Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Is Employee Monitoring Right for You?

For about a decade, donning my workforce futurist hat has required ongoing dialogue about employee monitoring tools and their inevitable march toward greater sophistication. Often, the question has not been “Will we monitor our employees?” but “What will we monitor about our employees?”

Today, employee monitoring is routinely making headlines. Stories abound of employers using monitoring software to track the location of their staff, detect signs of quiet quitting, record how much time employees spend on different activities, and take screenshots of their devices – sometimes without employee consent.

In August, the New York Times reported that eight of the 10 largest private U.S. employers are using software and other technologies to track the productivity of their employees.

According to a Capterra study reported in The Globe and Mail, 35% of Canadian employees work for a company that uses at least one monitoring tool that they know of. Another 18% weren’t sure if their employer was tracking them.

Canadian employees are divided on how they feel about being tracked. While the majority said using such tools did not affect how they work and did not impact workplace culture, 23% said it added stress and made work feel more “hostile.”

Overall, I’m not a fan of using software to track things like keystrokes, screenshots, and how much time employees are spending in various applications. If an employee wants to waste time on the clock, chances are they’re going to figure out a way to do it without their supervisor finding out. Presumably, you hired an adult to perform responsibilities as an adult would, so there’s no need to deploy technology as a babysitter.

As for efficiency, we need only look at individual and team performance metrics to determine if there’s an issue. Generally speaking, we shouldn’t care how long a specific task takes as long as quality work is executed consistently and delivered according to deadlines.

Instead of putting your technology dollars into monitoring workers and risking diminished morale and complaints over a loss of privacy, direct your investment toward cultivating a vibrant employee experience that fosters autonomy and trust. Such an experience should ideally include a mix of online and offline and human and technology-driven touchpoints.

In fact, you can use a purposeful lack of monitoring as an opportunity to survey your employees about their perspectives on company policies and start a dialogue with them more frequently about their individual goals and workload.

You might be thinking: Is any kind of employee monitoring appropriate? Given how vulnerable remote workers are to cybercrime, there may be a time and a place. Consider this: In a recent study, 80% of security and business leaders said their organizations are more exposed to risk because of remote work.

If you’re going to monitor employees for cybersecurity purposes, just remember that the goal should be protecting rather than calling out your people. And make sure you’re transparent with employees about why you’re collecting data and what you’ll be using it for.

For the original piece, head over to the Ceridian blog.

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.

Doing Right By Your Customers in a Crisis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

 

Agile Feedback is the New Performance Review

Many of us remember the days when we only talked about professional development during a once-a-year performance review conversation with our managers. We may have made development plans and set goals, but these were usually lost in the crush of immediate business priorities. And, by the time we got around to discussing them again, they were outdated and irrelevant.

Fortunately, many organizations have, in recent years, moved from the annual performance management model to bi-annual or even monthly models. This increase in frequently certainly benefits the process, but can we take it even further? Can we make learning and performance dialogue even more fluid and agile and therefore more useful considering the pace of change in our organizations and industries?

The Rise of Open and Continuous Dialogue

Today’s most comprehensive HRMS offer the ability for managers and employees to deliver real-time guidance and feedback as soon as an issue presents itself. This type of exchange is far more helpful for growth and engagement because it’s directly relevant to a current project or challenge. Typically, any employee can submit feedback to another regardless of level or reporting structure, so it’s an equal-opportunity endeavor that’s less biased and less restrictive.

Agile feedback systems provide an important mechanism for coaching and collaboration, and in boosting manager awareness of problems sooner rather than later, they aid in retention as well. They also alert leaders when there may be a new skills gap that needs to be addressed. For instance, if a manager sees results that indicate that a group of employees isn’t using a new technology as intended, they can get involved right away, collect more information about the disconnect, and ultimately determine if additional background or training is necessary.

For more where this came from, head over to the SilkRoad blog.

6 Essential Qualities of Corporate Trainers

As a human resources consultant, I’ve observed many approaches to corporate training, and most focus on content. Decisions involve what should be taught, and in what format. While delivery is equally important, sometimes it’s overlooked. I’m familiar with situations in which someone totally unfamiliar with the subject matter is pegged to teach an in-person course, and others where someone with no public speaking experience at all is expected to rally a group for a full day or more!

You can make the most of your corporate training initiatives by ensuring that the person who delivers your materials is as good as the materials themselves. Here are a few recommendations to that effect. Strong corporate trainers:

Can Appropriately Customize Material

Course materials that may have been developed months or even years ago for a different audience in a different location may not be an appropriate fit for the audience or the trainer herself. Not only do good trainers understand instructional design, but they are able to rework material in a way that targets a specific group and accomplishes a specific business objective.

Can Bring the Content to Life

Edutainment refers to a style in which course participants are entertained while learning. The best corporate trainers have an engaging style that prompts people to listen, pay attention, and apply learnings. They use substantial interactivity, including videos, quizzes, and exercises – to encourage active participation. They walk around the room, write on boards, and converse with the audience in a friendly and enthusiastic tone.

Possesses Relevant Life and Business Experience

In my experience, it’s difficult for trainers to connect with an audience when they have no firsthand knowledge of participant challenges. For example, as a trainer on workforce issues, I rely frequently on anecdotes and lessons learned from my 10 years in the corporate world. Without these, I don’t know that I would have the necessary credibility to be effective. After all, what can I possibly have experienced about the challenges of working in an office when I basically sit in my house all day?

Is Prepared But Flexible

Good trainers come in knowing the material inside out. While they may make use of a Facilitator Guide, they don’t use it as a crutch. Rather, they can answer most questions about the course material without “looking them up” and are generally considered experts on the topic at hand. At the same time, these trainers can read the audience and understand when material is not resonating, and adjust their approach on the fly for better results.

Can Facilitate Change

The best corporate trainers inspire participants to consider new angles and try different ways of doing things. They inspire a vision and future state in which the participants’ jobs are more successful and rewarding because of the training. They understand that most humans naturally resist change, so they anticipate objections, and school participants in managing obstacles and staying on the right path.

Promotes Blended and Continuous Learning

Along those same lines, good corporate trainers know that learning – and particularly the application of learning – must continue after participants have left the training room. They provide access to supplementary eLearning and self-study vehicles that reinforce lessons, and periodically reconnect with participants to assess how training is being used in role.

Can Evaluate Success Properly

Finally, good trainers don’t simply hand out smile sheets and call it a day, because they know that just because participants say they liked a course doesn’t mean they actually learned anything. Rather, collaborating with business stakeholders, they set concrete metrics (for example, increased sales or quality ratings among participants) that prove training effectiveness and assure learning goals are achieved and sustained over time.

Corporate training has a lot of moving parts, but it’s important to select an individual with the right skills and experience to best steer the operation and maximize your investment.

Are You Strategic About Military Hiring?

Many organizations have prioritized the hiring of military veterans in recent years. This is commendable, as military hiring requires a different strategy than civilian hiring because veterans do not have exactly the same needs as traditional hires. For instance, they are often attracted by different things during the recruitment process, and sometimes respond better to alternative training and development approaches.

The Talent Activation, the Employee Experience, and Skill Development survey, conducted online within the United States by DeVry University on behalf of the Career Advisory Board in August 2018 examined how organizations are currently designing and executing specific employee experiences at the recruitment, onboarding, learning and development, and performance evaluation stages.

Survey respondents included 505 US-based individuals (53 percent male, 47 percent female) with full-time positions at the supervisor level or above, in companies with more than 500 employees (mean company size was large at 15,000). Our respondents’ primary job responsibilities include the hiring, development, and management of employees.

In parts of the survey, we looked specifically at military hiring and development practices. Specifically, we asked our respondents how much they agreed or disagreed with the following statement: My company has implemented a successful military veteran hiring strategy. Sixty-four percent agreed, confirming that not only do such strategies exist, but also that they have been honed in a majority of organizations.

 We also asked the participants how much they agreed or disagreed with this statement: My company has implemented a comprehensive talent development program that capitalizes on the professional strengths military veterans bring to the workplace. Refreshingly, 67 percent agreed.  And, according to our respondents’ verbatim responses, material is often customized to resonate with veterans’ unique perspectives.

On the subject of the verbatim responses, the survey inquired about where respondents were focusing their thoughts and energies with respect to military veteran hiring and onboarding. Some of the initiatives they cited in the verbatims included:

• Hiring talent acquisition staff with military backgrounds
• Matching current employee veterans with new hires
• Engaging with Military Transition Centers
• Using regional military outplacement centers effectively
• Performing outreach to veteran groups in relevant locations
• Maintaining strong relationships with local VAs
• Holding veteran-specific job fairs
• Partnering with military recruiters
• Sourcing talent from military leaders who have commanded troops
• Participating in military-sponsored job events
• Offering interview and hiring preference to veteran candidates
• Creating onsite affinity groups for military
• Providing tuition assistance and educational incentives
• Emphasizing how military experience translates to work experience
• Understanding and communicating about PTSD and other symptoms veterans experience
• Placing veterans into supervisory or leadership jobs
• Developing veteran-specific onboarding programs to ease the transition to civilian work

For more survey results, check out the DeVry WORKS website.

Strategies for Engaging an In Person Audience

In my almost 15 years as a workshop speaker and facilitator, I’ve learned a lot. The most valuable lesson of all? Be interactive.

I’ve observed that you can be presenting the most intriguing topic of all time, but it’s only a matter of time before you audience tunes out the sound of you droning on and on. If you want to keep your participants’ attention and prevent them from checking their phones or falling asleep, I recommend sticking to no more than five minutes of instructional content at once, followed immediately by an interactive component that surprises the audience out of any stupors or daydreams.

The good news is, there are more choices for engagement than ever before. The following six techniques are my go-to standards. Depending on how long your next training is, mixing and matching them is likely to liven up the session, and hopefully, increase overall learning and results!

Technique #1: Storytelling

Funny or self-deprecating stories and anecdotes are always a hit, but early in most trainings, I like to share a specific story called The Hero’s Journey. Based on the famous narrative concept, the Hero’s Journey describes all the obstacles I faced while becoming an expert in the topic. Much of the time, the audience isn’t expecting to hear something like this, and participants are fascinated. I increase the engagement by asking for a show of hands if the audience has personally experienced something like what I’m relating (e.g. “Raise your hand if you’ve ever had a boss you thought really hated you”).

Technique #2: Surveying and Polling

The best type of survey takes place in advance, so you can ask participants about their experiences in detail, and customize your content to address what you learned. Given that this isn’t always possible, you might want to familiarize yourself with online polling technology that allows the audience to answer simple questions on their phones in real time – with answers appearing on your presentation screen. Both approaches pique the interest of audience members who are curious what their fellow participants answered.

For more techniques, have a look at the DeVry WORKS website.

Are You Leveraging Talent Activation to Get the Most Out of Your Workforce?

Talent activation focuses on the experiences, processes, and metrics that create an aligned and equipped workforce in the best position to realize its true potential. It transforms talent management into a measurable continuum of experiences – during the recruitment, onboarding, learning, and performance phases – that connect and empower employees to advance organizational goals.

Would you like to learn more about talent activation and its relationship to corporate culture and the employee experience? I  hope you’ll join me for a lunchtime webinar sponsored by Igloo Software, on September 6, 2018 at 1PM EST. Please register here or learn more about the topic on Igloo's blog.

Hiring Managers: Are You Supporting Vets?

In a recent Prudential Financial and IAVA survey published on Military.com¹, two-thirds of veterans said they faced a difficult transition to civilian life, partly because they speak a different language than the business leaders hiring them.

Tom Tarantino, chief policy officer for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said that we aren’t doing a good enough job of training people leaving the military to look for work. “It’s less a matter of veterans overestimating their skills than it is miscalculating how their experience translates to nonmilitary jobs and how well business leaders comprehend what veterans can offer,” he commented.

Because of these disconnects, a veteran who managed a few dozen people in the military might only be considered for an entry-level, individual contributor role in a private-sector organization, and significant achievements might be overlooked because they occurred in a military rather than a business setting.

Preparing New Vets for Transition

A few years ago, as a workplace and career author and consultant, I worked with the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Department of Defense to overhaul the military’s Transition Assistance Program (TAP)². This mandatory five- to seven-day program educates departing troops on job skills, vet benefits, and personal finances. The course explains the expectations, behavioral styles, cultural norms, and “lingo” associated with civilian employment and helps veterans adjust to a less rigid routine with increased individual competition.

Perhaps most importantly, it guides veterans in effectively translating skills acquired in the military – which often include strategic thinking, scenario planning, critical thinking, problem-solving, coaching, self-discipline, time management, attention to detail, teamwork, interpersonal communication, and adaptability – to civilian jobs in which these exact attributes are needed.

For the rest of this post, please visit the DeVryWORKS website.