Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Building Culture with a Distributed Work Model

These days the post-pandemic return-to-office question seems to have resolved. Most organizations have embraced a hybrid model, mandating that non-frontline employees work onsite between one and three days per week. However, this structure doesn’t necessarily equate to a positive work culture that employees are reluctant to leave. 

According to our Dayforce  Annual Pulse of Talent research, nearly 70% of employees are either looking for a new job or would leave their current organizations if the right opportunity came along. Thirty-eight percent said they had issues achieving their performance goals in the last year, with the main reason being too large of a workload. Only eight percent said their employer is giving them everything they need to be productive. 

It's clear that despite having more flexibility than ever before, employees are not as satisfied as they could be. And this does not bode well for a business climate that will continue to be plagued by labor and skills shortages.  

Understanding how to build a strong culture in a distributed work environment, a task that few attempted before the pandemic, has now become an organizational imperative. The following five strategies infused with the right employee experience technology may prove useful as you navigate this new terrain.  

Conduct ongoing employee needs assessments. 

The move to permanent distributed work requires a culture shift in all organizations, but instead of viewing this as an insurmountable task, leaders should look at it as a valuable opportunity to understand the unique requirements of all your employees and address concerns impacting specific groups.  

For example, caregivers may report that office commutes are a hardship, while employees who are underrepresented minorities may experience greater bias and more microaggressions in an in-person office environment. Leaders should know about these issues before they result in quiet or actual quitting.  

Employee pulse taking doesn’t have to be a ton of work. You can use an employee experience platform to automate the work of surveying your employees on a regular cadence and determine what they need and want as well as general workplace sentiment.  

You can also leverage an employee experience platform to create a real-time, two-way path to more in-depth dialogue and feedback with senior leaders and HR representatives. Once upon a time, the flow of information from the top to the bottom of the organization might have been more of a trickle, and c-suite communication may have lacked transparency, vision, and purpose. When an organization is empowered by employee experience technology, this no longer has to be the case. 

For the rest of this piece, check out the Dayforce blog.

The Future of Workspace in the Age of Adaptability

Most global cities are taking a long time to recover their pre-pandemic vibrancy, and that’s in large part to ongoing low utilization of corporate office space. As shared in ManpowerGroup’s Age of Adaptability research, organizations are experiencing a culture revolution in which the traditional office environment takes a back seat to more dynamic, flexible places of work.

Leaders accustomed to rigid, in-person workplaces and schedules may wish for the world to return to the way it was (hence the return-to-office or RTO wars), but workforce futurists believe that ongoing societal disruptions and employee pushback are likely to change the model permanently.

Let’s examine what’s happening and why, and how the question of the future of workspace is likely to be answered in the end.

The State of Office Space in 2025

Pervasive corporate office vacancies speak for themselves. And according to CBRE’s Office Occupier Sentiment survey, more than half of executives anticipate further reductions of their office footprints to trim unoccupied space, with most executing this upon lease expirations that will occur within the next few years. Similarly, Altus Group found that the cumulative volume of 2023 office transactions was 43% below 2020 levels, and 57% below the 10-year average over the same period. 

In a conversation I had with Brad Serot, vice chairman at commercial real estate consultancy CBRE, I learned that many organizations are still committed to an office-centric approach. But a majority of CBRE’s survey respondents are seeking flexibility in lease agreements, including more latitude to expand or contract their total space, and shared building services and amenities.

The research picked up on a trend toward “flight to quality,” in which organizations are relocating to newer and more desirable buildings – of which there’s a limited supply. The highest-performing options today combine walkability as well as housing and high-end experiential retail.

Serot said that rather than just telling their workforces how things will be, smart leaders work alongside employees to design spaces that provide the appropriate structure and technology support based on geographic, industry, and company-specific norms as well as employee choice.   

This model works best when each corporate-sponsored physical office has a designated purpose – such as hosting in-person meetings, offering individual employee hoteling space, or placing team members on the same schedule in a neighborhood-type environment.

International Workplace Group CEO & Founder Mark Dixon himself described modern office space planning as a “hub and spoke model, with smaller central offices, more regional hubs, and growing numbers of local satellite offices.” He said that the concept of the 15-minute city – the idea that any place a person would need to go would be within a 15-minute walk or bike ride of one’s home – saves time, is good for individuals’ health, and fosters community.

The Rise of Third Places 

I’ve been working in coffee shops since 2005. Once upon a time, I was the only person with a laptop in the store. Now, the preference to work at coffee places is so pervasive that some have had to implement “no laptop” policies to keep their establishments from being turned into mini-offices. 

In sociology, the third place refers to social surroundings that are separate from the two usual social environments of home and the workplace. Third places require either direct or indirect social interaction with other people and are also defined by the fact that no one is forcing you to be there. Besides coffee shops, popular third places for remote and hybrid workers include libraries, clubhouses, and conference centers. Coworking spaces like WeWork and Regus are good examples of businesses built on the premise of the third place. 

Some employees find third places desirable because they boost motivation and productivity, may have fewer distractions, and may also encourage them to get out of the house and look presentable. And given their popularity, leaders need to weigh whether it’s better for remote and hybrid employees to work in an independent third place or in the aforementioned regional hubs or local satellite offices.

Certainly, thorny issues like skill-building, confidentiality, privacy, and data security are easier to solve when an employee is working under a company-sponsored roof. Company-sponsored workspaces that are close to home may also boost connection and relationship building because one can see coworkers in person while working at the same location.

For the rest of the piece, check out the ManpowerGroup full blog series.

Building the Next Generation of Skills Inside Your Company

It’s common for employees to want to build skills at work, but an effective learning infrastructure isn’t as common. As organizations grow, they tend to lose track of their people’s skills. Leaders don’t know the competencies employees have acquired at work, what they can do next, and the skills they can develop to grow their contributions to the organization. 

Employers often don’t dig too deeply either, preferring instead to seek fresh talent externally when a need presents itself. But even if the current job market could support it, it’s difficult to maintain the hiring pace needed to source emerging skills from the outside. This reality leads to persistent understaffing and longer role vacancies.  

It’s imperative to build a skills-based organization that can flex to evolving business and employee needs. But where to start? 

The following five strategies may prove helpful as you seek to solve today’s labor shortage conundrum with your own reliable and already proven workforce. 

Understand the size and composition of your workforce 

Using analytics programs, employers should determine the current internal and external trends in workforce supply and demand. Examine the gap between the skills possessed by your workforce today and the skills your business requires to be successful now and in the future.  

It might be beneficial to use a skills segmentation matrix that includes the variables of scarcity (how common or uncommon the skill is in the market), criticality (how essential or non-essential the skill is for work to be successfully completed), and volume (how much volume of this skill the business requires).  

Seek feedback on your matrix from a diverse group of stakeholders across the organization, and during your investigation, determine the in-house superstars in in-demand areas. You can then enlist the help of these employees in crafting appropriate strategies and training to boost the organization’s overall level of skill competency. 

For the rest of the article, head over to the Dayforce blog.

How to Work Effectively on Project-Based Teams

Not long ago, employees would have ample time to build relationships with their colleagues while working together in the same office. But as organizations transition to more project-based work, workers need to understand the steps they need to take to foster trust and cooperation immediately.

That's where business owners and managers come in. Whether you have a full-time employee or gig worker working on a series of projects, you'll need to carefully consider the unique communication, inclusion, management and culture issues that arise with remote project work.

Communication

Even before the pandemic, the majority of project-based teams worked virtually. Organizations assembled teams from across locations and skill sets to solve specific business problems. Your team members most likely will be required to work closely with people they’ve never met before, and may in fact never encounter in person at all.

So much meaning is translated via body language, so working with someone entirely online adds a layer of communication complexity. When you don’t know someone, it's difficult to infer their tone, their motives or even whether or not they’re joking. Someone might perceive positive messages in email or instant message as neutral, and neutral ones as negative.

In the history of work, some of the most meaningful and rewarding one-to-one interactions have happened over chance meetings in the hallway or elevator. Many project-based teams don’t have such opportunities, so encourage team members to be direct and deliberate in communicating respect, collaboration and concern.

Inclusion

When most people worked in person for long time periods, the workplace could resemble high school. Some bosses would give the best assignments to their favorites, and it wasn’t unusual for some employees to feel left out when a clique of coworkers headed out to lunch together.

In other words, there were many ways to feel excluded and marginalized.

Virtual project-based teaming is a great equalizer. It provides flexibility for people, regardless of their situations. While webcams do offer a personal view into team members’ lives, people can purposely create the desired impression with dress, virtual backgrounds and decor—or simply choose to turn their camera off.

Project-based team members can still, however, be victims of microaggressions—statements, actions or incidents regarded as indirect, subtle or unintentional discrimination against members of a marginalized community.

New teams don't often have a reservoir of trust or comfort established at the beginning. Managers and leaders should be sensitive and mindful that microaggressions can occur and ensure that during online dialogue, all member's contributions are appropriately valued.

Make inclusion a value that's established through your hiring and onboarding process, and have systems in place that properly address any issue that does arise in a way that respects and affirms the harmed party.

Management

Many project-based teams are self-managed, meaning they have no formally assigned leader. About a decade ago, economist Elinor Ostrom received the Nobel Prize for her studies of self-governed communities in Africa and Asia.

Ostrom found that many human societies establish agreements among themselves for sharing and maximizing resources without the “help” of higher-order authorities. In other words, self-managed teams work. The best ones have several parameters:

• well-defined operational boundaries,
• access to resources to achieve their goals,
• a system for monitoring member behavior and performance,
• an internal process for dispute resolution and
• sanctions for rule-breakers.

According to SAP Success Factors (which refers to project-based, self-managed teams as "dynamic teams"), these groups are defined by the following:

• workflow that changes rapidly as new ideas are introduced and implemented,
• membership that is cross-functional and frequently in flux and
• the encouragement of failure in pursuit of innovation.

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

 

Americans Feel Their Employers View Them As Disposable

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Becoming a Remote-First Organization

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

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

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

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

1. Get comfortable with managing remote teams.

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

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

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

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

2. Embrace asynchronous work.

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

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

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

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

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

How to Cope with Long-Term Uncertainty

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

1. Act on the outcomes you can realistically anticipate.

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

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

2. Brainstorm with other business owners.

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

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

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

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

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

 

Guiding Your Team Through Evolving Work Structures

Whether you’ve been with the same organization or moved around, if you’ve been a manager for a while, you have probably experienced a lot of changes regarding how, where, and when people work. The boundaries for what’s acceptable and what isn’t have shifted dramatically over the last 10 years, and many agree that the waters are growing even murkier.

As we approach 2020, every organization is different with respect to policies on flexwork, technology-facilitated collaboration, virtual teaming, contract hiring, meetings scheduling and logistics, and the like. And because the dos and don’ts frequently evolve, your responsibility as a leader is to ensure that protocol is clear and that your employees can function happily and productively in the context of new structures. Here are a few suggestions for a successful transition.

Understand what the rest of your organization is doing

Before you provide guidance to your team, talk to HR or c-suite leaders about any top-down work structure-related policies, procedures, and resources that already exist and can be tweaked or updated to meet your team’s needs. If another leader is blazing an innovation trail, learn from their experience and aim to take workable arrangements to the next level.

Understand each individual’s unique needs

We now operate in a workforce of one, where every employee governs their career differently. Prior to revising a structure or process (or starting a new one), survey your team members about the most effective ways to get their jobs done with maximum impact and minimum stress, and notice commonalities in the feedback.

Choose pilot over permanent

Complete transitions to new structures gradually and on a small scale. For instance, if you want to move your team from 100 percent in-office to 80 percent, with the option of working from home or another location the remaining 20 percent, start with a three-month trial. Outline rules and expectations upfront and select a metric like productivity to ascertain how well the new protocol is working.

Educate your people on politics

If you’re reading this piece, your team may be on the cutting-edge of 21st century work. This means that your employees could run into snafus with other departments that operate differently. Think through potential complications early, manage perceptions, and ensure that your team can address objections from and continue to build trust with more traditional areas of the business. In other words, don’t let other leaders think your people are lazy or off the grid.

Encourage frequent communication

Any change process must be accompanied by more discussion than you think you need. Schedule group and individual check-ins at least twice a month so that your transition is smooth and hiccup-free as possible, protocols are consistently implemented from one team member to another, employees have an opportunity to provide feedback, and business is running as usual.  

In a business world where every employee’s journey is different, facilitating effective transitions is just as critical to engaging and retaining top talent as more traditional lifecycle focuses like onboarding and performance. Join sponsor SilkRoad and me for a webinar on August 29, 2019 at 2PM EST and come with questions!

 

Humanity Works Book Tour: Glimpses of the Future

One of the highlights of the last year was my #humanityworks tour in the UK, from which these six videos resulted. Check them out for short and sweet advice on what's to come in the workforce of 2030 and beyond.

Episode 1: Don't Worry about AI Stealing Your Job, Worry about Your Lack of Skills

Episode 2: Why You Should Develop Your Interpersonal Sensitivity Skills

Episode 3: Technology Will Create New Jobs

Episode 4: Will Technology Develop Consciousness?

Episode 5: Workplace Agility: The Crucial Skill for Your Career

Episode 6: 3 Important Technologies for HR and L&D

 

AI's Relationship to Team Collaboration

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is all the rage in business. Owners hoping for more efficient operations and better team collaboration are eager to take advantage of smart machines, but where should you start?

First described by Stanford computer scientist John McCarthy in 1956, artificial intelligence refers to computer simulation of human intelligence. Let's explore the categories of AI most businesses are implementing today, as well as the things to keep in mind when considering AI-based collaboration tools.

We can place nearly all available AI programs into two categories: narrow artificial intelligence and general artificial intelligence. Narrow AI completes simple, routine tasks and can usually do so more quickly than human counterparts. This form of AI does not possess understanding or insight—it does exactly what it's programmed for. (Most automation in manufacturing and business environments is the product of narrow AI.)

Narrow AI is transforming team collaboration by taking over administrative functions and freeing human workers to focus on more mission-critical tasks. Alexa for Business and Google Assistant, for instance, are intelligent assistants your whole team can use via a shared console. These AI assistants interact with your team's other digital systems to set up meetings, send reminders, print necessary materials and run your presentation in a conference room.

Artificial general intelligence possesses greater cognitive abilities. A system using this form can come across an unfamiliar task or situation and generate solutions, although currently not to the level of abstraction possible for human workers. Still, as computer scientists devise increasingly sophisticated machine learning applications, which actively learn from prior experience by recognizing patterns in their own data, the productivity of team collaboration skyrockets.

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