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.

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.

 

Essential Leadership for the Future of Work

At this year's SilkRoad Connections conference, keynote speaker Cheryl Cran challenged our attendees to upgrade their leadership operating systems to meet future work requirements. How can we change how we think, do, and share?

Twenty-First Century Changes and Challenges

The future of work will be about saying goodbye to blaming, bureaucracy, and bad leadership. Gen X, Gen Y, and Zoomers (baby boomers who refuse to age and retire) will work together to create an environment of shared leadership, freedom of expression, creativity, inspiration, and fun. And work will look very different. By 2020, 90 percent of employees will stay on the job three years or less, 50 percent will work remotely, and a majority will be independent contractors. Given these changes, the person who can embrace flexibility will have the most power.

Cran asked attendees about their top challenges related to HR and the future of work. Not surprisingly, they cited recruitment, retention, and skill development. We are fighting for talent globally and many twenty-first century skills such as creativity and agile leadership are sorely lacking. These skills are not natural and we have to teach them.

HR’s top three opportunities, according to Cran’s survey, are partnering, having a strategic advantage in the organization, and leading change. The biggest challenges, on the other hand, are transitioning to a fully digital andsocial mindset and mobile friendliness. In recent years, HR has made progress using dashboard analytics to get a real-time view of people and processes, and leveraging robotics to automate basic tasks, but there is still work to be done.

Cran pointed out the differences between the work environment of the past and that of the future. In the 1990s, for example, business was autocratic, centralized, task-focused, and based on the single perspective of the leader. But today and in the years to come, work will be shared, values-based, virtual, creative and revolutionary, and based on multiple perspectives.

How Businesses Can Stay Focused During Slow Periods

I asked three business owners—Zeeshan Ali, CEO of screen printing company The Zee Group in Chicago; Bryanne Lawless, managing partner of PR firm BLND in Los Angeles; and Michael Mogill, CEO of Crisp Video Group in Atlanta—about how they turn historically slow seasons into growth periods.

What are the ebbs and flows of your business in a typical year?

Ali: Typically, the start of the school year and the end of the year—as we are ramping up for trade show season—are our busiest times of the year. We have focused on diversifying our portfolio of clients this year, so the wavelength is a bit different than in past years.

Lawless: The beginning of the year is always the craziest since businesses want to re-market themselves, update their branding or expand their social media presence. The slowest time is usually the third quarter because companies are running out of budget for marketing and PR efforts. Luckily for us, almost every business needs PR to compete and be seen as an expert in its industry.

Mogill: The slower times of the year are the early part of Q1 and Q4. Starting the year, our sales pick up stride as we get into March and are very strong through Q2 and Q3. In Q4, things start to slow near Thanksgiving, not just because of the holidays but also because clients are going out of town.

Can you predict when activity will slow down? How do you prepare for slow seasons?

Mogill: Absolutely, since we have tracked activity data over several years. Because we are able to anticipate them, we can ramp up marketing significantly during slow periods to ensure that we are still able to be productive and hit our goals. Also, we frontload our goals through the early part of the year rather than spreading them evenly over 12 months.

Lawless: When our pipeline slows down, that’s a signal that everything else will follow. It’s important to focus on the clients we have, but we also have to make sure there are always clients ready to sign and hit the ground running.

Ali: We use the reporting feature in our CRM and in QuickBooks to monitor slow and peak periods of activity. This information dictates how we should manage our expenses and allows us to accurately forecast each month.

For the rest of the interview, head over to the AMEX Open Forum.

Telepresence Robots Coming to an Office Near You

Using telepresence robotics technology by Double Robotics and others, organizations are virtually sending their employees on client meetings and speaking engagements every day. But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.

Telepresence is one of the few commercial applications of robotics technology that I’ve been genuinely excited about. Now that remote work is significantly on the rise, I view telepresence as a terrific means for professionals to virtually project themselves into an engaging human office environment.

Since I don’t have a telepresence robot myself yet, I checked out some opinions from those who have used them. Do the currentmachines live up to the hype, and are they a nightmare for IT staff to manage and secure?

In theory

Over at TechCrunch, Peter Hirst wrote about his colleague at MIT Sloan Executive Education, Paul McDonagh-Smith. Paul’s based in London, but his telepresence robot from Double Robotics allows him to present at a conference in Singapore first thing in the morning, then have a business meeting in Cape Town, South Africa and later that afternoon, meet with team members on the MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“In our office, telepresence robots are no longer a novelty, but an everyday tool we’ve been using to enable our remote team members to be more engaged,” said Hirst. “Double’s robot units are available regularly for team meetings or one-on-one visits. We all enjoy the ability to be truly present in our interactions with colleagues and clients — an experience that feels much more natural and personal than a phone call or a videoconference.”

In practice

Emily Dreyfuss is a remote worker at Wired. She lives in Boston, but most of her colleagues are in an office in San Francisco, and she was feeling left out. Her boss bought her Double Robotics’ creatively named Double, which sells for around $2500. The telepresence robot was Dreyfuss’ physical embodiment at headquarters. Instead of legs, she moved on gyroscopically stabilized wheels. Instead of a face, she had an iPad screen. Instead of eyes, a camera with no peripheral vision. Instead of a mouth, a speaker. And instead of ears, a tinny microphone.

At first, Dreyfuss was enamored with the experience. “It’s thrilling. I am in the office! There is the kitchen! There is Sam! Hi, everyone! I am here!” she exclaimed. Her robot, nicknamed Embot, attended meetings. “Plunked at the end of the conference table, my iPad head tracked the conversation, listening.”

Although Embot put Dreyfuss physically in the office, her co-workers could only see her face and not her body, and therefore were not constantly reminded how pregnant she was. “The visual reminder of my changed condition was not in their faces,” she said. “I have worked at places before where women start getting treated differently when their bellies show.

Dreyfuss realized, however, that current telepresence technology has its limitations. For one thing, people were always touching her robotic body without asking, either to help her move if she got stuck or just because they felt it. It was awkward for her – and her colleagues too. As one reported: “You know, when Joe lifted you up and carried you – with your face on the screen, it looked really inappropriate. Like he was cradling you in his arms.”

Embot was also a little rough around the edges technology wise. Dreyfuss couldn’t hear meetings very well. Robots, of course, live off power and and Wi-Fi, and signal strength proved to be a big problem.

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

6 Workplace Realities Women Will Face In 2040

My 4-year-old daughter Serena will be 30 in 2041. Assuming that she has a college degree and eight years of work experience, how might she fare in a world dominated by contract workers, fluid teams, human-centered work, persistent pay gaps, blurred work-life boundaries, and biases that have been around since the beginning of time? Well, let’s investigate.

1. INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

Serena was born in 2011, the year the U.S. birth rate dipped to its lowest recorded level. As the U.S. birth rate keeps trending below 2.0 births per woman, that doesn’t mean young women will face less competition for school acceptance and jobs in the coming decades.

As the U.S. birth rate keeps trending below 2.0 births per woman, that doesn’t mean young women will face less competition for school acceptance and jobs in the coming decades.

Instead of vying with other Americans her age, my daughter will fight for a place among hyper-qualified professionals from around the world. While her generation struggles to support the population of adults over 65—projected to triple by mid-century—it will face a global talent pool from which companies can hire the best people no matter where they're based.

2. CONTINUING GENDER GAPS IN LEADERSHIP

Will my daughter preside over her own company? She probably won't, and yours isn't likely to either—unless current trends make a dramatic turnaround.

According to Judith Warner at the Center for American Progress, women’s presence in top management positions today remains below 9%, and their percentage on all U.S. corporate boards has been stuck in the 12.1–12.3% range over the past decade. A 2014 Babson College study showed that, on average, just 60 female CEOs got VC funding in the years 2011–2013. This is surprising given that women are the majority owners in 36% of all businesses in the U.S.

It’s been estimated that at the current rate of change, it will take until 2085 for women to reach parity with men in leadership roles. That’s too late for Serena.

3. REVOLVING DOORS OF EMPLOYMENT

Rather than heading up her own venture, Serena is far more likely to be a contract worker—a segment of the workforce that's been projected to overtake the single-employer workforce by 2040. And she won’t just have to compete for jobs every few years. She will be in a constant cycle of promoting her services, securing a project, and promoting her services again.

"Businesses will consist of owners, talent assemblers, and contract workers for everything else," the writer Tad Milbourne has argued on Techcrunch. "Platforms will spring up that know what contractors have certain skills, what they’ve done, and whether they’re available. Contractors will get instantly matched with talent assemblers.

For my daughter's generation of working women, networking with these "talent assemblers" will likely become a top priority.

4. SHORT-TERM VIRTUAL TEAMS

In preschool, Serena likes to flit from station to station, playing with a different group of kids every five minutes. That’s good, because in 2040 she'll work on a variety of remote project teams that form and disband quickly after accomplishing a specific business outcome. She will have no physical office outside her home, yet she’ll interact with thousands of professionals of all ages and across many cultures each year.

What will Serena do on these teams? Your guess is as good as mine, but according to futurist Gerd Leonhard, she’d be smart to pursue something related to growing technology segments like data science, artificial intelligence, cognitive computing, deep learning, and robotics.

It’s pretty clear than hundreds of millions of jobs that are primarily routine-based, repetitive, and rules-based will increasingly be done by machines.

Or she could pursue a career that makes good use of human skills like imagination, curiosity, understanding, empathy, and social and emotional intelligence—like design, therapy, negotiation, or invention.

What will she want to avoid? "It’s pretty clear than hundreds of millions of jobs that are primarily routine-based, repetitive, and rules-based will increasingly be done by machines," writes Leonhard.

5. AGE-OLD GENDER BIAS

And in the narrowing breadth of roles reserved for people, women are set to continue lagging behind men despite equal educational opportunities. How come? One reason is that "unconscious bias", or the implicit people-preferences we form through socialization, is deeply embedded in the human experience. It starts early, too—research shows that it’s present in children by the age of three or four—and enters the workplace already deeply rooted in each of us.

While some companies are now pioneering new methods for controlling for it in their recruitment and management processes, unconscious gender bias has proved a tough nut to crack.

A recent study by VitalSmarts researchers Joseph Grenny and David Maxwell found that women’s perceived competency drops by 35% and their perceived deserved compensation by $15,000 when they're seen to be assertive or forceful—violating ingrained cultural expectations for women to be caring and nurturing.

This is a problem that’s unlikely to be solved in my daughter's lifetime, even though, according to London Business School professor and The Key author Lynda Gratton, we shouldn’t lose hope. "It’s surprising how quickly societal norms can change," she says. "I see my sons being taught not to make any assumptions about what men and women do—and of course, more young people are now being brought up by working mothers. So in some parts of society, gender bias may be seen as something from the past."

Let's hope so.

6. BETTER WORK-LIFE INTEGRATION

According to the 2014 OECD Better Life Index, when compared to 35 other developed nations, the U.S. ranks as the eighth-worst country for work-life balance. The pressure to conform to standards set by countries like Germany and Denmark is likely to grow. As workforces become less global, top U.S. employers may feel more impelled to compete with foreign companies' perks in order to retain the best talent. So we may well have come a long way on work-life issues within the next 25 years.

In the narrowing breadth of roles reserved for people, women are set to continue lagging behind men.

On the other hand, future workers will be even more continuously connected to their work through technology than we are today. But by then we may have worked this way long enough that my daughter's generation will be better equipped to manage it.

Lynda Gratton believes that some work-life conflicts may be alleviated by a longer window for childbearing and more involvement from fathers. "Women may have more leeway in terms of sequencing their family and careers, and we will see more see-saw couples in which both partners take turns supporting one another."

All in all, there are likely to be more opportunities than obstacles for professional women in 2040, but there's plenty that we can do right now to make sure of that.

This piece was originally published on the Fast Company website.

For Greater Productivity, Try 52/17

Over five years ago, I wrote one of my first posts for the Fast Track blog. The article was about how I was able to hold down four paid jobs in addition to raising a toddler. Fast forward to today, when I am working on at least a dozen paid jobs and am responsible for an additional child. I’m still using the same system, and it’s still working.

One of the things I mentioned in the article is how I leave two hours per day for last minute tasks, essentially only scheduling enough productive work for six hours. During the remaining time, I manage administrative tasks, networking calls and gatherings, media interviews, research, and yes – downtime.

Introducing 52/17

Julia Gifford is a self-proclaimed Canadian born tech-enthusiast who currently works for the Draugiem Group. Gifford published an article on TheMuse.com detailing her company’s research study on employee work flow. Using time-tracking and productivity app DeskTime, Draugiem looked at the habits of the most productive employees and pinpointed the work style leading to an incredible ability to get things done.

What’s the strategy? It turns out I wasn’t so far off in my approach to six hours of productive work and two hours of non-productive work or breaks. Draugiem found that the most productive 10 percent of DeskTime users work for 52 minutes without stopping, break for 17 minutes, and then get back to the task at hand. They repeat this technique every hour.

If this sounds familiar, you might have heard of a similar approach called the Pomodoro Method. Cited by Gifford, the Pomodoro Technique is a time management method that uses a timer to break down work into intervals of focus and rest. These intervals are called “pomodoros” (or “tomatoes” in Italian), after those tomato-shaped kitchen timers.

Pomodoros are separated by short breaks for distractions, daydreaming, snacking, etc. It works by choosing a task to work on exclusively for 25 minutes, setting a timer, working on the task until the timer rings, and then taking a five minute break. After going through this cycle four times, you take a longer (about 15 minutes) break.

The Magic of the Creative Sprint

Why do methods like 52/17 and Pomodoro work so well? How can people who don’t even work a full day accomplish so much more than those who clock way more hours? Gifford wrote that the reason the top 10 percent of productive employees are able to get the most done during a comparatively short period of time is that every interval of working time is treated as a sprint. During the 52 minutes, they work with intense purpose, and then during the 17 minutes, they remove themselves completely from the task so that they can be fully focused and ready for the next sprint.

Human beings, apparently, are actually built to sprint. The body is not meant to sit for eight hours straight, so breaks on-the-hourimprove both productivity and health. The brain doesn’t love focusing for long periods either, and according to Gifford, concentration is like a muscle that needs to rest. Even if you’re a conscientious employee and love your work, doing it for hours on end will inevitably result in boredom and flagging attention. Psychologically and physically, being overworked is worse than being underworked.

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

Are You Ready for Life in the Swarm?

Mid-century work teams will be temporary in addition to virtual. The growth of contract work and the specialization of organizations will spell the end for stable groups that work together a long time. Teamwork will still be valued and rewarded, but the teams themselves will form and disband with lightning speed. Industry analyst firm Gartner calls this phenomenon swarming.

Pros and Cons of Life in the Swarm

A swarm is a group that comes together for a short-term project and quickly disbands when the project has been completed. It’s characterized by a flurry of collective activity from everyone available and able to pitch in. Employees in a swarm will barely know each other, so in order to gain influence with colleagues and partners, professionals will have to leverage larger networks rather than smaller ones.

In the near future, reporting relationships will get confusing since work will cross department and company lines and people will have an ever-changing array of formal and informal managers. Employees will have to be more spontaneous, proactively creating new designs and models to deal with the issues at hand.

Working on a new team every month (or week) is likely to be challenging and exciting, and you won’t ever be bored. But because your path is your own and everyone you work with is going in a slightly different direction, you are likely to struggle finding suitable long-term mentors and solidifying work relationships. Networking will be more complex as you attempt to manage an army of weaker ties, calling on people you may have interacted with only once or twice about a project or opportunity.

You won’t always understand the culture or perspective your new colleagues are coming from. Unfortunately, considering the speed and intensity of swarms, you usually won’t have time for icebreakers. You’ll simply have to accelerate your efforts to get to know swarm-mates, and accept that a common work goal may be all that binds you at times.

For more on life in the swarm, check out Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Is Open Allocation in Your Future?

Github.

Gore & Associates.

Treehouse.

Valve.

What do these companies have in common? Well, besides the fact that they are forward-thinking, pioneering firms, they all practice a leadership style called open allocation. In open allocation, employees select how to spend their time and the projects on which they’ll work. There is no such thing as hierarchy. In an open allocation culture, employees are accountable to the business and to their peers. As long as they can show that they’re contributing value, they can switch assignments whenever they want – there are no managers or rules about headcount to hold them back.

Self-Directed, Self-Managed

In an open allocation scenario, teams essentially manage themselves and are only temporary. The concept reminds me of Gartner’s swarming idea, in which a project group forms based on expertise and interest and then disbands when its goal is accomplished. Rather than an executive calling for a new team, the informal leader is the employee who came up with the idea for the project – tenure or “rank” aside. A new strategic initiative will only get off the ground if the “leader” can convince others to invest their time, talent, and resources.

No Blame, More Gain

The benefits of open allocation are many. Decisions are smarter and better informed because the people making them are closer to the work, and employees can provide input free of strict, inflexible communication channels. Team members are automatically more motivated because they wouldn’t have chosen to work on a project if they didn’t believe in it and weren’t excited about it upfront. And if they are unhappy, they have to recognize that it’s because of their own choices rather than a managerial mandate. Instead of leaving the company, they just move on to another project.

For the rest of the post, head over to SilkRoad's blog.

Let's End the Collective Death by Conference Call

According to new InterCall research on workplace conference call behavior, 82 percent of employees admitted to focusing on other work or non-work distractions while on a call. Rob Bellmar, executive vice president of conferencing and collaboration at InterCall, recently offered some great tips to Harvard Business Review about ending conference call abuse. Here are his highlights.

Stop striving for inclusiveness

Online calendars, scheduling apps and email distribution lists have created a monstrous meeting invite reflex. It has become too easy to send blanket, one-hour meeting invites to 10 people when only five are relevant to the agenda.

Businesses need to break free of the notion that all attendees should be on a conference call from start to finish. Rob advises that managers can stagger invitations and plan upfront which topics will be discussed at various points in the meeting.

Start using video

Video conferencing remains a point of contention, and its adoption curve is a matter of psychological acceptance. The idea that everyone in a meeting can watch what you’re doing deters many workers, as does the dissonance between what we see in the mirror and what’s reflected on our laptop or tablet screens.

But Rob cites research from Wainhouse, which found that of the employees who use webcams and similar tools during meetings, 74 percent like the ability to see colleagues’ reactions to their ideas, and nearly 70 percent feel it increases connectedness between participants.

For more con call tips, head over to Intuit's Fast Track blog.