Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Where France's Power Down Law Came From - And What It Means

The year was 1998. I had just graduated from college and was working as an entry-level account coordinator in a large PR agency in New York City. I worked hard, but my days ended at 6PM when I left the office. Within the next year, though, Ethernet access at home had become a reality. Suddenly, I was expected to be on call for my boss for any and all client needs. I was irate. I felt I did not make enough money for this. I had experienced the freedom of a solidly eight-hour workday, and I wanted that freedom back.

It would never happen. Over the next several years, diffuse working hours would become so pervasive that France – as a country – felt the need to strike back. In this post, we’ll talk about France’s brand new law limiting required employee communication outside of designated work hours. We’ll discuss the particulars, as well as whether or not the policy can be effectively enforced.

Introducing “The Right to Disconnect”

On the first of this year, France’s “right to disconnect” law went into effect. The law obliges organizations with more than 50 employees to initiate “switching off” negotiations with their workforces. The goal of the negotiations is for everyone to agree on employees’ rights to ignore work-related requests outside the boundaries of regular work hours. If employer and employees cannot come to a satisfactory compromise, the organization must publish a charter that explicitly defines employee rights with respect to out-of-hours communication.

The measure was introduced last year by France’s labor minister Myriam El Khomri. According to the Washington Post, El Khomri received the idea from a report by Bruno Mettling, a director general in charge of human resources at telecommunications behemoth Orange. Mettling explained in his report that a “right to disconnect” policy would benefit employers as much as their employees, whom, he said, are likely to suffer psychosocial risks from a ceaseless communication cycle.

Concern for Working Populace Prompted Law

 It’s not an empty claim. As reported in Le Monde and later in the Post, a recent study found than approximately 3.2 million French workers are at risk of “burning out,” defined as a combination of physical exhaustion and emotional anxiety.

According to an article in the Guardian, a study published by French research group Eleas showed that more than a third of French workers used their devices to do work out-of-hours every day. About 60 percent of workers were in favor of regulation to clarify their rights.

Another study out of the University of British Columbia found that participants who were assigned to check their email only three times a day were less stressed than those who could check their emails continuously. And Colorado State University found that even the anticipatory stress of expecting after-hours emails might have a negative effect on employee well-being.

Although France is known for its “official” 35-hour workweek, for many firms it’s in name only. Many French employees continue working remotely long after they leave for the day. In fact, now that France has a record-high unemployment rate of nearly 11 percent, the 35-hour workweek law has been called into question.

The “right to disconnect” law was part of a larger set of labor laws introduced in France last spring. The set was designed to combat some of the unintended negative consequences of the 35-hour workweek. One companion proposal, according to the Telegraph, would give companies the right to renegotiate longer hours and to pay less in overtime to employees who stay longer. Another proposal would make it easier for firms to hire and fire employees. The “right to disconnect” legislation was the only one of the proposed laws that did not generate widespread protests and strikes in France.

France is actually not the first nation to enact such a law. In 2014, Germany’s labor ministry passed legislation banning managers from calling or emailing their staff outside of work hours except in an emergency. You can immediately spot the loopholes in that one. What constitutes an emergency, especially when you have a Type-A boss?

Nevertheless, according to the BBC, the law prompted several German companies to reduce the burden of overwork. Car manufacturer Volkswagen blocked all emails to employees’ Blackberries after-hours, while competitor Daimler said it would delete email received by employees while they are on vacation.

For the rest of the piece, check out QuickBase's Fast Track blog.

New Career Advisory Board Research Reveals Employers Are Lukewarm About Talent Development

This week, my organization the Career Advisory Board announced the results of our sixth annual Job Preparedness Indicatory survey, which identified gaps between the skills and traits candidates have and the skills and traits employers seek to fill open positions.

Gaps were measured by assessing skills that are most important but least common among entry-level, mid-level, and senior-level job candidates. This year’s research of nearly 500 US-based, senior-level hiring managers also explored how organizations are developing the necessary skills and competencies in their workforces, as well as their level of commitment to strategic talent development and management.

Senior hiring managers are lukewarm in terms of how effective their organizations are at talent management and competency development. In this survey, few were willing to boast that they were employing sophisticated recruitment, development, and retention practices. Only 13 percent of respondents, for example, said that their companies’ talent development initiatives are very well-aligned with overall business strategy, and only 11 percent said their initiatives help “a great deal” in providing employees with the skills they need to be successful.

In order to ensure that employees are adequately trained to do their jobs, 80 percent of respondents rely on on-the-job training, 34 percent on formal mentorship, 31 percent on one-off online learning programs, and 30 percent on one-off in person learning programs.

Furthermore, only 12 percent of respondents indicated that their organizations align talent development initiatives to retention strategies “a great deal,” and only 11 percent said their companies very effectively align employee competency development to advancement at all levels. Seventeen percent of respondents said their organizations place a great deal of value on leadership development training, and only 13 percent place a great deal of value on succession planning.

Perhaps most significant, however, our respondents shared that the feel that their organizations are weak when it comes to tracking the return on investment (ROI) of talent development initiatives. Only eight percent said they do this “a great deal,” while 21 percent said they do it “a fair amount,” 31 percent said they do it “somewhat,” and 40 percent said they don’t believe that they do it at all!

For more Job Preparedness Indicator results, check out the Career Advisory Board press release and executive summary.

Open Offices: The Jury Has Returned

I’ve never liked open offices. Never. I remember the first time my CEO announced that we’d all be giving up our private offices. A part of me felt like I was about to lose my home. The next step? Goodbye cubicles. Now, we all sat together like one big, happy family, and any illusion that you could have a confidential conversation or crash on a deadline without interruption was shattered. I wonder sometimes if the open office trend was partially responsible for my decision to strike out on my own. Growing up, I’d never shared a bedroom with a sibling, and I couldn’t get used to sharing now.

My last open office experience was several years ago, and the trend hasn’t slowed down any. According to the International Facility Management Association in a piece in the Washington Post, about 70 percent of U.S. offices have no or low partitions. As with many trends, Silicon Valley has led this charge. Google, Yahoo, and eBay have had open offices for years, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg even hired famed architect Frank Gehry to design the largest open floor plan in the world for 3,000 of his engineers.

Open Offices Have Been Studied in Earnest

It’s not unusual for companies in more traditional companies to follow what the tech giants are doing, even if it doesn’t appear to make sense. But at some point, you hope reason will win out. The academic community and the media have certainly done their best. Lindsey Kaufman, the author of the Post piece, cited a  2013 study, which found that many workers in open offices are frustrated by distractions that lead to poorer work performance. About 50 percent of the survey respondents housed in open offices were perturbed by the lack of sound privacy, and more than 30 percent by the lack of visual privacy.

Do open offices have any benefits? Proponents often talk up how easy it is to interact with colleagues in any open office. This study showed the opposite to be true. Professionals with private offices were actually the least likely to identify their ability to communicate with colleagues as an issue.

Fine, that’s just one study. But then, Maria Konnikova, author of the book Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes, published a sort of expose on the open office in the New Yorker. She cited the following results:

Open Office Literature Review by Matthew Davis

More than 100 independent studies showed that open offices have their advantages. Employees apparently feel more in tune with the organization, with a better grip on the company’s vision and values, when they work in an open office. Open offices were also believed to be more innovative. However, Davis’ review also illustrated that open offices caused productivity, attention, and job satisfaction declines. Employees experienced poorer concentration and motivation and greater stress than their counterparts in standard office environments.

Large Scale Open Office Research by David Craig 

At global consultancy DEGW in Montreal, professor David Craig surveyed 38,000 professionals and found that more frequent interruptions had a negative impact on productivity. If the employee was more senior, this effect was worse. Craig also found that a sense of privacy and control increase individual performance, whereas open offices remove that control and lead to feelings of helplessness.

Danish Study on Open Offices and Health by Jan Pejtersen

In their study of 2,400 professionals, Pejtersen and his colleagues found that as the number of people working in a single room increased, the number of employees who took sick leave increased as well. Workers in two-person offices took an average of 50 percent more sick leave than those in single offices, while those who worked in totally open offices took an average of 62 percent more.

Cornell Noise Study by Evans and Johnson

According to Evans and Johnson’s research, clerical workers who were exposed to open-office noise for three hours had increased levels of epinephrine – otherwise known as adrenaline. They also found that people in noisy office environments made fewer ergonomic adjustments than they would in private, causing greater physical discomfort. Finally, open office subjects also solved fewer create puzzles than those working in a quiet, closed environment.

What about standing desks? To find out more about the legitimacy of this trend, visit the QuickBase Fast Track blog.

Project Management: What's Hot for 2017

The Project Management profession is evolving. Just this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics gave project management its own occupational category, a major sign that Project Managers are more important players than ever.

Here, we feature some of the most intriguing Project Management developments heading into 2017, including 3D and virtual reality PM, crowdsourcing, corporate social responsibility, big data, and the rise of DevOps.

 Trend #1: 3D Printing and Virtual Reality

Many projects today take place in the cloud and via distributed teams, which can make it difficult for team members to feel fully immersed in their work experiences. Virtual reality and 3D printing technology reinvigorate the project lifecycle so that tasks and collaboration efforts resonate more strongly.

dFakto is a small 45-person startup in Brussels, Belgium that has brought both VR and 3D into the field of program and project management, mainly for large enterprises like banks. As dFakto CEO Thibaut de Vylder said in a recent Forbes article: “We created a UX experience in project management that allows people to update their project status in 30 seconds or less each month just by focusing on what’s most important.”

The virtual reality experience provides full immersion with an app that allows Project Managers to see progress charts in a personal theatre style. Focus your eyes on a particular chart, and it grows. You can dive into elaborations the same way. The 3D printing component, similarly, facilitates the sense of touch. It creates something you can put on your desk, unlike a digital report that you can’t see once you close it.

Trend #2: Crowdsourcing

 According to a recent article on Raconteur, more project managers are taking advantage of new software programs to coordinate contributions from various sources. Wazoku Idea Spotlight is one software-as-a-service tool that allows organizations to create a central hub for ideas, innovation, and feedback. Users include Aviva, Oxford University and Waitrose, a UK-based supermarket that leverages Wazoku to capture ideas from its 60,000 employees.

“The success of our Partner Ideas scheme goes to show that sometimes the truly great innovations can be as simple as making small changes to the tasks you do every day, rather than the big ideas which transform everything,” said Stuart Eames, operational improvement manager at Waitrose. “By engaging our partners with the right platform and process, we’ve managed to achieve significant productivity and financial savings.”

For the rest of the post, head over to the QuickBase Fast Track blog.

The True Relationship Between Flexwork and Productivity

According to a recent survey conducted by WorldatWork and FlexJobs, over 80 percent of American organizations have implemented some type of flexible work arrangement. Shockingly, though, only three percent of those same organizations are measuring whether flextime actually makes people more productive and more likely to positively contribute to the bottom line.

This leads us to ask the critical question: “is flexwork worth it?”

Over the last three years, multiple pieces of research have offered clues to the answer. First, let’s look at the lay of the land. The WorldatWork/FlexJobs study provided a good framework for what flexwork actually looks like in American organizations today. First, 64 percent of companies described their flex programs as informal, with no written policy, and 44 percent of organizations said they do not feature or market flexible work options as an employee benefit.

Sixty-seven percent of respondents reported that managers can offer flexibility at their own discretion, and 41 percent of respondents said that access to flexible work is not widespread. The top three flexibility programs across all types of organizations are telework on an ad-hoc basis, flextime, and part-time schedules. So, flexwork comes in all shapes and sizes and is not an equal-opportunity benefit.

Some organizations are more amenable to flexwork than others, and some reasons may be how efficient and automated work processes are, if workers have the tools available to them to better collaborate remotely, and if processes are optimized or not.

For much more detail on this burning issue, check out the QuickBase Fast Track blog.

 

What Does Digital Transformation Mean to You?

Digital transformation is a transformation because it affects everyone within the organization from the c-suite on down. But at this point in time, is it more of a theory – something that organizations aspire to – or a reality? A group of recent studies provide insight into the degree to which non-IT employees desire and are helping to move the needle.

Age Discrepancies Are Real

To start, Capgemini Consulting conducted a 2016 joint research study with the MIT Center for Digital Business. The partners interviewed over 150 executives across a broad range of industry sectors and geographies. Not surprisingly, the research found that younger workers today have greater familiarity with digital tools and ways of working than their more tenured counterparts.

The Capgemini consulting executives highlighted a growing gap between older and younger workers in their expectations and work habits around technology. Where older employees face a learning curve, millennial workers are often underwhelmed by the digital tools available to them.

One executive commented: “these people coming into the company, mid 20s, late 20s, even early 30s, they do everything electronically.  They say:  ‘Come on, I know the company is over 100 years old, but our information and IT capabilities don’t have to match the age of the company!’”

Along the same lines, according to the Dell Future Workforce Study, which was conducted in 2016 by Penn Schoen Berland, nearly half of American millennials (42 percent) said they’d likely quit a job if workplace tech didn’t meet their standards – nearly 4X as many as baby boomers (14 percent). Eighty-one percent of millennials reported the technology available influences their decision to take a new position compared to 53 percent of baby boomers.

Sixty-two percent of millennials said remote teams and better communication technology will make face to face communication obsolete compared to 48 percent of Gen X-ers and 32 percent of baby boomers. And nearly 3 in 4 American millennials (72 percent) said it’s likely they will be working in a smart office using the Internet of Things in the next five years – compared to 52 percent of Gen X-ers and 35 percent of baby boomers. Finally, 68 percent of millennial workers anticipated using AR/VR products in their professional life (compared to 55 percent of Gen X-ers and 42 percent of baby boomers), and 70 percent of millennial workers agreed that their jobs could be made easier with the assistance of AI (compared to 49 percent of Gen X-ers and 34 percent of baby boomers).

Adoption Remains A Barrier

Some of the executives Capgemini Consulting and MIT interviewed reported success in using platforms such as enterprise social networks or collaboration tools, but others highlighted challenges. Given the investment made in these systems, lack of adoption is a serious concern. One respondent stated: “We’ve spent an awful lot of money on technology, but I still see people working in the old way.”

On the user side, executives reported a lack of understanding and unclear business value as major issues. A leader in the food service industry explained: “I think people are apprehensive about new technologies. They don’t understand them and there is a fear of the unknown. They don’t fully understand how they’re going to drive business outcomes.”

Many of Capgemini’s respondents recognized that new digital tools, automation of business processes, and an increasing role of data in decision-making can increase transparency in an organization. But, as conversations move online and information is more freely available, they also witnessed resistance from management employees.

Managers may view these trends as a threat to their autonomy or influence. Explaining sales managers’ reactions to the introduction of a real-time reporting platform, one Capgemini executive commented: “That kind of transparency, they’re not used to, so there’s an initial push back.”

For the rest of the post, head over to the QuickBase Fast Track blog.

The Future of Project Management with Moira Alexander

Project management thought leader Moira Alexander chats exclusively with The Fast Track about issues such as the difference between Project Management and change management, the unique requirements of remote project management, and the most effective use of software tools to complete project management and non-PM related tasks.

Moira Alexander is the founder and president of Lead-Her-Ship Group, as well as a project management and IT columnist for CIO Magazine whom I’ve often admired and cited. Her book Lead or Lag: Linking Strategic Project Management & Thought Leadership was just released this month. Here, Moira sounded off on some of our burning questions related to the field of Project Management in late 2016.

What’s new and different about the field of project management this year?

Project Management (PM) is a field driven by business strategy and it’s under increasing pressure to not only execute project specific requirements, but also provide evidence it can effectively link efforts back to higher-level company-wide, and even industry based goals. This makes it necessary for project, portfolio, and program leaders to take on the role of a true partner with company leadership in this regard.

There’s also a continued trend towards a higher degree of global visibility that’s creating an environment where transparency, accountability, and social responsibility are significant factors in measuring project, portfolio, and program success.

This year and well into the future, I believe successful delivery will mean project professionals will need to sharpen their technical knowledge, adopt hybrid methodologies with increasing frequency, and greatly expand on their softer skills to influence positive results.

What are some key differences between project management and change management?

Although project management and change management share a closely linked relationship, they are completely different disciplines with distinct roles and responsibilities. You could also think of change management as a subset of Project Management.

The role of project management: Project Management involves the actions and activities required in the actual implementation of a product or service.

Project management professionals manage all project specific activities from initiation to close, and ensure stakeholder goals are successfully accomplished. They facilitate project meetings, maintain communication with all stakeholders, and ensure projects remain within scope. Project managers should work with the company leadership to ensure there’s alignment with business strategies and help to mitigate risks. Ultimately, Project Manager focus is project specific activities that enable a company’s vision.

The role of change management: Change management monitors and manages only the impact of changes that result from organizational and project management activities. It involves the implementation of strategies to deal with change (sustainability aspects).

A Change Management professional guides, communicates, documents, and implements effective strategies to manage change. They help company leadership, employees, and other stakeholders through the transition as changes occur, and improve process adoption and buy-in to reduce anxiety and resistance. The primary focus should be the impact of change on people and processes.

For the rest of Moira's interview, head over to the QuickBase Fast Track blog.

Disruption 101: How to Ignite Change in Your Company

As a general rule, human beings fear change and will often fight to maintain the status quo. If there are individuals within your organization who are either not interested or downright hostile toward a focus on disruptive scenarios, there are several steps you can take to bring them into the fold.

Open a dialogue

Before you attempt to persuade colleagues to jump right into a specific initiative, provide a safe space to discuss disruption in general. Organizational change consultant David Hofstetter suggested posing questions such as: Where and how could disruption impact your business? How will your skills and those of your employees be impacted? Are you embracing change, shying away from it, or ignoring it? What are your competitors doing that you are not? What the newest trends in your industry?

Attend forward-thinking industry events

The sessions and conversations you and your colleagues will have at conferences centered on innovation will take your thinking to another level. Encourage your colleagues and employees to see for themselves what disruption means and what it can do for growth and profit. Appropriate events may vary by industry, but some good ones are Tech Crunch Disrupt, World Business Forum, and Fortune Growth Summit.

Hire an outsider

Sometimes, an internal person can repeat the same message dozens of times, but no one really hears it until it comes from the mouth of an external consultant who is perceived as an expert. When it comes to embracing disruption, you might make greater headway by bringing on a single or team of advisers who can offer an objective picture of your organization’s status compared to the larger market, and can provide direction and next steps.

Conduct periodic market disruptor analyses

Often, disruptive innovations (<<interview with Guy Kawasaki) are considered far away, irrelevant, and optional. There is no better way to make a case to in-denial executives than to regularly monitor and explain how disruptive competitors are threatening your business TODAY. “As the barriers to entry in businesses get lower and easier, competitors and new ways of doing things will appear fast and more often,” said Hofstetter.

Change your tone to one of urgency

As I mentioned before, human beings prefer to support existing ways of doing things. For this reason, companies tend to be conservative, reactive, and focused on immediate business fires rather than the ones that threaten to burn from miles away. Use the data from your market disruptor analyses to connect the dots for your leaders – why is disruptive change something that requires attention this instant? Speaking in terms of lost profit or customers is more likely to resonate with some leaders than “we should really try this new thing.”

Fight the temptation to be insular

While being laser focused on your own daily operations is more comfortable, putting on blinders is dangerous in a business world that changes rapidly. Therefore, you should make sure that your company has a pipeline to receive guidance from a variety of sources. For instance, an advisory council that taps people in different roles in different fields will provide a fresh perspective that is impossible to get otherwise. When it comes to understanding where your market is going, often you can take cues from other industries that are a year or two ahead of yours.

For more where this came from, check out the QuickBase Fast Track blog.