8 keys to developing a successful return to work program
What does your return to work program look like? Read this blog post for 8 tips to developing a successful return to work program at your organization.
No matter the size of your organization, there’s about a 99% chance at some point dealing with employees going on leave. Most HR professionals are well-versed on the logistics of what to do when an employee is on short- or long-term disability — but what sort of culture do you have in place that encourages and supports them with a return to work (RTW)? Developing a positive and open RTW culture benefits not only the organization but the employee and their teams as well.
An effective RTW program helps an injured or disabled employee maintain productivity while recuperating, protecting their earning power and boosting an organization’s output. There also are more intangible benefits including the mental health of the employee (helping them feel valued), and the perception by other team members that the organization values everyone’s work.
See also: 7 Ways Employers Can Support Older Workers And Job Seekers
Some other benefits of an RTW program can include improvement of short-term disability claims, improvement of compliance and reduction of employer costs (replacing a team member can cost anywhere from half to twice that employee’s salary, so doing everything you can to keep them is a wise investment).
Some of these may seem like common sense, but I’m continually surprised how many (even large) organizations don’t have an established RTW program. Here are eight critical elements of a successful program.
1. Support from company leadership.
2. Have a written policy and process.
3. Establish a return to work culture.
4. Train your team members.
5. Establish an RTW coordinator.
6. Create detailed job descriptions.
7. Create modified duty options.
8. Establish evaluation metrics.
3 ways to promote inclusion in your workplace
Are you looking to grow your current inclusion practices or build new ones? Read this blog post to learn three ways employers can promote inclusion in their workplace.
Diversity and inclusion is top of mind for HR practitioners and employees alike. If we think about diversity as who is walking through the door, then inclusion would be the next part of the employee experience. With the recent focus on workplace diversity trends, it’s important to not forget how important it is to create an inclusive working environment.
It’s critical to facilitate relationship building with new hires and their teams. We often focus on the work to be done without taking time to get to know our co-workers as individuals. When we see each other as people and learn to appreciate our similarities and differences, it makes it easier for everyone to thrive.
Whether you’re looking to grow your current inclusion practices or are starting from scratch, try these three action items:
1. Don’t be afraid to ask.
It may sound simple, but a great first step to improving inclusion is to survey employees. By conducting quick and easy “pulse” surveys, you can gauge the level of belonging that employees feel. You can do this by launching survey focused on diversity or add questions around inclusion and belonging into your existing employee engagement surveys. Once you have a baseline on company sentiment, you can begin to improve areas that may be lacking. Start to put in place mechanisms to support individuals from different backgrounds and don’t forget to conduct these surveys on an ongoing basis.
2. New Hire Buddies
Whether you’re an introvert, extrovert, or somewhere in between, it can be hard to meet new people when you start a new job. Consider creating a “buddy” program to encourage new hires to bond with their co-workers. Companies hit roadblocks when they put the onus on new employees to reach out and engage with their teams. Having the support of a “buddy” at work helps create a feeling of security, which leads to greater engagement. The more engaged your employees are, the longer they will want to stay with your company.
3. Resource Groups
Employee resource groups (ERGs), sometimes also called affinity groups, serve as a platform that employees can use to build a culture of inclusion and belonging. Not only do they foster a sense of community within your organization, they also help new hires transition into their new working environment. These groups create opportunities for education and understanding between diverse individuals across your company. They can also be a great launchpad for new ideas and change in creating more inclusive policies and practices.
Fostering an inclusive company culture helps increase both engagement and retention. The better an employee feels about working at your organization, the greater the likelihood that they will reach their full potential on the job. Measure your current state of inclusion with regular pulse surveys and follow up with making changes as necessary to foster stronger relationships across the organization.
Source: Li, J. (19 July 2018). "3 ways to promote inclusion in your workplace" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://blog.shrm.org/blog/3-ways-to-promote-inclusion-in-your-workplace
How faking your feelings at work can be damaging
Putting up a fake smile on Monday morning is sometimes unavoidable. There could be consequences to carrying a heavy emotional labor load to get over the Monday Blues.
Imagine yourself 35,000 feet up, pushing a trolley down a narrow aisle surrounded by restless passengers. A toddler is blocking your path, his parents not immediately visible. A passenger is irritated that he can no longer pay cash for an in-flight meal, another is demanding to be allowed past to use the toilet. And your job is to meet all of their needs with the same show of friendly willingness.
For a cabin crew member, this is when emotional labour kicks in at work.
A term first coined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild, it’s the work we do to regulate our emotions to create “a publicly visible facial and bodily display within the workplace”.
Simply put, it is the effort that goes into expressing something we don’t genuinely feel. It can go both ways – expressing positivity we don’t feel or suppressing our negative emotions.
Unhelpful attitudes such as ‘I’m not good enough’ may lead to thinking patterns in the workplace such as ‘No-one else is working as hard as I seem to be’ or ‘I must do a perfect job’, and can initiate and maintain high levels of workplace anxiety - Leonard
Hochschild’s initial research focused on the airline industry, but it’s not just in-flight staff keeping up appearances. In fact, experts say emotional labour is a feature of nearly all occupations in which we interact with people, whether we work in a customer-facing role or not. The chances are, wherever you work, you spend a fair portion of your working day doing it.
When research into emotional labour first began, it focused on the service industry with the underlying presumption that the more client or customer interaction you had, the more emotional labour was needed.
However, more recently psychologists have expanded their focus to other professions and found burnout can relate more closely to how employees manage their emotions during interactions, rather than the volume of interactions themselves.
Perhaps this morning you turned to a colleague to convey interest in what they said, or had to work hard not to rise to criticism. It may have been that biting your lip rather than expressing feeling hurt was particularly demanding of your inner resource.
But in some cases maintaining the façade can become too much, and the toll is cumulative. Mira W, who preferred not to give her last name, recently left a job with a top airline based in the Middle East because she felt her mental wellbeing was at stake.
In her last position, the “customer was king”, she says. “I once got called 'whore' because a passenger didn't respond when I asked if he wanted coffee. I’d asked him twice and then moved to the next person. I got a tirade of abuse from the man.”
“When I explained what happened to my senior, I was told I must have said or done something to warrant this response… I was then told I should go and apologise.”
“Sometimes I would have to actively choose my facial expression, for example during severe turbulence or an aborted landing,” she says. “Projecting a calm demeanour is essential to keep others calm. So that aspect didn't worry me. It was more the feeling that I had no voice when treated unfairly or extremely rudely.”
During her time with the airline, she encountered abuse and sexism – and was expected to smile through it. “I was constantly having to hide how I felt.
Over the years and particularly in her last role, handling the stress caused by suppressing her emotions became much harder. Small things seemed huge, she dreaded going to work and her anxiety escalated.
“I felt angry all the time and as if I might lose control and hit someone or just explode and throw something at the next passenger to call me a swear word or touch me. So, I quit,” she says.
She is now seeing a therapist to deal with the emotional fallout. She attributes some of the problems to isolation from family and a brutal travel schedule, but has no doubt that if she hadn’t had to suppress her emotions so much, she might still be in the industry.
Mira is not alone. Across the globe, employees in many professions are expected to embrace a work culture that requires the outward display of particular emotions – these can including ambition, aggression and a hunger for success.
The way we handle emotional labour can be categorised in two ways – surface acting and deep acting
A few years ago, the New York Times wrote a “lengthy piece about the “Amazon Way”,describing very specific and exacting behaviour the retail company required of its employees and the effects, both positive and negative, that this had on some of them. While some appeared to thrive in the environment, others struggled with constant pressure to show the correct corporate face.
“How we cope with high levels of emotional labour likely has its origins in childhood experience, which shapes the attitudes we develop about ourselves, others and the world,” says clinical and occupational psychologist Lucy Leonard.
“Unhelpful attitudes such as ‘I’m not good enough’ may lead to thinking patterns in the workplace such as ‘No-one else is working as hard as I seem to be’ or ‘I must do a perfect job”, and can initiate and maintain high levels of workplace anxiety,” says Leonard.
Workers are often expected to provide good service to people expressing anger or anxiety – and may have to do this while feeling frustrated, worried or offended themselves.
“This continuous regulation of their own emotional expression can result in a reduced sense of self-worth and feeling disconnected from others,” she says.
Hochschild suggests that the way we handle emotional labour can be categorised in two ways – surface acting and deep acting – and that the option we choose can affect the toll it takes on us.
Take the example of a particularly tough phone call. If you are surface acting you respond to the caller by altering your outward expression, saying the appropriate things, listening while keeping your actual feelings entirely intact. With deep acting you make a deliberate effort to change your real feelings to tap in to what the person is saying – you may not agree with the manner of it but appreciate the aim.
Both could be thought of as just being polite but the latter approach – trying to emotionally connect with another person’s point of view – is associated with a lower risk of burnout.
Jennifer George’s role as a liaison nurse with a psychiatric specialism in the Accident & Emergency department at Kings College London Hospital puts her at the sharp end of health care. Every day she must determine patients’ needs – do they genuinely need to be admitted, just want to be looked after for a while or are they seeking access to drugs?
“It’s important to me that I test my own initial assumptions,” she says. “As far as I can, I tap into the story and really listen. It’s my job but it also reduces the stress I take on.”
“Sometimes I’ll have an instinctive sense that the person is trying to deceive, or I can become bored with what they’re saying. But I can’t sit there and dismiss something as fabrication and I don’t want to.”
This process can be upsetting, she says. Sometimes she has to say no “in a very direct way”, and the environment can be noisy and threatening. “I stay as much as I can true to myself and my beliefs. Even though I need to be open to what both fellow professionals and would-be and genuine patient cases say to me, I will not say anything I don’t believe and that I don’t believe to be right. And that helps me,” she says.
When things get tough, she talks to colleagues to unload. “It’s the saying it out loud that allows me to test and validate my own reaction. I can then go back to the person concerned,” she says.
Ruth Hargrove, a former trial lawyer based in California, also faces tricky interactions in her work representing San Diego students pro bono in disciplinary matters. “Pretty much everyone you are dealing with in the system can make you labour emotionally,” she says.
One problem, says Hargrove, is that some lawyers will launch personal attacks based on any perceived weakness – gender, youth – rather than focusing on the actual issues of the case.
“I have dealt with it catastrophically in the past and let it eat at my self-esteem,” she says. “But when I do it right, I realise that I can separate myself out from it and see that [their attack] is evidence of their weakness.”
Rather than refuting specific, personal allegations, she simply sends back a one-line email saying she disagrees. “Not rising to things is huge,” she says. “It’s a disinclination to engage in the emotional battle that someone else wants you to engage in. I keep in sight the real work that needs to be done.”
Those who report regularly having to display emotions at work that conflict with their own feelings are more likely to experience emotional exhaustion
Hargrove also has to deal with the expectations of clients who believe – sometimes unrealistically – that if they have been wronged, justice will prevail. She understands their feelings, even as she has to set them straight.
“I empathise here, as a parent, with their thought that there should be a remedy, even when I know it’s not going to be achievable. It helps me that this feeling is also true to me.”
Remaining true to your feelings appears to be key – numerous studies show those who report regularly having to display emotions at work that conflict with their own feelings are more likely to experience emotional exhaustion.
Of course, everybody needs to be professional at work and handling difficult clients and colleagues is often just part of the job. But what’s clear is that putting yourself in their shoes and trying to understand their position is ultimately of greater benefit to your own well-being than voicing sentiments that, deep down, you don’t believe.
Leonard says there are steps individuals and organisations can take to prevent burnout. Limiting overtime, taking regular breaks and tackling conflict with colleagues through the right channels early on can help, she says, as can staying healthy and having a fulfilling life outside work. A “climate of authenticity” at work can be beneficial.
“Organizations which allow people to take a break from high levels of emotional regulation and acknowledge their true feelings with understanding and non-judgemental colleagues behind the scenes tend to fare better in the face of these demands,” she says.
Such a climate can also foster better empathy, she adds, by allowing workers to maintain emotional separation from those with whom they must interact.
Where it is possible, workers should be truly empathetic, be aware of the impact the interaction is having on them and try to communicate in an authentic way. This, she says, can “protect you from communicating in a disingenuous manner and then feeling exhausted by your efforts and resentful of having to fake it”.
SOURCE:
Levy, K (25 June 2018) "How faking your feelings at work can be damaging" [Web Blog Post]. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180619-why-suppressing-anger-at-work-is-bad
Is your culture keeping up with your growth?
Found a great read on the shift in culture within organizations by Ranjit Jose.
Original Post from SHRM.org on July 5, 2016
The other day, I grabbed coffee and caught up with a friend who is Founder & CEO of a fast growing startup here in San Francisco. The last time we had spoken, his company had around twenty employees. But over the last year, they have been growing at a torrid pace and are now at more than a hundred employees. While this has been an amazing ride for him, the growth has come with its own special brand of challenges. And according to him, the top one has been the question of how to maintain the great culture they have built through the tough first few years of the company.
His story reflects one of the key challenges most growing companies face: ensuring that the original corporate culture develops at the same speed as the business. Corporate culture is defined as “the beliefs and behaviors that determine how a company's employees and management interact and handle outside business transactions.” A corporation’s ideologies and actions are not explicit but rather become clear over time.
At young companies like my friend’s, the founders and early employees are the ones that create the culture and company values. As long as the company is small, it is very easy to ensure that the culture is well sustained. However, as soon as the company starts expanding, and as new employees start filling the ranks, most businesses witness a dissipation of the workplace methods and beliefs previously practiced if the culture is not intentionally managed.
Here are a few chief signs that your flourishing company’s culture is in danger.
Lack of openness
As a company expands, it becomes challenging for the employers to keep in continuous and thorough contact with their employees. It is far easier to get feedback from a small team; when newer employees expand these original teams, the culture of open communication and direct feedback begins to dissolve.
This is often in part due to the previous workers’ unfamiliarity with the newly hired staff. Dr. Keith Denton, from Missouri State University, explains that when this lack of confidence exists, employees “are more likely to be evasive, competitive, devious, defensive or uncertain in their actions with one another."
With the absence of openness between team members, the initial trust that is developed at the foundation of a startup slowly dissipates. Make sure that you have mechanisms and tools in place to ensure that a thriving open environment is maintained.
Isolated Employees
Your employees should all be working together for the common goals of the company. Employees can reach common goals through department collaboration, regular team and general discussions, socializing, and consistent motivation.
When a company expands, contact between employees from different departments start becoming less frequent, and workers may feel as though their opinions and feedback are not heard. The Catalyst Research Center for Advancing Leader Effectiveness surveyed 1,500 people from six different countries and discovered that workers feel important when they “ feel that they both belong…[and] are unique.” Understandably, when the number of workers grows, employees may witness a decrease in attention and feel as though their opinions are drowned in the monotone of their many colleagues.
When this happens, they do not feel like a valued team member and may begin to isolate themselves to just get their job done. To prevent this, ensure that you have structures in place to encourage and promote interaction between employees across departments and seniority levels.
Cliques
Another sign that your corporation’s culture is not growing at the same speed as your workforce is the formation of cliques. Cliques form when employers are not in touch with all employees; workers with similar beliefs and behaviors begin to group together instead of maintaining the corporation's previously overarching culture.
David Parnell, for instance, a communication coach, legal recruiter, and author of In-House explains that forming groups is innately human: “minimal group paradigm studies have shown us to form groups within minutes in a novel situation, and if there are no salient reasons for doing so, groups will even form based on irrelevant criteria such as shirt colors.” To illustrate this, one CareerBuilder survey found that 43% of surveyed employees admitted to having a “work clique.”
More often than not, these subdivisions start with staff who have previously worked together. When the new staff enter the workplace, due to the differences in experience, familiarity, and opinions, the workforce divides further into varying groups, and a uniform employee culture begins to break down.
To ensure that the overall corporate culture is not compromised by the beliefs and actions of smaller groups, it is important that companies have methods of hearing from both experienced and newer employees so that a uniform intra-corporate culture is better circulated.
How to strengthen company culture alongside growth
A big part of safe-guarding your culture is ensuring your people are engaged across the whole organization. And in order to keep employees engaged, growing corporations must first strengthen their internal communications by giving their workforce a channel to consistently give their opinions and feedback. If employees know that their input is heard and respected by their company, they will invest more into the relationships with their co-workers. They will also feel heard and valued engendering a deeper connection with the organization, resulting in higher loyalty and retention.
Once you have opened up the ability to conveniently hear back from employees, it is important to track problems that arise, monitor engagement, and respond to any issues in a timely and strategic way. This will not only continuously improve your company, but show employees that their participation and feedback really matters, because it truly does!
All of this eventually serve to ensure that as you grow, your newer employees feel valued and as much a part of the team as the founding members. Recognizing any sense of disconnect with your people and acting to re-engage employees can ensure that, even as you grow, your culture grows with you.
Read the original article here: https://blog.shrm.org/blog/is-your-culture-keeping-up-with-your-growth
Source:
Jose, R (2016, July 5). Is your culture keeping up with your growth? [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://blog.shrm.org/blog/is-your-culture-keeping-up-with-your-growth
