Posts

Want to Succeed at Upskilling? Lead With Hands-On Learning

Corporate learning and development (L&D) is at a crossroads. Today’s workforce desperately needs a skills update to prepare for the future of work, and old-school strategies aren’t rising to the challenge. Instead, organizations are rapidly turning to hands-on learning. Here’s why…

Skills development was once reserved only for high-potential employees. But now, with qualified talent in short supply, business leaders realize the importance of reskilling and upskilling people at all levels of the organization. And this need is only growing more urgent, as innovative technologies disrupt and redefine jobs in every industry. Still, L&D is struggling to respond.

Hands-On Learning Avoids Wasted Dollars

The scale of this learning disconnect is massive. Global L&D spending now exceeds $360 billion a year — $165 billion in the U.S., alone. Yet 75% of managers are dissatisfied with their company’s L&D programs, and 70% of employees say they haven’t mastered the skills needed to do their jobs.

In other words, most employees aren’t translating learning into skills improvement or applying what they learn in real work settings. As a result, L&D budgets are largely being left behind on the classroom floor.

However, all learning experiences are not equal. Traditional instructional formats (such as classroom-based training, theoretical learning, and standard elearning courses) are not enough to help people build the skills they need to succeed. Clearly, to develop a more competent, productive workforce, employers must rethink the way they approach reskilling and upskilling. This is why hands-on learning is rapidly gaining traction.

5 Ways Hands-On Learning Improves Upskilling Results

1. It Drives Skill Mastery

Until recently, learning focused primarily on delivering content and consolidating that content into better (curated) experiences. This may improve information discovery and access, but it isn’t enough to support the complex roles many employees must perform.

Anyone can read a blog about how to fly a plane, but it doesn’t mean they’ll be ready to step into a pilot’s role. Likewise, anyone can sit in a cockpit observing others, but that first-hand exposure doesn’t fully prepare them to fly.

To become proficient at flying an airplane, people need hands-on learning experience. For example, participating in simulations, role play, and challenges over time helps people practice and develop competence. Also by incorporating assessments, individuals receive feedback that helps them evaluate and improve their ability to perform on the job.

According to Stanford neuroscience professor Andrew Huberman, there is no “best way” to learn. However, he says research indicates that note-taking helps people engage and retain conceptual information. He recommends actively reading or listening to the material, then spending time away to deliberately revisit the content. “Periodically think back from start to finish and figure out where gaps in knowledge remain. Then repeat.”

But he adds this important point, “For material that requires problem sets, obviously, you also need to do the problem sets.” After all, no one would trust a plumber who has never touched a pipe, or a builder who has no tools.

The value of hands-on learning is common sense. We know it from our earliest days as children who must learn to walk, talk, and eat. Learning by doing is the most effective way to develop a skill.

2. It Validates Skills With Confidence

Just as a pilot must complete 1500 hours of flight time to earn a license, many employees must validate hands-on mastery of critical skills. For example, think of people involved with coding, cybersecurity, crisis management, customer service, and more.

For roles like these, too much is at stake to rely solely on passive learning through articles, blogs, videos, podcasts, and books. It’s all too easy for someone to log in to an elearning course, online seminar, or virtual classroom and then check out mentally. Hours completed and content consumed are not enough to verify an individual’s level of understanding, skill, and competency.

What’s more, as technology and business processes change, employees face increasing pressure to upskill and reskill. As the pressure mounts, it’s tempting to simply click on content and tick boxes to complete a learning pathway.

It may be tempting to think theoretical knowledge is sufficient for people to perform successfully at work. But imagine your organization manages a billion-dollar financial portfolio. Would you trust an employee with untested book knowledge to protect your company from cyberattacks? If that were the case, then why does human error cause 90% of data breaches?

3. It Helps People Remember What They Learn

Hands-on learning isn’t just a way to give people a safe space to practice new skills. When employees engage in the simple act of completing a learning task in their job environment it reinforces knowledge. This is why medical education is based on the philosophy, “See one, do one, teach one.” Doctors and surgeons realized way back in the 19th century that hands-on practice is the best way to develop skills.

4. It Encourages People to Learn More, Faster

Hands-on learning also helps people learn more than they realize. That could be because experiential learning is more engaging than reading words on a page or watching an instructor’s video lecture. It could also be because people are asked to recall information and apply it in real time during a simulation or other challenge. For example, a Harvard study found that students in classes where skills were actively practiced learned more than those who attended lecture-based classes. As a result, test scores were higher among those in “active” classes.

Reinforcing new skills ensures that nobody forgets what they’ve learned as soon as they leave a classroom or switch off their computer. It connects skills with their application. As a result, it reinforces skill development. And ultimately, it helps people learn more, more quickly. This is especially critical for employees, who often have only limited time available for learning and development.

As EY says, “Today, although the skills gap is one of the main concerns of business leaders, the workforce only has limited time available to dedicate to learning. This means L&D needs to make learning more accessible and prioritize certain learning interventions over others. Briefly, L&D needs to think about how learning can be integrated into the flow of work, so the workforce and business can grow as much as possible, given shorter, faster, more integrated learning.”

Hands-on practice actually helps the mind consolidate learning and store it in long-term memory. Studies show that hands-on learning engages both hemispheres of the brain, so it stores more information and builds stronger connections with that information. In other words, people who engage in hands-on learning gain more knowledge, and they recall it faster when needed.

5. It Meets Diverse Learning Needs

Each of us prefers to learn in different ways. Some people enjoy traditional classroom education, while others find self-directed learning more effective. The same applies to corporate learning. We can’t expect everyone to feel comfortable upskilling through an online course or by reading written materials. For example, neurodiverse people may not have the attention span to sit through a lengthy webinar or read a manual. Hands-on learning levels the playing field by letting each employee participate in a way that feels more natural and appropriate for their needs.

Hands-On Learning Is the Smartest Upskilling Strategy

Many L&D leaders enter this field because they have a passion for learning and they understand the value it brings to employees and organizations alike. But if we don’t equip employees with the best options for learning, we’re letting them down. The best way for people to practice and develop skills in a safe environment is to offer hands-on learning experiences that align with their current roles and future aspirations.

If you’re still not convinced, ask yourself this question: The next time you travel on an airline, who would you choose to fly that plane? Would you prefer a pilot with thousands of hours of hands-on experience, or someone who’s spent thousands of hours reading airline manuals?

Is Your Employee Recognition Strategy On Point?

Sponsored by Kudos

The idea of employee recognition seems as natural as breathing. Who wouldn’t want to recognize a job well done? But the truth is, effective workforce recognition doesn’t just naturally happen. That’s why it pays to invest in a thoughtful recognition strategy.

Why a Strong Recognition Strategy Matters

If you follow leading workplace management trends, you know the case for recognition is compelling. For example, according to recent Gallup research:

  • Employees who say recognition is important to their organization are nearly 4x more likely to feel strongly connected with their culture.
  • When employees receive great recognition, they’re 20x more likely to be engaged than those who aren’t effectively recognized.
  • Among employees with successful recognition programs, 72% say their performance is acknowledged, even on “little things.”

Clearly, employers can’t afford to leave employee recognition and engagement to chance — especially in today’s complex hybrid work environment. But what exactly does an effective recognition strategy look like? Join me as I dig deeper with an industry expert on this episode of #WorkTrends…

Meet Our Guest: Karim Punja

Karim Punja is the COO at Kudos. As a CFA charterholder with over 15 years of experience at multiple global tech companies, Karim has found his sweet spot at Kudos. That’s because it’s a dynamic HR tech venture where data-based decisions are made at the speed of change, and everyone at Kudos is focused on improving the world of work.

With his business acumen and first-hand understanding of tools that enhance the modern employee experience, Karim is an ideal source for advice on how to develop a successful employee recognition strategy.

To learn more, check these highlights from our discussion…

Building a Recognition Budget

Welcome, Karim. Let’s begin with funding. Recognition programs should be planned, funded, and measured, just like any other business initiative. But how do we build a budget for this?

Well, a typical benchmark for a platform-supported program is 1-3% of payroll or of an employee’s salary.

But this is not necessarily a one-size-fits-all approach. You also need to consider your organization’s culture and recognition strategy.

What’s the split between hourly and salaried workers? Are your teams mostly remote workers or deskless workers? Plus, you’ll want to consider whether you’ll want to use a recognition platform to supplement income through rewards.

In addition, you may already be doing things you can consolidate into a recognition and engagement platform. For example, do you offer spot bonuses? And how do you manage birthdays and milestones?

Why Management Involvement is Key

What other elements should a recognition strategy include?

One of the most critical keys to success is getting managers on board early as stakeholders who take ownership of system adoption and usage.

We know this from analyzing our own clients. When managers are highly engaged with our system, monthly participation among non-managers is 3x higher than groups where manager engagement is low.

How a Recognition Strategy Creates Value

How should HR professionals communicate the value of employee recognition to senior leaders and others?

Measurement is an important attribute, because it speaks to the core philosophy that “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.”

With an employee recognition system, you can get measurable insights into employee wellbeing. And when you overlay that with engagement surveys, you can compare the data and see the impact of your culture over time.

I like to talk about the value of employee engagement metrics as a leading indicator of organizational health. Whereas surveys are more of a lagging indicator, because they provide a snapshot of sentiments that have led up to a particular point in time.

So, because a recognition and engagement platform provides real-time metrics and trends, it gives you a leading indicator of sentiment. This means you can use those actionable insights proactively, rather than reactively…

 


Learn More About How to Develop a Successful Recognition Strategy

Listen to this full #WorkTrends episode on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or wherever you tune in to podcasts. And while you’re there, be sure to subscribe so you won’t miss future episodes.

Want to continue this conversation on social media? Follow TalentCulture or use our #WorkTrends hashtag anytime on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Let’s talk!

Toxic Cultures Are Crushing Workforce Wellbeing. What Can Employers Do?

Toxic cultures are like dark clouds looming over the world of work. Wherever they go, they wreak havoc with employee wellbeing. That’s not an overstatement. For example, consider what one recent technology industry survey revealed:

  • 45% of tech employees said their work environment is so toxic it affects their mental health, while 48% said it takes a toll on their physical health.
  • Among those who work in toxic cultures, 43% use sick days or personal time off to take a break from all the negativity.
  • 45% of employees in these environments say they’ve been pushed into “quiet quitting.”

Statistics like these are alarming, especially for organizations that are struggling to attract and retain qualified talent. To understand the issue better and find out how to create a happier, healthier workplace for all, read on…

How Toxic Cultures Erode Employee Mental Health

Today’s work environment is so fast-paced and demanding that it’s easy to overlook signs of toxicity. But left unchecked, these symptoms can cascade into serious consequences that harm individuals as well as overall workplace wellbeing.

Recognizing key issues is the first step toward developing a healthier culture. Here are four common warning signs you don’t want to ignore:

1. High Stress Levels

Toxic workplaces are a breeding ground for stress. Often, employees find themselves constantly navigating through a minefield of negativity, unrealistic expectations, and hostile interactions.

Stressful environments are more common than you may think. In fact, 79% of U.S. workers struggle with work-related stress, according to the American Psychological Association.

The persistent pressure to meet unattainable goals — coupled with a lack of support or recognition — leaves employees grappling with chronically elevated stress levels. This prolonged exposure to stress not only takes a toll on mental health, but also contributes to physical health issues such as hypertension, insomnia, and intestinal tract disorders.

2. Burnout

A combination of stress, overwork, minimal autonomy, and a lack of appreciation create a perfect storm that fuels employee burnout. Constantly pushing people beyond their limits to meet unreasonable demands can leave them emotionally exhausted, disenchanted, and disengaged from their work.

Because it diminishes mental and physical wellbeing, burnout goes hand in hand with absenteeism and employee turnover. As a result, team productivity and organizational performance also suffer.

3. Poor Work-Life Balance

Toxic work cultures often blur the boundaries between work and personal life. Employees may find themselves constantly tethered to their jobs, with little time or energy for personal life.

A lack of boundaries between work and life plays havoc with mental health. It can compromise an individual’s quality of life and leave them feeling overwhelmed and isolated. This inability to detach from work-related stressors can also contribute to sleep disturbances and anxiety, further intensifying mental health challenges.

4. Low Job Satisfaction

One of the most obvious symptoms of a toxic workplace is low job satisfaction. This usually develops when people don’t feel respected or appreciated, and they aren’t offered opportunities to develop and grow. This means enthusiasm and motivation slide, and engagement follows.

Over time, a lack of job satisfaction can erode employee mental health. When this reaches across a team or an organization, it also puts workplace harmony, productivity, and innovation at risk.

How to Heal Toxic Cultures

Creating a workplace that puts employee wellbeing first is not just a corporate responsibility — it’s a necessity. By fostering a healthy, supportive work environment, companies can safeguard mental health across their teams, which translates into high job satisfaction, productivity, and talent retention.

Here are some strategies and tactics to help develop a work environment that is more respectful, inclusive, and supportive:

1. Promote Open Communication

Encourage employees to speak up when they encounter toxic behaviors or instances of workplace misconduct. Create formal and informal processes and channels where people can openly discuss issues. Also, for situations that require discretion, provide a safe platform where anyone can report a problem and know that leaders will act on their input.

2. Implement Feedback Mechanisms

Establish processes and tools to gather and assess regular feedback. For example, conduct periodic anonymous surveys and informal one-on-one sessions. This gives employees multiple ways to express their thoughts, feelings, and concerns about the work environment. By seeking input on workplace culture, policies, and practices you’ll have a foundation for meaningful change.

3. Prioritize Leadership Training

Invest in leadership and management training programs that underscore the importance of creating a respectful, inclusive work environment. Equip leaders with the skills they need to identify and address toxic behaviors. Also, focus on helping them develop emotional intelligence so they can be role models for a positive workplace.

4. Offer Mental Health Support

Provide resources and programs aimed at supporting employee mental health. Include access to counseling services, stress management workshops, and initiatives that promote work-life balance. By showing a serious commitment to workforce wellbeing, you’ll elevate employee trust and commitment.

5. Emphasize Employee Recognition

Implement employee appreciation programs to acknowledge and reward employees for their efforts and contributions. When executives, managers, and peers express genuine appreciation for hard work, it boosts morale and contributes to a more positive work environment.

6. Provide Professional Development Opportunities

Show you care about the future of your employees. Proactively invest in their skill development and career growth. When people feel that their employer actively supports their aspirations, they’re more likely to remain loyal and view their workplace in a positive light.

7. Offer Flexible Work Arrangements

Open the door to flexible work options, such as remote/hybrid work models or flexible hours. This kind of flexibility can help employees better balance their work and personal lives. As a result, it helps reduce work stress, avoid burnout, and enhance job satisfaction.

8. Don’t Forget Conflict Resolution Processes

Establish clear and fair methods for conflict resolution. This ensures that you can address workplace issues or disputes in a timely, effective way. A structured approach can prevent problems from escalating and negatively affecting the work environment.

Encourage Self-Care Education

Toxic cultures can be overwhelming in many ways. Although it’s important for organizations to implement employee wellbeing initiatives, it’s equally important for employees to learn how to take care of themselves.

Educating individuals about mental health and wellbeing can empower them to build the resilience they need to more effectively navigate today’s challenging work world. Consider a curriculum that focuses on topics like these:

1. Coping With Stressful Situations

Training sessions that teach employees how to identify stress and cope with it are extremely useful. During training, focus on techniques for managing work stress, such as mindfulness, time management, and brief relaxation exercises. For example, teach people to recognize their own stressors and develop personalized strategies for dealing with them.

2. Prioritizing Self-Care

Educate employees about the importance of self-care and how to incorporate it into their daily routine. Emphasize the value of maintaining a healthy work-life balance, getting adequate sleep, engaging in regular physical activity, and practicing healthy eating habits. Provide resources and tips for self-care practices that improve mental and emotional wellbeing.

3. Resolving Conflict

Be sure to help employees develop effective conflict resolution techniques that emphasize open, respectful communication. This can help participants discover how to identify and address workplace conflicts constructively — whether it involves colleagues, supervisors, or clients. Through your employee training system you can offer guidance on negotiation skills, active listening, and finding common ground during regular 1:1 meetings.

4. Building Mental Health Awareness

Plan workshops or events to raise awareness about mental health issues and reduce the stigma surrounding this topic. Employees need to recognize signs of mental health challenges in themselves, as well as their colleagues. Make sure you provide information about available mental health resources and how to seek help when needed.

5. Boosting Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence training can enhance an employee’s ability to understand and manage their own emotions while affirming others. Effective training often includes strategies for developing adaptability, problem-solving skills, and a growth mindset. All of these contribute to increased resilience while on the job.

6. Setting Goals

Everyone can benefit from learning how to set and achieve personal and professional goals. A great way to do this is by guiding employees through the process of creating actionable plans, tracking progress, and celebrating successes. Ultimately, this fosters a sense of accomplishment and motivates people to dig deeper and aim higher.

It’s Time to Let Go of Toxic Cultures

Bottom line: Workforce wellbeing is the key to a loyal, thriving, high-performing workforce. When you commit to building a positive culture that genuinely cares for team members, you’ll benefit in multiple ways:

  • Happy, healthy, well-supported employees are more content and effective in their roles. They’re also significantly more valuable team players who are willing to embrace business goals.
  • When employees are equipped to face the challenges of modern work life, they engage more fully, work more productively, contribute more creative ideas, and are more eager to share in their organization’s success.

Ultimately, fostering a culture of wellbeing is a win-win proposition. A workforce that is mentally, emotionally, and physically present and engaged will thrive — and will help your business thrive, as well.

Organizational Transparency is the New Normal: How Open Are You?

Imagine this: You’re attending one of your company’s senior staff meetings. The CEO nods and smiles when one executive shares a KPI chart with an upward-trending graph. Clearly, the CEO appreciates seeing how performance is improving. It confirms the management team’s commitment to excellence and its ability to deliver. But these results don’t really surprise anyone. That’s because your company embraces organizational transparency.

In today’s complex business landscape, a culture of transparency is not just a nice-to-have option — it’s a strategic necessity. Why? Because open communication is a catalyst for engagement, accountability, and success at all levels of a company.

What Makes Transparency Tick?

CEOs never aim for mediocrity. They want teams that are highly motivated, engaged, and productive. This is why organizational transparency is so powerful.

Leaders who champion open communication ignite employee trust, commitment, and motivation. In transparent cultures, success isn’t just about hitting the numbers. It’s about creating an environment where people are all in — where team members know they matter and their efforts make a valuable difference.

Who’s Responsible for Organizational Transparency?

The answer to this question isn’t always clear. Certainly, openness starts at the top. But kickstarting the process and keeping it moving requires a partnership between senior leaders and People Operations.

C-suite leaders bring the company vision and goals into focus, while People Ops teams conduct daily tasks that turn that vision into a reality. Their responsibilities include onboarding new hires, managing the employee experience, and supporting workforce growth and success — all efforts that strengthen an organization’s backbone.

By working together, executives and People Ops can keep employees in the know, so their mindset and contributions align with the company’s vision, values, and objectives.

3 Ways to Enable Organizational Transparency

Here’s how People Ops can partner effectively with the C-suite to foster a transparent work environment:

1. Give Employees a Voice

A culture that welcomes feedback is a cornerstone of transparency. Employees deserve a say in how their organization operates, and leaders can promote this behavior by proactively seeking input.

Regularly inviting employees to express their insights, ideas, and opinions creates an environment where communication is accepted as a norm. By working hand-in-hand with executives, People Ops can develop, promote, and manage multiple feedback channels — both open and anonymous.

For example, you can conduct periodic focus groups or town hall forums with employees who are willing to participate in an open dialogue. And for those who prefer confidentiality, you can initiate private interviews and 1:1 conversations.

Also, to calibrate broader sentiment, insights, and trends, you can conduct periodic anonymous pulse surveys and employee net promoter score assessments.

When mapping a strategy, it’s worth noting that 47% of employees aren’t totally honest when sharing feedback with HR. But 56% of those employees are more likely to be honest when their anonymity is assured.

Although managing employee feedback channels may seem complicated, it’s worth the effort. For instance, organizations that listen and act on these findings are 3x more likely to reach their financial targets.

In addition, when you’re receptive to feedback, you build a sense of connection and trust across the organization. Ultimately, this can elevate workforce wellbeing by reducing stress, disengagement, and even burnout.

Bottom line — it pays to offer various feedback options and keep employees in the loop about how you’re responding to their concerns.

2. Share Information Quickly and Consistently

It’s essential for leaders and People Ops to agree on how to treat sensitive company information. Striking the right balance between transparency and confidentiality prevents misunderstandings. This is especially important when communicating about decisions or events that directly affect employees — for instance, when you’re dealing with layoffs, salary changes, or restructuring plans.

Leaders who care about transparency insist on timely, accurate communication. This preserves trust and positions your company as a reliable source.

For example, publishing pay scales and compensation guidelines helps avoid ambiguity and clarifies career advancement paths. Actually, pay transparency laws already cover more than 25% of the U.S. workforce — and this figure could soon rise to 50%. But this is just one reason why transparency is essential in the modern workplace.

3. Make Company Information Accessible

Ready access to information is critical for the kind of awareness and understanding a cohesive culture needs. Partially informed employees can’t be expected to contribute fully to an organization’s success. This is why a variety of communication channels can help you reach team members where they’re at and keep them up-to-date.

Platforms such as town halls, executive “Ask Me Anything” sessions, online chat forums, and email newsletters can play a pivotal role by adding context to announcements about company priorities, programs, and performance. In addition, these channels give employees an opportunity to share direct feedback with decision-makers and discuss their thoughts with peers.

To take full advantage of these channels, you’ll want to provide clear, consistent messaging across the board. Using an integrated People Ops platform, you can gather, track, and analyze internal communications activity data, and map it to broader organizational objectives.

4. Let Go of Lazy Labels

Most employees want to be seen as people. Yet, only 45% actually think their organization views them that way. Transparency can bridge this gap, so you can build a more unified, empowered workforce, where individual strengths and aspirations contribute to a collective success story.

That’s why it’s time to trash stereotypes — especially negative buzzwords. Terms like “lazy girl jobs” and “quiet quitting” aren’t constructive.

This kind of workplace shorthand may seem harmless, but it doesn’t serve anyone well. In fact, it only undermines employees who value work-life balance over work-at-all-cost expectations.

So make no mistake. Transparency isn’t about mindless judgment or brutal honesty. It’s about intentionally creating an environment where people feel like they belong and they can flourish.

This mindset fuels trust, confidence, and commitment through communication that empowers people to contribute their best. Other benefits include:

  • Heightened job satisfaction
  • Enhanced collaboration
  • Increased engagement
  • Strengthened leadership credibility
  • Improved problem-solving

At its best, organizational transparency aligns everyone with shared objectives. From Gen Z to your most seasoned team members, everyone can work more happily and productively when they’re part of a culture based on open communication.

But be prepared. Developing this kind of relationship takes time, consistency, and persistence.

The Case for Transparency

“The Great Resignation” began in 2021, when nearly 48 million people quit their jobs. But experts say the “Real Great Resignation” actually happened last year, when resignations reached nearly 51 million.

What caused so many employees to leave? According to research, 40% of former employees could no longer tolerate a toxic work environment.

Contrast this with people who feel their work culture is transparent. Their job satisfaction rate is 12x greater than others. That’s a key point because satisfied employees are much more likely to stay on board longer.

It’s no secret that employees want to feel supported, respected, and motivated to do their job well. This starts when top-down transparency is baked into your culture. With a genuine, ongoing effort, business leaders and People Ops can cultivate the kind of transparent workplace that attracts great talent, respects them as individuals, and gives them a powerful reason to stay.

What Does the Voice of the Employee Say About Your Culture?

Sponsored by WorkForce Software

Employers, you know the story. For years, organizations have been struggling to engage and retain employees, yet few have really moved the meter. So, how do the best employers succeed? Some say the answer lies in listening more closely to the voice of the employee. Why?

Here’s what statistics say:

  • 90% of workers told Achievers they’re more likely to stay at a company that seeks feedback and acts on it. Yet 67% rate their organization as only “okay” or even “horrible” at doing this.
  • According to a Gallup survey, 52% of people who resigned say those in charge could have done something to prevent them from quitting. But only a third actually discussed their disenchantment with their manager before they left.

It is time to lean in and listen to the voice of the employee more closely and more continuously. But what should that look like in a modern work environment? This question is super important. And that’s why we’re talking about it today with an expert in the psychology of work…

Meet Our Guest: Angelina Sun

Today, we welcome back Angelina Sun, PhD, WorkForce Management Solutions Director at WorkForce Software. With extensive experience in multiple industries, she is deeply interested in innovative ways to build and sustain healthy organizational cultures.

In her current role, Angelina focuses on helping leaders more effectively manage and communicate with employees – especially deskless workers. Angelina’s finger is clearly on the pulse of modern workforce challenges and opportunities. That’s why I asked her to join us earlier this year to discuss the state of today’s deskless worker experience.

But this topic is much bigger than just one podcast episode. So I invited Angelina to return so we could dig deeper. Here are some highlights from our latest conversation…

Defining the Voice of the Employee

Welcome back, Angelina! What is the voice of the employee, and why is it so valuable in organizations?

People often think of the voice of the employee in terms of responses to staff surveys. But it’s more than that.  It encompasses all their feelings, perceptions, and experiences. And it includes all communication channels.

There are so many ways you can tap into the voice of the employee. For example, you can learn by paying attention to team meetings, one-on-ones with managers, service sentiment, and information sharing at company gatherings, interviews, focus groups — anywhere you gather feedback.

The Need to Feel Heard is Universal
You’re so right, Angelina. This extends far beyond employee surveys…

Everyone wants to be heard and valued. Whether we are office-based, remote, hybrid, frontline hourly workers or shift workers, we all want to feel like we’re doing meaningful, purposeful work.

But for deskless workers, the voice of the employee has a unique operational focus. Because these workers are closest to production or customers, their feedback is crucial. It helps identify what’s really happening in the workplace or with the customer experience, so we can take action and improve.

Technology’s Role

How can technology, especially mobile, help create a more seamless communication flow between employees and employers?

You know, smartphones are an essential tool for managing our day-to-day lives. This is why organizations really should employ these powerful, pocket-sized supercomputers to connect with frontline workers.

In fact, our research reveals that 45% of employees would prefer to receive training and information on their mobile phone. Yet only 20% of them actually have this option.

Improving the Communication Process

What are some of the best ways employers can select a communication vehicle and make it work for everyone?

The biggest obstacle is adoption. Why? Because deskless workers don’t sit or stand in front of a computer all day to check email and respond.

So if you want a successful solution, it must integrate into the technology deskless workers are already using in the field or on the shop floor.

We are not just talking about a simple chat system. It should be workflow-driven. It should help people get their job done and make it easier to manage schedules and work-life balance, while also helping managers have the right conversations with the right people at the right time…

 


Learn More About the Voice of the Employee

For more insights about how your organization can benefit from listening to the voice of the employee, listen to this full #WorkTrends episode on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or wherever you tune in to podcasts. And while you’re there, be sure to subscribe, so you won’t miss future episodes.

Also, visit WorkForce Software anytime for details about the company and its modern workforce management suite.

And whenever you want to continue this conversation on social media, follow our #WorkTrends hashtag on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Let’s talk!

How to Become a Great Manager (And Why It Matters)

Sponsored by The Culture Platform

You probably know at least one great manager. Maybe you’ve even worked for that person. If so, I imagine it was a fulfilling experience. How do I know? It’s a safe bet because research tells us just how deeply managers influence our work experience. For instance:

  • Gallup says managers affect employee engagement and performance more than anything else. In fact, 70% of the variance in a team’s engagement is determined solely by its manager.
  • A Stanford study found that productivity increases by as much as 50% when employees move from a manager with “average” capabilities to a high-quality boss. Not surprisingly, retention is also higher among those with better bosses.

Sadly, great managers are a rare breed. But we can change that. First, we need to understand what it takes to be the kind of manager everyone wants to work for. And that’s exactly what we’re exploring with a management development expert on today’s episode of #WorkTrends…

Meet Our Guest: Ron Ricci

This week, I’m thrilled to welcome a long-time friend of TalentCulture, Ron Ricci. Ron is the founder and CEO of The Culture Platform, the foremost data-based system to measure, manage, and magnify organizational culture.

With more than two decades of experience in leading large teams, Ron is an expert voice on management best practices. Previously, he held multiple senior leadership roles at Cisco, where he managed more than 5,000 employees.

Because he is so passionate about helping managers succeed in what he calls the “post-everything” era, I know Ron has a wealth of ideas to share. So let’s get started!

The Anatomy of a Great Manager

Welcome, Ron. What did your successful career at Cisco teach you about being a great manager?

I knew I was only as good as the people on my team — so to attract the best people, I needed to be a great manager. And to be a great manager, I learned that I had to be really good at setting clear expectations for people.

Being a manager is probably the toughest job in any organization. You sit between leadership’s expectations and your people’s expectations. That’s why it’s critical to be a strong expectation-setter.

Factors Affecting Managerial Success

Why do so many people fail in management roles?

I think this happens for two reasons:

First, being a manager is hard because it involves human-to-human communication. It takes a lot of courage to be a great manager. You have to tell people the truth. You have to follow through on your word. You have to hold people accountable.

So folks fail because they don’t understand how hard it is or how to develop an effective communication style.

Also, I think companies contribute because they’re often very inconsistent in how they act and behave. We’ve all seen it. Companies start a project, then stop it. They launch an initiative, then they don’t fund it. They don’t measure things consistently. Or they don’t have a calendared process to hold people accountable.

Managers need to challenge their company to do better. If companies operate more consistently, managers can do a better job of helping people see future opportunities and move in that direction.

Unsung Heroes

I really feel for anyone who is a manager these days. We talk nonstop about employees and leaders, but managers are left behind…

Good point, Meghan. Over the past few decades, organizations have emphasized leadership and over-invested in employee engagement — and it hasn’t gotten us anywhere. Meanwhile, we’ve under-invested in manager training and development.

We have to stop doing something to do something else better. We have to decide that the manager role is more important. We need to help managers improve how they set expectations, so their employees fall in love with their job and kick ass in whatever their role may be.

In my opinion, this is 20 years overdue.

The Manager’s Toolbox

I’m glad you offer a resource called The Manager’s Toolbox. What’s inside?

Rather than over-emphasizing technology, the toolbox focuses on developing the human-to-human communication process every great manager needs. It’s based on three elements:

1) How to align company priorities with a job role.

2) How to measure something people are doing so you can communicate with facts.

3) How to set priorities and make sure you measure things in a consistent way across the organization so there’s no ambiguity.

You can’t really replace this kind of communication with technology. It’s a process.

 


Learn More About How to be a Great Manager

For more insights about developing better managers, listen to this full #WorkTrends episode on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or wherever you tune in to podcasts. While you’re there, be sure to subscribe, so you won’t miss future episodes.

To get a copy of The Manager’s Toolbox, send an email request to Ron at TheCulturePlatform@gmail.com. Also, visit The Culture Platform anytime for details about the company or to schedule a demo.

And whenever you want to continue this conversation on social media, follow our #WorkTrends hashtag on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Let’s talk!

Employee Motivation Matters. How Can Leaders Help?

You’re a business leader. You believe in your company with all your heart. Your commitment to the organization’s mission drives you to aim high, work hard, and put in your best effort. However, that’s not the case with your workforce. You want your team to be as dedicated as you are, but employee motivation doesn’t happen by chance. And that’s where leaders too often miss the mark.

In an article about employee appreciation, Harvard Business Review briefly illustrates the problem:

An employee arrives at work on his 10th-year anniversary and finds a gift card with a sticky note on his desk. The note is from his manager, acknowledging his anniversary. Realizing the message doesn’t include a thank-you or congratulations, he rolls his eyes.

This missed opportunity speaks volumes. Just imagine the cumulative impact on morale when this kind of scenario plays out on a regular basis.

Layoffs continue to capture headlines as the economy sputters. Nevertheless, employers are still vying for qualified talent so they can stay competitive. But no one can effectively attract and retain stellar people without inspiring them. And the ability to inspire depends on your willingness to motivate people on an ongoing basis.

Connecting Motivation With Business Benefits

The power of motivation is undeniable. It directly influences multiple business metrics. For example, it can:

  • Boost Productivity and Profitability
    Because motivated employees are more engaged with their work, they tend to be more productive and deliver higher-quality results. In fact, research says highly engaged teams can increase business profitability by more than 20%.
  • Reduce Absenteeism and Turnover
    When motivation and engagement are low, people are more likely to call in sick or resign. The cost of both can be steep. On the other hand, Gallup says organizations with high engagement see significant benefits, with an average of 81% lower absenteeism and 43% lower turnover.
  • Improve Collaboration and Innovation
    Motivated people typically are more content with their jobs. As a result, they’re more open to teamwork and collaboration, which leads to better problem-solving and innovation. They also tend to be more efficient and willing to go above and beyond to achieve business objectives.

Most leaders understand the value of motivation. But motivating people is easier said than done. What can you do to fuel employee motivation? When work starts piling up and engagement is at a low ebb, try these 8 ideas to engage your team and steer them toward success:

8 Ways to Inspire Employee Motivation

1. Communicate the Big Picture

Regularly sharing information about your organization’s vision, goals, challenges, and achievements helps people feel more invested in its success. Here are some effective ways to keep people in the loop:

  • Articulate Your Expectations: This is essential. Unless people know how you define success, and understand how it relates to their roles and output, they have no way to gauge their status or progress.
  • Set Objectives Collaboratively: Work together to set clear, achievable objectives. This helps people grasp the purpose behind their work and how it fits into the company’s broader mission and strategy.
  • Provide Periodic Business Updates: Keep employees informed about how the organization is performing to plan. This is also an opportunity not only to focus on key issues but also to celebrate successes and milestones. Keep in mind that timely, specific public recognition is one of the most effective ways to motivate people.

2. Seek Employee Input

It’s easy to become so focused on top-down communication that you may overlook the value of employee input and feedback. Asking employees direct questions during a group meeting or private conversation lets them know you care about their opinions and are open to their ideas and concerns.

It’s also helpful to periodically gauge overall employee satisfaction and engagement by conducting anonymous surveys. This is an opportunity to remind people that their opinions matter. Ask for feedback about what needs improvement and suggestions for how to improve.

Of course, any input you receive deserves swift attention and action. A timely, thoughtful response tells employees you value their feedback. It’s also a way to demonstrate the kind of loyalty you hope they’ll return by doing their best.

3. Give People Autonomy

Handing employees some control over their work can be a highly effective motivator. This can be as simple as giving people a chance to work on projects they love or letting them choose a schedule they prefer from a variety of options.

When employees have a voice in defining their priorities and daily activities, they’re more likely to feel committed to their work and invested in their results.

4. Reward Success

People will sign up for your mission and stay with your business when you give them a reason to care. And recognizing their efforts is one of the most effective ways to build this kind of connection.

For example, implementing an employee incentive program is relatively straightforward strategy:

  • Focus first on how to align rewards with company values and goals.
  • For each level of achievement assign appropriate awards, such as crystal trophies and cash bonuses, as well as certificates and verbal recognition.
  • Establish clear, attainable criteria for receiving awards, and regularly share program guidelines with everyone who is eligible.
  • Build peer-to-peer recognition into the process, so employees can nominate colleagues for recognition.
  • Celebrate achievements publicly to increase visibility and inspire others.
  • Regularly review and update your incentive program to keep it fresh and relevant.

5. Foster a Positive Work Environment

Formal recognition isn’t the only way to shape employee attitudes and behavior. For instance, leaders can also make a significant impact on employee morale and motivation simply by fostering an open, supportive work environment. This includes:

  • Work structures and processes that encourage teamwork and collaboration,
  • Programs and policies that promote work-life balance, and
  • Opportunities for employees to socialize and form strong bonds.

The important thing to remember here is that, even in small companies, work cultures are complex. The status quote won’t change overnight. If your culture needs to shift, prepare to be intentional and consistent. It may take time, but you’ll be rewarded with lasting business impact.

6. Offer Opportunities for Professional Growth

What better way to motivate people than to enrich their professional knowledge and skills? Especially if your business is expanding rapidly, giving people opportunities to learn, develop, and grow within your organization can be a tremendous incentive.

There are many ways to help people expand their capabilities beyond formal training. For example, consider adding stretch assignments, cross-training, educational reimbursement, mentorships, and internal career advancement to the mix.

7. Lead With Encouragement

Every day brings new opportunities to help employees overcome inevitable mistakes and failures. By encouraging people to focus on continuous improvement, you can help them develop a positive mindset and the determination to see things through.

When projects don’t go according to plan, resist the temptations to start by investigating whose to blame. Instead, focus on working together to identify the root cause and solve the problem. During difficult times, remember to tell people you trust them or send a supportive email message. And be sure to reinforce anyone who takes accountability and steps up to the challenge.

8. Remain Available

No matter how busy your schedule is, make it a priority to be responsive when anyone needs help or advice. Can you blame an employee for becoming frustrated and demotivated if you’re never available to offer guidance, assistance, or approval?

Here’s a sign that you may need to adjust your standards: Think about your one-on-one meetings. Do you regularly postpone these sessions, or blow them off altogether? Don’t be surprised if productivity and engagement are suffering.

A Final Word on Employee Motivation

Any leader who wants to elevate organizational performance and productivity should start with employee motivation. There are multiple ways to move in the right direction, but here’s the bottom line:

If you want employees to commit to your organization, you’ll need to commit your time, attention, and effort to motivate them on a continuous basis. This is clearly a long-game process, but the journey can be one of the most rewarding investments your business will ever make.

Managers Need a Toolbox for the “Post-Everything” Era

TalentCulture Content Impact Award Winner - 2023
Sponsored by The Culture Platform

What tools actually help managers manage their people? That’s the most important question every organization needs to ask itself as the workplace enters the “post-everything” era. Post-pandemic, post-work-from-home, post-boomers, post-engagement-software’s-failure-to make-a-difference, post-wondering-if-AI-will-affect-work. You get my drift.

I believe this new era will be defined by how well organizations adapt their approach to managing people, as well as the responsibilities they put on managers’ shoulders.

Inside the “Post-Everything” Manager’s Toolkit

“Post-everything” has created a new starting line for managers. Expectations have changed. Most importantly, the number one reason why individuals leave a job today is a lack of growth opportunities. In fact, more than any generations in history, Gen Z and Millennials are ready to quit their current job for another role that promises better opportunities.

This is why managers need to focus on setting clear expectations. But here’s the catch — it requires human-to-human communication.

I’ve managed about 5,000 people in my career. My on-the-ground experience taught me that no two people are exactly alike. Career planning is a process of ongoing communication. It’s a give-and-take conversation about strengths and weaknesses, about roles and responsibilities, about goals and metrics, about performance and results.

As every manager knows, it’s remarkably easy to make mistakes when setting expectations. Being consistent is hard. But it’s even harder if your organization is also inconsistent.

Think for a moment about your career. Ask yourself this question: Have you ever seen an employer dedicated to providing a single, consistent, unified process that helps managers set expectations about career opportunities for team members? Is this happening where you work now?

The “Post-Everything” Process

Of course, a toolbox is only as good as the process it uses.

I’ve spent a decade talking to hundreds of organizations around the world about the role of the manager. Along the way, I’ve repeatedly heard that if we want to help managers set clear expectations, inconsistency is the biggest problem to solve.

Inconsistency comes in many forms. It may come from a lack of formal goals or goals that are continuously changing. You may see it in a failure to establish metrics or metrics that mean different things. It could be about reorgs or reductions in force, weak communication, managerial changes, or language differences. The list goes on and on.

At its heart, inconsistency breeds distrust in management’s ability to be accountable and follow through on an employee’s career growth. These triggers cause people to move on in search of better opportunities. And that’s why I think organizational inconsistency is failing managers today and is the real reason employees are so disengaged at work.

3 Steps For Success

I’ve come to believe that every unified process to help managers consistently set clear expectations must include three essential steps. Individually, each step is helpful. But linking all three end-to-end is the key to empowering managers, especially at scale. So this is my call to action for leaders:

1. Embrace a Common Vocabulary

Communicate with common terms. Think of company-specific languages like V2MOM from Salesforce or standardized vocabularies like OKRs. A common organizational vocabulary eliminates communication gray zones or ambiguities. What words do people use in running your business? You need to define the meaning of those words. For example, what does strategy mean to your organization? How do you distinguish a priority from a program? What is an initiative, and how does that differ from a project?

2. Emphasize Shared Goals

To be clear about which activities matter to operational execution, develop and publish shared goals. These goals are the way people can connect their job role to what will be rewarded. Shared goals serve the important role of distinguishing what’s important from what’s urgent when communicating. Do we care about growth? Or do we care about efficiency? Shared goals help managers align job roles to what the organization actually values.

3. Focus on the Standard Metrics

Are you measuring everyone’s success the same way? A single taxonomy of metrics sets up what employees really want — a consistent accountability system. If people can’t communicate with facts about their performance and results, it leads to an insidious way of getting ahead: relying on who you know. And we all know what that leads to.

Alignment Matters in the “Post-Everything” Era

A common vocabulary, shared goals, and a single system of metrics. Together, they form an end-to-end process that minimizes inconsistency when setting expectations.

Yes, this process is more difficult than buying a software tool. It requires leaders and managers to do the hard work of agreeing on specific elements of the process. But that said, it’s no different with Six Sigma or Lean/Agile methods. And the results are worth the effort.

The “post-everything era” is defined by what the best employees want — growth and advancement. This era demands end-to-end alignment. That means every employee in an organization should be able to align their job role to current and future opportunities. It is hard work for any manager, but it’s the new “post-everything” reality.

Want to Manage Well? Alignment is the Answer

End-to-end alignment requires human-to-human communication up and down the organization. It’s why I believe employers have been getting engagement wrong. It’s upside down. Instead of being engaged, employees want their leaders and managers to be engaged in conversations about their individual career success.

The core premise of The Collaboration Imperative, which I co-authored about Cisco’s best practices, centers on the idea that any great productivity leap forward or new strategic direction requires the alignment of process, culture, and technology. In other words, it may be tempting to depend on a tool for this, but technology alone cannot substitute for a complete process.

Organizations already put significant weight on managers’ shoulders. In the “post-everything” era, it’s time to lighten the load. It’s time for leaders to carry some of the weight by giving managers what they need — a process that consistently and systematically eliminates inconsistencies in expectation-setting. Let’s give managers the toolbox they really deserve. Your people are depending on it.

I want to give you a head start with this process. Send an email request to me at TheCulturePlatform@gmail.com and I’ll send you a PDF of Chapter 4 from The Collaboration Imperative: Creating Commitment to Shared Goals.

Want to Improve Engagement? Focus on Employee Expectations

TalentCulture Content Impact Award Winner - 2023

When it comes to implementing a successful engagement strategy, HR teams can’t afford to ignore employee expectations. Yet, research suggests that too many organizations forget or overlook this pillar of engagement. For example:

If you’re an HR professional or business leader, statistics like these should alarm you. Clearly, something about the process of managing employee expectations is going awry. And if you care about engagement, the sooner you address this disconnect, the better.

A Related Issue: Labor Market Trends

To understand this challenge, it’s helpful to consider the bigger picture. For example, in the UK and elsewhere, the talent pool is shrinking, despite a sharp decline in permanent staff recruitment. This decrease is fueled primarily by demographic factors — experienced workers are retiring early, the birth rate continues to fall, and immigration rules are changing. Plus, the pandemic has caused many people to rethink their career goals.

As a result, when organizations need to recruit, finding the right people at the right time is becoming increasingly difficult. And in terms of retention, it means employers must work much harder to keep their best and brightest people engaged and on board.

In other words, recent labor market dynamics have shifted power from employers to the workforce. Individuals now have enough latitude to be more selective about their career moves. They’re also likely to expect more from their current role — for example, higher wages, better recognition, or stronger professional growth opportunities.

With all this in mind, organizations need to understand what people expect from their employment experience, and proactively address these expectations. This makes it easier to create a positive work environment and improve employee satisfaction. Both of these metrics are essential for effective talent attraction and retention. So, how can HR successfully manage employee expectations?

6 Ways to Manage Employee Expectations

To elevate employee engagement across your organization, first step back and evaluate existing HR strategies and programs. If you’re falling short in any of the following areas, this is the time to rethink the tools and techniques that support your engagement efforts, as well as broader leadership and management practices:

1. Communicate Clearly and Consistently

Access to relevant, useful, accurate information is essential, right from the start of the employment journey. When you approach candidates and new hires with clear, open communication, their job expectations are much more likely to align with yours. What’s more, it sends a powerful message about the importance of transparency and inclusion in your work culture.

Be sure you center communication activities around your organization’s vision, mission, and values. You’ll also want to be sure important company policies are readily available.

In addition, showcasing updates and insights from senior leaders is a highly effective way to reinforce priorities and build trust. In fact, as our 2023 staff satisfaction survey shows, many employees value communication from senior leaders as part of a positive workplace experience.

2. Revisit and Revise Job Descriptions

As mentioned earlier, inaccurate job listings are all too common. The problem may not be intentional on an employer’s part. Regardless, it can derail the employee experience from day one.

Candidates naturally form expectations based on the job posting that prompted them to apply. So, when actual responsibilities don’t match, new hires aren’t likely to stick around. And even for those who stay on board, this mismatch can permanently jeopardize trust and goodwill.

Now, imagine how badly your employer brand would be damaged if numerous employees experienced the same kind of disconnect. This is why HR teams must ensure that job descriptions correctly outline roles, responsibilities, and performance expectations. And ideally, these descriptions should help people envision what it’s really like to work at the company.

HR must also recognize that developing a job description isn’t a one-shot process. For best results, you’ll want to review descriptions regularly and update them as business needs change. All this will help new employees understand what’s expected and avoid misunderstandings over time.

3. Prioritize Performance Management and Feedback

When organizations are able to measure, evaluate, and improve workforce performance, they operate more efficiently and profitably. And the best way to ensure that employee expectations are on point is with support from a robust performance management program.

Underpinning this program with an integrated performance management system makes it possible for HR to establish company-wide workforce goals, track progress, and provide regular feedback. It also helps support line managers in conducting more meaningful employee evaluations.

By working in concert to set clear objectives and provide constructive feedback, HR and line managers can continuously guide and improve employee performance. Plus, they can effectively manage expectations about job roles and career progression.

4. Ensure Fair Business Practices

An HR professional’s core duty is to maintain fair, consistent decision-making across an organization. This includes adhering to fair and unbiased practices in areas such as annual performance and salary reviews, promotions, and disciplinary actions. Ensuring fairness and consistency helps manage those all-important employee expectations. It also helps build trust.

HR can’t afford to ignore the element of trust. When it comes to successful engagement strategies, the employer-employee relationship is critical. And as with any relationship, it depends on a solid foundation of trust. But trust isn’t just switched on like a lightbulb — it is earned in numerous ways, over time. Fairness directly contributes to this process.

5. Provide Ample Training and Career Development

As our research on successful company cultures reveals, staff members want more than just competitive salaries. They also expect to develop new skills, so they can grow professionally.

This is why the best employers invest in building workforce competencies and knowledge through various learning opportunities — training, mentorships, stretch assignments and more. By committing to a culture of learning, organizations demonstrate their faith and confidence in employees’ future success. As a result, these organizations enjoy higher retention rates.

6. Pay Attention to Exit Interviews

Lastly, exit interviews offer a perfect opportunity to discover if departing employees feel their expectations have been met. When people decide to move on, they’re typically more comfortable providing unfiltered feedback, for better or worse.

By conducting exit interviews, you can gather valuable insights that help the organization compare actual employee experiences with expectations. By analyzing and acting on this intelligence, your HR team will be better able to identify areas for improvement and manage future employees’ expectations.

A Final Word on Managing Employee Expectations

These suggestions offer a framework for HR planning. Still, this is only a starting point. Every company, culture, and workforce is unique. So, wherever your organization may be on the employee engagement spectrum, remember that improvement is an ongoing process. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither are employee expectations. Just stay focused on improvement and keep moving forward.

Change Management is Tricky. How Do You Handle It?

Change is an integral aspect of every organization — especially in today’s volatile environment. But managing change is challenging. That’s why it sometimes helps to rely on change management specialists for guidance or support. But when? It depends on the situation.

To better understand how leaders tackle change successfully, we asked business professionals to tell us how they approach this process. Nine people shared their recommendations. And despite their diverse experiences, some common themes emerged:

  • Help Employees Adjust
  • Include Employees in Decisions
  • Facilitate a Culture Shift
  • Encourage Two-Way Communication
  • Gamify Change Initiatives
  • Deliver Readiness Bootcamps
  • Involve Everyone in Training Curricula Updates
  • Build Skills for Collective Change
  • Keep Remote Teams in the Loop

To learn more about when and how your organization could benefit from these change management methods, read the full responses below…

9 Ways to Lead Change Management

1. Help Employees Adjust

Our direct managers’ plates are already full, so they don’t have enough time and energy to communicate about every change and seek continuous feedback from across their teams. That’s why we rely on dedicated change managers. They ensure that employees get the kind of support they need throughout any change process, and anyone with a question or idea has access to the right forum where they can speak their mind.

Sometimes, employees prefer to discuss these issues with change management specialists, especially if they’re worried about overloading their direct manager with more work. But the change management team is always available as an employee resource.

Their mission is to ensure a seamless adjustment — whether that includes taking ample time to listen to employee concerns, or to address suggestions that might make the implementation process better.

Jack Underwood, CEO and Co-Founder, Circuit

2. Include Employees in Decisions

Our organization isn’t big enough to require a change management team, so whenever a significant change is required, it’s imperative that we include employees in the process. Change can be daunting, stressful and scary, so it’s essential to mitigate any negative impacts, if possible.

Even if you’re just starting to consider a change, employee input is invaluable. People are much more likely to get onboard with new initiatives if they feel a sense of agency. Plus, they often have interesting insights and ideas to contribute.

And when you do move forward, respecting employees’ feelings and involving them in decision-making means you’ll have a smoother journey. Offering opportunities throughout the process to ask questions, raise objections and make suggestions is crucial.

These actions are not just about supporting change. They also reflect a spirit of inclusion. By seeking input and responding to ideas, you demonstrate that your employees are respected and valued, and they matter to your organization. Working together towards a shared vision and collective responsibility reinforces a sense of teamwork and helps employees feel more in control. This encourages engagement and helps employees embrace change.

Martin Gasparian, Attorney and Owner, Maison Law

3. Facilitate a Culture Shift

Our organization is tiny, so we do not have a dedicated change management team. However, we do have a culture committee composed of members from each department, and this group often helps navigate organizational change.

These representatives can act as liaisons and report on general workforce sentiments that might otherwise go unheard for fear of upsetting management. Members can also help their departments understand the reasoning behind a change decision and model a positive example of embracing and adapting to that decision.

A large part of change management is a cultural shift. So, the culture committee can help employees feel like they’re part of the process and help them view change as an evolution of company culture, rather than abandonment of the status quo.

Grace He, People and Culture Director, TeamBuilding

4. Encourage Two-Way Communication

We have a dedicated change management team at Brosix. That’s because change is an inevitable part of any business, and being prepared for it is crucial. One way we handle change is by empowering employees through communication. But change management communication involves more than just sending out a one-time email notice. It requires ongoing interaction with employees. And that demands dedication, clarity and consistency.

Effective two-way communication techniques like surveys, focus groups and informal feedback gathering give employees a voice in change-related decisions. When leaders involve their team in this process, people feel heard and appreciated. And when people feel valued, they’re more likely to welcome change and participate in making it happen.

Proactive two-way communication has other benefits, as well. Leaders can identify and resolve issues that are likely to cause resistance. And the organization can potentially avoid obstacles and pitfalls before they become a problem.

Stefan Chekanov, CEO, Brosix

5. Gamify Change Initiatives

At TechAhead, we have a dedicated change management team that is highly skilled in collaboration, communication and critical thinking. This team analyzes the potential risks and challenges that come with change and develops effective strategies to mitigate them.

To make the change process more engaging, accessible and effective, we use a unique “Gamification of Change Management” approach. Specifically, we’ve developed a game-based change journey that rewards employees with points and badges for completing challenges such as attending training sessions, participating in feedback surveys and collaborating with team members.

We also offer a “Change Management Cafe,” where we invite stakeholders to openly discuss their concerns, suggestions and feedback about changes we’re planning or implementing. This helps create a culture of transparency and collaboration, which makes the entire change process more inclusive.

Vikas Kaushik, CEO, TechAhead

6. Deliver Readiness Bootcamps

Throughout my career, I have seen many organizations struggle with change management. However, my current employer has implemented highly effective “change boot camps” for employees.

These boot camps are training sessions that focus on teaching people how to accept change and move through it with a positive mindset. They also receive resources and tools to make necessary transitions smoother.

With this structured approach to developing employee change capabilities, our organization is better prepared to handle change more efficiently, while maintaining morale, and ultimately achieving success in the transformational process.

Derek Bruce, First Aid Training Director, Skills Training Group

7. Involve Everyone in Training Curriculum Updates

The healthcare industry is a fast-paced, stressful environment where staying on top of constant change is critical. We don’t have a dedicated change management team, but we do have medical educators whose roles include change management. This comes into play for us when we introduce a new curriculum for medical certifications we offer.

Every two years, we need to incorporate best practice updates into our certification programs for medical skills such as CPR and BLS (Basic Life Support). It is our education team’s job to make sure our instructors and clients (nurses and healthcare workers) are up-to-speed with all these curriculum adjustments.

Because this change process focuses on our curriculum, it’s a business priority. That’s why it’s a central part of our education team’s ongoing responsibilities, rather than a standalone activity.

Brian Clark, CEO and Marketing Director, United Medical Education

8. Build Skills for Collective Change

Change management is central to our organization’s mission. We educate others about the power of facilitation in change management and we equip them with tools to transform the process by replacing traditional methods with facilitation.

Within our organization, we embrace the same philosophy. Rather than relying on a dedicated change management team, we focus on equipping individuals across the organization with facilitation skills to address change collectively.

By engaging stakeholders and empowering them to actively participate in the process, we are fostering a culture of change, adaptability and resilience. Ultimately, this means we can achieve change outcomes that are more enduring and effective.

Douglas Ferguson, President, Voltage Control

9. Keep Remote Teams in the Loop

We don’t have a dedicated change management team because our organization is a relatively small remote team. My partner and I oversee necessary changes. Currently, we’re focused on work to be done so we can boost our sales and generate business results.

However, for change management, we keep our employees in the loop by conducting frequent video calls and arranging online meetings so we can communicate our expectations and discuss any questions people may have.

We ensure that employees are satisfied with the volume and nature of their work, so no one feels overloaded. We also consider their feedback about the company’s operations, so we can incorporate changes they will appreciate and feel comfortable adopting.

Harman Singh, Director, Cyphere

 

4 Smart Ways You Can Use Data to Cultivate Employee Growth

Data has percolated into every area of business — from the hiring process, to marketing programs, to charting a company’s strategy for the future. In fact, 80% of business leaders now say data is critical for decision making in their organizations. One area where the right data can make a huge impact is when managers are helping individual team members expand their professional skills. Here are some of the most powerful ways you can use data to develop people more effectively:

4 Ways to Use Data for Employee Growth

1. Set the Stage With Feedback Insights

Before applying data to help employees grow, it’s worth starting at the top — literally. Leaders can demonstrate the power of data by ensuring that essential information flows upstream and downstream across your organization.

Start by setting up continuous feedback loops. In other words, create communication conduits that facilitate the ongoing flow of feedback from employees to team leaders and back again. This can help you better identify areas where employees are struggling and respond more quickly to those needs.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management says effective and timely feedback is “critical to improving performance.” Often, feedback reveals trouble spots that leaders must first address on a management level. This process establishes a foundation that helps employees feel empowered to improve and grow.

For example, imagine that critical project status information is consistently slow to reach some corners of your organization. You conduct a brief employee survey and find that specific communication roadblocks are keeping people from interacting more openly and proactively. As a result, you implement a targeted communication improvement initiative, including tools, protocols, and training sessions that help employees understand when, why and how to communicate project updates.

If you want employees to grow and succeed in their roles, leverage key data from ongoing feedback, so you can encourage growth that also improves business results.

2. Use Data to Establish Performance Objectives

Working hand-in-hand with feedback efforts, data can also play an integral role in establishing employee goals and evaluating performance. The concept is simple. For employees to grow, they must understand where they need to focus and the goals they need to reach.

Smart goal-setting strategies often rely on collaborative OKR methods. This acronym stands for “objectives and key results.” Rather than simply setting a goal and trying to reach it, OKRs let you connect objectives with measurable key performance indicators (KPIs). Data can play a key role as you move through this OKR process.

For instance, say your business wants to boost sales revenue by 10% next quarter (your objective). To get there, you need to define a clear set of actions that will lead to that result. These actions could include a market analysis in the first month to identify additional target audiences, and roll-out of a market expansion sales initiative in the second month. Throughout the quarter, you can use KPIs to measure results and adjust the plan, accordingly.

OKRs are powerful because they tie individual and team goals to organizational objectives. These shared goals are managed and discussed on an ongoing basis. Ultimately, the measurable nature of OKRs lets you use data objectively to measure employee performance and growth over time.

3. Use Relevant Data

Data analysis is an excellent way for leaders to identify opportunities for employee growth. However, it’s important to use data carefully, so you don’t misapply it.

When measuring something like employee growth (which varies from one person to another), avoid using stale or unrelated data. This can cause you to set an unrealistic bar for goals or point you in the wrong direction entirely. Instead, use industry and company benchmarks to create relevant, achievable OKRs that fit into your feedback framework.

For example, leadership consultants at McChrystal Group have helped numerous organizations turn existing data into leading behavioral indicators of team success. The firm’s research underscores a need for workplace accountability and communication.

Specifically, McChrystal analysts have found that, compared with other industries, healthcare employees are 20% less likely to agree that accountability is upheld in their organizations. And separately, financial services middle managers are 15% less likely to say their organizations communicate clearly and regularly about objectives and best practices.

Although these statistics are interesting, they don’t apply to every workplace. So, what’s the key takeaway here?

Don’t use data just because it vaguely supports your situation. If you want to develop a stronger team, make sure your data is up-to-date and relevant to your industry, business, and team.

4. Use Data to Assess Soft Skills Objectively

It’s easy to use data when assessing hard skills and measurable results. For example, if a sales representative isn’t meeting quota, data can help you set objectives to resolve that particular shortcoming. If the employee lacks particular selling skills, data can help you pinpoint the issue and resolve it with appropriate training to improve their performance.

In contrast, soft skills are more difficult to assess. Fortunately, advances in data analysis are making it easier to assess an individual’s soft skills and determine how to improve when needed. This is especially important during the hiring process. But you can also use this kind of intelligence to encourage professional growth among existing employees.

For instance, People First Productivity Solutions recommends soft skill assessment rubrics. By entering data into these tools and analyzing the results, you can objectively determine if an employee’s soft skills are up-to-par at any point in time.

One word of warning about these assessments. You’ll want to be sure you don’t let bias and favoritism influence your analysis. The best way to do this is to measure soft skills against specific job requirements and performance. This will help you more reliably identify areas where an employee can focus to improve over time.

Final Notes

There are many viable ways you can use data to determine where and how to help your team members grow professionally and perform more successfully. From using feedback to set the stage, to creating OKRs and assessing soft skills, you’ll get better results by applying the most relevant, timely data and tools you can find.

Also, remember that a data-driven culture of growth starts at the top. If you’re a business or HR leader, you must set an example that demonstrates a desire to establish appropriate performance goals and a commitment to ongoing improvement. With this strategy, you can encourage (and even gently require) team members to dig deeper and pursue growth that will advance their career while simultaneously benefitting your organization.

Rethinking The Manager’s Role: Here’s How to Get Better Results

Sponsored by The Culture Platform

At some point in the last 20 years, companies started to believe employee engagement should define a manager’s role. And looking back, this conclusion made some sense. After all, managers are the organizational layer between leaders and people on teams. So why not embrace this as a framework for managerial effectiveness?

How The Engagement Expectation Began

The shift to engagement as the center of a manager’s role coincided with the arrival of tech-savvy millennials and the promise of HR software to power the so-called engagement revolution. It sounded good in theory. But it has largely been a failure.

Frankly, there is no evidence that investing in “managing” employee engagement actually works. Instead, research consistently points in the opposite direction. So let’s dig deeper for answers.

Throughout most of the industrial economy, managers weren’t very good at managing people. In fact, job turnover surveys typically found the #1 reason employees quit was “my manager.”

No wonder organizations decided to invest in technology to help. But what has that accomplished?

If you add up the revenue of engagement software and HR tech firms over the past 20 years, you’ll see customers spent perhaps $25 billion on these tools. Even so, the level of U.S. employee engagement remained mostly unchanged throughout this timeframe. It has consistently hovered around 32%, according to Gallup. Abysmal.

Why do we need to change what's wrong with a manager's role? 20-year U.S. employee engagement trends from Gallup

Rethinking the Manager’s Role

I believe this idea of managing engagement was flawed from the beginning. Flawed because managers actually manage people and their expectations about success. If every employee could perform at a top 10% level, get promoted, and work from home, engaging them in their work would be a breeze. But that’s not reality.

Today, when people leave a job, they usually don’t say their boss is the primary driver. Instead, they point to a desire for professional growth or career advancement. With this in mind, I would say managers have the most important role in any organization. So this is why I believe it’s time to rethink the manager’s role.

What if organizations actually embraced what employees want? And what if they empowered managers to help their people plan for professional growth and advancement?

Currently, most organizations don’t think this way. They culturally believe career planning is an individual employee’s responsibility.

I vehemently disagree with this conventional thinking. It’s really just an artifact from an era when employees could comfortably expect to spend their entire career at one or two companies.

For most managers, empowering employee career-building will require new attitudes and actions. Changing cultural norms and setting clear expectations isn’t an easy or intuitive process. This means managers will need a new framework or model for managing people that is different from today’s engagement-centric approach.

A New View of the Manager’s Role

I propose a new concept built for the modern manager-employee relationship. 

I call it goals with purpose.

Goals with purpose align an employee’s current job role with future career aspirations. This alignment is the key to creating an emotional connection between an individual and the work they’re performing as part of the team.

For managers, this is no doubt much more challenging than seeking engagement through a simple pulse survey or weekly poll. Those engagement tools are easy to use and they appeal to the mass market by design. However, they don’t address what matters most to employees.

The Power of Goals With Purpose

What does it mean to set goals with purpose? Through the research I’ve conducted at The Culture Platform and the listening I did at Cisco with hundreds of companies, I’ve processed this input and determined what constitutes a goal with purpose.

At its highest level, this kind of goal is the way an individual contributor on a team clearly sees how today’s job role aligns with future-minded growth opportunities.

Specifically, a goal with purpose has five attributes:

1. It is tangible
It aligns a job role in a measurable way with goals that matter to the organization’s success. An individual contributor should be able to “hold” this goal in their “hands.”

2. It shapes personal growth
It reflects the strengths of the person in that role. Experienced leaders know a job role should never play to someone’s weaknesses.

3. It demonstrates a pathway
It aligns a current role with a future role. The future role may even be outside the organization or team.

4. It helps people navigate the organization
It clarifies the position an individual plays on the team. This helps dispel politics and endless positioning.

5. It empowers a reputation
It enables people to communicate with facts about their accomplishments. Ideally, it provides a “signature” project to build an individual contributor’s credibility.

Managerial Success: A Call to Action for Leaders

A manager’s role has never been more important to organizational success. It has also never been harder to be a manager, given the pandemic, work-from-home disruption, the current era of business “efficiency,” and the unrelenting pace of change.

If managers have an organization’s most important job, leaders need to realize an employee’s emotional connection to the company is earned. They also need to recognize it is worth the effort.

Tapping into an individual’s intrinsic motivations is the key to inspiring discretionary effort — that magical relationship between an employee, their manager, and their company. It’s the sweet spot where going above-and-beyond is the way things work.

During Cisco’s heyday, we called these magical moments the “Cisco Save.” In other words, when we needed to accomplish something important, a group of people would step up and do whatever it took to get the job done.

As leaders and managers, we can make work more magical for our people. But engagement doesn’t make someone want to do “whatever it takes.” We finally know that now, after 20 years of trying. It’s time to try a better way. We need to make goals with purpose every manager’s priority and make career empowerment the new managerial normal.

What do goals with purpose mean to you? How could this approach help your organization move in the right direction? I look forward to seeing your comments and ideas.

Employee Appreciation Day: Why Not Celebrate All Year?

Sponsored by Workhuman

How often does your organization acknowledge team members who deserve recognition? Certainly, Employee Appreciation Day is an ideal opportunity to thank everyone. But an annual pat on the back isn’t nearly enough to move the meter on employee satisfaction, engagement, and retention.

So, what does effective recognition actually look like, and how can Employee Appreciation Day help? According to today’s #WorkTrends podcast guest, companies that get recognition right treat it as an ongoing conversation where everyone is invited to participate.

Makes sense. But what kind of impact can employers expect? The numbers are impressive. For example, research shows that when we regularly acknowledge employees, they’re 90% more likely to be happier at work. They’re also 70% less likely to burn out. And they’re 60% more likely to stay onboard. To find out more about what’s driving these outcomes, tune in now…

Meet Our Guest:  Derek Irvine

Had a blast discussing this topic with Derek Irvine, SVP of Strategy and Consulting Services at Workhuman! Derek is a foremost expert on recognition and the human side of business. I can’t think of anyone who’s better qualified to help us understand how to make each day feel like Employee Appreciation Day. So please join us as we dig deeper:

Why Appreciation Matters

Welcome, Derek! You’ve studied employee appreciation for years. What does science tell us about its value?

Actually, appreciation is like a natural medicine. When someone sincerely thanks us at work, it releases happy hormones. It boosts our health and wellbeing. So in a way, Employee Appreciation Day is like a wellness day.

Unfortunately, however, research says 80% of people aren’t appreciated enough. This means they’re more likely to become disengaged or quit. So this is important. But it’s something we can fix.

Factors That Support Appreciation
How does Workhuman honor Employee Appreciation Day?

Of course, we acknowledge all of our employees and celebrate as a team. But for us, every day is Employee Appreciation Day. So we’re committed to a continuous dialogue. And our reward strategy is built on three foundational blocks:

  1. Fair Pay: People need to feel appropriately compensated for their contribution.
  2. Ownership: We aren’t a public company, but everyone has a real stake in the company’s success.
  3. Recognition: These are the spontaneous moments when we acknowledge people for reaching a milestone or supporting our values.

Appreciation as a Cultural Priority

Spontaneous. I love that word. What other steps can companies take to build a culture of recognition?

In addition to being spontaneous, it’s also important to be intentional. Because most people I talk to agree that they should show more appreciation. And then, other priorities take over, so taking the time to say “thank you” constantly falls from the top of their to-do list.

You’ll want to put a drumbeat in place to be sure this intention won’t slip off of your agenda.

Getting Started

What would you say organizations should do to make Employee Appreciation Day more meaningful for everyone?

Well, it could be a great day to launch your all-year initiatives. So maybe you could recognize people at a special gathering. But then also announce your commitment to change your organization’s habits and explain how you intend to create a culture based on ongoing recognition.

That’s my top recommendation because it will help your organization pivot in a more positive trajectory, and it will have a lasting impact.

Tools That Enhance Appreciation

How can technology help employers make recognition work better?

Using technology to thank people may seem odd. But it can help in several ways.

It can provide a nudge that reminds managers to reach out to people at specific times. But beyond that, with a platform like ours, you’ll create a fantastic repository of all the human connection stories that are happening in your organization.

You also have a huge data pool you can use to understand your culture better. For example, you can ask: What words are people using? What skills are being celebrated? Are particular leaders being recognized for skills we hadn’t seen? Are there dark spots in the organization where people aren’t being thanked at all?

Insights like these can be a powerful way to enhance your work culture with more intention…


For more insights from Derek about why and how to make every day feel like Employee Appreciation Day, listen to this full podcast episode. And be sure to subscribe to the #WorkTrends Podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.

Also, to continue this conversation on social media anytime, follow our #WorkTrends hashtag on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

7 Employee Appreciation Ideas People Love

Content Impact Award - TalentCulture 2022

Employee appreciation is naturally top-of-mind for employers during the holiday season. But employees actually prefer recognition throughout the year. In fact, according to a HubSpot survey, 39% of employees don’t feel appreciated, and nearly 7 in 10 think better recognition would boost their performance.

So, what can you do to help your workforce feel more deeply appreciated?

Some organizations rely on standard, old-school methods like plaques. But a more personalized approach is far more effective. A thoughtful token of appreciation is worth much more than its monetary value, alone. It tells people they matter. And that kind of message lasts long after it is received.

Here are some meaningful ways to show your team members just how grateful you are for their contributions.

7 Ways to Elevate Employee Appreciation

1. Give Hard Workers a Break

When you recognize employees for an extraordinary effort on a project or success in achieving an important business goal, don’t just say thank you. Reward them with some well-deserved time off.

In going above and beyond, employees often put in extra hours working on weekends, at night, or in the wee hours of the morning. Along the way, they’re likely to lose precious sleep or family time. By letting them redeem some of that time you can help them relax and recharge after an intense work effort. Even one day away can make an impact.

Providing time off is easy. And if you toss in a bonus gift card or cash for these employees to spend on activities they enjoy, that break is likely to be especially memorable.

2. Spotlight Your Stars on Social Media

Want people on your team to feel like stars? Showcase top performers on social media for the world to see. Share photos or video clips of them on your organization’s accounts and express your gratitude for their unique contributions in an uplifting caption.

Invite your leaders and others to congratulate featured individuals in the comment section. Your “stars” will love the attention as it spreads across social media for others to see. These interactions also increase visibility for your business in all the right ways.

This kind of public recognition is personalized, community-minded, and compelling. Above all, it can boost an employee’s pride, confidence, and morale in ways that private recognition can’t touch. 

3. Create Customized Rewards

Are you thinking of giving top performers a framed certificate, a trophy, or maybe a cash reward? Instead, why not appeal to their particular interests? How do they spend their free time? What hobbies or passion projects matter most to them?

For example, do you have fitness freaks on your team? Reward them with a gym membership, a network pass, or a subsidy.

Maybe some of your people are into group activities. Why not share experiential rewards with them? For instance, you could arrange an outing at a local bowling, bocce, or Topgolf venue.

Or for those who love outdoor adventures like hiking, fly fishing, or river rafting, you could go all out and book a fun vacation package like this: White Water Rafting Montana.

Imagine how thrilled people will be with rewards that fit their interests. Whatever your budget, this is a highly effective way to keep employees motivated and reinforce your relationship with them.

4. Treat Your Team to a Tasty Meal

Everyone loves to eat. And there are endless ways to show employee appreciation with the gift of free food. You could send each employee a gift card to their favorite restaurant. Or to celebrate as a team, why not organize a surprise lunch out?

If your people work remotely, you can arrange to have a meal delivered to everyone’s door at the same time on the same day. Contact a restaurant each employee loves and order their favorite menu item. Or send a gift card to everyone in advance. This is an easy, cost-effective way to bring people together for a casual meetup. And don’t forget to send a heartfelt thank you note to each recipient, as icing on the cake.

5. Celebrate Everyday Efforts

To build and sustain a thriving workforce, look for ways to celebrate individuals and teams on a frequent basis. Ask for your workforce to be your eyes and ears to nominate people who deserve recognition for everyday accomplishments, little wins, and hard work, as well as big achievements. And encourage everyone in your organization to celebrate others, as well.

Genuine, ongoing praise is a powerful employee feedback tactic that drives engagement and job satisfaction. It also models the kind of spirit you want to see at the core of your culture.

Also, don’t forget opportunities to celebrate birthdays and other personal milestones. Let your employees know these aren’t just “checklist” items, but heartfelt gestures. You’ll see them smiling more often and sharing appreciation with peers.

6. Highlight Employee Excellence in Internal Newsletters

Internal newsletters and intranets are great for informational updates, but they’re just as powerful for employee appreciation. It pays to think creatively about how you can acknowledge your best performers through these channels.

You could dedicate a regular column in one of these vehicles to highlight stories about the hard work and accomplishments of top performers. These stories are an excellent way to boost morale and inspire top talent to remain engaged and keep aiming high.

7. Make The Most of Anniversaries

Some organizations treat anniversaries as just another day. But wouldn’t it be great to work for a company that celebrates every year of your employment as an important milestone?

The average employee turnover rate remains 20% higher than pre-pandemic levels. In this tough talent market, why would any employer let an anniversary go to waste?

Each year matters in the life of an employee. Whether they’re new to your organization or they’ve been on board for a long time, every member of your team deserves a celebration dedicated to their service. This kind of recognition can take many forms. But whatever you do, be sure to sincerely acknowledge people for their loyalty and their role in helping your organization advance its mission.

Final Thoughts

Great companies embrace employee appreciation as a crucial way to boost motivation, minimize turnover, and set their organization apart from competitors. Appreciating employees doesn’t need to be difficult, but it should be timely, sincere, and relevant.

Even if your budget is limited, there are endless ways to acknowledge people while reinforcing your organization’s goals, values, and culture. Why not think outside the box and show your appreciation in a truly unique way? All it takes is your commitment, consistency, and some thoughtful planning.

Key Design Decisions for 360 Feedback Success

Many managers and HR practitioners are familiar with 360 feedback as a leadership development practice. However, no two 360 feedback experiences look alike.

That is actually a good thing. Most successful 360 feedback drives behavior change both for individual leaders and their employers because the process is tailored to the organization’s unique culture as well as the intended purpose of the exercise.

On the other hand, this need for customization means practitioners face an overwhelming number of decisions when designing a new 360 feedback assessment. For example:

  • Who should participate?
  • How many survey questions should we include?
  • Who should receive the report?
  • What kind of follow-up support should we offer?
  • Who should choose the raters?
  • What role should HR play in the process?

Fortunately, some 360 feedback implementation practices have become ubiquitous. That means some guesswork, research and debate aren’t necessary. For example, below are five must-haves for strong engagement and outcomes.

Five Design Factors for 360 Feedback:

1) Which groups should participate in ratings?

Anyone who has observed a leader’s on-the-job behavior can provide useful rating input. This could include the leader who is being assessed, as well as a combination of direct supervisors, secondary managers, peers, direct reports, customers, board of directors representatives, donors and even skip reports.

In some situations, it is helpful to include other groups to meet specific requirements. For example, if a leader is actively involved with strategic partners or other third-party groups, their voices could add useful context. 

While there is flexibility to customize the participant mix, 360 feedback assessments typically include these four core rater groups as a baseline:  self, peers, direct reports, and direct managers. In fact, according to soon-to-be-released research from our firm, 88% of organizations include these four core groups.

2) Who will select and approve raters?

Among 360 feedback experts, there is some debate about the best way to choose raters. Should assessment recipients choose their participants? Those who favor this approach say it ensures a sense of ownership and buy-in. Others say a third party (a manager or HR representative) should choose raters. This ensures that feedback is well-balanced and avoids a “friends and family” bias.

Most 360 feedback process owners agree leaders should choose their own raters to build trust and establish assessment process buy-in. On the other hand, 70% of organizations tell us they review and approve final rater lists.

We agree that manager involvement is a wise practice, and a leader’s direct manager should approve the final list. Over the last 20 years, we’ve found that this is the most common approach. And according to our new benchmarking analysis, 48% of companies continue to use this method.

3) How will we score surveys and generate reports?

As with many HR processes, technology has also transformed 360 feedback implementation practices. Now, most HR practitioners rely heavily on online tools so they can collect, organize, analyze and share useful feedback faster and easier.

In 2009, spreadsheets and even paper surveys were still popular ways to collect and report 360 feedback data. Today, those methods are all but obsolete. In fact, 91% of organizations now use a web-based reporting tool to manage surveys and generate reports.

Many practitioners are also choosing to outsource this task to specialized service providers. In fact, our recent research shows that 80% of employers rely on an external vendor or consultant to handle this aspect of the process. 

4) How can we assure rater anonymity? 

To encourage honest responses, employers must ensure that feedback sources remain anonymous. Therefore, it’s not surprising that 81% of employers tell us rater anonymity is essential to the success of their 360 feedback endeavors.

A common way to ensure anonymity is by requiring a minimum number of survey responses for any group specified in the report. For example, peer scores are displayed separately only if at least 3 peers respond. If fewer peers respond, then that data is included only in overall average ratings.

Most often, organizations require a minimum of three raters in a category. In fact, 83% of companies use this three-rater threshold rule. Very few skip this requirement altogether (3% require no minimum responses). And on the other end of the spectrum, very few require more than three responses.

5) How will we help leaders translate the report into action?

For best results, talent management experts agree that personal follow-up is essential. To optimize ROI, employers should avoid the “desk drop” follow-up, where leaders receive a 360 feedback report, but no direct support to discuss results, implications, or next steps.

Follow-up can include any number of supportive actions, such as:  Adding development suggestions to the report, offering action planning guidance, providing individualized 1-on-1 coaching, assigning in-person or online workshops, referring leaders to specialized resource libraries, and more.

The most common step is also what talent management professionals feel is most critical for 360 assessment success:  Provide a one-on-one meeting with a trained 360 feedback coach who can facilitate action planning based on the results.

Historically, these sessions were conducted in person. However, in recent years, video meetings have become the dominant format. Also, reliance upon external coaches (rather than in-house staff) has become more popular.

Fortunately, 88% of organizations say they provide debrief sessions and one-on-one coaching, so feedback recipients can interpret insights and chart a relevant path forward.

Final Thoughts

Good leaders thrive on feedback. But for 360 feedback assessments to be effective, it’s important for leaders to understand the results and commit to improvement.

This means employers must take care to design and implement a valid, well-informed process from end to end. By addressing key design elements at the outset and by investing in ongoing leadership guidance, organizations can dramatically increase the likelihood of success.

 


EDITOR’S NOTE:
Want to learn more about the decisions talent managers make when designing and implementing 360 feedback assessments? Replay this recorded webinar, where the 3D Group unveils findings from its latest benchmarking study,
Current Practices in 360 Feedback, 7th Edition. This analysis includes 20 years of data from more than 600 companies.

6 Ways to Help Employees Feel Valued

Nurturing employees’ sense of value is important for running a successful business, especially in 2021. With the ongoing shift to remote work, professional responsibilities are just a click away. The proliferation of job networking platforms is introducing professionals to dozens of new opportunities on a daily basis. Because of this, your employees are likely assessing how they feel about their current roles and keeping an eye open for greener pastures.

As a result, it is critical to ensure that employees feel valued in order to guarantee their commitment to your company. An American Psychological Association study found that 93 percent of professionals were more likely to perform their very best if they felt valued by their employer, versus a mere 33 percent who were motivated to do their best for their own intrinsic reasons. The same study also found that employees who felt valued were also much more likely to recommend their company to a friend and were far less likely to seek new employment opportunities.

Clearly, nurturing your employees’ sense of value should be a top priority for your company. If you are looking for ways to set this initiative in motion within your organization, consider the following six ideas for how to make employees feel valued.

Create Innovative Compensation Packages

There is no denying that salary and wages are correlated to employee value. Simply put, if you pay an employee more, he or she will feel better about their job. This explains why, after a challenging year in 2020 due to the pandemic, most U.S. companies are doing everything in their power to reinstate bonuses and implement raises. Studies show the average salary likely will increase by 2.8 percent in 2021.

However, the modern professional is motivated by far more than money. The traditional nine-to-five office environment is quickly fading, and so are the traditional ways in which professionals live, love, relax, and consume. This creates the opportunity for companies to create unique benefits packages that will appeal to a contemporary workforce. While staples such as health insurance and retirement contributions are still important, Perkbox found that 66 percent of modern employees view customized benefits as a personal investment that would increase their loyalty to the company. Some innovative benefits ideas that are sure to help employees feel recognized and valued include:

  • Flexible schedules and leave policies
  • Paid childcare
  • Gym memberships, counseling sessions, and other perks to help improve employee well-being
  • Subscriptions to popular online services and entertainment platforms

Modernize the Workspace

By investing in top-notch facilities, you are telling employees that they are worthy of working in the best environment possible. Forbes magazine reports that 87 percent of professionals would like their employers to offer healthier workplace benefits. Some effective ways to do this include offering on-site workout and meditation spaces. You can also provide open and inviting work areas that optimize the benefits of natural sunlight. Living walls that incorporate elements of nature and sustainability into the work environment are good as well.

Keep Remote Workers Engaged

While there are many benefits to remote work, there’s one drawback. Remote workers have a tendency to feel isolated from their peers. Studies show that some 20 percent of employees feel isolated when working from home, which can cause them to experience marginal feelings of value about their role within the company.

Therefore, it is critical to find ways to keep your remote workers engaged. Frequently build company- or department-wide video calls into the work schedule. This reminds remote professionals that they are an important part of the team. Make use of the power of social media, as millennials are increasingly motivated by social media recognition. Studies reveal that 82 percent of modern professionals feel that social media has the ability to improve their work relationships, making it simple to strengthen commitment to the company through a quick post, like, or comment.

Provide a Foundation for Growth

Professionals will question their value to the company if they feel trapped in a dead-end job. Yet, 68 percent of employees feel like their company doesn’t care about their career advancement. Therefore, provide the framework for employees to learn new skills and communicate how these skills are valuable to the industry. Discuss roles within the organization that you could see them attaining in the future. Encourage them to attend networking events where they can establish meaningful connections to advance their careers.

Challenge Employees

It may seem like people shy away from work that is too hard, but employees are actually happier in roles that they perceive as challenging. Some creative ways to challenge employees include:

  • Implement job rotations, where employees are working on new projects with regularity.
  • Include employees when creating job descriptions, and make them feel like a part of the hiring process for similar or subordinate jobs.
  • Offer incentives for professionals who are able to attain specific goals.

Don’t Shy Away From Critical Feedback

Although it is intuitive to think that critical feedback may be perceived negatively by employees, Harvard Business Review actually found that 57 percent of professionals preferred corrective feedback over praise. Employees want to see that you care about their improvement and advancement within a role. Taking the time to offer constructive feedback on their performance demonstrates that you view them as valuable assets.

The Best Ways to Help Employees Feel Valued

Employees are more likely to give their best efforts and less likely to defect when they feel valued by their employer. Both are relevant factors to a company’s bottom line. By intentionally implementing the six aforementioned ideas, you can take significant steps toward helping your employees feel valued.

Andrew Neel

Employee Burnout: How Leaders Can Help Right Now

I want you to look around at your employees — in person where possible, and on that Zoom call. Then, I want you to think about how they’re doing. 9 times out of 10, they’re at least a little burned out. One of the areas we’ve been focusing on a lot here at TalentCulture is employee wellness. What that means right now is we’re looking at an entire workforce that seems, well, exhausted. Employee burnout is on the rise. And chances are, dear reader, that may not be a surprise to you at all.

There are certainly many external factors playing a role in the growing wave of burned out employees. Those range from a scary economy to social turmoil. And from political upheavals to a terrifying health crisis. There are domestic factors: The disruptions and worries of parenting and caregiving through the pandemic. In addition, there are more pressures facing business and the workplace now than we’ve never seen before. Recently, Eagle Hill Consulting ran a survey of U.S employees. They discovered 45 percent reported suffering from burnout, whether they are essential workers or remote. 25 percent linked their stress to COVID-19 — and that was in April, when we were just weeks in.

By July, a study by FlexJobs and Mental Health America reported that 75% of employees were dealing with burnout at work.

For employees, it’s VUCA time. So what should leaders do?

It’s time to roll up our sleeves and take care of our people. And that doesn’t take grand gestures. We don’t need to invest in new software or major changes. There are simple strategies you can execute right now. Simple. But they may mean a lot:

Commit to Mental Health

The Eagle Hill study shows employees could use more help:

  • 36 percent feel their company is not taking action to combat employee burnout
  • A mere 20 percent feel they’re getting the mental and physical wellness resources they need

And in a July 2020 poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 53 percent of the adults surveyed reported that coronavirus-related stress and worries were eroding their mental health — up from 32 percent in March. 

A few months ago, I had a great conversation with a start up about how they’re supporting employees through COVID-19. Being young and lean, they had to optimize their offerings without rebuilding their entire benefits program. So they looked at their mental health benefits and made a tweak or two. It’s no secret that stress, anxiety and depression can wreak havoc on an employee’s ability to focus and work. So they provided remote employees access to professional counseling through tele-therapy. In short order, among all the benefits available to employees, tele-therapy became one the most utilized and popular programs.

Bringing the need for therapy out into the open took the taboo and the stigma away — at a time when many people need mental health support the most.

Improve What Already Exists

There’s an interesting pushback going on regarding flexibility and remote working. Some employers are still singing the “when we reopen” song. They are using it as a rationale for just letting their workforce get by. Again, I know a lot of companies are feeling the pandemic pinch. They may not have the spend for their wishlist of new HR technology right now. But the reality is we may ever get everyone back to the office — at least not in the same pre-pandemic way. After all, remote working and flexible schedules are enabling people to handle one of the hardest periods of time (barring wars, of course) this country has ever faced.

Given the importance of employee engagement, staving off burnout, and increasing performance and productivity why wouldn’t you maximize the best aspects of working remotely?

Perhaps you can’t invest in a new platform right now because the business environment has thrown off your plans. That’s a reality for many. People are already functioning and working remotely and have been for months. S0 chances are you don’t need more technology to get your people to work together better.

Focus on Weak Spots

So focus on those pesky weak spots. What’s causing friction? Where is trust the weakest? Around deliverables? Around hierarchies? Maybe around teams?

Have you crafted and shared a set of policies and expectations around how your people are supposed to work remotely? If not, do it now. Do some in-house remote training on best practices and etiquette. Be proactive about the problem of sexual harassment or bias showing up in virtual interactions. Write a set of simple policies around parenting and caregiving emergencies. 

Just as important, engineer some lightness into the workdays — because, in general, those days have gotten very long. Allot time for informal get-togethers and casual conversations. Find ways for employees to have a little fun. A giving challenge or a gratitude drive, for example. Or a meet-the-kids (or the pets) event.

Working remotely can’t all be about work all the time. Now that work has come home, let some of home come to work.

Ask People What They Need

Pandemic aside, employee burnout was alive and well in countless work cultures already — and the pandemic just compounded the problem. Blame hyper-tight production cycles, toxic levels of competition among coworkers and teams, and managers too spread thin to spend any time helping teams. The fact is a whole host of other subpar conditions existed before the pandemic hit. What I mean is this: Fundamentally, most organizations want to be great places to work. But things happen. Then came COVID-19, and that’s been a whole new level of “happen.”

The silver lining here is that now there’s no excuse for reaching out to employees to make sure they’re all right. Whether that’s a pulse survey, an informal check-in via text, or even a phone call — reach out. Burnout is often triggered when employees are completely tapped out — mentally, physically, emotionally — and feel like they’re not getting any acknowledgement or support. Extended periods of high stress, overly tight deadlines, disruptive shifts in the workflow — all can lead to the mounting frustration that can result in burnout.

The Best Way to Avoid Employee Burnout

The most important thing you can do to help your workforce avoid burnout? Find out how they are and where they are really struggling. It may be hard to do this individually and in confidence. So instead, solicit anonymous feedback and share the results in a way that doesn’t expose anyone, or anything. Further, share it with a transparent commitment to make things better. Then actually do it.  

None of these three strategies need fancy bells and whistles to get off the ground. All they really require is a heartfelt reality check. One that helps deals with the here and now. One that acknowledges that work during a pandemic — remote or not — is exposing our vulnerabilities as well as our strengths. 

A video conference hosted by the Wharton School of Business and U Penn focused on the prospect of getting back to “normal” whether for corporate and knowledge workers or for frontline and essential workers. Given everything, they determined that we’re not going to get there until November 2021. That’s more than a year away. So don’t be the employer remembered for overloading your people when life was already hard enough.

Don’t shelve employee wellness until all this is over. Work to improve your conditions for the present. Prevent the employee burnout happening now.

Alphacolor

The Power of a Purposeful Hashtag: #WorkTrends

If we’ve learned anything over the past decade, it is the power of a hashtag…

#WorkTrends has been on quite an adventure. Over the past 10 years, TalentCulture’s signature podcast has introduced us to great minds in the HR space. We’ve produced over 700 episodes — packed with insights, future-casting and anticipated trends.

We’ve had an incredible range of guests on #WorkTrends, from CEOs to technologists to practitioners, psychologists, data mavens and more. They’ve given us unparalleled perspectives and wisdom on so many subjects — leadership, recruiting, management, recognition, strategizing, coping, thriving. How, where, when, and even why we work is ever-expanding — and we’re proud to say our savvy guests predicted every pivot, and every moment. 

In our episodes and in our Twitter chats, we’ve heard some groundbreakers I’ll never forget. Listing the many names would take pages and pages, so to all our guests so far I’ll just say this: Thank you for gracing the #WorkTrends stage with your presence and your brilliance. 

And now it’s time to expand these amazing discussions… it is time to release them into the world.

The Power of Change

Even before the massive changes of 2020, TalentCulture was planning our own set of changes: a new website, an expanded community, and a new way to bring #WorkTrends to our growing audience. We recognized that in today’s business world, we’re connecting across digital space more than ever before. And we realized there isn’t a better time than now to broaden our discussions. 

So we’re inviting everyone to join the #WorkTrends conversation beyond Twitter — and across more social media channels. We’re taking #WorkTrends to LinkedIn, Facebook, Google and beyond. Of course, you’ll find the same dynamic conversations about key work topics and all the issues that matter. Instead of exclusively through a weekly Twitter chat, though, #WorkTrends will be an ongoing discussion.

We believe the world of work is limitless: it’s a wellspring of energy and engagement. And to honor that, we’re opening the gates. 

The Power of a Purposeful Hashtag

#WorkTrends is now a legacy hashtag. It’s become a classic that represents all the best minds and conversations. We’re excited to watch it grow wings — and move across time zones, borders, and barriers. So please join us. It’s going to be another wonderful adventure!

Be sure to tune into our weekly #WorkTrends podcasts and recaps. And to learn even more about how we’re growing the podcast, check out our WorkTrends FAQ page.

As always, thanks so much for tuning in and being a member of this amazing community. You #inspire me — every day!  

Photo: Danielle MacInnes

10 Tips to Stabilize Employee Experience During the Pandemic

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

That leader needs to be you.

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

How Can You Maintain a Positive Employee Experience?

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

1. Foster Transparent Communications

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

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

2. Keep Communications Positive and Hopeful

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

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

3. Offer Ways for Your Employees to Relieve Stress

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. Be Empathetic and Patient with Your Team

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

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

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

6. Ramp Up Employee Feedback

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

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

7. Set Up New Channels for Inbound Feedback

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

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

8. Promote New Safety Protocols

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

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

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

9. Help Your Team Recalibrate Expectations

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

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

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

10. Recognize the Small Things

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

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

Your Leadership Can Make the Biggest Difference

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

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

Photo: Drew Beamer

New Research Indicates Desire for Recognition, Feedback

In the past several months, many companies have modified their performance programs. From streamlining their review processes to running more frequent pulse surveys, organizations around the world are seeking to make changes that will ultimately boost employee performance and productivity.

Our company, Reflektive, sought to measure these changes with a performance management survey. In June we reached out to 445 HR professionals and business leaders, and 622 employees, to understand the current state of their performance programs. We compared these results to a similar survey we ran in 2018. Our 2020 Performance Management Benchmark Report uncovered meaningful performance management trends over the past two years, as well as insights into the current state of work.

Formal Processes of Performance Management Consistent Since 2018

A surprising observation was that the formal processes of performance management have not changed significantly over the last two years. Nearly half of reviews are run annually or less frequently. Forty-six percent of respondents use descriptive performance ratings, such as “meets expectations.” 

People Analytics Present Big Opportunity

The survey also found that only 50% of HR and business leaders are using people analytics to predict performance and turnover. What’s interesting is that most leaders believe that people analytics has become more important, however they’re still not utilizing this technology to inform strategic people decisions. This gap can really impact workforce planning, as organizations struggle to fill needs when employees depart.

Employees Desire More Communication and Transparency from Companies

The employee survey results revealed that workers seek more communication to stay informed and engaged at work. Nearly half of respondents desire more consistent communication from leadership, and 37% said more consistent communication was needed from colleagues. 

In a similar vein, we found that employees sought more transparency from their employers. Only 19% of employees believed that their organization was transparent about upward mobility. Twenty-one percent said their company was communicative about salary freezes, and the same percentage said that their org was transparent about potential pay cuts. Employees are cognizant of the pandemic’s economic toll, and would like their companies to be honest with them about the business impact.

Employees Seek More Feedback and Coaching for their Growth

Another interesting insight we uncovered was that employees want more from their performance programs. Specifically, they’re looking for increased coaching, dialogue and recognition from their managers. Since 2018, there’s been a 3.2X increase in the percentage of employees that desire recognition. We also observed a nearly 90% increase in the percentage of employees that desire formal feedback conversations monthly or more frequently.

A performance bright spot was the manager-employee relationship. Over 80% of employees surveyed said that they are having 1:1s with their managers. Additionally, 80% said that these meetings were productive. This data was really uplifting to me, since driving alignment and communication can be tricky when everyone is working remotely.

However, we did identify a major communication gap: only 20% of employees reported that they receive weekly feedback. So it appears that managers and employees are talking regularly about ongoing work and projects, but employees still aren’t receiving the coaching that they desire. This represents a huge opportunity for managers — they can benefit from training on how to ask important questions, and how to provide valuable feedback on a more regular basis. Performance management technology — including feedback prompts and 1:1 tools — can help drive productive coaching conversations too.

Getting Feedback Remains Challenging for Employees

One interesting discrepancy between leaders and employees was sentiment around initiating feedback conversations. Only 14% of HR professionals and business leaders felt that employees weren’t empowered to initiate feedback conversations. However, 30% of employees — or over 2X the percentage of leaders — felt that they weren’t empowered to request feedback. This discrepancy indicates that HR teams and leaders are overestimating employee comfort with feedback processes. Employee training on giving and receiving feedback, and an easy-to-use feedback tool, can help fill this gap.

Executives and Employees Remain Optimistic for the Future

While sentiment and outlooks are continuously evolving in 2020, both executives and employees remain optimistic about the future. Specifically, executives anticipate more investment in technology (35% of respondents) and more efforts to boost engagement and retain employees (29% of respondents). 

Employees anticipate that six months from now, it will be business as usual (34% of respondents). Additionally, 26% expect to have learned new skills, and 25% believe they’ll feel proud of their accomplishments. Despite the many headwinds that they’re facing, employees feel that they will come out of 2020 stronger and more prepared for the future.

As employees, HR teams, and executives navigate the ever-changing environment, agility and resilience will be crucial. The ability to work productively in different environments, and collaborate cross-functionally, will be highly valued. Companies that maintain engaged and productive workforces will be the success stories of 2020.

This post is sponsored by Reflektive.

Photo: Christina @ wocintechchat.com

The Power of Check-Ins: 7 Proven Strategies

A large component of any work culture is how managers assess and review employee performance and chart progress. Given the remote and hybrid nature of so many workplaces today, the approach is evolving — from top-down, unilateral, formal reviews to more dynamic and continual conversations. We’re seeing an increasing need for transparency and authenticity, and for recognizing how important it is for managers to reach out to employees — not just around a series of tasks accomplished, but around overall contributions to the organization and their own sense of goals and performance. Check-ins enable managers and employees to do just that. They create a framework of interaction and communication through a continuous cycle, and are proving far more effective than traditional reviews. They’re becoming a hallmark of modern talent management, and for good reason. 

Done well, check-ins build a dynamic relationship between manager and employee that increases engagement, enhances employee experience, and organically aligns employee and employer goals. But they need to be conducted not as check-ups, but as two-way interactions focused on trust as well as growth. 

The Value of Trust

For those already doing them right, check-ins with employees are focused on growth, albeit in small doses. It’s not hard to connect a cadence of conversations that include feedback, advice and dialogue to the development of our employees after all. But trust is just as key: all successful relationships are built on trust, especially in today’s workplace. It’s human nature to reject feedback and advice from someone we don’t trust, and that extends readily into the workplace. Without trust, the check-in process would fail before it started.

As with any other HR strategy there are best practices for conducting check-ins, whether from home or the office. Recently I sat down with TalentCulture’s Meghan M. Biro to level-set on seven critical factors that can standardize your check-in strategy — without diminishing either responsiveness or flexibility:   

Approach: Check-ins are not about a top-down, unilateral approach. While the role of managers has always entailed authority and supervision, when it comes to check-ins, managers need to scale back that dynamic. 

Replace the reflex to be assertive with a focus on the employee. Truly understand what makes them tick; this means listening to their thoughts, opinions and concerns and acting on them. Research by the Harvard Business Review shows that the more you listen to employees, the better they think you are at giving feedback, and so the more likely they are to trust what you say. 

Purpose: Check-ins embody a shift in purpose. They depart from the static occasion of traditional reviews to setting up a highly effective and ongoing dynamic geared to building trust and fostering growth. 

Dave Ulrich articulated the shift in his book, Victory Through Organization: “The foundational assumption is that feedback is not a leader’s side-responsibility; it is the leader’s primary work.” Instead of thinking of a check-in as an isolated moment or a mini-performance review, consider it a touchpoint on the employee lifecycle; an interaction that’s part of an ongoing conversation. 

Frequency: Establish a cadence of check-ins that adapts to the circumstance, the context, and the nature of your work culture. Pre-COVID, our advice was to conduct check-ins around every 4 to 6 weeks. But these are uncertain times — and they call for increased communication that’s aligned and consistent with the organizational message, culture and values. The bottom line is that you can’t overcommunicate. 

Your check-ins can take various forms, from a regular update focused on clarification and feedback; to a more comprehensive appraisal of performance (emphasizing personal development and employee contribution); to a marker of key events, such as onboarding, a promotion, a secondment, or even the shift to remote. But don’t do away with ad-hoc check-ins either. Employees and managers should be able to simply initiate a check-in regardless of whether it’s on the calendar. 

Approachability: Both parties should remain open and responsive within the context of a check-in. But that hinges on successfully building that foundation of trust: trust must be in place first in order for both parties to commit effectively. For managers, that means creating a sense of trust in the first place. Two simple ways to build trust: first, make it clear that either the manager or the employee is free to request a check-in at any time, for any reason — whether a formal discussion or a quick catch up. Second, whatever is covered, make it a conversation, in which you combine a review of tasks with questions about overall state of mind, and give the employee plenty of room to answer. Listening to your team members reinforces the fact that check-ins are not an exercise in powerplay, but on the contrary, a forum for two adults to meet on equal terms. 

In my discussion with Meghan, she pointed out the value of flattening the expected hierarchy: “For employees who may be used to taking a passive role in their own professional development, check-ins change the game. Instead of receiving advice and feedback, they get to play a lead role in assessing and guiding their own development.” This means it’s incumbent upon employees to not just discuss how the work is going, but also focus on the direction they want to be heading in, and the skills they need to get there.This dynamic empowers employees, strengthening their performance and loyalty. 

Addressing the whole person: The manager needs to continually remind themselves that the check-in is not just about the job at hand. It’s not about a singular project. It needs to happen with an eye on the bigger picture, and the employee as a whole person, particularly right now. As well as addressing an employee’s performance and contributions, use the check-in time to reinforce a sense of social connection and foster the essential relationships we all need and depend on to work. 

Go beyond this, addressing any safety concerns the employee may have, which are so common as we navigate the minefield of COVID-19. Discuss the future in terms of a trajectory, not a fixed point, including what kinds of skills and behaviors need to be developed and supported. And use deeper questions to address aspects of wellness and health. Employers have a duty of care, and the more we all experience the integration of work and life, the more check-ins can play a helpful role.

Language: This is not just a matter of tone; it’s also a matter of clarity. Managers in particular need to focus on how to clarify and improve their language during check-ins, and be accountable for what you say as well as how to say it. What’s come to the fore during the shift to remote as well as the increased pressure on essential workers is that we need interactions that convey a clear perception of what is expected and how we are performing. 

That should seem a simple matter, but the nature of remote and hybrid working is that we’re communicating across multiple channels that may not deliver the same way as face to face. As Meghan pointed out, “Tone and language are more important than ever, and they’re harder to get right when we’re working virtually.” Managers should purposefully practice conducting check-ins until they’re comfortable enough that the action becomes a habit. 

Measuring the change: Effective check-ins offer two dimensions of measurable  impact over time. There’s the personal impact, or developmental path, and a business impact, or performance/contribution. Managers and leaders have a duty to effectively enable the workforce to achieve a high-high combination, in which both aspects see growth:

We’re been witnessing a sea change in how we work for a while. We’ve seen a shift to teams as the essential unit of operations, as opposed to individuals collected under a supervisor. We’ve seen a new emphasis on democratizing data. Further, there’s been a marked increase in the ability to work remotely. All have raised the bar on what constitutes a great work culture. The situation we find ourselves in now has put the onus on better communication overall, including how we provide feedback to employees, and even whether or not “providing” is the right term. We’re seeing the fruits of allowing both parties to be actively involved in feedback and reviews, and we’re seeing the benefits of grounding these conversations in trust and framing them as a continuing cycle rather than a rare event. 

Check-ins are a powerfully effective tool for inviting employees to own their own growth and contribution in your organization. They provide a means to build and maintain better manager-employee relationships, align around shared goals, and turn the workplace into a high-performing, engaged community.

This post is sponsored by MHR International.

Photo: Aleks Marinkovic

#WorkTrends: Aligning Around Performance Management: New Findings

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

How, where, and when we work may have changed, but there still needs to be a way to manage performance. But do employees want that right now? Amid the uncertainty, the answer is yes. Employees are yearning for continuous feedback, according to a 2020 performance management benchmark report by Reflektive, which surveyed over 1,000 HR practitioners, business leaders, and employees. And the feedback process is bolstering the relationship between managers and employers. 

I invited Jennifer Toton, Chief Marketing Officer at Reflektive to #WorkTrends to shed light on this benchmark study and dig into some of the trends it reveals. But as Jennifer pointed out, what was surprising was what didn’t change. The formal process of performance management and the number of reviews are still intact, but the way we give and receive feedback has really evolved. “We saw a 90% increase in employees who want more formal feedback conversations on a monthly or more frequent basis.”  

Also compelling, to me, is that even in these times, employees have retained a sense of optimism. Many believe that six months from the time of the survey, business will remain as usual. A quarter believed they would learn more skills. Another quarter said they would feel proud of the work they accomplished, and about a fifth said that they will feel more productive. “Our employees are resilient and they’re adapting to the change,” added Jennifer. 

Much is up to the managers, though. They must be transparent in their communication, said Jennifer, particularly around salary freezes and pay cuts, as honesty feeds trust. In addition, 80% of employees said they were having regular meetings with their managers, and that they found the format was not only positive, but productive. 

We covered a lot of ground in this discussion, so I encourage you to have a listen for yourself. Got feedback? Feel free to weigh in on Twitter or on LinkedIn. (And make sure to add the #WorkTrends hashtag so others in the TalentCulture community can follow along.)

 Twitter Chat Questions
Q1: Why do organizations struggle with performance management? #WorkTrends
Q2: What strategies can help improve performance management? #WorkTrends
Q3: How can leaders refocus performance management for better results?  #WorkTrends

Find Jennifer Toton on Linkedin and Twitter

This podcast is sponsored by Reflektive.

(Editor’s note: This month, we’re announcing upcoming changes to #WorkTrends podcasts and Twitter chats. To learn about these changes as they unfold, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter.)

Photo: Nick Fewings

How to Perfect the Skill of Listening

Coronavirus has changed the way American businesses operate, to say the least. And from work-from-home mandates to reopening strategies to locking down again in the face of virus spikes, it’s taken a toll on effective communication in the workplace. 

Communication is a two-way street. But it’s not just about what we say. As the old saying goes, we have two ears and one mouth — so we ought to be able to listen twice as much as we speak. Or consider the inverse, as Ken Blanchard says: “I often like to joke that if God had wanted us to talk more than listen, he would have given us two mouths.” 

But in reality we aren’t listening very well, and it’s not new news. The Harvard Business Review published a famous article way, way back in 1957 about a study of manufacturing executives in Chicago: it found that listening is a much neglected skill. Benchmark research found that the average listener remembers only about 25% of what they heard, and that number has been repeated in many posts on why we can’t listen, time and time again. Flash forward more than half a century and for all the work on refining and clarifying our message, the weakest point of how we communicate is what we actually hear. Compound that by the fact that so much of our work is happening online and remotely, and it makes the listening part of communication even harder.

But we need to be better listeners, especially now. To be able to actually listen, take in someone else’s points and retain the information is not only better for whatever work process is going on at the moment. It also builds far more trust, promotes empathy, and forges a work culture of engagement and exchange. You can’t tout transparency if there’s no emphasis on listening, either. So here’s a refresher with eight ways to improve your skill at listening now, including some tips that will greatly boost the quality of remote communication:

1. Allow for Silence

Give the person speaking time to pause and collect their own thoughts as they’re talking. Everyone talks with a different style and pace. Some get nervous when they’re talking and tend to need to slow down and clarify for themselves before saying an idea out loud. Some may be broaching a difficult topic and try to circle around it. Listening requires patience and slowing down our own rapid-fire internal thought process: we think faster than we speak. Don’t try to fill in the silences with your own interjections. Let the speaker have the room and the time to say what they need to say.

2. Repeat Back in Your Own Words

Don’t respond to the speaker with your thoughts right away. That’s the default setting for listening, but it’s far more effective to restate their thoughts in your own words. It cements the fact that you understood it — and if you didn’t, they can clarify. For example, start with “I hear you saying that …” and reiterate carefully. Not only do you demonstrate that you are actually listening, but the speaker will, in turn, be more receptive to your point of view knowing you understand theirs.

3. Ask Useful (and Relevant) Questions

Asking useful questions can help you better understand what the other person is saying. To encourage further discussion, make them open-ended prompts that give them the opportunity to further elaborate. Try asking, “What do you think we should do about this?” Asking questions is not about controlling the conversation or pushing back on someone’s perspective. It’s about understanding.

4. Work toward Empathy

We all fear being judged as we talk. Make a concerted effort to truly understand and acknowledge how the other person feels; to put yourself in their shoes. By carefully reiterating their feelings as you understand them, you build empathy and set them at ease.

5. Do a Recap 

We may listen, we may hear, but do we remember? One highly effective way to recall a conversation is to recap what was said. Restate the point of the discussion, and list the action steps each party is going to do in response. This doesn’t need to be word for word, just an overview. And let the person who spoke weigh in, so they’re comfortable with your summary. 

Remote communication has its own set of issues and conditions, including how people behave, multitask, and receive information; and how technology can suddenly go haywire at the worst possible time. These three final tips will help: 

6. Have a Backup Plan for the Tech

Always have a Plan B when it comes to remote meetings and discussions. If the tech you’re depending on happens to fail for whatever reason, you can pick up the thread without a mad scramble. Many of us know the frustration of a 15 minute video call that turns into an ordeal of pixelated video or frozen presentations. Having a backup plan prevents the goal — communication — from being hijacked by tech problems. 

7. Use Names in Remote Meetings

During an in-person meeting, there’s no doubt as to who is speaking or whom they’re speaking to. Online meetings aren’t as clear. Use names when addressing people, and encourage everyone to refer to themselves by name as well. And when you are discussing the points someone made, reiterate who said them to keep everyone on track. 

8. Take Your Time  

Video meetings allow us to see each other but not always discern the nonverbal subtleties that are part of communication. Tiny delays are nevertheless long enough to prevent how we perceive each other’s expressions. Eye contact is altogether different: if we really want to look at someone’s face, we need to stare at the camera, not their face. But people don’t just speak with words. Take the time to consider what’s being said rather than jump in with a response. If you’re not sure of the intent, ask. Virtual is not the same as in the same room. 

Communication is a fundamental part of who we are. At the workplace, it’s critical to be able to listen well, whatever context we’re in. Blanchard encourages all professionals to master the art of listening, but I’d take it one step further: it should be considered a skill, like any other, and we should all endeavor to practice it, especially in these times. A little understanding can go a long way in terms of collaboration, trust, and productivity.

Photo: Petri R

Continuous Listening: Moving Beyond Standard Practices

The second in a two-piece series on Continuous Listening. 

In Part One of my series on Continuous Listening, I looked at the flaws of taking a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to an employee’s development. Continuous Listening and asking the right questions can play a key role in recognizing milestones along each employee’s individual journey, and evaluating their engagement. 

The second part of this series looks at how to move beyond standard practices in order to craft engaging, long-term, and productive employee journeys and ultimately business success for all — and use the Continuous Listening strategy to tackle the challenges now facing our industry. And it’s important to note the value of feedback, as it contributes to the roadmap aimed at improving the organization.  

Applying Continuous Listening strategies before exploring suggestions for decision-makers can greatly improve outcome, and help explore various ways to address a number of HR challenges:

  • HR’s employee insight is segmented. Information is siloed based on the different HR tools used in various milestones, each tool having its own task and interface. Sharing between existing application tools is usually complex and information tends to stay within the boundaries of departments. 
  • Insight is collected from a limited number of sources. This limits HR’s ability to see the big picture and creates a disjointed employee experience. For example, some collection tools are only focused on one feedback channel instead of a combination of direct, indirect and inferred channels. As a result, HR can miss the broader view. 
  • Not enough data types are gathered. HR teams can gather transactional data on existing processes thanks to tools such as applicant tracking systems, HRIS tools, and learning management systems. Who was hired? Into what department? When was the start date? With some advanced analytics, this information can be transformed into predictive models indicating who should be hired in the future. Though sophisticated, these systems miss the heart of the employee experience as they fail to tap into the thoughts and feelings that bind employees to their jobs. Transactional data will never provide insight about personal views and cannot answer questions like: “How engaged is the employee?” or “How loyal do they feel to the brand?” “Are they committed to the mission or just the paycheck?” “What are their long-term aspirations?” Thus, it makes sense to use tools that also focus on evaluative HR processes such as 360 feedback, performance reviews, training evaluations, and engagement surveys. 
  • Most data analyses do not address an employee’s evolution. Data is collected at specific intervals and analyzed with particular timestamps, but understanding how an employee’s data has evolved over time may offer a clearer perspective of the processes that this employee has gone through with the organization. This highlights effective HR interventions to reach higher employee engagement, retention, and success. 

Moving Forward 

Continuous Listening encourages multi-directional communication among employees, managers, administrators and executives. It is designed to work in conjunction with other listening tools deployed at milestones such as performance reviews, annual engagement surveys, training programs, and mentoring programs. With it, HR can compile a more comprehensive picture of the attitudes, feelings, and intentions of the workforce. 

Organizations that are serious about optimizing the engagement of their workforce should look beyond a one-size-fits-all approach, and instead pursue a measurement strategy that incorporates:

  • Gathering evaluative feedback during milestones.
  • Collecting data between events aligned on topics relevant to employees and business goals.
  • Integrating the milestones and Continuous Listening data with fluid, real-time feedback processes to gain a comprehensive and evolving picture of workforce issues. 

Solving a Turnover Problem

Continuous Listening can help solve problems feedback can’t handle alone. Take the example of a large software engineering firm in Silicon Valley: it was experiencing a 50% higher turnover rate among employees who had been there for three or four years. The traditional milestone approach using HRIS data flagged the increase in turnover, but failed to provide any meaningful insight as to its occurrence. An evaluative feedback survey, delivered annually, showed that no one in the cohort had been promoted to a managerial position in the past 18 months. The business unit had adjusted the promotion criteria, delaying qualification by another one or two years to ensure stronger competencies among those being promoted. 

A combination of HRIS data, annual survey results, and Continuous Listening surveys revealed that employees were outraged at the policy changes, and had started looking for jobs elsewhere. Additional results from Continuous Listening surveys illustrated the fact that the 50% who remained were given development experiences and discretionary time to work on special projects — i.e., meaningful incentives to stay despite the prospects of delayed promotion.

These approaches provided substantially different data that, when viewed independently, provided weak explanations for the turnover. But through a holistic strategy, the bigger picture became clear. Using Continuous Listening provided insights earlier, giving leaders the opportunity to intervene sooner.

Feedback Approach Information Uncovered Available Leadership Actions 
Transactional 

Annual Turnover Report from HRIS turnover data 

Turnover is 50% higher. Investigate by launching a survey or conducting interviews.Backfill positions with experienced hires.
Transactional & Evaluative 

Annual Turnover Report

Annual Turnover Survey

Turnover is 50% higher.No one in the 3 – 4 year cohort has been promoted due to a policy change. Create an internal marketing campaign to encourage employees to stay.Change the policy.

Provide incentives to stay.

Continuous Listening 

(Transactional & Evaluative)

Annual Turnover Report

Annual Turnover Survey

Continuous Listening Surveys

Turnover is 50% higher.No one in the 3 – 4 year cohort has been promoted due to a policy change.

After learning of the policy change, outraged employees started looking for other opportunities.

Explain why changes are necessary.Let employees know leaders hear their frustration.

Fund new development events. 

Provide discretionary time to those who stay to work on special projects.

Feedback Matters

Without Continuous Listening efforts and the adoption of innovative technologies, information gaps can grow, increasing risk and uncertainty for decision-makers and the company. Further, effective listening allows leaders to stay informed about workforce perspectives, and it encourages employees to communicate their needs, satisfaction, frustrations, and other points of view in a healthy way. 

The journey begins when HR professionals develop and implement a comprehensive listening strategy across the employee lifecycle. By listening to employees, HR will develop a continuously evolving stream of data to support critical business management decisions. Through understanding which questions to ask and which tools to employ, HR professionals may properly listen and respond to needs. Moving beyond the one-size-fits-all approach enables organizations to craft engaging, long-term, and productive employee journeys — ultimately predicting positive or negative changes before they are likely to occur, thus driving their business toward success.

 

Photo: PCM

Continuous Listening: How to Strengthen Employee Communication

This is the first in a two-piece guest series on Continuous Listening. 

Human Resources departments own many responsibilities that directly contribute to the overall success of a company. According to Sari Levine Wilde, managing vice president of Gartner, “The businesses that are successful today and in the future, will be those that win when it comes to talent…This means helping employees build critical skills and developing employees into leaders.”  One of the burning questions today is how we can achieve that mission. 

Howard Moskowitz, a psychologist in the field of psycho-physics and a renowned market researcher, was hired by PepsiCo to determine the optimal quantity of artificial sweetener for a Diet Pepsi product. He faced a similar challenge, as mentioned by author Malcolm Gladwell in his TED Talk. With the aim of maximizing sales, Moskowitz conducted empirical tests, which provided unexpected results. He examined the data and concluded that there was no such thing as a perfect Diet Pepsi! Due to the multitude of variations between human tastes, Moskowitz found that the best option to maximize the number of sales was by offering a collection of lower calorie flavors along the scale of taste. 

Returning to the HR dilemma, a one-size-fits-all approach to HR is guaranteed to overlook the needs of many employees. More specifically, each employee journey is unique and thus HR must find ways to observe, tune in, and adapt to address individual employees in a more personalized manner.

Disjointed Employee View and Continuous Listening

In order to understand employees and their level of engagement when it comes to business goals, HR must continually gather information by asking questions and listening to employee responses. These standard HR processes currently serve as milestone events for gathering data, but with so many aspects of the employee lifecycle to monitor, it can be difficult to build a comprehensive view of the culture, engagement, retention, and success of employees. The process of data collection is usually transactional, though sometimes there are opportunities to gather evaluative information as well. In this respect, many challenges that HR professionals are faced with when attempting to gather this comprehensive data can be addressed by a strategy known as Continuous Listening. 

Continuous Listening is a methodology grounded in the philosophy that feedback matters all the time — not just once a year during a performance review, or once a year during an engagement survey. Feedback matters even after employees leave an organization and unofficially serve as alumni ambassadors for your brand. It matters because every employee has a unique journey that begins with a handshake and a contract that says, “We will do this for each other.” 

HR organizations that begin gathering evaluative feedback from employees during such milestones will gain valuable insights that leaders can use to better manage the workforce. An added benefit is that once in place, this feedback process can gain further traction as employees witness leaders responding to their feedback. This reinforces more open lines of communication, which is a recipe for future success. For every milestone along the  employee journey milestones, here are some sample evaluative questions that HR should be asking in order to enrich the information that is later provided to company leaders: 

Employee Journey Milestones Sample Evaluative Question 
Recruiting Would your employees recommend your organization to their professional network? 
Onboarding Do your onboarding processes achieve the cultural immersion and integration you need? 
Development Is your development process providing the right knowledge and skills to drive successful employee outcomes in meeting the needs of tomorrow?
Performance Management Is the performance management process identifying, recognizing, and rewarding talent? 
Engagement How much do you really know about your employees’ experiences? Are your efforts encouraging or destroying employee goodwill, motivation, and engagement? How often do you measure employee engagement? Once every two years? Annually? Bi-annually?
Promotion & Career Growth Are you identifying employees with strong potential and directing them toward leadership positions? Is your leadership pipeline full enough to meet resource planning goals?
Compensation & Benefits Is your compensation and benefits plan competitive? Is the plan sufficient to keep high-value employees engaged?
Retention Do you know what motivates your employees’ decisions to stay and grow with your organization, and what motivates them to seek opportunities elsewhere? Are you systematically collecting the data needed to analyze and improve the employee experience from hire to retire? 

Feedback matters because whatever the expression, it contributes to the roadmap aimed at improving the overall organization. By implementing a Continuous Listening strategy, we can begin to explore how to best address specific HR challenges. For that, stay tuned for the second piece in this series.