, she described a nightmare in which her manager littered her office with big black hairy spiders. Pretty much how she feels at work, she effused.  “The creepy crawlies never seem to go away.”

That type of stress dominates her work life experience, and it’s not foreign to many of us. And sharing news and tips on how to reduce that work life stress is where my focus will be here at Talent Culture.

The American working pool has been thrust into what I refer to as “a work-related field of cognitive dissonance.” Stuck in a vacuum of perpetual information overload, courtesy technology and our human response to it, we’re also pressed to pay attention at work and excel or suffer potential consequences.  Survey please! The numbers tell the story:

An American Psychological Association survey on work-related stress found that sixty-two percent of Americans hold work as having a significant impact on stress levels.

A survey by Princeton Survey Research Associates found seventy-five percent of employees believing that on-the-job stress has increased compared to the previous generation.

We are under enormous pressure to perform. To deliver. To excel. We juggle our working and living experience, but often fall into a merry-go-round of stress in what I refer to at WorkLifeNation.com as the  “UPED U” Cycle which is described below.

In simple terms, “UPED U” is the chaotic cycle we enter when our work life merge gets out of control and  “ups” our stress level leading to emotional turmoil and potentially less productivity.

The solution – to find creative ways to throw a kink into that cycle.

Here’s what happens in that cycle, along with a few pointers on how to stop the insanity! I’ll be writing more about the antidotes to these cyclical monsters in future posts.

1.     Unlimited Incoming:

A barrage of information continually comes our way.

NEW RULE: Consciously limit your news intake. Aggregate your favorite news sources and blogs on line and choose one time a day to focus on them. Depending on your job, determine the best time of
day to check e-mails and stick to it. If you are addicted to web surfing –limit your time doing that.

2.    Perceived Availability:

We’re all wired to our families, work and communities and everyone else knows you’re tethered to technology so we’ve created the perception that we’re always available.

NEW RULE: Come to agreement with the most important people from work and in your family that you communicate with regularly. Speak with them and share your daily work life scenario. People will assume that you are available unless you tell them otherwise.

3.    Expectation of Instant Gratification:

That perceived availability leads to other people’s needs to be attended to. They want to be heard and answered in the moment.

NEW RULE: Unless your work requires it, do not respond to e-mails in the moment and limit your texting.  This takes a lot of discipline and you will break this rule a lot depending on the circumstances.

4.    Desire to Deliver and Excel:

Our nature is to not fall short. To nurture and want to please in what is a competitive working environment. To make our boss or clients happy, we desire to deliver and excel to keep up with the Jones’.

NEW RULE: Don’t be so caught up in how other people define success. Be confident in your work your deliverables. Only you know how productive you are andwhat might need to change to up your game. There will be times when you might have to enter into the extreme work zone, but be aware of your limitations to avoid burnout.

5. Unlimited Interruptions:

In order to please everyone at the same time, we are often taken out of the moment, are
lead astray from the initial task and surrender to multi-tasking.

NEW RULE: Stop the insanity. Find a place in the cycle to make that tiny aberration in the stream of chaos to offset the tumble effect. It’s really about you taking control a little more control. Being conscious that the choices you make can mean the difference between burnout and a productive work life merge.

The trick is to monitor your incoming, and make concrete choices somewhere in this cycle to stump the system. Where do you think is the best place to stop the cycle? Please share your solutions to avoid an “UPED U.”