Bosses Get Busy With Emails on Weekends

One in three employees often gets emails from their boss over the weekend and they are expected to reply, according to a new survey we conducted at Right Management. An additional one-third of the 569 survey respondents also reported getting emails from their boss on the weekend, not often, but just from time to time.

The survey findings are another indication of an increasingly 24/7 workplace. Everybody once thought technology would reduce the drudgery and make the workplace more efficient. Sure, technology has delivered great benefits to employees, but also crosses the boundary between the workplace and the worker’s own private space. It seems one can no longer get away at all from work or responsibility.

We specifically asked if workers were expected to respond to the emails from their boss, so we were not talking about broadcast emails or purely informational communications, but those intended for a particular person and looking for a response. It’s now taken for granted that everyone has to check their work email during the weekend.

Continuous, borderless communications are now a workplace fact of life. I suppose it’s possible weekend emails serve to smooth out the pressures of a Monday morning, but likewise they may become an intrusive nuisance. We know workers are feeling exceptional pressures, and so many weekend emails may be counterproductive.

Managers set clear expectations about what really needs to be addressed over the weekend. And if emails might just as easily wait until Monday, say so. If you don’t have to send an email on the weekend, don’t send it. Create it in draft form and hit ‘send’ on Monday morning. Workers need down time. Weekends should be a time to re-energize. When bosses expect employees to be constantly at attention, you get productivity loss.

Worker Insecurity Could Be Harming Productivity

Despite signs the economy is steadily improving, most employees feel less secure in their jobs compared to a year ago. According to our research as many as 71% of workers reported they are less secure in their job than last year, while 14% feel just as secure and 15% more secure.

This research finding surprised us. We really expected a more optimistic outlook by employees. In fact, we thought most respondents would tell us they were feeling at least as secure as a year ago now that it appears the recession is well past its depth. But it seems it will take more time for people to get over the trauma of the long downturn, and job security is probably the sort of indicator that lags behind any good news.

As further evidence, Manpower’s second quarter Employment Outlook projects that 74% of employers plan no staffing changes. With only 16% of companies expecting to hike hiring, and just 6% foreseeing any staffing decreases, it seems the word just isn’t getting through or that employers have been overly reticent about communicating their staffing plans with their employee base.

Persistent workplace unease can pose challenges for employers. Savvy leaders know that such widespread deep anxiety is no good for the organization in the long run. In order for employees to do their best they need to have a sense they’re valued by their organizations and engaged in a worthwhile pursuit. Top management has to address the job security issue head on, and communicate to workers what their role is in the organization’s future success.

Productivity may suffer when workers are busy with “water cooler” discussions, rumor mills and looking for a new job on your time-clock. The best thing a leader can do to promote security and confidence is to communicate regularly and with authenticity and candor. Most people feel greater confidence when they know they are dealing with the truth.

When was the last time you checked in on how your employees are feeling?

Is Change Interfering With Your Productivity?

Nearly two-thirds of senior executives and human resource professionals say that employees are struggling to focus amidst all the changes at work, according to a recent poll conducted by Right Management. While that may not be completely surprising to you, the larger problem is that they also acknowledge it is seriously impacting productivity levels.

Reacting to change is an emotional roller coaster. The greater the impact of the event and the less welcomed the change is for people, the more dramatic the emotional response will be. The process often includes a time of clinging to the past, followed by a period of apathy or hopelessness, and finally the eventual acceptance and positive movement toward the future. It’s actually a healing process, and individuals differ greatly in how long they move through it and how well.

To accelerate the pace of change implementation and increase the potential of succeeding with the objectives driving the change, you need to build change management capabilities at all organizational levels. Each organizational level – senior leaders, middle managers and staff – needs to learn how to effectively respond to and manage change. But each requires different capabilities, depending on role and amount of control over the process. For instance:

-- Senior leaders need to ensure engagement and alignment. They should encourage input from employees, communicate and keep them informed about the change process, value and act on ideas, follow through on actions, and model appropriate responses to change.

-- Middle managers need to facilitate change and help employees understand the reasons and objectives for the change. Provide direction and support, understand typical responses and cycles of change, guide people through the cycle, and help them to maintain their productivity through the process.

-- Employees need to continue to meet performance objectives during and after a change initiative. Involve them in the process. Ensure they understand the rationale for change, their role in making change work, and what is expected of them. Create strategies to help them overcome natural resistance to change, and show them how to recognize their own styles and reactions to change through assessments, workshops and team meetings.

If you are frustrated with the impact of change on productivity, consider building change management capabilities at all organizational levels. Are your employees struggling to focus and maintain performance levels?

Making Innovation More Than a Buzzword

I read with great interest Ric Merrifield’s blog post where he commented: “My growing fear is that innovation is on course to become the fad of the day in the same way quality was in the 90s.” Far from a “fad”, I believe innovation is core to growth for many businesses and it is not likely to get blown away by the next breezy trend. The foundation to creating innovation in your firm is to develop a culture that supports risk taking. It’s not about fads, trends and buzzwords. It’s about creating an environment that promotes creativity.

Complacency can ruin any good business. Just look at Blockbuster who announced last month they are filing for bankruptcy after not being able to anticipate, adapt and cater to new market and customer demands.

As Fast Company reports, there’s a strong correlation between innovation and failure. One of the worst habits organizations get into is that of not taking any risks. Place the bet on smart people who push the envelope. These are the ones who will help spur innovation. Fostering innovation is about the way you do business as much as who does business with you. Recreate the same uncreative processes, fail to listen to your customers, miss market trends and you’ll have the same uncreative business.

If you value innovation and want to instill it as a cornerstone to success in your organization, then you will need to establish the kind of culture that is conducive to sustainable innovation — one that enables innovation to become part of your company's DNA, rather than being yet another buzzword. Demonstrate to people that ideas are at the heart of what your organization values. Give people room to grow, to explore new ideas; build a strong sense of openness and trust and community; and facilitate the internal mobility of talent. All of this will go a long way to fostering sustainable innovation.

Is innovation a fad or a cornerstone in your organization?

Stressed Out With Change?

According to a recent poll conducted by Right Management, 71% of senior executives and human resource professionals said their jobs are more stressful amid the current demanding and changing business environment. No big surprise, really… who isn’t feeling like this lately?

One of the main triggers of stress is understanding what you can and can’t control. Stress can be a common cause of negativity, driven by a lack of understanding for the business rationale behind change initiatives, the role each employee plays in making the change work, as well as an inability to adapt quickly to changes in the environment. Focusing on the factors you can influence and control helps to develop a more positive and productive response to change.

We’ve conducted research in this area and found that nearly one in three employees don’t adapt well, if at all, to changes at work. More than 9 in 10 employees are disengaged when organizations don’t implement change well. For employees who said leadership managed change effectively, only 40% were disengaged. Improving change effectiveness positively impacts performance. Our studies also identified the top global drivers of effective change management. The number one driver: senior leaders implement effective change. However, our results revealed that less than one in two employees work in organizations where senior leaders are perceived to implement change effectively. And only one in three people believe that the reasons for decisions are fully explained.

What can workers do – at all levels of the organization – to reduce stress and cope more effectively with change? Take a look at the three main pillars that provide the foundation for our ability to adapt to change:

-- Attitude. A feeling or emotion toward something that impacts what we think, feel and do. Attitude is impacted by our openness to change, our ability to embrace it, adapt to it and persevere through change.

-- Self-management. Being able to manage your own emotions and behaviors to increase personal resilience in a range of situations. This is also a pillar in developing strong emotional intelligence. Your ability to control your emotions and the self-confidence that comes as you successfully navigate interactions all contribute to a strong sense of self-management, particularly important during times of change.

-- Relationship management. The ability or willingness to carry out interpersonal interactions in a way that increases the likelihood of beneficial outcomes. Your skill at building relationships, combined with influence, provides you with the ability to build agreement and affect positive change.

In the words of John Wooden: “Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”

Are you stressing over what you can’t control?

Building Virtual Capacity

There’s a technological revolution taking hold across the globe which has the power to change where, when and how we work - enabling organizations to be more agile and innovative. It’s fueling a growth in virtual workers, which is also being supported by many businesses as a way to reduce costs, increase employee engagement and empower individuals to have greater flexibility in how they accomplish work.

According to recent studies, virtual companies - companies that use technology to link a geographically dispersed staff - are showing an increase of 8% to 15% in productivity. Key to that gain in productivity is the virtual company's workforce. As McKinsey reports, boosting productivity of knowledge workers and virtual employees is not a one size fits all approach.

How these workers interact with colleagues plays a large part in their success. We’re moving to a social business model that stresses our ability to communicate and collaborate effectively, not just in personal interactions but also in virtual interactions. Virtual interactions can be tricky – often, there are no visual clues for guidance and it requires a stronger emphasis on good communication and self-management skills. Basically, working virtually requires a different set of behaviors and motivations.

As this pool of mobile talent continues to grow for many organizations, assessments can play a practical role in evaluating whether employees have the right behaviors and are motivated to be successful in working virtually, or identifying gaps that might impede their success. Good assessments will help identify a potential employees’ adaptability, autonomy, decisiveness, dependability, stress tolerance and resourcefulness. In short, whether or not a person will be successful as a virtual worker.

Are you assessing the behaviors needed for your employees to succeed in an increasingly virtual and social working environment?

The Benefits of Impromptu Chitchats

Is the water cooler conversation dead? Maybe so. With many companies today stretched so thin, leaders are expecting people to take on more, expanding their responsibilities and increasing productivity goals. Add to the mix the growing trend of working virtually, office chitchat is on the decline.

However, impromptu chitchat can have real value. As MIT Professor Sandy Pentland reports on the results of a new study proving the benefits, he says: “Individuals who talked to more co-workers were getting through calls faster, felt less stressed and had the same approval ratings as their peers. Informally talking out problems and solutions, it seemed, produced better results than following the employee handbook or obeying managers’ e-mailed instructions.”

Office chitchat is often perceived as unproductive down time. But, in reality, it can lead to innovative problem solving, new ideas, stress relief and collaborative efforts that actually increase both productivity and performance. And it can be fun, too!

Sure, when chitchat is excessive it can lead to frustrations and lowered performance. So, help employees to learn the skills to move on from unproductive conversations. It’s ok to tell someone you’re “on a deadline” or “have a call to join”. However, managers should encourage conversations among team members - and not just email exchanges. An office devoid of personal interaction can create an atmosphere that’s unpleasant, even oppressive. It’s human nature to interact. The relationships that are built out of sharing can go a long way toward building a cohesive team. And, it’s well known that relationships with co-workers are the main reason employee stay with their current employers.

Encourage employees to reach out to one another to help solve problems and create solutions, even if they work virtually. Use technology, such as the telephone, Instant Messaging, wikis and other tools to help them keep engaged with each other. And as the leader, it's important to role model this behavior.

When was the last time you stopped to chitchat?

Why Training Matters to Everyone

When budgets get cut, often training is the first thing to go. In the last three years, training budgets have fallen by 21%. Cutting training can have a devastating impact on the customer service experience. Today, the customer experience – which can be instantaneously broadcast far and wide via social media – is a powerful differentiator.

Without training, frontline employees often find it difficult to make the connection between their roles and the success of the organization. Consider the influence on the customer’s experience when you factor in that only one in three U.S. retail employees have received formal training from their employers, according to a June report from the Sloan Center on Aging & Work at Boston College.

Training may not require significant investments of cash and resources. Training and development have taken on newer and far more cost effective forms without losing the power to change behaviors or acquire new skills. Online courses, scenario-based learning and on-the-job learning applications have all made development more “real time”, reducing “time away from the job” costs associated with more traditional training models. It might be more of an issue of coaching managers to regularly engage employees in discussions to keep them informed about the business strategy so they understand how they play a part in the company’s success. Whatever the method used, solicit employee feedback and opinions for improvements so they can make meaningful contributions. And empower them to implement their own solutions.

A classic example of great training reported in a recent BNET article comes from CitiStorage. One of the key stakeholders in the business argued that it wasn’t just customer service representatives who should be trained; everyone should. This wasn’t a trivial suggestion. Taking every employee out for three days is expensive – never mind the cost of the trainer. But, argued the stakeholder, isn’t customer service everyone’s business?

The acid test was this: CitiStorage’s customers got the impression that the company had taken on more staff. But of course they hadn’t. They were just getting more involvement, commitment and creativity from the staff they already had.

Can you afford to cut training and potentially taint the experience your customers receive from your “directors of first impressions”?

Is the Lunch Break a Relic?

Has the true lunch break become the exception rather than the rule? Fewer than half of employees take a break from work for lunch during their day, according to a new poll by our research team at Right Management. As Anne Fisher writes in a recent Fortune post: “It's a sad day when leaving your desk for 30 minutes can make you fear being branded a slacker, but welcome to the post-recession world.”

We know employees are under a great deal of pressure. Workloads have increased for most employees and many are logging longer hours. But skipping lunch or being reluctant even to step away from the desk is not a good way to deal with the added pressure. On the contrary, taking a break to have lunch may go a long way toward relieving stress, boosting energy, promoting creativity and improving morale.

However, at some companies there is an unwritten expectation that everyone works through lunch. In conversations with employees at various companies, they’ve spoken about the need to apologize for stepping out. This kind of culture isn’t the way to heighten performance and engagement.

If your employees aren’t taking a lunch break, consider encouraging the practice – it’s about quality of life and quality of work. Just 30 to 60 minutes of free time can feel like a mini-vacation – and employees return refreshed, with new ideas, a clear head and probably a healthier, more positive attitude. Be sure to support them and lead the way by taking lunch yourself. And take time to talk with employees to see if individuals are struggling to manage their workloads. Review priorities and deadlines if workers feel they can’t take a break. An oppressive atmosphere where no one feels they can leave their desk is not one that leads to a satisfied, productive and loyal workforce.

Are you giving your employees a break?

Take a break...and get a productivity boost

The sad reality is that most of us senior leaders don’t take all of our allotted vacation time each year. And if we do take a break, we remain plugged in to the 24/7 service culture we have helped to create. We remain completely accessible to any and all who want us. As leaders, what we need to understand for ourselves and also impart to our employees is that no one is bigger than the company. If you can’t leave work for a few days or a week, then there is a serious problem that will result in an unsustainable situation.

There are tremendous benefits to taking a break. I’m not going to focus here on the obvious benefits of being refreshed and recharged. I’m talking about the value to your team and your co-workers. Believe it or not, taking a vacation and being out of reach can actually boost productivity. You give your team a break from worrying about all the things you throw in their way when they are trying to get their work done. You also give them the chance to shine and be more visible by stepping up and taking on some of the responsibilities you need covered. It’s also a great way to develop people and expand their experience. But the trick is to not undo all they did while you were out, just because they did it differently.

Still in doubt? Read this terrific article on 10 Reasons to Go on Vacation for further inspiration.

As a senior leader, no one expects these days that you will completely disconnect while you are away. Technology is driving around-the-clock work cultures. The traditional work and play boundaries are blurred. Empower your people by letting them know you are “leaving it in their hands.” Use the opportunity to grow your team.

When is your next vacation planned?

Why you should do a gap analysis before a restructuring

Employees are reporting that their workloads have increased due to restructuring at their company, according to research from Right Management. What’s less clear, however, is whether employees have the necessary skills to take over the work of laid-off colleagues.

According to the research, 79% of employees feel their workloads are heavier. The feeling is especially acute at large organizations, where 68% of employees believe their work demands have grown “a lot”. Right Management analyzed responses from more than 800 people throughout North America.

How can organizations make sure that remaining employees can handle their new responsibilities? The answer is first to conduct a gap analysis of work requirements to understand what holes need to be filled and pinpoint the best individuals on staff to fill those gaps. Once that’s determined, the logical response might mean anything from reassigning roles and developing internal competencies to bringing in contingent workers or consultants or simply eliminating the work. Managers also will need to discuss with employees what changes they can expect in their roles and responsibilities and how their work contributes to the goals of the organization, as well as helping to prioritize assignments.

The bottom line: By doing a gap analysis, companies can establish a better alignment between talent and business strategy. And by providing employees with the guidance and training they need, organizations can ensure that employees are set up to succeed.

Do you know Pat Tangent?

I’d like to introduce you to Pat Tangent. You may already know Pat. Pat likely works just down the hall from you. Pat Tangent is a furious multitasker whose lack of focus on any single thing for any length of time sends Pat off in various directions at a constant and frenetic pace. The result: hard to know. Is Pat’s ability to multitask beneficial or detrimental to performance? The answer is vital for leaders to understand!!

As T+D reports, 75% of people believe they multitask at work. Further research cited in The New York Times found that the consumption of media (such as email and TV) has exploded – adding to the gravitation away from being able to focus on one task at a time. These days people consume three times as much information each day as they did 50 years ago. They are constantly shifting their attention. Computer users at work change windows or check email or other programs nearly 37 times an hour.

Being able to complete one task quickly and then move onto the next item is a result of heightened concentration, not superior intellect. (Play a game testing how well you switch between tasks.)

It takes a mix of skills to get it right. Some people have a natural tendency toward, high need for and find satisfaction in great task variety. While others are just the opposite. Knowing who has a preference for each condition can really help employers to hire and develop the right people for the roles that demand a lot of variety and for those that don’t. This is the value of using assessments. Placing a high task variety person in a low task variety role can have detrimental effects on productivity and performance. The reverse is also true. Either mismatch can result in frustration by the individual and low engagement.

Utilize assessments to hire for the right mix so the Pat Tangents of the world (and Pat’s polar opposites) can thrive and deliver.