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[#WorkTrends] Hiring Hourly Employees, Improving Candidate Experience

Hiring hourly employees — for retail, travel and hospitality, hospitals, restaurants, and warehouses — is more critical now than ever before. 

So why don’t we make the hiring process easier? And why don’t we treat those on the front lines better?

We’ve been counting on our frontline staff members, many of them hourly employees, for nine months now. And we’re about to start rebuilding workforces. So soon, there’s likely going to be a tidal wave of organizations hiring hourly employees. 

So as your company tries to beat the competition and attract the best talent, and as you work to improve your employer brand, there are two words you need to think about seriously: candidate experience. This means this week’s podcast is just for you!

Because this week on #WorkTrends, we’re taking a deep dive into the best way to provide a super candidate experience for hourly employees.  

Our Guest: Quincy Valencia of Alexander Mann Solutions

With the inevitable hiring surge soon to begin, I’m thrilled to be joined by Quincy Valencia, Vice President – Product Innovation, at Alexander Mann Solutions. Having worn many hats throughout her 20-year career, Quincy has firsthand knowledge of the challenges faced by candidates, recruiters, hiring managers, leaders, and vendors. In her current role, she leverages her passion for challenging the status quo as she designs new products that bolster AMS’s leadership position in the global recruitment industry. So who better to talk about something we don’t talk about enough: The challenges ahead of HR, recruiters, and hiring managers responsible for hiring hourly employees?

My first question for Quincy was simple: “Why do so many organizations leave hourly employees out of the candidate experience equation?” Her answer was both nostalgic and a reminder of far we need still need to go when hiring the best hourly candidates:

“It’s a vestige of old. Going back to the 90s, you had a personnel department. Everybody had the same process: People would come in, fill out the application, and you would hire. Later in that decade, technology came in, and we designed new procedures around old processes. Through the decades that followed, we’ve continued to promote the same old processes developed and designed for your salaried professionals — and not hourly employees.”

“Hourly workers have been looked at as more of a commodity — they kind of come and they kind of go. Turnover is higher. This work is not meant to be your forever job, and so that’s been okay.”

Improving Candidate Experience When Hiring Hourly Employees

After saying I firmly believe we should treat every employee as a valued member of a team — as humans — I asked Quincy why candidate experience is so vital now. Her answer was heartwarming: “Look, it is 2020. We’ve learned a lot about who really supports our businesses. And we know those people want us to treat them with the integrity, dignity, and respect they deserve. These are the people on the front lines of our economy. They are often the face of the businesses we all frequent. That should translate into your candidate experience, now so more than ever.”

Quincy added: “As our organizations are trying to grow and rebuild and survive this global pandemic, there’s a renewed focus on how we are competing for this talent. We’re having to really focus on the needs of the candidate. Fortunately, I’m seeing employers give this issue the due consideration it’s been deserving for a long time.”

So how do we improve the candidate experience? As anticipated, Quincy was ready with some real solutions to our very real challenges. “Number one is speed. Go through your application process. See how long it takes, how many broken links there are, and how many steps and clicks it takes. In a lot of cases, you’re going to be frustrated.”

Quincy continued: “Number two (or maybe 1A) is mobile. Applicants must be able to apply from anywhere. A lot of people don’t even have laptops or desktops anymore. So close to 70% of all job searches, certainly within the hourly category, begin on a mobile device. And then, number 3 is communication. Make sure you are not letting candidates go into that black hole of ‘I applied, and I’m never going to hear from you again.’”

Candidate Experience 101

Sure, some of this sounds simple enough. But how many of us are actually walking through our own application process? How many of us know how well we treat our candidates, including hourly employees? Quincy and AMS have certainly invested the time and energy necessary to understand their candidate experience — as we all should!

Listen in, and learn exactly what AMS is doing to attract, train, and retain top talent in the hourly category — and what a seamless hiring journey looks like as we approach 2021 and, finally, the end of the pandemic.

I’m grateful Quincy Valencia had the chance to stop by #WorkTrends this week and bring our front line employees front and center. I, and the TalentCulture team, thank Hourly by AMS for sponsoring this episode.

Find Quincy on LinkedIn and Hourly by AMS on Twitter.

A Special Offer: The Hourly Hiring Guidebook

It’s time to treat hourly employees with the dignity and respect they deserve. So, we’ve partnered with Hourly by AMS to redefine how great the hiring journey can (and should) be for your hourly job seekers.

Download your copy of The Hourly Hiring Guidebook: Defining a New Standard for Candidate Experience today.

And start providing a better candidate experience tomorrow!

 

Editor’s note: We’ve updated our FAQ page and #WorkTrends Podcast pages. Take a look!

 

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[#WorkTrends] The Power of Workplace Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging

Talking about workplace diversity without talking about inclusion and a sense of belonging can be counterproductive. Worse yet, it isn’t going to help the marginalized feel like they have a seat at the table.

I recently read a great post by LaFawn Davis of Indeed. In that article, LaFawn makes it clear the pandemic’s impact on people of color, women, older, and more often marginalized workers is entirely disproportionate. Cases in point:

  • Discrimination against Asians in the U.S. has surged since the early days of the pandemic. Over 30% of Americans have recently witnessed COVID-19 bias against Asians.
  • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 33 percent of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 were Black. This, despite blacks comprising only 13 percent of the American population.
  • An October study on Women in the Workplace by McKinsey found that one in every four women is considering downshifting their careers. Or, they might give up their jobs due to the impact of Covid-19.

We have a lot of work to do. And we must start that work by acknowledging that people of color and women are shouldering recent burdens far more than others.

Our Guest: LaFawn Davis, VP of Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging, Indeed

Joining me this week on #WorkTrends is the author of that insightful post, LaFawn Davis. LaFawn is the Vice President of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at Indeed. There, she leads Indeed’s strategic efforts to remove bias and eliminate barriers to entry by focusing on inclusive features and accessibility in products to help all people get jobs. She also enables a diverse and inclusive work culture for Indeed’s employees. 

Because I find too many companies are still trying to lump diversity, inclusion, and belonging into one entity, I started our conversation by asking LaFawn how these three elements differ and, taken one at a time, how they help us build a truly diverse workforce. LaFawn’s response quickly cut to the heart of the matter:

“Companies are trying to silo off diversity, inclusion, and belonging. Or, they make one of the words synonymous with the others,” LaFawn added. Next, LaFawn intuitively explained how a deliberate focus on each element helps create an innovative workforce:

“Diversity is the belief that teams with different work styles, problem-solving techniques, life experiences, backgrounds, perspectives, and skill sets are truly what makes innovation possible. Inclusion is really around the actions and behaviors that create a culture where employees feel valued, trusted, and authentic. And belonging is a feeling of community; it is the people and our culture that make us feel connected.”

LaFawn when on to say that when those three elements are adroitly combined, we feel valued: 

“In the workplace, it’s not about looking like me or coming from where I come from. It’s about those common threads that pull us together.”

The Business Case for Workplace Diversity

Of course, many business leaders remain focused on the bottom line. So after talking with LaFawn about the undeniable systemic racism in the US today, I asked her how diversity, inclusion, and belonging impact that bottom line. LaFawn, as you can imagine, has some strong feelings about how leadership should be leveraging workplace diversity to build better companies.

“This should be what keeps every single business leader up at night,” she emphatically said. “Are we going to be a different and better company than we are right now? Ten years from now? 15? I mean, we know that businesses with a more diverse workforce are 36 percent more likely to be in the top tier of their industry. And we know that firms with greater gender diversity are 25 percent more likely to be at the top for financial returns, market share, and retention. So diversity, inclusion, and belonging do affect your bottom line!”

LaFawn and I also talked about how these three elements have been hit hard by the pandemic. Specifically, how the need to transform to a remote workforce and the stress the pandemic has placed on frontline workers impacts the ability to intentionally create and maintain a diverse workforce. We also discussed the role hiring has in creating workplace diversity and the mistakes commonly made as organizations work to include people of color, women, and other groups who feel marginalized in their workforce — those who do not feel they belong.

Looking Ahead to 2021

If you haven’t already, your organization will soon start taking a hard look at how diversity, inclusion, and belonging will look in 2021. Before you do, I invite you to listen to my conversation with LaFawn. In 20+ minutes, you’ll understand how she has helped Indeed build an innovative workforce. You’ll also learn how she has helped many other organizations — starting with hiring — create organizations where equality and parity become the norm. And where that norm becomes a critical component of the company culture.

My thanks to LaFawn Davis for joining me on #WorkTrends and for participating in our upcoming #WorkTrends Twitter chat at 1:30pm Eastern on Wednesday, December 16th. During that chat, we’ll answer these questions and more:

  • Q1: Why do organizations struggle with building diversity?
  • Q2: What strategies can help increase inclusion and belonging?
  • Q3: How can leaders build more diverse workplaces?

Our thanks also to Indeed for sponsoring this timely episode of #WorkTrends. 

 

Find LaFawn on LinkedIn and Twitter.

 

Editor’s note: We’ve updated our FAQ page and #WorkTrends Podcast pages. Take a look!

 

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[#WorkTrends] Designing Work to Meet Personal and Professional Goals

We’re all doing more with less. And yet, we continue to work toward the achievement of our personal and professional goals. So how do we find the right balance… or shall I say the right “blend”? 

Even as we learn best how to work from — well, wherever — for most of us, our overarching goal remains integrating a productive, engaging professional life with a satisfying, fulfilling personal life. In fact, as I talk to members of the TalentCulture community over the past few months, one thing has become clear: The blending of personal and professional goals into a comfortable mix is finally gaining momentum. 

That makes sense; after all, attempting to create strict boundaries between one’s personal life and work often meets with disappointment. Especially now, when distancing oneself from personal life while at work — and removing work from our active thoughts while on downtime — is becoming increasingly difficult. 

However, with some concerted effort, we can balance satisfying personal and professional goals. 

Our Guest: Author and Productivity Expert, Carson Tate

Joining me on the #WorkTrends podcast this week is Carson Tate, the founder and managing partner of Working Simply, Inc. — a consulting firm that enhances workplace productivity, fosters higher employee engagement levels, and helps build personal and professional legacies. Carson’s newest book, where she talks about making any job your dream job, is Own It. Love It. Make It Work. Of course, I had to ask Carson if someone, especially now, can really design their work in a way that makes them happy in their professional and personal life. Her answer was both encouraging and inspiring:

“That is the big question, and it often comes with an eye roll or a sigh. Yes, because any job can be a place for fulfillment and engagement for you. Because who defines what fulfillment and engagement look like? You do! So you must own the opportunity to shape and craft your work in a way that works for you. You actually own your piece of the action. So you must identify what you need to be happier, more fulfilled, more engaged, and more excited about going to work.”

I followed up by asking how that is possible given many of us can no longer separate who we are at work and who we are at home. Carson replied, “When our commute is two minutes to the kitchen table, our concept of work is very different. Folks are working more hours. There’s more burnout because of the connectivity. And there’s anxiety around making sure I stay visible; that my boss knows what I’m doing and that I’m adding value.”

“So it’s even more important to be thoughtful about what it is you need, the conditions under which you work best, and also your own levels of engagement and fulfillment.”

Professional Goals: How to Make “This” Job Your “Dream Job”

Carson shared with us many tips on how to stay connected and visible while working remotely. Her tips are sure to help all of us balance our desire to live a fulfilling personal life while being fully engaged at work. My favorite moment came when I asked her about the three most important steps when making our current job our dream job. “Own it… love it… make it work,” Carson said. She added: “When we own our work, we align our strengths to the work; we then do better work. When we love our work, we have a clear idea of where we want to go and the skills we must develop to get there. And when we make it work, we’re designing the work for more meaning; we find purpose in what we do each and every day.”

Solid advice we can all use. But we weren’t done yet. I also talked with Carson about avoiding the roadblocks that interrupt our career journeys (especially in these challenging times), how to ensure we’re getting the recognition and appreciation we all need while working from home, and much more. Be sure to listen to the entire episode!

My thanks to Carson Tate for joining me on #WorkTrends. A thought-provoking conversation, indeed!

 

Find Carson on LinkedIn and Twitter.

 

Editor’s note: We’ve updated our FAQ page and #WorkTrends Podcast pages. Take a look!

 

Photo: Norbert Levajsics

How to Work Productively During COVID-19

Working from home is a necessity for many of us right now. It’s a critical way to help flatten the curve, for one. It can also have its appeal even during this unprecedented, harrowing crisis that faces us all. But being productive at home even under the best of circumstances — without remote schooling, sick loved ones, relentlessly bad news, and economic turmoil — can be a challenge. 

Full disclosure: I have been working remotely since well before COVID-19; many of my colleagues do as well. We’re old pros at this (not really old, but you get the point). But even those who have been doing it for years know productivity is not just a robotic process. Sometimes we need to detach to refocus. Sometimes we need a better chair. So I collected some of the best practices for being productive and staying focused while you work at home. As we weather this pandemic — a sentence who among us ever thought we’d be writing — here are proven tips for boosting your productivity: 

1. Recognize these are not normal times.

The stress of great expectations can be crippling to our ability to focus right now. Anxiety is also a known productivity-crusher. My advice: acknowledge these are not ideal conditions to shift your operations to the home office / kitchen / kids’ room.  My colleague, Meghan, calls it the “new not normal.” We’re stressed and distracted and overburdened; we may be parenting and caregiving as we’re conference calling. Remembering that we’re all in this together, and there’s a great purpose to it all can be a powerful way to defuse that tension headache brewing as you try to conquer that memo.

2. Go with your flow.

Work with your natural flow of mental, physical, and emotional energy that happens in the course of a day. Everyone’s different. The friction of pushing back against fatigue uses way too much energy, and that’s energy you should be conserving to sit back down. So the next time you feel tired and sleepy, don’t ignore it. Your brain chemistry is saying it’s time to take a break. Like any organism, it can only run high gear for a while. After that, the ratio between potassium and sodium gets out of balance and that’s when you start losing focus. 

3. Take better breaks.

It’s not just the act of taking a break that’s key to productivity; it’s also the kind of break we take. You’ve just been facing a screen for three hours and then you decided (wisely) to get up and give yourself ten minutes. Where do you head? LIkely, to another screen. Too many of us turn to our smartphones and check in on social media. But that’s no way to rest our brains. If you take a microbreak from your computer screen, make it a microbreak away from any screen. Go for a walk, stretch, or meditate: even meditating for a few minutes can be extremely effective. 

4. Smooth out the distractions.

A professor of Informatics at UC Irvine found that distractions aren’t just momentary little hiccups: they can seriously detract from your ability to concentrate. It can take an average of 25 minutes to regroup after a 30-second jump to check Twitter, for instance. Repeatedly checking inboxes and social media also breaks the all-important flow state of creativity that’s required to successfully complete a complex task. Even taking a few seconds to answer a text can derail your focus and lead to errors. Given the digital array we’re all working on now, it may be hard to ignore the constant flow of communications from your co-workers. But if you have a project you need to attend to, consider signing off — at least for half an hour. You’ll get farther with it, faster.

5. Take a longer break.

Many of us have a crowded household and several needs pulling at us from all directions. It can feel as if you’re moving from conference call to homework table to snack making to the next meeting. Break that seamless feeling by going for longer breaks that take you entirely out of the routine. As well as microbreaks, make sure you get at least one macro break during your workday. A twenty-minute walk can increase the release of endorphins that naturally improve your mood and reduce stress levels. It’s also a great way to clear your head. 

6. Track your moods and energy levels.

Knowing how to pace yourself will come with time, but it’s worth it to monitor yourself over the course of a workweek. The goal is not just to work well over the duration, but also to avoid burnout — by not pushing yourself so hard you’re completely depleted. Take an average day (if there is one). Every hour, write down what you do, whether or not you were focused for the whole hour, your mood, and your energy level. Use a 1-10 scale for energy and mood — keep it simple. What interruptions happened, and how long did it take you to get back to working? When did you break to drink or eat? Then, repeat it the next day, and the next. You can also find a time tracker app, though the act of writing something down on paper has the added benefit of getting you off the screen. At the end of a few days or a week, gather the data. See what you’ve got.  

From those insights, see what small changes you can make to improve the low mood and low energy times. Might be more breakfast, meditation, a later lunch, a longer walk, more exercise, more water. And look at the high mood and high energy times and see if you can shift your schedule, so the toughest tasks are done at those times. Even minor adjustments can have tremendous results.

Finding our working rhythms in this time of crisis and anxieties isn’t necessarily the first thing that comes to mind. We may be more concerned with where we’re going to go, in a noisy apartment for the next meeting, or getting the Internet to go a little… faster. But what we learn now about our own work habits will last the rest of our careers. And you’ll always remember that during self-quarantine, you found out you’re really not a morning person — and you don’t need caffeine, or just the opposite. Taking care of yourself means taking care of your ability to get your work done, too. I wish you good luck and good workdays!

Photo: Nick Kane

#WorkTrends: How to Make Your Work Culture Rock

What does a person do when the pressure is on them? That’s what NY State Governor Andrew Cuomo asked in his daily press conference on March 26. The same could be asked of our organizations. In her #WorkTrends conversation with workplace culture expert Jim Knight, Meghan M. Biro started by thanking everyone working today — particularly those of you in HR and management who are doing your best to keep your people safe. This is a transformation no one asked for — a sudden and mandatory shift to remote, to flexible schedules, to sitting in kitchens, to navigating new platforms and software, and to trying to virtually and digitally maintain the values of a workplace. What enables that to happen is culture.

Jim built his career as part of the Hard Rock International brand, creating award-winning training programs to catalyze learning and growth. He’s also the author of the bestselling Culture That Rocks: How to Revolutionize Your Company’s Culture

As he and Meghan started jamming on the concept of culture, it was clear they agree that culture is anything but a logo or a color scheme. “It’s always going to be about the people that are currently working in the business at that moment….at the core it starts with each individual with their own unique behaviors, and then when you put them together, if you’ve got similar values and shared experiences, that’s when the culture becomes more robust.”

Meghan pointed out that it’s often a challenge for organizations to find out who their rock stars are — and noted that we often know who the innovators and key players are “in our gut,” aside from the data. Jim added that often, the great ones may be flying right under the radar. Finding them is a matter of looking for those great qualities even before they walk in, and then giving them a culture that brings those to the fore, that celebrates those behaviors.“ Then you can keep them because frankly, they’re a bit in love. And part of that culture has to be wanting to help the world, support the greater good — and be larger than your product or service, both agreed. In other words, your culture has to rock — and that’s when you’ll see people lean into the pressure, take on the challenges, and truly lead.

Listen to the full conversation and see our questions for the upcoming #WorkTrends Twitter Chat. And don’t forget to subscribe, so you don’t miss an episode. 

Twitter Chat Questions

Q1: Why do many organizations struggle with creating a great work culture?  #WorkTrends
Q2: What internal and external strategies can improve work cultures? #WorkTrends
Q3: What can leaders do to help organizations improve their work culture? #WorkTrends

Find Jim Knight on Linkedin and Twitter

Photo: Ben White

5 Ways to Build a Great Candidate Experience in 2020

Heading into a hiring spree for the new year? Last year, the Talent Board Candidate Experience Research Report found that if a prospective hire has a negative candidate experience, they’re increasingly willing to sever their relationship with that employer. This year? That report’s packed with good information to map to better strategies right now. With 61 million members of Gen Z beginning to join the workforce, companies need to bear it in mind. These digital natives have high expectations for work/life balance, inclusivity, technology and who they want to work for. And first impressions count. 

We know that a great candidate experience can pay off in long-term dividends, leading to a better employee experience, better engagement, and a stronger chance your new hires will be willing to rep you as an employer to their peers. But the most important result is that it leads to an applicant staying with the process through to the final interview, and then if it leads to a hire, they — and you — feel great about the move. To optimize the outcome, focus on these five simple pillars: 

Communicate Better

Quality communication and feedback are key factors in improving candidate experience. According to the Talent Board report, candidates who were able to ask a chatbot questions consistently rated their candidate experience higher than those who weren’t. Additionally, candidates who communicated with a chatbot were 80% more likely to increase their relationship with the employer, and candidates who received mobile text notifications during the research process rated their candidate experience 50% higher than those who did not.  

Be Human

But: no matter what generation, candidates prefer hearing from a live human within the first few steps of their application process. Despite multiple rounds of emails or preliminary video interviews, candidates may get frustrated if there’s no sense of a person on the other end, particularly Gen Z. This generation wants to believe in your company’s mission and find the work meaningful, starting with personal interactions — that’s how they know the prospective employer values them as an individual.  

Reject with Tact

When it comes to rejection, candidates still want to hear the bad news straight from the horse’s mouth — and not from a robot’s. Positive candidate experience ratings jump upwards of 28% when an applicant receives a phone call rather than an automated email rejection. It will also go a long way towards keeping the candidate in your talent pool for future openings. Rejections should be considered and considerate: especially with a young candidate, make sure the criteria and the reasoning is clear, and leave the door open. 

Be Curious

Employers who ask candidates for their feedback on the hiring process increases that candidate’s positive feeling about the organization. According to the Talent Board report, when candidates are asked for screening or interview feedback, there’s a 148% increase in their willingness to increase their relationship with the organization. That simple act of asking for (and listening to) feedback has the potential to create exceptional employee loyalty in advance.  

Be Consistent

Consistently treating candidates well breeds trust and trust is foundational for a true, human sense of engagement. Make sure your message and your process are consistent end to end. If there’s any doubt, map out all the touchpoints your organization has with a candidate. Create a checklist to address how you can treat candidates better, from branding to technology. Is the branding inclusive? Are you offering an application process that offers self-service and is self-populating? Also: make sure your job listings and your job information are consistent everywhere, whether on your career page or job boards. Candidates should feel good about your organization no matter what kind of interaction they’re having. 

We’ve got more sophisticated hiring tools than ever. But here’s a modern irony: it’s imperative that we go back to the basics in terms of how we use them. Respect candidates’ time, energy, and attention spans. Consider their need to feel like they’re valued, like their questions will be heard and answered, and that there are people — not just algorithms and bots — genuinely interested in who they are. Provide plenty of information about the process as well as the position; and about the organization’s values and culture as well as the next forms they need to fill out. Think person, not just process. And no matter the outcome, remain gracious. Might seem old-fashioned, but it’s back in style.

Trending in 2020: The (Somewhat) New Workplace

What does your workplace look like in 2020?

The workplace starting off this new decade is a whole different animal than the workplace was in 2010. The entire definition of the workplace and the nature of work has changed.  So have the expectations of employees.

Here’s what you and your team need to know about what 2020 means for your office: 

The Death of the Office… Kind Of

It’s official: the office is dead. The office your parents knew, that is.

2020 will build on a trend that’s been on the rise in 2018 and 2019. More employees rely on technology to do their jobs and keep up with their teams. This means that more employees know they can do their jobs from anywhere–and they’re not afraid to ask the boss for that benefit.

According to the Society for Human Resources Management, 69% of organizations allow their employees to work from home at least some of the time, and 27% of organizations allowed full-time remote work arrangements.

Technology is not the only driver behind this shift. Millennials, who have more debt than any generation in history, are increasingly leaving prohibitively expensive cities in favor of the suburbs where they can get more space for less (and the ability to work remotely is a major commuting benefit).

Plus, the highest-paying, most advanced jobs are concentrated in a small handful of expensive cities where the cost of living can chase out much of the talent pool. Remote work allows companies to stay competitive by broadening their talent base and attracting talent that would otherwise be inaccessible.

Somebody’s Watching You

Technology is behind the workplace monitoring trend. But this isn’t 1984, and Big Brother isn’t the one watching you — that would be your boss.

A survey by Gartner found that 22% of organizations worldwide are using employee movement data, 17% are monitoring workplace computer usage data, and 16% are using Microsoft Outlook or calendar-related data. An additional Gartner survey of 239 organizations found that 50% are now using non-traditional monitoring methods, such as analyzing employee emails and social media posts, gathering biometric data, examining who’s meeting with whom, and scrutinizing how employees use the workplace.

Based on this survey, Gartner predicts that 80% of companies will be using non-traditional methods in 2020.

That data is being used to make decisions about running the workplace. More than a quarter of employers have fired employees for misusing email, and nearly a third of employers have fired employees for misusing the Internet at work. On the other hand, workplace surveillance can benefit customers — take, for instance, hospital sensors that detect nurse hand-washing practices.

Employee Activism

But workplace surveillance isn’t holding employees back from pursuing what matters to them, even if it means speaking up against their own employer.

Half of all millennial employees have spoken out about employer actions about a controversial societal issue. The same Bloomberg study found that younger employees are more likely to be activists, though millennials are the biggest activist generation.

The past year has seen countless examples of employee activism, instigated by a sensational (and divisive) political climate. Hundreds of Wayfair employees walked out after learning that the company sold furniture to a Texas detention center for migrant children.

A Workplace That Stands for Something

This feeds into the millennial need to work for a purpose, not just money or a career.

A CNBC survey found that 69% of employees want to work for a company with clearly-stated values, and 35% stated that the most critical factor in their workplace happiness was the feeling that their work is meaningful. And these days, employees are willing to trade money for a purpose, with 9 in 10 employees stating that they would take a pay cut if it meant they could do meaningful work.

In fact, when employees were asked to rank what matters most to them in their work, money was a distant second to workplace purpose.

The Changing Definition of Benefits

That said, employees (especially millennials) won’t turn their nose up at decent benefits.

Millennials are the job-hopping generation, with half of all millennials (compared to 60% of all non-millennials), stating that they plan to be working at a different company than their current one by next year. In short, millennials don’t see a long-term future with their companies, and the jobs they take don’t tend to last more than a few years.

But for the few years that you do have your employees, they want that time to be worth their while. Younger workers are pushing back against the idea of work as a constant obsession. More of them demand increasing flexibility and benefits that reflect it, such as more paid leave after having a baby, the ability to work remotely, or allowances for breaks during the day.

The End of the Corporate Ladder

In addition, younger workers no longer think of the corporate ladder the same way their parents do. If anything, the corporate ladder doesn’t exist.

After all, why take the corporate ladder when you could take the elevator?

Younger workers are highly motivated and eager to make an impact, and they don’t want to wait for their turn. They want to move at their own pace. This means that more young workers are starting their own companies or working on their own projects rather than viewing the corporate ladder as an aspiration.

They also don’t see the value in trying to scale the wrong wall. Millennials are willing to be workaholics, but they’ve learned their lesson from the Baby Boomers–they won’t be workaholics unless success is guaranteed.

Also, young workers who grew up in the Great Recession aren’t afraid to scrap and start over, as they’re all too aware that a stable income and a good job are more fragile than they seem. Instead of putting all their eggs in one basket, they’re willing to keep trying until they find the right fit, and they’re more willing to work parallel jobs at the same time.

Take Charge of Workplace Trends for 2020

The workplace trends of 2020 will change the way your office operates —and that can be to your office’s benefit if you’re prepared to take advantage of it. Keep these trends in mind to ensure that your workplace can attract (and keep) the best talent on the market.

Photo by Proxyclick from Unsplash.

 

Yes, Your Employees Are Probably Looking for Other Jobs. Stop Trying to Fight It.

With low unemployment and growing demand for talent, it’s absolutely a job seeker’s market out there right now.

A survey last year found that 82 percent of workers were open to new employment opportunities, and Gallup data from 2015 and 2016 indicated that half of all employees in the U.S. were actively seeking new jobs. The ongoing talent crunch means a huge percentage of job applicants are actively employed at other companies.

So how do you keep your talent from leaving? For starters, by knowing that cracking down on job seekers within your company isn’t going to help. Smart organizations are focusing more on retaining talent than on hindering their workers’ ability to search for other jobs.

Last month, I wrote in my column on Forbes that you should probably stop worrying so much about retention. Let’s take it a step further — here’s my advice for how to stop panicking about retention and start focusing on what matters.

Focus on Incentives and Culture to Retain Talent

All the data shows that companies that demonstrate they believe in the professional and personal growth of their employees are much more likely to attract and retain top talent.

One of the easiest and most effective ways to do this is by clearly celebrating each and every accomplishment and achievement by employees. It’s also quite important that employees and managers remain in close contact on accomplishments, which also means having clearly established goals and milestones. Generating accurate data on employees hitting their target goals and also showing the trajectory of their performance and improvements is always helpful.

And companies should offer as much training as possible, particularly beyond employees’ current job description. Work with employees on their current and stretch goals, offering guidance about next steps.

If an employee can continue to grow by staying within the company, that’s great. But if they can’t, don’t try to maneuver the situation so they’re afraid to leave. Instead make sure they leave on good terms and know they always will have a home in your organization.

They may return sooner than you think — either as a boomerang employee or an independent contractor. Employers can’t afford to burn bridges any more than employees can.

Don’t Try to Stop Employees from Interviewing with Other Companies

I was asked recently — by someone who expected me to say what a good idea this was — if they could request that their employees not interview with another firm.

Here’s the truth: It’s a terrible idea to make such a request. Instead, I strongly suggest you invite your employees to interview with other firms. It’s a remarkable incentive for employees to stay, actually. If you encourage them to explore their free will and free choice, you’re sending a message that:

  • You’re confident enough as a company to be compared with others.
  • You’re confident enough as an employer to know you can replace an employee.
  • You’re confident enough in that employee to give them the privilege of making up their own mind.

Given the statistics, it’s highly likely employees will be interviewing. You might as well make it a part of your non-restrictive management policy to recognize that change and growth — even out the door — is inevitable. Make it clear that an employee’s career growth is considered a win for the company, even if the employee grows right out of the organization.

This comes with one important caveat. Encouraging employees to interview with other companies can be done by a brand that has plenty of confidence, as well as stellar compensation and benefits packages. A company that’s trying to hold on to its employees by the fingernails should probably steer clear of this approach.

There’s No Point in Blocking Job Portals in the Office

People look for work and jobs 24/7, and, yes, that probably means in your office. But there’s not much you can, or should, do about it. Even if you did “lock out” job portals on your organization’s PCs, intranet or network, some employees will find a way.

Glassdoor statistics from 2015 indicated that 45 percent of job seekers used mobile devices to search for jobs at least once every day. Unless you’re going to act like a grade-school teacher and confiscate mobile devices, it’s going to be nearly impossible to prevent a sneak peek at a job portal. Plus, such rules smack of retrogressive management policies and are begging to be broken. For example, what, exactly, should be the consequences for breaking such a rule?

Instead, trust your workers and show confidence in them and the strength of your organization. The reality is that job boards and portals can be random and overwhelming, and many employees are smart enough to take a personal day to focus only on job hunting.

There’s no doubt that today’s workforce landscape is challenging for organizations of all types. But accepting this reality as it truly is and focusing your resources on what matters most to employees will help you retain more talent over the long run.

#WorkTrends: How Citrix Is Redefining the Modern Work Experience

The miracle of working today is that you’re just as likely to be reading this from your company office as from your home, the beach or in the air. And it all can be on the company’s time and dime.

A 2017 study found that about 3 percent of Americans worked from home at least half of the time, with the trend most common among baby boomers, and that’s just one of the big ways in which the world of work has changed recently. It can get confusing and a bit surprising for companies trying to adapt to what workers want.

Tim Minahan, chief marketing officer at Citrix, is here to help us figure it out on this week’s episode of #WorkTrends. Minahan knows a thing or two about how the way people work is changing. Together we looked at some of the major trends affecting the skills companies need, the places where employees work and how technology can help or get in the way of accomplishing our goals.

Listen to the full conversation or read the recap below. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Skills: Addressing the Digital Gap

The biggest skill set change we discussed is also the one that’s most common in our daily lives: digital technology. For the average worker it means learning more systems and tools. For the company it involves training and hiring to ensure everyone has the tools and skills they need.

“There was a recent Harris poll that I thought was particularly telling where they surveyed about 1,500 CEOs around the globe,” Minahan says. “The number one barrier to growth that CEOs identified was not just access to talent but, interestingly enough, access to developer talent. And … if every business is becoming a digital business, then of course developer talent is at a premium.”

He points to this as one of the biggest aspects of the talent crisis. Solving it not only requires embracing the many different places we work but also ensuring that people can collaborate in successful ways. Companies should look for ways to help employees be more productive, without burdening them with more requirements.

Space: Work Is ‘Wherever You Need It’

Thinking about the places we work provides one clear revelation: There’s no such thing as a typical day anymore. More people are working from multiple locations, whether that’s at HQ or in a home office, reading at the gym or catching up on email during a commute. Planes, trains and automobiles all play a role in our daily work lives.

“It seems every week is an illustration of that distributed work style,” says Minahan, who was joining us from Tokyo. “My team is literally everywhere. While we have our headquarters in Florida, we have major sites in Raleigh, Santa Clara and obviously our global team as well. So work really happens wherever you need it to.”

Companies might want to consider a mix of physical and digital spaces to allow work, as well as offer the technology that lets people work where they prefer, Minahan says. He points to a Gallup report that says employees with flexible work schedules are more engaged, and that flexibility includes both time and place.

Engagement: Productivity Vs. Complexity

Employee engagement came with the biggest surprise, especially if we think about these new digital workspaces. Most offices now have plenty of tech that allows us to work from anywhere, communicate, share files and engage in social channels. It may seem like having the right tools is all people need to be productive, but that’s not necessarily the case.

“Despite all that investment in technology, our productivity, U.S. productivity, on the whole, has continued to trend down, and it’s at some of its lowest productivity gross overall,” Minahan says. “There’s a lot of different conjecture on what’s causing this. But at the end of the day, it’s actually complexity. There’s just too many apps, too many different channels, too much content switching that makes all of us less productive and is contributing to this disengagement we’re seeing with the American workforce.”

He suggests that companies look at enterprise applications to see what might be adding too many screens or to-dos that get in the way of completing tasks. Prioritize tools that provide quick access to tasks and the insights that workers need to be productive.

“We spend a good part of our work week, about 20 percent of it, actually just searching for the information we need,” Minahan says.

The Gig Future

The culmination of these skills, location and productivity changes will lead to a significant increase in hiring from the gig economy for companies of all sizes, he says.

“Leading companies are beginning to blur the lines between full-time employees, gig workers and contractors. They’re moving toward these pools of talent where they understand the individual skills,” Minahan says. “They can rapidly bring them together to solve particular business issues. And they give them a digital workspace environment in which they can engage with one another regardless of where they are around the world.”

Once the solution is found, he says, those teams can be quickly dissolved to maximize efficiency and affordability. It’s an interesting look at the future and just one of the predictions Minahan gave us for how things will change within the next five years at Citrix and in the larger workforce.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

Let’s continue the conversation. Join us on Twitter (#WorkTrends) for our weekly chat on Wednesdays at 1:30 p.m. Eastern, 10:30 a.m. Pacific, or anywhere in the world you are joining from to discuss this topic and more.

This episode is sponsored by Citrix.

How Manufacturers Are Evolving to Recruit and Engage New Talent

While smart companies of all types are investing more resources in worker engagement and development than ever, many manufacturers remain a step behind. In fact, Lisa Ryan, an employee engagement and retention expert with a background in the manufacturing and welding industries, says she still encounters manufacturers who are skeptical about the value of these worker-friendly concepts.

“In some places there is this mentality of, ‘The guys come to work, why should I thank them for doing their job?’ — but I’m seeing a slow change,” Ryan says. “It’s starting, but it’s not as fast as other industries. You can connect with people on a human level instead of just another employee ID number.”

This new approach across manufacturing is being driven by a dire labor shortage — created by the U.S. manufacturing renaissance, rapid technological advances and retiring baby boomers — that is projected to grow in the coming years. “If your company is stuck in an old, calcified way of doing business, you’re going to have a hard time finding and keeping younger workers,” Ryan says.

Failing to recruit and retain young talent could be fatal for manufacturers, who are already staring down a potential shortage of 2.4 million workers over the next decade, according to research from Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute. The same report found that a record 89 percent of executives agree there is already a talent shortage in the U.S. manufacturing sector, with firms struggling to find skilled labor to operate emerging technologies.

We asked a number of experts how the manufacturing sector is evolving to recruit and retain top talent. Here’s what they shared.

Changing Perceptions and Approaches

Khris Bhattan, president of RTG Solutions Group, which consults for the manufacturing sector, says one of the biggest drivers of recruitment and engagement strategy in the sector is the changing physical work environment, which in most cases has moved far beyond the stereotype of the gloomy factory floor.

“Manufacturers have become very aware of this negative stigma and have made significant investments in the manufacturing workspace to reverse it,” Bhattan says. “Investments in the workspace include not just the physical space but also the tools, equipment and safety protocols that are part of the workspace.”

Ryan agrees that a stigma of factory workplaces lingers with many job seekers, but she says companies can overcome it with recruiting pitches that focus more on the importance of technology in manufacturing. She says companies also need to drive home that automation and robotics are expected to create more jobs in the sector than they replace.

“On one hand, yes, it’s replacing workers,” she says. “Yet on the other hand, we’re looking for a different breed of talent and people that understand technology, like technology and want to use it in the manufacturing environment.”

Skills Gap Requires Creative Recruiting

Carlos Castelán, managing director and founder of The Navio Group, an HR/business consulting firm that works with companies to improve workplace engagement and productivity, says HR professionals in manufacturing organizations need to adjust to compete for the best and brightest.

“HR teams should think about different ways to meet the company’s goals, be it rethinking traditional employment and engaging on-demand talent solutions or adjusting pay on job offers to attract top talent in these areas,” he says. “More than ever HR plays a critical role in achieving a manufacturing company’s strategic objectives and long-term vision.”

Saint-Gobain, one of the world’s largest building materials companies and manufacturer of innovative material solutions, is taking innovative approaches to address the talent shortage, particularly when it comes to locations in rural areas. The company is looking beyond the geography of a job and touting positions in which people can design a career, “invent themselves and reshape the world,” says Valerie Gervais, the company’s senior vice president of human resources.

“We’re attracting talent in rural areas by rolling out pilot programs that take a holistic approach to people and families, because we know it’s not about making a living, it’s about making a life,” Gervais says. “In fact, we brought in an anthropologist to understand specific barriers that were impacting our ability to hire in certain areas. As an employer, we look at the whole ecosystem of the family.”

Manufacturing Engagement

In the book “The New Collar Workforce,” Sarah Boisvert writes about touring a family-owned and -operated jewelry company in Massachusetts that implemented lean manufacturing principles designed to encourage rapid iterations to reduce waste and improve efficiency.

She encountered a worker performing low-tech repetitive tasks who was nevertheless highly engaged in his job — because the company had empowered him to solve problems. “He was clearly proud to be valued by management and trusted to think, not just do something repetitively,” she writes.

Boisvert says lean manufacturing approaches can help tremendously with employee engagement if executives truly buy in and implement them with a focus on empowering people — which doesn’t always come easy in the sector.

“Manufacturing by definition is a conservative industry, and we’re conservative partially because change is expensive,” she says. “Anytime you have to change anything on the production line, it’s expensive both in terms of equipment and training.”

Ryan says part of the resistance to empowering, engaging and developing manufacturing employees is because most workers in the sector are between the ages of 45 and 65, rather than job-hopping millennials who want more feedback and opportunities for career development.

“There’s this mentality that ‘I’m going to be wasting my time with this person because they’re going to be leaving anyway,’ ” she says. “But if they just spent those couple of minutes, if they just created those connections and helped those people, they would probably be with the organization a lot longer.”

She says that to meet the complex needs of the next generation of workers, manufacturers will have to get creative in how they approach engagement and development. “A turkey at Christmas isn’t going to cut it,” Ryan says.

We want to hear from you. What are you seeing? How are recruiting and retention changing for you? What should manufacturing companies do to compete for top talent?

#WorkTrends: Is Your Team Really Motivated?

Gregg LedermanWhen it comes to employee management and engagement, a large body of research indicates that respect, purpose and relationships are more effective than money. So why are so many organizations still struggling to move the needle on worker engagement?

On this week’s episode of #WorkTrends, we discuss these issues —and a few creative answers — with author and employee engagement expert Gregg Lederman, who shares valuable lessons from his new book, “Crave.”

Lederman is a sought-after speaker, best-selling author and president of employee engagement at Reward Gateway, an employee engagement company. He is also the founder of Brand Integrity, a leadership development and employee engagement company. For the past 16 years he has worked with leading organizations to implement sustainable engagement solutions.

Listen to the full conversation or read the recap below. Subscribe so you never miss an episode. This episode is brought to you by our friends Reward Gateway.

A Management Problem

Lederman says he was moved to write his book after diving into the huge body of social science research on employee engagement going back to the 1930s. He started to realize that organizations were either not understanding the research or not deploying it in ways that optimized the engagement in the customer experience.

“It is not the employees’ fault,” he says. “This is a management issue. We have a management engagement crisis.”

Lederman argues that the engagement issue has more of an “energy crisis.” “Companies are buying the energy of their people, and they’re not getting it all because [the employees] are not as motivated and committed to doing what’s best for the company as they could be,” he says.

What People Crave

Lederman says that if you look at the engagement numbers from 2000, when Gallup started first polling on the issue, and compare them with 2018, they have changed by only about 4 percentage points. Meanwhile, he says, the amount of money companies are spending to try to fix the engagement issue is up 115 percent in the past five years.

“That is almost $8 billion spent last year to try to fix the engagement issues that we have,” he says. “Yet engagement is barely budging. The answer is in the book. It’s in the title, frankly — the reason people are not engaged at work is they’re not getting enough of what they crave.”

He says research is clear that motivation is intrinsic, rather than something we do to people, and that you can’t “beg for more or bribe people for it. People are going to decide each day whether or not they are going to tap into that intrinsic motivation and be more committed to the organization.”

Lederman has summarized the research into three concepts. The first thing that humans crave is to be respected for who they are and what they do. The second concept is purpose. “Help me see the purpose, the meaning, the impact of my work,” he says. And the third is relationships, particularly a worker’s relationship with his or her boss.

“You have to learn how to genuinely and very strategically capture and share successes and help people to see that what they do is important and that they matter,” he says. “When you do that, you’re not just showing them respect and helping them see the purpose, you are strengthening a relationship with them.”

10 Minutes by Friday

The subtitle of Lederman’s book is “You Can Enhance Motivation in 10 Minutes by Friday,” which hints at the simple ways he suggests for leaders to implement some of his ideas to boost engagement.

“At least once a month, take 10 minutes to stop, witness and share a success inside your organization of someone living your values, delivering your hospitality experience, doing something to drive your strategy forward — and connect that to a business result,” he says.

“There is a three-step process for how you do the actual recognition to make it strategic, but that’s it: 10 minutes a month if you want to be good. If you want to be amazing, and literally almost instantly become a better leader, challenge yourself to do it 10 minutes a week. It’s not easy, but that’s the 10 minutes by Friday challenge that our organization Reward Gateway is putting out there in front of folks.”

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

Let’s continue the conversation. Join us on Twitter (#WorkTrends) for our weekly chat on Wednesdays at 1:30 p.m. Eastern, 10:30 a.m. Pacific, or anywhere in the world you are joining from to discuss this topic and more.

Snacks Make All the Difference: Why Free Food is a Great Workplace Perk

When it comes to boosting employee morale, finding small ways to make the day a bit more pleasant, fun, and less stressful can go a long way. That’s why office perks are a big deal at today’s top companies—and among the most appetizing are boatloads of free snacks.

Don’t worry—you don’t need to hire a celebrity chef and create gourmet meals on-site. However, stocking a bountiful snack pantry, setting up a coffee bar, or having free lunch Fridays just might feed your employees’ workplace devotion, and end up offering a pretty healthy return on your investment. According to a Glassdoor survey, younger workers aged 18-34 (89 percent) and 35-44 (84 percent) said they actually prefer benefits or perks to pay raises. And of the perks listed, 19 percent mentioned free lunch.

When you consider that only 22 percent of offices provide free snacks and beverages, it’s an easy and fairly low-cost way to stand out from your competitors.

Take a look at a few of the benefits of keeping your staff well-fed to decide if it’s time to get in on the office snacking trend:

Snacks make people happy. Even in companies that have extremely or very satisfied employees, a survey by grocery delivery service Peapod found that the happiness factor goes up when free food is involved-jumping from 56 percent in companies with bare cupboards, to 67 percent at workplaces that supply snacks. Think about organizations that are known for their great employer brands (like Dropbox, Apple, and Google), and you’ll see that fabulous food is a staple of the employee perks menu.

Your staff may be more productive. It’s hard to dispute the fact that hunger tends to creep up throughout the day, especially around 3:00 in a hectic office setting. So, ask yourself-isn’t it better if your employees walk into the kitchen or lounge for a cupful of popcorn or to make a cappuccino, than if they step out and end up taking an extended work break? Why do you think tech start-ups are notorious for having so many perks on-site-it’s to limit the need for their employees to leave the premises. By encouraging people to remain in the building, you’ll limit those 15-minute coffee runs that turn into 45 minutes, or those 30-minute lunches that turn into two hours.

Healthy food can improve moods and keep people energized. You can’t argue with nutritional science. By offering an array of healthy energy-boosting foods, it will help prevent your workers from crashing or fizzling out. Sure, it’s nice to have cupcakes or pizza luncheons from time to time, but for daily offerings, stick with snacks that will invigorate your workers. The American Heart Association actually has a Healthy Workplace Food and Beverage Toolkit that offers smart snack and lunch suggestions for employers to offer. Among the most important tips are to provide clean, cool water, always, and offer healthy treats, like a “Build Your Own Trail Mix” bar, complete with dried fruit, nuts, seeds, and whole grain cereal or granola.

If you’re looking for an easy and affordable way to increase employee satisfaction, consider serving up some free snacks. A giant jar of pretzels or a few bunches of bananas might seem insignificant, but that small gesture can help show your workers that you appreciate them.

This article was first published on Huffington Post.

Reenfranchising Your Company’s Disenfranchised

If 2016 taught me anything, it’s that I may have overestimated how tuned in I am to large segments of the population. I would not call this group a silent majority (as they are neither “silent” nor a “majority”), but recent political events have reinforced my need to engage and find common ground with those who feel alienated.

In his recent movie, Imperium. Daniel Radcliffe plays a FBI agent who goes undercover in a white-supremacy group. According to Radcliffe, “…my biggest takeaway from this film is that, as much as we want to demonize these people and in a way demonize their views, we should try and find a way of getting them into this conversation, unfortunately as awful as that sounds, because the more you ostracize them and aggressively dismiss them, the more it just plays into their worldview that everything is a conspiracy against them.”

Before you send me your oppositional emails, let me be clear: I am not equating, comparing, or in any way associating those who feel disenfranchised with white supremacists or racists-at-large. What I am saying is that Radcliffe makes a valid point about demonizing people without engaging in a conversation to understand their point of view.

Imperium’s Director, Daniel Ragussis, added that characterizing those on the fringe with insults like “monster” is not helpful.—“They don’t give you any access as to the mechanism that’s going on there and why the people are behaving the way they are. I think if you’re going to try to dismantle that or change it, you have to understand what’s going on and what’s happening.”

A mutually beneficial workplace culture is not determined solely by the leaders; the employees ultimately decide what practices and habits they will adhere to… and this includes those who don’t feel welcomed to participate. Therefore, companies must focus their resources to involve these individuals.

To help us encourage those who believe they are estranged from the decision makers, we must be mindful of one important concept: Don’t confuse feeling disenfranchised with feeling disengaged. The disengaged are not willing to put in extra effort for success. They don’t like work and they aren’t afraid to show it. The disenfranchised, on the other hand, believe they are deprived of rights and/or privileges. They want to contribute, but either don’t know how to initiate, don’t think they are allowed, or don’t feel welcomed into the process.

To reenfranchise, start by listening to their concerns. Actually, that’s too easy. Your really need to start by withholding judgment. It’s easy to dismiss those who disagree with us, especially when they are not in a position of power. An effective leader, however, cannot disparage or ostracize these individuals. They are part of the organization, so either treat them like they are part of the organization or release them from your condemnatory sentencing.

Once you are able to withhold judgment, you can begin listening to their concerns. Schedule one-on-one’s to figure out what they need to feel embraced. Ask questions, focus on their concerns, and formulate an ongoing plan.

After you know their hindrances and have a plan in place, it is your responsibility as the leader to change how you manage. However you led before resulted in a disenfranchised populace, so figure out what you can do differently to be more inclusive. And follow up frequently to ensure that your efforts are effective.

If attitude is an indication of success (and it is) you will get more bang for your buck if you concentrate on reenfranchising the disenfranchised then engaging the disengagement. Since the disenfranchised crave involvement, involve them. If you don’t, they will find their voice, with or without you. Why wait for them to be an organized opposition? Make them allies and strengthen your team.

Photo Credit: maransa99 Flickr via Compfight cc

Improve Leadership Training Programs with Manager Feedback

360-degree feedback can bring up a whole host of areas for improvement and goals to be worked towards. Developing based on feedback is important for anyone, regardless of position, experience level or objectives: managers are no exception.

Today major companies don’t simply want people who will listen and carry out: they want creative thinkers who will come up with innovative ideas and solutions. As a result, rather than giving orders, managers must find ways to foster this creativity. This means companies want:

  • Less micromanaging and more autonomy
  • Faster development of new skills
  • Higher employee retention

We explain how the feedback managers receive can establish specific leadership training plans to help improve skills, performance and daily practices to make sure this can all be achieved, and both teams and managers can function in the best way possible, helping both inexperienced or first-time managers and those just looking to take their leadership skills to the next level to improve how they lead their team in this ever-changing modern work environment.

Upward Feedback & where to go with it

Gaining feedback on daily practices, performance and skill sets can be an incredibly useful process. 360-feedback encompasses upward feedback from your team members, helping you to gain perspective from those who work closely with you. Hearing the views of those who work with you every day and have an acute awareness of your leadership style is a great chance to take a step back and re-evaluate. But, of course, once the feedback has been given, the process doesn’t end there. Using feedback for leadership training means that managers are able to work on the specific things that would improve both their leadership qualities and general interactions with their team on both a daily and a long-term basis.

Keep your team!

It’s often said that people don’t quit their jobs, they quit their bosses. If there are multiple issues within a work environment but people generally like their manager, and are satisfied with how they’re being led, they’re less likely to leave their position. Ensuring that managers are not only listening to but acting on the feedback which they receive from their team makes it clear that the team’s views are valued, and means that managers will be able to use the feedback given to communicate with and work more effectively with their team. Managers will be on the road to improvement, and team members will feel both valued and more satisfied, be less likely to leave their position and begin to work more effectively with their managers.

Engagement & Team spirit

After the leadership training has taken place, it’s likely that team morale will increase, communication will improve and employee engagement will be on the rise. It’s not just managers that will improve from leadership training either. Research from the Journal of Business Strategies found that leaders who were able to impact the long-term cohesion of their teams could account for more than 25% of the team’s overall performance. Effective leaders will keep their team communicating well and keep engagement levels up by giving them useful and motivating feedback, and making the organization a positive and impactful place to work.

Using a performance management tool such as a feedback app  has never made it easier for managers to develop. Feedback comes in the form of both real-time updates and reviews where questions can be tailored to find out exactly what skills or traits can be improved. Once feedback is received, it’s collated into an automatic report identifying exactly which skills and practices require focus.

Now it’s time for improvement: continuous feedback that carries on long after the review process gives team members the opportunity to continue the conversation and provide real-time feedback on their manager’s ongoing development. Based on feedback, the best training programs can be devised to develop managers’ skills. Just like your employees, offering regular trainings on key skills will keep managers engaged, motivated to improve their strategies and at the top of their management game!

Summary:

  • Using upward feedback for manager training means team members know their input is valued
  • Successful leaders interact with employees in a way that significantly increases employee engagement and performance
  • Employees communicate better as a team as a result of more effective management
  • Good leadership training based on team feedback will lowers turnover rates

A version of this post was first published on Impraise. 

Photo Credit: Marc_Slavin Flickr via Compfight cc

Five Powerful HR Resolutions to Implement in 2017

It’s the first month of a new year, and you know what that means—time to get moving on those resolutions and goals for the new year. Setting goals in the corporate world isn’t just an individual pursuit, however. It should involve your entire team. Get everyone together to solicit input on what you as a company or department want to achieve in 2017.

Implementing yearly goals can be a daunting task, which is why it’s a good idea to set,  and take action on, monthly and quarterly goals as well. This allows you to give your team more short-term feedback and also provides you with the opportunity to make adjustments that will keep your team on track for the improvements you hope to achieve.

Here are five powerful resolutions that will propel your HR team forward in 2017.

  1. Implement a BYOD program. BYOD means “Bring Your Own Device,” and it has become a much more prevalent practice in a variety of industries. Eighty percent of employees use personal technology for business use, so it makes sense to tap into this trend. Studies show that a BYOD program enhances employee productivity and efficiency and, ultimately, corporate profits.

The BYOD strategy gives employees the freedom to buy or lease the type and brand of device they prefer. They may feel more comfortable using their own devices, knowing they can store photos, purchase apps, and text personal messages with the understanding that the phone or tablet will stay with them when they leave the company. Though the device is personal, employees are still able to access company emails, spreadsheets, contact lists, etc., with the convenience and mobility that enhances productivity.

When employees are allowed to use their own devices for work-related matters, it saves money and reduces training time because employees purchase what they feel are best suited to them and their tech abilities. A disadvantage, however, is the lack of uniformity among employees’ devices, because not all employees will be able to afford the personal expense for the same type of device. Employers can help by subsidizing purchases to ensure a minimum level of functionality.

  1. Create and implement an employee wellness program that includes a financial wellness component. Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy peace of mind and freedom from the stressors of poor financial decisions that can otherwise hamper both your professional and personal life. Just as we can credit corporate wellness programs with an increase in productivity and employee engagement in the workplace, we have a growing awareness that we need to address financial well-being as well.

If you do not have an employee wellness program, build one from the ground up with a focus on physical fitness to start. If you already have such a wellness program but have yet to incorporate elements of financial fitness, add in a component that teaches employees better money management and spending habits.

  1. Survey employees to improve engagement. Most companies want to improve employee engagement, as it results in a more motivated and productive workforce. The first step is to survey employees, soliciting input as to what you’re doing right and wrong as a company, which is also a good way to gauge employee satisfaction. Based on survey results, set goals to fix areas in need of improvement. Survey again after six months or so to see if your changes have had a positive effect on employee engagement.
  2. Revamp hiring and onboarding processes. Getting off to a good start is critical to a new employee’s perception of your company and their likelihood to stay around for the long haul. Your first step is to ensure best hiring practices, where job duties are clearly defined and job applicants’ skills and expertise are matched well to your needs. Follow that up by emphasizing an effective onboarding process that engages new employees in order to communicate from the very start the value you place on their contributions to your organization.
  3. Get rid of annual performance reviews—for good. Many employees view performance evaluations as a yearly annoyance, and rightly so—rarely do they fairly measure performance. With constantly shifting goals and responsibilities, and increasingly overburdened managers, trying to evaluate a year’s worth of performance by rating employee efforts on a 1-to-5 scale is outdated. Instead, focus on mutual goal-setting between manager and staffers on a regular basis (say, quarterly), and ditch the cumbersome paperwork.

Real progress can happen for your organization when you engage your team in planning and setting goals for the new year. Talk with your team and resolve to take your business to the next level in 2017.

Photo Credit: plainmama Flickr via Compfight cc

5 Steps To Take Employee Engagement To Another Level

Why is employee engagement critical to an organization?

Many think “getting more employees involved” is the end game. That’s true, but for what purpose? To make every person feel like they are making a contribution? To make them happier? To make them more supportive of leadership?

If the purpose of employee engagement isn’t clearly defined, and a disciplined process to achieve that purpose isn’t established, the best that can happen is busyness and dysfunction. Employees are busy as hell but they are not acting in unison towards a shared outcome.

Employee engagement must be strategically driven. It must be THE vehicle to mobilize the employee body to execute the strategy of the organization together; consistently.

The employee group is the orchestra; the song sheet is the strategic game plan and values  of the organization.

And the desired behavior is EXECUTE AS ONE.

This 5-step process will increase engagement towards the achievement of shared strategic goals.

  1. Make engagement one-on-one. Effective engagement is leadership driven, not program driven by a centralized group like HR. Individual leaders must be held accountable for getting their teams more engaged around strategy and values. Unfortunately a tops down program is less effective than encouraging daily hands on involvement by leadership.
  1. Connect each function in the organization with the strategic game plan. This involves “drawing a straight line” between strategy and the deliverables every department is expected to produce. In practical terms, this means translating the relevant key result areas (KRA) of the strategy in terms of what they mean for every team. If “delivering dazzling service” is a strategic KRA, for example, it must be designated as a critical performance area for all functions in the organization and their roles must be explained in granular terms to ensure they are clearly understood.
  1. Define the role each person is expected to play in each performance area. In sales, for example, it could relate to focusing on building deep relationships with high value clients as opposed to flogging products at them to satisfy short term sales targets.
  1. For each employee, set 3 objectives which are “tight” with the specific roles defined and establish the mechanism to track results achieved. For sales, measuring client perception is necessary to evaluate whether the salesperson is actually building a deep and intimate relationship with them. Set an objective for each sales person – 75% of Roy’s named clients will agree that their relationship with him is “excellent” – and measure the result monthly. This is where strategy hits the ground and real engagement occurs.
  1. Review performance regularly. Leaders must sit down “eye to eye” with each of their team members; review the results of each objective set for them, and define an action plan to close any performance gaps.

Engaging employees effectively to help the organization achieve its goals requires the consistency and discipline of individual leaders working with each one of their team members day in and day out.

It’s brutal but required work if you want to take employee engagement to another level and standout from the crowd who rely on programs “handed down from above”.

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Culture, Brand, Engagement: How Benefits Support HR’s Three-Legged Stool

You know the old three-legged stool metaphor: you can’t sit down if one of those legs is off. In HR, that means culture, brand and engagement. All three are closely, intrinsically related; even more so given the new world of work. In the Deloitte University Press’ Global Human Capital Trends 2015 report, the news shows palpable gaps between perceived weaknesses in all, and the capability to solve them.

Among the findings, gleaned from more than 3,300 business and HR leaders:

  • 87% of organizations cite workforce culture and engagement as a top challenges.
  • 38% of respondents felt like they were “weak” when it came to helping employees balance personal and professional life/work demands.
  • 71% of those who responded stressed the importance of reinventing their HR, but only 42% said they felt actually prepared and ready to do it.

That last stat in particular is compelling, reflecting a hefty gap (30%) between perception and action. Not surprising: the radically changing world of work knows it needs to undergo an equally radical readjustment in HR. In terms of positive realignments, here’s one arena to consider: Benefits. Rather than a part of the basic HR operations, benefits are a deeply entrenched facet of company culture and brand, and a critical driver of employee engagement.

Brand Awesome

Successful organizations like Netflix make the connection between employer brand and HR — including benefits. Logically, a new breed of workplace needs a new approach to talent, so it created one. In terms of recruitment, it made sure to include its approach to benefits as part of the brand. In terms of firing, it turns a loss into a mutual gain: if someone is let go, a generous severance may help her regroup, retrain and further their career — which possibly means she circles back to the company with more training and experience (on someone else’s dime).

A Culture Of Benefits

Other Netflix innovations include flexible vacation time, an honor system policy on expenses, and an interesting take on perks: this is an organization that figured out that having grade-A colleagues (a.k.a. fully formed adults) is a better employee perk than foosball. Other realistic components include health care programs (such as those created by Jiff) that incentivize employees to use services that promote their actual health. Firms may also offer realistic avenues for improving financial wellness — such as reducing crippling student loan debt and investing with a conscience via a firm like SoFi. Offering these kinds of benefits isn’t the norm yet, but it’s helping to set a new standard, delineating a forward thinking, authentic culture that is clearly aligned to the new world of work.

Transparency Drives Engagement

The Deloitte study found that 78% of respondents believed culture and engagement are critical, but only 47% felt ready to put that into action. For that 31% gap, consider the Netflix severance concept, which uses HR strategy to replace taboo with transparency — and that, my friends, is a radical cultural shift. It scales the traditional, monolithic fear of losing ones job down to a normal hiccup (or not) in a modern career trajectory.

The change aligns with how millennial (and other) employees perceive working — as constant disruptions, possible even in employment itself. In Netflix’s case, it also means an authentic and open conversation in which both parties play grown-up. Virgin made a similar splash with its greatly expanded parental leave policy. Such instances foster engagement by allowing for the fact that yes, we are all human here. Things happen. Families happen. We will adjust — with you.

Lack of employee engagement has some heavy hidden costs, but they’re completely logical: engagement is part emotion, part function. If an employee feels as if they’re not being supported or acknowledged for their own emotional and functional expenditure on behalf of your company, then they’re going to spend less of that energy. But create a benefits program that recognizes that exchange, and is the figurehead of an authentic culture, and you drive and deepen engagement. Now, have a seat.

A version of this was first posted on Forbes.

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Is Work-Life Balance Dead? Depends on Which Generation You Ask.

Is striking a balance between work and life a priority for you?  You are not alone. 45 percent of employees said they don’t have enough time for personal activities according to results from a Workplace Trends Survey. Health professionals are reporting that people are working themselves to death. In direct contradiction is a multitude of research stating work-life balance is dead and nothing more than a myth.

So who should we believe?

It appears we are all in the right church but the wrong pew. Your seat assignment (and Kool-Aid of choice) is determined by your generation.

Boomers

This generation has been ready to “86” the entire conversation of work-life balance the moment Millennials got duped with its creation.  This “me” generation spent their entire careers concentrating solely on building just that…their careers. Remember why you wore that key around your neck, Gen X? It wasn’t because Mommy was striking a healthy balance between the office and home. She was burning the midnight oil to be considered only half as equal as her male counterpart. Think about what influenced Boomers – Suburbia, Vietnam, Human Rights Movements, Wade v Roe, etc. Boomers have been incredible influencers which they obtained through allowing their careers to become their life.

If you want to keep your Boomers engaged, allow them to work as many hours as they want, set up mentorship programs and let them complain about work-life balance.

Gen X

This generation is the poster-child of work-life balance. Gen X is the skeptical, middle child with abandonment issues (thank you, Boomers). Gen X wants nothing more than to be home by six for dinner, evaluate every study abroad program Sally just had to enroll in, and above all, continue to enable, what they term, “little monsters” at work— Millennials. Xers grew up fending for themselves and knew early on that if they wanted anything in life, they had to go out and get it on their own. Influencers were The Brady Bunch, (Oh no! Mom and Dad in the same bed together?) the energy crisis and the divorce rate tripling for the first time. Xers know how risky putting all their eggs in the career basket can be and ensure that they do not repeat the same mistakes their parents did.

Retain Xers through Flex scheduling, telecommuting, maternal/paternal leave and give them adequate time off.

Millennials

As a Millennial, I come with many labels such as entitled, lack soft skills, naïve, love Bernie Sanders, and enlarged thumbs, which I do see in many of my peers. However, one box I refuse to get thrown is work-life balance.

We HATE work-life balance!  Here’s a test to prove my point – as a Boomer or Xer, think about how often you talk about work to your family. Do you go home every day telling your spouse about a co-worker, project or upcoming promotion? Do you ask a family member for advice on how to handle minor issues at the office? The majority of Xers answer “never.” In contrast, Millennials see no difference between work and life and regularly discuss all aspect of their work with their families. All efforts in both are interwoven in a greater purpose, mission or passion. Ever wonder why we text and email you at all hours of the night? Frustrated with us always asking “why?” Do you think obtaining all those advanced degrees was solely due to the Recession? For many of us, work-life balance is dead because there is no need to strike a balance. It is all one big mission.

Keep us engaged through allowing us to work after hours emailing and researching from home. Show us how we can make an impact and then lead the initiative.

Creating successful engagement initiatives in our organizations is no easy feat. Because we have diverse workforces, we cannot take a canned approach to work-life balance or any other program. Let your teams waive their generational flags with honor while understanding their differences.

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The Paradox of Diversity and Inclusion

Almost every organization has a firm understanding of how important diversity is. There is an abundance of research out there that confirms more diversity results in success. Forty-nine percent of executives surveyed by Forbes Insights strongly agree that a diverse and inclusive workforce is crucial to encouraging different perspectives and ideas that drive innovation. With the rise of millennials in the workplace, many organizations have achieved diversity organically. The average human being has turned on the news over the last decade any maybe even has a moral compass that tells them diversity is simply a fairness issue that should be the norm.

I find myself wondering, if everyone knows what diversity is, and why it’s so important, why are white men much more likely to hold leadership positions than women or minorities?

It appears HR’s approach to diversity suffers from the tunnel vision that started with a misunderstanding of what diversity is.

I consulted with an HR pro once who would put a post-it on any applications from minority candidates that read, “Hire a minority,” when passing those off to a hiring manager. When I was first made aware of this practice, I thought to myself, “This has to be limited to this one organization?” After all, who else could believe it’s okay to hire someone solely based on race? Did I read that article on the Supreme Court ruling on racial quotas correctly? It turns out, this practice is all too common throughout organizations, schools, governments, etc.

To truly achieve a diverse workforce that is also inclusive, we must re-examine what diversity is and educate our teams on inclusion.

Real diversity is accomplished through teams that are comprised of multiple generations, cultures, genders, ethnic groups, races, personalities, cognitive styles, length of tenures, organizational functions, parental status, military status, educations, and backgrounds. When building our teams, if we concentrate solely on one characteristic, we alienate groups of society. Much like the HR pro from above was alienating anyone that did not fall within a particular minority. When re-structuring the organization, we must ensure that our teams are as eclectic as possible.

Like many initiatives, there are only as good as the tools you provide to utilize them. Diversity is no different nor is it only HR’s problem or responsibility. Once you have teams where everyone does not think, look and act alike, they are set up for failure if they do not have the knowledge and skill to work together cohesively. This is the most important aspect of diversity and will sabotage your efforts if not setup correctly.

Here are only a five top inclusion initiatives:

  • Ensure your Baby Boomers, Xers and Millennials know what motivates each other and how to communicate.
  • Show your high Ds that their personality type is not superior to others.
  • Create initiatives that enable ethnic groups to see the values of different points of view.
  • Encourage your tenured employees to engage in reverse mentoring of new hires.
  • Invest as much as possible in each team member’s professional development.

If we truly want to make progress and ensure everyone has an equal opportunity, we have to stop thinking about diversity in a vacuum. We owe it to ourselves, our organizations, the HR field and most of all, to society.

 

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When is Consensus a Bad Thing? The Three Stooges on Dissension

In a society where people have the right to voice their opinions, a leader’s role is often to find consensus. On the occasion when everyone agrees, it’s tempting to sigh in relief and start happy hour a little early. If this is the case, fight the temptation; your lack of conflict is a drawback.

Successful organizations need dissent. That’s why I want a little Three Stooges on my team. Who better demonstrates the bickering, questioning, and debating that a healthy team requires? If you look beyond the physical attacks, Larry, Moe, and Curly/Shemp hold each other accountable. They avoid groupthink, the faulty decision making created by group pressures, and analyze all sides of a problem before settling on a solution. Their plans don’t typically work out, but imagine how prosperous they’d be with 20 more IQ points.

To encourage the dissension necessary for a high performing team, a new paper to be published in The Proceedings of The Royal Society A investigated the idea of paradox of unanimity. When groups of people unanimously agree, it’s assumed they cannot all be wrong; after all, what are the odds that the masses will find total accord? The paradox of unanimity states that this confidence in unity is ill-founded.

Overwhelming agreement without a dissenting opinion actually weakens credibility and points to a systemic error in the system. The researchers demonstrated this paradox in a police line-up where witnesses were tasked with identifying a suspect. The study found that as the number of unanimously agreeing witnesses increased, the chance of them being correct decreased until it was no better than a random guess.

“As with most ‘paradoxes,’ it is not that our intuition is necessarily bad, but that our intuition has been badly informed. In these cases, we are surprised because we simply aren’t generally aware that identification rates by witnesses are in fact so poor.” — Derek Abbott, probability expert from the University of Adelaide

In some cases, large, unanimous agreement is expected, but only when there is little room for bias. For instance, when witnesses must identify an apple in a line-up of bananas, it is nearly impossible to be incorrect. However, a criminal line-up is more complicated than identifying pieces of fruit. Misidentification rates are as high as 48% especially when witnesses only briefly view the perpetrator.

The paradox of unanimity is common in the workplace, as well, and we may be unintentionally propagating it. In today’s work environment, there’s a popular notion that decisions should be unanimous. I’ve sat through many meetings where a bold idea is whittled away to gain consensus. Since the company message states that dissenting voices are welcome, the meeting tackles each aspect of the plan point by point. When someone disagrees, the team has to convince the dissenters otherwise or scrap that section of the plan. The end product is often inferior to what you started with and lacks the intended impact, BUT everyone is in agreement.

If you find yourself on the endless search for agreement, stop. The leadership role involves making tough decisions. Survey those on your team and then create an educated resolution. Not everyone will agree, and nor should they—if everyone agrees with every decision you make, your decisions are too broad, are inconsequential, or you’re pandering.

A culture of consent is a culture of either complacency, fear of change, or a lack of engagement, so instill some Stooge into your team. Swing your proverbial frying pan to encourage discourse. Poke others in their metaphoric eyes to extract feedback from the meek. Throw your oratorical cream pies to find areas of debate. And allegorically slap the team into expressing their sincere opinions without fear of retribution or judgment.

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10 Tips on How To Empower and Engage Your Employees

“Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.” Stephen R. Covey

The “my way of the highway” leadership style is no longer effective. Yes men and women who simply follow rules, policies, and procedures are not the kinds of employees who will produce results and generate growth. As a business owner or manager, you know that the more engaged and empowered your employees are, the more likely they are to feel a sense of ownership in your company. That sense of ownership leads employees to be innovative, customer service oriented, problem solvers who take pride in their work.

Of course, empowerment and engagement doesn’t just happen. It takes good leadership techniques to ensure that the people working under you feel as if they are free to make decisions and take actions with autonomy. Here are ten tips that you can use to increase engagement and empowerment among your underlings.

  1. Give Them Opportunities to Demonstrate And Strengthen Their Leadership Skills

In order for empowerment to be successful, it has to be accompanied by confidence. You can’t simply tell your employees that they have the power and autonomy to act in the best interests of the company and its customers. They need to find and develop confidence in their own leadership and decision making skills. As the leader, you can do this by finding ways in which employees at all levels can lead and make decisions. Eventually, you won’t need to direct them to take the lead.

  1. Tell Them

Make sure that the language that you use doesn’t contradict your goal of creating a culture of engagement and empowerment. If you are used to using an authoritarian leadership style that might reflect in the words that you use. Be mindful of the tone and words that you use when addressing your team. Your words should tell them that you are sincere about the work environment that you want to provide and remember that “Employees engage with employers and brands when they‘re treated as humans worthy of respect.” Meghan Biro

  1. Provide Regular State of The Company Updates

In order to act in the best interests of the company, employees need to be kept engaged with regular and candid updates on the current state of things, along with your vision of the future. This includes acknowledging areas of concern and struggle. Your team needs to know where things are going wrong in order to find ways to be proactive and improve areas of weakness. These regular updates will also keep everybody on the same page.

  1. Encourage And Enable Personal Development

The more support you give your employees regarding their pursuit of their career goals and skill development, the more that they will trust that you have their best interests in mind. One way to do this is to give them the time and resources to spend on personal development.

  1. Back Them up When They Use The Power You Give Them

If you pull the rug out from underneath employees when they act with autonomy, you will struggle to ever get them to believe your rhetoric on empowerment again. Now, this doesn’t mean that you can never step in and intervene if you believe a course of action is a mistake or redirect an employee who has overestimated the extent of their empowerment. It just means that care must be taken to ensure that the employee understands that the intervening action was taken in their and the company’s best interests.

  1. Reward Successful Results And Recognize Good Efforts

When employees show initiative and take action to solve problems, keep customers happy, improve processes, or create growth, your recognition is what will encourage them to do the same in the future. When their efforts really make a difference, rewarding them is an appropriate action to take.

  1. Give Them Space

Just like authoritarian language can undermine your message of empowerment, so can hovering and micromanaging. Give your team members space to do what they do best, and trust them to bring you in when you are needed.

  1. Review And Revise Policies That Could be Hindering Empowerment

If your written policies don’t reflect your goal of creating a more empowered workforce, your employees may be in an uncomfortable situation. It’s difficult to heed verbal encouragement to act with autonomy, when written policy is full of mandatory procedures and admonishments to follow chains of command.

  1. Help Them Pursue Career Tracks That Reflect Their Talents

It’s fairly easy to make employees who are doing well feel empowered, but what about employees who are struggling to find their footing. It is often these employees who need the most mentoring to make them feel empowered and engaged, while still directing them to improve their performance. In many cases, a lack of good performance is the result of an employee being placed in a position that doesn’t allow them to use their talents, and they feel stuck. Encourage employees to take on roles and responsibilities that reflect their skills, even if that means transferring to another area, or changing path they joined your company to pursue.

  1. Create an Environment Where The Possibility of Failure Doesn’t Create Fear

When people are given power to make decisions without checking in with their supervisors or running to a policy manual, great things happen. Sense of ownership increases, performance improves, and customers are happier. Unfortunately, another side effect of this is that people are going to make mistakes, and their efforts will occasionally result in failure. Failure in itself is painful enough for employees, make sure that you communicate that failure as the result of sincere effort isn’t going to be met with harsh criticism or penalty.

 

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5 Truths: Insourced Leaders Promote From Within

Insourced focused leaders should be tuning into ways to recruit and retain talent from within for strong results and increased employee satisfaction.

When my parents started in the world of work, there was an unwritten rule: put in two to five years on the job with a set job description and title before making your next move. Impress people, work 50+ hours a week, learn everything, and become essential to the organization. It was a recipe for success pulled straight out of 50s movies, and it was the way to move up the corporate ladder.

With every promotion, the interval between new titles might have gotten a little longer, but the company offered security and a sense of belonging. People might have been restless, but they knew where they stood. Companies retained talent, for the most part, because talent wanted to stay. There was a gold watch at the end, remember.

The path of career people who came up in the 80s, 90s, and now has been much different. Our perception of ‘meaningful work’ is different. Companies have a different attitude, too – I seldom meet anyone who’s been at the same company for more than five years. Perhaps this is par for the course for technical recruiters, or maybe it’s a sign of something different: companies have pulled the corporate ladder out of reach.

For some of my clients, in fact, there’s a belief that hiring from the outside is preferable to promoting from within – the ‘fresh blood builds a stronger company’ idea. While that trend may be good for recruiters, it isn’t cheery news for workers looking for promotions. I hear from people every day looking for work. Some are unemployed, but more feel trapped in a meaningless job or fear their skills have timed out. Many feel there’s no place to grow in their organizations. At the same time, companies bemoan the lack of employee loyalty and engagement.

HR Technology exists to help leaders solve at least a portion of these talent management issues. Maybe it’s time to make internal (upward) mobility a priority again.

What can leaders do to create a culture of loyalty while making growth and innovation a priority?

Here are five ideas to make the next rung of the corporate ladder easier to reach:

  1. Reinstate employee referral bonuses. A staple of fast-growth startups, referral bonuses give employees an incentive to stay – and to bring their talented friends onboard. It might seem risky or profligate in a time of slow job growth, but your top talent wants to work with other talented people, and their networks may be better than yours.
  1. Create an internal talent scouting network. Many managers fear losing their best people. Recognize managers who push talented employees to the next step in the organization. You might not be able to promote them right now, but they are demonstrating their commitment to the company, so find a way to acknowledge and reward them. Why not a 10 or 20 percent finders’ fee for bosses who nurture great employees?
  1. Cultivate fast-start work groups. You know who your best managers are. Choose the best from each department or business unit – especially in traditionally rapid-turnover areas, e.g. sales – and give them a management task: identifying and fast-tracking talent. Make it an MBO goal.
  1. Invest as much in management training next year as you spent on job ads last year. Fortune 500 companies appear to be headed in this direction but smaller companies may not have the leeway to send star performers to Harvard or Wharton for executive training. So look to other sources for courseware and build your own programs. Start with Harvard – MIT edX online offerings and work up and in.
  1. Institute a management and executive book club. Not all business-themed books are a bore; talk to the manager who’s most effective, or consult with someone from your Board. Find out what they’re reading and distribute copies to your managers. Pop quiz in 15 minutes.

Research shows it takes two years for external hires to perform as well as internal candidates promoted on the job. Ensure your organization has a promote-from-within strategy – every company needs a farm team.

A version of this post was first published on forbes.com on July 24, 2012

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3 Performance Indicators That Will Make Or Break Your Company

Want to find out how your business is performing? Setting and analyzing performance indicators for your company is the best way to forecast and get on track with your business goals. Creating KPIs or Key Performance Indicators will help you measure your company’s success. The question is what to focus on? How you measure performance says a lot about your company’s objectives.

Common Types of Indicators

There are two common types of performance indicators: financial and customer focused.

Financial indicators are the most commonly used metrics for performance including: revenue growth rate, net profit, return on investment, among others. In terms of employee performance these are often quantified using output related measurements. These can be useful for growing your company’s finances but companies that focus solely on profit related indicators often face an innovation problem.

A focus on financial goals can put pressure on managers to focus on short term profitability over creativity. Financial indicators also don’t provide a full picture of a company’s performance. Rather than taking risks on new ideas, these companies can become known for creating ‘one hit wonders’ that sell and repackaging past successes. Eventually, quality and customer satisfaction can become compromised and employee motivation drops.

Microsoft learned this lesson at the expense of its top spot in the tech world. Originally a leader in cutting edge technology, after 2000 it began slipping in the rankings against companies like Google and Apple with its inability to keep up with new trends. As these companies began producing paradigm shifting products like the iPhone and Google Maps, Microsoft continued to survive off of its updated versions of Windows Office. Financial indicators demonstrated the company’s shift in popularity but not the contributing factors.

Internally, Microsoft had taken a cut throat approach to performance management called stack ranking. In this system employees were ranked according to their performance, with the top being put in line for promotions and the bottom 5-10% being shown the door. Rather than boosting productivity, this system merely increased competition and discouraged teamwork. Ultimately, instead of being encouraged to collaborate on new ideas, employees had to focus on gaining favor to survive.

Customer success indicators are increasingly seen as the most important performance metric. Some of the main customer centered KPIs include: conversion rate, customer retention, Net Promoter Score (NPS), etc. Due to differing objectives, companies that focus on customer centered indicators focus more on gaining a loyal customer base by producing great quality products, utilizing different marketing techniques and emphasizing a strong customer support service.

An example of this is Riot Games’ ‘Free To Play’ games which helped them to gain a loyal customer base by allowing gamers to play some of their best games for free online. Zappos’ customer service is famous for providing unsatisfied customers with gifts and free shoes to improve their customer experience. Creating a customer service culture is an essential part of their business strategy and the focus of CEO Tony Hsieh’s book Delivering Happiness.

However, for companies that don’t take off straight away, the money and time put into each product can lead to slower profit generation and financial instability. Furthermore, while customer satisfaction is an extremely important key to success, what customers ultimately want are state-of-the-art products. Though customer focused indicators can help you build a loyal client base, they do not necessarily solve a company’s innovation problems.

Screen Shot 2016-03-07 at 8.44.55 PMCompanies should use a combination of both financial and customer focused indicators but there is a third key measurement which is essential to meeting your company’s goals.

Why employee centered indicators are so important

More and more companies are beginning to realize the importance of employee centered metrics. These types of indicators include: employee engagement, satisfaction and turnover.

Studies show that higher employee engagement is linked to higher customer satisfaction. When employees are happy at work and believe in their product/company this comes across to customers. Gallup revealed that companies with high employee engagement levels outperformed companies with lower levels of engagement in customer ratings by 10%.

Engaged employees take less sick days. A study by Workplace Research Foundation found that engaged employees take an average of 2.69 sick days annually compared to disengaged employees who take an average of 6.19 days. Most important, they’re motivated to achieve more. Gallup’s study also showed that engaged companies outperform others in productivity by 21% and profitability by 22%.

In fact, the treatment of employees is also an important factor for consumers. Deloittes 2015 study on millennials revealed that this generation considers the treatment of employees as the top characteristic of industry leaders, even over profit generation and impact on overall society. Furthermore, “While they believe the pursuit of profit is important, that pursuit needs to be accompanied by a sense of purpose, by efforts to create innovative products or services and, above all, by consideration of individuals as employees and members of society.”

Companies that have employee centered strategies are also more likely to foster innovative environments that promote autonomy and employee ownership. Atlassian became famous for its ‘Shipit days during which it actually encourages employees to drop their work and spend twenty-four hours on a creative project of their choice. Allowing employees the freedom to try out new ideas sounds like a great financial risk but it turned out to have great returns. The projects developed during these sessions have resulted in some of the company’s most profit generating products. Atlassian not only dominates Australia’s tech industry, it has also been named the best company to work for the past two years in a row.

More and more companies have started focusing on an employee first strategy:

In an interview with Inc. Virgin Atlantic CEO Richard Branson disclosed that the company puts staff first, customers second and stakeholders third. He explains, “If the person who works at your company is not appreciated, they are not going to do things with a smile.” Southwest Airlines, the company consistently reaching the top 10 in employee and customer satisfaction surveys, follows the same ideology. The company does this by motivating employees through its company values and creating an environment that regularly recognizes employees for going above and beyond.

Southwest Airlines follows the same strategy. Founder Herb Kelleher posited, “A motivated employee treats the customer well. A customer is happy so they’ll keep coming back, which pleases the shareholder. It’s just the way it works… They can buy all the physical things. The things you can’t buy are dedication, devotion, loyalty—the feeling that you are participating in a crusade.”

A version of this post was first published on the impraise.com blog.

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Gallup’s Profound Discovery: Engagement Is Driven By Good Managers With Rare Talent

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.” ~ Schopenhauer

It’s been nearly a year since Gallup announced its stunning finding that engagement in the American workplace had fallen to crisis levels.

In what became the shot heard ‘round the world in business, the research firm revealed that 70 percent of the nation’s working population now admits to being disengaged in their jobs (i.e., content with collecting a paycheck while investing little of their hearts in their work) – and that nearly 1 in every 5 workers is so discontent that they’re perversely motivated to undermine the effectiveness of their bosses and organizations.

All of this profound unhappiness has a primary source, of course, and organizations across the land have scurried to create taskforces, introduce employee satisfaction metrics and experiment with innumerable strategies in their efforts at finding it. Like any problem decades-long in the making, however, no new programs or organization-wide themes are likely to prove effective at creating a sustainable solution.

I’ve always believed, of course, that our shared engagement problem is the direct result of ineffective – even destructive – leadership. More specifically, I’ve shown that human beings have greatly evolved what they need and want in exchange for their committed efforts at work, while our traditional managerial practices have failed to keep up.

Last fall, Gallup helped confirm this assessment when their research revealed that too many people in supervisory roles today, across all industries, lack the requisite ability to manage. Their important revelation was that employee engagement in the 21st Century is largely dependent upon having a good manager.

In a series of discussions I’ve since had with Dr. Jim Harter, Gallup’s Chief Research Scientist, I learned how he and his research team arrived at their conclusion – in addition to five specific talents they now believe characterize the most effective and influential workplace leaders.

The direct and immediate take-away is that some people are naturally imbued with qualities and talents that virtually preordain their leadership success. The surest way of restoring high engagement, therefore, is to only select people with these traits into all future managerial roles.

Managers, Not Organizations, Drive Engagement

“We’ve long had the understanding in business,” Harter told me, “that organizations have an overriding culture – one that’s either highly engaged or not. But when we mapped engagement data down to the team level, we started noticing that engagement – and all performance metrics – varied widely. Our discovery was that culture varies by team. When we got under the hood a little bit, it became more obvious that whatever was happening with a team was directly related to its manager and to the tone they were setting.”

Managers Are Too Often Chosen For The Wrong Reasons

It’s simply undeniable that managers directly affect people’s lives and how they feel about their jobs and organizations,” stresses Harter. “But what we’ve seen over the years is that many organizations haven’t given a lot of attention to selecting managers based on their talents, and that just means they’re left with a random distribution of engagement team-to-team.”

Gallup now estimates that managers account for at least 70 percent of the variance in engagement scores – a direct reminder of what’s at stake every time a new manager is chosen.   Nevertheless, people are predominantly given management positions as rewards for long tenure (often because it’s the only road to higher pay), or because they were successful in a prior job entirely unrelated to management. “I would call decisions like this one of the biggest missed opportunities since modern-day organizations have been around,” says Harter.

The Talents Required To Be A Good Manager Are Extremely Rare

The famous question of whether great leaders are made or born seems to now have a conclusive answer. Gallup believes some people come into the world pre-wired with a rare combination of talents (naturally recurring patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviors) that enables them as managers to instinctively engage employees, build loyalty and drive high performance.

Gallup has an assessment tool that diagnoses whether someone has all of the talents required to be a great manager. Out of the 300,000 people who’ve taken it so far, only 10 percent had all five “extreme” talents:

  • They individually motivate and inspire employees to take action.
  • They assertively drive outcomes and successfully maneuver through adversity and resistance.
  • They create a culture of clear accountability.
  • They build relationships anchored by trust, full transparency and advocacy.
  • They make decisions based on productivity, not politics.

The research indicates that another 20% of the population has more moderate levels of these talents. Through training and coaching, they’re also assured of attaining a very high level of performance.

If you’re wondering about the prospects of the other 70% becoming excellent managers, the news isn’t too encouraging. “While people, of course, do learn and change, without the inherent talents needed as a foundation,” Harter says, “succeeding as a manager will always be a kind of a struggle – an uphill battle.”

How These Talents Translate Into Behaviors

If you’re trying to determine whether you have the talents of a truly great manager – or want to learn how to identify one during your hiring process – you should know that they not only behave differently, they instinctively lead with both mind and heart.

Here are five ways great managers translate their talents into practices, inspiring uncommon commitment and productivity along the way.

  1. They’re Results Oriented While Concurrently Focused On Developing Every Worker

As a means of inspiring loyalty and high achievement, they demonstrate a consistent commitment to every person’s professional growth and expansion. Rather than use training opportunities as a reward – or delay them until a campaign’s goals are met – they intentionally seek to accelerate the competency and growth of every employee while simultaneously driving performance. Generous, and with an abundance mindset, they willingly share their own hard-earned expertise and know-how. They understand that by pro-actively developing people, they inherently build the self-confidence that enables them to scale new heights.

  1. They Intentionally Give Employees A Voice In Decision Making

Seeking to ensure employees feel deeply committed to the team’s mission and tactics, they take time to solicit their feedback – even guidance. Having an orientation like this requires higher levels of self-esteem, an inclination to be inclusive – not to mention an ability to manage without full command and control. But the payback from all of this pulse-taking and transparency is a soaring of engagement and trust. People feel heard and valued, and ultimately treat the success of the business as if they were owners.

  1. They Ensure People Feel Connected And Know How Their Work Contributes To The Team And Organization.

When workers become deeply disengaged and dispirited in their jobs, one consistent contributing factor is the belief that the work they do every day has no real meaning. But highly effective managers fully understand that all human beings need to know that their work matters and has significance. Consequently, they make a practice of reminding employees of the importance of their work and how it directly connects to the teams’ and organization’s success. Their goal is to ensure no one goes home at the end of the week without knowing that all of their efforts and contributions truly made a difference.

  1. They Routinely Make People Feel Valued And Appreciated – Even Nurtured

Feeling valued is essential to the well-being of all people and to the spirit which motivates performance. Many managers, to their detriment, often disregard how important this is to people, how it inspires and why it’s so essential to sustaining high performance. Because it’s human nature to want to do more of anything that gets acknowledged and appreciated, the best managers set aside time at regular and known intervals to thank and praise their people for all performance that meets or exceeds expectations. 

  1. They’re Deeply Caring About The Well-Being Of Every Person They Lead

One characteristic of great managers that accentuates their inherent uniqueness is their motivation to make a meaningful difference in their employees’ lives. They authentically care about seeing their people thrive and succeed, and get to know and understand them individually. They learn their personal stories – and are deeply motivated to ensure their unique needs and aspirations are met. They also seem to intuitively understand the truth in the late poet Maya Angelou’s insight: “A leader sees greatness in other people. You can’t be a great leader if all you see is yourself.”

Conclusion:

If it’s not already apparent, the most effective managers seek to influence employees in ways we’ve traditionally believed were soft and even weak in business. They build personal relationships with their people, advocate for their growth – and routinely ensure they feel valued, respected and cared for. Just the idea that they want to make a difference in other people’s lives is a colossal change in our shared leadership paradigm.

Were you to ask any of the people known-to-be disengaged in their jobs today (70% of our society) what they felt was missing at work, it’s almost assured to be some if not all of the things I just mentioned.

So, just imagine what it would be like if every manager in the American workplace shared these same traits and talents. Just think how much greater human potential could be released. One sure hint to the outcome: Gallup has confirmed that great managers contribute 48 percent higher profits than average ones.

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Millennial’s Commentary On the Generational Gap: How We Really See You

Thousands, maybe even millions of research articles flood the web on how Xers and Boomers are trying to understand what millennials really want in the workplace. After all, this is the generation taking over our organizations. With all of this information at your fingertips on how you can engage this sector of the workforce, there seems be too little to no rhetoric spelling out how Millennials view our Xer and Boomer colleagues. This brings me to question, how can you expect engagement initiatives to be successful when you have no idea how we view you?

We think Gen X is cynical

Generation X (1965-79) is one of the most skeptical generations to date, having grown up in an era when many of the institutions built by veterans (1922-1946) and improved upon by boomers (1946-1964) were torn to pieces. We agree it can be discouraging watching companies like Enron and WorldCom crumble and being fed lies about faulty products, but understand that your cynicism stifles the innovation that we are longing for. A check and balance system in the workplace is good but when very idea that spews out of our millennial mouth’s is met with your skepticism, we naturally do want to run home at 5:00 and apply for any other position on Monster.

All you see is the corner office

The Greatest Generation raised Boomers to ensure they would never miss out on their youth the way they did. A noble cause. What parent would not want to give their child a great life? It became all about what they could do for themselves and their families. “Don’t let anything stand in the way of what you want,” Boomers taught their Xer children. This has created a stigma, whether just or not, that Xer are willing to do whatever it takes to get to get ahead. They put their head down, work 60 hours a week and finally land their prize – the corner office. The problem with that for millennials is many Xers do not seem to be inviting us to their marathon to success, quite the opposite. We view your hands-off, because I said so and never take a sick day approach to leading as nothing more than an oppressing attempt to keep us in our entry to mid-level roles. Our goal is not the corner office, but the entire company with a budget for Corporate Social Responsibility.

Them is we

Boomers and Xers, more so than others, tend to use the generation labels much more than millennials or Zs (1995-2012). Yes, I know that seems like an oxymoron considering you are reading an article about generation labels right now but please humor me. No matter who you are you do not like to be pigeon-holed into categories. The rise of individualism is not new nor did it start with our generation. It is simply better documented due to more sophisticated technology. Only a third of millennials say they are millennials. While we will always have categories in place to better organize everyone, Xers and Boomers could relate to us more if they simply stopped using the “young and dumb” approach. I know Xers have spent years trying to live up to the Boomer’s expectations only to have them creep back in to the workforce (Thank you Great Recession) but putting all the ideas you deem naïve in a box and labeling it millennial will never build successful organizations. We are all in this together.

You are on our pedestal

This has and will continue to be one of my biggest flaws. I put my mentors and leaders on a pedestal. I am chomping at the bit to conquer the world and all I need is someone in my corner cheering me on and calling me out when I need it. When my cheerleader cannot find the pom-poms or stifles my innovative idea with negativity, I am heartbroken, confused and angry. I take it personally to the point I almost cannot learn from them any longer. I do make sure I do whatever it takes to prove them wrong though. Maybe they use it as a form of motivation? Millennials as a whole inspire to be incredible people that will make the world better. You do not need to be Steve Jobs or Mohmmas Yunus but you do need to try and get on-board with that.

No matter where you stand in the conversation around generations in the workplace, one thing is certain, we are not going away. 53.5 million millennials are expected to be in the workforce by the end of this year. While I understand some of the stereotypes around our endless texting and job hopping and proven true in some cases, overall, many of us simply want someone to lead us.

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