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.
It’s a fitting end to a product that was never a good fit for Google’s portfolio of solutions, said Othamar Gama Filho, CEO of recruitment marketing automation platform Talentify. “I was more surprised when they launched it than when they ended it.”
Google Hire promised to simplify the hiring process for recruiters. By utilizing Google’s 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 didn’t offer a lot to make it stand out in an already crowded market. “The global ATS market is small compared to what Google is used to,” Gama Filho said. It’s 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. “A lot of ATS platforms integrate with G-Suite, so there was not a lot to differentiate the offering,” he said.
It also wasn’t a good fit for Google’s business model, said Holger Mueller, vice president and principal analyst for Constellation Research. “Google 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.”
Mueller also points to Google Hire’s 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 Google’s 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, it’s closing fast on Amazon and Microsoft.
What does that have to do with Google Hire? Many believe buying Bebop was just Google’s way to get Greene onboard. “But they still had to show stakeholders that they didn’t waste the acquisition,” Mueller said. So they kept it on the books for a few years, used it to showcase how their technology could help recruiters. “But never really did anything with it.”
For customers of Google Hire, the good news is that it won’t 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. “Especially when comes in the cloud.”
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 — namely in the handling of absences protected by the FMLA or ADA. If the FMLA or ADA protects an employee’s 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, where’s the humanity in denying two days off for an employee to deal with medical symptoms, especially when the request is accompanied by a doctor’s note?
The ADA requires reasonable accommodations. Unless the employee is a serial abuser of unpaid days off, it’s 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 “I have a great deal of self-awareness.”
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 wasn’t 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 can’t 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.
There’s 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 — which can stem from self-awareness — 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, “Conscious knowledge of one’s own character and feelings.”
Researcher Anna Sutton further elaborates on this to describe it as, “The extent to which people are consciously aware of their interactions or relationships with others and of their internal states.”
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 — 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 people’s 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 — 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 we’ve mentioned, just asking people “are you self-aware” or even “are you more or less self-aware than other people” doesn’t work too well. It’s a bit like asking people, “Are you an above average driver?” Around 90 percent of Americans say “yes” 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 “*”; 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 “inner self.”
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 I’m 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 individual’s 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 one’s life.
However, the most popular methods aren’t 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 wasn’t too surprising that “training to be a coach” 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, “receiving personal coaching” 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, “journaling,” 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 “feedback from your manager” 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.
You’re 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 organization’s 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.
As I think about the workplace issues faced by my clients, I can’t help but reflect on my personal life and how there might be some parallels. Supervising a toddler’s 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, I’ve 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 — ironically, an urgent business opportunity for most executives.
Another reason for the Easterlin Paradox could be the growing workload faced by many employees in today’s 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 seeker’s 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. It’s 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 “unsupervised” 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 it’s 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.
Kevin LaBelle, a lab technician for mining company Cleveland-Cliffs, took occasional days off from work for approved intermittent FMLA leave for flare-ups related to a shoulder injury.
His employer noticed that LaBelle seems to always take his FMLA leave by combining it with scheduled days off and vacation days.
Noticing the pattern of suspected abuse, the company hired a private investigator to watch LaBelle during his FMLA leave, and twice found him playing golf. The employer concluded that if LaBelle was experiencing a shoulder flare-up that prevented him from working, he would not be able to golf, and that if he could golf, he could work. Accordingly, it fired him for FMLA fraud and abuse.
The 6th Circuit affirmed the trial court’s dismissal of LaBelle’s FMLA retaliation claim:
There is no evidence in the record to show that Cliffs’ proffered reason lacked a basis in fact. Cliffs approved LaBelle’s request for intermittent FMLA leave for two reasons: (1) attending medical appointments and (2) taking three days off per month for a “flare-up.” Even crediting LaBelle’s explanation of why it was ok for him to golf, or why he “stacked” his leave, LaBelle did not take FMLA leave for “flare-ups” or medical appointments. He took FMLA leave because he was in constant pain and would take leave around vacations or weekends to give himself as much rest as possible. But occasional rest to alleviate low-level background pain is not what his FMLA leave was for.… If LaBelle had constant pain that required occasional long weekends to mitigate, he should have requested FMLA leave for that purpose.
Intermittent leave is (one of) the biggest FMLA-management problems for employers. And the “stacking” of intermittent leave against other scheduled days off is one of the biggest intermittent-leave management problems. This case gives employers a great tool to combat this form of FMLA abuse.
Barbara Fisher recalled a time one of her remote workers traveled to Hawaii yet called in to four meetings over two days.
“I asked, ‘How are you recharging? Why did you even take your computer?’ As a remote worker, it’s an extension of what she does,” said Fisher, chief operating and people officer for digital health company Aduro Inc. who previously was a vice president for Intel Corp. working in human relations and talent management.
“The reality is that weighs on you. You’re never able to refuel.”
Remote work has become the new normal for companies responding to workers’ desire for flexibility. In its “State of the American Workplace” report, Gallup polling found 43 percent of employees worked remotely in 2016 compared to 39 percent in 2012.
In its 2019 “Employee Benefits” report on leave and flexible working released in June, the Society for Human Resource Management noted that remote work continues to rise in popularity as a benefit. Telecommuting of all types is increasing as a result. Part-time telecommuting — now offered by more than 40 percent of organizations — is up 5 percent from 2018 and demonstrated the greatest increase.
Ad-hoc telecommuting is offered by 69 percent of organizations while full-time telecommuting is offered by more than one-quarter of organizations, SHRM reports.
“From a remote worker’s perspective, some of the positive aspects are flexible job schedules, work-life balance and the freedom to work from almost anywhere,” said Tina Garrell, director of the annual HR Florida Conference for the HR Florida State Council, a SHRM affiliate.
For companies, it means extending a footprint beyond its headquarters, saving on office space costs and keeping employees happy.
Tina Garrell
“But employers are sometimes faced with different challenges arising with their remote workforce, such as the health and well-being of those employees who do not come to the office every day,” said Garrell.
Studies show remote workers struggle with loneliness, isolation, an inability to unplug and ongoing distractions.
“Global Work Connectivity,” a recent study commissioned by Virgin Pulse and HR advisory and research firm Future Workplace, concludes many remote workers feel isolated.
“While remote workers gain freedom and flexibility, the study found they are disengaged and less likely to want a long-term career with their company because of their lack of human contact,” said Dan Schawbel, a partner with Future Workplace.
The survey of more than 2,000 managers and employees in 10 countries found almost half of an employee’s day is spent using technology to communicate. Slightly more than half always or very often feel lonely as a result.
Men, introverts and younger generations indicated a greater need for work companionship. Leaders can support employee relationships by encouraging connection in person over online, researchers said.
“Remote workers in some organizations are among the most stressed, which can seem counterintuitive. The perception is they have more time and are free from office politics, getting dressed up and commuting,” said Mary Marzec, senior health strategy scientist for Virgin Pulse, a part of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group that designs technology cultivating positive employee lifestyle habits.
Mary Marzec
With most employees’ waking hours spent on work, the work culture has a significant influence on adopting and sustaining healthy habits, Marzec said. While technology has paved the way for more employees to work remotely, it also has contributed to that sense of isolation, leading to mental and physical health challenges.
“Technology has created the illusion that workers are connected when in reality they feel isolated, lonely, disengaged and less committed to their organizations when overusing or misusing it,” said Schawbel, who also authored “Back to Human: How Great Leaders Create Connection in the Age of Isolation.”
“Most remote workers have the flexibility to work in different areas — a coffee shop or the beach — and they still choose to work at home,” said Fisher. “The convergence of work and home into one space underlies the struggle to unplug.
“You have to be able to recharge. Not doing it definitely weighs on an individual’s health and how they show up.”
Remote workers can feel left out of key decisions, leading to stress, frustration and unhappiness, said Fisher.
Distractions are another challenge.
Barbara Fisher
One of Fisher’s employees who asked to work remotely later expressed frustration that home tasks were distracting her from work.
“When you are a remote worker, it actually is more work because you have to think about how you balance your time to get things done and make sure you’re still connected,” said Fisher.
That necessitates discipline in meeting work milestones and personal goals, she added.
Air in the at-Home Schedule?
The perception that remote workers have more time at home to take care of family responsibilities essentially is false, said Marzec.
“Drawing boundaries can be very difficult,” she added. “If somebody sends you an email, there is internal pressure to answer that right away to show you’re working. Somebody in the office can be in a meeting for two hours, go to lunch, and even stop at the bank on the way back. A remote worker doesn’t feel that freedom.”
Lack of face time with team members is another challenge.
“You can’t just stop over to somebody’s desk or bump into someone in the hall and ask them if they’ve followed up,” Marzec said. “Emails and communications have to be constructed much more clearly because you’re not there to back it up in person. Communication can start a downstream spiral of lack of productivity.”
Remote workers don’t have the feeling of support one gets by standing around the office water cooler and soliciting ideas on how to deal with professional and personal struggles, Marzec added.
Feelings of isolation and lack of social support are linked to anxiety and depression, she added.
“Even though you think remote workers are not working longer hours, often that sense of being present at work is on their mind and can contribute to depression and anxiety,” she added.
Remote workers also don’t feel they have the freedom to work out or take a walk, said Marzec.
“When you work remotely, you’re not getting in the extra energy like walking from a parking lot to work,” said Marzec. “Someone who works remotely could have as few as 1,500 steps in a day. Whereas in normal workday walking, you’re going to put in 5,000 to 6,000 steps. It isn’t the 10,000 recommended steps, but it’s a lot more than 1,500.”
Health implications depend one’s go-to for dealing with stress when working alone and not able to walk over to peers to get advice on how to move a project forward, said Fisher.
“Whatever your vice is to manage stress is where you’re going to go. That’s just human nature. When you’re alone, going to that vice is likely easier than when you’re in an office where you can reach out quickly to the person sitting in the cube next to you, tell them you’re having a rough day and try to figure the problem out.”
Companies have a responsibility to take care of the workforce and remote workers have to put themselves out on the radar more, said Fisher. That entails remote worker access to wellness initiatives.
“Part of that responsibility if you decide to have a blended workforce is figuring out how what you offer at your headquarters is also what you offer to your extension sites as well as to your remote workers,” Fisher said.
While remote workers may not be able to access the gym at company headquarters or enjoy a healthy lunch at the in-house cafeteria, inclusive team challenges such as walking or drinking enough water “are a lot of fun and help everybody feel included no matter where they work,” said Marzec.
Technology makes implementing wellness programs for remote workers easier, said Garrell.
“These programs offer a variety of options both remote employees and employees who physically come to the office can participate in,” she said. “An example of a program that would work well for a remote workforce is providing partial or full reimbursement for various fitness activities in which they choose to participate.”
That can include sports leagues, gym memberships, yoga classes and other activities available in the remote worker’s area that keeps the employee active and engaged. By allowing them to choose activities in which they are interested, it helps ensure higher participation rates and long-term engagement, said Garrell.
Brian Rhonemus, CEO of Sanford Rose Associates — Rhonemus Group, said he encourages everyone on the recruiting firm’s remote team to manage distractions by being as disciplined in their work hours as they would if they physically drove to an office with a more structured schedule.
Brian Rhonemus
Rhonemus also said some of his company’s remote workers use stand-up treadmill desks to address the struggle with scheduling fitness time.
“We also schedule blocks of time out of the office to meet people face-to-face to fulfill the need for social interaction,” he said. “We encourage participation in coaching and other outside activities and allow time for that away from the office. We share our personal and professional success in our weekly update call.”
Joey Frasier, CEO of Shortlist, a San Francisco-based freelancer-management platform, suggested that hosting events in remote locations can ensure remote workers feel connected to the office community.
“We constantly remain in contact with our remote staff to make sure they are happy and have all of the support they need,” he said.
Frasier said his company helps its customers manage about 70,000 workers, nearly all of whom are remote.
“Remote workers are encouraged to participate in wellness programs in their areas or online using apps like Calm or MoveWith. HR managers also can provide access to places like One Medical, which provides wellness and mindfulness services.”
Management support is critical. A manager can discuss with a remote employee how to set up their work schedule in such a way they can block off time to engage in physical exercise, said Marzec.
“It relieves that pressure that if I take a walk and don’t answer that email within an hour, I’m not going to be punished for it,” she added.
Virtual Teamwork
Garrell said she ensures that the three remote workers in her business are included in as many office activities as possible through daily sales team conference calls, video conferencing training programs and a group messaging chat program to communicate with management throughout the day.
“This helps make them feel like they are truly a part of our organization as well as having a positive impact on their mental health, productivity and overall wellness,” she said.
Fostering a strong work culture that helps remote workers feel supported can be done through team-building activities, social events and workstations where workers can get to know each other on a personal level, said Schawbel.
An investment in the remote workforce yields positive returns.
“When you give greater autonomy, flexibility, responsibility but also greater support for employees, they feel it,” said Fisher. “We talk a lot about ‘I want to have a loyal employee who doesn’t want to leave.’ It’s a balance. The company needs to show how invested they are in the person and the person shows how invested they are into the company based on that relationship between the two of them.
“There is so much research that employees are looking to be heard and valued. When an employee feels that, they’re able to reach full potential because they’re being challenged and rewarded in ways that inspire and motivate them. The impact to productivity and the bottom line starts to improve.”
When a company addresses physical and mental health challenges faced by its remote workers, those workers stay committed, Marzec said.
“The manager doesn’t have to replace that talent,” she added. “Many times, companies focus on health care costs when it comes to health and well-being and overlook the important factor of employee satisfaction and intention to leave the company.
“Once somebody leaves, that impacts other people on that team who now need to work more to fill the gap of the person who left. The manager needs to put in time to hire somebody else. The training may take up to a year before a new person is really folded into the organization. In some cases, knowledge is lost when somebody leaves and we have a very knowledge-based economy. There can be client loss. Protecting against unwanted turnover is an important goal of health and wellness programs.”
Leading companies today embody the concept of “disruptor.” They are fast-growing, digital players that are introducing innovative new business models and revenue streams and forcing incumbents to rethink their businesses.
Businesses are on track to spend nearly $1.2 trillion on digital efforts this year as they seek a competitive edge over their peers, according to IDC research. These top companies typically have leaders at the helm who are helping redefine how businesses and customers interact.
It’s time we stop focusing on what disruptors are doing and instead shift our attention to how other companies can compete. Legacy companies with the right leadership and stakeholder priorities supersede disruptors. In fact, traditional players have a significant opportunity to transform their companies and their C-suite to make a lasting impact and respond to the disruptive forces around them.
As with any big reward, risk is required. It requires a new way of thinking and a new way of doing things from the top down. The C-suite, the most crucial piece of the puzzle, must leave status quo leadership styles behind and learn new skills to compete in this age of disruption.
Where Is the Pressure Coming From?
Beyond introducing new business models and harnessing innovative technologies, disruptors have changed the playing field of consumer expectations. According to research by my organization, Accenture Strategy, 74 percent of C-suite leaders say the disruptive impact of constantly shifting customer demands has increased and has added considerable complexity to the business landscape.
Coupled with these shifting customer expectations is a set of stakeholders with specific expectations of company leaders, according to a recent report from Accenture Strategy titled “Whole-Brain Leadership: The New Rules of Engagement for the C-suite.” The report, released this past June, is based on interviews with 200 C-suite executives and surveys of more than 11,000 employees and consumers globally.
Changing the C-Suite DNA
With these disruptive forces converging on the C-suite, leaders must respond to the tides of change both by doing things differently and doing different things. Reskilling to change the DNA of leadership is now crucial to building enduring businesses and achieving competitive agility.
The majority (89 percent) of today’s C-suite leaders hold business, science or technology degrees and have honed “left-brain” skills — like critical reasoning, decision-making and results-orientation. Furthermore, 65 percent say their “right-brain” skills are weakest and recognize the need to strengthen their right-brain skills — including empathy and intuition — for a well-rounded “whole-brain” approach. Not only is adopting a progressive whole-brain leadership approach good for building diversified thinking and decisions, it’s also good for the bottom line. Our research shows a correlation with stronger financials — 22 percent higher revenue growth and 34 percent higher profitability growth (as measured by EBITDA) — for those companies using a whole-brain approach today.
Adopting a Whole-Brained Approach
C-suite leaders can unlock a whole-brain approach to leadership that applies new, richer depths of left-brain skills with more tangible applications of right-brain skills and secure the future of their companies by:
Addressing the skills gap: Changing the mix of leaders at the top of companies will help address the current skills gap. Today, 9 in 10 C-suite executives are already taking action by using organic and inorganic ways to tackle the problem. Over half (55 percent) of leaders are currently reskilling C-suite members, and 46 percent are bringing in new C-suite talent from outside their organization.
Redefining traditional leadership: Customer expectations demand a new type of leader, as this group has a clear view of what they think are important skills and behaviors for C-suite leaders to possess. Leaders need to pivot and develop a leadership style that balances traditional, left-directed skills, right-directed skills and human-centered capabilities.
Driving change deep and wide: Proactively ingraining right- and left-brain skills into the leadership of organizations is crucial to longevity and competitiveness. The C-suite must build these balanced skills and use them at both the organizational and individual level. They also need to plant seeds for the future by building this required skillset into their recruiting strategy.
Disruptors are forcing incumbents to challenge the status quo, pushing them to look outward to unlock growth and value, all while surviving waves of disruption. Through a new leadership mindset that balances left-led analytical thinking with a right-led human centered compass, it’s possible for incumbents to disrupt the disruptors.
It’s been a decade since the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act went into effect, with the goal that insurers and health plans offer mental health and substance abuse benefits comparable to coverage of medical and surgical care.
Despite progress made since the law’s passage, some barriers to equality still exist. As vital as behavioral health care is for people with substance abuse and mental health disorders, unlike their physical health needs, employees with employer-sponsored coverage may face challenges in accessing and affording quality mental health care coverage.
The current environment sees employers, employees, the government and individuals spending more money on behavioral health than ever before, but the results just aren’t there, said Henry Harbin, a psychiatrist with over 40 years’ experience in the behavioral health field.
Harbin, whose experience includes senior positions at public and private health organizations, said that while fatality rates for many medical issues are decreasing, fatality rates from suicide and opioid overdoses — two major issues in behavioral health — are increasing. Between 2004 and 2014, the death rate for heart disease decreased by 16 percent and for stroke by 19 percent. In the same span, the death rate climbed by 17 percent for suicide and over 200 percent for opioids, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For employers, genuinely caring about their employees’ mental health issues is a good start, but providing quality coverage is important as well. Behavioral issues among employees are prevalent. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 1 in 5 adults in the United States have a mental health disorder. Meanwhile, 1 in 22 adults have a serious mental illness like schizophrenia, major depression or bipolar disorder, the study noted.
Access Issues
There is a national shortage of seasoned behavioral health professionals in the United States, which can “constrain access to essential care and treatment for millions of individuals with mental illness of substance use disorders,” according to the Health Resources and Services Administration report “Behavioral Health Projections, 2016-2030.” The agency, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, focuses on improving access to health care services for individuals who are uninsured, isolated or medically vulnerable. The report stressed the fact that certain areas of the United States have few or no behavioral health providers available.
The shortage of behavioral health care providers impacts a majority of employer-sponsored health plans, according to Mercer’s May 2019 “10-Minute Survey on Behavioral Health” that surveyed 523 employers. Sixty-three percent of respondents reported that they lack adequate access to outpatient behavioral health care in some or all of their locations.
Some 74 percent of employers said they are taking action to improve employee access to quality behavioral care. Most commonly, 49 percent addressed this by enhancing their employee assistance program services or changing their EAP provider. Only 12 percent of these employers conducted a network analysis to identify gaps in behavioral health care.
Early intervention can be vital for behavioral health, especially for patients with a severe disorder, Harbin said.
For a patient with schizophrenia, for example, screening by one’s primary care physician or pediatrician can help identify the problem early on. The patient can then see a specialist sooner and will likely see better outcomes, Harbin said.
Tom Sondergeld, vice president, global HRIS, benefits and mobility at global pharmacy giant Walgreens Boots Alliance, said that one of the biggest priorities in their carrier analysis was to evaluate access. Employees with a behavioral health issue often face long wait times to see a behavioral health specialist such as a psychiatrist. “To me, that’s not parity,” Sondergeld said.
Walgreens has been pushing hard on its insurance carriers in recent years so that employees can find coverage for the care they need in a timely manner, Sondergeld said.
While larger organizations may have more resources to negotiate with insurance carriers, he suggested that small organizations can join coalitions such as the National Business Group on Health, allowing their voice to be heard within that larger pool of companies.
He also said that using data to tell a powerful story is a way smaller organizations can influence their carriers. Employers can get this information through their health plan, which can use its data to analyze utilization and costs across the various benefits to get a better picture of the overall spend and areas to concentrate on to improve spend.
For example, if a third of the workforce needs access to behavioral health care for themselves or their loved ones, but the data show that a majority of people can’t access care in a timely manner, that’s a powerful, data-supported story.
The human impact of mental health problems is notable, as mental illness impacts how people handle stress, how they relate to others and whether they make healthy choices, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Still, HR can use the business case to support the need for better access.
Poor mental health and stress can impact an employee’s job performance, their relationship with co-workers and their physical capabilities and daily functioning, according to the CDC. Depression interferes with a person’s ability to complete physical job tasks about 20 percent of the time and reduces cognitive performance about 35 percent of the time, the agency notes.
“When [employees] can’t find the care they need, the business suffers because they aren’t engaged,” Sondergeld said.
Network Issues
A host of issues exist even when an employee does access care for behavioral health problems. A majority of people with behavioral conditions are screened and treated through primary care and not a specialist, Harbin said. The quality of this behavioral health care is often low, with many people not necessarily even getting a diagnosis but getting a prescription for a psychiatric drug. Harbin noted that the patient’s response to the drug may not be tracked efficiently, the drug and dosage may remain unchanged, and this may help lead to low efficacy outcomes.
Employers should urge employees to use specialists if they want improved outcomes, he said.
Patients accessing out-of-network providers is another issue, he added, citing a 2017 Milliman Inc. report, “Addiction and Mental Health vs. Physical Health: Analyzing Disparities in Network Use and Provider Reimbursement Rates.”
Patients seeking behavioral care more often need to use an out-of-network provider than patients seeking medical or surgical care, according to the report, which also found that medical and surgical providers are paid at higher rates than behavioral providers. The lower reimbursement rates are one reason for low network participation rates among behavioral health providers, making it difficult for patients to find more affordable in-network care.
Employers can work with their providers or vendors to understand if there are places where there are more complaints about access issues than others, said Mandie Conforti, a licensed clinical social worker and senior consultant at Willis Towers Watson.
Even though the mental health stigma is lifting, it’s still there, she said. Many employees hesitate to call HR to complain about not being able to find a behavioral health provider.
“We’ve been asking behavioral health centers to do more customized networks, enhancing the network in locations where employers may have a larger base of employees,” she said.
Quality Control Issues
It’s difficult for a patient to find the right provider for their unique situation or one who can get them the best results.
Employers have historically not asked their insurers many questions about behavioral health or the quality of these provider networks, said Sandra Kuhn, Mercer’s national lead for behavioral health consulting. This is an area in which they have potential to be more proactive and really push for more information from their insurers.
Questions can include: What quality measures do you use to bring carriers in and keep them in-network? Can you share with us at the end of the year a data set to show how many people were in treatment and the average length of time people stay in treatment? Also, did people improve while they were in treatment?
“Tools exist to measure those things, they’re just not being uniformly applied,” Kuhn said.
She also suggests that employers look for specific data points as indicators of whether the health plan is adequately addressing behavioral health, starting with data on what the employee population looks like. Then, look at EAP utilization. If utilization is low but a lot of people are using the behavioral health network in the health plan, then perhaps employees aren’t aware of the EAP services. That knowledge could give employers the opportunity to close the gap.
Data can also educate employers on how much out-of-network behavioral health care employees are getting. Maybe employees are having access issues, or maybe they’re unsure of how to go about finding care. They could be relying on friends’ referrals rather than something more evidence-based.
“If [employees] don’t have a clear way to obtain information about the network, the types of providers and what provider is good for what types of challenges, they’re just randomly picking, and that’s problematic,” she said.
She continued that quality metrics are “reasonably established” for certain areas of the behavioral health system. The type of care people may need ranges from outpatient care for mild or moderate cases to more complex and higher levels of care for more severe conditions. This inpatient care is where quality metrics are consistent, but most people come into contact with behavioral health services at the outpatient level, Kuhn said.
There are some insurance carriers and tech solutions like Ginger.io and Lyra Health that are using their own measures, but these aren’t consistent with each other, she said. This can lead to inconsistency and member confusion.
“They don’t know if they’re going to a quality provider or not, and oftentimes they don’t know how to judge if they’re improving,” Kuhn said. That may lead to people thinking that if they go to their friend’s therapist, they’ll get the best care.
“There are all sorts of wives tales that come out of there not being a good way to determine quality,” she added.
Employers can also push vendors on how they assess quality, said Conforti. Many times providers self-report quality to behavioral health centers. Whether they actually have the competencies to do so, they could simply check the boxes that they can work with any disorder.
“There has to be a better way at assessing and making sure that providers are doing good, sound, evidence-based care,” she said.
Jared Dennis was employed as a deputy in the Summit County, Colorado, Sheriff’s Office. He’s also an alcoholic. While on administrative suspension following his wife’s allegation of domestic violence, Dennis got drunk at home the night before his criminal arraignment. The following morning, he failed his intake breathalyzer. Thereafter, the Sheriff’s Office terminated him for, among other rules violations, conduct unbecoming of an officer and being impaired while on duty.
Dennis sued his former employer for disability discrimination, claiming that it fired him because of a protected disability — his alcoholism.
The court disagreed, and dismissed Dennis’s lawsuit.
It is generally recognized that alcoholism can constitute a disability entitling the employee to protection under the ADA…. The more difficult question is whether Deputy Dennis has come forward with evidence that his termination resulted from his disability, rather than his conduct.…[W]hen the disability at issue is alcoholism, the ADA … draw[s] a distinction between “having a disability” and “disability-caused misconduct.”
It is undisputed that the SCSO based its decision to terminate Deputy Dennis’ on the fact that he reported for his arraignment in an intoxicated state. Thus, there is no dispute that SCSO’s decision arose from his unsatisfactory conduct on the morning of July 28, not from his abstract status as an alcoholic. As noted, the ADA … do[es] not extend protection to actions of alcohol-influenced misconduct, even if the employee’s alcohol use is related to the disability of alcoholism. Accordingly, Deputy Dennis has not come forward with evidence that indicates that his termination was based on his status as a disabled person (as opposed to his conduct).
Addiction is a protected disability. But it does not mean you have to permit its use to accommodate the disability. Under the influence at work does not equal a disability, ever.
Color choice can help enhance the mood of an office setting.
Boosting productivity and wellness is a challenge for which organizations are looking to more creative solutions.
Color choice of the office is one relatively simple yet impactful tool that organizations from hospitality to tech are implementing to elevate the level of productivity, wellness and experience in their spaces.
“People are starting to see the psychological effects that color has on us, especially in the workplace,” said PPG Color Design Manager Vanessa Peterson. “It can really spark certain emotions and spark certain responses from people because they’re integrated into a space for so many hours.”
This reaction, Peterson said, has to do with what certain colors communicate in a space and how that communication works with other elements of office design to create an overall atmosphere. For this reason, blue is often chosen over others for interior design.
“Many of the colors that we find in nature, specifically blue, have caused a lot of really great health and mental benefits because of its serene and peaceful nature,” Peterson said. “It reminds people of the sky, or it reminds people of the ocean, in a very calm and tranquil space.”
Even within the color spectrum of blue, slight variations in shade can communicate different things, which in turn affects how people might feel in a space.
“One of the great things about blue is that for the most part, each version of blue has an identity of its own but also reflects the idea of either calmness or wellness. That idea of wellness can be integrated into an atmosphere where it gives you this feeling of power and it can feel very regal,” Peterson said. For example, a stronger blue such as cobalt is often used in sports companies’ marketing and darker shades of navy that exude a sense of maturity are used by universities.
The design industry is also seeing a heightened interest in color choices for products, Peterson said.
“Not only are you having desk and wall colors and furnishings go into this more serene setting, but you’re having tech companies do this with their products as well,” she said. “They’re going into a lot more beiges and a lot more soft corals, mints and blues, even into the actual technology to give that overall feel.”
The search for the equilibrium of office color and design is also about more than just improving productivity. Creating a sense of serenity in a space that people go to everyday can improve mood, too.
A study conducted by the University of Texas found that more bland colors such as beige, gray and white induced feelings of sadness and depression, particularly among women. This was in contrast to colors like blue and pale green, which produced feelings of productivity and peace in study participants.
PPG also named “Chinese Porcelain” its color of the year, which is a rich, natural blue and was selected with the idea of serenity and clarity in mind.
“With everything that we’ve been seeing happen socially and culturally around the world, we really felt that that shade of blue emoted that sense of serenity that people are looking for in this day and age,” Peterson said. “They want to have that sense of wellness, that sense of peace and they want to see a color and feel something that’s outside of that idea of intensity or anything that would make you feel disturbed.”
“Not only are you having desk and wall colors and furnishings go into this more serene setting, but you’re having tech companies do this with their products as well,” she said. “They’re going into a lot more beiges and a lot more soft corals, mints and blues, even into the actual technology to give that overall feel.”