Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Superjobs Are the Roles of the Future

As companies begin to spin back up, leaders are looking to refill the roles they may have had to cut to survive. But many new roles won’t look like the old ones —organizations can structure their workforces to most effectively distribute labor between employees and automation through newly defined roles called “superjobs.”

According to Deloitte’s 2019 Global Human Capital Trends report, superjobs include components of traditional jobs to maximize the strengths of both humans and automated services. When thoughtfully deployed within an organization, superjobs can offload routine work to automaton to free up employees to focus on more strategic, revenue-oriented tasks.

"Calling for both hard and soft skills and cutting across typical departmental silos, superjobs require the flexibility to combine tasks and merge responsibilities as needed," the Deloitte report says.

While Deloitte's research on superjobs mainly focused on large enterprises, the concept is applicable to small and midsize businesses as well. No matter the size of your organization, superjobs can streamline operations in functions like supply chain management, accounting and marketing — really, wherever software exists to supplement human efforts. Indeed, Deloitte's research found that 41 percent of respondents are using automation extensively or across multiple functions. (The survey "polled nearly 10,000 respondents in 119 countries.")

To get started on this path, businesses must undertake an intelligent job design process, flatten their hierarchies to make room for flexible, self-managed teams and boost their arsenal of applied technology skills.

Intelligent Job Design 

Traditional roles are narrower in scope — the tasks an employee performs directly maps to what the employer outlined in the job description.

But automation and algorithms take over the routine and fixed aspects of work, business leaders can free their employees to use their critical thinking and feeling talents on tasks such as like data interpretation, problem solving, empathy, creativity and teamwork.

While you don’t have to throw out all your existing job descriptions, it’s worth looking at your workforce with a broader lens. Consider creating what Deloitte calls a “job canvas” — a more fluid and expansive way of examining the work you need done.

You can launch your canvas, which can be organized by team or individual, by thinking through the following questions:

• What core business problem does this team or individual need to solve?
• What should their outputs or deliverables be?
• What kind of supervision will the team or individual need to accomplish these objectives?
• What technologies can this team or individual use to augment their capabilities? Which tasks related to this business problem are best suited to people, and which should we automate?
• What learning processes can we put in place to target essential skill development for this team or individual?
• How will we measure this team or individual’s success?

Because you are now looking at your workforce at a higher level, you will likely find that your superjobs (or superteams) cross departmental fault lines of HR, IT, finance, sales, etc. Integrating data-driven insights with human intuition will be a central component of all superjobs. Depending on your business, your superjobs might include:

• a “customer experience architect,” who uses sentiment analysis to create stronger real-time engagement;
• a “case synthesizer,” who examines legal precedents mined by an algorithm and handpicks the most impactful ones; or
• a “supply chain effectiveness analyst,” who uses performance data to make recommendations that balance both cost and sustainability.

For more on superjobs, check out the full article on the AMEX Business site.

Americans Feel Their Employers View Them As Disposable

A new DeVry University study conducted for Labor Day found that at a time when American workers should feel recognized and celebrated, more than a third felt their employers could take or leave them.

Thirty-six percent of DeVry respondents said that based on their employers’ actions since the start of the pandemic, they believe their employers view them as disposable. This perception resonated  more with younger workers than older ones, with 47 percent of Gen Z-ers (born after 1996) and 42 percent of millennials (born 1980-95) saying they felt disposable compared with 28 percent of Gen X-ers (born 1964-79) and 32 percent of baby boomers (born 1946-63).

Respondents agreed that in today’s workforce, tenure, education, and industry experience do not matter as much as hard work,  meeting goals and deadlines, and having a positive attitude.

If you’re an employee, being disposable is clearly not the ideal status as it makes you vulnerable to layoffs, consolidations, or random turns in your marketplace. Fortunately, you can protect yourself from natural evolution and future disruptions by focusing on your career durability, or your ability to sustain gainful employment over a long period of time. The five components of career durability include:

Soft skills are interpersonal attributes that you need to collaborate successfully with others at work. As machines take over more work tasks over the next 10 years, soft skills like empathy, intuition, diplomacy, judgment, and problem solving will set human employees apart. You can hone yours through personality assessments/recommendations, classic business books such as those by Stephen Covey and Dale Carnegie, and on-the-job experience.

Hard skills are those in a specific area for which learning can be measured (i.e. you either know it or you don’t). If you’re applying for a given job, employers will expect you to perform the requisite functions. For instance, if you’re a phlebotomist, you must know how to insert an IV. You can acquire the hard skills you need via degree programs, online courses, certifications/microcredentials,  and employer training.

Applied technology skills represent the ability to leverage people, processes, data, and devices to do a job more efficiently. In all occupations, digital technology exists to augment human work. But do you know, for example, what software is available in your role and how to use it? You might increase your base of applied technology skills with employer training, mentorship, solo exploration, and investigation.

Institutional knowledge is industry specific expertise gained through experience and/or tenure. Organizations are facing a brain drain caused by the retiring baby boomers. Some things can only be learned by facing similar scenarios multiple times over a career lifespan. You typically acquire institutional knowledge by staying with one company or in one industry and gaining cross-functional and adjacent expertise via job shadowing, informational interviewing, and volunteering.

A growth mindset is the positive attitude that influences how an individual sees their world, and that motivates them to learn and change. Today’s learner must be continuous and self-directed, and curiosity, agility, and drive to improve will win the day. You can enhance your growth mindset through self, peer, and manager evaluations, acceptance of failure, implementation of constructive feedback, intrapreneurship, and inspirational books and podcasts.

Employee actions are only one piece of the puzzle, however. What if you’re an employer, and you’re rightfully concerned that so many of your talent employees feel disposable? Improved benefits and greater pandemic safety measures are essential, but don’t get to the heart of the disposability issue. The key  is to show appreciation early and often. The DeVry survey respondents indicated that the most effective ways are through pay increases (69 percent), awards (34 percent), and greater schedule flexibility (30 percent).

This year especially, Labor Day is an appropriate time to take the right steps so employment is beneficial and satisfying for all sides.

Becoming a Remote-First Organization

Companies looking to improve their work-from-home (WFH) productivity may want to adopt some of the principles of distributed work.

The most evolved version of work from home, distributed work refers to operations that are remote-first rather than office planned. Companies like WordPress and Zapier have been 100 percent distributed for years, with all of their employees — from their executives to HR to sales and marketing — working from their homes and offices around the globe.

Having entered this situation so suddenly, it's no surprise that many business owners have been winging WFH. But given that working from home and distributed workforces will continue even as we emerge from COVID-19, business owners can use the pandemic as a catalyst to permanently transform work for the better. According to a March 2020 Gartner survey of 317 CFOs, "74 percent of respondents said they will move at least 5 percent of their previously on-site workforce to permanently remote positions post-COVID 19."

Being strategic about distributed work demands a wider lens. Now is the time for businesses to adopt some of the principles of distributed to prepare for a remote-friendly future.

1. Get comfortable with managing remote teams.

To fully realize the benefit of distributed work, small-business owners must get away from a strong preference for employees to work onsite and use company space and equipment at scheduled times. If you only allow remote work in an emergency, you won't have the necessary infrastructure in place to support fully distributed work, and employee access will likely be slow and clunky. 

Being comfortable with distributed work requires trusting your employees. You can cultivate trust by stepping up communication and letting your people know you support them and are giving them the freedom to do their jobs when and how they feel it is most appropriate and effective. 

Boost your comfort level by tracking the productivity of WFH employees during the pandemic. You don't have to use software to record their every keystroke or micromanage their daily tasks — it's more about having a concrete idea of whether employees are achieving their goals as efficiently at home as they did in the office.

When it comes time to ease restrictions, seek employee feedback about an onsite schedule that makes sense. By using a survey tool or individual interviews to collect this information on a broad scale, you may find that some employees are more comfortable with returning to the workplace than others. This can help guide your decision regarding how distributed your post-COVID organization will be.

2. Embrace asynchronous work.

Accepting that closings will be long term, many companies have simply moved in-person activities online. Tools like Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Google Hangouts facilitate real-time meetings. Employees can access share drives, email and company applications remotely, but everyone is largely working the same hours whether they have distractions (e.g. children doing eLearning) or not.

On a recent podcast, Automattic CEO and WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg shared a secret for effective distributed work: a move from synchronous (everyone performs work tasks at the same time) to asynchronous processes (employees work on their own time). For instance, a synchronous process might require people to travel, sit in a meeting room and provide immediate reactions to an idea. An asynchronous process might involve presenting an issue via instant message, prompting team members to think through it in detail and then respond within a predetermined deadline.  

Organizations can shift to asynchronous processes by first evaluating whether set business hours are necessary, and if so, for whom (e.g. customer service staff). Consider how you might change your performance model to evaluate employees on the quality of their contributions rather than the time it took to produce them. For example, an agile performance management system relies on continuous feedback to establish, accomplish and reconfigure goals that align with business needs, and employees are measured on their progress against these goals in real time. 

When you stop relying on synchrony, you have the freedom to source talent across the globe. Think about assembling teams based not on who is geographically proximal, but who is best for the job. This way, you can move operations forward 24 hours a day as employees "pass the baton" to overseas colleagues.

For the rest of the post, head over to the AMEX Business site.

How Entrepreneurs Can Use Supply Chain Finance

Supply chain finance, also known as reverse factoring, links the seller, the buyer and the financing party to improve business cash flow on all sides.

How Supply Chain Financing Works

In leveraging supply chain finance, suppliers sell outstanding receivables to financial institutions to accelerate payment of receivables and extend payment flexibility to customers.

Once the supplier sends an invoice to the buyer, the buyer confirms to the financial institution that the invoice is approved and the supplier receives payment immediately. When the invoice is due, the buyer pays the financial institution back.

Benefits for Buyers Using Supply Chain Financing

There are many benefits for buyers using supply chain financing, including increased liquidity, less contentious relationships with suppliers, decreased liabilities and consolidated finances.

Increased Liquidity

Buyers initiate reverse factoring so their suppliers receive more streamlined payments at lower interest rates. The process aids liquidity for buyers because they receive lengthier and generous payment terms.

Buyers also don't need to contend with early payment requests from suppliers. In the reverse factoring process, suppliers are already paid at previously agreed-upon, and typically faster, terms.

Less Contentious Relationships 

Supply chain finance helps the supply chain process run more smoothly and provides advantages for everyone involved.

In dealing directly with a supply chain funder (i.e. the factor), buyers can usually avoid payment disagreements with suppliers. When buyer/seller relationships don't deteriorate based on late payments or failure to pay, they can grow stronger and build trust, and are thus more likely to expand.

Decreased Liabilities

A business liability is money owed from past transactions that will require additional funds to resolve.

Buyers want to reduce liabilities so they can procure lower interest rates from lenders and maintain overall financial health. Using reverse factoring, the factor is on top of invoices and payments so buyers can focus on other things.

For the rest of the article, head over to the AMEX Business website.

How to Build Relationships with Generation Z

 Generation Z, defined as those born 1996-2012, is a diverse and cosmopolitan group of young people that may be inexperienced, but appreciates unique opportunities to contribute. What else do we know about them, and what can we do to better connect with Gen Z?

They are city dwellers who stay put

Not only is Generation Z more ethnically and racially diverse than prior generations, but members reside in heterogeneous environments as well.  According to a late 2018 study by Pew Social Trends, Gen Z-ers overwhelmingly reside in metropolitan as opposed to rural areas. Only 13 percent of post-Millennials are in rural areas, compared with 18 percent of Millennials, 23 percent of Gen X-ers, and 36 percent of early Boomers at the same ages.

They are less likely, however, to move. Only about 11 percent of Gen Z-ers had a different address from a year earlier, compared with 17 percent of Millennials and 20 percent of Gen X-ers and Boomers at the same ages. Companies that want to learn how to reach Gen Z as employees or customers should integrate into the nearest metropolitan community by offering free learning and social opportunities.

They lack concrete work experience

Per the Pew report, Gen Z-ers are entering adulthood with less experience in the labor market than prior generations. Only one-in-five 15- to 17-year-olds in 2018 (19 percent) worked at all during the prior calendar year, compared with 30 percent of Millennials and 48 percent of Boomers at the same ages. A little more than half of Gen Z-ers were employed during the prior calendar year. 

I’m fond of saying that one can learn transferable workplace skills like sales, marketing, client relations, and finance in any job – even in retail or fast food. The trouble is, fewer Gen Z-ers are taking these positions as teens, and therefore enter the professional world less prepared to succeed. As a workforce futurist, I believe Gen Z-ers are less gainfully employed because they are spending more time in school and prefer to balance their time doing meaningful activities. Therefore, strategizing how to connect with Generation Z should include designing part-time or internship opportunities that expose them to the business and introduce essential skills.

For more where this came from, check out the full piece at AMEX Business.

How to Cope with Long-Term Uncertainty

As much as experts want to predict how the coronavirus situation will pan out, the truth is that no one really knows what's going to happen. The good news is that there are several things business owners can do to reduce their uncertainty. 

1. Act on the outcomes you can realistically anticipate.

Businesses based on in-person interaction already know that customers won’t be coming in for a while. If you don’t yet have a digital means to offer your product or service, consider which products and services are most appropriate to sell online, and then add e-commerce to your website. There are a number of e-commerce solutions such as Shopify, BigCommerce and Squarespace.

While you may want to delegate this to a tech-savvy staff member, both of you should make note of the ways in which online business differs from brick and mortars. With the reduction in frequent in-person connection points, you'll need to go out of your way to engage with your customers via social media and email outreach. Try working with your marketing team to create a content calendar—either an old-school spreadsheet or a tech-based solution like Later or HubSpot—that tracks analytics around your social engagement so you can see what resonates with your customers.

2. Brainstorm with other business owners.

Another way you can deal with uncertainty is to identify other business owners in your sphere who are facing the same challenges you are, and come together to devise solutions to keep the collective group afloat. In particular, experts recommend launching online engagements that preserve the heartbeat and character of a community. 

Midnight Market, a Jersey City, New Jersey-based indoor festival that curates 20 food vendors to recreate an open air, international market, did just that. Understanding that they can’t open for the foreseeable future, Midnight Market’s owners rallied their partners to host a "Take-Out Flash Mob," that is, encouraging followers to order takeout from eight participating restaurants.

"It gives them a burst of cash to pay employees, keep the lights on and helps them continue normal operations so they can continue making delicious food for us!" the company wrote on its website.

To create a social distancing appropriate recreation of their event, Midnight Market promoted cocktail recipes that were easy to create at home, live streamed of DJ sets, and shared drinking games. And they're planning another one with a different selection of restaurants.

For the rest of my tips, check out the full article on the AMEX Business website.

 

Doing Right By Your Customers in a Crisis

Around the world, large companies are making unprecedented moves on behalf of their customers. Dunkin' is awarding its loyalty program members bonus points for using their drive thrus; luxury product manufacturer LVMH switched from making perfume to producing hand sanitizer.

But the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent quarantining procedures present a dilemma for business owners. How should one engage with customers during this frightening period? Is there a right or wrong strategy? Here are three dos and don'ts for effective interaction.

DO offer cancellations and refunds to the best of your ability.

Even if you have a policy that expressly states that all sales are final, recognize that these are extenuating circumstances and err on the side of generosity, especially if products haven’t been used or services rendered. 

Andrew Maff, who runs a digital marketing consultancy, understands why many of his staffing agency customers have pulled their orders as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The job market is a big question mark," Maff says, "so to help our clients do whatever they can to make it through this, we’ve had to be creative.

"For example, while we didn't give outright refunds, we basically offered a hold. Most of our clients have a minimum of a six-month contract. We volunteered to hold the monthly payments for up to 90 days, and then re-evaluate," he explains. "We did have two clients start in March and we voided those contracts, saying we'd revisit in the next few months. For clients who paid us already, we stopped working for the time being and will use the funds as a pre-payment for future services."

DO send a small gift or coupon to make their immediate situation easier.

If your product or service correlates to pandemic-related needs, consider providing something for free or at a discount. While this strategy may help you upsell, this isn’t the goal. You can show your customers that you’re thinking about their well-being by sending a food delivery, a subscription or even a simple handwritten card.  

Lisa Barrington, an employee engagement strategist, realized that her clients could use her advice in their newly created work-from-home roles. She responded by developing and delivering pro-bono webinars as well as free, downloadable videos and resources. The response was positive.

"People wrote on my LinkedIn to thank me for the great resources on my website, and one of my students who'd never worked from home before commented that he really appreciated and found the video useful," Barrington says.

For the rest of the piece, head over to the AMEX Business site.

Stress and Anxiety Guidance from Northwestern's Chief Psychologist

Greetings, friends.

 

I hope everyone is staying safe and well during this unprecedented and challenging situation. As many of you know, my husband Stew Shankman is a Professor and Chief Psychologist at Northwestern Medical School. He provided some great advice to the media for coping with stress and anxiety of the pandemic and our current isolation procedures. It might be helpful to share with your families, friends, and teams.

 

NPR

CBS

NBC

The New York Times

WGN Chicago

         

Please let me know if Stew or I can help you in any way.

3 Innovative Business Trends for 2020

Remember when the year 2020 seemed incredibly far away? Sure enough, if we'd read about this year's new business trends in the late '90s, we might have thought they were pretty futuristic.

A few developments—including the artificially intelligent voice economy, democratized IT and enhanced social video—became reality in the last few years and form the basis of future business trends in 2020 and beyond. 

AI-Powered Voice Economy

Proactive voice response systems have long been a part of customer service. A proactive response from a machine prompts a human to ask a question. Then the machine answers and then asks a follow-up question.

For example, a customer might call a drugstore to order a prescription refill. The machine would offer the customer options; the customer could choose one, such as “Do I have a refill available?" and the machine could respond “Yes, there is one refill available. Can I fill the prescription for you?"

Phone-based customer service “robots" were once clunky and fussy, but the technology behind them is rapidly advancing. This progress is mostly due to improvements in natural language processing (NLP), or a machine's ability to process human speech patterns.

Artificially intelligent voice-based assistants like Alexa and Siri are taking off because if you think about it, it's much easier for humans to communicate with digital devices and software by voice than by typing onto a screen. Your assistant sits quietly in the background until you ask for its help, and thanks to NLP, it can respond to you far more accurately than in the past.

For the rest of the innovations, head over to the AMEX Business site.

How to Spot the 5 Subtle Forms of Workplace Bias

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a tall, white man.

While I am Caucasian, I’m not tall or male. And because depending on who you ask, between 70-80 percent of leaders have all three attributes, I’m wondering just how much my lack of two of them has held me back.

When I talked, off the record, to a gender bias researcher at a prestigious U.S. university, she informed me that I should not take my success for granted. Apparently, being a short woman in Corporate America means I must be twice as smart, twice as competent, and twice as hardworking.

Most clients wouldn’t tell me that outright as they don’t understand it to be true. It’s not like people readily believe that tall, white men naturally make better leaders. And that’s the thing about unconscious bias – it’s an automatic attitude or perception about a person based on a single attribute like gender, ethnicity, race, or sexual orientation that we are unaware we have and act upon. Unconscious bias is almost as old as humans, as our ancestors developed it to quickly categorize threats in a hostile environment.

In other words, we don’t mean to discriminate, but we can’t help it.

The good news is, we’re getting better at spotting subtle bias at work, as well as the business process improvement techniques and strategies that can root it out before it does too much damage to your culture. Let’s examine a few places bias at work will commonly show up, now or in the near future.

Resume Filters

We often don’t realize it, but we don’t review resumes and profiles on merit alone. When unconscious bias creeps in, we can negatively assess a candidate based on their name, photo, or educational institution. Therefore, using software to blind your applicants’ resumes, profiles, and sample interview tasks is the first element of your first business improvement plan. Full candidate details should not be revealed until your recruiters or hiring managers have had an opportunity to get to know them as an individual.

Unstructured Interviews

Unstructured interviews are not a solid predictor of employee performance for many reasons, but one is surely the subtle bias that results. When we chat informally with candidates, the conversation may proceed in a direction that takes away from the candidate’s relevant attributes. Your business process improvement plan should combat selection bias by including a new interview approach that asks every candidate the same questions, in the same order, according to the same evaluation criteria. You might also consider using a video-based chatbot assessment of interviewer speech and body language to check for potential bias there.

Female Notetakers

Do you have a meeting methodology in place? If so, use business process improvement methodology to mitigate the effects of unconscious bias. Recognize that in meetings, women tend to be asked to take notes more often than men and are more frequently the victims of crosstalk and credit stealing (men may speak over them or coop their ideas). Leaders must make a concerted effort to ensure that female participant contributions are respected and acknowledged equally, and this may be involve changing the way your meetings are structured.

Questionable Writing

Business communication is becoming more informal, and from a subtle bias perspective, that makes it increasingly dangerous because we are more prone to be lazy about what we say and how we say it. Thankfully, artificial intelligence can help you make business process improvements here. Certain document creation software, for instance, provides guidance 

on potentially sensitive or offensive language (i.e. “May the best man win”) contained in a presentation, and others scans text for inappropriately gendered pronouns as part of a general grammar check.

Homogeneous Teams

When we only have contact with our ingroup – or other people who share our demographic and/or psychographic characteristics – we perpetuate unconscious bias. Strategize business process improvements that will diversify your team both traditionally (gender, ethnicity, race, etc.) and cognitively (point of view, background, etc.). This might mean recruiting teammates from new sources and devising ways to bring forward talented individuals who might not be the perfect candidates on paper.

Even a few business process improvements in this area will help you head off subtle biases at the pass. And, if you question your need to make them, spend a few minutes at the Project Implicit website. Designed by Harvard, University of Virginia, and University of Washington psychologists, the site administers Implicit Association Tests to measure personal bias. While you may be unpleasantly surprised at what you uncover, it may well serve as the motivation you need to address this critical issue.