Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Using HCM Technology to Enhance the Middle Manager Experience

In the last post of my series about middle managers, I’d like to explore how human capital management (HCM) platforms can assist HR teams in supporting middle managers. These management tools are especially adept for learning and job efficiency, so let’s start there. 

Promoting learning  

A self-service learning portal can deliver customized content to middle managers, including communication and team building. Ideally, this learning portal is integrated with talent acquisition, onboarding, project management/workflow, performance, and career mobility systems. 

Learning content should be in a variety of lengths and formats, including bite-sized videos, supplementary reading, and simulations, to be consumed at the manager’s discretion. 

Learning is a corollary to job efficiency, of course, but middle managers can also benefit from systems that automate simple job tasks and synthesize data.  

Supporting organizational agility 

Ceridian’s 2022 Executive Survey found that respondents are using a variety of systems that support organizational agility. 

According to the survey, 60% of respondents are using technology to aid in workforce scheduling, and 61% have technology to measure employee performance. Furthermore, 56% are using technology to speed up recruitment processes, and 44% are using technology to identify flight-risk employees. 

Data accuracy and integration, however, continue to be major issues. The Executive Survey found that 85% of respondents have issues with their workforce data, including 39% who said their data was siloed in different systems and 34% who claimed data was outdated or not available in real time.  

Given these findings, it’s easy to imagine how data is a thorn in the side of the middle manager. How can they make rapid and informed decisions that are a staple of their everyday lives if they cannot trust their data?  

Middle managers will also be reluctant to automate job components if the technology fails to work seamlessly with their core management tools or breaks down unexpectedly. After all, the last thing they need is more stress. 

Using HCM technology to better support managers 

When it comes to creating a better middle-manager experience powered by HCM technology, there are several directions a leader could go. I recommend starting with internal focus groups with HR professionals, leaders, and middle managers in a variety of departments. 

In these sessions, inquire about the biggest pain points in the middle manager’s day, and how these are currently addressed (if at all). What training and support do middle managers receive, and what role does HCM technology play in this process? Is the organization satisfied with its retention of middle managers, or would improvement be welcome? 

These brainstorms may uncover one area of the employee lifecycle that’s especially troubling for middle managers. For example, perhaps the talent acquisition system is so cumbersome that middle managers’ open positions remain unfilled for months.  

In this case, consult IT and/or an HCM provider to devise a pilot technology program with the intention of easing one burden at a time. Starting small will help to build a case for more expansive implementations down the line. 

This post was originally published on the Ceridian blog.

Are You Adequately Supporting Your Middle Managers?

Want to know what struck me the most in our middle manager panel blog post? I was impressed by how proactive they were. In many circumstances, they knew what to do and were able to execute on behalf of their organization and for their own well-being.

I realize this is not always the case, especially for new managers or managers who are new to working in a distributed work environment.

It’s up to an organization’s leaders to provide middle managers with the support and guidance to be productive, engaged, and healthy on the job. Let’s divide our support strategies into two categories: assimilation and safety.

Assimilation

Assimilation doesn’t just apply to middle managers who are new to the role or new to an organization. Even experienced managers can feel confused or stressed about how to succeed in this transformed workforce that presents new management challenges.

Leaders need to start conversations on how to manage bi-directionally within the organization’s current culture, how job expectations and success metrics have evolved, and how to handle employee issues that didn’t exist two years ago – like how to proceed if a worker refuses to come to the office.

More than ever, middle managers need leaders to facilitate mentorship, sponsorship, and peer-leader relationships that can grow and deepen in person as well as online.

In Ceridian’s 2022 Executive Survey, 94% of respondents said that the employee-manager relationship was very or extremely important for employee retention. Despite that, many people in supervisory positions don’t feel comfortable communicating with their direct reports.

In a private leadership session, I recently asked 10 executives how they felt about having substantive conversations with their employees. More than half said “awkward.” Regardless of the cause of the communication difficulties (lack of in-person rapport, etc.), this is an issue that should be nipped in the bud.

Both new and experienced middle managers should receive training in areas such as demonstrating empathy, building trust, delegating, providing constructive performance feedback, and persuading and motivating teams. This may be easier said than done, though, because as the Executive Survey indicated, only about half of organizations have management training programs at all.

The bottom line? Today’s middle managers don’t have the bandwidth or wherewithal to “figure it out.” If leaders want them working in harmony with the rest of the organization, they need to expend the time and resources to educate them and empower them to overcome management challenges.

Safety

For much of the pandemic, employee safety initiatives focused on how we could keep people from contracting and spreading COVID-19. But over the course of two trauma-filled years, employees and especially managers began feeling a different lack of safety.

In fact, the emotion that has most permeated the ranks of middle management is fear. Many are facing significant personal and professional challenges but are afraid to speak up lest they experience negative consequences.

Some organizations have done an excellent job of supporting managers’ psychological needs during the pandemic, including organizing events to target burnout, providing confidential resources like crisis hotlines and behavioral health sessions, and actively reducing the stigma of talking about mental health issues. And in the immediate aftermath of COVID-19, organizations are offering career mobility and flex work options to an unprecedented degree.

The key here is to sustain the momentum. Already, I’m seeing some companies revert to their basic EAPs (employee assistance programs) when it comes time to decide on benefits for the upcoming year.

Unfortunately, I’m also witnessing certain organizations doubling down on in-person office time or subtly punishing managers who leave work to pick up a child or go to a doctor’s appointment.

If managers don’t feel safe, no one else will either. Caring for middle managers through assimilation and safety isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s the smart business decision in a tight labor market where competent and loyal talent is hard to find.

The Plight of the Middle Manager in 2022

Welcome to our blog series on middle managers. Over the next two months, we will focus on the millions who comprise this heroic group. We’ll start with an overview of modern middle manager challenges and follow with some individual perspectives from middle managers. Our final two posts will cover general solutions and technology-specific solutions for supporting the middle managers in our organizations.

When I was 24 years old and working in a junior-level PR job in New York City, I decided to write a book about everything work-related I hadn’t been taught in college. Burnout was top of mind.

As it turns out, I had no idea.

Fast forward 20 years, and many of my generational compatriots are middle managers. They took these roles at a time when burnout had increased so much that the World Health Organization had labeled it an “occupational phenomenon.” And, in conjunction with the COVID-19 pandemic, late 2021 survey data from Gallup found that manager and middle manager burnout is only getting worse and is precipitously higher than individual contributor burnout.

It's not just the pandemic

It’s easy to attribute burnout to working two years in a pandemic, but the issue is more nuanced and multifactorial. First, let’s consider the role within the organization. A manager in the middle of several layers of hierarchy must maintain relationships with those below them and those above them. “It requires being both a proactive leader to direct reports and an engaged follower to the top management – all at the same time,” wrote Zahira Jaser last year in Harvard Business Review.

Jaser explored other challenges facing middle managers, including the need to create a dialogue with and appease people with conflicting agendas, to amplify the voices of direct reports upwards, and to critically appraise and balance dilemmas.

Do middle managers receive proper training for this complex dance? It depends, but the answer is often no. Ceridian’s 2022 Executive Survey found that while leaders recognize the value of middle managers, they aren’t always great at supporting them.

When Executive Survey respondents were asked how their organizations support middle managers, only half (51%) said their organizations offer management training programs.

A lack of comprehensive leadership development guidance and mentoring often leaves middle managers feeling less secure. Millennial managers are especially vulnerable to getting in over their heads, as they were promoted into supervisory positions much earlier than prior generations. All these factors lead to a profound experience of middle manager burnout.

For the rest of this piece, head over to the Ceridian website.

5 Boxes to Check for Your First-Time Manager Experience

The first time I was promoted into a managerial position, I closed the door of my fancy new office and held back tears born of fear and Impostor Syndrome. But here’s the thing. I could leave said office, walk down the hall, and get a pep talk from my boss.

In a distributed workforce where you rarely or never see your own manager or direct reports and are often doing the jobs of three people, you may be experiencing the toughest time in recent history for managers.

According to a Gallup survey, depression increased for managers in 2021 despite being unchanged for leaders and ICs, and one in three managers often or always feel burned out.

In my recent column for the Wall Street Journal’s Workplace Report, I spoke with Alyssa Lahar, chief human resources officer for ZoomInfo, a subscription-based database service. Lahar shared that managers often find themselves not at the bottom rung and but also not in positions of influence, which leads to a feeling of powerlessness. “Middle managers tend to be stretched the thinnest, and their work tends to be unseen,” she said.

Especially vulnerable are first-time middle managers, who too often are thrust into new roles without proper guidance, mentorship, or training. Without the in-person management experience to draw from, it’s even  more important that organizations use technology to fill the gaps.

Specifically, they should identify a solution that immerses new managers in the organization’s approach to leadership, performance, engagement and productivity.

Not only should the technology be customizable for the unique needs of the individual manager, but it should also have the capability to flex with evolving business requirements. If you are smartly rethinking your first-time manager offering, here are five elements to consider including.

• Retention: Providing detailed information on new role expectations and team contributions, reducing the uncertainty, frustration, and burnout that leads to attrition.
• Knowledge Transfer: Communicating with key stakeholders to ensure continuous project management and workflow.
• Recruitment: Making the hiring process as seamless as possible so that managers can quickly select and onboard new talent for vacant roles.
• Talent Management: Facilitating consistent and timely performance evaluations for and engagement with direct reports.
• Internal Mobility: Clarifying manager career paths and opportunities for internal movement and transition.

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.

Emphasizing Cognitive Diversity: Can It Be Taught?

A few years ago, I worked with The Billie Jean King Leadership Initiative (BJKLI) and The Deloitte University Leadership Center for Inclusion on a survey that sought to provide modern context around the notions of diversity and inclusion. Among other things, the research asked nearly 4,000 global professionals of all levels, ages, genders, races, ethnicities, and sexual orientations how they define these terms.

It might not come as a surprise that most baby boomers and even X-ers (read: the chronologically older people in the workforce today) think representation and assimilation when they consider the notion of diversity. Millennials tend to view it a bit differently, though. For them, workplace diversity and inclusion go beyond ensuring that people of all genders, races, ethnicities, religions, and sexual orientations are welcomed into the organization.

While this form of diversity is obviously important and essential, millennials also value the respect and consideration given to employees as individuals with different backgrounds and perspectives. This is referred to as cognitive diversity, and it means that employees can come to work and share their ideas, philosophies, and contributions as their complete selves – without fear of negative consequences.

Over the last few years, the workplace in general has improved when it comes to fostering cognitive diversity. I think we have the millennials to thank for that, because they now comprise a majority of the global workforce and are entering leadership positions – and disrupting them – and average of ten years earlier than members of prior generations. That being said, it’s not unusual to hear someone like a young, transgender, first generation American raised in a rural environment say they feel misunderstood and ignored in a big city corporation because “apparently I don’t have the background, experience or tenure to be taken seriously.”

Fortunately, though, not only can cognitive diversity be taught, but it can be systematically integrated into an organization’s culture. The first step is to educate baby boomer and Gen X-er leaders about cognitive diversity and its benefits. Once leaders fully understand why it’s good for business to be as inclusive as possible, they can acknowledge the limitations of hierarchies and minimize barriers to communication and engagement.

Rather than making critical decisions in a vacuum, leaders should take care to include voices and votes that are truly representative of the employee population. This is especially important when it comes to innovation, as many of the freshest ideas come from unexpected places. They should establish cross-functional pilot projects or committees that seek to improve business outcomes through diverse collaboration, and finally, they should put online and offline feedback mechanisms in place so all employees feel comfortable and encouraged sharing real-time thoughts.

Of course, if you’re working for a company that hasn’t mastered hiring diverse employees in the first place, you can’t put the cart before the horse. First and foremost, you must continue your work to ensure you have a population from which to solicit cognitively diverse perspectives.

Did you miss our webinar on the next generation of diversity and inclusion? Catch the replay and let us know what you think!

 

How to Retain Millennials Today

It’s not unusual to hear HR professionals at large, publicly-traded companies lament: “No one wants to work here. I wish this was a nonprofit.”

On the surface, this makes sense. After all, nonprofit organizations are often an easier sell for millennials, who say they want the opportunity to do meaningful work on issues that benefit society. But as they get older, millennials who want to pay down debt and start saving are increasingly looking to employers who pay handsomely. And if they do accept a lower salary for a job, they expect that nonprofit environment to provide the most rewarding experience they can imagine. As we all know, however, even the noblest nonprofits are still organizations, and no organization is perfect.

AccessLex Institute is a nonprofit that advocates for policies that make legal education work better for students and society alike and conducts research on the most critical issues facing legal education today. The mission is intriguing, especially given how many young professionals consider and eventually enroll in law school. And sure enough, AccessLex never had much of a problem attracting millennial candidates for its open positions. The organization’s challenge has involved getting them to stay once new hires realize that nonprofit employment can be stressful and frustrating at times -- just like any job.

Assimilate Talent Strategically And Early

Based on nearly 15 years of working with millennials, I can confidently say that the most important thing organizations must do to retain millennials is to assimilate them strategically and early. First impressions matter a great deal and new millennial hires aren't likely to give a company a second chance if they don't like what they experience initially.

To that end, AccessLex set out to increase its retention of new millennial employees by creating a high-tech, high-touch virtual onboarding system. The tool was built based on what they learned was new hires’ biggest hurdle -- feeling disconnected from the culture. The organization’s internal research revealed that young employees would accept a job, come in for a few weeks and keep interviewing. If a better opportunity presented itself, nothing stopped the new hire from taking it. “We knew if we could make them feel part of the organization right away and get them to hang out with us for a year, we could actually keep them for much longer,” said Tanya Papahristos, Director of Human Resources for AccessLex.

For the rest of the piece, check out Forbes.com.

 

Do You Rely Too Much on Processes?

I know that the topic of generational differences irritates some people. My personal experience, though, is that when it comes to certain things, baby boomer points of view do often differ from millennial points of view. One of these areas of debate is process.

Why (Some) Boomers Like Process and (Some) Millennials Don’t

Many boomers scaled their organizations successfully because they put the right processes in place to do so. For a long time, these processes worked, and so understandably they may be reluctant to let go of them. And when new business challenges present themselves, many leaders answer them with new processes, because after all processes are tried and true. These are the rules, and if we don’t stray from them, we’ll be okay.

When millennials came into the work world starting in the aughts, many weren’t as enamored by process. They wanted to use new technologies, in real time, to solve new kind of dilemmas popping up every day. They wanted to change business for the better by streamlining work and getting it done as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Tension started to build, particularly in this decade when the health and survival of a company depends upon its ability to be agile. Some leaders wanted to stick steadfastly by procedures that had served them well in the past, while others felt that existing processes and the bureaucracy often associated with them were impeding growth and true progress.

For more where this came from, head over to the QuickBase Fast Track blog.

Relocation May Soon Be a Thing of the Past

In a research paper, Understanding the Long-Run Decline in Interstate Migration, Greg Kaplan and Sam Schulhofer-Wohl of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis analyzed the secular decline in interstate migration in the United States between the early 90s and the early aughts. They found that while gross flows of people across states are about 10 times larger than net flows, they declined by around 50 percent over the study’s 20 year period.

The latest U.S. Census numbers support this decline. According to Richard Florida at CityLab, just slightly more than one in ten Americans (11.2 percent) moved between 2015 and 2016, almost half the 20.2 percent rate back in 1948, when the Census began tracking American mobility. “Mobility was once the cornerstone of the American Dream, but today Americans move less often than Canadians, and only a bit more than Finns or Danes,” he wrote.

Why Mobility Is Falling: The Research Speaks

It’s arguably easier to move out of state now than it was in the past, so why are fewer Americans doing so?  After looking at microdata on the distribution of earnings and occupations across space, the researchers assigned this fall in migration to a decline in the geographic specificity of occupations, together with an increase in workers’ ability, before moving, to learn about other locations and assess how much they will like living there through information technology and inexpensive travel.

In other words, you don’t necessarily have to relocate to Silicon Valley to work in software development, and if you were thinking about such a move, you might decide through online research that it would be dumb to trade a 10 percent salary increase for a 60 percent increase in living costs. So you stay put, whereas before the Internet you would have had less information available, made the move, and potentially regretted it.

In a related CityLab piece from a few years ago, Plumer speculated that today’s economy actually mandates fewer overall changes in jobs and careers, meaning opportunities to move would simply come up less often. And, he wrote, “in our increasingly specialized labor market, people increasingly sort into the places and jobs that best fit them far earlier in their careers. Those who want to be in finance head to New York while they’re still young, just as those who want to be in film head to L.A.” After a while, it becomes prohibitively expensive to leave that geography, so people stay.

Depending on your professions, a move across state lines could actually negatively impact your career. For example, lawyers and doctors are licensed at the state level and might not want to go through the trouble of getting the necessary credentials in a different state, even if the state in question pays better or is experiencing greater demand. Similarly, a high school teacher who moves out of state after working for many years loses both his seniority and his pension eligibility.

For the rest, check out the QuickBase Fast Track blog.

20 Years Later, Much Career Advice Still Applies

In the summer of 1996 after my sophomore year of college, I started an internship at a nonprofit technology association in downtown Washington, D.C.

Until that point, I’d only worked in retail and had no idea what to expect. I asked my father and a professor for advice. Remarkably, 20 years later much of that guidance still resonates.

Doors open based on who you know

In the late 90s, these were physical doors rather than virtual ones, but the concept is the same. When applying for a job or looking to connect with someone, name-dropping would increase your odds of getting a positive response. Today, although we have exponentially larger networks thanks to social media, deep, in-person relationships still provide the greatest networking benefit. 

As you build your network of contacts, remember to follow up

Meeting a contact once is a wasted opportunity unless you periodically remind him or her of who you are and take steps to grow the relationship over time. In the 90s, I was encouraged to send snail mail holiday cards to former bosses and colleagues, and even to pick up the phone occasionally. Twenty years later, it’s all about LinkedIn.

In a new situation, aim to assimilate

Corporate culture used to be “one-size-fits-all.” If you worked in a business office in any city in the world, you were expected to behave professionally, adhere to hierarchies, and generally do what you were told without making waves. Individual company cultures may be more unique today (conservative versus liberal, strict versus playful) but the need to examine and then fit into a new culture – whatever it may be – remains.

For the rest of the piece, head over to my new Mashable column.