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The Power of a Purposeful Hashtag: #WorkTrends

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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

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

That leader needs to be you.

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

How Can You Maintain a Positive Employee Experience?

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

1. Foster Transparent Communications

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

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

2. Keep Communications Positive and Hopeful

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

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

3. Offer Ways for Your Employees to Relieve Stress

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. Be Empathetic and Patient with Your Team

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

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

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

6. Ramp Up Employee Feedback

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

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

7. Set Up New Channels for Inbound Feedback

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

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

8. Promote New Safety Protocols

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

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

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

9. Help Your Team Recalibrate Expectations

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

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

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

10. Recognize the Small Things

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

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

Your Leadership Can Make the Biggest Difference

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

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

Photo: Pixabay

5 Ways COVID-19 Will Continue to Change HR

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Many companies and job titles will go through drastic changes due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The HR sector and the people working in it will undoubtedly experience some of them. Here are five things people can anticipate regarding HR after COVID-19 — as well as during it:

1. Companies Will Show Employee Appreciation Differently

Even while people love working from home, many find it difficult to get through their days without the fist bumps, handshakes and pats on the back that often accompanied their most productive, successful days in offices. These changes mean HR departments may need to find alternative ways to thank employees for their hard work. 

Hani Goldstein is the co-founder and CEO of Snappy Gifts, a company specializing in employee recognition products. She noted, “Working from home can be an isolating and disorienting experience for most of today’s workforce who are used to seeing their peers every day at the office.”

It’s also more challenging for employees to strike that all-important work-life balance. “Hours that were once dedicated to fun activities have been replaced with more work and increased responsibilities,” Goldstein explained. These things mean employers need to show their gratitude differently. Whether that means having team appreciation parties over virtual platforms or sending workers online gift cards, HR representatives must figure out safe, effective ways to express thanks. 

2. Remote Hiring and Recruitment Practices Will Gain Momentum

Some analysts predicted remote methods would change hiring and recruitment methods long before COVID-19 impacted the world. They were right to some extent, especially as HR professionals realized doing things remotely cut out potential hassles like travel arrangements. Remote platforms let companies extend their hiring and recruitment reach instead of only looking for candidates in the immediate area. 

HR after COVID-19 will likely prominently feature remote platforms and approaches. Suppose a human resources professional or recruitment expert can gauge a person’s candidacy for a role via a teleconferencing platform. That method saves time compared to bringing a person into the office. 

Some remote interviews are for work-at-home jobs. However, if a person gets hired for a position at a physical location, companies may require that the new hire tests negative for the novel coronavirus before arriving. 

3. Contracts Will Include COVID-19-Related Specifications More Often

As professionals navigate this new normal and ponder what it means for the future of HR, they should consider how the pandemic might impact their employment contracts. For example, a company might remove a line that guarantees the worker a certain number of hours per week to work, especially if the industry will experience the effects of the pandemic for the foreseeable future. 

One emerging trend — especially seen in the construction sector — concerns the addition of force majeure clauses related to the pandemic in contracts. Those cover the natural and unavoidable disasters preventing a party from fulfilling a contract’s terms. However, it is not sufficient for that entity to claim it was inconvenient to meet the contract’s terms. Courts look at several variables, including whether the conditions made working impossible.

Contracts may also state that workers must report their COVID-19 risk or agree to get screened. Drug screenings are already commonplace, and the same could become true for coronavirus tests. Legal experts and HR representatives are still working out the specifics of contracts in light of the global health crisis. However, people should expect to see some noticeable changes in contractual language soon. 

4. HR Representatives May Need to Reserve More Time for Training

The pandemic forced workplaces to adjust rapidly to new procedures to keep people safe. Cleaning happens more thoroughly and frequently, and many companies reduce or eliminate the time employees spend in close quarters. Customer-facing businesses also must adopt new procedures for keeping guests safe. 

Human resources professionals regularly schedule training sessions. However, they may need to do that more often or for larger workforce segments due to COVID-19. Some businesses invested in robots to help workers or wearable gadgets to ensure that people stay far enough apart while on the job. It could take a while for some workers to adjust to those things, although dedicated training efforts could help. 

If all or most of a workforce shifts to remote working, HR representatives may deem it necessary to plan training sessions that spell out safe practices online and give people tips for staying productive. Many employees now have to work in ways they hadn’t imagined. HR professionals cannot remove all the obstacles, but taking the time to educate the workers about what’s new could relieve the stresses they feel. 

5. Businesses Will Adjust Their Time-Off Policies According to Government Guidance

The need to isolate confirmed or suspected coronavirus cases poses challenges for HR professionals who may already face workplace shortages for other reasons. However, following government guidance on that matter remains crucial. Workplace leaders must also stay abreast of recent changes.

For example, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently updated the guidance about workers caring for themselves at home after symptom onset. The most recent recommendation is that people can come back to work if at least 10 days pass since symptoms began and they stay fever-free for at least 24 hours after their body temperatures initially return to normal without medication. Their non-fever symptoms must also improve. 

The CDC previously set the fever-resolution component of that three-prong test at 72 hours, so the change represents a significant reduction. These specifics mean companies may begin implementing time-off periods that people can use specifically for reasons connected to the virus. Doing that keeps people safer by minimizing the likelihood that they feel tempted to work while feeling unwell. 

The Evolving Future of HR

No one knows the pandemic’s time frame, so it’s impossible to say for sure how things will change. However, the five things mentioned here are solid predictions, especially since some workplaces have already adopted the changes.

Photo: Mariya Pampova

#WorkTrends: Hiring Virtual Assistants

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Virtual assistants (VA) offer young brands the flexibility to focus on other areas of the business.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss an episode.

From multitasking between meetings and meal prep to the issues of internet and noise levels, many of us are still trying to adjust to this new normal. But we don’t have to do it alone. Big and small companies are hiring helpers to come to the rescue. These virtual assistants (VAs) and freelancers can take on the tasks that give employees a break and keep the business going.  

Nathan Hirsch, co-founder of Outsource School, came to #WorkTrends to talk about this new trend. For entrepreneurs and leaders he’s got one rule of thumb: bring in help before you’re in dire straits early. “When you can’t walk away from your business for a week, a moment — that’s usually a good indication that you need to hire followers” — as he calls VAs.

The same approach applies as with bringing in any outside help: make sure everyone is on the same page and onboard well. Outsource School uses an onboarding process called SICC: Schedule, Issues, Communication and Culture. VAs also receive standard operating procedures for their first week at work and are tasked with not just reading them, but asking questions. A quiz determines whether they need more training or not — and at that point, if the fit isn’t right, each party may decide to part ways. “That’s how you protect your time, protect your investment and build trust,” he noted. 

For managers, Nathan advises “making sure you set those communication channels up front” to get the process aligned — whether that includes emails, Slack, WhatsApp, Viber or all of them. Then coach VAs on which to use when. For VAs, asking for support when needed is critical. And I predict that we’re going to see more VAs coming onboard now and into the future, so this is an option I’d take seriously. 

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.)

Find Nathan Hirsh on Linkedin and Twitter

(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: You X Ventures

Don’t Sacrifice Talent To Survive a Crisis

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

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

Will your company survive and be ready for this?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo: Drew Beamer

New Research Indicates Desire for Recognition, Feedback

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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

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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

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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: NeOn Brand

#WorkTrends: Great Expectations: Living Your Employer Brand

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This month TalentCulture has been focusing on how people and companies can learn to do better. Nowhere is that more crucial than in the sphere of employer brands. We’re in an era now where companies don’t have full control over their brand: no matter how they present or package it, the outside world may have a wholly different take that outweighs the best intentions. But an employer brand isn’t just an academic exercise, as Meghan M. Biro noted on the latest #WorkTrends — even if that’s how many companies are approaching it now. 

To better clarify the link between employer brands and profitability, Meghan brought in Debra Ruh, a visionary in the field of employer branding. Ruh founded Ruh Global IMPACT, a firm that focuses on branding as well as digital marketing and global disability inclusion strategies (and more). She’s also the mother of an amazing daughter who inspired Debra to focus on the true essence of diversity, and why we need to embrace human potential right now.

“We’re talking about intelligence when we haven’t even decided as a human species what that means,” Debra said.  “The human potential is there. We really need to rethink what we mean by that — and stop deciding that certain people don’t belong in the workforce.”  By doing so, she added, companies are shortchanging the power of true diversity — a proven driver of higher levels of innovation and performance. Witness companies like Amazon, Barclays and Atos, who are bringing people with disabilities into their workforce, and programmatically expanding their commitment to inclusion, with strong business results. By so doing, they’re also shifting the perception of what their brand truly stands for. They’re not just talking the talk, they’re walking it.

What’s key, Meghan noted, is understanding all the touchpoints involved in a brand, and who really controls it. The days of grumbling in public and getting a cease and desist are over — in a sense, the brand is now owned by those who perceive it. And its fate has more to do with that, and with the perception of market influencers, than the company itself. But our expectations are higher than ever, both agreed. “We want our brands — especially the brands that we work for — to stand for more,” Debra said. Tune into this great conversation to find out how to shift a brand into a desirable, authentic, diverse culture. And have faith: it’s never too late to course-correct.

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

Twitter Chat Questions

Q1: Why are some employers failing at becoming an employer of choice?  #WorkTrends
Q2: What strategies can help organizations become an employer of choice? #WorkTrends
Q3: How can leaders help their organizations live their employer brand? #WorkTrends

Find Debra Ruh on Linkedin and Twitter

#WorkTrends: The Future of HR Tech

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Technology is disrupting everything, and HR is no exception. The tools and platforms available for today’s HR teams are light-years ahead of what we worked with 10 years ago. What does this new tech mean for recruitment, talent management and other HR functions? I talked to one of the smartest people in the HR tech world to get her take.

This week on #WorkTrends, we’re talking to Anna Ott about what’s next in HR tech. Anna is head of HR tech startups for UNLEASH. Last week at UNLEASH America in Las Vegas, I joined hundreds of other HR tech analysts, practitioners and vendors to think about how work and HR are changing.

You can listen to the full episode below, or keep reading for this week’s topic. Share your thoughts with us using the hashtag #WorkTrends.

HR Problems Technology Can Solve

Anna has spent the past 18 years working at digital companies — especially startups — and has held various HR-related roles. “I believe we are in a renaissance of HR as it has regained its strategic value of shaping organizations in the Fourth Revolution,” she says. “I am driven by enabling HR practitioners to be a stronger partner, feel more tech-savvy and enabled to shape the future of work.”

No one goes into HR because they love the repetition of filling out forms and going through the same processes over and over again. Most people sign up to work in HR because they want to work with people. “I think anything that automates processes and reduces the administrative work of HR is definitely something that we all appreciate,” she says.

Anna also acknowledges that, as humans, we struggle with unconscious bias during the recruitment process, and she believes that technology can remove human factors that tend toward partiality — and even create new ways to approach problems.

In March of this year at UNLEASH London, she met the team at Vault Platform that is working on a project that never would have been on the radar even a year ago. “They are trying to face the #MeToo debate by building a counter-harassment platform on blockchain,“ Anna says.

HR Issues Technology May Create

While she’s passionate about the possibilities that new technology brings, Anna is keenly aware of the risks and uncertainties involved.

Some solutions are helpful, but she says they could also be hurtful at a certain point. “It’s always two-sided. For example, when you look at security detection and skill-matching, at which point do we become too transparent?”

There’s a chance that people will reveal too much of themselves for the sake of developing in their careers and learning new things and trying to be a match to great jobs, she cautions. At the same time, she says, “At what point does it feel scary if a company monitors everything I do and everything I write, or the chats that I do within my company, or all the documents I create on Google?”

Another issue is just trying to manage all of the point solutions in the HR tech market. “HR people and practitioners can’t orchestrate a solution landscape of 100 different small things,” she says. There needs to be a more holistic approach.

Taking the HR Technology Plunge

For HR people who want to understand what HR tech can do for them and their organization, Anna recommends starting with one particular problem in need of a solution. “Try to find people who either have tackled this before,” she says. “Find peers, or look at those people who actually observe the market as I do, or analysts or thought leaders.”

She also recommends going to HR tech startups, talking to them, looking at their solutions, watching demos and meeting with them at conferences or HR tech competitions.

“When I was in my corporate payroll employment job, previous to UNLEASH, I wanted to eliminate the CV in the hiring process, but I didn’t know where to start,” she says. She spoke with a lot of startups that she thought might have a solution, and found one company that used video interviews instead of CVs.

“We actually sat down, created a new candidate experience and process, and then we eliminated the CV in my hiring process with their tool.” But she says it was a trial-and-error process — an experiment.

A year later, she switched from video interviews to chatbots, so she needed to speak with a chatbot startup about recruitment. Again, she labelled it as an experiment so it would be OK to fail, learn from that mistake, then pivot.

Anna is now a big advocate of chatbots. “Most of people looking actively for jobs want instant information,” she says. They want to have an instant response on the salary, location and other core details of a job. “In fact, in our chatbot at my previous company, people wouldn’t even write whole sentences,” she says. They would write “dog to work” to find out if they could bring their dog to work. She says candidates were comfortable doing that because they knew they were talking to a machine. Another benefit of that automation? “Chatbots also help us to get back to candidates and re-engage with those people that probably haven’t applied yet, allowing us to tap into a new pool of potential candidates.”

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

5 Ways to Earn Trust: The Ultimate Competitive Advantage

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Are you looking for that leadership silver bullet that will propel you past the competition? You can take public speaking courses and enroll in an MBA program or you can attempt the single easiest feat for which an individual can strive, trustworthiness.

Leadership is built on one core concept—trust. Without it, you can forgo every other attribute espoused by management experts. Confidence without trust is an egomaniac. Charisma without trust is a charlatan. And vision without trust is a hypocrite. This was supported by a meta-analysis study from leading trust researcher and Georgetown University professor Daniel McAllister.

Published in the Academy of Management Journal, McAllister concluded that leaders viewed as trustworthy generate a culture where team members:

  • display greater innovation, agility, and responsiveness to changing conditions;
  • take risks because they believe they will not be taken advantage of;
  • do not expend needless time, effort, and resources on self preservation; and
  • go above and beyond to exhibit higher performing customer service, brand loyalty, and problem solving.

This leads to a competitive advantage through significantly higher commitment, satisfaction, retention, and performance. Similarly, research from the Ken Blanchard Companies found a strong correlation between trust and the behaviors associated with highly productive employees—discretionary effort, willingness to endorse the organization, performance, and a desire to be a “good organizational citizen.”

“Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.”—Stephen Covey

Before you get insulted that I’m explaining something as elementary as the benefits of trust, have you heard of the Edelman Trust Barometer? The ETB has surveyed tens of thousands of people across dozens of countries about their level of trust in business, media, government, and nongovernmental organizations. In its 17th year, this is the first time the study found a decline in trust across all four institutions in all 28 countries surveyed.

For leaders, one of the more disturbing findings of the ETB is the shocking lack of confidence in leadership—63% of participants said corporate CEOs are either not at all or somewhat credible. That means only 37% maintained the credibility of CEOs, a 12-point drop from last year, and this is consistent around the world. CEOs are more trusted than government leaders (29%), but that’s setting a pretty low bar. Plus, with this “trust void,” only 52% said they trust business to do what is right.

So if trust is important and society is not feeling it, what can we do? Good news: you can (re)build trust. Here are five techniques to consider:

  1. Recognition, Recognition, Recognition. To increases trust between leaders and employees, nothing does it faster than acknowledging their achievements. It indicates you are paying attention and reinforces positive behaviors.
  2. Show Compassion. Did I say recognition is the fasted way to build trust? It won’t mean anything if you don’t already have a foundation of respect. Just try influencing someone who doesn’t respect you; see how engaged they are in your ideas. Treat your team like real-life people—listen to their ideas, care about their feelings, and empathize with their concerns.
  3. Keep to Your Word. You can’t build trust without following through on promises. Your team needs to believe that what you say is sincere, so follow through on commitments.
  4. Don’t Hide Your Humanity. Being human means showing your imperfections. Your ability to discuss your mistakes and share what you have learned from it makes you more relatable. No one is concerned with transparency for the good stuff; they need you to fess up to faults, so show your vulnerable side.
  5. Smile. If you don’t want to do something substantive to build your trust and would prefer a gimmick, consider a recent study published in Psychological Science where convicted murders with trustworthy faces received more lenient sentences then their peers with untrustworthy faces. The key, it seems, is that a gentle smile increases how trustworthy others perceive you. Keep in mind, that it needs to be gentle—too big can be seen as duplicitous or insincere, while too small may be seen as sarcastic or leering.

“I doubt that we can ever successfully impose values or attitudes or behaviors on our children certainly not by threat, guilt, or punishment. But I do believe they can be induced through relationships where parents and children are growing together. Such relationships are, I believe, build on trust, example, talk, and caring.”—Fred Rogers

We live in untrustworthy times, but that does not mean we have to lead in an untrustworthy manner. Generate a culture where honesty, transparency, and truth are the basis of your organization. This must start at the top of the organizational hierarchy with you. The team will trust you once you establish that you trust the team. It may take time, but as Seth Godin says, “Earn trust, earn trust, earn trust. Then you can worry about the rest.”

Think Like a Workplace Futurist

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In the first quarter of 2015, Millennials finally overtook Generation X as the largest cohort in the workplace — there are more than 53.5 million of them working today. Their massive size and economic power has had marketers and business leaders tracking the “Millennial mindset” for years.

And yet, nipping at their heels, here comes Generation Z, the oldest of who are just starting to come of age. The U.S. Census estimates that Generation Z will include close to 80 million members — a number that eclipses the conversation-dominating Millennials.

It’s time to stop thinking in terms of generations; such thinking makes it too easy to buy into assumptions. For example, Millennials aren’t necessarily tech geniuses any more than anyone over the age of 40 is categorically a Luddite.

Instead, a leader needs to learn to think like a futurist. From innovation and technology to diversity and cultural norms, the pace of change is too rapid to focus solely on generational differences.

The Role of Technology, Analytics & Big Data

Younger generations are adjusting to the new world of work as much as their older colleagues; it’s the technology, not any one generation, that’s pushing workplace boundaries.

For example:

Thinking like a futurist means being in a constant state of learning, absorbing emerging trends and concepts, then considering the impact they might have globally as well as longer term. It means being open and receptive to change, both within your organization and outside. It means considering future possibilities, not just what’s happening right now.

For example, futurists are interested to learn how analytics can drive a company’s success.

AMC experienced this when looking into what personality traits lead to the best concession workers. Their data revealed that technology and training weren’t predictors of job performance; what mattered was emotional intelligence, a worker’s ability to work with and engage customers through social interaction.

AMC used these insights to develop a hiring process that screened for these traits in applications. The result? They cut turnover in half, and increased the bottom line margin by 1.5 percent. They didn’t just hire workers who were the best prepared for success, they also found people who stayed with the company for a longer period of time.

While data-informed hiring processes should be embraced, I am compelled to include a note of caution: It’s important to avoid the mistaken belief that algorithms or statistics are free of bias. It isn’t always clear how bias can creep into analytics, but it’s important to see data as the tool it is. Recruiters (read: humans) still need to make decisions, not just interpreting analytics but ensuring that HR best practices are met and that hires are diverse and a great personality fit.

Futurists Consistently Connect Technology and Culture

A futurist will seek to understand not only how technology changes the hiring process, but also its impact on corporate culture.

Technology allows workers to untether themselves from a cubicle; they no longer need to be in an office to attend a meeting or interact with their team. Job seekers have access to a global workplace, where they can prioritize work and employers who reflect their values.

However, freedom of place also has its drawbacks: Feelings of isolation among remote staff, limitations of corporate culture, varying expectations, different work-life boundaries, and a whole new model for communication.

This makes transparency paramount for attracting top talent. An open-book recruitment process allows job seekers to match their work needs to the right organizational culture, which leads to better-qualified applicants who are invested in the outcome.

Artisans Are the Future

A futurist isn’t just a strategist, they’re an artisan: They take trends, interpret them, and craft a vision for their organization. Taking a futuristic approach to work means more than scrutinizing work theories. It means gathering evidence to ultimately take action — one that may require risk, but which can also create competitive advantages.

It’s easy to get caught up in the generational differences that are shaping our evolving workforce; but we need to move beyond labels and focus on the factors that directly influence the way we live and work today and in the future. By actively looking forward, organizations will make better decisions for the culture of the company and its workers. The tools are already here, we just need to approach them with more curiosity and less fear.

Image credit : Bigstock 

A version on this post was first posted on Huffington Post on 11/19/15.

The Rise Of Marketing And Transparency In Recruitment

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As we dive into the new year, top of mind for a lot of us are questions of need and want. One of which is the need for marketing and transparency in recruitment.

And, if we could have anything we wanted in terms of HR Tech, what would it be? To better push employee engagement — with some kind of magical Big Brother-like metrics that ping us when employees start to lose interest? To finally relegate those creaky file cabinets in Storeroom B to things of the past, by allowing us agile and responsible access to the Cloud? What about big picture planning, endless processes and admin: can tech just do that so we don’t have to?

Depending on our role in the field, we may want all sorts of shiny toys. A colleague recently described HR as a big funnel, and the widest point is where I think we need HR tech to pay the most attention right now. We need all the tools we can get our hands on to attract the talent. Before a job at Company X is a gleam in anyone’s eye. Well before they are finally filling out the paperwork. And by the way, on paperwork, I’ve got my own dreams about how HR tech solves those 15-minute applications. I think we all do.

Let’s call this the ETF in HR: Edge of the Talent Funnel. Here’s my wish list:

Wider and smarter. As it was aptly pointed out and talked about, during our  #TChat at the HR Tech Conference, there are enormously compelling reasons to not treat potential candidates like people filling out applications, but like consumers. The rise of social and mobile, the shift in demographic cultures and the 24/7 constancy of brand identity and awareness means that we need to market and target talent. A company has to maintain and deepen its brand on all platforms; a workplace has to convey its own culture and make it appealing; and even the hiring process itself has to sell the potential consumer on its ease of use and benefits.

Stickier surface. There’s a lot of talent. According to the B.L.S., there were 5.0 million job hires on the last business day of July 2015. We need to be able to grab the attention of these possible hires far before they’re even considering being candidates. That means we need tech that can seize any and all opportunities to create an initial handshake and get them interested in your company.

User friendly both ways. User interface and experience are not just about talent, they’re also about the HR professionals who utilize them. In our quest to catch the eye of talent, we can’t overlook the need to also appeal to those doing, well, the eye-catching. In the trenches, the HR tech had better deliver without complicating things more, or all that fancy software won’t mean anything.

Unslick. There’s a nice trend towards using video and chats, with nice packages to convey employer identity and run onboarding, and neat ways to conduct interviews and supply FAQ-type info. But let’s not let that be a one-way screen dump, and let’s not forget to bring humans into the equation. No matter the power and scope of the tech we adopt, please let it be appropriately transparent. Real questions should be answered by a real person. A potential staffer in a given unit should be able to confer with top performers about what it’s like. Use video to close the distance without shutting out unscripted conversation. Transparency is authenticity, and tech has to build that into itself.

On an interesting point raised recently regarding the intersection between sales, marketing and HR, I want to add a note of caution. The goal of marketing is always to land a sale, and the goal of shaping a consumer experience via that sale is to always create a loyalty to that brand and product. One key difference: we are more than consumers when it comes to working. We are workers, working together. Ours is a long-term, constant gig. The kind of loyalty we need tech to enable is for more than a product, it’s got to be a commitment to deeply engage with time and energy in a company where we are willing to give our all. It’s a thick and thin loyalty, not a “gee that’s cool” loyalty.

If we don’t remember that, we’re not going to be able to maintain transparency, and we’re not going to be able to retain our best talent.

A version of this post was first published on Forbes on 10/16/15 

Technology as Enabler of 2016 HR Trends: Personalized Learning and Transparency

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Recently, I published an article on some of the major disruptions happening in the workplace and the role that technology has played (is playing) in enabling or inspiring innovative HR programs. This article serves as an extension (or “Part Two”) to that piece: Technology: The Enabling Force Awakening HR as a Strategic Partner In 2016. After publishing that post, a healthy conversation ensued on Twitter about whether I was advocating that technology is what will enable HR to become more strategic. While I could see how one might come away with that interpretation, I want to make it clear that I see technology always as an “enabler,” never the answer to a solution or problem.

Let’s take continuous feedback as an example. Continuous feedback is feedback given to an employee by his/her manager (or peers) on their performance on a regular, and frequent basis. This feedback is used to provide continuous coaching and development of employees rather than waiting until the end of the year. Now let’s say a manager has 12 direct reports one can easily imagine that providing real-time, meaningful feedback to each of those reports could become quite difficult and time-consuming without the aid of technology.

The point I was trying to make was that innovations in HR technology have “enabled” these processes to exist that might never have been possible through manual intervention and definitely NOT with the rigid HR systems so many organizations have been saddled with for far too long.

Here are the remaining two concepts/trends in HR I believe HR technology will have a considerable hand in supporting in 2016: personalized learning and development, transparency as the new norm.

Personalized learning and development

Personalization is fast becoming a must-have in today’s workplace. No longer can employers afford to roll out cookie-cutter programs to meet the needs of every generation or type of employee. From creating benefits programs that are flexible providing employees with choices, to career development and learning, personalization is the name of the game.

We’ve all heard about the needs of today’s learners. They want a learning experience that fits their personal needs, learning speed, preferred learning style and, most importantly, their learning pathway – learning personalized for them. But what most people don’t know is that this approach to learning is not new. In fact, noted adult learning theorist, Eduard Lindeman, laid out five key assumptions about adult learners that may sound very familiar to many of us (excerpted from Lindeman’s 1926 book, The Meaning of Education):

  1. Adults are motivated to learn as the experience needs and interests that learning will satisfy
  2. Adults orientation to learning is life centered
  3. Experience is the richest source for adults learning
  4. Adults have a deep need to be self-directing
  5. Individual differences among people increase with age – therefore, provision should be made for differences in style, time, place, and pace of learning.

As adults, we have always craved a different style of learning. In fact, learning theories have existed for quite some time now that classify learning into two approaches: pedagogical and andragogical. Pedagogy is the discipline that study and practice of how best to teach. Andragogy, on the other hand, is the method and practice of teaching adult learners. Andragogy works best in practice when learning is adapted to fit the uniqueness of the learners and the learning situation. Somehow modern day trainers and training departments have either forgotten this or never been made aware that as adults we have a different style of learning that requires different approaches.

Learning has moved beyond the classroom, and experience – one of the three components of the 70:20:10 model – should no longer be seen simply as what occurs within the four walls of the traditional workspace. Learning is social and is the result of interactions with others and also with content. That content may be formally generated by the organization and disseminated to employees; it can be employee generated and shared through peer networks or it may be content that an employee interacts with online and off hours. The point being we are all in a continuous state of learning and traditional learning management systems (at least not yet) are not capable of capturing the multitude of learning experiences that each and every employee encounters on a weekly or even daily basis.

This is where vendors like Degreed have stepped up to the plate. Capitalizing on xAPI, Degreed’s platform can capture meaningful information relating to a wide range of learning experiences and behaviors. This type of technology plays an important part in creating a more personalized learning environment; empowering learners to achieve their goals and creating self-awareness of the micro-learning moments that might otherwise go unnoticed (think meta-cognitive).

Transparency as the New Norm

We have entered a millennium where workplaces are filled with four generations of workers (or five if you ask Bill Kutik). We live in a global environment where businesses continually have to adjust to keep up with the accelerating pace of change that is fueled by technology. Technology is considered by many to be one of the primary drivers behind the globalization of economies, and its power to accelerate change of all kinds cannot be ignored. Social, mobile, video and self-service capabilities provide opportunities for greater visibility into the behavior of individuals or groups making how work gets done more transparent to the masses.

Goal planning

Openly communicating goals within an organization is a step in the direction of driving efficiencies through information transparency. A benefit of transparent goals and the linkage between them within an organization is to drive collaboration between employees directly, and not exclusively through direct managers. Another potential benefit from this is to drive efficiency through reducing redundant work efforts that might not otherwise be known. With greater transparency, individual performance and contributions to the organization become more evident. Transparent goals are critical for an employee to understand how his or her goals and performance relate to those of other employees. Here are a few vendors making goal transparency possible:

  • iDoneThis – productivity software that allows employees to stop and reflect at the end of each day on what they have accomplished. The next morning, an email digest is distributed showing everyone’s accomplishments from the previous day and employees can share thanks and celebrate the achievements, helping create a culture of openness (transparency) and gratitude.
  • Betterworks – enterprise goal software platform that utilizes OKRs to create and align goals beyond the traditional horizontal approach seen in most MBO and other goal management approaches. Their software facilitates the collaboration of goal creation and goal tracking across the enterprise and encourages open, frequent monitoring and cross-functional alignment of goals.
  • Atiim – (pronounced A-team) – a goal (OKR) and team performance management platform offers a continuous, real-time and closed-loop feedback process to improve alignment and transparency for managers and their teams.

Enterprise social networks (ESNs)

Transparency also means encouraging open communication across the organization, and soliciting feedback from and involving employees (and even customers) in making decisions. Being transparent in communications builds trust ‒ an essential component in building a strong culture. But even more importantly, transparency requires trust. Trust is the foundation for building a strong culture—trust in leadership, trust in teams and trust in individuals.

Being transparent in communications builds trust, which influences both employee support and acceptance of change, and also provides a sense of safety for employees to allow creativity and innovation to be stimulated, accepted and promoted.

Blogs delivered on enterprise social networks (ESNs) are a natural way for leaders to openly communicate with their followers and are a great forum for leaders to share their thinking around business decisions, as well as a means to build trust.

Platforms like Jive, Tibbr and Facebook at Work, whose aim is to create a connected workplace that is more productive, are prime examples of ESNs that can be used to encourage leaders and employees to share ideas, collaborate on projects and create opportunities for greater visibility across the enterprise.

[Clarification, xAPI, is not the primary method by which the Degreed platform captures data. Currently, it is designed explicitly to drive progress and build expertise over time with plans to capture more of the experiences and accomplishments too.]

Additional Resources:

Cross, R., Borgatti, S. P., & Parker, A. (2002). Making invisible work visible: Using social network analysis to support strategic collaboration. California management review, 44(2), 25-46. Chicago

Knowles, M. S., Holton III, E. F., & Swanson, R. A. (2014). The adult learner: The definitive classic in adult education and human resource development. Routledge.

Photo Credit: loyale99 via Compfight cc

Leadership: It's All In Your Head

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We call it vision when it works. But what possessed the leadership of Volkswagen to systematically falsify emissions reports? What drives a magnate with unruly hair (so much so that it has its own meme) to toss his pompadour in the ring and make a loud bid for the presidency? Why would the CEO of a BigPharma company think a five thousand percent price hike on a medication was justifiable? Is it really the same impulse that prompts a smiling, trailer-dwelling CEO to transform his online retail site into a model of the workplace 3.0? I’m of course referring to Tony Hsieh’s holacracy in the place of hierarchystrategem: Think Different circa pretty much now.

What drove Hsieh, as the press gushed (drinking the punch), was a fear of being bored. To me his biggest legacy is not everyone getting to feel the veneer of equal, but that a mindset does indeed drive leadership. But also: the perception of what is good leadership and bad leadership is inevitably measured by results. If the results are devastating, that same sense of derring-do becomes a characteristic of the damned. Volkswagen’s CEO is out and there are more than 600,000 employees whose level of engagement has just plunged to zero.

What drives leadership is neuroscience; wiring. That’s what drives leaders to be an inspiration to the rest of us or an utter head shaker, or both. It’s their own psychology that brings down a company (and loses it $7.3 billion and a widening, enormous share of the global market) or changes the political game, to the benefit of a nation or not. But there are still two key traits of leadership that will make a workplace instead of breaking it, and we still need to hew to them:

Transparency. Among the forces that cause insomnia in leaders is rigidity. There are leaders who are, simply, too proud to be responsive or adaptive. They refuse to change for the sake of the workplace or the mission; hewing to a dysunfctional model because it is the status quo but also their very survival is entrenched in it. Our brains have built in ways of fighting change, one reason “think different” still seems so radical a concept. But this kind of gravity is the enemy of transparency, without which disasters happen: as well as being unable to adapt to change, they are unable tor respond to problems in an innovative way. It’s not innovative to lie. It’s not visionary to be obnoxious, unless it part of a very long, very annoying corporate con.

Emotional intelligence. Buzzword it may be, but another key marker of dysfunctional leadership is crowded out vision entirely. There are leaders too busy to win: those too trapped in the forest to see the trees; overwhelmed, constantly connected, unable to turn off and therefore preventing themselves from being able to work at peak performance or productivity — or inspire the engagement and confidence of their workforce. The whole “I live in a trailer, and it’s really cool” ethos that Hsieh transmitted had an underlying message: being too busy to live is being too busy to lead.

I’ve seen organizations dovetail their internal culture and functionality beautifully only to have a leader quash the effort: there are countless surveys advocating the adoption of tech, for instance, and lamenting the gap between recommendation and implementation. We also know leaders with such a precise and confidence instinct for the next zeitgeist that they simply leapfrog over recalcitrant boards or management strata — and that can work as well.

Now, though, perhaps more than any time before, there are global consequences to faulty leadership — just as profound, if not more, as to good leadership. And if we’re touting talent; the human factor; as the new currency in the world of work, let’s take a page form our own playbook. Opaque leadership is a paradox and a contradiction: Volkswagen’s leader made a travesty of the value of transparency, and probably ruined a legacy brand. So if the new world of work is still based on the same classic, sacred geometry: leaders, and followers, perhaps its time to delve into leadership analytics as well as talent analytics, and make sure we’re all aligned. We can’t change our brains, but we can certainly manage the consequences better.

This article was first published on Forbes on 9/26/15

Photo Credit: Big Stock Images

Transparency: A Red Carpet Experience for Candidates

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“Your Uber driver is named Pete. He’s driving a white Prius and will arrive in 3 minutes.” 

People aren’t happy about having to slog through poorly designed experiences anymore. Companies like Uber and Lyft are driving demand for white-glove services and full transparency, transforming the age-old experience of hailing a cab into a less anxiety-inducing and more human experience. In the past year, the bar was raised on how people expect to experience many everyday services, and they’re now demanding a more “Uber-fied” experience everywhere. These expectations have even made their way into the employment process, where the war on talent is won by employers and technology providers working together to deliver an experience that meets the candidate’s expectations.

Your Hiring Process is Like Hailing a Cab

From the candidate’s perspective, the experience of finding and starting a new job is like the old way of hailing a cab — awkwardly standing on a street corner waving one’s hand in the air with no idea if or when a taxi would arrive. A resume is seemingly submitted into a black hole, and a similar waiting game begins that continues all the way through the hiring process.

If the candidate is one of the lucky ones who actually receives and accepts a job offer, they don’t often hear anything again until they show up for work on the first day. This waiting game creates anxiety and uncertainty, with candidates worried about the status of everything and wondering what to expect next.

Employers can’t afford for the process to be this way anymore.

Just as Uber disrupted transportation, HR technology vendors are now making a better candidate and new-hire experience possible with processes that are rapid, easy, and transparent.

Transparency = A Red Carpet Experience

Transparency is the key to reducing candidate anxiety and making a great first impression. So what does it actually mean to build transparency into the hiring process? Let’s look at what it means to be transparent along the four main steps of the hiring process:

  • Recruiting: Websites like Glassdoor are now making it very easy for candidates to provide feedback about their recruiting and interviewing experience, whether they are hired or not. Feedback is the new currency in our online world, and putting your best foot forward in this early stage of the process is more important than it’s ever been. Keeping your applicant informed of the status of their application, interviews and prospects will go a long way toward creating and maintaining your brand’s reputation as an employer.
  • Hiring: Hiring is all about momentum and the stakes are even higher in this stage of the process. If your process takes too long or causes anxiety you might lose the candidate you’ve now expended so much time and money recruiting. The Talent Wars rage on and you need to keep your candidate feeling good about their decision so they don’t choose another job. The way to do that is by setting expectations about all that will happen during this part of the process. Tell them what you’re going to do, tell them when you’re doing it, and tell them when each step is complete.
  • Screening: There’s no way to get around the fact that background checks and drug screenings are intrusive. If you doubt that, just take a look at the verbiage in a standard Disclosure for Background Check notification:
    “The report may contain information bearing on your character, general reputation, personal characteristics, mode of living and/or credit standing.”
    This is one time in the process when a human touch can really make a difference. You owe it your candidate to be transparent through the process, not just because regulators are requiring you to do so, but also because you care about creating a good experience for them.Regulators are driving more transparency in the screening process. In five different states, employers are now required to give candidates the opportunity to request a report with the results of their background checks and this trend will likely continue. Go over and above what you’re required to do by letting them know exactly what to expect, keeping them informed of the status of their screenings, and giving them a person and phone number to call with questions.
  • Onboarding: This is your area to really shine with your new hire. A good onboarding process will make them feel great about their decision to join your organization and help them to feel prepared to start on day one. Let them know exactly what paperwork they’ll need to complete and give them the opportunity to do so online before they show up to work on the first day. This is also a prime time for you to lean forward in helping them to get to know your culture and brand. Get information in front of them that helps them get to know the company; like corporate videos, your employee handbook, social media links, and other training materials. 

Transparency gives candidates control of the process, replacing anxiety and uncertainty with trust and confidence. Lead your candidates through the process with an online portal, like TalentWise, that provides real-time updates and notifications, outlines all tasks to be completed, and enables candidates to complete those tasks on their own time, in the comfort of their own home. Create a transparent hiring process where everyone wins.

photo credit: Passage to history via photopin (license)

 

TalentWise is a client of TalentCulture and sponsored this post.

4 Ways to Increase Your Goal Achievement

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The formula for achieving goals is straightforward: apply team, time and budget to the specific work needed to reach the right results. Very successful people achieve goals faster and with fewer resources than peers; their execution velocity is high, which raises their career velocity. Their capacity to execute is focused on achieving clear goals so they need less time or resources to get from point A to point B; great business and career results follow. Stellar team members gravitate toward these managers, so their teams — and results — get stronger over time.

Our capacity is almost always constrained, so how we manage that capacity is a crucial factor in goal achievement and it’s one of the biggest challenges managers face. Goals face intense competition from incoming emails and daily dramas, which tend to erase all memory of the original goals. Keeping people aligned and working toward the goal is hard, but losing even a day a week is a 20% capacity hit.

Without clear goals, operational transparency and capacity focused on goal achievement, even awesome teams end up moving the wrong mountain. These four disciplines can help increase your velocity to goal:

1. Know Your Point B.

Make sure the team knows the specific goals and the metrics for success. Keep them present and visible day-to-day to counter rising environmental noise. With clear goals, people make better decisions and waste no time trying to figure out what matters. As importantly, they have a continuing understanding of how their efforts contribute to group achievement. Without that clarity, time and goodwill are lost redoing work and achievement is pure luck.

2. Know Your Point A.

To define the actions and investments necessary to get from where you are to goal, be rigorous about operational transparency. While the goal shouldn’t move much, current state changes constantly. Set your transparency threshold by the cost of time — if losing five days will undermine goal achievement, then it’s too long to wait for execution facts. Tell your team that you value facts (even when they are not happy facts) and why those facts are essential to success. Real-time transparency maximizes your ability to recover quickly by optimizing your resources as facts change.

3. Concentrate Resources On Goal Achievement.

When goals and current facts are opaque, the team’s capacity goes everywhere except goal achievement. Your velocity to goal is a function of how much friction and distraction there is on your path from point A to B. Make sure your full capacity is laser focused on goal achievement. Hold yourself and the team accountable for where time and effort are spent — these are your most valued assets. Deciding what not to work on is hard but necessary; use team meetings to rule out distractions and lower priority work so goals can be achieved.

4. Make Transparency A Constant.

Define dashboards for transparency on goals, actions, progress and team efforts then automate them so they don’t take time away from goal achievement. Most organizations can recoup 25% – 40% of people’s time by making goals and facts clear and eliminating endless status meetings and reporting. These resources and transparency improve velocity — in fact, they’re an opportunity to achieve goals with fewer resources and speed than peers. And because no member of the team enjoys status meetings, read outs and reworking bad decisions, stellar team members will gravitate to your team where they can spend more time doing great work, achieving goals and building their own career velocity.

While productivity often refers to doing more every minute, increasing velocity to goal means deciding where not to spend time and resources. You’ll cover the path to goal in less time and with less effort. It’s not more work, it’s just more achievement.

Tools like Workboard provide dashboards and transparency on goals, actions, progress and effort and automates status reporting. It enables everyone on the team to make better decisions, stay goal aligned and increase their velocity — it’s free for managers and their teams.

The 5 Dynamics of Low Performing Teams

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High performing teams seem to generate their own energy and elevate everyone on the team to their full potential. Despite achieving more, work on these teams seems less taxing, the workday shorter and less frustrating. Low performing teams are plagued by dysfunction and produce more frustration than progress.

What undermines the performance of groups and teams? Poor leadership and low self awareness from team members.

The Leader’s Role In Dysfunction

The most common leadership failure points are the hardest part of a leaders’ job: getting the wrong people off the team, holding people accountable and giving direct feedback. These aspects of management and leadership push us into uncomfortable territory. Sometimes managers don’t have support resources or skills in these areas and in large organizations, there may appear to be a high social price as well.

Building and exercising management skills are essential because great performers will leave the team for better places to work and the rest of the team will disengage (as more than 70% of employees have!) — the doomsday cycle for teams, companies and careers. The five dynamics of low performing teams stem from what leaders don’t do and the vacuum from what is missing:

1. Freeloaders

Teams with freeloaders consistently under perform. About 2 in 10 employees are actively disengaged in their work and undermine value created by their peers, according to Gallup. Less destructive freeloaders benefit from the results of the group but contribute nothing to it, demotivating their peers. While it’s one of the least pleasant aspects of management, avoidance compounds rather than corrects the problem.

2. Vague Goals

Without clear goals and objective or, worse, with a goal de jour, there is little chance of great achievement. because great performers will leave the team for better places to work and the rest of the team will disengage (as more than 70% of employees have! When team members don’t know what they’re working toward, the resulting vacuum of purpose is unsatisfying at best and chaotic at worst. The absence of progress on a meaningful goal devalues and frustrates team members. This goal kit can help establish goals and rally the team toward their achievement.

3. No Transparency

Without discipline and systems of transparency, the team wastes its time and effort trying to figure where it is and where it’s going — mind-numbing status meetings and cadence calls are the result. Everyone feels busy, but nothing important gets accomplished. Develop a transparency discipline so goals and actions to achieve them are visible. This is the substrate of achievement and accountability.

4. No Accountability

Half of all managers are “terrible” at driving accountability, according to Harvard Business Review. Fear of being the bad guy and lack of discipline hold people back. Without accountability, mediocrity rules and careers suffer. Not holding people accountable for under performing does them no favors, misleading them or implicitly validating their performance — until review time surprises. On the best teams, members hold themselves and each other accountable. Engage your team in defining a shared accountability standard and use committed actions week over week to sustain it.

5. Feedback Fear

No feedback is actually worse than negative feedback — team members want it, managers hesitate to provide it! Get over the discomfort and make it a habit to provide regular feedback. Young people do 70% of their learning on the job so positive reinforcement is most effective (and among managers’ highest priorities). Experts with mature skills benefit most from constructive feedback to advance those skills. In fact, 57% of employees say constructive critique and feedback helps them improve; a 5:1 ratio of positive to negative works best.

The Individuals’ Role in Dysfunction

It is easy and tempting for team members to blame team dysfunction on leaders’ failure to lead. Not so fast: Teams are a collection of people who can choose to work well together — or not. Each person contributes to the chemistry and function of the team, and everyone is responsible for their own contribution. I’ve found it even more important to raise my self awareness on lower performing teams. In the same way great teams elevate everyone’s performance, dysfunctional teams tend to degrade each individual’s performance.

Doing a gut check on the deadly sins helps me align my actions with my unwavering intentions for great performance. And I will confess that fear and defensiveness are my sins when I’m not at my best or when I’m reacting rather than acting with awareness! When I take responsibility for those I not only feel better, I perform better and help elevate others.

The Great Rated! Interview: EY’s Larry Nash On The Transparency Trend

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When Larry Nash looks into his crystal ball about the future of the workplace, one thing is clear to him: workplace transparency itself. Larry, Americas Director of Experienced and Executive Recruiting at professional services giant EY, is confident that job seekers and the public will have more visibility into what it’s like to work at organizations. “Transparency will only grow as technology evolves and different social media platforms continue to grow and expand,” he says. “We’re just always increasingly connected.”

Nash and EY aren’t waiting for this interconnected, transparent future to arrive. They are embracing it now, showcasing their culture through their own website and taking advantage of sites, including Great Rated!, to show the world what EY is all about. Revealing EY’s essence to job candidates is central to Larry’s work—in the 12 months ending in June 2014, he oversaw the recruitment for nearly 6,000 experienced positions in the U.S. alone. And that number represents a more than 37 percent increase from the previous year. We recently talked with Larry about topics including the workplace transparency trend, its link to employer brand and EY’s overall mission of “Building a Better Working World.”

Ed Frauenheim: What’s the importance of company transparency in recruiting these days?

Larry Nash: At EY, we have a very simple principle—our employer brand—which is whenever you join, however long you stay, the exceptional EY experience lasts a lifetime. Being transparent is critical to our brand. Individuals looking to start their career, or change their career, want to know what working at EY is really like and what’s in it for them if they decide to join the organization. Ultimately, we know what candidates want and we know what we want.

We also know that any relationship, be it personal or professional, is built on openness and trust. That’s why we provide potential candidates with an authentic and transparent view into the organization. Then they can evaluate the potential of an EY career and determine whether EY is the right choice for them.

Ed: What is the connection between transparency and employer brand at EY?

Larry: We have a great story to tell about our brand and culture. We’re on many best-places-to-work lists, including those compiled by FORTUNE, Diversity Inc., Working Mother, and Universum, to name a few. These are organizations and publications saying that EY is a great place. So we’re confident that we can offer a lot to people and that’s why we are transparent about the specifics, too.

Ed: How does your employment brand tie into EY’s broader purpose of “Building a Better Working World”? It seems the overall company brand should make your job as a recruiter easier.

Larry: This purpose of building a better working world relates to our people, our communities, and the investing public—given how they rely on what we’re doing for our clients—and on and on. We’re completely focused on building a better working world in these different ways.

Ed: Some experts say transparency about the workplace is smart because it helps you efficiently find people that are right for your organization. Do you agree?

Larry: Yes. Our interview process—whether you’re coming from campus, have experience, or are an executive at another organization— is a two-way dialog. There are a number of interviews that take place, so candidates can get to see what we’re like, and what we can offer to fulfill their aspirations. And then we have a dialog to understand what they offer and what they’re interested in. Hopefully, over the course of the interviews, we see a match. And part of that match is a feeling that they’re coming to a culture that can enable them to achieve their goals.

It goes back to building a relationship. If we want candidates to work here, they should know what it’s like. We’re proud of what it’s like here. So, we’re comfortable sharing the culture, and what we can offer and what we can’t offer. If that is a fit for people, that’s great. And if people don’t think we can give them what they want, that’s fine as well. We want people to feel like they can have a meaningful career here, whether they stay three years, five years or the rest of their career.

(About the Author: Ed Frauenheim is editor at workplace research site Great Rated!™, where he produces content and reviews companies.)

Photograph by Jonathan Gayman(About Larry Nash: Larry Nash is Americas Director of Experienced and Executive Recruiting at professional services firm EY (formerly Ernst & Young). Larry is a member of EY’s Americas Recruiting Leadership team and is responsible for the strategic execution of experienced and executive recruiting efforts for the Americas. Previously, Larry served as EY’s Americas Director for Recruiting and Mobility.)

photo credit: marcomagrini via photopin cc

The Great Rated! Interview: Employer Brand, Transparency and Job Candidates

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I had the recent pleasure of speaking with Great Rated! CEO Kim Peters. Kim’s leadership at Great Rated! is evident in her desire to help job seekers and organizations to be better candidates and better employers.  Using proprietary survey and evaluation tools, Great Rated! can help employers identify strengths, thus reinforcing or forging the employer brand. For job seekers, Great Rated! helps them to compare and contrast the work cultures of different employers with the use of a “company compare” assessment tool. There’s also a short questionnaire that helps job seekers better identify what company culture is right for them by targeting the attributes that matter most to them individually and that are a good culture match based on their preferences.

Q1 – Cyndy: What types of attributes are job candidates and employees looking for when they say, “I want to work for a company that has a transparent culture?”

Kim: I think that they mean they want a workplace where there’s a free and open exchange of information. That starts with leadership—so there would be especially good communication and discussion about strategy, goals, financials, ideally at all levels—company-wide, departmental and for individuals—and it resonates—so things ring true and make sense.  In my opinion, in a transparent culture, the majority of people know what’s going on and how they fit into it.

Cyndy: Agree Kim. When too many conversations are taking place behind closed doors, transparency goes out the window.

Q2 – Cyndy: Great Rated! has a wealth of information from some of the best companies in existence. What are a few of the more common attributes that make a Great Rated! company stand out as an employer of choice?

Kim: There are great things about all workplaces. And any company can be Great Rated! There’s no threshold, or anything. The company just has to be willing to survey their employees using our Great Place to Work® Trust Index© employee survey so we can understand what they like about their workplace, and provide some information about their business including their programs and practices. Then our experts analyze the results and write a workplace review, highlighting the best practices and cultural strengths identified by the employees. Having a Great Rated! Review shows people that the organization is serious about creating a great workplace, comfortable with transparency, and that its employees treasure the unique aspects of their culture.

Because we include Reviews of our Great Place to Work Best Companies List winners—the FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For® and the Best Small & Medium Workplaces—we do many companies who score very high in ALL categories. But not all great workplaces appeal to everyone. Some people like small companies, some large, some thrive in an exuberant culture like Zappos, some want to be in a much quieter culture. Great Rated! reviews offer insight into what workplace cultures are all about, so that the job seeker can better understand if that culture is a fit for them.

Cyndy: Well said. Company culture is very important to candidates and employers, alike, and both want a good match so the fit feels right.

Q3 – Cyndy: Kim, why do some companies struggle with providing a great job candidate experience and where does transparency and employer branding come into play here?

Kim: Top talent has lots of choices, and they want a workplace where they’ll be comfortable. It’s the company’s willingness to be open about their workplace that lets people understand if they’ll be a fit, and ultimately decide to join the company. We all know people who thought they’d found the right fit, and then discovered the experience wasn’t what they thought.  Social media and the internet has given people the ability to research and find out before they buy…. and so they search to better understand the company’s workplace reputation and employee experience—and that is the employer brand.

Cyndy: Wonderful information Kim. Thank you for sharing your keen insight and experience with us.

Kim Peters-223 midsize (1)(About Kim Peters: Kim Peters is CEO of Great Rated!™, at Great Place to Work®, where she is focused on helping job seekers understand companies’ workplace cultures and find their best fit. Kim has over 15 years’ leadership experience in the online recruitment industry, and has launched and led a number of successful businesses including Workopolis.com, Canada’s leading job board, where she was founder and President,  and Canwest Mediaworks where she served as Vice President Online Classifieds. Kim most recently was CEO of Eluta.ca, a Canadian job search engine combining reviews and job listings.)

(About Cynthia Trivella: Cyndy began her career in advertising and Human Resource Marketing Communications on Madison Avenue in New York City over 15 years ago. Prior to that, she worked in corporate human resources as a recruiter and as a training and development coordinator. In addition, Cyndy has multiple years of media planning, employment branding and human resource communications strategy experience at a management level from both the media and agency sides.

Cyndy maintains a strong presence in the digital space and has been awarded the distinction of being named to the lists: “Top 25 Online Influencers in Recruiting” and “HR Marketer Top 25 Digital Media Influencers.” In addition, she volunteers as co-host and moderator of the Twitter chat #OMCchat for assisting job hunters, and serves as #TChat events director for TalentCulture World of Work. 

 

#TChat Preview: The ROI of Workplace Transparency

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The TalentCulture #TChat Show is back live on Wednesday, September 17, 2014, from 7-8 pm ET (4-5 pm PT). The #TChat radio portion runs the first 30 minutes from 7-7:30 pm ET, followed by the #TChat Twitter chat from 7:30-8 pm ET.

Last week we talked about how millennials aren’t as different as companies think, and this week we’re going to talk about the ROI of workplace transparency and the race for talent.

If you’re of a certain age, you may remember reading comic books and seeing advertisements for X-ray vision glasses, giving you the ability to see through, well, anything.

That fantasy of old is a reality today for employers, employees and candidates alike, with social media and world of work review sites giving anyone the ability to “see through” company walls.

That’s critical in the constant race to attract and keep talent because we continuously market and sell each other blue sky, when all the while storm clouds brew and burst at a moment’s notice, grounding trust’s feeble flight.

This week’s show highlights great real-world examples of transparency in the workplace, from Ernst & Young, Centro, Hilcorp and more.

Join TalentCulture #TChat Show co-creators and co-hosts Meghan M. Biro and Kevin W. Grossman as we learn more about the ROI of workplace transparency with this week’s guest: Kim Peters, CEO Great Rated! from Great Place to Work®.

Sneak Peak:

Related Reading:

Gina O’Reilly: Why We Replace (In)Human Resources With ‘Employe Experience’

Meghan M. Biro: How Companies Can Leverage Influence To Create Trust

Daniel Bloom: Lack Of Employee Response Directly Related To Management Empty Words

Maren Hogan: 3 T’s You Want To Cross: Teamwork, Transparency & Technology

Ed Frauenheim: The Great Rated!™ Interview: Kim Peters On Employer Brand

We hope you’ll join the #TChat conversation this week and share your questions, opinions and ideas with our guests and the TalentCulture Community.

#TChat Events: The ROI of Workplace Transparency

TChatRadio_logo_020813#TChat Radio — Wed, September 17 — 7 pm ET / 4 pm PT Tune-in to the #TChat Radio show with our host, Meghan M. Biro and Kevin W. Grossman, as they talk with our guest: Kim Peters.

Tune-in LIVE online this Wednesday!

#TChat Twitter Chat — Wed, September 17th — 7:30 pm ET / 4:30 pm PT Immediately following the radio show, Meghan, Kevin and our guests will move to the #TChat Twitter stream, where we’ll continue the discussion with the entire TalentCulture community. Everyone with a Twitter account is invited to participate, as we gather for a dynamic live chat, focused on these related questions:

Q1: What are some key considerations around workplace transparency? #TChat (Tweet this Question)

Q2: How does transparency come into play with the employer brand? #TChat (Tweet this Question)

Q3: What real-world examples of positive transparency can you share? #TChat (Tweet this Question)

Throughout the week, we’ll keep the discussion going on the #TChat Twitter feed, and in our new TalentCulture G+ community. So feel free to drop by anytime and share your questions, ideas and opinions. See you there!!

photo credit: Daveography.ca via photopin cc

How Transparency Positively Impacts Your Workplace

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There’s a basic social contract that exists between workers and their employers. Employees rely on their companies for their living and for a stable work environment where they can thrive. Businesses depend on their workforce to provide the talent and manpower necessary to develop products, serve customers and generate revenue.

It sounds simple, but this arrangement actually requires quite a bit of trust on both ends. For their part, corporate leaders must count on their workers’ honesty and integrity as they give employees access to a whole range of company resources, put them in direct contact with clients, set them to work with sensitive customer information and give them the keys to the office. For the most part, this contract works, and the corporate world keeps on running.

In fact, openness and honesty with employees – which is a natural offspring of this trust – might be even more significant than a foundation that allows basic business operations to occur. According to Fortune, transparency is a key factor in developing positive customer relationships. Part of the reason it’s so important is that greater information about the way the company is running and what its goals are can empower employees to do their jobs better, and this capability leads to better products, higher-quality service and engaged workers.

Transparency In The Workplace

In addition to being open with customers and the public about company operations, fostering greater transparency within a business can contribute to a positive employee culture. Simply demonstrating that executives and stakeholders trust their workers with information about the organization’s successes and failures, strategies and goals helps to build up that social contract of trust and responsibility. Of course, there must always be prudence in determining how much and which information to divulge to the entire company, but greater transparency tends to make a positive impact on workers.

Fortune explained that transparency involves factors such as practices, policies, algorithms, operating data and future plans. It means giving staff members the information they need to develop a deep understanding of what their company stands for and what its objectives are. This, in turn, can foster work pride and inspire innovation, loyalty, independence, positive co-worker dynamics and passion to meet common goals, the source added.

Supervisors who think their company is plenty transparent might want to reconsider. Referring to a recent poll, Forbes magazine noted that 71 percent of employees felt that their managers failed to spend enough time explaining goals and 50 percent said that their organizations were held back by a lack of transparency.

Sharing More information 

One place to start is with employee engagement survey results. Many leaders collect information about their workforce by distributing questionnaires and analyzing the responses, but workers are rarely informed about the results. Sharing this data not only helps create an environment of inclusiveness and teamwork, it also brings staff members on board to help solve some of the problems they identified. Letting them know the enterprise’s strengths is a great idea, too, since it can encourage them to continue doing whatever makes the company strong.

Fortune observed that technology makes it easier for leaders to employ resources like surveys and use them as tools to increase transparency. Rather than merely soliciting feedback, the point is to develop constructive conversations about ways to improve. Welcoming employee ideas and providing avenues for them to contribute to problem-solving initiatives builds a strong business community and enables companies to benefit from the collective wealth of knowledge and brain​ power in their workforces.

As Forbes put it, every organization must determine how much transparency is right for its unique situation, but ignoring transparency completely is most likely a costly error.

(About the Author: David Bator is passionate about programs that move people. As Vice President of Client Strategy at TemboStatus he works with growing companies everyday and helps them bridge the gap between assessing employee engagement and addressing it with action. For the last 15 years David has worked with the leadership of companies large and small to build programs that leverage strategy and technology to deliver extraordinary value for employees, customers and partners.)

To discuss World of Work topics like this with the TalentCulture community, join our online #TChat Events each Wednesday, from 6:30-8pm ET. Everyone is welcome at events, or join our ongoing Twitter and G+ conversation anytime. Learn more…

TalentCulture World of Work was created for HR professionals, leadership executives, and the global workforce. Our community delves into subjects like HR technology, leadership, employee engagement, and corporate culture everyday. To get more World of Work goodness, please sign up for our newsletter, listen to our #TChat Radio Channel or sign up for our RSS feed.

Do you have great content you want to share with us? Become a TalentCulture contributor!

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The Social Workplace: Nowhere To Hide #TChat Recap

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“A lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity.”
–Dalai Lama

Excellent point. But the Dalai Lama’s quote begs a key question: In the social workplace, how much transparency is too much? Moreover, what does “privacy” really mean today, for employees as well as employers?

Obviously, there are no simple answers. And best practices only continue to shift, as social tools and conventions evolve. However, this issue affects everyone in the world of work. So that’s why TalentCulture invited a social-media-savvy HR attorney to help our community explore these issues at this week’s #TChat forums. We were thrilled to welcome Mary Wright, former General Counsel at employment litigation firm Ogletree Deakins, and founding Editor of HR Gazette, a daily online newspaper for HR professionals and employment lawyers. (For event highlights, see the links and Storify slideshow at the end of this post.)

Social Disclosure: Less Is More. Or Is It?

Ubiquitous social media channels. Smartphones with cameras. (Does anyone remember “old school” film cartridges anymore?) Circles of “friends” we’ve never even met face-to-face. It seems like nothing is truly private anymore. Most of us share photos, post comments and tell the world whatever pops into our minds throughout the day. But how does all that activity expose us professionally in unwanted ways? And what are the implications for the organizations we represent?

Here’s the kicker question: In an open social environment, how can companies encourage employees to serve as brand ambassadors, while ensuring that those same individuals use appropriate discretion?

Knowledge Is Power

As many #TChat participants noted this week, the answers start at the top. Senior executives must lead by example and encourage others to follow. Treating employees with candor and respect means that candor and respect will likely be returned. Communicating company objectives and priorities helps employees feel valued and empowered. And clarifying social policies provides a framework that makes it easier for employees to comply. Sharing more information with employees doesn’t need to put employers at risk. Instead, it can create a spirit of collaboration and strengthen employee engagement.

At the same time, employers should respect employee privacy. Again, leading by example is key. Managers should avoid gossip around the office and outside of work. This sounds like common sense, doesn’t it? And yet, I’ve overheard managers openly discussing an employee’s personal hardships, including private medical information. When managers breach that kind of trust, it leaves a memorable impression for everyone involved.

Amplify This? Think Before You Go Social

These days, social media adds another dimension. Employers can no longer afford to operate without documented social media policies. But what should the guiding principle be? Here’s a simple idea from Dave Ryan:

And what is an employee’s responsibility when interpreting social policies? Jen Olney offered sound advice:

https://twitter.com/gingerconsult/status/383017281405853696

Or perhaps for some of us, that sequence should be Stop. Think. Stop some more…and more…and more…then send.

In other words, before posting a comment or photo, consider for a moment who may see that information. How might they perceive it — for better or worse? Ask yourself, “Would I want my grandmother or daughter to see what I am about to make public?” Remember, once you post it, you won’t have control over where it may be seen, or how it will be interpreted. So perhaps the very best policy is for each of us to take responsibility for ourselves, and err on the side of caution.

To see more about this week’s conversation, see the resource links and Storify highlights slideshow below. And if you have ideas, feel free to share a comment, or post in the #TChat stream. This is just the start of an ongoing dialogue — so please weigh-in anytime!

#TChat Week-In-Review: Workplace Privacy vs. Transparency

SAT 9/21:

Mary Wright

Watch the Hangout with Mary Wright now

#TChat Preview: TalentCulture Community Manager Tim McDonald framed the topic in a post that features a brief G+ Hangout video with our guest, Mary Wright. Read the Preview:
“TMI: A Fresh Take On Privacy By An HR Lawyer.”

SUN 9/22:

Forbes.com Post: TalentCulture CEO, Meghan M. Biro outlined 5 issues for business leaders to consider about transparency in today’s social world. Read: “Private Workplace Lives In a Public Social Age.”

MON 9/23:

Related Article: Entrepreneur David Hassell talked about why and how trust is the most precious currency for any new venture. Read: “Want to Build a Business? Lead With Trust.”

TUE 9/24:

Forbes.com Post: TalentCulture CEO, Meghan M. Biro shared compelling leadership lessons learened from a cultural clash at a software company in transition. Read: “5 Social Skills Business Leaders Must Master.”

WED 9/25:

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Listen to the #TChat Radio show now

#TChat Radio: Our hosts, Meghan M. Biro and Kevin W. Grossman spoke with Mary Wright about legal issues and implications surrounding privacy in the workplace — from multiple perspectives: employers, employees and job candidates. Listen to the radio show recording now!

#TChat Twitter: Immediately following the radio show, hundreds of community members gathered with Mary on the #TChat Twitter stream for an expanded discussion about this topic. For highlights from the event, see the Storify slideshow below:

#TChat Highlights: Transparency vs. Privacy In The Workplace

[javascript src=”//storify.com/TalentCulture/tchat-insights-transparency-vs-privacy-in-the-wor.js?template=slideshow”]

Closing Notes & What’s Ahead

GRATITUDE: Thanks again to Mary Wright for adding your insights to this week’s discussion. Your legal and HR expertise added depth and perspective to a topic that increasingly affects us all.

NOTE TO BLOGGERS: Did this week’s events prompt you to write about information sharing in the new era of social business? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Post a link on Twitter (include #TChat or @TalentCulture), or insert a comment below, and we’ll pass it along.

WHAT’S AHEAD: Next week, we tackle another “world of work” hot topic — The Dark Side of Workplace Effectiveness — along with two of the HR community’s best-known social commentators: John Sumser, editor-in-chief of HRExaminer; and William Tincup, CEO of HR consultancy Tincup & Co. So save the date (October 2) for another rockin #TChat double-header.

In the meantime, we’ll see you on the stream!

Image Credit: Pixabay

TMI? Fresh Take on Privacy by an HR Lawyer #TChat Preview

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(Editor’s Note: Want to see complete highlights and resource links from this week’s #TChat events? Read the recap: “The Social Workplace: Nowhere To Hide.”)

For better or worse, much of today’s world of work now plays out on a relatively open, social stage. Many of us — employers, employees and job candidates alike — welcome this as progress. However, it also raises core legal questions about transparency and confidentiality on all sides of the employment equation.

It’s like a scene from Goldilocks and the Three Bears. How do you know if you’re openly exchanging too much information? Too little? Or just the right amount? What business practices are accepted in your organization? What does common sense tell you? And what would a lawyer do?

Fortunately for the TalentCulture community, a smart, HR-savvy attorney is in the #TChat house this week to advise us about these issues!

Our guest expert this week is Mary Wright, former General Counsel of Ogletree Deakins, a premier employment litigation firm, and founding Editor of HR Gazette, a daily online newspaper for HR professionals and employment lawyers.

To kick-off this week’s conversation, I spoke briefly with Mary in a G+ Hangout, where she explained why it’s time to recast “privacy rights” workplace issues in a more positive light:

#TChat Events: Transparency vs. Privacy in the World of Work

This promises to be an enlightening week for HR and recruiting professionals, as well as employees and job seekers everywhere. So join us with your questions, concerns, ideas and opinions!

#TChat Radio — Wed, Sep 25 — 6:30pmET / 3:30pmPT

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Tune-in to the #TChat Radio show

Our hosts, Meghan M. Biro and Kevin W. Grossman talk with Mary Wright about legal issues and implications surrounding privacy in the workplace — from the perspective of employers as well as employees and job candidates. Tune-in to the interview LIVE online, and call-in with your comments and questions!

#TChat Twitter — Wed, Sep 25 — 7pmET / 4pmPT

Immediately following the radio show, we’ll move the discussion to the #TChat Twitter stream, for an open chat with the entire TalentCulture community. Anyone with a Twitter account is invited to participate, as we address these questions:

Q1: What does transparency and privacy in the workplace mean to you?
Q2: Are transparency and privacy essential to orderly and efficient workplaces?
Q3: What are the most common legal mistakes employers and employees make with one another?
Q4: What can business leaders do to balance the two and avoid legal trouble?
Q5: How does technology enable and hinder transparency and privacy in the workplace?

Throughout the week, we’ll keep the discussion going on the #TChat Twitter feed and on our LinkedIn Discussion Group. So please join us share your questions, ideas and opinions.

We’ll see you on the stream!