The Power of HR Mentorship: A Two-Way Street
A workplace mentorship can impact the way afflictions, ordeals, and even the achievements are handled throughout different situations. As HR professionals learn how to handle situations, it's important for them to have someone to look up to and to go to when they are struggling. Continue reading this blog post to learn more about the importance of having a workplace mentor.
Professional mentorship can take many forms and can have long-lasting impacts on our career successes, trials and tribulations. Regardless of the role we play in an organization, we can and should play a role in mentoring. Each of us should have a mentor and serve as a mentor to others. It's a powerful relationship.
In my journey as an HR consultant over the past four and a half years, I have had the unique opportunity to develop, rebuild or totally change HR departments for various clients, and mentoring has been involved in these transformations. From mentoring other HR professionals and seeking guidance from my own mentors, here are some of the lessons I have learned.
The big picture (and other metaphors).
- Experience—our own and how we can benefit from other people's—is valuable throughout our careers and lives. Understanding the big picture will ensure that we are setting up an organization and HR department for success. To drive a successful mentorship program, knock down silos and utilize talent from other departments. Envision a chess match: What moves and strategies do you need to put in place for both organization and individual to succeed? Do not fear receiving or providing feedback. To truly know the needs of the organization, think outside the HR box. Utilize the SHRM competencies of Communication, Relationship Management, Critical Evaluation and HR Expertise to recognize and maneuver within the ever-evolving big picture.
- Recipes for success. An organization rarely asks for an HR consultant if things are running smoothly; normally we get a call if there is a problem. My consulting assignments usually involve change management and culture change. To ensure that the process is successful, the right people need to be in the right seats. I'm very selective when I recruit, hire and build an HR team. For these professionals to succeed, they need to be provided with training, support and mentorship. This includes continuous feedback on performance; ongoing (weekly, if not daily) communication; training, education and certification; accepting mistakes; and learning from one another. As a result of the change I implemented for one client organization, its HR professionals became certified and some are pursuing master's degrees. The SHRM competencies of Business Acumen, Relationship Management, HR Expertise and Communication are ingredients in the secret sauce in the recipe for success.
- Relationship transformation. As professionals grow, so must their mentoring relationships, so learn to recognize when the relationship needs to evolve. Over time it can become more of a friendship or a partnership, or even a reverse mentorship. Emotional intelligence and mutual respect for one another will guide you through this transformation. In my experience, taking a less hands-on approach provides flexibility and empowerment. Create metrics that will summarize how mentoring relationships have contributed to the evolutions in your workplace. Use all of the SHRM competencies to ensure mentorship success.
Mentorship is a two-way street; it requires buy-in and communication from both parties. These relationships can and do have tremendous impacts throughout someone's life, both in and outside the workplace. I rely on a network of mentors for advice on many things and have seen mentorships turn into lifelong friendships. Recognize mentorship opportunities and continue to build on them.
SOURCE: Burr, M. (13 February 2020) "The Power of HR Mentorship: A Two-Way Street" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/behavioral-competencies/pages/the-power-of-hr-mentorship-a-two-way-street.aspx
How to Manage Intergenerational Conflict in the Workplace
With there being at least four generations working together in the workplace, there can be multiple multi-generational conflicts that come into fruition. Although the success of a company should be the common goal for the workforce, it can be difficult to manage the conflict between each of the generations that are a part of the same organization. Read this blog post to learn about how to handle conflicts between multiple generations in the workplace.
When Brian Formato began working as an HR manager for Golden Books, the editorial staffers of the now-defunct publisher of children's books were mostly in their late 50s or early 60s and had been with the company for 25 years or longer.
After the company was purchased, it added more than 200 new jobs in one year, with most new hires being recent college grads. The new generation of employees brought fresh ideas but were also far more focused on immediate gratification than long-term success, Formato said. As a result, many veteran employees took early retirement because they couldn't stand by and watch the company they had devoted their careers to change so drastically overnight.
"What was left was a group of high-energy amateurs that lacked the industry knowledge, as well as the discipline, to negotiate attractive deals with the writers," Formato said. Revenues soon fell. "After more than 50 years in business, the company was forced into bankruptcy."
While this may sound like a typical clash between Millennials and Baby Boomers, it's noteworthy that this happened before Millennials were in the workforce and when most Boomers were in their 40s. However, it does highlight the perennial clash that occurs—in every generation—between newcomers with fresh perspectives and more-experienced elders.
There are at least four generations now in the workplace: Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials and Generation Z. Managing a multigenerational workforce with so many different perspectives, experiences, values and goals poses a unique organizational challenge for company leaders, managers and HR professionals. However, "generational differences" aren't always the real issue.
"Companies invest millions of dollars in training and development because of their beliefs about generational differences," said Jennifer C. Deal, a senior research scientist at the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, N.C., and co-author of What Millennials Want from Work: How to Maximize Engagement in Today's Workforce (McGraw-Hill Education, 2015). "They do it because they believe it's true, even though the evidence doesn't support those beliefs."
Deal believes that life stage and position are better predictors of behavior than the generation a person was born into. "Most intergenerational conflicts are fundamentally about power or clout," she said. "A young person who wants more clout wants to be noticed. They have new ideas that aren't being listened to. An older person wants their experience to be recognized and appreciated. Everyone wants to be heard and respected."
We need to be careful about generational research because it puts people in a box, said Val Grubb, author of Clash of the Generations: Managing the New Workplace Reality (Wiley, 2016) and CEO of Val Grubb and Associates in New Orleans. "The key to understanding someone's behavior is to look at the individual, and the best way to find out how to motivate and engage is to ask them what matters to them."
Establishing Norms for Working Together
Haydn Shaw still finds value in traditional generational research, as long as it does not lead to stereotyping.
"Statistical generalizations are an aid to conversation, not a substitute for it. When it comes to understanding another person, nothing replaces conversation," said Shaw, author of Sticking Points: How to Get 4 Generations Working Together in the 12 Places They Come Apart (Tyndale Momentum, 2013). "The greatest fear in my work is that people will try to shortcut by using the categories rather than the conversations."
To stimulate productive conversations, Shaw has identified numerous "sticking points" where generational differences tend to emerge, particularly around the use of technology, communication, feedback, time management, work/life balance and organizational structure. Managers need to start conversations at those points so they can better understand the situation.
In Tammy Erickson's experience, misunderstandings about time and place are common among team members from different generations.
"Older generations tend to be more linear and traditional, while younger generations are looser and more spontaneous around time and place," said Erickson, CEO of Boston-based consulting firm Tammy Erickson Associates. To resolve those differences, she recommends that managers determine which norms work best for the team based on collective preferences and the work that needs to be accomplished.
Preferences around the use of technology is another potential sticking point. Generally, older employees tend to prefer e-mail, while younger employees prefer texting. While preferences matter, experts say the needs and goals of the team as a whole should take priority over any individual preference.
According to research conducted by Kathryn Bartol, a professor of leadership and innovation at the University of Maryland, College Park, communication among team members improves significantly when teams match the technology to the task. While text-based media is generally more useful for sharing daily information, for example, video chats and telephone conversations are better for brainstorming, problem-solving and relationship-building.
Shaw has developed a five-part process to help resolve these differences:
- Acknowledge. Talk about generational differences. "You can't solve a problem if you don't acknowledge it exists."
- Appreciate. Focus on the "why," not the "what," and the common needs. "The 'what' divides us. The 'why' is a uniter."
- Flex. Agree on how to accommodate different approaches.
- Leverage. Maximize the strengths of each generation. For example, if an organization decides to use the messaging platform Slack as a communication tool, there will inevitably be people who are uncomfortable with a technology they don't recognize or understand. A manager or leader can recruit an older team member who is comfortable and experienced in using this technology to coach, train and mentor the novice Slack users.
- Resolve. Determine which option will yield the best results if flexing isn't enough.
Dismantling Stereotypes One Relationship at a Time
"Stereotyping is a symptom of discrimination. It's important to treat people equally but not necessarily the same," Formato said. "Self-awareness is the key to effectively managing generational differences. Managers must be in touch with their own beliefs, values and work attitudes and understand that these may be different from the people they manage."
Managers and leaders need that self-awareness to make sure their own biases are not skewing how work is distributed. "Subtle things that leaders do can undercut respect for diversity of age," Grub said. "Who do you give plum assignments to? Do you automatically assign younger employees to technology because you assume older employees can't handle it? These biases stifle enthusiasm and innovation."
In an Addison Group study of 1,000 workers representing multiple generations, 90 percent reported satisfaction with the diversity of age ranges in their workplace. However, the study also found that 35 percent feel their company's culture and processes favor one generation over others. Forty-five percent of respondents feel their employers are biased toward Millennials.
Rather than prefer one generation over another, organizations need to develop and recognize the unique value of each individual, as well as the synergy that can be created between people with different experiences and perspectives.
Formato encourages companies to use appreciative inquiry to advance that goal. Appreciative inquiry focuses on strengths rather than weaknesses by recognizing that people with different perspectives and experiences and at different life stages are all able to work collaboratively.
The leader can also help team members build positive relationships by encouraging them to get to know each other better. Volunteer programs often promote this kind of camaraderie, as do team-building exercises.
Formato uses Patrick Lencioni's personal histories activity to help team members build trust and find common ground. Each person on a team prepares a slide with photos and answers these three questions:
- Where did you grow up?
- How many siblings do you have, and where do you fall in that order?
- Describe a unique or interesting challenge or experience that shaped who you are.
"This activity always brings a team closer together," Formato said. "People find common experiences, and they get to know the whole person."
This can happen spontaneously as well. When the president of a small New York City foundation asked his employees to share stories about their sports activities in high school, he was delighted to learn that there was a high school fencer on his team. What he didn't anticipate is how the younger women (most of whom were administrative staff) would end up bonding with a much older female executive when she lamented how, in a pre-Title IX era, there weren't a lot of sports teams for women. This led to an equally interesting conversation about life lessons learned through team sports and other team activities.
Although the president started the conversation as an icebreaker, he opened the door to a deeper discussion about what it means to be a member of a team and how each person's personal history informs his or her participation as a team member.
Uniting Around a Common Purpose
When team members rally around a common vision, purpose or goal, there is often a greater sense of unity that, in turn, translates into a better customer experience.
When Formato first began working with a small software-as-a-service company in Santa Clara, Calif., the CEO and senior leadership wanted him to help the team become more closely aligned. One of his first efforts to do so was to ask the team, "What does this company do better, special or different?"
The answers were not well-aligned. After diving deeper into their successes, they discovered that while the software solution was important, what they were really selling was their knowledge and ability to manage relationships.
"They build trust with their clients and are truly focused on customer success," Formato said. He describes this as their "groove" and emphasizes that, as they scale, they must keep their focus on the customer experience. It's a reminder that, as the company continues to grow, customer retention will still be as important as new-customer acquisition.
Although each member of the team has personal strengths, weaknesses and preferences, what unites them all is striving toward a common purpose and set of goals.
"It's up to the leader to make sure they are leveraging their strengths and working together as a team," Formato said.
SOURCE: Hirsch, A. (05 February 2020) "How to Manage Intergenerational Conflict in the Workplace" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.shrm.org/ResourcesAndTools/hr-topics/employee-relations/Pages/How-to-Manage-Intergenerational-Conflict-in-the-Workplace.aspx
How to Leave Work at Work
Bringing work home after a workday is a common factor that disrupts family time, and even causes more mental stress. In order to maintain a work-life balance, it's important to know that there is a way to leave your work life, at work. Read this blog post to learn simple tips on how to keep a healthy balance between work and home-life.
Some jobs have very clear lines between when you’re “on” and when you’re “off,” while in others the lines are blurred — or potentially nonexistent. That makes not being distracted by work, especially mentally, a major challenge.
This can lead to sitting at dinner while your daughter tells a story about her day, but instead of hearing her you’re wondering whether an email from your boss came through. It can mean exchanging the time you could have spent on sleep, exercise, or talking with your spouse glued to your laptop. And it can look like keeping your work life in order, while your finances or home are a mess because you don’t take time to pay bills, plan for retirement, or tidy up.
As I shared in my article on boundaries, what is possible can vary depending on your particular job, work culture, and coworkers. But in most cases, you can reduce how distracted you feel by work during times when you’re not working.
As a time management coach, I’ve found these four steps can help. I encourage you to challenge yourself to gradually implement these changes and see how much you can leave your work at work — both physically and mentally — in 2020.
Step 1: Define “After Hours”
If you have a traditional 9-to-5 job, your hours are set for you. But if you work in an environment with flexible hours, you’ll need to think through when you want to be on and off the clock. If your employer has a certain number of hours that you’re expected to work each week, start by seeing how to fit those hours around your fixed personal commitments, like taking your kids to school or extracurricular activities, making a certain train, or attending an exercise class you really enjoy. When do you need to start and stop to put in the proper work time?
On the other hand, if your company doesn’t have a specific amount of time that you need to work — say, you freelance or have a results-only work environment — but your job still takes over almost all of your waking hours, take the reverse approach. Think through how many hours you want for activities like sleep, exercise, family, friends, cleaning, finances, etc. Then see how much time you need to reserve on a daily and weekly basis to fit in those personal priorities. That then defines the parameters of when you want to be “off hours.”
Step 2: Have Mental Clarity
Next, make sure you have mental clarity on what needs to get done and when you will complete it. This includes having a place where you write down the many tasks that you need to do, whether that’s in a notebook, a task management app, a project management system, or in your calendar. The important point is that you’re not lying in bed at night trying to remember everything on your mental to-do list.
Then once you have this list, plan out your work. That could mean setting aside time in your schedule to work on a report in advance, putting time in your calendar to prep for your next day’s meetings, or just plotting out specific hours that you will reserve for getting your own work done versus attending meetings or responding to other people’s requests. This planning reduces anxiety that something will fall through the cracks or that you’ll miss a deadline.
The final part of increasing your mental clarity is to have an end-of-workday wrap-up. During this time, look over your daily to-do list and calendar to make sure that everything that absolutely must get done — specifically, those tasks that had a hard deadline — were completed. You also can do a quick scan of your email to ensure any urgent messages are attended to before you leave the office. For some people, it works well to do this as the last thing they do that day, say 15 to 30 minutes before heading out. For others, it’s better to put a reminder in their calendars for an hour or two before they need to leave. This gives them a more generous time period to wrap items up.
Step 3: Communicate with Your Colleagues
In some job situations, you can set a definite after-hours boundary like, after 6 pm, I’m offline. But in other situations, the lines are much blurrier.
For those in situations where you can have a clear dividing line between work and home, I would encourage you to directly communicate that with your colleagues. For example, you might say, “I typically leave work at 6 pm, so if you contact me after that time, you can expect to hear back from me sometime after 9 am the next business day.” Or in some cases your actions can simply set that tone. If they never hear from you between 6 pm and 9 am, that will set the expectation that you’re not available.
But for others, who have jobs that require more constant connectivity, you may want to set some guidelines to control how people reach you, thereby reducing unwanted interruptions. For example, you could say, “It’s fine to text me during the day with questions, but after 6 pm, please send me an email instead of a text unless the situation is truly urgent.” Similarly, if you have a very flexible schedule where you take extended breaks during the day for things like going to the gym or picking your kids up after school, encourage people to reach out to you in specific, preferred ways that you establish. For instance, “There are some times during the day when I may be away from my computer. If you need a fast response, call or text me.” In these scenarios, you’ll know that only the most important work will take you away from your personal or family obligations via an urgent call or text, and you can turn your attention to non-urgent work once you have the bandwidth.
Step 4: Get Work Done at Work
It may seem crazy to say this, but I want to encourage you to give yourself permission to do work at work. For many, they perceive “real work” as something they reserve for post-5 or 6 pm, after everyone else has left the office or for after they’ve tucked their kids in bed for the night. People have this mindset because this time can seem like the few precious hours where no one is dropping by your office or asking you for anything immediately. But if you want to stop feeling distracted by work after hours, you need to actually do your work during the day.
Completing the actions under the mental clarity step will take you a long way forward in that process. Really guard your time. Put in time for project work. Place time in your calendar to answer email. And if follow-through requires going to a place other than your office to work, do it. Make and keep meetings with yourself to knock off tasks. It’s exceptionally difficult — if not impossible — to not be distracted about work when you’re stressed out because you haven’t gotten your work done.
And if you must (or want to) do some work outside of your standard day, make sure that you timebox it. For example, I will work from 8-9 pm tonight then stop. Or, I’ll put in three hours on Saturday from 1-4 pm, but then I won’t think about work before or after. It’s much better to designate a time and stick with it than it is to think about work all night or all weekend and do nothing.
As individuals, we need a mental break to do our best work, and taking time for ourselves — without the distraction of work — can help us become our best selves. I can’t guarantee that thoughts about work will never cross your mind, but with these four steps, you can reduce how much you’re distracted by work after hours.
SOURCE: Saunders, E. (03 February 2020) "How to Leave Work at Work" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2020/02/how-to-leave-work-at-work
The New Analytics of Workplace Culture
Workplace cultures vary significantly depending on the workplace itself. With new technology and various ways to analyze employees' viewpoints on their workplaces' culture, new ways are being implemented to analyze and measure cultures around different businesses. Read this blog post to learn more about different methods to process employees' thoughts behind their workplace culture.
A business's culture can catalyze or undermine success. Yet the tools available for measuring it—namely, employee surveys and questionnaires—have significant shortcomings. Employee self-reports are often unreliable. The values and beliefs that people say are important to them, for example, are often not reflected in how they actually behave. Moreover, surveys provide static, or at best episodic, snapshots of organizations that are constantly evolving. And they're limited by researchers' tendency to assume that distinctive and idiosyncratic cultures can be neatly categorized into a few common types.
Our research focuses on a new method for assessing and measuring organizational culture. We used big-data processing to mine the ubiquitous "digital traces" of culture in electronic communications, such as emails, Slack messages and Glassdoor reviews. By studying the language employees use in these communications, we can measure how culture actually influences their thoughts and behavior at work.
In one study, two of us partnered with a midsize technology company to assess the degree of cultural fit between employees and their colleagues on the basis of similarity of linguistic style expressed in internal email messages. In a separate study, two of us analyzed the content of Slack messages exchanged among members of nearly 120 software development teams. We examined the diversity of thoughts, ideas and meaning expressed by team members and then measured whether it was beneficial or detrimental to team performance. We also partnered with employer-review website Glassdoor to analyze how employees talk about their organizations' culture in anonymous reviews to examine the effects of cultural diversity on organizational efficiency and innovation.
The explosion of digital trace data such as emails and Slack communications—together with the availability of computational methods that are faster, cheaper and easier to use—has ushered in a new scientific approach to measuring culture. Our computational-lingustics approach is challenging prevailing assumptions in the field of people analytics and revealing novel insights about how managers can harness culture as a strategic resource. We believe that with appropriate measures to safeguard employee privacy and minimize algorithmic bias it holds great promise as a tool for managers grappling with culture issues in their firms.
The Studies
Our recent studies have focused on cultural fit versus adaptability, the pros and cons of fitting in, cognitive diversity and the effects of diversity on organizational performance. Let's look at each in detail.
Fit versus adaptability. When managers think about hiring for cultural fit, they focus almost exclusively on whether candidates reflect the values, norms and behaviors of the team or organization as it currently exists. They often fail to consider cultural adaptability—the ability to rapidly learn and conform to organizational cultural norms as they change over time. In a recent study two of us conducted with Stanford's V. Govind Manian and Christopher Potts, we analyzed how cultural fit and cultural adaptability affected individual performance at a high-tech company by comparing linguistic styles expressed in more than 10 million internal email messages exchanged over five years among 601 employees. For example, we looked at the extent to which an employee used swear words when communicating with colleagues who themselves cursed frequently or used personal pronouns ("we" or "I") that matched those used by her peer group. We also tracked how employees adapted to their peers' cultural conventions over time.
We found, as expected, that a high level of cultural fit led to more promotions, more-favorable performance evaluations, higher bonuses and fewer involuntary departures. Cultural adaptability, however, turned out to be even more important for success. Employees who could quickly adapt to cultural norms as they changed over time were more successful than employees who exhibited high cultural fit when first hired. These cultural "adapters" were better able to maintain fit when cultural norms changed or evolved, which is common in organizations operating in fast-moving, dynamic environments.
These results suggest that the process of cultural alignment does not end at the point of hire. Indeed, our study also found that employees followed distinct enculturation trajectories—at certain times in their tenure demonstrating more cultural fit with colleagues and at other times less. Most eventually adapted to the behavioral norms of their peers, and those who stayed at their company exhibited increasing cultural fit over time. Employees who were eventually terminated were those who had been unable to adapt to the culture. Employees who left voluntarily were the most fascinating: They quickly adapted culturally early in their tenures but drifted out of step later on and were likely to leave the firm once they became cultural outsiders.
To further assess how cultural fit and adaptability affect performance, Berkeley's Jennifer Chatman and Richard Lu and two of us surveyed employees at the same high-tech company to measure value congruence (the extent to which employees' core values and beliefs about a desirable workplace fit with their peers) and perceptual congruence (how well employees can read the "cultural code" by accurately reporting the values held by peers). We found that value congruence is predictive of retention—employees with it are less likely to voluntarily leave the company—but is unrelated to job performance. We found that the opposite is true of perceptual congruence: It is predictive of higher job performance but unrelated to retention. These results suggest that companies striving to foster a stable and committed workforce should focus on hiring candidates who share similar values with current employees. Employers needing people who can quickly assimilate and be productive should pay greater attention to candidates who demonstrate the ability to adapt to new cultural contexts.
The benefits of not fitting in. When might it better to hire a cultural misfit? People who see the world differently and have diverse ideas and perspectives often bring creativity and innovation to an organization. But because of their outsider status, they may struggle to have their ideas recognized by colleagues as legitimate. In a recent study two of us conducted with V. Govind Manian, Christopher Potts, and William Monroe, we compared employees' levels of cultural fit with the extent to which they served as a bridge between otherwise disconnected groups in the firm's internal communication network. For instance, an employee might have connections with colleagues that bridge both the engineering and sales departments, allowing her to access and pass on a greater variety of information and ideas.
Consistent with prior work, we found that cultural fit was, on average, positively associated with career success. The benefits of fitting in culturally were especially great for individuals who served as network bridges. When traversing the boundary between engineering and sales, for example, they could hold their own in technical banter with the former and in customer-oriented discourse with the latter. People who attempted to span boundaries but could not display cultural ambidexterity were especially penalized: They were seen as both cultural outsiders and social outsiders without clear membership in any particular social clique. However, we also identified a set of individuals who benefited from being cultural misfits: those who did not have networks spanning disparate groups but instead had strong connections within a defined social clique. By building trusting social bonds with colleagues, they were able to overcome their outsider status and leverage their distinctiveness. These results suggest that an effective hiring strategy should strive for a portfolio of both conformists—or at least those who can rapidly adapt to a company's changing culture—and cultural misfits.
Cognitive diversity. Proponents of cultural diversity in teams presume that it leads to cognitive diversity; that is, diversity in thoughts and ideas. But the findings about whether cognitive diversity helps or hinders team performance are inconclusive. Part of the problem is that these studies use imperfect proxies for cognitive diversity, such as diversity in demographics, personalities or self-reported beliefs and values. Moreover, this line of research has rarely looked at how diversity is actually expressed in communications and interactions, which is problematic given that team members are sometimes reluctant to share their real feelings and opinions. Finally, cognitive diversity is often assumed to be static, even though we know team dynamics frequently change over a project's life cycle.
In a new study, which two of us conducted with Stanford researchers Katharina Lix and Melissa Valentine, we overcame these challenges by analyzing the content of Slack messages exchanged among team members of 117 remote software-development teams. We identified instances when team members discussing similar topics used diverse meanings, perspectives and styles, and then analyzed the impact of that diversity on performance. For example, in discussions of customer requirements, different interpretations of the desired look and feel of the user interface in some cases led developers to talk past one another and fail to coordinate, but in other cases sparked creative new ideas.
Our results indicate that the performance consequences of cognitive diversity vary as a function of project milestone stages. In the early stages, when the team is defining the problem at hand, diversity lowers the chances of successfully meeting milestones. During middle stages, when the team is most likely to be engaged in ideation, diversity increases the likelihood of team success. Diversity becomes an obstacle again toward the end of a project, when the team is deep into execution.
Cultural diversity and the organization as a whole. We've seen that there are trade-offs associated with diversity in teams, but how does it affect the performance of entire organizations? Conventional wisdom holds that firms must choose between a homogeneous, efficient culture and a diverse, innovative culture. A homogeneous culture improves efficiency and coordination, the theory goes, because employees agree about the norms and beliefs guiding work, but the benefits come at the expense of fewer novel ideas about how to accomplish tasks. In contrast, a heterogeneous culture sacrifices the benefits of consensus in favor of healthy disagreement among employees that can promote adaptability and innovation. The evidence supporting this thinking, however, is scant and inconclusive.
In a recent study, we analyzed the language that employees used when describing their organization's culture (for example, "our culture is collaborative," "our culture is entrepreneurial," and so on) in anonymous reviews of nearly 500 publicly traded companies on Glassdoor. We first measured the level of interpersonal cultural diversity, or disagreement among employees about the norms and beliefs characterizing the organization. We found that interpersonal cultural diversity makes it difficult for employees to coordinate with one another and reduces the organization's efficiency as measured by return on assets.
We then measured the organizations' level of intrapersonal cultural diversity. Those with high intrapersonal cultural diversity had employees with a large number of cultural ideas and beliefs about how to accomplish tasks within the company (measured as the average number of cultural topics that employees discussed in their Glassdoor reviews). For instance, employees at Netflix conceptualized the work culture in terms of autonomy, responsibility, collaboration and intense internal competition. We found that organizations with greater intrapersonal cultural diversity had higher market valuations and produced more and higher-quality intellectual property via patenting, evidence that their employees' diverse ideas about how to do work led them to be more creative and innovative.
This suggests that organizations may be able to resolve the assumed trade-off between efficiency and innovation by encouraging diverse cultural ideas while fostering agreement among employees about the importance of a common set of organizational norms and beliefs. Again, consider Netflix: Although "multicultural" employees contributed to the company's diverse culture and drove innovation, the culture was nonetheless anchored by core shared beliefs, such as the importance of radical transparency and accountability, which help employees coordinate and work efficiently.
Implications for Practice
How can these findings inform leaders' understanding of culture as a tool for improving the performance of employees, teams and the broader organization?
First, managers can increase retention by hiring candidates whose core values and beliefs about a desirable workplace align well with those of current employees. However, too much emphasis on cultural fit can stifle diversity and cause managers to overlook promising candidates with unique perspectives. Hiring managers should look for candidates who demonstrate cultural adaptability, as these employees may be better able to adjust to the inevitable cultural changes that occur as organizations navigate increasingly dynamic markets and an evolving workforce.
Hiring managers should also not overlook cultural misfits. They can be wellsprings of creativity and innovation. But to make sure they flourish inside the organization, managers should consider assigning them to roles in which they are likely to develop strong connections within particular social groups. That's because misfits need the trust and support of colleagues to be seen as quirky innovators rather than outlandish outsiders.
Second, leaders should be mindful that the expression of diverse perspectives in teams needs to be managed. Cognitive diversity is essential for generating novel, innovative solutions to complex problems, especially during the planning and ideation phases of a project. However, the expression of diverse perspectives can quickly become a liability when the team needs to focus on execution and meet looming deadlines. It is during these times that team members have to unify around a common interpretation of the problem and come to agreement about what needs to get done to solve it. Leaders must be adept at switching back and forth, learning when and how to promote the expression of divergent opinions and meanings and when to create a context for convergence.
An important distinction is warranted here. The term "diversity" is often used to connote variation in the demographic makeup of a firm's workforce. This has been particularly the case in recent years, as companies have tackled pernicious problems such as the underrepresentation of women and minorities in decision-making positions in organizations. In our work, we use "cultural diversity" to refer to variation in people's beliefs and normative expectations, irrespective of their demographic composition. As we pointed out earlier, demographic and cultural diversity are related, but a demographically homogenous group may be culturally diverse, and vice versa. Our research on cultural diversity is relevant to but ultimately independent of efforts to increase gender, race and ethnic diversity in firms.
Third, leaders should foster a culture that is diverse yet consensual in order to promote both innovation and efficiency. Such a culture is composed of multicultural employees who each subscribe to a variety of norms and beliefs about how to do work. These diverse ideas help employees excel at complex tasks, such as dreaming up the next groundbreaking innovation. Managers should encourage employees to experiment with different ways of working—extensive collaboration for some tasks, for example, and intense competition for others. At the same time, a culture should also be consensual in that employees agree on a common set of cultural norms—shared understandings—that helps them successfully coordinate with one another. Leaders can signal the importance of these norms during onboarding and in everyday interactions, just as leaders at Netflix do by rewarding employees for sharing their mistakes with colleagues in order to promote beliefs about the value of transparency.
A New Management Tool
Many of the tools we used in these studies are off-the-shelf products, and there is great potential for managers to use them to help solve practical challenges inside organizations. For instance, Stanford Ph.D. candidate Anjali Bhatt is working with two of us to demonstrate how language-based culture measures can be used to anticipate the pain points of post-merger integration. We are studying the merger of three retail banks, and analysis of emails has revealed stark differences in the rates of cultural assimilation among individuals. Such tools can be used diagnostically to assess the cultural alignment between firms during premerger due diligence, as well as prescriptively during integration to identify where and how to focus managerial interventions.
Yet the accessibility of these tools also raises important ethical concerns. In our work, we maintain strict employee confidentiality, meaning that neither we nor the organization is able to link any employee to any specific communication used in our studies. We also strongly advise against using these tools to select, reward or punish individual employees and teams, for at least four reasons: Accurately predicting individual and team performance is considerably more challenging than estimating average effects for broad types of individuals and teams; culture is only one of many factors influencing individual and team performance in organizations; algorithmic predictions often create a false sense of certainty in managers; and finally, giving any algorithm undue weight can have unintended consequences—for instance, exacerbating human biases that negatively affect women and members of underrepresented social groups.
Algorithms make estimates, but it is ultimately humans' responsibility to make informed judgments using them. Managers must be vigilant about keeping metadata anonymous and must regularly audit algorithmic decision-making for bias to ensure that the use of language-based tools does not have unintended adverse consequences on culture itself—for instance, by breeding employee distrust.
These important ethical questions notwithstanding, we believe that these tools will continue to generate insights that allow managers to finally manage the culture as a strategic resource, and ultimately lead to more culturally diverse and inclusive teams and organizations.
Matthew Corritore is an assistant professor of strategy and organization at McGill's Desautels Faculty of Management. Amir Goldberg is an associate professor of organizational behavior at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. Sameer B. Srivastava is an associate professor and the Harold Furst Chair in Management Philosophy and Values at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business. He and Goldberg codirect the Berkeley-Stanford Computational Culture Lab.
This article is reprinted from Harvard Business Review with permission. ©2019. All rights reserved.
SOURCE: Corritore, M.; Goldberg, A.; Srivastava, S. (07 January 2020) "The New Analytics of Workplace Culture" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/technology/pages/the-new-analytics-of-workplace-culture.aspx
Need a Morale Booster? Therapy Dogs Can Help
Work is stressful by itself, but with added layers of stress from having to process outside emotions and hardships, it becomes difficult to give the best service that is should be offered. Allowing a therapy dog in the workplace can help employees reduce stress, and become calmer throughout the day. Read this blog post to learn more about how therapy dogs in the workplace can be beneficial to the work environment.
The Evergreen Health services facility in Buffalo, N.Y., is buzzing with anticipation several days before Stella arrives. Some staff even seek out Matthew Sydor, the director of housing and retention services at the health care agency, days ahead of time to confirm her arrival. Others have requested a calendar invite from him so they can plan their day around her visit.
The middle-aged golden retriever is a certified therapy dog, and her visits are a hit with employees.
Therapy dogs are common in what Sydor describes as the "helping" fields. Bringing therapy dogs into any workplace, he says, is an opportunity to break up the day for employees and give them something to look forward to at no cost.
"At our agency we work with many people who have gone through traumatic experiences. All work is stressful, but layers of stress are added when you are helping others to process their own emotions and hardships," he explained. "The compounding stress makes it difficult to best serve our patients at a high level. Having a therapy dog in the building helps staff to participate in a self-care activity."
Stella's owner, Krista Vince Garland, Ph.D., is an associate professor of exceptional learning at Buffalo State College. The pair specializes in animal-assisted interventions in educational settings but are receiving an increasing number of requests to visit local workplaces.
"Everyone who visits Stella has the same comments: 'I feel so much better. She's brightened my day,' " Vince Garland said. "Aetna also did a study in 2017 that shows tremendous promise on the benefits of therapy dogs in the workplace. Employee sick days were down, morale was up and interactions among co-workers increased."
Having dogs in the workplace isn't a new concept, but it's a concept that hasn't been widely embraced. Only about 11 percent of companies in the United States allow pets in the office, according to the Society for Human Resource Management Employee Benefits 2019 survey.
Paul LeBlanc is the founder and CEO of Zogics, a Massachusetts-based fitness, cleaning and body care company. S'Bu, a Rhodesian Ridgeback, was LeBlanc's first employee.
"When you look at [Inc. magazine's] list of best places to work, 47 percent of those companies allow dogs in the office," he said. "Studies have shown that petting a dog for five to 10 minutes causes a reduction of blood pressure and the dogs have calming effects on people."
But not all employers are ready to go "all-in" like Zogics. For these workplaces, therapy dogs are a viable alternative. Sydor and Vince Garland share insight into what has made their partnership successful and offer tips any business can use.
Communicate. No one likes a surprise, even if it's a friendly four-legged canine. Talk with staff first to address any questions or concerns. Arrange a quick meet-and-greet to give the dog a chance to get used to the environment before interacting with employees.
"This also gives the administrator a chance to touch the dog and make sure it is clean and well-groomed. Therapy dogs are required to have a bath within 24 hours of any visit," Vince Garland said.
Distributing a fact sheet helps with the introduction of a therapy team. Once a visit is established, send a reminder a day prior.
"I suggest telling your staff why you're bringing therapy dogs in and advertise it as much as possible to employees," Sydor said.
Verify credentials. Ask about the team's training. Certifications are not required of service dogs and emotional support dogs. However, therapy dogs must complete training. Stella is an American Kennel Club (AKC) Good Citizen and has earned certifications through Therapy Dogs International and the SPCA Erie County Paws for Love.
"There's a lot of fake information out there. If someone is shy about sharing that information, that's a clue that more discussion is needed," Vince Garland said.
Sydor added, "We found Krista and Stella through Erie County SPCA's Paws for Love, and it has been a great partnership. They hold liability insurance for any damage that may occur. All dogs are well-trained, and the handlers are consistent with how they conduct their work."
Acknowledge cultural differences. "Care must be taken to respect cultural sensitivities," Vince Garland said. "Some cultures regard dogs as unclean, others view dogs as nuisances, while others believe spirits may appear as animals."
Designate a point of contact. This person handles scheduling visits, interacting with the team, and confirming vaccinations and liability insurance. The ideal individual works well with people and is animal-friendly, according to Vince Garland.
Create a space for the team. Not everyone will embrace dogs. Designating space separate from the main workflow respects the space of those employees who choose not to interact with the dog.
"Evergreen has given us a room for visits," Vince Garland said. "By being out of the flow, we're able to meet with staff who are interested without making others feel uncomfortable."
SOURCE: Navarra, K. (13 January 2020) "Need a Morale Booster? Therapy Dogs Can Help" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/benefits/pages/need-a-morale-booster-therapy-dogs-can-help.aspx
The Saxon Advisor - January 2020
Compliance Check
what you need to know
Form W-2s are due January 31, 2020. January 31 is the deadline for employers to distribute Form W-2s to employees. Large employers – employers who have more than 250 W-2s – must include the aggregate cost of health coverage.
Form 1099-Rs are due January 31, 2020. Employers must distribute Form 1099-Rs to recipients of 2019 distributions.
Form 945 Distributions. Form 945s must be distributed to plan participants by January 31, 2020, for 2019 non payroll withholding of deposits if they were not made on time and in full to pay all taxes that are due.
Section 6055/6056 Reporting. Employers must file Forms 1094-B and 1095-B, and Forms 1094-C and 1095-C with the IRS by February 28, 2020 if they are filed on paper.
Form 1099-R Paper Filing. Employers must file Form 1099-R with the IRS by February 28, 2020 if they are filed on paper.
CMS Medicare Part D Disclosure. Employers that provide prescription drug coverage must disclose to the CMS whether the plan’s prescription drug coverage is creditable or non-creditable.
Summary of Material Modifications Distribution. Employers who offer a group health plan that is subject to ERISA must distribute a SMM for plan changes that were adopted at the beginning of the year that are material reductions in plan benefits or services
What Employers Should Know About the SECURE Act
Join us for this interactive and educational Saxon U seminar with Todd Yawit, Director of Employer-Sponsored Retirement Plans at Saxon Financial Services, as we discuss what the SECURE Act is and how it impacts your employer-sponsored retirement plan.
Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, 401(k), 403(b): What's the Difference?
Bringing the knowledge of our in-house advisors right to you...
If you haven’t begun saving for retirement yet, don’t be discouraged. Whether you begin through an employer sponsored plan like a 401(k) or 403(b) or you begin a Traditional or Roth IRA that will allow you to grow earnings from investments through tax deferral, it is never too late or too early to begin planning.
“A major trend we see is that if people don’t have an advisor to meet with, they tend to invest too conservatively, because they are afraid of making a mistake,” said Kevin Hagerty, a Financial Advisor at Saxon Financial.
Fresh Brew Featuring Scott Langhorne
“Pay close attention to detail.”
This month’s Fresh Brew features Scott Langhorne, an Account Manager at Saxon.
Scott’s favorite brew is Bud Light. His favorite local spot to grab his favorite brew is wherever his friends and family are.
Scott’s favorite snack to enjoy with his brew is wings.
This Month's #CommunityStrong:
American Heart Association Heart Mini Fundraising
This January, February & March, the Saxon team and their families will be teaming up to raise money for the American Heart Association Heart Mini! They will be hosting a Happy Hour at Fretboard Brewing Company Wednesday, January 29, from 4 p.m. - 7 p.m. to raise money.
Are you prepared for retirement?
Saxon creates strategies that are built around you and your vision for the future. The key is to take the first step of reaching out to a professional and then let us guide you along the path to a confident future.
Monthly compliance alerts, educational articles and events
- courtesy of Saxon Financial Advisors.
Organizations Will Need Data Analytics to Survive
Did you know: the use of data analytics can improve a company's overall performance. Data analytics can differentiate those companies that are going to be disrupted. Implementing technology is simple, but it is HR's responsibility for managing the technological change. Read this blog post to learn more about why data analytics is becoming a need for organizations.
SEATTLE—HR professionals play a critical role in getting their organizations to use data and analytics strategically to compete more effectively.
Jack Phillips, CEO and co-founder of the Portland, Ore.-based International Institute for Analytics, a research and benchmarking services firm for the analytics industry, urged attendees at the Society for Human Resource Management People Analytics conference on Jan. 14 to get focused on data.
"It's proven that the use of data analytics improves overall company performance," he said. "Organizations invest in many things, but budget dedicated to data and analytics is limited. It needs to be a top priority. The broad use of data and analytics will differentiate the companies [from those] that eventually are disrupted and disappear from the survivors."
And HR is key to the success of winning with data, from sourcing the necessary talent and applying analytics to HR functions to leading change management when adopting a data-driven mindset across the organization.
Implementing the technology is the easy part, Phillips said. Getting your workforce to truly adopt data analytics across the organization is harder. Ultimately HR is responsible for managing that transformational change.
Data Analytics Overview
The data analytics market is in full growth mode, accelerated by the explosion of cloud computing. The technology environment is moving so quickly that it is very hard to keep track of the increasing array and complexity of analytics technology available, Phillips said. But the top-performing companies are investing heavily in data analytics.
"If you are not paying attention through expenditure and [acquisition of] talent you will be behind," he said.
Phillips outlined a maturity model showing the sophistication levels of an organization's approach to analytics. Employers aiming to improve their data analytics function first need to assess where they currently are. Phillips' model includes those at the bottom stages who don't use any data to make business decisions and companies where data analytics may exist in silos without a structure for collaborating across business units.
Most employers likely exist in one of these stages, while many enterprise-level organizations are in the higher aspirational stages where the value of analytics is expressed, or they are data-oriented and use analytics with some internal coordination.
"Only one company we've studied [Amazon] has achieved near perfection as a data-driven company," Phillips said. "You don't come to a meeting without data [at Amazon]. No gut-based decision-making is allowed. Everything is driven by data."
Succeeding with Data
According to Phillips, the key ingredients needed to achieve higher levels of maturity as a data-driven organization include:
- People with data analytics skills.
- Organizational structure, processes and technologies in place for those people.
- Use of the data. "The highest performing companies have superior capabilities on the supply side and business leaders who use the insights that the data analytics teams are providing to drive the business forward," he said.
Another model he presented breaks down the elements that must be in alignment for companies to succeed with their analytics initiatives. "Without alignment, organizations run the risk of poor or limited results," he said. "To make real progress and become a data-driven organization, the capabilities and assets of these five elements must evolve and mature." The five elements are:
Data. It may seem obvious, but to provide meaningful analytics, data must be high quality, organized, reliable, integrated, and accessible. The raw material must be right.
Coordination. Companies must advocate a single and consistent perspective for analytics across the organization.
Leadership. Senior leadership should fully embrace analytics and lead company culture toward data-driven decision-making.
Targets. The organization should prioritize business targets against which it will apply its analytics. "Data and analytics without a targeted reason for it is worthless," he said.
Talent. Organizations require analytical talent that covers a range of skills from accomplished data scientists to rank-and-file employees who embrace being more analytical in how they do their job.
Employers must also understand rapidly emerging analytical techniques and technologies, Phillips said. The widespread adoption of open source tools has resulted in an explosion of analytical methods and techniques, and with the advent of big data, machine learning and cloud computing, creating an effective technology strategy for analytics is a critical ingredient for success.
HR's Role
Human resource professionals play an important part in getting their organizations up to speed and competitive with analytics, including sourcing the right qualified talent—a difficult task in a labor market lacking the requisite skills—and investing in data analytics for its own functions.
"HR lags behind other business functions when it comes to using data analytics," Phillips said. "Sales, marketing and finance tend to outpace other parts of the business."
HR should be assertive with leadership when advising on budget and staffing for data analytics positions and in creating and managing a workplace culture that values innovation.
"The top performing companies treat their data analytics function as a product, with design thinking and intentional product management," Phillips said.
One positive for employers who may be overwhelmed by implementing a data analytics function is that best practices are easily transferable. "There are many things that you can just copy," he said.
SOURCE: Maurer, R. (15 January 2020) "Organizations Will Need Data Analytics to Survive" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/technology/pages/organizations-will-need-data-analytics-to-survive.aspx
5 talent trends to watch in 2020
Although 2020 is a new year, talent may still seem comparable to previous years' trends. In 2020, employers can expect to see talent management move into a more proactive role. Read this article to learn about the five talent trends to watch for in 2020.
2020 may herald a new year (and decade), but today's talent trends will likely seem familiar.
Employer branding, diversity and inclusion, empowering managers and developing employees all remain priorities for talent pros. For example, HR Dive identified "talent acquisition panic" as one of the driving forces of 2019 — and while recruiting won't necessarily remain in a panic state, most experts agree that it will be a strategic focus for all company leaders in 2020.
But experts also said that certain trends may rise in importance in the new year, and five, in particular, will likely stand out.
Talent management will move from reactive to proactive
The workforce now encompasses a large swath of employees, independent contractors and even robots, requiring a new approach, Michael Stephan, Deloitte's US human capital leader, told HR Dive in an interview. "It's going to change the way HR business partners approach … workforce planning," he said. "Not just how many heads you need, but 'where is the best place to access this particular talent?'"
That means employers will need to move from reacting to talent needs to anticipating them, Mark Brandau, principal analyst at Forrester, told HR Dive. "Most organizations look at it from a reactive perspective and not enough time is done on planning," he said.
Expect more proactive talent strategies that encompass tech's undeniable impact on work. Kristen Ruttgaizer, director of human resources at Igloo Software, agreed that employers will have to put more effort into initiatives that draw candidates in over time, such as solid employee experience.
Diversity and inclusion efforts provide a good example of what this shift may look like, as a successful D&I initiative requires that an employer address "the entire employee life cycle," according to Randstad US's report on 2020 trends. Talent is no longer about simple efficiencies; it's now a driving force for C-suite decision-making, Stephan explained.
Contingent hiring will be more integrated
While employers may no longer be in panic mode about talent acquisition, the rise of contingent worker hiring has complicated recruiting by introducing a new variable: When you need more help, do you hire an employee or bring on a contractor?
Employers are "trying to figure out the workforce ecosystem or strategy that cuts across the different sources," Stephan said. "They realize how important figuring out that ecosystem is to that future strategy. They're in rapid investment mode."
In other words, recruiters are starting to press third-party vendors to provide offerings that would allow them to see both employee and contractor availability from the same place, Brandau said. "Why aren't they in the same place and with a nod toward skills?" he said.
Some of this transition also may include adopting development structures that create "gig-like" models within an employed workforce, WorldAtWork's CEO Scott Cawood said in his Top 7 Workplace Predictions emailed to HR Dive, giving workers opportunities to work on a project-by-project basis and understand how their career will develop in the long-term.
'Super jobs' will become more prevalent
Employee learning and talent management are more intertwined now than ever; learning was the No. 1 trend in one of Deloitte's 2019 human capital trend reports. But that push is driven in part by the looming talent shortage and heightening competition. As employers adopt tools that can do some of the work that talent would previously be hired to do — think robots in Amazon warehouses — they're also inadvertently creating "super jobs" that require skill sets that cross multiple domains, Stephan said.
"A package organizer now has to be an expert in robotic tech," he said. Someone who is managing fellow organizers may now have to combine those key leadership skills with minor capabilities in robotics. To make up that gap, employers began to lean heavily on employee development — but how does a company balance necessary development time without disrupting the work?
"People need to be able to do their job and have access to knowledge when doing their job," Stephan said. A global manufacturing company that works on elevators once had a 3,000 page manual, he explained. Now, employees can use an iPad to search for ways to resolve issues on the fly, educating the worker while keeping them productive.
"They're having to adapt to a really fast changing market," Brandau said.
It's not all tech-driven. The rise of super jobs also has forced employers to redefine leadership development and what it means to be a leader in an organization that requires each worker to have a broad swath of skills, Brandau added.
'Agility' will give way to 'adaptability'
Last year, "agility" was the buzzword of choice. But employers and experts have made a semantics shift toward "adaptability" as employers consider how to best prepare for the future of work.
"When you think of agility, you think of being able to bend an arm in a certain way," Brandau said. "But adaptability is an intelligence of...which way do I need to bend and why?"
The concept is not wholly different from agility, which requires an employer to be ready for the rapid changes descending upon the business world, but it does require an employer to more seriously consider how its people work and behave. "Adaptable is about living and breathing around networks," Stephan said.
A company's culture may need to adopt a philosophy about "failing fast and learning fast," he continued. After all, a workplace can't be "adaptable" if its people aren't ready — though Brandau predicts this will continue to be a hurdle for employers to overcome.
"You have to have a workforce that is ready to adapt to change. We hate change," he said. "Adaptive workforces thrive in change. How do you do this in real ways?"
Employers will have to use data to dive local — whether they're ready or not
To find talent faster, some employers have invested in data and "workforce sensing" to get a more accurate assessment of the local talent market. The pressure to do so — and quickly — has only risen in recent years as employers grapple with talent gaps. That data can inform the type of tech an employer needs or even a new location strategy, Stephan said. And that doesn't even account for HR's use of internal data to gauge employee experience.
Unfortunately, HR teams aren't exactly prepared for this deep dive, even if the branding around it has been centered on employee experience, Brandau said. "HR and these areas have not typically been very good at dealing with data," he added. "How are managers going to deal with an intelligent suite? They aren't ready for it."
Employers that want to improve their workforce sensing capabilities will need to invest serious time into understanding external data sources. Where are the "pockets of workforce capabilities"? "Our clients really aren't there yet," Stephan said. But this talent market might just push them there.
SOURCE: Moody, K. (08 January 2020) "5 talent trends to watch in 2020" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.hrdive.com/news/5-talent-trends-to-watch-in-2020/570026/
The Post-Holiday Funk Is Real
Getting out of the post-holiday funk is a difficult task in itself. After a holiday season filled with parties, breaks, food and time off, it can be hard to snap back into work mode. Here are a few things you can do to get out of that holiday funk:
Somewhere around the third week in December work in many offices starts to slow down. There are holiday parties. Customers and clients may be harder to reach. Energy and motivation wanes. And many of us sign off from work completely to spend the holidays with friends and family.
And then January arrives, and it’s time to get back in the swing of things. But, after being out for a week or two, it can be hard to snap back into work mode. If you’re feeling sluggish and unmotivated, you’re not alone. There are several reasons for this kind of the post-holiday funk — and, fortunately, there are things you can do to get out of it as well.
Focus forward
It’s common around New Year’s Day to look back at the past year. Research on construal-level theory suggests that the more distant you are from anything in time, space, or socially, the more abstractly you think about it. Getting out of the office and looking at the whole year leads you to think about your contribution and not just the tasks you did. This is natural and healthy. After all, your contribution in the last year was not the 16,471 emails you sent, but rather the relationships you solidified, the projects you oversaw, and the collaborations you continued as a result of those emails.
But while you’re likely to be proud of some things you accomplished, you may also be thinking about some of your failures. These are often the source of many people’s New Year’s resolutions.
Of course, noticing last year’s failures can be disheartening. And around the new year, you may end up in a cycle of thoughts about what you could have done differently in the past. This kind of rumination can actually heighten feelings of depression and anxiety, which sap your motivation.
When you get back to work, it’s important to start looking forward to the new year rather than back on the past one. Treat the goals you want to accomplish as new challenges and a source of energy not a penance for things you didn’t get done last year. Focusing on the future — and seeing new opportunities to succeed — can help you to generate the energy to get started.
Get specific
Your reflections on the past year might also lead you to commit to making changes. This is a good thing but not if your commitments are abstract, like “be more productive,” “get a new job,” or “become a better leader.”
In fact, these abstract goals can be paralyzing. They’re simply too big to make meaningful progress toward. Instead, turn your goal into specific actions that when added up lead to the desired outcome. This kind of specific plan is called an implementation intention. It requires that you break the general goal down into tasks that can be put on your calendar.
This specificity has two benefits.
First, it requires you to think through what actually has to be done to achieve the goal. You may discover that you don’t know all the steps or that some of the steps are ones that involve skills you need to learn. In that case, you might want to find a mentor or coach who can help you.
Second, being specific forces you to grapple with your densely packed schedule. One reason why people often fail to achieve important goals is that they cannot find the time to perform the tasks that would lead to success. When you try to add new actions to your agenda, you are forced to figure out what can be moved, delayed, or delegated in order to put you on the road to following through on your commitment.
Make the right social comparisons
A third possible source of post-holiday funk is social comparison.
Humans don’t evaluate things on an absolute scale. Instead, we assess our success relative to some standard. Often, we do that through the process of social comparison, in which we compare ourselves to someone else.
There are two kinds of social comparisons. Upward social comparisons involve comparing yourself to someone better off than you are along a particular dimension. For example, you might see a high-school friend who just got a promotion, or a college friend who just bought a car that you dream of owning some day. These comparisons tend to make you feel bad about yourself, because they highlight what other people have that you don’t, whether it’s money, social standing, or particular relationships. Downward social comparisons are comparisons to someone worse off than you. These comparisons generally make you feel good about yourself and your situation.
Unfortunately, both kinds of comparison can sap your motivation. Upward social comparisons can frustrate you, knowing that other people you know are more successful, happier, or wealthier than you are. Because of the way people curate their social media, if you just look at where people are taking vacations or what they post about their jobs, it’s easy to believe that most people are doing better than you are, which may lead you to feel like giving up.
When you make downward social comparisons, you feel better about what you have and what you have accomplished, but you aren’t motivated to continue pushing forward. Instead, it makes you satisfied with where you are and, often, complacent. The energy you need to motivate yourself comes from being dissatisfied with something about the present, along with developing a plan to get what you want.
You can’t stop yourself from making social comparisons, but you can explicitly manage those comparisons to motivate you. For example, you can find a close rival — someone who is doing slightly better than you are along some dimension, but whose performance is close enough to your own that you can see how you could take some actions to reach their level.
You can also make social comparisons to your past self. Take a look at your trajectory. Recognize that even if you haven’t achieved all of your goals, you have improved over time. Use that recognition of your own growth to spur you to keep working to reach new heights.
No one wants to start the year off in a rut. And yet many of us begin January too focused on the past and feeling bad about what we have yet to accomplish. With some small changes in your perspective, though, you can hit the ground running in the new year.
SOURCE: Markman, A. (03 January 2020) "The Post-Holiday Funk Is Real" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2020/01/the-post-holiday-funk-is-real?ab=hero-subleft-3
Are You Pushing Yourself Too Hard at Work?
Different seasons can bring in long hours, extensive work, and multiple deadlines that require a lot of attention. Are you pushing yourself too hard? It is important to know the difference between a temporary work crunch and an everyday "norm". Read this blog post for a few key signs of pushing too hard at work.
We all have intense periods at work where multiple deadlines converge, an important deal is closing, or a busy season lasts for a few months. During these times, we may work more intensely or longer hours, but we know that the situation is temporary, and we are able to keep work in perspective. Conversely, approximately 10% of Americans are considered workaholics, defined as having a “stable tendency to compulsively and excessively work.” Whether you are in the midst of a temporary work crunch, or if working all the time is your version of “normal,” there are some key signs that you are pushing yourself too hard. These include:
You aren’t taking time off. Consistently putting off vacations (including working over major holidays), regularly working all weekend, or dismissing the idea of an occasional day off is a sign that you are burning the candle from both ends. While only 23% of Americans take their full vacation time allotted, studies of elite athletes show that rest periods are precisely what helps them to perform at full throttle when needed, and the same is true for the rest of us. While extended vacations are helpful, smaller breaks, such as taking the weekend to recharge, carving out personal time in the evening, or having an occasional day off can also be an important part of having sufficient downtime to restore your energy and counter the drain of being “always on.”
You deprioritize personal relationships. When we focus exclusively on work for extended periods, it often comes at the expense of our personal relationships. During 2018, 76% of US workers said that workplace stress affected their personal relationships, with workaholics being twice as likely to get divorced. Not taking time to connect with friends and family can also be detrimental to our health. Research shows that strong social relationships are positively correlated to lifespan and that a lack of social relationships has the same effect as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. If you are not taking time outside of work to connect socially with others and have become increasingly isolated, such that social invitations have dried up because others assume you are not available, chances are you are too focused on work.
You’re unable to be fully present outside of work. Another sign you are pushing yourself too hard is that when you do leave the office and take time to be with the people you care about, you are not able to mentally turn work off and be present with them. In 2017, 66% of Americans reported working while on vacation. Jeff, a former client of mine who is a senior partner at his law firm, has never gone on vacation without his laptop. In addition, after making a point to spend time on the weekends to connect with his daughter, he confessed to constantly thinking about work and admitted that he couldn’t help but compulsively check email on his phone every few minutes. While it’s normal to think about work periodically, it becomes a problem when we’re not able to manage our urge to give into work-related distractions, slowly eroding our most important relationships. In his book, Indistractable, author Nir Eyal points out that these distractions make the people we care about “residual beneficiaries” of our attention, meaning they get what is left over, which typically not very much.
You’re neglecting personal care. This is not the occasional skipping a shower when working from home in your sweatpants. Failing to get sufficient sleep, missing meals or existing on a diet of coffee and energy bars, or abandoning exercise or personal hygiene for extended periods are all indications that you are in an unhealthy pattern of behavior. In particular, when we sacrifice sleep for work, we are effectively working against ourselves, as sleep deprivation is shown to impair higher-level cognitive functions including judgment, critical thinking, decision making, and organization. Likewise, skipping exercise puts us at a further disadvantage. Exercise has been shown to lower stress, improve mood and energy levels, and enhance cognitive function, such as memory, concentration, learning, mental stamina, and creativity. As a former investment banker who worked 80- to 100-hour weeks during more intense periods, taking breaks to exercise, eat, and even nap in one of the sleeping rooms provided onsite was critical to maintaining my health, stamina, and productivity.
You see your value as a person completely defined by work. Failure to see a broader perspective, both in terms of how you see your value as a person as well as how you see the importance of work relative to the rest of your life, can be a sign that you are pushing yourself too hard. This myopia is usually driven by deeply held limiting beliefs that create a contracted worldview. Elisa, the head of engineering at a tech company, pushed herself and her team incredibly hard. Her behavior was driven by a belief that “My value is what I produce.” To broaden her perspective, she asked others she respected about what they valued about her, as well as how they valued themselves. She was able to see not only that people valued her for other things like being a good friend, parent, or thought partner, but also that they defined their own value more broadly than their work. Sometimes, it takes a big life event, like the birth of a child or the death of a colleague or loved one, to shake someone out of this restricted perspective. Another way to broaden your perspective in the absence of these events is to have interests outside of work, which can be a good reminder that work isn’t everything.
While we all need to shift into high gear from time to time, keeping work in perspective with the rest of our lives, and taking care of ourselves and our relationships are key to achieving long-term success, both personally and professionally.
SOURCE: Zucker, R. (03 January 2020) "Are You Pushing Yourself Too Hard at Work?" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2020/01/are-you-pushing-yourself-too-hard-at-work