Applicant tracking systems providers breathed a small sigh of relief in September when Google announced it was officially shutting down Google Hire, the cloud-based applicant tracking system that the search-engine giant launched barely two years ago.
Itâs a fitting end to a product that was never a good fit for Googleâs portfolio of solutions, said Othamar Gama Filho, CEO of recruitment marketing automation platform Talentify. âI was more surprised when they launched it than when they ended it.â
Google Hire promised to simplify the hiring process for recruiters. By utilizing Googleâs powerful search capabilities, open API environment and G Suite tools, including Gmail and Google Calendar, recruiters would be able to more easily find and communicate with candidates, and schedule interviews. At least that was the pitch.
But in reality it didnât offer a lot to make it stand out in an already crowded market. âThe global ATS market is small compared to what Google is used to,â Gama Filho said. Itâs projected to be a $2.34 billion by 2026, which may be exciting for a burgeoning tech startup, but is hardly worth the attention of a company that generates billions of dollars in revenues every year.
Google also never explained how the global platform would accommodate the unique data privacy regulations in every country where it was offered. Gama Filho noted that Google is already facing antitrust investigations in the European Commission for its Google for Jobs app, which could have chilled its interest in the recruiting space all together.
The real truth is Google Hire never found it customer base. âA lot of ATS platforms integrate with G-Suite, so there was not a lot to differentiate the offering,â he said.
It also wasnât a good fit for Googleâs business model, said Holger Mueller, vice president and principal analyst for Constellation Research. âGoogle never does anything in business apps. They can make a lot more money attracting the HCM SaaS vendors to their platform than competing with them.â
Mueller also points to Google Hireâs origin story as a potential harbinger of its early demise.
Google Hire was originally developed at Bebop, a startup tech firm led by Diane Greene, which Google acquired for $380 million in 2015. As part of that acquisition, Greene was brought in to head up Googleâs cloud business.
Greene was lauded as a veteran of the enterprise software marketplace, and Google leaders believed she could help them compete with the likes of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.
They were right. During her four-year tenure (she left earlier this year), Google Cloud increased its revenues to $1 billion per quarter. While it is still third in the public cloud marketplace, itâs closing fast on Amazon and Microsoft.
What does that have to do with Google Hire? Many believe buying Bebop was just Googleâs way to get Greene onboard. âBut they still had to show stakeholders that they didnât waste the acquisition,â Mueller said. So they kept it on the books for a few years, used it to showcase how their technology could help recruiters. âBut never really did anything with it.â
For customers of Google Hire, the good news is that it wonât be officially shut down until September 2020, giving them almost a full year to find a replacement. Google has also generously agreed to keep it running for no additional fees.
The lesson to be learned from the rapid rise and fall of Google Hire is that nothing lasts forever, Mueller said. âEspecially when comes in the cloud.â
Research indicates that more self-aware individuals understand others better, enabling them to lead more effectively.
The research on self-awareness by my organization, the Myers-Briggs Co., shows that most people believe they are self-aware. In fact, 82 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement âI have a great deal of self-awareness.â
Despite these high levels of self-reported self-awareness, a study by The Eurich Group shows that the quality of self-awareness is actually in short supply. This wasnât a surprise. In our research, most participants thought that they were more self-aware than most people they knew (which is, of course, impossible; everyone canât be more self-aware than everyone else).
There are a number of reasons to believe that greater general levels of self-awareness among individuals within organizations lead to positive business outcomes. Studies such as those by Bass and Yammarino, Atwater and Yamamarino, and Church showed that people with more accurate self-conception tended to perform better.
The relationship between self-awareness and flexibility is demonstrated by a study of the Royal Navy, which found that more self-aware leaders were better able to tailor their leadership style to the needs of a given situation. Better employee performance plus more agile leadership typically leads to a better bottom line.
Thereâs also reason to believe that self-awareness might influence retention. My team at Myers-Briggs recently researched workplace well-being with over 10,000 global respondents and found that individuals with a higher level of well-being â which can stem from self-awareness â had significantly higher levels of job satisfaction, felt much more emotionally attached to their organization, and were significantly less likely to look for a new job. They were also much more likely to be good organizational citizens being helpful to their co-workers, conscientious and more willing to go the extra mile.
What Is Self-Awareness and How Does It Help?
According to the Oxford English Dictionary self-awareness is, âConscious knowledge of oneâs own character and feelings.â
Researcher Anna Sutton further elaborates on this to describe it as, âThe extent to which people are consciously aware of their interactions or relationships with others and of their internal states.â
Think about a time you took your car in for a tune-up. Nothing major was fixed, but afterward it drove like a dream. Similarly, increasing your self-awareness can help you perform better â by discovering how you operate you begin to understand how to adjust your behaviors for better results.
By increasing self-awareness, you also begin to better understand other peopleâs approaches. In our own recent research on self-awareness, survey respondents reported that increased self-awareness led to improvements in confidence, decision-making, people-management and stress management.
When we asked people about the advantages of being self-aware, the top five responses were:
Understanding of reactions and motivation.
Management of self and others.
Ability to adapt behavior.
Relationship improvement.
Personal growth.
We also asked people about any disadvantages to being self-aware â but many, many more people mentioned advantages. Additionally, people said that self-awareness was particularly helpful when:
Working with others in a team (mentioned by 58 percent of survey respondents).
Coping with stress (mentioned by 54 percent of survey respondents).
Acting as a coach (mentioned by 53 percent of survey respondents).
Dealing with change (mentioned by 50 percent of survey respondents).
Managing and leading others (mentioned by 45 percent of survey respondents).
Dealing with clients (mentioned by 33 percent of survey respondents).
Receiving coaching or feedback (mentioned by 28 percent of survey respondents).
How Is Self-Awareness Measured?
As weâve mentioned, just asking people âare you self-awareâ or even âare you more or less self-aware than other peopleâ doesnât work too well. Itâs a bit like asking people, âAre you an above average driver?â Around 90 percent of Americans say âyesâ to this even though this can only be true for 50 percent of individuals. There needs to be a more structured way to assess self-awareness.
A number of models and assessments can be employed to measure self-awareness in individuals. A particularly useful one comes from a 2015 study by Sutton, Williams and Allinson that identified four facets of self-awareness: Reflection, Insight, Rumination and Mindfulness. In conducting our own research, we used questions, including the sample below, designed to measure these four facets.
Agreeing with these questions suggests that you may be more self-aware, except for those marked with a â*â; more self-aware people will tend to disagree with these. How would you score? How about others in your organization?
Reflection
I often reflect on my thoughts.
I do not often think about the way I am feeling.*
I enjoy exploring my âinner self.â
I often reflect on my feelings.
Others would benefit from reflecting more on their thoughts.
Insight
I am interested in analyzing the behavior of others.
I value opportunities to evaluate my behavior.
It is important to understand why people behave in the way they do.
When Iâm feeling uncomfortable, I can easily name these feelings.
I usually know why I am feeling the way I do.
Mindfulness
I am often on auto-pilot and do not pay much attention to what I am doing.*
Sometimes I am careless because I am preoccupied, with many things on my mind.*
I often dwell on the past or the future, rather than the present.*
My mind often wanders when I am trying to concentrate.*
Rumination
I often find myself thinking about past negative events.
When things go wrong, I often ruminate on them for long periods of time.
I tend not to look back and think about how I could have done things differently.*
How Can a Workplace Professional Promote Self-Awareness?
There are many ways to develop self-awareness, but a mix of methods will probably work best. Here are some of the most popular, based on responses to our survey.
Feedback from a range of different people, including:
Peers.
Managers.
Subordinates.
Clients.
Family.
An individualâs wider network.
Completing personality questionnaires.
Training to become a coach.
Coaching and other professional help.
360-degree feedback tools.
Journaling: keeping a diary or journal that explores thoughts and feelings surrounding the events of oneâs life.
However, the most popular methods arenât necessarily the best. We looked at a number of these commonly used approaches and found that the best methods, in order of effectiveness, were:
Training to be a coach.
Being coached.
Completing personality assessments.
Having structured feedback from your peers.
Journaling.
It wasnât too surprising that âtraining to be a coachâ topped the list, as this involves many hours of learning to understand oneself before being allowed to coach others. Of course, such training is also time consuming and expensive and not a realistic route for most employees.
On the other hand, âreceiving personal coachingâ as a way to help senior managers is something that many organizations may invest in. It does, however, come with a significant cost and time commitment, so for many individuals this may not be a realistic option. Instead, companies might want to look into using personality assessments and facilitating ways in which employees can have structured feedback from their peers. These may often be the most cost-effective approaches in terms of providing the biggest payoff for a relatively low monetary investment.
Similarly, âjournaling,â the practice of keeping a diary or journal that explores thoughts and feelings surrounding the events of your life, offers a low-cost way to effectively promote self-awareness. However, journaling may not work for everyone.
Companies should note that one of the interesting findings of our research was that âfeedback from your managerâ was seen, on average, to be one of the least effective methods. This is an important point because, as noted earlier, this kind of feedback was also listed as one of the most common methods of promoting self-awareness that organizations leverage.
Though we cannot say definitively why manager feedback was not seen as especially effective, there are a number of possible reasons. Some managers may be less close to the work of their subordinates work than their peers; indeed in some large international organizations they may be based on a different country and rarely be in contact. Others may be viewed as having a particular agenda, or as being too busy with other aspects of their job. Whatever the reason, this is a troubling finding for managers.
Youâre Self-Aware, Now What?
Building your own self-awareness is really just the first step. Once individuals become more aware of their own personality preferences and have a structure to understand and describe themselves, they can start to recognize how their co-workers are similar to or different from them. They can use this knowledge to begin to devise strategies to work with their co-workers more effectively, using their differences in a constructive, rather than destructive, way.
Research shows that more diverse teams can perform better than more homogeneous teams; team members can bring different perspectives to bear on the issues they have to deal with. Diverse teams can however suffer from more conflict, often because individuals simply do not understand other team members. Building self-awareness is a key way of solving this issue.
Linked to this greater understanding, managers and workplace professionals can put in place systems to help people work together more effectively. This could include approaches such as:
Establishing a modus operandi for working together that takes account of the rights and the responsibilities of different personality types.
Ensuring that important information is communicated in a range of different ways (rather than only in a style that suits the personality of the sender).
Taking into account both the logical answer and the solution that makes sense for people and the organizationâs values when making decisions.
Identifying how the different approaches of team members can complement each other.
Allowing time for reflection during or after meetings.
Considering personality preferences when reorganizing office layouts.
For managers and leaders, the story does not stop there. Using personality assessments gives you a structure to understand yourself better. This in turn gives you a structure to understand those you manage; what motivates them, and how you can best communicate with them.
Understanding how your team works leads to an understanding of other teams and ultimately of the dynamics of your entire organization. For those at the top level, it can help in aligning the whole company to the strategy that is needed for organizational success.
Regardless of whether some or all of the approaches are taken, the key to successfully implementing any of these includes both the realization that we are different from others in ways that can be identified and described, and the harnessing of this diversity of personality in a positive way. And of course, this is a lesson that can be learned by individuals at any level in the organization.
Barbara Fisher recalled a time one of her remote workers traveled to Hawaii yet called in to four meetings over two days.
âI asked, âHow are you recharging? Why did you even take your computer?â As a remote worker, itâs an extension of what she does,â 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.
âThe reality is that weighs on you. Youâre never able to refuel.â
Remote work has become the new normal for companies responding to workersâ desire for flexibility. In its âState of the American Workplaceâ report, Gallup polling found 43 percent of employees worked remotely in 2016 compared to 39 percent in 2012.
In its 2019 âEmployee Benefitsâ 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 â now offered by more than 40 percent of organizations â 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.
âFrom a remote workerâs perspective, some of the positive aspects are flexible job schedules, work-life balance and the freedom to work from almost anywhere,â 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
âBut 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,â said Garrell.
Studies show remote workers struggle with loneliness, isolation, an inability to unplug and ongoing distractions.
âGlobal Work Connectivity,â a recent study commissioned by Virgin Pulse and HR advisory and research firm Future Workplace, concludes many remote workers feel isolated.
âWhile 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,â 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 employeeâs 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.
âRemote 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,â said Mary Marzec, senior health strategy scientist for Virgin Pulse, a part of Richard Bransonâs Virgin Group that designs technology cultivating positive employee lifestyle habits.
Mary Marzec
With most employeesâ 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.
âTechnology 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,â said Schawbel, who also authored âBack to Human: How Great Leaders Create Connection in the Age of Isolation.â
âMost remote workers have the flexibility to work in different areas â a coffee shop or the beach â and they still choose to work at home,â said Fisher. âThe convergence of work and home into one space underlies the struggle to unplug.
âYou have to be able to recharge. Not doing it definitely weighs on an individualâs health and how they show up.â
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 Fisherâs employees who asked to work remotely later expressed frustration that home tasks were distracting her from work.
âWhen 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 youâre still connected,â 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.
âDrawing boundaries can be very difficult,â she added. âIf somebody sends you an email, there is internal pressure to answer that right away to show youâre 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 doesnât feel that freedom.â
Lack of face time with team members is another challenge.
âYou canât just stop over to somebodyâs desk or bump into someone in the hall and ask them if theyâve followed up,â Marzec said. âEmails and communications have to be constructed much more clearly because youâre not there to back it up in person. Communication can start a downstream spiral of lack of productivity.â
Remote workers donât 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.Â
âEven 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,â she added.
Remote workers also donât feel they have the freedom to work out or take a walk, said Marzec.
âWhen you work remotely, youâre not getting in the extra energy like walking from a parking lot to work,â said Marzec. âSomeone who works remotely could have as few as 1,500 steps in a day. Whereas in normal workday walking, youâre going to put in 5,000 to 6,000 steps. It isnât the 10,000 recommended steps, but itâs a lot more than 1,500.â
Health implications depend oneâs 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.
âWhatever your vice is to manage stress is where youâre going to go. Thatâs just human nature. When youâre alone, going to that vice is likely easier than when youâre in an office where you can reach out quickly to the person sitting in the cube next to you, tell them youâre having a rough day and try to figure the problem out.â
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.
âPart 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,â 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 âare a lot of fun and help everybody feel included no matter where they work,â said Marzec.
Technology makes implementing wellness programs for remote workers easier, said Garrell.
âThese programs offer a variety of options both remote employees and employees who physically come to the office can participate in,â she said. âAn 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.â
That can include sports leagues, gym memberships, yoga classes and other activities available in the remote workerâs 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 â Rhonemus Group, said he encourages everyone on the recruiting firmâs 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 companyâs remote workers use stand-up treadmill desks to address the struggle with scheduling fitness time.
âWe also schedule blocks of time out of the office to meet people face-to-face to fulfill the need for social interaction,â he said. âWe 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.â
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.Â
âWe constantly remain in contact with our remote staff to make sure they are happy and have all of the support they need,â he said.
Frasier said his company helps its customers manage about 70,000 workers, nearly all of whom are remote.
âRemote 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.â
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.
âIt relieves that pressure that if I take a walk and donât answer that email within an hour, Iâm not going to be punished for it,â 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.
âThis 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,â 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.
âWhen you give greater autonomy, flexibility, responsibility but also greater support for employees, they feel it,â said Fisher. âWe talk a lot about âI want to have a loyal employee who doesnât want to leave.â Itâs 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.
âThere is so much research that employees are looking to be heard and valued. When an employee feels that, theyâre able to reach full potential because theyâre being challenged and rewarded in ways that inspire and motivate them. The impact to productivity and the bottom line starts to improve.â
When a company addresses physical and mental health challenges faced by its remote workers, those workers stay committed, Marzec said.
âThe manager doesnât have to replace that talent,â she added. âMany 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.
âOnce 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.â
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.
âPeople are starting to see the psychological effects that color has on us, especially in the workplace,â said PPG Color Design Manager Vanessa Peterson. âIt can really spark certain emotions and spark certain responses from people because theyâre integrated into a space for so many hours.â
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.
âMany 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,â Peterson said. âIt reminds people of the sky, or it reminds people of the ocean, in a very calm and tranquil space.â
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.
âOne 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,â Peterson said. For example, a stronger blue such as cobalt is often used in sports companiesâ 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.
âNot only are you having desk and wall colors and furnishings go into this more serene setting, but youâre having tech companies do this with their products as well,â she said. âTheyâre 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.â
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 âChinese Porcelainâ its color of the year, which is a rich, natural blue and was selected with the idea of serenity and clarity in mind.
âWith everything that weâve 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,â Peterson said. âThey want to have that sense of wellness, that sense of peace and they want to see a color and feel something thatâs outside of that idea of intensity or anything that would make you feel disturbed.â
The number of age-related discrimination charges filed with employers and the EEOC by workers aged 65-plus doubled from 1990 to 2017.
44 percent of employees report that they or someone they know experienced age discrimination in the workplace.
21 percent report they faced age discrimination themselves.
36 percent feel their age has prevented them from getting a job since turning 40.
26 percent feel there is some risk they could lose their current job because of age.
Only 40 percent who experienced age discrimination filed a charge or complaint.
Employers paid $810.4 million to settle age discrimination charges filed with the EEOC between 2010 and 2018 (excluding litigation).
These numbers are only going to get worse. By 2024, workers age 55 and older will represent 25 percent of the nationâs workforce, with the fastest annual growth rates among those aged 65 and older. Indeed, according to the Hiscox survey, 67 percent of surveyed workers age 40-65 plan to continue to work after they turn 66.
This trend is not without its cost to employers. Age discrimination hurts employers, and Iâm not just talking about the $810 million paid in settlement costs.
It demotivates employees, which can hurt productivity, customer service, and product quality.
It causes a loss of talent and institutional knowledge, due to experienced workers leaving from a stalled career or hostile environment.
It causes employers to miss the opportunity of hiring and retaining workers who possess knowledge, experience, good judgment, and commitment to the job.
So, how can an employer help prevent age discrimination from permeating its workplace? The EEOC, in its State of Age Discrimination Report, published last year to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the ADEA, offers the following five suggestions.
1. Leadership needs to create and foster a workplace culture that is committed to a multi-generational workplace where all workers can grow and thrive, which extols ability and reject discriminatory stereotypes and words.
2. Employers and employees must recognize and reject stereotypes, assumptions, and remarks about age and older workers, and treat them no differently than stereotypes, assumptions, and remarks about sex, race, disability, national origin, religion, or other protected classes.
3. Companies should work to increase the age diversity of the workforce by hiring, retaining and engaging employees of all generations,
4. Businesses should implement recruitment and hiring strategies that avoid age bias by seeking workers of all ages and not limiting qualifications based on age or years of experience. These strategies should include training recruiters and interviewers to avoid ageist assumptions and common perceptions about older workers, assessing interviewing strategies to avoid age bias, and having an age-diverse interview panel for prospective employees.
5. Employers should develop retention strategies to keep older workers. Iâve written about this point before, which youâll find here.
I was on the phone with one of my favorite colleagues debriefing a recent client engagement.
Weâd done a series of focus groups for an organizational assessment and weâd gotten some fantastic data and comments.
âTheyâre such a great client!â my colleague exclaimed. I enthusiastically agreed.
That exchange got me thinking about great clients. What makes them âgreatâ to work with? And what are the consequences when a client isnât âgreatâ?
Consultants are here to serve clients, yet we are most effective when clients help us help them. Being a âgreat clientâ doesnât just matter when working with diversity consultants â it matters in engaging any external partner for leadership development, organizational strategy or change management. However, sometimes those leaders engaging diversity and inclusion consultants are less experienced in how to work with external professionals.
What makes clients great to work with â and more successful afterwards as a result â are the following three behaviors:
Trust the consultant. Clients who are unable or unwilling to be fully transparent inhibit the consultantâs ability to serve them and do an excellent job. Even pre-contract intake conversations are confidential, and an ethical consultant will ensure their clientâs data, documents and personal disclosures are kept private. If youâre wary, have the consultant sign a non-disclosure agreement, but just as full honesty with your physician is critical to receiving the best health care, full transparency with your D&I consultant is critical to properly diagnosing your problem and getting meaningful results. Avoid keeping secrets from your diversity consultant even if they portray your organization in a less-than-flattering light.
Work at least as hard as the consultant. The consultant will eventually leave, and you will stay behind. Ultimately, you are the owner of the problem you have hired the consultant to help solve. Just as itâs up to you to follow your physicianâs advice and change your behaviors to improve your health, you are responsible for implementing solutions and creating results that matter for your organization. Involve the right people in meetings with the consulting team, and enlist the right internal people to take on tasks. Follow up on action items by the agreed-upon deadlines. Communicate changes in priorities or key personnel to the consultant, as well as crises that arise during the project. Make it easy for the consultant to do their job well by executing critical functions they canât, such as internal communications, scheduling and on-site logistics. Itâs a waste of time, talent and budget to not ensure proper building access, fill focus groups, or brief stakeholders on the project goals.
Follow the consultantâs advice. Great clients hire excellent consultants because they need expertise they donât have in-house. The fields of diversity and inclusion, organizational development, coaching and others require years of study and practice. When a consultant uses their expertise to provide recommendations, great clients often ask for clarification or provide necessary pushback. But just as a patient may not get good outcomes if they ignore a health practitionerâs advice, a client who does not heed their consultantâs expertise will not get the best results. Just as in health care, second opinions and questions are welcome, but great clients donât waste their budget on consultants they plan to ignore or use as a scapegoat.
In short, great clients treat D&I consultants like healers, not magicians. Just like other types of healers, we partner with clients to understand their situation and context, diagnose the problem, co-create a treatment plan and provide support. We canât do the work for the client just as the physician canât heal the patient. The patientâs body does that with the right intervention and support. We canât wave a wand and make the problem vanish, and we cannot fix it for you. Great clients get it, which is one of the reasons they can be so successful after working with great consultants.
The relationship between a CEO and chief human resources officer is arguably the most unique in the corporate world.
When fostered strategically, the dynamic between the person at the helm of the company and the head of human resources can drive a business to greater heights. However, when that dynamic is one of misalignment or blurred responsibilities, it can singlehandedly take an organization down unproductive paths.
Many key executives report directly to the CEO â for example, the chief financial officer. This is typically someone with a highly specialized background in finance who has grown through the management ranks into the executive level.
When CEOs and CFOs interact, the dynamic is one where the CEO relies heavily on a CFOâs extensive knowledge of financial best practices. The CEO sees a clear line between responsibilities for their role and the CFOâs role, and understands they must rely on the CFO to ensure financial processes and decisions support the overall strategy.
Oftentimes a CEOâs leadership team is viewed as a three-legged stool between the CEO, CFO and CHRO. Unfortunately, the relationship between the CEO and CHRO is not as clear-cut, causing confusion and frustration.
One study found that only 11 percent of CEOs view their HR chiefs as anticipators, able to forecast talent needs and provide the insights that support business planning. When HR is viewed as reactive and not strategic, CHROs are not given opportunity to demonstrate how their expertise can add value. Too often, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy relegating HR to an administrative, rather than strategic, function.
Trusted Adviser
Why are CEO-CFO relationships generally more productive than CEO-CHRO relationships? Many CEOs have spent meaningful time in P&L roles where theyâve gained a strong foundation in sales, marketing, finance and operations. Some have even held significant staff roles in those functions.
Very few have ever rotated through HR. Ironically, many CEOs fancy themselves as HR experts with an innate ability to identify, select and develop talent. Some do excel at this, but many do not. Itâs a delicate situation for CHROs to address. It takes courage, finesse and credibility to become a trusted adviser.
Mary Barra, chairman and CEO of General Motors, is a rare example of a CEO who spent meaningful time in HR. From 2009 through 2011, Barra served as vice president, global human resources. Her earlier experience included stints in engineering, manufacturing and product development. Shortly after becoming CEO, Barra took a page out of her HR playbook when she decided to change GMâs archaic 10-page dress code policy to two words: âDress Appropriately.â
On the surface, this might appear to be a mundane issue for a CEO to focus on. In reality, it was a brilliant move to send a clear message on empowering people to lead. Ironically, the HR department posed the biggest hurdle.
In a recent article in Entrepreneur, CEOs are said to want four things out of HR: match talent resources with company strategy; help attract the best and brightest; deliver excellence in the onboarding process; and foster employee engagement.
Itâs interesting to note that, in Entrepreneurâs above four points, there is no mention of compliance, policies, cost-per-hire or other baseline tactical issues. Over the years, CFOs have earned a âseat at the tableâ by focusing on the more strategic issues while delegating day-to-day tasks such as accounting, controls and financial reporting. The truly exceptional CHROs have been able to do the same, however, their numbers are few. Many CHROs are still considered by the CEO to be administratively minded, and thatâs why they are unable to attain or keep their seat at the table.
Moving Forward Collaboratively
There is another interesting phenomenon in the CEO-CHRO relationship. While most CEOs express a desire to have a strategic CHRO on his or her team, few really understand what that truly means. In some cases, they have had limited interaction with a strategic HR leader and canât comprehend how that function will impact business. These CEOs often have a difficult time assessing CHRO abilities and actual performance. In other cases, the CEO understands the value of a strategic HR partner, but the organization is not ready for that type of transformational leader.
Naturally, every company has its own unique dynamics that shape the relationships within it, especially between the CEO and the CHRO. Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, is often credited with embracing the value of HR and changing the way the function is viewed. During his tenure as CEO, GEâs CHRO was Bill Conaty who had a great deal of business and financial acumen. As a result, Welch involved Conaty in most major business decisions.
Not every CEO will utilize the HR function to its fullest potential. For those who do, however, the results will be significant assuming the CHRO is up to the task.
The research indicates that more self-aware individuals understand others better, enabling them to lead more effectively.
However, while most people believe they are self-aware, a study by The Eurich Group shows that the quality of self-awareness is actually in short supply.
There are a number of reasons to believe that greater general levels of self-awareness at organizations lead to positive business outcomes. For example, studies such as those by Bass & Yammarino, Atwater & Yammarino, and Church showed that people with more accurate self-conception tended to perform better.
At the top level, 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 the situation at hand. Better employee performance plus more agile leadership typically leads to a better bottom line.
Thereâs also reason to believe that it might influence retention. My team at the Myers-Briggs Co. recently researched workplace well-being with over 10,000 global respondents, and found that individuals with a higher level of well-being â which can stem from self-awareness â had significantly higher levels of job satisfaction and were significantly less likely to look for a new job.
What Is Self-awareness, and How Does It Help You?
According to the Oxford English Dictionary self-awareness is âConscious knowledge of oneâs own character and feelings.â Researcher Anna Sutton further elaborates on this to describe it as, âThe extent to which people are consciously aware of their interactions or relationships with others and of their internal states.â
Think about a time you took your car in for a tune-up. Nothing major was fixed, but afterward it drove like a dream. Similarly, increasing your self-awareness can help you perform better â by discovering how you operate, you begin to understand how to adjust your behaviors for better results.
You also begin to understand other peopleâs approaches too. 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 responses were:
. Understanding of reactions and motivation.
. Management of self and others.
. Ability to adapt behavior.
. Relationship improvement.
. Personal growth.
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?
A number of models and assessments can be employed to measure self-awareness in individuals, but one particularly useful one comes from a 2015 study by Sutton, Williams and Allinson which identified four facets of self-awareness: Reflection, Insight, Rumination and Mindfulness. In our own research, here is a sampling of the included questions designed to measure these facets:
 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 autopilot 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 peers.
Completing personality questionnaires.
Feedback from family, managers, clients, subordinates and a wider network.
Training to become a coach.
Professional training.
360-degree tools.
However, the most popular methods arenât necessarily the best. We looked at a number of commonly used approaches and found that the best methods, in order of effectiveness, were:
Training to be a coach.
Being coached.
Having structured feedback from your peers.
Completing personality assessments.
It wasnât too surprising that âtraining to be a coachâ topped the list, as this involves many, 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, âbeing coached oneselfâ 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 companies might want to look into having ‘structured feedback from your peers and completed personality assessments, which may in fact 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, companies should note that one of the interesting findings of our research was that âfeedback from your managerâ was seen 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 exactly why manager feedback was not seen as especially effective, there are a number of possible reasons. Some managers may be less close to their subordinateâs work than peers, seen to have particular agendas or as too busy with other aspects of their job. Whatever the reason, this is a troubling finding for managers.
Youâre Self-Aware, Now What?
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 them, they can start to recognize how their co-workers are similar to or different from them and begin to devise strategies to work with them more effectively. 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).
Allowing time for reflection during or after meetings.
Considering personality preferences when reorganizing office layouts.
Regardless of whether some or all of the approaches are taken, the key to successfully implementing any of these is 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.
Itâs been just over 18 months since the National Labor Relations Board decided Boeing Co., perhaps its most significant decision in decades.
It rewrote more than a decade of precedent by overturning its Lutheran Heritage standard regarding when facially neutral employment policies violate the rights of employees to engage in concerted activity protected by section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act.
In Boeing, the board scrapped Lutheran Heritageâs âreasonably construeâ test (a work rule violates section 7 if an employee could âreasonably construeâ an infringement of their section 7 rights) with a test that balances âasserted business justifications and the invasion of employee rightsâ by weighing â(i) the nature and extent of the potential impact on NLRA rights, and (ii) legitimate justifications associated with the requirement(s).â It was a huge win for employers drafting and issuing workplace policies.
In applying this balancing, the NLRB announced the three-tiered approach to analyzing the legality of employee handbook and other workplace rules.
Category 1: Rules that are Generally Lawful to Maintain, which, when reasonably interpreted, do not prohibit or interfere with the exercise of rights guaranteed by the Act, or the business justification for which outweighs any potential adverse impact on protected rights
Category 2: Rules Warranting Individualized Scrutiny, which are not obviously lawful or unlawful, and must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis to determine whether the rule would interfere with rights guaranteed by the NLRA, and if so, whether any adverse impact on those rights is outweighed by legitimate justifications.
Category 3: Rules that are Unlawful to Maintain, which are generally unlawful because they would prohibit or limit NLRA-protected conduct, and the adverse impact on the rights guaranteed by the NLRA outweighs any justifications associated with the rule.
Last month, the NLRB Office of General Counsel released its advice memo in Coastal Shower Doors (curiously dated 8/30/2018), which passed judgment on the legality or illegality of 10 different handbook provisions under the Boeing standard.
âObtaining unauthorized confidential information pertaining to clients or employees.â Lawful Category 1 confidentiality rule.
âRude, discourteous or unbusinesslike behavior; creating a disturbance on Company premises or creating discord with clients or fellow employees.â Lawful Category 1 civility/disruptive-behavior policy.
âSoliciting, collecting money, or distributing bills or pamphlets on Company property by employees during non-working time, including rest and meal periods, is not restricted so long as such activity is in good taste.â Lawful Category 1 solicitation/distribution policy.
âUn-business-like conduct, on or off Company premises, which adversely affects the Company services, property, reputation or goodwill in the community, or interferes with work.â Lawful Category 1 on-duty conduct rule, and lawful Category 2 off-duty conduct rule.
â⌠all information gathered by, retained or generated by the Company is confidential. There shall be no disclosure of any confidential information to anyone outside the Company without the appropriate authorization. . . . nothing in this policy is intended to infringe upon employee rights under Section Seven (7) of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).â Unlawful Category 3 rule.
âDisparaging, abusive, profane, or offensive language (materials that would adversely or negatively reflect upon the Company or be contrary to the Company best interests) and any illegal activitiesâincluding piracy, cracking, extortion, blackmail, copyright infringement, and unauthorized access to any computers on the Internet or emailâare forbidden.â Lawful Category 1 civility and on-duty misconduct rule.
âEmployees should refrain from posting derogatory information about the Company on any such sites and proceed with any grievances or complaints through the normal channels.â Unlawful Category 3 rule.
âEmployees may not post any statements, photographs, video, or audio that reasonably could be viewed as disparaging to employees.â Lawful Category 1 civility rule.
âEmployees may not post to any on-line forums ⌠providing any Company telephone number or extension. Do not create a link from any personal blog, website or other social networking site to a Company website without identifying oneself as an employee of the Company.â Part lawful Category 1 rule (as to self-identification) , and part unlawful Category 2 rule (as to telephone number ban).
âThe use of personal cell phones or other mobile devices is prohibited during working hours for personal use, including phone calls, texting and downloading of web content.â Unlawful Category 2 rule.
This memo, which delves into a lot more detail on each of the 10 policies, is required reading for anyone drafting, rewriting or reviewing an employee handbook, and offers great insight into how the NLRB will judge policies under its relatively new Boeing test.
When a client calls me to ask for advice about firing an employee, the first question I always ask is, âWhat does the employeeâs file look like?â
I want to know if there exists a documented history of performance issues to justify the termination, and whether said issues are known and understood by the employee.
I ask these questions for two reasons:
Can the employer objectively prove the misconduct to a judge or jury? Fact-finders want to see documentation, and if itâs lacking, they are more likely to believe that the misconduct was not bad enough to warrant documentation, or worse, that it did not occur. In either case, a judge or jury reaching this conclusion is bad news for an employer defending the termination in a lawsuit.
Surprises cause bad feelings, which lead to lawsuits. If an employee has notice of the reasons causing the discharge, the employee is much less likely to sue. Sandbagged employees become angry ex-employees. You do not want angry ex-employees going to lawyers, especially when you lack the documentation to support the termination.
Jason Anderson, African-American, claimed that GCRTA discriminated against him because of his race by denying him a promotion, issuing excessive discipline and ultimately terminating him. He lost. Why? Because his employer had a long and documented history of his performance and discipline issues.
On April 17, 2012, Anderson received a coaching for being involved in a preventable motor vehicle accident in an unmarked RTA Transit Police Vehicle.
On March 5, 2013, Anderson received a coaching for making disrespectful and unprofessional comments about a fellow officer over the police radio.
On August 14, 2014, Anderson received a coaching for failing to report to work for an overtime shift that Anderson had volunteered to work.
On January 1, 2015, Anderson received a coaching for neglecting his responsibilities as a first responder after witnessing a motor vehicle accident involving an RTA coach. Anderson continued driving rather than stopping to provide assistance to injured passengers.
On August 5, 2016, Anderson received a coaching for allowing a person to ride without proof of payment purchase or validation of fare and failing to take any enforcement action.
On August 5, 2016, Anderson received a First Written Warning for a disruptive, disrespectful and unprofessional outburst directed at Andersonâs supervising officer during the Republican National Convention. He yelled, among other things, âYou disgust me. The very thought of you is disgusting to me and your presence sickens me.â
On January 25, 2017, Anderson received a coaching for failing to address the resistive and disorderly behavior of a fare violater at the Tower City Rapid Station.
On April 12, 2017, Anderson received a coaching for failing to attend to scheduled court appearances.
On May 30, 2017, Anderson received another First Written Reminder for violation of Employee Performance Code for failing to maintain control of a suspect following an investigative detention.
On June 13, 2017, Anderson was charged with multiple misdemeanors following an off-duty incident with his girlfriend during which he allegedly assaulted her while he had his loaded service weapon unsecured in their hotel room.
Based on this history, the court had little difficulty dismissing Andersonâs claims:
Plaintiff was issued three (3) First Written Warnings and (2) two non-disciplinary coachings, each based on a particular circumstance of Plaintiffâs problematic or violative conduct. Plaintiff provides no direct evidence to support a finding that his discipline or termination were made because of his race. Plaintiff also fails to demonstrate how any similarly situated employee received more favorable treatment. The record does however support a finding that GCRTAâs actions against Plaintiff were made for legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons following Plaintiffâs unlawful conduct the morning of May 26, 2017 at the Double Tree Hotel.
This employer gave this employee a very long leash before ultimately terminating his employment. Your leash may not, and likely need not, be this long.
However, no matter the length of your leash, you must ensure it’s documented and communicated to the employee each step of the way. Otherwise, you are asking for a lawsuit and issues in said lawsuit post-termination.
âNot only are you having desk and wall colors and furnishings go into this more serene setting, but youâre having tech companies do this with their products as well,â she said. âTheyâre 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.â
