Tag: communication

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Poor Internal Communication Can Be a Costly Mistake for Businesses

employee communications

Poor internal communication can have some seriously negative impacts on a company — poor morale, high employee turnover and lower employee productivity, to name a few. Worse yet, these can lead to a lasting effect on a company’s bottom line.

employee communicationsStatistics show that plenty of businesses could stand to improve in this area. According to a 2018 Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. study, 60 percent of companies don’t have a long-term internal communication strategy, though about half said they wanted to make improving leadership communication a top priority.

Also read: How to use technology in your internal communications strategy

Additionally, replacing a worker can cost a company 33 percent of that worker’s annual salary. And lower morale leads to actively disengaged employees, which results in reduced productivity. Productivity loss costs the U.S. a whopping $550 billion each year, according to a Gallup report. Turnover and lower morale can also make it more difficult for a company to attract the talent it needs to move forward.

These problems should give businesses powerful incentive to improve communication with employees.

Three Internal Communication Problems to Avoid

Here are some of the most common communication problems companies face and how to avoid them:

  1. Using outdated communication methods. With many companies going paperless, email has become the primary form of communication because it’s quick and efficient. However, it can also be a source of decreased productivity, as employee inboxes can quickly get cluttered with frivolous emails that hide important messages. The constant influx of new messages can also be a distraction from completing important tasks.

Companies can try focusing on mobile-driven communication instead. Company apps such as G Suite, Asana and Slack offer a new way to communicate and engage employees via their smartphones or tablets. This is especially ideal as the workforce demographics are changing to include nontraditional employees like remote workers, contract-based workers and freelancers.

An employee app provides workers with easy access to corporate information and workplace tools while cutting out the clutter of irrelevant messages and keeping all employees on the same page. Many employees also prefer the use of apps over email. For example, our clients and even some vendors prefer communicating via Slack channels rather than email to touch base quickly and share relevant documents.

  1. Not having an internal communication strategy. Many times, companies place their focus on putting a solid strategy in place for external communications with their customers, but developing an internal communication strategy is just as important. In fact, poor internal communication, along with poor coaching of frontline workers, can result in poor communication with customers. This limits a company’s ability to build a sense of loyalty among customers. Here are some tips to help you start building an internal communication strategy that works:
  • Assess your current internal communication and where you want to be. What has worked successfully and what hasn’t?
  • Identify and track key metrics. What data points matter to you? Is it how many people access your intranet, social media shares and comments from your staff, or customer service issues? Identifying and setting goals that align with your business objectives will be important.
  • Identify and segment your internal audience. Not all communication needs to go to everyone.
  • Identify your communication tools. This can include email, face-to-face meetings, social media, an intranet, company apps and more. Pick the channel that works best for the audience and the type of message you are communicating.
  1. A lack of feedback. A lack of feedback can cause employees to feel like their voices aren’t being heard and can have a significant impact on employee turnover. HR professionals and managers often communicate with employees about policies and procedures without taking the time to listen to them. If you want to implement a comprehensive communication strategy, it should include two-way communication.

Not only does listening to employee issues and concerns improve productivity and build loyalty, but it’s also an opportunity to learn about issues or concerns before they escalate into a formal complaint.

Start a feedback loop process through authentic and consistent communication between managers and employees. Providing feedback benefits a company by increasing engagement and helping to move the company forward. Up to 80 percent of an organization’s opportunity for improvement comes from frontline employees.

Now that you understand what’s at stake when a company has poor internal communication, you can begin taking the necessary steps to avoid these pitfalls. If you don’t take the time to develop a solid strategy, you’re putting your company at risk of losing touch with employees in addition to losing money.

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A Cautionary Tale on Why We Background Check Employees

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer

Here is a cautionary tale on why employers should conduct thorough background checks on employers.

In late 2013, Kristl Thompson, Ashley Raby and Corbie Leslie filed a lawsuit against the Scott Fetzer Co. (doing business as “The Kirby Company”), Crantz Development, and John Fields. The women claimed Fields had sexually assaulted them (including verbal abuse and harassment, inappropriate touching, forced sexual acts, and rape) on numerous occasions between May 2012 and January 2013. A number of these allegations resulted in felony and misdemeanor convictions against Fields.

Fields had worked on and off since the 1970s for Crantz (a factory distributor of Fetzer-manufacured Kirby vacuums) as an independent dealer of Kirby vacuums. Over his decades of work, he had been charged with numerous criminal offenses, including embezzlement, unlawful imprisonment, domestic abuse, and rape.

In their civil lawsuit, the women claimed that Fetzer and Crantz were negligent in hiring Fields and allowing him to go on sales trips with them. The women also asserted claims against Fetzer alone for negligently failing to take appropriate precautions to prevent its independent contractors from hiring employees like Fields, and for negligent supervision of its independent distributor in its hiring practices.

The women alleged that after receiving Fields’s application to become a Distributor Trainee, Kirby conducted a limited background check on Fields, which showed that Fields had lied about his prior criminal record. They further alleged that had Kirby conducted a national search instead of a regional search, it would have discovered his criminal record was much more substantial than he disclosed (including rape). Nevertheless, with knowledge that “Fields had spent almost a year in jail for beating up his wife in 2000, and despite the fact that Kirby knew that Fields lied about his criminal record, Kirby approved Fields to be a Distributor Trainee.”

A year later, Fields applied to become a Factory Distributor. According to the women, Fields “again lied about his criminal record and Kirby again learned of his criminal record.” Despite again learning about Fields’s criminal past, “Kirby approved Fields’ application to become a Factory Distributor.” In the following years, Fields continued to commit crimes, including “forcible rape, first degree domestic violence, unlawful imprisonment, and assault.” While Fields was awaiting trial in the forcible rape case, Kirby learned that he had defrauded elderly customers. That crime appears to have been the tipping point for Kirby, and it terminated his factory distributorship.

Yet, after Fields’ release from prison in February 2012, Kirby rehired him, and he began selling their vacuums again. It was during this period of employment that he sexually assaulted Thompson, Raby, and Leslie.

I pulled these horrible facts from The Scott Fetzer Co. v. Great Am. Ins. Co. (6th Cir. 4/30/19) [pdf], an insurance coverage dispute relating to the long-since-resolved underlying claims brought by Thompson, Raby, and Leslie.

I hope, however, we can all spot the mistakes made here in screening and hiring Fields.

    1. It’s no longer acceptable to limited criminal background checks on employees locally or regionally. Our society is mobile, and the background checks we are conducting on potential hires should reflect this mobility by being national in scope. Almost all criminal records are available online, and there is really no excuse to do anything other than a national search.
    2. When you discover that an employee has lied about their criminal background, the only resolution is termination. The employment relationship is all about trust, and when that trust is broken the relationship is irreparably damaged.
    3. I’m all for second chances and redemption, but an individual with a history of rape and domestic abuse is un-hireable. Convince me otherwise.
    4. Why rehire someone after they are released from prison for rape, especially with all of this back story? This fact is the most head-scratching of them all.

There was little chance this story was going to have a happy ending. Let’s all learn from it by reviewing our own background screening and hiring processes.

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Instant Messaging: The Future of Communication, With Caveats

The days of face-to-face meetings and group emails may soon be coming to an end. From texting job candidates and using Slack for project management, to building artificially intelligent chatbots that answer questions about human resources, communication technology in the workplace is evolving. All of this is a good thing, said Sharon O’Dea, a digital and social media consultant based in the U.K. These tools enable faster, more efficient communication, via the devices employees have in their hands all the time, she said. “We all use instant messaging in our personal lives. It is natural to see that shift into the workplace.”

Younger workers are far more likely to choose text or Slack over email or phone calls, which they view as cumbersome and outdated, said Adam Ochstein, CEO of StratEx, an HR technology and consulting firm based in Chicago. Email can also be tricky for contract workers and frontline staff, who may rarely check their emails but always have their phones. “They want to communicate in real time with their fingers, not their voices.”

The use of instant and automated technology to support communication isn’t going away, so managers need to get on board or risk creating information gaps in the workplace. A 2017 report from Dynamic Signal found that only 17 percent of companies had recently invested in technology for internal communication, even though 73 percent said communicating company information to employees was a “serious challenge.”

While chatbots won’t be taking over the way we engage any time soon, the tools we use are evolving, and skeptical managers need to get on board, Ochstein said. “If you want to be an employer of choice for this generation, you’ve got to adapt.

Conversation Bots

Along with changing how employees communicate, new technologies are also changing what information they can share, said Rob High, chief technology officer for IBM Watson, IBM’s cognitive computing system. “Artificial intelligence tools, at their most basic, improve the likelihood that employees can find and share information as they communicate.” This enables faster problem-solving and ensures they can make decisions based on data, not gut instinct. High envisions a day where AI conversation agents will be the third party in a conversation, automatically searching for information and providing context.

Also read: Meet Your New Colleague: Artificial Intelligence

High’s team has also created the AI-driven IBM tone analyzer, which uses linguistic analysis to examine the emotion in text messages. The goal is to help employees vet the “tone” of texts and emails, just as you might spell-check before hitting send. “It’s an efficient way to reduce misunderstandings,” he said. High believes AI technology will change the way we communicate at work and at home.

O’Dea agreed. “Chatbots offer huge potential for employee communication. They can take over the tasks that are needlessly complicated.” She believes early applications will focus on things like filling out employment forms, requesting days off and accessing personal data. “Chatbots can provide employees with instant access to this information through an app, which is where they spend more of their time anyway,” she said. For those who think chatbots are too inhuman for workplace communication, O’Dea believes it’s the opposite. Many employee communication platforms and corporate emails are “generic and impersonal, but chatbots can have human conversations,” she said.

In an era of social sharing, the casual nature of texts in the workplace can put companies at risk.

The Trouble With Text

The adoption of instant communication in the workplace isn’t all good news. In an era of social sharing, the casual nature of texts in the workplace can put companies at risk. We’ve all read the stories of managers cursing out employees for some minor infraction or flirting in a way that makes someone uncomfortable, only to have those conversations go viral and result in someone getting fired.

“There is a fine line between casual conversations and inappropriate content, and instant messaging makes that line very easy to cross,” StratEx’s Ochstein said. It’s rarely intentional. He recalls a recent day at his own company when employees were using Slack to discuss whether the company’s “no-shorts policy” should be abandoned when temperatures rise above 90 degrees. That evolved into a conversation about why female employees were lucky because they can wear skirts, which led to a “guys vs. girls in the workplace” battle. “That’s when the HR team had to get involved and shut it down,” he said. “It was innocent banter, but all of [the] sudden it was going in a direction no one wanted.”

Such scenarios are all too common, particularly when teams work long hours together or are out celebrating a project success. “One person may think a text is funny, where the other thinks it’s inappropriate,” he said. “But once you send it, you can’t get it back.”

The instant nature of these tools also creates legal issues with hourly gig workers. If a manager sends an email at night, it is assumed a contractor will respond the next day, but if they send an instant message the implication is that they expect an instant response. “Does that mean you have to pay them for that time?” Ochstein pondered. “Once you cross that chasm, the legal stuff can get bad.”

That doesn’t mean companies shouldn’t use instant messaging apps to interact with employees, but they should define clear policies for their use. Ochstein advised “over-communicating” to employees about texting protocol and reminding them that anything they say on text is as admissible as any other document. He also urged HR leaders to promote a culture of caution. “Encourage them to pause and think about whether a message could be construed as not respectful,” he said. “If there is any chance it could be construed as rude or not respectful, don’t send it.”

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Personal Lessons in Communicating Change

At the start of the year, I took a personal crash course in navigating organizational change. Despite consulting on issues around change management for most of my career, I learned it’s a different animal when you’re right in the middle of it yourself. Going through a big change reinforced a lot of what I know — and it gave me some new insights.

The source of all this change? My company, Benz Communications, joined forces with The Segal Group on Jan. 1. By absolutely all measures, this was — and is — an awesome step for our team, our business and our clients.

Segal is an 80-year-old privately held employee benefits and HR consulting firm that works with an amazing group of clients around the country. Our communications team doubled from 30 to 60 people, and we are so proud to be part of an organization with Segal’s history, values, people and clients. One of my favorite comments from a member of my team was “I feel like I just got an even better job — along with 30 of my best friends.”

Still, all the good stuff doesn’t mean change isn’t hard.

One of the things I learned is that it takes people a while to digest information when they are caught off guard. Fortunately, we were able to share our news in person with the Benz team during our annual end-of-year celebration in November.

But they were expecting to enjoy the time with colleagues and rejoice in all the great work we created during the year; no one was expecting me to announce a huge organizational change like this. That kind of surprise, no matter how good the news is, creates anxiety.

Also in Benefits Beat: Make Benefits and Internal Communications Inseparable

One of my team members said, “I know your lips were moving, but I didn’t absorb a thing you said.” It highlights an important lesson for corporate communicators, reinforcing why you have to give people time to absorb information and why you need to say things many times and in multiple ways.

It was also a reminder that leaders and employees experience change in entirely different ways. When I talk to clients about this, I tell them to remember that leaders have more context, more insight, more control and more notice.

It takes people a while to digest information when they are caught off guard. No matter how good the news is, surprise creates anxiety.

Those factors make it hard to put themselves in employees’ shoes. Even so, I was surprised by how big a blind spot I had in predicting my team’s concerns. Fortunately, people felt comfortable telling me exactly what they and their colleagues needed (it helps to have several communications consultants among them!). But over and over, I was disappointed in myself for not being able to anticipate their concerns on my own.

One example: Benefits changes are hard — even for a team of benefits experts. We didn’t have much time to move the Benz team onto Segal’s systems and benefits.

It’s hard getting up to speed on new programs, understanding how they compare to the old ones and making decisions — especially when you have so many other questions and concerns bubbling around. And present discomfort obscures long-term gain.

Our benefits package at Segal is far richer than what we had as a small business — we have a 401(k) match and a pension plan! But when your prescription ID card doesn’t arrive and you’re at the pharmacy with a sick kiddo, you’re not thinking about your pension plan.

And that was a big lesson for me. In times of change, not only do you need to communicate more, but you also need to thoughtfully engineer the small stuff.

Also in Benefits Beat: Employers Should Be Bold With Their Benefits

Go above and beyond to make sure there are no kinks in the systems or information flow. I recently caught up with a longtime friend and client who works for a large global corporation. She is immersed in M&A all year, because their business strategy relies so much on acquiring new companies. She said they have perfected almost everything about acquiring new companies — except delivering medical plan ID cards. That’s still a huge pain point for new employees and the one thing that continues to be a disconnect. It’s the small stuff.

I hope these personal anecdotes will help you navigate your next big change. While they are the lessons learned, we did plenty of things the right way, too.

Most importantly, we started from a place of trust and transparency, built from an employee-centered culture. And we joined an organization that shares our core values and also prioritizes doing the right thing for employees. Those are the best things any organization can have to help navigate the inevitable changes ahead.

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Top Effects & Causes of Poor Communication

poor communication

Summary

  • Employees across various industries report poor communication as one of the leading challenges they face during the workday. 

  • Poor communication has a negative impact on both employee productivity and mental health.

  • A mix of face-to-face meetings, training, and using communication software helps mitigate the effects of poor communication.

The workplace is increasingly connected, with 24/7 email, instant messaging and phone calls pulling employees into work matters both during and after business hours. But that doesn’t necessarily mean employees are better connected to each other. Often, all that information can become white noise.

The study “Communication Barriers in the Modern Workplace,” conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit and sponsored by Lucidchart, has taken stock of communication in the workplace today, and the results suggest leaders have some work to do.

Also read: How to use technology in your internal communications strategy

The State of (Mis)Communication

EIU’s study of 403 executives, managers and staff at U.S. companies found that, across the board, employees believe miscommunication is contributing to their stress, failure to complete projects and loss of sales. “This is not just an unpleasantry. This is really affecting the performance of the company,” said Nathan Rawlins, chief marketing officer at Lucid Software, makers of Lucidchart.

Rawlins emphasized, “Employers just don’t even understand that this is a challenge. We talk about things like diversity and as part of that conversation don’t talk about the fact there are diverse ways of communicating.”

Miscommunication takes on many forms. According to the study, different communication styles, unclear responsibilities and time pressures are the three most frequently cited causes of poor communication. Focusing on communication styles, employees’ struggles to connect often result in unclear expectations that are amplified under pressure.

Employees believe miscommunication is contributing to their stress, failure to complete projects and loss of sales.

The data show that miscommunication is more severe across generational divides. “Nearly a third of millennials and Gen Xers said that they have used instant messaging every day in the past year to communicate with colleagues or clients,” Rawlins said. Only 12 percent of baby boomers reported a similar trend. This leaves part of the workforce with one less way to connect with one another, reducing the likelihood of effective message delivery.

Hierarchy impacts communication as well. Leaders have a hard time making direct contact with their frontline employees, for example. Those serving as bridges between higher-ups and nonsupervisory employees, the middle managers, tend to face the most communication trouble, having to navigate different goals and desires from above and below. “They tend to get caught in the middle of conflicting communication preferences,” Rawlins said.

Loss of morale, stress and frustration abound when employees can’t connect. That’s a burden employees may carry home with them, affecting their home life and future work performance.

The report found that in addition to its effect on productivity, miscommunication also has a heavy emotional impact on employees. Loss of morale, stress and frustration abound when employees can’t connect. That’s a burden employees may carry home with them, affecting their home life and future work performance.

Employees reported that too many unproductive meetings, tight deadlines and waiting for others to pass along information in order to continue working were the top three most stressful situations.

Also read: When Your Workday Is Interrupted, and Interrupted Again and Again

“These inconsistencies in the pattern of how managers who lead are communicating is leading to challenges,” said Philipp Schramm, chief financial officer and vice president of human resources and communications at Webasto Roof Systems Americas. “People are worried, rumors start and that’s a major problem.”

Technological Impact

Surprisingly, the study found a discrepancy between the tools employees know are effective and the ones they continue to use. For example, only 22 percent of employees reported they have meetings every day despite their reported effectiveness. Also, 60 percent of employees said they use email every day, but only 40 percent said it’s very effective at sharing information.

Many reported that technology is actually hurting communication as it has drastically cut down on direct communication, allowing employees to default to tools like email rather than phone calls and meetings. As a result, employees no longer have access to nonverbal cues like tone of voice, gestures and visuals to help them understand messages.

Sixty-five percent of employees reported that face-to-face meetings were very effective for sharing information, making them the most effective method the study examined. That number didn’t change across generations. That means employees may feel they’re missing out on important information, even if fewer meetings and phone calls reduce wasted time and interruptions to their workflow.

However, tools utilizing technology like video conferencing, slide presentations and even conference calls can reestablish some of the elements of visual and face-to-face communication that employees are looking for. For international businesses, digital conferencing has already become an essential element of the workday, and it may become increasingly important to connect with remote workers.

“These are all forms of communication,” Schramm said. “To say that one form of communication is best I think would be the wrong approach to it. It depends on the situation.”

To say that one form of communication is best I think would be the wrong approach to it. It depends on the situation.”

— Philipp Schramm, chief financial officer and vice president of human resources and communications at Webasto Roof Systems Americas

How Can Training Help?

While it may not be possible to completely change one’s communication style, the No. 1 cause of miscommunication found by the EIU, it is possible to become more aware of others’ communication styles through training. However, employees may be missing out on the right kind of training.

Schramm stated that some organizations don’t see communication as a topic where training is essential. “They say, ‘Why do you spend time on communication? We all learn how to communicate. We all learn how to speak.’ ” He emphasized that existing communication training programs tend to focus more on presentation than on communication. This makes them ineffective.

“In the end, it’s not about presenting yourself in an organization; it’s about how we interact with each other,” Schramm said.

One study found that even short communication training sessions for doctors improved patient satisfaction, as well as reduced burnout for participants. Communication training helped doctors better connect to those they serve, and the same can apply to other organizations.

Sixty-two percent of respondents to the EIU study said they believed firmwide training to improve communication would have a significant impact. Additionally, 57 percent of responders reported they enjoyed working with people who have different communication styles. They just need the training to understand how to better communicate among them.

“I think that’s absolutely critical, that we help people understand that not everyone communicates the same way they do,” Rawlins said.

Communication training is more than just increasing written communication skills. It should include training on verbal communication and basic training on the use of new communication tools. As the generational divide between millennials and boomers emphasizes, for example, training on the uses of instant messaging could expand use of the technology and increase efficacy.

More important, communication training should include opportunities to practice in realistic situations. “We think that this is a great opportunity for workshops and practice sessions where people can try different ways of communicating than they’re probably most familiar with,” Rawlins said.

Schramm echoed this point. “Put more emphasis actually on the doing. Don’t put too much emphasis on learning the theory behind,” he said.

Schramm’s team at Webasto has already overhauled the company’s communication training program with great success. “With putting a lot of effort on fairness and proper communication within the organization we have improved in just 15 months from the worst company McKinsey has seen to the second-best category,” Schramm said. And that overhaul has had an impact on the personal lives of employees who reported they are communicating better outside the office, as well.

What’s Next?

Overcoming communication problems needs to be a team effort. Schramm stated that it is the job of leaders to guide teams toward the right tools. “I think that’s the kind of understanding a leader has to get: what tool, what way of communication to use for what situation without losing your authenticity,” he said.

With the help of training, perhaps all employees can gain that level of understanding. Rawlins said, “One of the key skills is recognition of the type of communication patterns that are most common with the people you are working with.” Across the board, individuals should strive to better understand the communication methods that work best for their teams. Learning leaders can facilitate this process by ensuring all team members have the vocabulary to do so.

The workplace is only going to continue to change. That means additional stress on employees and a greater variety of tools available to employers. But by improving how they communicate now, teams at all levels can be ready to navigate what’s to come.

“As we understand this data, as we take a step back and think about communication, we can actually affect the bottom line,” Rawlins said. “We can help people be more effective, help them to be less stressed at work, focus on the things that matter most and ultimately improve the way that the business operates.”

This story originally appeared in Workforce’s sister publication, Chief Learning Officer.

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A Leader’s Guide to Effective Communication Under Pressure

employee communication co-worker

How can a manager become measurably more effective?

To answer this question, scholars, scientists and leaders have studied personality traits; others have tried to understand and categorize management styles. While these studies yield appealing insights, they are difficult to emulate. Evidence is lacking that these approaches to managerial effectiveness have enabled managers to markedly improve their personal influence and results.

In our own efforts to help managers improve effectiveness, we’ve focused our study on crucial moments — those moments where a manager’s communication has a profound and disproportionate effect on results. In moments when the stakes are high, do managers remain calm, collected, candid, curious, direct and willing to listen? Or do their direct reports describe them as the opposite: upset, angry, closed-minded, rejecting, even devious? And how does either style under stress affect results and relationships?

Our latest research confirms, yet again, that the way a manager performs in these crucial moments has a disproportionate effect on their personal influence and their people. The research also shows, however, that a shockingly large majority of managers and leaders buckle under pressure.

We asked more than 1,300 employees to describe their leader’s style under stress and the impact of that behavior. According to respondents, one in three leaders are seen by their direct reports as someone who fails to engage in dialogue when the stakes get high. Specifically:

  • 53 percent of leaders are more closed-minded and controlling than open and curious.
  • 45 percent are more upset and emotional than calm and in control.
  • 45 percent ignore or reject rather than listen or seek to understand.
  • 43 percent are more angry and heated than cool and collected.
  • 37 percent avoid or sidestep rather than be direct and unambiguous.
  • 30 percent are more devious and deceitful than candid and honest.

This is significant because it’s these nonroutine moments that define you as a leader. In difficult, highly charged situations, some managers react emotionally and aggressively while others became silent and withdrawn. These responses damage relationships and undermine the work being done.

One executive we worked with was adamant and deliberate about creating a fun and supportive atmosphere where his team felt safe to try new things. He saw his role as building people. And yet, to his surprise, most of his team labelled him a “jerk.” As we described a situation his team found particularly “jerky,” he said, “You’re probably thinking I’m some sort of hypocrite. But I’m not. Ninety-five percent of the time, I’m the fun, supportive guy I’ve described. It’s only the 5 percent when I lose my temper that I say stupid things. Those statements are not an accurate reflection of who I am.”

And while it was true that his team agreed he was great 95 percent of time, it was also true that this nonroutine behavior was what left a lasting impression. His team felt those few moments when stakes were high and the heat was on revealed the truth about who he really was.

A leader’s unsavory behavior in stressful moments does more than harm his or her personal influence — it also hurts the team. When asked how their leader’s style impacted their results, respondents said that when their leader clams up or blows up under pressure, team members have lower morale; are more likely to miss deadlines, budgets and quality standards; and act in ways that drive customers away. They also described negative impacts on morale and psyche. Specifically, when a leader fails to practice effective dialogue under stress, team members are more likely to consider leaving their job; more likely to shut down and stop participating; less likely to go above and beyond in their responsibilities; and more likely to be frustrated, angry and complain.

Luckily, there are managers who handle themselves under pressure differently from the rest. In high-stakes situations, they remain calm and respectful. They don’t skirt or minimize issues. They are direct, but their behavior invites others to contribute their concerns and ideas. By doing so, they surface the most accurate, complete information; they better understand problems; they formulate with others the best solutions; and they act together with greater unity and conviction. This, in turn, creates better relationships and results.

Another silver lining? A manager’s ability or inability to deal with high-stakes, stressful situations has nothing to do with age or gender. Neither factor correlated with the skills and behaviors of dialogue under pressure. The ability to stay in dialogue when stakes are high is not dependent on genetic or inherent factors. Rather, these are skills anyone can learn and adopt to not only be more personally effective and influential, but to better lead a team to success.

Here are a few tips managers can use to improve their communication style under stress and see better results from the people they lead.

  • Speak up early. When we anticipate stress or pressure, most of us decide whether or not to speak up by considering the risks of doing so. Those who are best at dialogue don’t think first about the risks of speaking up. They think first about the risks of not speaking up. They realize if they don’t speak up early and often, they are choosing to perpetuate and often worsen the situation — and their reaction to the situation — as they begin to work around the problem.
  • Challenge your story. When we feel threatened or stressed, we amplify our negative emotions by telling villain, victim and helpless stories. Villain stories exaggerate others’ negative attributes. Victim stories make us out to be innocent sufferers who have no role in the problem. And helpless stories rationalize our over- or under-reactions because, “There was nothing else I could have done!” Instead, take control of your emotions by challenging your story.
  • Create safety. When communicating while under pressure, your emotions likely hijack your positive intent. As a result, others get defensive to, or retreat from, your tirade. As it turns out, people don’t get defensive because of the content of your message, but because of the intent they perceive behind it. So, when stressed, first share your positive intent. If others feel safe with you, they are far more open to work with you.
  • Start with facts. When the stakes are high, our brains often serve us poorly. To maximize cognitive efficiency, we tend to store feelings and conclusions, but not the facts that created them. Before reacting to stress, gather facts. Think through the basic information that helped you think or feel as you do, and use that information to realign your own feelings and help others understand the intensity of your reaction.

Managers who can effectively hold crucial conversations outperform their peers. As an organization collects a critical mass of these effective managers, it has a profound effect on successful execution of initiatives, financial agility and overall performance.

David Maxfield is a New York Times best-selling author, keynote speaker and leading social scientist for business performance. He leads the research function at VitalSmarts, a corporate training and leadership development company. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

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How HIPAA-Compliant Are Digital Health Apps?

Andie Burjek, Working Well blog

I recently received a pitch about how Amazon’s Alexa now has a “HIPAA-compliant upgrade” through which people can book appointments, ask health care questions and check on the status of prescription deliveries. The immediate reaction of my editor and me was, “How can this possibly be HIPAA-compliant?”

I bring this up because I’ve also recently read a Washington Post article about a pregnancy tracking app that claims to be HIPAA-compliant. And there was a lot to unpack here. From a patient advocacy perspective, a lot of scary things to unpack.

Before I get into that, a quick anecdote from my high school years. My dad gave me some job advice I’ve never forgotten. Watch out for yourself and if you want to quit, don’t feel guilty about leaving a company you don’t want to be working at anymore. If the tables were turned and the company had to sack a bunch of people, it’d feel no guilt about letting you go. It would make a non-emotional business decision. Employers mostly watch out for themselves, and employees should too. Loyalty can only go so far.

I know that many employers tout a “culture of health” nowadays and make broad claims about how much they care about the health of their employees. As a benefits and health writer, I don’t buy that. Not for nefarious reasons, but because I know that at the end of the day, it’s all about the business. That’s their No. 1 priority. Just like my career should be my No. 1 priority. To believe otherwise is naïve.

Also read: Trendy Digital Health Firms Seek Solutions to Questions It Never Thought to Ask

I’d argue that this self-interest extends to health plans. As this Washington Post article stated, “The real benefit of self-tracking is always the company. People are being asked to do this at a time when they’re incredibly vulnerable and may not have any sense where that data is being passed.”

How can employers benefit from self-tracking? Through digital health apps that employees sign up for, employers could access aggregate data of employee health; the data is “de-identified,” which means it’s stripped of information like name, social security number and email addresses that could be used to identify the patient. Employers who don’t pry into these anonymous identities can still use this data to understand the overall health of its organization and identify issues that afflict many employees, which could help inform and shape its health strategy.

As for sneakier employers, the article notes that it’s “relatively easy” for companies to identify patients (in this case, women using the pregnancy app) “based on information relayed in confidence, particularly in workplaces where few women are pregnant at a time.” Someone could, for example, cross-reference the app’s data with other data. This potentially could impact people’s health care costs or coverage.

An excerpt:

The apps, [health and privacy experts] say, are designed largely not to benefit the women but their employers and insurers, who gain a sweeping new benchmark on which to assess their workers as they consider the next steps for their family and careers. … Experts worry that companies could use the data to bump up the cost or scale back the coverage of health care benefits, or that women’s intimate information could be exposed in data breaches or security risks.

This is why I’m skeptical about digital health apps. I’ve heard arguments on both sides, but if it’s possible for someone’s private medical information to be used against them, how is that OK? Why aren’t there more protections for patients? And how could current patient protection rules be up to date with the digital age?

To quote an informative article from The Verge: “In 1996, the year Congress passed its landmark health privacy law [HIPAA], there was no Apple Watch, no Fitbit, no Facebook support groups or patients tweeting about their medical care. … [It] is still a key piece of legislation protecting our medical privacy, despite being woefully inadequate for dealing with the heath-related data we constantly generate outside the health care system.”

The Post article brought up something else noteworthy: the app’s 6,000 word “terms of use” agreement that women must consent to. A lot of us in the health space have probably heard the statistic of how few people know how to define basic health care terms like “deductible” and “premium,” suggesting low health literacy rates among people. So how is a person supposed to understand the legal and health care jargon in a 6,000-word “terms of use” agreement? Is that realistic? Do people really know what could happen with that data?

Further, according to the article, while a spokeswoman said the company doesn’t sell aggregate data for advertising purposes, the “terms of agreement” tell a different story. The company has a “royalty-free, perpetual, and irrevocable license, throughout the universe” to “utilize and exploit” de-identified personal information for scientific research and “external and internal marketing purposes.”

Digital health companies are a relatively new thing. And in any communications they make — whether it’s a press release, an executive’s quote in the media or the employee they pick to make a statement to the press — they’re marketing themselves. Of course the focus will be on the positive.

That’s why it’s healthy to be critical of these new institutions that have the potential to greatly impact people’s lives, health and security. If nobody pushes forward to seek change that could protect people’s health privacy, then the future health care environment is not going to be a safe place for patients. Patient advocacy groups should have a greater say in how these digital health companies operate. Insurance companies and employers can easily benefit from the wide array of data in these apps, but what about patients?

Candice Sherman
Candice Sherman

One final thought comes from an interview I had about six months ago with Candice Sherman, the CEO of the Northeast Business Group on Health. The NEBGH released a fascinating guide about genomic medicine and employers that came from a roundtable including many key stakeholders, including employers, clinical experts, benefits consultants and genomic vendors. The missing stakeholder was a patient.

Also read: New Wellness Bill HR 1313 Gets Flak for Genetic Privacy Concerns

I asked Sherman about that, and she explained how health privacy concerns would stop patients from participating in a discussion like this. I do understand this, logically — and I am by no means trying to criticize Sherman or the NEBGH roundtable, since I love that they met up to have a discussion on a health-related topic that’s only going to become more prominent.

That said, I think it would be valuable for businesses or business groups to find a way to include the patient stakeholder in conversations like this. Maybe through an advocacy group or an expert who can make sure to represent the patients’ interests without experiencing the same privacy concerns. There are options.

This is a lot of information, but this topic is important now and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. In summation, de-identified, aggregate data doesn’t always stay anonymous; just because a digital solution is HIPAA-compliant doesn’t mean it’s necessarily harmless to a patient; and patients deserve to have their voice represented in health care conversations.

I understand the power of data for organizations to understand big picture trends, but if this data could easily be used against an employee, it’s not worth it.

Health data privacy is important. I’m curious what discussions we all must have and how laws should be rethought to represent patients — your employees.

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Successfully Communicating Across Cultures

communicating across cultures

In early 2016, Emma Seddon picked up her life in the U.K. and moved across the world to China on a three-year international secondment in her role as talent development manager at Jaguar Land Rover. Her colleagues who had previously completed long-term assignments in China warned of “shang-highs and shang-lows,” and gave her as much advice as possible.

Of course, some things must be learned on one’s own. Seddon recalls trying to order noodles without meat in her best Mandarin and the server responding with a stream of Chinese she couldn’t understand, to which she said she was left noodle-less, hungry and frustrated. At work, language differences also posed challenging. Seddon said meetings would often slip into Chinese, which put her at a disadvantage if she missed chunks of the discussion. “I’ve found that making an effort to learn the language really helps; local colleagues appreciate this, and it can be a good way to break back into the conversation,” she said. For example, she might say “I heard you say ‘yi bai wu,’ is that 150?” “Then they will laugh as I will have undoubtedly got it wrong, and switch back to speaking in English,” she said.

While language is a clear barrier in those situations, Seddon encountered many nonverbal cultural differences at work. One challenge she didn’t anticipate was that many decisions are made outside of formal meetings. “Lunch is a big deal in China; everyone leaves the office between 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. and goes to the canteen or a local restaurant and the in-meeting discussion will continue during this time,” she said. “As a foreigner this can leave you one step behind, and so it’s incredibly important to develop some close relationships with colleagues who can help to keep you in the loop.”

Seddon said even when employees do understand and appreciate cultural norms, there is always a risk that they default to their natural style when under pressure, which is common in a fast-paced work environment. She said she often sees this around meeting etiquette. “In China, it’s not seen as impolite to continue a conversation on your phone during a meeting, while Western colleagues see this as a lack of respect,” she said. “Similarly, I often hear Western colleagues using technical or colloquial British terms or speak rapidly, which can make it difficult for Chinese colleagues to follow the discussion.”

Seddon said companies with a global footprint can gain a competitive edge if they are able to harness and leverage the international diversity inherent in their global markets, but the challenges are significant. Language and social norms change across the globe and employees need targeted training to successfully communicate across cultures.

Companies with a global footprint can gain a competitive edge if they are able to harness and leverage the international diversity inherent in their global markets, but the challenges are significant.

Cross-Cultural Training

Before Seddon relocated to China, she had a two-day intercultural awareness training that included topics such as “stepping out of your cultural bubble,” which focused on how behaviors are value driven, and how values are derived from our cultural background. She said the training also discussed potential barriers to intercultural communication and culture shock, both from a business and personal perspective. Other cultural training programs do the same thing, though they vary.

Berlitz Corp. is a global leadership training and language education company that aims to help individuals within an organization understand how cultural values drive behavior in other countries.

“We’re trying to help them to become better communicators, better observers,” said Diana Anderson, director of cultural training solutions at Berlitz. “Once they understand more about the values that drive behaviors, they are then able to modify their personal styles, their interaction styles, their communication styles, to work more successfully with those individuals in other countries.”

Anderson defines cultural competence as the ability to navigate, communicate and interact effectively when encountering cultural differences. “The goal is to make sure people get the kind of information they need, have the practice in these different cultures and then once they have this ability to recognize differences, to then react in a way that mitigates those differences,” she said. “Then organizations can take that individual and put them in any culture around the world.”

Berlitz offers group-oriented programs that focus on global cultural competence and cultural diversity and inclusion. For example, there is an intercultural business skills program that focuses on developing cross-cultural business communication skills that are practiced by building relationships, teamwork and exercising leadership across cultures. The diversity and inclusion programs focus on how bias shows up in or outside of the workplace and the dynamics of unconscious bias, Anderson said.

Anderson said understanding one’s own national culture and how one sees themselves is vital to being culturally competent. “Culture is central to how we make sense of what we see and how we express ourselves,” she said. “When we embark on a cultural journey toward cultural competence, it’s incredibly important that people understand how they’re showing up in the world — how the national culture, how the corporate culture they’ve been working in, how all of that influences who they are and how their personal preferences really drive behavior.”

She said the first step in all the programs is self-awareness and helping people understand themselves. If someone knows they are a hierarchical person, for example, they will look at the way people answer emails in a certain way, or they may be more likely to look to a manager to make more decisions than someone who is more equality-oriented within their corporate culture, Anderson said. “It’s identifying where you show up and then where there might be some potential obstacles,” she said.

communicating across cultures

In China, Seddon said being aware of her natural style and how her behaviors may be interpreted by others has been critical in working with people of a different culture. “When developing a learning solution, my preference would be to seek input from a range of stakeholders in line with my preference toward collaboration,” she said. “In the U.K., I may pull together a mixed-grade focus group. However, in China I’ve learned that the lower-grade employees won’t offer any feedback if higher-grade managers are in the room, as this would open them up to the risk of losing face or being humiliated, if for example the manager disagreed with them.” Instead, Seddon said having one-on-one offline conversations provides a safe environment and is more productive.
Communication Culture Clashes

Anderson said a lot of challenges arise between direct communicators and indirect communicators. “Your direct communication or your way of speaking might seem like you’re yelling at an individual or that you are being overly emotional or rude when you are giving direction or having a conversation,” Anderson said. “We focus on helping you understand what you’re bringing to the table and how you’re being perceived by others and finding ways you can modify your behavior to communicate in a more successful way.”

Another challenge, especially for managers, is communicating in a face-saving culture. For example, Anderson said there are certain things an American managing someone in Japan wouldn’t want to do in front of others. “In a meeting you wouldn’t want to give feedback that’s negative, but you also might not want to give feedback that’s positive because Japan is a more collectivistic society,” Anderson said. “You would want to give that negative or constructive feedback to that individual in a private setting.”

Anderson said meetings in many Asian cultures are not for brainstorming as they often are in America; rather the meeting is to give a message, then the conversation or clarification of what happened in the meeting happens outside the formal meeting. “Getting information about the norms of other cultures, identifying how other people communicate and show up is going to help you modify your style in order to fit better into that environment and keep your integrity and dignity,” Anderson said.

“ Culture is central to how we make sense of what we see and how we express ourselves.”

— Diana Anderson, director of cultural training solutions at Berlitz

Cultural clashes can also happen when one person is used to taking initiative and the other is used to asking a manager to make the decisions, Anderson said. “The person who wants to take initiative is assuming that person is going to jump right in and begin the work. And that person is assuming that the other person understands that they need to go to their manager to get a sign off which might take longer,” Anderson said. “All these little nuances create cross-cultural clashes that those who are not as culturally competent look at as a front against them. But in the cultural field, you need to ask questions, analyze specific situations and assume good intent.”

Coaching Multicultural Employees

“The communication challenges are what typically hold back progress for multicultural employees,” said Nadia Nassif, founder and CEO of Springboards Consulting, which offers career development and leadership coaching programs for native and nonnative English speakers.

Springboards Consulting has a team of cross-cultural and professional communication coaches who helpa multicultural workers develop and advance their careers. Nassif began Springboards in 2008 after working in Tokyo for almost two years. During her time in Tokyo, a few people mentored and supported her and helped her practice language skills, gain a cultural understanding and receive feedback. “For that reason, I had a better experience and ended up staying longer in Japan in my role,” she said. She kept her experiences in mind as she came back and saw multiculturl employees experiencing similar challenges in the U.S.

Nassif said an important part of Springboards’ coaching is peer feedback, as multicultural employees often do not get constructive feedback at work. She said the feedback they receive from peer reviews or annual performance reviews is often limited and lacks clarity. That feedback often comes from upper management and is missing more information and context from a specialist who can dig deep around the cultural issues, she said. “Our peer review process uses a careful collection of peer input before, during and after the coaching, which helps to create a target for the learning and keeps it fresh,” Nassif said. “It gives multicultural individuals the advocacy they need for an equal playing field.”

Feedback is especially important for people who come from cultures where it isn’t appropriate to ask for feedback, said Debora Bloom, an independent organization development consultant and a Springboards coach. Bloom said having a mentor is helpful for multicultural employees to feel comfortable in the American business context. “When learning a new language, it’s hard to always know the best way to put things,” she said. “It’s helpful to have someone to ask, ‘Can I use this phrase? What’s the best way to say this or that?’ ” She added that reading biographies and novels is a great way to gain a cultural understanding.

In additional to verbal communication, physical communication can also be different across cultures. “In our American culture, we really evaluate the firm handshake,” she said. “When people are coming from Asian countries or some African countries, they are not used to that kind of handshake and have to learn it.”

Multicultural employee Nicolle Campa is the director of human resources for Fox News bureaus. In her view, the best way to learn how to successfully communicate across cultures is simply to communicate and interact with others.

“I don’t think there’s some actual training you can go to. I don’t think that this is the situation where you can just go to a training and an hour and a half later, you come out saying, ‘Alright, I got it,’ ” Campa said. “There may be some cultural awareness training that one can go through that can start sparking that level of attention and awareness, but I think interacting with people that are different from you is a better way to be able to get that — for lack of a better term — training.”

A Twofold Approach

Springboards’ Nassif emphasized that addressing communication challenges is a twofold approach: helping individual employees be successful and helping management communicate. “Not everything is an accent or a speech communication issue. Not everything is a remedial developmental issue,” Nassif said.

Nassif said even if there is a great coach, if there is not support, infrastructure and validation from a manager, it’s hard for a multicultural employee to know they are doing well. “If they’re not getting routine validation or feedback throughout the process, then it doesn’t stick,” Nassif said. “It doesn’t help them validate and understand where there’s career growth.”

Campa, who is originally from Puerto Rico, said the best managers she has encountered in her career are the ones who take the time to ask her questions. For example, “if I were interacting with somebody with your background, with your culture, what would be an ideal way that I could communicate better?” Campa said. “Those type of questions that are coming from a good place — that are curious but at the same time respectful — I think that makes a difference.”

Nassif said developing cultural awareness and understanding in management is vital to creating an inclusive environment that is supportive and moralizing for multicultural individuals, who are becoming a much larger part of the workforce. She said diversity and inclusion efforts and awareness around unintentional bias can help managers become more globally and inclusively minded for a stronger workforce.

Employee experiences are still largely shaped by managers. Nassif said if management lacks the cultural awareness or sensitivity, and developmental needs are viewed as remedial, it’s not going to be a motivating environment that’s conducive to growth. “Their whole developmental journey is often set on course by a manager who would advocate for their growth or invest in them,” Nassif said. “For multicultural individuals often unfamiliar with all the rules of the game, or the internal politics, it’s really critical to have the right infrastructure.”

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Expanding Employee Access to Mental Health Care

Last week the U.S. Department of Labor announced that it’s launched a new toolkit for employers to help them understand mental health issues and create a supportive work culture.

The EARN Mental Health toolkit — created by the DOL’s Office of Disability Employment Policy and its Employee Assistance and Resource Network on Disability Inclusion, or EARN — includes an educational framework and a list of case studies of successful programs at organizations of various sizes.

The EARN Mental Health Toolkit hinges on “4 A’s”:

  • Awareness: Build awareness and a supportive culture.
  • Accommodation: Provide accommodations to employees.
  • Assistance: Offer employee assistance.
  • Access: Ensure Access to treatment.

I want to focus on access for now, because no matter how much you try to create a disability-friendly culture, if employees can’t access or afford medication, therapy or whatever medical assistance they need to treat their mental illness on a regular basis, then a huge piece of the treatment puzzle is missing.

APA Publishing, a division of the American Psychiatric Association, recently published an informative article on this issue of access. The article covers a February 2019 panel discussion hosted by the New York Academy of Medicine, the New York County Psychiatric Society, and the New York State Psychiatric Association.

There are a lot of points I find valuable in this panel discussion of several people in the medical community. First, one of the panelists noted how Aetna recently settled a lawsuit in Massachusetts after an investigation found that the insurer violated state law with its “inaccurate and deceptive provider directories and inadequate provider networks.” Basically, this means that patients couldn’t access timely behavioral health care because listed providers weren’t accepting new patients or had retired.

This isn’t necessarily an anomaly, the article noted. For example, it cited a very comprehensive report that’s worth a read for anyone interested in this.

The 2017 research report by Milliman Inc. found that compared to medical/surgical care, people seeking behavioral health care more often have to access an out-of-network provider. While in-network care generally has lower co-pays for patients, when they must seek out-of-network care that means more out-of-pocket costs and more expensive behavioral health care.

Also, the report stated, “Some patients may want to avoid the higher costs and delay seeking needed services from behavioral health care providers, which can lead to less effective care.”

The article also stated the employer’s role in this. An excerpt:

Schwartz said that the business community is a strong ally in improving access to behavioral health care given the high cost of not addressing these issues in productivity loss, lower employee retention, high rates of disability, and higher overall employee costs. “While employers are paying for benefits, they are not getting what they paid for when employees cannot access behavioral health care,” he said. “Businesses are well positioned to ask health plans for data on provider networks and to examine disparities to improve accountability.”

Also noteworthy was a list of actionable items that presenters believe could help improve access to care. For example, a suggestion from the National Alliance and the Center for Workplace Mental Health is that “employers obtain quantitative assessments from third-party administrators on how well their employees are accessing mental health and substance use benefits.”

Again, I don’t want to suggest that environmental factors in the workplace don’t impact people’s general well-being. But offering free yoga classes in your building or teaching employees how to use mindfulness to reduce stress are NOT the medical equivalent of seeing a therapist or accessing an outpatient center.

Self-care is not medical care. If your organization has a deluge of trendy perks to help employees de-stress but doesn’t have a sufficient behavioral health provider network, how much of a difference could that really make?

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When Workplace Training Goes Very, Very Wrong

active shooter training

A few months ago I participated in active-shooter training.

I presented harassment training for a local manufacturer and at its conclusion the company played a 10-minute video explaining to its employees what to do in an active-shooter situation.

Generally I’m not a fan of training videos. They tend to be boring, poorly acted and ineffective. This one, however, was quite effective. It was not only chilling to watch, but, a few months out, I still recall the ABCs of what to do during an active shooter (Avoid, Barricade, Confront).

An Indiana school district, however, had a different idea of how to train its employees to prepare for an active shooter.

This employer had its employees shot in the back, execution style, with plastic pellets.

Vox offers the details.

Local law enforcement carried out the drill with the teachers of Meadowlawn Elementary School in Monticello, Indiana, in January, the Indiana State Teachers Association said in a meeting with state legislators on Wednesday. The drill involved dividing the teachers into small groups and instructing them to face a classroom wall and kneel. Then, deputies with the White County Sheriff’s Office fired plastic pellets into the backs of more than 20 teachers without warning. Several teachers were injured, a representative for the district’s union said, though none have publicly come forward about the incident.

The employees’ union further detailed on Twitter the mental anguish its members suffered.

Indiana State Teachers Association@ISTAmembers
 · 
Replying to @ISTAmembers

During active shooter drill, four teachers at a time were taken into a room, told to crouch down and were shot execution style with some sort of projectiles – resulting in injuries to the extent that welts appeared, and blood was drawn.

Indiana State Teachers Association@ISTAmembers

The teachers were terrified, but were told not to tell anyone what happened. Teachers waiting outside that heard the screaming were brought into the room four at a time and the shooting process was repeated.

This is NUTS.
We all want our teachers to know how to keep our children safe in the event of an active shooter. I can’t believe I’m typing this … but mock executions are not the answer. To look at this another way, we want to end sexual harassment, but we’re not molesting our employees either.
Sometimes, a training video is all you need.