My most recent Workforce print feature story is about mental health parity, and thatâs one of the topics I love writing about as a benefits reporter: the need for quality, accessible, affordable mental health coverage.
The argument is that even though ideas or theories in psychiatry have prevailed in certain moments of history, all of them have been proven inadequate or outright wrong. And weâre still uncertain about both the cause of mental illness and why treatments work on some people but not others.
This sounds cynical, but I love a book that rationally explores the highs and lows of a scientific goal (in this case, to pin down the cause of mental illness). This isnât discouraging as much as it is proof that people will constantly try to progress their understanding of the world in order to help people with a disorder. Itâs more promising to me to see people admit their miscalculations and be determined to move forward than to see people stubbornly hold on to ideas from the past.
There are a few reasons I want to write about this book. The history of mental health treatment and theory is simultaneously fascinating, inspiring and upsetting. Especially in this context, history gives us many examples of how some of the mental health trends weâre now seeing in the workplace may not be exactly new.
Iâve gotten press releases about how people are more depressed or anxious now than ever before â especially millennials (or whatever young generation is being picked apart at the moment). Iâve spoken to people about how prevalent mental illness is and how that has changed over time. Iâve always been skeptical about the idea that itâs more common than in the past. My theory is that itâs more talked about now, more diagnosed now and less stigmatized now, and so the numbers just seem higher. (Feel free to argue against me on this, of course!)
What interested me about âMind Fixersâ was the section about the Cold War Era and how it was seen as the âAge of Anxietyâ at the time. Many people relied on the âminor tranquilizerâ Miltown, a predecessor of Valium, to deal with that anxiety. Meanwhile, in the 1980s depression became âthe common cold of psychiatry.â
Comments like this make me wonder how current trends compared to other periods of history. This isnât to minimize the impact that mental illness has on people and communities in the present. I bring this up so that we donât talk about the history of mental health in a way that romanticizes the past. People in the 1950s, the 1800s, and before that had mental disorders, too. The treatments just werenât as advanced.
According to the National Institute of Health and the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, 41.2 percent of adults with a mental illness have received mental health services. And, more importantly, this statistic is very gendered if you dissect the data further. While 47.6 percent of women have received this type of health care, only 34.8 percent of men have.
Thatâs a big gap. Why donât men get mental health care as much?
It was âassociated with women and weaknessâ and men did not receive this label. Fast forward to the 1970s, when people were talking about a new trendy topic called âstress.â It was thought that women were twice as likely to experience stress and depression than men.
This is just a snapshot. Still, it shows how deep these roots are that may tell men that theyâre weak if they admit certain things.
Finally, âMind Fixersâ mentioned the unwillingness of insurance companies to cover psychiatric services in 1970s. Lack of benefits coverage of behavioral health is something that even today â after the passage of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act in 2008 â is still sometimes an issue.
According to âWorkforce Attitudes Toward Behavioral Health,â a February 2019 survey from behavioral health company Ginger, 35 percent of the 1,214 U.S. employees surveyed reported that they had to pay directly for behavioral health services their benefits didnât cover. Further, 85 percent of people said that behavioral health benefits are important when evaluating a job, and 81 percent of people said they face barriers in accessing behavioral health care. The most common barrier (28 percent) was that providers arenât available in their benefits plan.
Iâd strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in the science behind mental health. It brings up a lot of interesting talking points like, How much has stigma improved in the past 200 years, and where is there still room for improvement? Which issues still exist that caused people problems all those years ago as well?
While this isnât a book about the workplace, youâll read about certain historical trends and movements that sound a lot like some of the âinnovativeâ solutions youâre hearing about now. Maybe youâll learn a couple lessons from history.
A German court recently ruled that a hangover qualifies as an âillness.â
Which got me thinking ⌠are hangovers the next frontier of your FMLA headaches?
Thankfully, the answer to this question is almost certainly âno.â
But itâs worth reviewing the FMLAâs definition of âserious health conditionâ to see how I reach that conclusion.
The FMLA defines a âserious health condition entitling an employee to FMLA leaveâ as âan illness, injury, impairment or physical or mental condition that involves inpatient care âŚor continuing treatment by a health care provider.â
âInpatient careâ means âan overnight stay in a hospital, hospice, or residential medical care facility, including any period of incapacity ⌠or any subsequent treatment in connection with such inpatient care.â
âIncapacityâ means an âinability to work, attend school or perform other regular daily activities due to the serious health condition, treatment therefore, or recovery therefromâ
âContinuing treatment by a health care providerâ means âa period of incapacity of more than three consecutive, full calendar days, and any subsequent treatment or period of incapacity relating to the same condition, that also involvesâ either âtreatment two or more times, within 30 days of the first day of incapacity by a health care provider,â or âtreatment by a health care provider on at least one occasion, which results in a regimen of continuing treatment under the supervision of the health care provider.â
Itâs difficult to imagine a hangover meeting any of these criteria. No hangover should ever require an overnight stay, continuing treatment of three or more days, or a regimen of supervised continuing treatment, even if an employee feels so ill that he or she cannot work or perform other regular daily activities as a result.
HR folks and leave administrators, rest easy knowing that you will not have to grant FMLA to your hungover employees.
Sylas Butler was an employee for a Jimmy Johnâs sandwiches franchise in Illinois.
After Butlerâs hours were reduced, he attempted to transfer to another Jimmy Johnâs franchise. He discovered he could not transfer because the franchises have contracts with Jimmy Johnâs corporate that contain âno poach agreements,â â agreements that prohibit franchisees from hiring each otherâs employees.
Butler brought a class-action lawsuit on behalf of current and former Jimmy Johnâs employees, alleging the sandwich company violated the Sherman Antitrust Act, and committed unfair and deceptive business practices under state law. The United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois held that Butler stated a valid claim under the Sherman Act and state law.
The court rejected Jimmy Johnâs argument that the no-poach agreements were merely âverticalâ restraints on trade between Jimmy Johnâs corporate and franchisees, and not âhorizontalâ restraints upon trade between competitors, which are typically illegal.
The effect of the no-poach agreements was horizontal, as under the contract, the franchisees had the ability to enforce the no-poach agreements against each other as third-party beneficiaries. Butler v. Jimmy Johnâs Franchise, LLC, 331 F. Supp. 3d 786 (S.D. Ill. 2018).
IMPACT: Courts are increasingly skeptical of no-poach agreements that restrict the ability of employees to seek gainful employment.
What rights do you have to ban union organizers from your property?
A lot. Your property is your property.
What if, however, you allow your employeeâs daughterâs Girl Scout troop to set up a table outside and sell cookies? Have you just opened yourself to an argument that allowing cookie sales unlawfully discriminates against the banned union organizers?
Historically, yes, but currently, no. Or at least not under the NLRBâs most recent pronouncement on the issue of employer property rights, in Kroger Mid-Atlantic.
To establish that a denial of access to nonemployee union agents violated the Act âŚ, the General Counsel must prove that an employer denied access to nonemployee union agents while allowing access to other nonemployees for activities similar in nature to those in which the union agents sought to engage. Consistent with this standard, an employer may deny access to nonemployees seeking to engage in protest activities on its property while allowing nonemployee access for a wide range of charitable, civic, and commercial activities that are not similar in nature to protest activities. Additionally, an employer may ban nonemployee access for union organizational activities if it also bans comparable organizational activities by groups other than unions.
Since the Girl Scouts (or the Salvation Army, or the American Cancer Society, or any other charitable, civic, or commercial activity) is nowhere near âsimilar in natureâ to union organizing activities, an employer should be safe permitting the former while banning the latter.
Warning: This monthâs column is not for everyone. If, however, you are offended by what I am about to say, then this is specifically for you.
In August, the Department of Laborâs Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, the federal agency that regulates and governs federal contractors and subcontractors, proposed regulations to clarify the scope and application of the religious exemption contained in section 204(c) of Executive Order 11246.
By way of background, Executive Order 11246, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in September 1965, âprohibits federal contractors and federally assisted construction contractors and subcontractors, who do over $10,000 in Government business in one year from discriminating in employment decisions on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.â Itâs been amended over the years, including its 2014 addition of LGBTQ protections to the list of prohibited discrimination.
Section 204(c) specifically exempts from coverage any âgovernment contractor or subcontractor that is a religious corporation, association, educational institution, or society.â
The Trump administration seeks to expand section 204(c) to permit religious organizations with federal contracts to âmake employment decisions consistent with their sincerely held religious tenets and beliefs without fear of sanction by the federal government.â
It makes clear that religious organizations can discriminate because of religion, and that religious organizations can require employeesâ behavior to meet the organizationâs religious rules.
What has people, including me, up in arms about this rule is its proposed change to what qualifies as a âreligious organization.â The EEOC has long taken the position that for-profit companies cannot qualify as âreligious organizations.â This proposal deviates from that long-standing rule for purposes of the OFCCP. Indeed, according to two senior Labor Department officials, the exemption would apply to âclosely held companies acting in accordance with an ownerâs religious beliefs.â
In other words, if someone organizes a closely held business for a religious âpurposeâ and holds itself out to the public as such, it would be exempt from the OFCCPâs anti-discrimination provisions if it operates its business consistent with its religious purpose.
What would this change mean practically? As the American Civil Liberties Union tweeted, âThe Department of Labor just proposed a rule that aims to let government contractors fire workers who are LGBTQ, or who are pregnant and unmarried, based on the employersâ religious views.â
This is not âreligious freedom.â Itâs government-sanctioned discrimination. And itâs just plain wrong.
Private businesses canât hold religious beliefs. Extending to them these protections based on their ownersâ religious beliefs is dangerous. And scary. And abhorrent. We should all be troubled by a rule that permits an employer to opt out of an employment law because of a religious belief.
Religious freedom as an opt-out from the law is a dangerous construct. Our Constitution guarantees freedom of religion. We irreparably damage this important principle when we permit a private business, under the guise of religious freedom, to opt-out, without penalty, from an employment law with which it disagrees or finds offensive.
If you stand with me, and against government-sanctioned discrimination of any kind and in any form, write or call your senator and congressperson and tell them that this proposed rule cannot stand. That as a nation we are better than this. That all private businesses should be held to the same non-discriminatory obligations, regardless of the religious beliefs of their owners.
And, donât forget about the comment period required by the rule-making process for any proposed regulations. The public gets to chime in, and everyone who opposes this rule should do so.
To conclude, Iâll make this as clear as possible.
Racism is wrong.
Sexism is wrong.
Homophobia is wrong.
If you disagree, youâre a bigot, period.
And, if you hide behind your religion to protect your views, then youâre a hypocritical bigot. There is nothing religious about bigotry, no matter what some might want you to believe.
Applicant tracking systems providers breathed a small sigh of relief in September when Google announced it was officially shutting down Google Hire, the cloud-based applicant tracking system that the search-engine giant launched barely two years ago.
Itâs a fitting end to a product that was never a good fit for Googleâs portfolio of solutions, said Othamar Gama Filho, CEO of recruitment marketing automation platform Talentify. âI was more surprised when they launched it than when they ended it.â
Google Hire promised to simplify the hiring process for recruiters. By utilizing Googleâs powerful search capabilities, open API environment and G Suite tools, including Gmail and Google Calendar, recruiters would be able to more easily find and communicate with candidates, and schedule interviews. At least that was the pitch.
But in reality it didnât offer a lot to make it stand out in an already crowded market. âThe global ATS market is small compared to what Google is used to,â Gama Filho said. Itâs projected to be a $2.34 billion by 2026, which may be exciting for a burgeoning tech startup, but is hardly worth the attention of a company that generates billions of dollars in revenues every year.
Google also never explained how the global platform would accommodate the unique data privacy regulations in every country where it was offered. Gama Filho noted that Google is already facing antitrust investigations in the European Commission for its Google for Jobs app, which could have chilled its interest in the recruiting space all together.
The real truth is Google Hire never found it customer base. âA lot of ATS platforms integrate with G-Suite, so there was not a lot to differentiate the offering,â he said.
It also wasnât a good fit for Googleâs business model, said Holger Mueller, vice president and principal analyst for Constellation Research. âGoogle never does anything in business apps. They can make a lot more money attracting the HCM SaaS vendors to their platform than competing with them.â
Mueller also points to Google Hireâs origin story as a potential harbinger of its early demise.
Google Hire was originally developed at Bebop, a startup tech firm led by Diane Greene, which Google acquired for $380 million in 2015. As part of that acquisition, Greene was brought in to head up Googleâs cloud business.
Greene was lauded as a veteran of the enterprise software marketplace, and Google leaders believed she could help them compete with the likes of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.
They were right. During her four-year tenure (she left earlier this year), Google Cloud increased its revenues to $1 billion per quarter. While it is still third in the public cloud marketplace, itâs closing fast on Amazon and Microsoft.
What does that have to do with Google Hire? Many believe buying Bebop was just Googleâs way to get Greene onboard. âBut they still had to show stakeholders that they didnât waste the acquisition,â Mueller said. So they kept it on the books for a few years, used it to showcase how their technology could help recruiters. âBut never really did anything with it.â
For customers of Google Hire, the good news is that it wonât be officially shut down until September 2020, giving them almost a full year to find a replacement. Google has also generously agreed to keep it running for no additional fees.
The lesson to be learned from the rapid rise and fall of Google Hire is that nothing lasts forever, Mueller said. âEspecially when comes in the cloud.â
An employee suffering from epilepsy, migraines and heart condition asks (with a medical note) for two unpaid days off from work to treat symptoms related to her disabilities.
Instead of granting the leave, the employer assigns the employee points under its no-fault attendance policy and fires her for exceeding the allowable number of attendance points. The EEOC has sued the employer, alleging disability discrimination.
A no-fault attendance policy assigns points each time an employee is absent, with corresponding levels of progressive discipline automatically imposed at certain point levels. Employers like these policies because they simplify attendance issues.
These policies, however, carry, a certain degree of risk â namely in the handling of absences protected by the FMLA or ADA. If the FMLA or ADA protects an employeeâs absence from work, an employer would violate the statute by counting the absence as part of a no-fault attendance policy. And, in this case (assuming the medical note is legit), and for this reason, it appears this employer has a big problem with the EEOC.
On a more basic level, whereâs the humanity in denying two days off for an employee to deal with medical symptoms, especially when the request is accompanied by a doctorâs note?
The ADA requires reasonable accommodations. Unless the employee is a serial abuser of unpaid days off, itâs hard to imagine a situation in which two days is not a reasonable request.
Research indicates that more self-aware individuals understand others better, enabling them to lead more effectively.
The research on self-awareness by my organization, the Myers-Briggs Co., shows that most people believe they are self-aware. In fact, 82 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement âI have a great deal of self-awareness.â
Despite these high levels of self-reported self-awareness, a study by The Eurich Group shows that the quality of self-awareness is actually in short supply. This wasnât a surprise. In our research, most participants thought that they were more self-aware than most people they knew (which is, of course, impossible; everyone canât be more self-aware than everyone else).
There are a number of reasons to believe that greater general levels of self-awareness among individuals within organizations lead to positive business outcomes. Studies such as those by Bass and Yammarino, Atwater and Yamamarino, and Church showed that people with more accurate self-conception tended to perform better.
The relationship between self-awareness and flexibility is demonstrated by a study of the Royal Navy, which found that more self-aware leaders were better able to tailor their leadership style to the needs of a given situation. Better employee performance plus more agile leadership typically leads to a better bottom line.
Thereâs also reason to believe that self-awareness might influence retention. My team at Myers-Briggs recently researched workplace well-being with over 10,000 global respondents and found that individuals with a higher level of well-being â which can stem from self-awareness â had significantly higher levels of job satisfaction, felt much more emotionally attached to their organization, and were significantly less likely to look for a new job. They were also much more likely to be good organizational citizens being helpful to their co-workers, conscientious and more willing to go the extra mile.
What Is Self-Awareness and How Does It Help?
According to the Oxford English Dictionary self-awareness is, âConscious knowledge of oneâs own character and feelings.â
Researcher Anna Sutton further elaborates on this to describe it as, âThe extent to which people are consciously aware of their interactions or relationships with others and of their internal states.â
Think about a time you took your car in for a tune-up. Nothing major was fixed, but afterward it drove like a dream. Similarly, increasing your self-awareness can help you perform better â by discovering how you operate you begin to understand how to adjust your behaviors for better results.
By increasing self-awareness, you also begin to better understand other peopleâs approaches. In our own recent research on self-awareness, survey respondents reported that increased self-awareness led to improvements in confidence, decision-making, people-management and stress management.
When we asked people about the advantages of being self-aware, the top five responses were:
Understanding of reactions and motivation.
Management of self and others.
Ability to adapt behavior.
Relationship improvement.
Personal growth.
We also asked people about any disadvantages to being self-aware â but many, many more people mentioned advantages. Additionally, people said that self-awareness was particularly helpful when:
Working with others in a team (mentioned by 58 percent of survey respondents).
Coping with stress (mentioned by 54 percent of survey respondents).
Acting as a coach (mentioned by 53 percent of survey respondents).
Dealing with change (mentioned by 50 percent of survey respondents).
Managing and leading others (mentioned by 45 percent of survey respondents).
Dealing with clients (mentioned by 33 percent of survey respondents).
Receiving coaching or feedback (mentioned by 28 percent of survey respondents).
How Is Self-Awareness Measured?
As weâve mentioned, just asking people âare you self-awareâ or even âare you more or less self-aware than other peopleâ doesnât work too well. Itâs a bit like asking people, âAre you an above average driver?â Around 90 percent of Americans say âyesâ to this even though this can only be true for 50 percent of individuals. There needs to be a more structured way to assess self-awareness.
A number of models and assessments can be employed to measure self-awareness in individuals. A particularly useful one comes from a 2015 study by Sutton, Williams and Allinson that identified four facets of self-awareness: Reflection, Insight, Rumination and Mindfulness. In conducting our own research, we used questions, including the sample below, designed to measure these four facets.
Agreeing with these questions suggests that you may be more self-aware, except for those marked with a â*â; more self-aware people will tend to disagree with these. How would you score? How about others in your organization?
Reflection
I often reflect on my thoughts.
I do not often think about the way I am feeling.*
I enjoy exploring my âinner self.â
I often reflect on my feelings.
Others would benefit from reflecting more on their thoughts.
Insight
I am interested in analyzing the behavior of others.
I value opportunities to evaluate my behavior.
It is important to understand why people behave in the way they do.
When Iâm feeling uncomfortable, I can easily name these feelings.
I usually know why I am feeling the way I do.
Mindfulness
I am often on auto-pilot and do not pay much attention to what I am doing.*
Sometimes I am careless because I am preoccupied, with many things on my mind.*
I often dwell on the past or the future, rather than the present.*
My mind often wanders when I am trying to concentrate.*
Rumination
I often find myself thinking about past negative events.
When things go wrong, I often ruminate on them for long periods of time.
I tend not to look back and think about how I could have done things differently.*
How Can a Workplace Professional Promote Self-Awareness?
There are many ways to develop self-awareness, but a mix of methods will probably work best. Here are some of the most popular, based on responses to our survey.
Feedback from a range of different people, including:
Peers.
Managers.
Subordinates.
Clients.
Family.
An individualâs wider network.
Completing personality questionnaires.
Training to become a coach.
Coaching and other professional help.
360-degree feedback tools.
Journaling: keeping a diary or journal that explores thoughts and feelings surrounding the events of oneâs life.
However, the most popular methods arenât necessarily the best. We looked at a number of these commonly used approaches and found that the best methods, in order of effectiveness, were:
Training to be a coach.
Being coached.
Completing personality assessments.
Having structured feedback from your peers.
Journaling.
It wasnât too surprising that âtraining to be a coachâ topped the list, as this involves many hours of learning to understand oneself before being allowed to coach others. Of course, such training is also time consuming and expensive and not a realistic route for most employees.
On the other hand, âreceiving personal coachingâ as a way to help senior managers is something that many organizations may invest in. It does, however, come with a significant cost and time commitment, so for many individuals this may not be a realistic option. Instead, companies might want to look into using personality assessments and facilitating ways in which employees can have structured feedback from their peers. These may often be the most cost-effective approaches in terms of providing the biggest payoff for a relatively low monetary investment.
Similarly, âjournaling,â the practice of keeping a diary or journal that explores thoughts and feelings surrounding the events of your life, offers a low-cost way to effectively promote self-awareness. However, journaling may not work for everyone.
Companies should note that one of the interesting findings of our research was that âfeedback from your managerâ was seen, on average, to be one of the least effective methods. This is an important point because, as noted earlier, this kind of feedback was also listed as one of the most common methods of promoting self-awareness that organizations leverage.
Though we cannot say definitively why manager feedback was not seen as especially effective, there are a number of possible reasons. Some managers may be less close to the work of their subordinates work than their peers; indeed in some large international organizations they may be based on a different country and rarely be in contact. Others may be viewed as having a particular agenda, or as being too busy with other aspects of their job. Whatever the reason, this is a troubling finding for managers.
Youâre Self-Aware, Now What?
Building your own self-awareness is really just the first step. Once individuals become more aware of their own personality preferences and have a structure to understand and describe themselves, they can start to recognize how their co-workers are similar to or different from them. They can use this knowledge to begin to devise strategies to work with their co-workers more effectively, using their differences in a constructive, rather than destructive, way.
Research shows that more diverse teams can perform better than more homogeneous teams; team members can bring different perspectives to bear on the issues they have to deal with. Diverse teams can however suffer from more conflict, often because individuals simply do not understand other team members. Building self-awareness is a key way of solving this issue.
Linked to this greater understanding, managers and workplace professionals can put in place systems to help people work together more effectively. This could include approaches such as:
Establishing a modus operandi for working together that takes account of the rights and the responsibilities of different personality types.
Ensuring that important information is communicated in a range of different ways (rather than only in a style that suits the personality of the sender).
Taking into account both the logical answer and the solution that makes sense for people and the organizationâs values when making decisions.
Identifying how the different approaches of team members can complement each other.
Allowing time for reflection during or after meetings.
Considering personality preferences when reorganizing office layouts.
For managers and leaders, the story does not stop there. Using personality assessments gives you a structure to understand yourself better. This in turn gives you a structure to understand those you manage; what motivates them, and how you can best communicate with them.
Understanding how your team works leads to an understanding of other teams and ultimately of the dynamics of your entire organization. For those at the top level, it can help in aligning the whole company to the strategy that is needed for organizational success.
Regardless of whether some or all of the approaches are taken, the key to successfully implementing any of these includes both the realization that we are different from others in ways that can be identified and described, and the harnessing of this diversity of personality in a positive way. And of course, this is a lesson that can be learned by individuals at any level in the organization.
In Latif v. Morgan Stanley & Co., plaintiff Mahmoud Latif complained to defendant Morgan Stanleyâs HR department about his co-workersâ inappropriate comments regarding his sexual orientation and religion, inappropriate touching and sexual advances.
Latif also complained of a female supervisor sexually assaulting him. Morgan Stanley terminated him one year after he first complained. Latif brought suit in federal court alleging discrimination, hostile work environment and retaliation in violation of Title VII.
Morgan Stanley moved to compel arbitration under Latifâs employment agreement. In response, Latif argued the agreement was not enforceable as to his sexual harassment claims in light of a recently adopted New York law.
The New York law, N.Y. C.P.L.R. § 7515, prohibits employers from requiring employees to arbitrate claims of sexual harassment, except where inconsistent with federal law. The court found the New York lawwas inconsistent with federal law â specifically, the Federal Arbitration Act (the FAA), which states that arbitration clauses shall be valid, irrevocable, and enforceable, unless grounds exist for the revocation of any contract.
Similar to AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, where the Supreme Court held the FAA preempts state laws prohibiting waivers of class-wide arbitration, this court found that the FAA preempted the New York law because it attempted to prohibit arbitration of a particular type of claim. Latif v. Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 107020.
IMPACT: Employers should carefully craft arbitration clauses to comply with state law unless and until a court determines that the law is preempted by the FAA.
As I think about the workplace issues faced by my clients, I canât help but reflect on my personal life and how there might be some parallels. Supervising a toddlerâs play date through the corner of an eye, holding my newborn in one arm while typing this opinion piece with the other and a light bulb switched on for me. To authentically reflect this chapter of my life and the workforce issues that matter most to me right now, I have to blog about flexibility. For me, there is nothing else so top of mind.
Since 2007, I’ve advised firms around the world on all kinds of workforce issues including flexibility. Over the course of my travels, Iâve had world-class mentors, both men and women alike.
Within this group, there is a set of common traits that I strive to emulate. They successfully balance the three important attributes of the trifecta: love, life and career.
If you are career-oriented, balancing the three components of the trifecta is an important condition for living a happy and fulfilled life. And, when done properly, it improves your chances of success in the workplace.
In the United States alone, despite relatively low levels of violent crime and unemployment, coupled with steadily rising income per capita over the last few decades, general happiness within the population is declining. The 2019 World Happiness Report describes this relationship as the Easterlin Paradox, where despite rising standards of living, happiness levels trend inverse. This is attributed to a variety of factors, one of which includes digital advancement â ironically, an urgent business opportunity for most executives.
Another reason for the Easterlin Paradox could be the growing workload faced by many employees in todayâs workforce. In fact, HR leaders (particularly in North America) consider unmanageable workloads a key risk to their people experience. In response, several firms have prioritized wellness strategies as a means to remediate. To do so, establishing the link to flexibility is key. Wellness and flexibility cannot be decoupled. They go hand-in-hand.
Good flexibility programs help employees balance the trifecta.
Empower employees to spend meaningful and undistracted time with their loved ones and to invest in starting and/or growing loving relationships.
Give employees adequate opportunities to enjoy their lives by engaging in leisure activities, pursuing personal passions and participating in social and/or community networks.
Create a professional environment where love and life are celebrated and where making investments of time in these two components of the trifecta will enhance an employee’s career, as opposed to harming it.
The equation is pretty simple: Organizations that offer flexibility are more likely to have engaged workers. Engaged workers are more likely to be productive. Productivity leads to heightened levels of business performance. Performance strengthens the employer brand. Top talent likes top brands.
In a job seekerâs market where, at least in the United States, there are more open positions than available talent, firms cannot afford to be inflexible if they want to gain the competitive advantage in a growing war for talent.
But where to start? Consider these five tips for paving the way to a flexible future:
Establish flexible HR policies. Consider a work from home or casual dress policy. Think about an unlimited or mandated vacation policy and how this might impact well-being. Offer flex-time so employees can adapt their work hours to complement their lifestyle (to honor family, health and spiritual commitments).
Lead by example. Flexible HR policies are meaningless when not adopted. Sometimes, workers do not take advantage of these policies in fear of retribution if leaders do not walk the talk. Itâs important that leaders give employees permission to partake by taking advantage of these policies themselves.
Consider diversity. Flexibility means different things to different people. For example, what might flexibility mean to a parent? How about someone transitioning to retirement? A caregiver? Someone with standing religious commitments? A single person?
With more diversity in the workplace than ever before, it’s important to take into account diverse needs when designing flexibility programs. A one-size approach to flexibility could offer an inflexible result.
Invest in technology. If the goal is to free up more time for employees for their personal use, offer state of the art technology that enables efficient work from home and mitigates unnecessary travel to the workplace or to meetings (particularly, where distance/air travel is required).
Monitor well-being and flexibility. To understand the return on investment in flexibility, establish a correlation to well-being metrics and other business outcomes and monitor this over time. Also, review the unintended consequences of âunsupervisedâ flexibility and put the necessary controls in place. For example, monitor patterns in remote working periodically to make sure people are still coming on-site to work and collaborate when necessary, while taking advantage of the policy when itâs not.
There are many ways to bring more flexibility to the workforce. However, as is sometimes the case with people programs, efforts to enhance flexibility will be futile when leadership support is not in place. While these are best enabled by HR, visible C-suite sponsorship is critical. Remember this before getting into tactics, as getting the leadership team on board first will be a worthy and very important next step.
