Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Don’t Be a Victim of the Great Resignation

By now, you’ve likely heard the term “the great resignation.” Anthony Klotz, a professor at Texas A&M University, coined the term in a May Bloomberg article to refer to the great numbers of workers expected to exit the workforce after the pandemic.

Klotz does his own research, but a recent Microsoft study, the 2021 Work Trend Index, mirrored his findings. Microsoft surveyed more than 30,000 people in 31 countries and analyzed trillions of productivity and labor signals across LinkedIn and Microsoft 365 to forecast the pending workforce departures.

According to Microsoft, over 40 percent of the global workforce are considering leaving their employer this year, 46 percent are planning to make a major pivot or transition, and only 38 percent of employees are thriving in their careers right now. The situation is worse for women. McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace 2020 study found that one in three working mothers have considered leaving the workforce or downshifting their careers because of COVID-19.

The Microsoft and McKinsey data suggest that the pandemic led employees to question their priorities and either transition to work they found more meaningful or decrease the focus on their job generally. But while this was certainly a factor, new data from Stanford University illustrated that how companies treated their employees also played a significant role.

According to Stanford, the pandemic had a cascading effect on organizations with unsupportive cultures. Companies that had historically laid people off, decreased compensation, held back promotions, or sacrificed psychological safety to preserve the bottom line engaged in more of these behaviors during COVID-19. Stressed-out employees who might have been disgruntled before were downright disgusted. And now they’re ready to quit.

Interestingly, food service, hospitality and retail – some of the sectors hardest hit by the pandemic – are experiencing the most resignations. A “We Quit” sign left on the door of a Nebraska Burger King restaurant after the entire staff walked out really said it all.

For more, check out the full piece on the SilkRoad blog.

Managing a Team You Never Meet: The Remote Small Business

Small-business owners who offer remote work as part of their hiring perks packages may find themselves a step ahead of competitors who don’t in the search for talent in a tight labor market. But how can small-business owners be sure they’re prepared to manage a part-time or fully remote workforce?

To make the most out of remote-work policies, consider what jobs are best suited for remote work, the differences between the types of remote work, and how you can apply key organizational principles to your workforce to ensure it is effective, responsive, and productive.

How Remote Work Has Changed

Although remote work isn't new, just two years ago, the landscape looked quite different. In late 2019, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shared a report based on the responses of 10,000 salaried workers in 2017 and 2018. It found that that only 15 percent of "wage and salary workers had days they only worked at home" and "just over one-half of these workers worked one day or more per week at home, and about one-seventh worked at home five or more days per week."

Among salaried and non-salaried workers alike, these numbers were about to change drastically. According to a June 2020 policy brief from the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, 42 percent of U.S. workers were working from home full-time, accounting for more than two-thirds of economic activity. (The report surveyed 2,500 employees in May 2020.)

The report also found that nearly one-quarter of U.S. employees expected to continue working from home full-time post-pandemic, and an additional 28 percent expected to work from home part-time. And after COVID-19 dissipates, the report indicates that most organizations will facilitate a hybrid of in-person and remote working.

It can be tempting to think these WFH trends mainly apply to large corporations with thousands of highly compensated employees, but that isn't always the case. In June 2020, an occupational analysis done by the University of Chicago indicated that 37 percent of all U.S. jobs could be done at home.

Some small-business owners seem to intuitively understand this. Also in 2020 (April), more than half (57 percent) of the 250 small and midsize business owners surveyed by Intermedia planned to adopt remote working options for employees in the long term. After shifting to remote working, employee availability went up 19 percent and life satisfaction 7 percent. The surveyed owners also experienced falling overhead costs and improved worker attitudes and productivity.

The Different Types of Remote Work

If you're going to run your business using remote teams, understand that a variety of arrangements constitute remote work. Many successful business owners know that remote work isn't a one-size-fits-all proposition, and that choosing the mix that works best for you and each individual employee will ensure a more effective team down the line.

For simplicity's sake, the primary types of remote work are fully or hybrid virtual teams—that is 100 percent virtual versus some mix of in-person with remote work.

Fully virtual teams describes arrangements in which all team members are 100 percent remote with no office time, explains Lauren Bidwell, senior research scientist at HR technology firm SAP Success Factors.

"Hybrid teams encompass some team members working remotely but coming in occasionally, and others working from the office all or most of the time,” she adds.

A fully virtual team may be preferable if your team members work independently and don't require the resources of a physical office space to do their jobs efficiently. After all, going fully virtual means you can offer your employees the maximum flexibility while potentially saving a bundle on overhead and expenses.

On the other hand, if you have a business in which in person creativity and brainstorming are core components, you may consider requiring the regular physical proximity that hybrid work offers. 

Carlos Castelán, managing director of retail consulting firm The Navio Group, suggests some additional benefits of hybrid work.  “An in-person environment can be beneficial to build a company culture, to give younger employees more hands-on training and to foster innovation,” he says. 

The key for small-business owners? Don't just do what your neighbor or competitor is doing. Take the time to think through whether you really need people in the office, and if so, when, and how much. And there's no harm in asking others for their opinions as you strive to make sense of the issue.

“HR is often called in to decide on the most optimal arrangement, which is usually one that balances employee autonomy, cultural cohesion and productivity,” SAP's Bidwell says.

Jobs Suited to Remote Work

Many are familiar with traditionally remote jobs, including IT and programming, marketing and public relations, accounting and finance, professional services, and customer care. While these roles remain key remote-work candidates, other jobs are increasingly proving they’re remote-friendly. 

“There really are a variety of businesses that work well remotely," says Rachel Brenke of business coaching firm Real Biz Accelerator. Inspired by the location needs of her military spouse employees, Brenke has managed wholly virtual teams around the world for more than a decade and today leads an all-women remote team of 16.

As an example of a type of small business that is evolving with respect to remote work, Brenke cites law firms. "The mindset has always been that you must be in a suit and tie and in an office every day in order to provide value to your boss and or your clients," she says. "The pandemic has highlighted that this mentality is no longer needed in a world with the technology available at our fingertips, and the quality-of-life improvements that have resulted are very encouraging."

If you are a small-business owner embracing remote work, there are a variety of sources you can tap for ideas and potential employees. Specialized staffing firms, for example, can help you target appropriate remote employees in a variety of functions. You might also consider reaching out to former employees who left on a good note, who understand your business and whom you trust. Their circumstances may have changed, and they could be amenable to a remote work opportunity.

Keep in mind, though, that while remote job categories have certainly expanded this year, working in this way is still best suited to a specific personality: namely someone who can work and solve problems independently without a great deal of supervision. A hands-off, but supportive management style is may be best for these individuals provided they have demonstrated that they are reliable and trustworthy. 

There may well be times when you must manage employees who are not as well suited to virtual work but are doing their jobs to the best of their ability. Be prepared to offer more general assistance and helpful strategies, schedule frequent check-ins, and review their deliverables so excellent (or subpar) contributions don't slip under the radar.

Organizing Your Company in a Remote-First Era

Whether you're starting a new company that will operate fully or semi-remotely or are reconfiguring because of recent events, the way you manage and structure your workforce can be critically important to its success.

Bob Pozen is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management and the co-author of Remote, Inc., which explores how to think about management in a remote-first era. "Generally speaking, if you're a small business owner, I don't think it makes sense to run an all-remote team in most situations. Instead, consider how you might design a hybrid work structure," Pozen says.

To do this, Pozen suggests leaders consider five factors he calls FLOCS: function, location, organization, culture, and schedule.

Function

A team member function, for instance, plays into whether employees will be more productive collaborating in person or focusing quietly at home. Determine this by taking an inventory of what each of your employees does on an everyday basis, as well as their unique personality and preferences and customize work arrangements accordingly.

Location

Pozen says that location is critical because if team members are 100 percent geographically dispersed from each other already, there’s no point in making them come to a company location where they'd simply sit in an empty cubicle by themselves. On the other hand, if your employees are somewhat geographically proximal, a hybrid work structure could involve them traveling to an in-person get together a few times a month. 

Organization

In this context, organization refers to your degree of hierarchy, or how many levels of management, you establish for your company. 

“Some research has found that a flatter organizational hierarchy facilitates virtual work, and the more autonomy employees have to do their jobs without micromanagement, the higher their productivity outside the office will be,” Pozen says.

Culture

Be honest about whether your culture is conducive to remote work. The more traditional and bureaucratic your company is, the harder the adjustment may be. For example, Pozen says that companies with an individualistic culture make a smoother transition to virtual work as do companies with employees whose work doesn’t immediately depend on other team members’ actions.

"But, companies that stress collectivism, or have a "we" or "us" mentality, may struggle in a remote-first arrangement," he adds.

If your company isn't suited to remote work, all is not lost. You can still offer your employees other types of flexibility, such as self-scheduling and fluid hours.

Lisa Hudson, president of The Growth Coach, a firm that advises small-business owners on remote work. recommends that remote-first leaders set up clear expectations and timelines, as well as check-in points. 

“Launching a remote or hybrid team requires clear responsibilities, direct lines of leadership and a consistent communication tool,” she says.

“You have to be more strategic and stop relying on ‘drive-by conversations.’ Using virtual collaboration apps like Slack, Zoom and Microsoft Teams, leaders can touch base face-to-face, build rapport with employees they might not have met in person and improve their coaching effectiveness.”

For more, head over to the AMEX Business site.

 

Don't Be a Victim of the Great Resignation

By now, you’ve likely heard the term “the great resignation.” Anthony Klotz, a professor at Texas A&M University, coined the term in a May Bloomberg article to refer to the great numbers of workers expected to exit the workforce after the pandemic.

Klotz does his own research, but a recent Microsoft study, the 2021 Work Trend Index, mirrored his findings. Microsoft surveyed more than 30,000 people in 31 countries and analyzed trillions of productivity and labor signals across LinkedIn and Microsoft 365 to forecast the pending workforce departures.

According to Microsoft, over 40 percent of the global workforce are considering leaving their employer this year, 46 percent are planning to make a major pivot or transition, and only 38 percent of employees are thriving in their careers right now. The situation is worse for women. McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace 2020 study found that one in three working mothers have considered leaving the workforce or downshifting their careers because of COVID-19.

The Microsoft and McKinsey data suggest that the pandemic led employees to question their priorities and either transition to work they found more meaningful or decrease the focus on their job generally. But while this was certainly a factor, new data from Stanford University illustrated that how companies treated their employees also played a significant role.

According to Stanford, the pandemic had a cascading effect on organizations with unsupportive cultures. Companies that had historically laid people off, decreased compensation, held back promotions, or sacrificed psychological safety to preserve the bottom line engaged in more of these behaviors during COVID-19. Stressed-out employees who might have been disgruntled before were downright disgusted. And now they’re ready to quit.

Interestingly, food service, hospitality and retail – some of the sectors hardest hit by the pandemic – are experiencing the most resignations. A “We Quit” sign left on the door of a Nebraska Burger King restaurant after the entire staff walked out really said it all.

As reported by the Washington Post in June, 649,000 retail workers put in their notice in April, the industry’s largest one-month exodus since the Labor Department began tracking this data more than 20 years ago.

The so-called “great resignation” will collide with other demographic factors impacting who is available to work and where – including baby boomer retirement, a small population of midlife employees, and a young worker population plagued by stalled education and career growth. If this doesn’t point to a coming labor shortage, I don’t know what does.

If you’re an HR professional or manager, is there anything you can do to avoid becoming a victim? The answer is yes, and it starts with self-awareness of common employer blind spots.

Want to learn more? Catch the replay of my webinar on HR blind spots with SilkRoad!

 

A Futurist's View of the Post-Pandemic Workforce

Given that I wrote a book about the rapid transformation of work as we knew it back in 2018, people often ask me what has surprised me about how human capital is evolving today. As a Workforce Institute Board Member, I’d like to share my topline thoughts, some of which have been derived as the result of quantitative research, and others which came about through engagement with organizations and futurist groups such as the Association of Professional Futurists (APF), the Future Today Institute, the Grey Swan Guild, and the foresight certification program I recently completed with the University of Houston.

The Acceleration of What We Saw Coming

Pandemic or no pandemic, several workforce-related trends were inevitable, including the rise of the gig economy, the contract workforce, internal talent marketplaces, and talent assembly – in which teams are constructed from different types of workers to solve specific problems in hot areas of the business.

We also surmised that organizations would begin to look closely at how human capital quantitatively drives businessvalue; the use of Big Data, analytics, and executive dashboards to determine what is and isn’t working in talent acquisition, learning, scheduling, and performance; the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to combat unconscious bias and measure productivity; and the focus on data quality, integration, and governance.

The shift in the flow of work due to new players like Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon entering the online collaboration market was expected, as was theincreasing popularity of curated learning content by in-house subject matter experts, personalized course recommendations, and targeted certifications and microcredentialing. Given the technology available today, there is no reason individuals shouldn’t upskill and reskill using all the resources at their disposal, and at their own pace and convenience.

What Has Surprised Me

There have been a few head scratchers along the way. The first involves digital transformation. It is a bit disappointing how, during the pandemic, some organizations have simply slapped in-office processes up online. That was fine for the first six months of the crisis, but now it’s time to move on. One size doesn’t fit all. We must permanently adapt certain processes to be antifragile and an effective mix of high tech, high touch.

Also, with respect to digital transformation, it surprises me that no one is talking about what we’ll do when we are entirely dependent on technology and it breaks, what happens when it gets seriously hacked, what happens when we have bandwidth challenges and access inequity, what happens when there are too many systems and usability and adoption falter, and what data and privacy concerns will arise with increased employee monitoring. In my opinion, these are issues that every company should be closely tracking.

While the labor shortages occurring as a result of demographic shifts like baby boomer retirement and smaller generational cohorts like X and Z were anticipated, organizational attitudes toward post-pandemic employee retention are not. Many companies are currently issuing decrees about exactly when people should return to the office and how and when they should work. After a successful 18-month trial of much greater flexibility, this is not going to fly with top (and increasingly rare) talent, and I fear a “great resignation” is about to take place.

Finally, I’m perplexed that more leaders aren’t acknowledging that they were caught completely off guard by the pandemic and are now engaging in strategic foresight to be adequately prepared for what’s certain to be future disruptions.

While we can’t predict the future, we have a responsibility to look around corners as best we can and plan for a variety of potential scenarios. I look forward to continuing to be part of this process!

This post was originally published on the Workforce Institute blog.

Building Your First Reskilling Strategy

According to a not-yet-published research study by Chief Learning Officer and DeVry University, only half of leaders feel their organization’s learning strategy is properly aligned to their business strategy.

In last week’s webinar with SilkRoad, I discussed why upskilling and reskilling are so important in the post-COVID era. As you’ll recall, upskilling provides new skills to workers in their existing domains, while reskilling trains workers for new jobs.

Whether your strategy involves upskilling, reskilling, or a combination of both, the first step in creating it is ensuring business objective alignment.

An aligned learning strategy includes an established process for mapping learning initiatives to business goals and outcomes.

In contrast, an unaligned learning strategy is piecemeal or ad hoc, with little consideration of overarching company objectives. In other words, someone in the business or in L&D said: “We should do a training on that” and someone else said, “sure, let’s make it happen!”

Eight Steps to Reskilling Proficiency

Alignment sounds good, but how do you achieve it in reality?

1. If you’re an L&D professional, sitting in on c-suite meetings and/or getting briefed on executive plans in real-time is a terrific start.
2. You might also try embedding members of your team in business units so you know immediately what roles or skills you need to upskill and reskill FOR.
3. Next, map the identified workforce needs against the competencies your employees currently possess.
4. Convene a task force to outline jobs that are mission-critical for organizational growth and assess whether any of these roles can be redesigned, reconfigured, or combined.
5. Use strategic automation, or determining where human and machine labor best fit, and match resources to tasks.  When plugging in human labor, don’t forget about contract workers, subject matter experts, and anyone else with an alternative work arrangement.
6. If you’ve determined that your human workforce has skills gaps, next you’ll need to determine the best way to address those. Fortunately, there are endless external training resources to supplement internal ones and developing learning content has become more of a curation than a creation exercise.
7. Technology can absolutely help. A human capital management (HCM) solution can assist you in upskilling and reskilling at scale, predict on-the-job success using skills assessments, drive personalization and social connection, and document skill acquisition.
8.  If used “skillfully,” HCM technology can also provide learners with a more immersive, impactful experience that resonates on an individual level, facilitate mentorship, deliver rewards for training completion and/or skill mastery, and leverage analytics to determine what activities have the largest impact on your people and business.

So, before moving forward, make sure you understand the people systems you have at your disposal, as well as additional offerings that integrate with your technology infrastructure and will enhance the learning experience.

Remember too that any new learning strategy should be accompanied by a robust internal communications plan. It’s important to ensure that everyone, including those who are being reskilled and those who aren’t, understands why you’re undertaking the initiative and how their jobs will (or won’t) be affected.

Did you miss the webinar? Please catch us on replay to learn more about how to upskill and reskill your workforce to mid-21^st century success!

 

Is It Time for Your Business to Transition to a New Leader?

According to PwC’s Family Business Survey, 62 percent of family business owners expect to pass the baton to the next generation. But many businesses lose their way when making the transition from startup to a more structured, complex organization.

Despite solid intentions, only one-third of family businesses are expected to last beyond the founders’ generation while even less—an estimated 12 percent—will make it through the second generation to a third.

A confluence of factors make succession planning more urgent. The enormous baby boomer generation will retire en masse by the end of this decade. But according to the PwC research, over half of family businesses are unprepared for the transition to the next generation.  

Prior to this year, many companies’ succession plans were likely informal. Even if junior family members wanted to be involved in the business, PwC found that about half weren’t trained to take on senior roles, which include responsibilities such as executive decision-making and long-term planning. However, the pandemic has forced many organizations to acknowledge the vulnerability of their senior owners and to take steps to adapt to this disruption as well as whatever comes next.

Senior owners and their presumptive junior successors may look at the prospect of a leadership shift differently depending on their individual situations and aspirations.  

Senior Leaders Feel the Time Is Right

Given the amount of pivoting that's required of business owners as a result of this year's disruptions, some tenured leaders are considering handing the reins to younger family members who are better equipped to try new innovations, riskier technology and practices and fresh marketing approaches.

For Konrad Goess-Saurau, the founder of car equipment manufacturer AutoBead, timing was everything.

“When we moved our family from Austria to England and opened for business in a new country, I recognized the importance of brand awareness,” Goess-Saurau says.  

“I don’t fully understand today’s digital channels, but my son Markus does," he continues. "For example, he implemented automated marketing and data analysis that allows us to anticipate a customer’s next purchase and prompt them with relevant communication. I thought, why fight it? Let’s hand the business to the person with the best chance of success.”

The pandemic led Sophie Bowman and her business partner Jackie Nepola, to think more intently about the future of their PR firm Brand Branding.

“We always planned to have a next-gen division, but we fast tracked launching it when the pandemic hit. We have delegated graphic design and content creation to my partner’s teen daughters,” Bowman says.

“Not only can the teens close deals because they relate to consumers that brands struggle to reach," she says, "but this approach also gives younger family members a career at a time when there’s no guaranteed job security in someone else’s company.”

Timing also played a role in the leadership transition of the architectural firm Metzger Mandl from father to son.

“My partner died of pancreatic cancer at age 52. David ran the business, while I brought in the work and led the design responsibilities of the firm,” explains founder Marvin Metzger. 

“While I struggled to keep everything going, my son Eli got his architecture license and was honing his craft with other respected firms," he says. "He took over running the practice in a way that kept up our level of excellence in the area of multifamily housing in New York City.”

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

Could the Pandemic Be a Springboard to Sustainability?

Large companies and organizations have been making good on their recent commitment to corporate citizenship by dedicating resources to help the globe overcome some of its most pressing challenges. Sustainability has been among these key areas of focus, leading to environmentally friendly corporate initiatives from Apple’s commitment to closed-loop supply chains to the development of Patagonia’s next-generation responsible business venture capital arm.

While it’s crucial for these organizations to make top-down commitments to sustainability, business units, groups and even individual teams within them can take their own steps in playing a key role in sustainability in the new normal.  

1. Commit your team to your corporate purpose.

At the corporate level, a clear statement of purpose from executive leadership has become a critical tool in supporting sustainability. The same concept can be borrowed by unit and team managers to empower their employees to find ways to take action.

The process of defining purpose makes it clear that businesses exist to serve society and not the other way around, and the link to sustainability becomes clear,” University of Pittsburgh School of Business professor CB Bhattacharya wrote in a May 2020 article for the World Economic Forum.  

In the pandemic era, Bhattacharya recommends that companies bring their purpose to life by pursuing concrete sustainability goals and focusing on a few material areas. Unit managers can follow up on that commitment in their daily work by asking themselves questions such as: What new sustainability developments will affect demand for our products and the supply of our raw materials? What type of sustainability do stakeholders expect from our part of the business?' By adding a sustainability variable to the business unit decision-making equation, middle management can help make good on big corporate promises. 

One way to do this is to evaluate your immediate team’s carbon footprint. Although you might have policies in place already, application may need some ground-level execution. You can start by examining how your electricity, gas emissions output, and water intake were measured in the past, and consider re-measuring with a new reduction target in mind.

Encourage your senior leaders to reiterate your corporate purpose, sustainability objectives and reduction targets to all constituents, but especially the employees who will be implementing them "on the ground." 

2. Empower your employees.

Getting employees buy in to sustainability measures is critical. Motivate your employees—and build enthusiasm for your efforts—by explaining why sustainable business practices benefit everyone. Tell them how they can make a difference by incorporating these new processes and tools into daily operations.

Empowering your team requires stepped up communication. It's something the leadership team at major home health product manufacturer Sunstar learned first-hand during COVID-19. 

“The pandemic developed with unprecedented speed, and the amount of information created confusion,” says Julia Linz, senior director of HR at Sunstar. “We tried to provide regular and clear communication to our employees—especially when conveying tough messages.”

Sunstar set up a dedicated online channel to share best practices on sustainable business practices, remote work, and other timely topics, to post updates on health authority regulations, and to provide a space for confidential questions. Company leaders have also learned to seek multiple perspectives on managing the crisis from local market leaders and departmental managers.

Encourage employees or teammates to brainstorm and implement new ideas that serve customers in a more environmentally friendly manner or generally make the office a greener space. A few examples employees can take ownership over include embracing electronic file sharing to reduce paper and ink cartridge use, using reusable coffee mugs and water bottles, or even bringing plants into their workspaces to recycle stale air. They may seem like minor contributions, but if enough employees across the globe deploy them together, the benefits can add up.  

Fracture, a medium-sized company in the Inc. 5000, allows customers to upload digital photos, have them printed on durable glass, and shipped in an eco-friendly, ready-to-mount package. According to CEO Abhi Lokesh, the organization’s employees are researching ways to offset the company’s carbon footprint from raw material shipments and receivables. “Fracture is also working with We Are Neutral, a partner helping us neutralize carbon emissions through offsetting and reduction initiatives like tree planting,” he says.

For the rest of the article, check out AMEX Business.

This Veteran's Day, Broader Your Diversity and Inclusion Strategy

According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, as of June 2019, 200,000 service members transition from military to civilian life annually. In the last several years, the federal government has taken many steps to support them — including the Joining Forces Initiative in 2011, which called for companies to hire and train 1.5 million military veterans and their spouses, and the the Forever GI Bill passed in 2017, which ensures that student veterans can take advantage of the educational benefits they’ve earned at any point throughout their lives.

However, the transition to civilian employment may not always be an easy or successful process.

Per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate among veterans has more than doubled year over year to almost 7 percent this year. And according to Gallup’s 2019 annual survey on employee engagement, a majority of all employees including veterans have jobs in which they are not engaged.

The lack of job security and satisfaction is a profound concern. In an October 2020 piece for Military Times, Leo James reported that more than 6,000 veterans take their lives every year.

In light of the escalating stress and financial pressure associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, this Veteran’s Day we need to do more than simply thank our former service members. Leaders can make their veteran employees feel included and valued by leveraging these specific strategies.

1. Address their military experience.

DeVry University’s Green Zone Elite training program offered several tips to increase leaders’ veteran sensitivity, and this one is at the top of the list.

Leaders should encourage veteran employees to discuss their military service in the context of the job.

“Take the time to understand and respect the transferable skills veterans bring to the table by virtue of their Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) and leadership skills informed by their rank,” DeVry recommends in a press release.

“In the workforce, I quickly advanced with the project management and leadership skills I learned during my time in the Navy,” said DeVry University alum Dan Fettig, a former enlisted sailor and current Navy Reserve Intelligence Officer and the T-TAURI Engagement & Capabilities Implementation Manager at Lockheed Martin Space.

“As I navigated my career, I have found there’s an opportunity for employers and fellow team members to learn more about how the military trains veterans with transferable skills and better understand how and why veterans operate the way we do," Fettig says.

2. Provide veterans with structure.

Although this is more difficult to do in pandemic times, we must remember that veteran employees are accustomed to a set workday, timely meetings and predetermined performance objectives. It may be necessary, especially when a veteran employee is new to the organization, for a manager to outline exactly what their days will look like and the precise expectations upon which they will be evaluated.

3. Emphasize teamwork.

Most veterans have a finely-honed sense of camaraderie and are motivated by a shared purpose and strong relationships. Veterans should connect with their teams early and often, even if engagement is entirely remote.

If a leader has a choice between an individualized or team approach to a project, it’s more psychologically beneficial for many veterans to work alongside others.

Leaders can also boost veteran morale by helping them help others.

“Through our Veterans Employee Resource Group, we run campaigns to have our veterans refer other veterans,” Mike Thiel, a U.S. Navy veteran and talent acquisition manager at Micron Technology, said in an October 2020 Tech Republic conversation about helping military veterans transition into civilian jobs with the help of artificial intelligence.

“To give these opportunities to veterans who are very scared of transitioning, to be able to provide something for them, is huge,” Thiel said.

4. Use a retrospective lens.

According to DeVry, military veterans are accustomed to “After Action Reviews” that assess successes and opportunities for improvement.

Once a project or assignment is completed, civilian leaders can follow suit by hosting a reflection meeting to discuss the progress and outcomes. Postmortem meetings are good practice for everyone, but they may be doubly useful to veterans who may feel insecure about the differences between military and civilian employment.

5. Educate your workforce about stereotypes.

Civilian employees may view veterans in a certain light and may expect them to only be qualified for specific jobs and/or have specific personality traits and attributes.

Leaders are well-served to create training programs—or at least self-serve online information—that educate their workforces about veteran myths versus realities. Anti-bias initiatives targeted to other forms of discrimination should also include former service members.

6. Be mindful of mental health challenges.

In his Military Times piece, Leo James reported that since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, funding for veterans' mental health care has increased fourfold from $2.5 billion to $10 billion a year. This is good news, but we must keep in mind that in the wake of the pandemic, everyone’s mental health needs will increase and veterans may be a particularly vulnerable population.

Leaders should check in frequently with veteran employees, ask about their general well-being, be on the lookout for warning signs of depression and anxiety (isolation, moodiness, changes in work performance, etc.) and provide helpful resources.

This Veterans Day, so many organizations have illustrated their commitment to former service members by hiring veterans in record numbers. Now, in conjunction with overall diversity and inclusion objectives, they must ensure their leaders are equipped to support this group in meaningful ways.

Please visit the original piece at American Express Business.

Managing Your Data in the New Normal

Amid social distancing, stringent lockdowns and a second surge of COVID-19 cases, business owners can no longer rely on splashy launch events, mom-and-pop friendliness or a dynamite location to build customer relationships. Today, every business is competing for eyeballs and purchases made on digital channels.

Data-based approaches can help you stand out more effectively.

To successfully stand out, you’ll need to understand data optimization basics, including gathering customer information, responding to real-time feedback and reducing inefficiencies that lose revenue and diminish trust.

Gathering Customer Information

Data optimization commonly refers to collecting all the information at your disposal and maximizing the speed and comprehensiveness with which business-critical information can be extracted and analyzed.

If you have a website, this could be the most sensible place to start data collection. You likely have a handle on how many people are visiting and what pages they’re viewing, but are you using an analytics tool to assess where they are coming from, the content they spend the most time reading, and which page prompts them to leave? Do you know where your most active visitors live, how old they are and what products or services they most frequently purchase? These questions form the foundation of your business, and therefore are critical to your data-optimization efforts.

Feedback forms or emails are essential, but in today’s climate you’ll likely want to be more proactive about seeking out qualitative information about how customers value your offerings and their experience with your organization.

You don’t have to invest in a pricey or unwieldy customer survey to do this. Instead, try pushing a few questions to targeted visitors based on the defining characteristics above. You can also use analytics features embedded in the big four social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter) to ascertain what people are saying and the general sentiment around your brand.

If your customer relationships are rich with engagement points, CRM software can be a wise investment. These tools help monitor your interaction with current and potential customers, leverage data analytics to track customer history and details and suggest data-driven strategies to grow relationships.

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

5 Leadership Principles to Improve Customer Service

Each year, thousands of companies around the world – spanning the financial, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, retail, hospitality, communications, not-for-profit, government, and education spaces – celebrate Customer Service Week during the first full week in October. Although the 2019 Customer Service Week theme is “The Magic of Service,” strategies to improve customer service go beyond magic. In fact, the role of the team leader in customer service is significant, and certain leadership principles, including developing and managing teams that are positive brand extensions, illustrating demonstrated commitment to quality customer service, focusing on the employee experience, designing agile processes, and being visible are critical to a company’s efforts to recruit and retain customers.

Leadership Principle #1: Teams as Brand Extensions

Strong leaders understand that building and communicating a memorable brand is an essential piece of customer loyalty. However, when it comes to brand, many organizations “set and forget.” Instead, leaders should take steps to evaluate the company’s current value proposition, analyze how it stacks up to the competition, and vet it to ensure authenticity and consistency with actual company practices. Then, they must select team members who complement one another in embodying the brand, and reward employees who display and share core brand attributes. For example, savvy leaders know that customer service representatives who dress fashionably and speak articulately will bolster a sleek, on trend, and forward thinking brand.

Leadership Principle #2: Commitment to Quality Customer Service

Customer Service Week can present a fresh opportunity to re-commit to quality service from the top-down. Ideally, leaders reinforce stellar customer service on a regular basis through company-wide messaging and activities. They have outlined what customer service looks like in their organization and strive to improve on measured results. Leaders are willing to invest in adequate staffing, equipment, and software so representatives are set up for success, and are dedicated to leveraging new technologies to facilitate omnichannel communication and strategic automation with the goal of faster and more targeted customer service.

Leadership Principle #3: Focus on the Employee Experience

Business mogul Richard Branson once said, “Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.” The employee experience, or what a company’s people do and how they feel over the course of recruitment, onboarding, learning, performance, and transitions, is a necessary focus for customer-oriented leaders. For instance, good leaders facilitate a hiring experience that attracts employees with the right combination of skills and traits to excel in customer service. And, leaders who support an employee experience that highlights collaboration and continuous learning via applicable training will typically have more customer savvy team members.

Leadership Principle #4: Agile Processes

Just like customer service is an attitude, so is agility, and strong leaders must keep their eyes on big picture business objectives while recognizing that evolving market forces require more frequent adaptation than in the past. Not only should leaders design customer-facing processes that make it easier to respond to changing requirements in real time, but they should also empower representatives to make in-the-moment decisions and innovate on behalf of a customer. Rigidly constructed policies aren’t the hallmark of good leadership or service, so this Customer Service Week, perhaps take the opportunity to rethink them.

Leadership Principle #5: Visibility

Beyond Customer Service Week, effective leaders show up for employees and customers alike. This means putting in face time at your place of business, conversing with staff and clients, and paying attention to small details like birthdays and professional moves. Even if a leader has the most competent frontline employees imaginable, there’s no substitute for an owner who takes the time to get to know and spend time with the people who matter to the business. Hosting team building outings and customer appreciation events provides an excellent forum for owners to interface with the community and humanize their enterprises.

There are a variety of ways to improve customer service, but this Customer Service Week, consider the role that solid leadership plays in driving it. By honing agility and visibility and placing a spotlight on branding, employee experience, and commitment to quality service, you’ll be the most trusted and admired of business owners.