Tag: strategy

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Welcome to Your Employee Communication Road Map

employee communication roadmap

Road maps are a form of content that will help you navigate key areas of people management. Each road map includes an orientation guide that gives a high-level overview of the subject as well as articles and other resources that provide more detailed directions on how to find your way to success. This road map focuses on the changing terrain of employee communication. The orientation guide below will get you started, and we invite you to see other Workforce road maps by visiting workforce.com/roadmaps.

Effective employee communication is the foundation of a good human resources program. Setting guidelines for how and when to communicate with employees, and what you are going to say sets the tone for the company culture and paves the way for business success. However, most companies — even big global firms — often leave this important element of human resource management to chance.

Only 20 percent of organizations have an internal communications role somewhere within their HR department, according to a 2018 Newsweaver study. In other organizations this role falls to sales and marketing teams, individual managers or no one in particular.

employee communication roadmap

“They just let the communication culture emerge, and assume everyone knows what to do,” said Craig Johnson, partner in Mercer’s Career Business focusing on communication and technology. “That’s not the right approach.”

This “do-it-yourself” attitude leads to mixed messages, missed opportunities to engage, and a negative communication experience when employees are deluged with messages from management that they eventually just tune out, according to Rachel Miller, director of All Things IC, an internal communications consultancy.

“Internal communications should be part of your business strategy and plan,” she said. It ensures that internal messaging is consistent, relevant to the brand, and reflective of the company culture and business goals. “Every message should reflect what the company is trying to achieve.”

If you don’t have a communication plan — or haven’t reviewed yours in years — this road map will help you get started.

PART 1: Make a Plan

Put someone in charge. A communication strategy needs a leader, said Johnson. Putting someone from HR in change of the overarching company communication plan ensures a consistent tone and prevents disparate, confusing or conflicting information bombarding employees from all sides.

Identify stakeholders. Effective employee communication requires planning and buy-in from leaders across the organization. Miller suggests bringing together a cross functional team of executives, HR leaders, managers and employees to write the plan and ensure it aligns with the corporate vision.

Define your goals. A good communication plan links communication strategies to the purpose of the company, its mission and its vision. “Don’t just copy the words off a vision statement,” Miller warned. Really think about what the company is trying to do and how internal communication supports those goals.

Consider your audience. It’s not enough to know what information you want to send, you need to customize it for the reader. If you are announcing a merger, the information you share with front-line workers or IT teams will be far different from the messages you send to VPs and managers. “Understanding your audience is how you get the right information to the right people at the right time so that they can do their jobs,” Miller said.

Choose your channels. Do your employees read emails every day? Visit the company portal? Communicate via Slack? “It’s easy to attach a document to an email, but if three-fourths of your employees won’t click on it, what is the point?” Johnson said. Understanding how, where and when employees want to engage with company content will increase the chance that your messages will get read.

Create a calendar. Large companies may have dozens of vendors sending information to employees about benefits packages, 401(k) plans, insurance offerings, etc. If they all send messages at the same time it creates a tremendous amount of noise, Johnson said. To reduce the deluge, he advises clients to audit all communications — including vendor messages — then eliminate the ones that aren’t necessary, and create a schedule for those that are. “A plan helps you think through what you are sending instead of always reacting.”

He suggests organizing messages into three categories:

  • Annual events: Messages related to benefits enrollment and updates about annual meetings can be scheduled months in advance.
  • Ad hoc scheduled events. These include one-time scheduled events, including information about workshops, announcement about technology upgrades or reminders to complete required training.
  • Ad hoc unplanned events. Leave some space in the calendar for urgent messages that can’t wait.

Remember, Johnson added, “even if emails from vendors are part of the service, if the message isn’t useful it won’t add value.”

PART 2: Start Communicating

Customize each message. Every communication should begin with an overarching message about why this information ties back to the company’s goals and values, Johnson said. For example, if you are hosting a financial wellness workshop, start the announcement with, “As part of our commitment to helping employees achieve a better work-life balance, we are offering this financial wellness workshop to … .’ ”

It shows that the workshop is tied to something broader, Johnson said.

Create a review step. Having someone else review messages before they get sent to the entire company can minimize the risk that grammar errors, inaccurate information and embarrassing gaffes get sent out.

Provide training. HR isn’t the only group sending company communiques. To ensure there is a consistent cadence in all internal messages, provide training to managers and leaders about how to craft messages that align with the business goals.employee communication roadmap

PART 3: Measure Results

Define success. Every communication campaign should have a goal. “That is what makes measurement possible,” Miller said.

Establish key performance indicators. When setting measures, focus on outcomes not output. Counting messages sent or number of people who signed up for a class doesn’t tell you much, Miller said, whereas tracking the results of these programs will. Some useful measures might include proof of changed behavior, improved employee engagement, increased participation in rewards programs or fewer safety incidences. “Outcomes are tangible if you know what you are looking for,” she added. “We don’t do this enough.”

Ask employees what they think. Include questions in employee surveys about the quality of company communication, their top communication issues and/or what could be done better. This can provide evidence of the impact of HR communication efforts and help identify areas that require improvement.

Adapt accordingly. A communication plan is always evolving. Measuring outcomes can help you identify which messages, channels and cadence of content is having the biggest impact, so you can continue to adjust it to meet employees’ needs.

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3 Ways for HR Professionals to Cultivate a Global Business Mindset

In today’s increasingly connected and international marketplace, HR professionals who have a strong understanding of global dynamics are going to have an advantage.

The question I often hear is, “How do I develop that global mindset?”

Many people in HR assume they can’t travel abroad and build valuable global knowledge unless their company sends them on an official work trip overseas. The reality is that you can take that initiative yourself and learn to become an effective global leader — whether you travel abroad regularly or not — and there’s a good chance your employer will take notice if you do.

These three steps will help you get started.

1. Develop Global Relationships Online

No matter what function you’re in within an organization, there’s a global community you can join via Facebook, LinkedIn or a professional association. These online communities are excellent ways to connect with your peers in other parts of the world and start meaningful conversations.

Investing time and energy in global social media groups can both help you with your professional development and expand your understanding of the global scope of your industry — all from your home or office.

2. Travel to an Overseas Conference, Then Hang Out

However, even if you’re active in every available international social media group for your profession, to fully expand your global understanding you’re going to have to travel. I would suggest figuring out how to travel internationally once a year — with an intention to visit a different country every trip. While this may sound daunting at first, there are practical ways to make it happen.

An excellent starting point is to attend a conference in another country or schedule an annual professional development trip overseas, then tack on some time to explore and network after your official business is wrapped.

For example, if you’re traveling to a three-day conference in another country, add a few days and use the connections that you’re making in your online groups to meet with people face-to-face in that city. There’s nothing better than immersing yourself in another culture.

3. Explore International Development Opportunities

A very powerful way to expand your global mindset is to travel with a group of like-minded professionals to really explore a specific country. A good place to begin is Nanda Journeys, a travel company that brings together travelers with purpose and passion to explore the world in a meaningful way — whether it’s nurses to Vietnam, dentists to Ecuador or HR people to Singapore.

An associate and I organize an HR delegation every year to a different country. In recent years, we’ve taken 21 HR-related professionals to Cuba for a week and another dozen to Japan. Last year we traveled with an HR group to the Czech Republic and Hungary. In each location, we meet with government officials, academics and business leaders about HR topics and talent issues.

On one of the trips, an attendee was the head of talent acquisition for a specific business unit inside a global organization, and she said the trip was part of her strategy to take on a more global job. This person was wisely investing in her ability to understand talent acquisition dynamics in other parts of the world.

When she returned her company took note of her willingness to invest her own funds and time in an international learning perspective and put her into a global job within a few months.

If you truly want to understand how things work in other parts of the world and make the investment to start your learning curve, your employer is likely to notice that effort and support your journey. And if they don’t then you have a great foundation to find an organization that’s more conducive to your global learning.

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The New Rules Around Communication to Engage Global Teams

For managers who are building or inheriting teams in today’s fast-paced, digitally enabled business environment, things are far more interesting, productive and creative. But that doesn’t simplify managing a modern global team.

Most enterprise companies now do business overseas, and they employ teams that span many boundaries: cultural, functional, geographic and global teams are becoming more of the norm. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, worldwide employment by U.S. multinational enterprises increased 0.4 percent from 42.1 million in 2015 to 42.3 million workers in 2016 (the latest year available).

The good news is that people typically enjoy working on global teams. Based on data from a 2019 “Global Employee Survey” conducted by my company, professional employer organization Globalization Partners, 72 percent of people said they like to be part of global teams but like them even more when they feel listened to and treated fairly. Also, the flexibility in work locations lets companies hire the best talent anywhere in the world, and the diversity that comes from global teams can be a huge benefit.

But there are challenges that generally fall into three types: communications, logistics and culture. Communication issues are no surprise, but if not tended to can snowball to become serious problems. Also, the same diversity that brings new ideas into the mix and inspires us can cause conflict and disagreement, or misunderstandings and hurt feelings.

What does it take to succeed in managing a global team? It rolls up to two kinds of activities: establishing good systems and establishing trust.

Establishing good systems means following the laws and knowing the customs in the places where your organization does business, taking the time to understand how your team will need to work together and then acquiring the technology to support it. It also means communicating with your team — in a firm, clear and inclusive way — to help them adhere to those systems and use those tools. Here are some best practices.

  • Understand the law. Work with finance, legal and HR teams to be sure you are always operating according to local laws.
  • Set up centralized information sharing. Make sure your team can all access the same files and tools, and establish centralized, cloud-based sharing to save yourself endless headaches and revision nightmares.
  • Establish strong communications methods. Choose your tech wisely and stick to it. Plan for differences in schedules and augment text-based communication (email, instant message, text) with face-to-face meetings whenever possible using online video tools. Difficulty with languages or accents? Try more text-based collaboration.
  • Rotate time zones fairly. Introduce your team to tools like world clocks, which tell you what time it is anywhere in the world. When scheduling meetings be sure not to eat up all your “golden hour overlap” time when everyone is available with meetings, leaving no time for spontaneous collaboration. Also, be aware and respectful of holidays, which of course differ from region to region.
  • Encourage participation and communication. Make sure the processes and tools you put into place encourage people from all backgrounds to have a voice in the conversation. People who connect daily with global team members feel more connected, engaged and involved than those who don’t.

It’s a lot easier to build processes than trust, but you will need both to be successful. In terms of establishing trust, global virtual managers don’t get the benefits of managing by walking around that local managers get, so you’ll have to make up for it in other ways. Here are a few.

  • Do your culture homework. The very act of expressing genuine interest in an individual and their background improves morale and understanding. According to our survey data, more than two-thirds of employees (68 percent) say their companies struggle at least some of the time to align with, be sensitive about and adhere to local laws, practices and cultures.
  • Understand working styles and communications. In addition to understanding cultures, get to know your employees as individuals. Be sensitive to how people from a “dominant” culture within the team may frustrate team members from a region that is less represented or that has differing cultural norms and values.
  • Set goals, communicate, motivate and inspire: This is Manager 101, but with all the unique challenges of managing a dispersed team it can fall by the wayside. Be sure you’re working with those team members, not just on deliverables but also on their development.
  • Know your tech. Be willing to tailor your communication style and medium to the needs of different employees, based on things like time zones and language barriers.
  • Be available. The most successful managers make themselves available across multiple time zones and through different means of technology (IM, Slack, Skype, email, phone and text).
  • Check in frequently and consistently. Global team members who connect daily with their co-workers feel more engaged and involved than those who don’t. Employees who feel like they belong are 93 percent more likely to say they feel optimistic about their company’s’ future.

 As more companies continue to enter the global game, they will need to make it a priority to build and nurture a local team, set them up with compliant, equitable systems, demonstrate an understanding of local culture, and establish communications practices that make them feel valued and heard. If not, they risk losing the much sought-after international employees that can be so hard to find.

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Workplace Civility Shouldn’t Be Something We Have to Legislate

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer

Workplace harassment isn’t illegal unless it is harassment because of some protected characteristic (sex, race, age, religion, national origin, disability, or any other class protected by law).

Generalized workplace bullying or other mistreatment is not illegal unless it falls into one of those categories. Indeed, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly reminded us, workplace discrimination laws are not “a general civility code.”

Just because the federal workplace discrimination laws are not “general civility codes” does not mean that individual states can’t do more with their own laws.

For example, consider Tennessee’s Healthy Workplace Act. It encourages anti-bullying and respectful workplace policies by granting immunity to an employer from lawsuits alleging negligent or intentional infliction of emotional distress if that employer adopts such a policy. Tennessee even provides a Model Abusive Conduct Prevention Policy [pdf].

As originally drafted, Tennessee’s law only applied to public employers. Last week, Tennessee amended it to apply to all employers in that state.

Bravo to Tennessee for taking a stand against abusive bosses and other bullies at work. But also, how sad that we need a law to tell employees to treat each other like, well, like people.

The [Insert Entity Name] is firmly committed to a workplace free from abusive conduct as defined herein. We strive to provide high quality products and services in an atmosphere of respect, collaboration, openness, safety and equality. All employees have the right to be treated with dignity and respect.

The policy prohibits employees from:

  • Repeated verbal abuse in the workplace, including derogatory remarks, insults, and epithets;
  • Verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct of a threatening, intimidating, or humiliating nature in the workplace; or
  • The sabotage or undermining of an employee’s work performance in the workplace.

And it requires supervisors to:

  • Provide a working environment as safe as possible by having preventative measures in place and by dealing immediately with threatening or potentially violent situations;
  • Provide good examples by treating all with courtesy and respect;
  • Ensure that all employees have access to and are aware of the abusive conduct prevention policy and explain the procedures to be followed if a complaint of inappropriate behavior at work is made;
  • Be vigilant for signs of inappropriate behaviors at work through observation and information seeking, and take action to resolve the behavior before it escalates; and
  • Respond promptly, sensitively and confidentially to all situations where abusive behavior is observed or alleged to have occurred.

Such admirable goals. It’s just so sad that we need to legislate them into existence.

So here’s my version of the Healthy Workplace Act (and sorry for the language, but I figure we’re all adults here):

Don’t be an asshole!

The rest will take care of itself.
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Building Healthy Communications With a Remote Workforce

employee communication, hearing, talk, schedules

Over the past two decades, digital technologies have enabled more and more companies to utilize remote and mobile workers.employee communications

Virtual teams are commonplace, and they offer benefits for both the employer and the employee. But developing a healthy virtual culture is vital to ensure dispersed team members feel connected, engaged and valued.

According to a Global Analytics Workplace survey, 4.3 million people work from home at least half of the time, and the telecommuter population has grown 11.7 percent since 2008. Data show that working remotely is desired by employees, and the trend of working off-site isn’t going away.

Remote workers may consist of project teams working together at a remote site, individuals working independently and traveling frequently, such as salespersons, and people who work from home.

Communicating With Remote Teams

With project teams working in different locations, it is important for the leader to travel to the site regularly. Site visits allow the leader to pick up on subtle indicators of culture. Being there is often the only way the leader can assess the office environment: Do team members seem happy? Do they help each other? Do they engage in informal conversations or does everyone have their heads down? Do they feel supported by the company or cast away and forgotten?

By coming to the site, the leader can gauge what actions need to be taken to improve morale and connectedness. But more important, visiting the site lets the remote staff know that they are an important part of the team.

Research indicates the factor that most affects engagement at work is the employee’s relationship with the direct manager, so having a strong connection to the local site manager is more important than connecting with corporate leaders.

Visits from corporate may be rare when companies entrust local leaders with developing a strong culture, especially if the local culture mirrors headquarters. But other companies take an extra step by conducting strategy and vision meetings at remote work sites to help ensure buy-in and strengthen connections.

In his book “Drive,” Daniel Pink points out that people are most engaged when they have autonomy, purpose and mastery at work. Autonomy is being able to work according to your own schedule and the way you like to work, free of micromanagement provided deadlines and goals are met.

Purpose is feeling that the work you do matters and that you are aligned with the values of your organization. Mastery is being able to do high quality work and improve every day. Managers can keep remote workers engaged by providing clear goals so they know what success looks like, letting them know what quality is expected, and communicating with them frequently to learn what they care about and explain how their work aligns with the company’s goals.

Communicating With Individuals Working Remotely

Compared to on-site teams, more effort is required to make individuals working remotely feel connected. They are easily overlooked, whether intentionally or not.

An organization, for example, can address the “out of sight, out of mind” problem during video conference calls by placing large photos of remote team members in chairs around the table so everyone in the meeting room can remember their remote colleagues.

Another tip for including remote workers in virtual meetings is to remember to send the agenda and other information well in advance rather than handing out materials in the meeting and realizing remote workers don’t have them. This is also a good practice if you have introverts in the group who like to prepare and think about the topic ahead of time.

Another good practice is to have a meeting facilitator who can make sure remote workers get a chance to speak. It can be hard to know when to enter a conversation when you are on video or on the telephone; a facilitator can look for openings to bring in remote participants.

When it comes to people working from home, it’s vital to communicate standards and expectations. Do you expect them to be online and available during certain hours? Do you only care that the job gets done and not how long they are at their desks?

Setting clear expectations makes everyone know the boundaries and lessens the need to “check-up” on remote workers. When people feel trusted they tend to live up to expectations.

If you manage remote workers, treat them as you would local staff. Make time for conversations, both work related and personal. Keep them aware of changes going on at headquarters and involve them in local activities such as charity events.

Because remote workers may not want to “bother” you constantly with minor concerns and comments, they may save them up until a later time. By then, however, issues may have been forgotten or may have festered and dealing with them may take longer than if they had been handled in the moment.

You may need to call on remote workers frequently to give them the opportunity to ask any questions and offer comments. Some managers post office hours when staff can drop in or call in; others establish set times each day for remote team leaders to check-in.

Providing feedback, both appreciative and developmental, is especially important for remote workers to help them know they are not toiling away in a forgotten backwater. Being aware of their career goals is also important; often remote workers must rely on their managers to keep them apprised of advancement opportunities within the organization.

With a little forethought, remote workers can feel appreciated as valuable members of your team.

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Poor Internal Communication Can Be a Costly Mistake for Businesses

employee communications

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

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

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

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

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

Three Internal Communication Problems to Avoid

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A Leader’s Guide to Effective Communication Under Pressure

employee communication co-worker

How can a manager become measurably more effective?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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H-1B Visa Challenges: Utilizing AI to Close Your Talent Gap

Immigration reform and H1B visa programs

The H-1B visa approval rate dropped nearly 30 percent from 2016 to 2017, challenging employers and recruiters to find the right talent. Advanced technology, like artificial intelligence, can help.

Immigration reform and H1B visa programs

Many organizations, especially those in technology, higher education and health-related industries increasingly depend on highly skilled non-U.S. candidates to fill positions left vacant due to a lack of experienced or interested domestic workers. A survey by Envoy Global, an immigration services firm, found 59 percent of companies planned to hire more foreign employees at their U.S. offices in 2018, which is up from 50 percent in 2017 and considerably higher than the 34 percent in 2016.

The reason firms are looking abroad: The U.S. is facing a significant skills gap, especially in STEM-related fields. Generational and technological shifts have created new roles, like mobile developers and programmers, that require significantly higher levels of technical or digital knowledge. Other countries tend to have higher quality math and science programs, and this rigorous education produces attractive candidates to fill the hundreds of thousands of new jobs across the United States.

The proposed federal changes to H-1B visa issuance, which include tightening qualification requirements, such as increasing minimum annual salaries, reducing the three-year duration, implementing more rigorous interview processes and limiting visas for family members and more, will make it even harder for workers to get approval to work here in the U.S. In an already extremely tight labor market, these changes add complications for hiring teams to be effective in their chase for talent. Few organizations are immune to the pressures of the H-1B crackdown. According to Envoy Global, 85 percent of U.S. employers surveyed say they have already felt impacts of the shifting immigration system.

Context Around the H-1B Challenge

Having worked across a variety of industries in my career, at privately held companies where visa sponsorship was not common as well as at Fortune 500 companies with and without visa sponsorship programs, I’ve found the immigration challenge is twofold. First, companies often don’t have the infrastructure and budget to support individuals with H-1B visas, since acquiring sponsorship is a long and capital-intensive process that requires involvement from outside immigration counsel. Second, the visa quota set by the government tends to run out so quickly that unless a company proactively applies for a certain number of visas a year in advance, it is left out of the game entirely.

The other element to the H-1B issue that companies must, but often don’t, think about is the well-being of the future employee. When a candidate emigrates to the U.S. to take the job, they must relocate, often with their families, which costs money and requires navigating cultural barriers.

Hiring organizations must decide if they will prepare these individuals with cultural training and help them find communities and schools for their children or leave them to their own devices. Figuring out where to help foreign workers and where to draw the line is never easy as there’s a natural inclination to help; providing support often takes a lot of time and effort from the organization.

U.S. companies are also facing geographic difficulties in sourcing talent. For hiring managers, dealing with restrictions of a candidate’s citizenship reduces the likelihood of finding the best person for the job. It may be that the perfect coding guru or IT specialist is not an American and needs sponsorship to work in the United States.

With tightening qualifications for H-1B visas, recruiting and attracting the right talent gets more difficult, and in some cases is seemingly impossible. Even when looking inside the U.S., IT jobs are easier to fill in metropolitan regions like New York and Silicon Valley. Companies based outside of major urban center locations are having a hard time attracting the talent they need without large hiring budgets and third party recruiting firms with high retainers to help fill those jobs.

Making concessions on skill requirements or a candidate’s experience based on low talent availability is never ideal. When applied on a larger scale and for contract or short-term roles, this brings a completely new set of challenges for hiring teams.

Some of these challenges include higher budgets and increased bids to reach the right level of talent; an inability to fill projects and requisitions quickly; and having to delay projects because the right domestic workers don’t exist or are hard to attract.

It’s also important to note that an HR team’s regular responsibilities don’t stop during the recruiting process, which can lead to either putting projects on hold due to constrained resources, or stretching employees too thin as the company tries to cover the work, which doesn’t create a positive work environment.

When restricted to the U.S. labor market, it can take a long time for companies to find qualified candidates. There have been many times in my career where my team has had to repost job openings several times before we found someone to fill the position.

Typically, teams can fill most positions within 90 days, but STEM roles can take up to six months or longer. In these cases, settling for a candidate that doesn’t have all the ideal capabilities, education and experience is unfortunately common because there’s a dire need to fill the role.

How AI Can Help

The tightening labor market will continue as unemployment rates hit all-time lows, coupled with the proposed H-1B rules. Human resources, consulting and professional services, IT, engineering, management, clerical and administrative gigs are all increasingly being sourced from outside the United States and the changes would affect these areas the most.

Being proactive and staying on top of legislation changes to understand how they impact the organization is the minimum baseline for success, as it helps companies proactively plan their workforce. However, this still doesn’t solve for filling roles that become vacant unexpectedly — so organizations also need a hiring strategy that utilizes technology and contingent labor to fill critical worker voids.

For example, AI mechanisms are aiding hiring managers in bringing in the right talent by making it easier to find, filter, interview and vet candidates on a variety of hard and soft skills. The matching capabilities bridge the skills gap by helping teams find domestic workers when H-1B visa rules make it tough to source abroad. The depth and breadth of candidate screening enabled by AI can help hiring teams find previously considered “nonexistent” employees and go beyond a candidate’s resume to determine if they are the right person for the job.

HR can now prioritize their time on reviewing the candidates that AI identifies, not spending countless hours trying to find the right candidates, sort through scrambled resumes and CVs, or deal with visa paperwork and other regulatory complexities. Not only will they be able to sort through resumes faster, but also get better-qualified candidates to interview more quickly, ultimately gaining an edge in the race for global talent.

Hiring departments across the nation are finding it challenging to uncover the right talent to bridge the growing STEM skills gap as attracting and supporting candidates from abroad is exponentially more expensive and harder than ever before. For U.S. organizations, not being able to find, attract and retain the right workers, especially those from abroad, to fill highly skilled or specialized roles stifles innovation and opportunity. Hiring teams at companies across all industries need to follow the H-1B visa changes, leverage emerging technologies and understand how to attract and acquire the talent they need — at the right cost — regardless of candidates’ country of origin.

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Q&A With Gary Pisano: How Managerial Leadership Drives Innovation

Author Gary Pisano
Author Gary Pisano

Over his three-decade career, Gary Pisano has been a researcher and consultant to many of the world’s largest corporations in various industries from aerospace to nutrition. He is a Harry E. Figgie professor of business administration at Harvard Business School where he has been a member of the faculty since 1988. Pisano’s extensive experience has made him one of the leading experts in management, innovation and competitive strategy. In his new book, “Creative Construction: The DNA of Sustained Innovation,” Pisano examines how businesses of all sizes, not just plucky startups, can become transformative innovators. Workforce Editorial Associate Bethany Tomasian recently caught up with Pisano.

Workforce: When did you recognize the need for leadership-oriented innovation strategies?

Gary P. Pisano: I think it goes back very early in my career working with companies, consulting for them and case writing. I saw that without the right leadership to shape the innovation process, getting the strategy and building the right culture just doesn’t happen. I kept coming across situations with some organizations where you wouldn’t see progress over time. There was no one really taking the ball and running with it to provide that energy. Where there was lack of leadership, I would see there was a lack of progress.

Then there were companies where I would see a leader take ownership and you’d see results. So that crystalized for me that leadership plays a central role in driving innovation. I set out to write the book to give leaders a guide in how to do it.

Workforce: What is the relationship between necessity and competition as driving forces for innovation?

Pisano: I think competition is critical for driving innovation. It provides the motive. I don’t think we see a lot of innovation in sectors of the economy where there is little competition because of there is a lack of incentive. If you look at any of these companies such as Amazon, Apple and Google, there’s a lot of competition going on there between these very techy companies. They’re always changing and they can’t sit still. Competition plays an incredibly important role in spawning innovation and spawning a lot of a good economic outcomes. I’m speaking here as someone trained in economics, so I tend to feel in favor of competition to drive good outcomes in general. Competition does a lot more than innovation, too. It drives better prices and efficiency.

I think competition is one of the reasons companies get interested in innovating, particularly companies whose competitive space has suddenly gotten more intense. They might have had a period where they could get away with not being very innovative and then their space starts to change. That’s when they say, “OK, we need to reenergize this innovation muscle again.”

I’ve worked at a number of those companies where it has been some 20 to 30 years since they’ve been innovative and they got away with it because their markets were only moderately competitive. When the competition kicked up and prices began to erode, they saw they couldn’t generate the margins they needed to sustain themselves without innovation.

Workforce: In an era of nearly exponential technological growth, what defines innovation?

Pisano: We do think about innovation too much as being about the technology change but it’s not always technology. There is a lot of business model change that has very little to do with technology. Technology is not the magic; the magic is their business model.

Think about discount airline carriers, somebody like Ryanair and easyJet in Europe. They all use the same planes and airports as everyone else and they have to follow the same regulations as everyone else. Yet, the story there isn’t about technology; it’s about creating a completely new business model. I think we see a lot of that. There is a lot of business model innovation that doesn’t necessarily have to do with high technology.

Workforce: How can companies stay focused on small-scale innovation rather than becoming distracted by whiz-bang innovative strategies?

Pisano: I think it’s very easy to get inebriated by technology today. To some, it’s all about the technology and pushing the technological frontier. I think you have to go back to letting value become your compass and go back to what your competitive position is. This can help you figure out what you need and what is going to drive innovation. Sometimes that is going to be functionality that is created by technology but sometimes it could be a different kind of service offering, or business model.

Take men’s shaving products. Making a razor blade sharper using ever more sophisticated technology is probably not the value driver, but convenience is something different. Think about companies like Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s, which have online models that provide convenient access to the product. This goes back to the source of value and what customers would be willing to pay for. That’s the acid test of value.

Workforce: Are there examples of established companies that are leading in innovative strategies?

Pisano: I think there are many of them across all sectors of the economy in different ways. Innovation is in almost every sector. You see it in apparel with people buying clothing online. The whole retail sector is being turned on its head, so we see a lot of innovation there as well. If you are going to survive you need to innovate.

There is a lot interesting stuff in the auto industry today. People talk about the auto companies as being dinosaurs, but they are doing a lot of innovation on the technological side. They are doing a lot of advancement around alternative fuel and most of them have some major programs there. They are also experimenting with new business models such as ride sharing. Sometimes it’s the companies that we don’t think of as innovative. When people think of innovative auto companies everyone thinks of Tesla. There are some major auto companies that we haven’t normally thought of as these bastions of innovation that are doing fascinating things.

There are also profound changes going on technologically in the drug industry. These aren’t business model innovations per se, although many pharmaceutical companies are experimenting with new business models. There are scientific changes happening that these companies are actively involved with and investing in. It’s not just startups that are innovating, there are large, established companies.

Every company, I don’t care who you are, there is an opportunity to be an innovator. Some might say, “Innovation doesn’t apply to us. We can do what we have been doing, just do it a little better.” I don’t think that there are many sectors of the economy where that is true anymore. Particularly in the U.S. economy, where we are facing global competition. That’s going to be hard to compete on.

Workforce: As climate change remains an ever-encroaching threat to the environment, how can more companies gear strategies toward greener innovations?

Pisano: I think companies are looking very carefully at their incentives to do it. This is where government policy matters because policies often create the incentive for companies to innovate. Tax policies and other regulations can tilt the field, so you will see that kind of innovation. A lot of companies are waiting and watching. Auto companies certainly see themselves on the forefront of green innovation as they invest heavily in alternative fuel sources. I think that there are a lot of things that every company can do in terms of climate concern.

Think about plastic. Plastic is atrocious for the environment and it’s all over the place. Just thinking about changing materials doesn’t require massive innovation. You can see how much waste there is every day, especially in packaging. A lot of the stuff you buy online that is shipped to your house is loaded with plastic and Styrofoam. None of us want our stuff to be broken but there is an awful amount of waste just in packaging. We don’t think of packaging as this big innovation opportunity but figuring out ways to cushion items without using so much plastic would be amazing.

I think regardless of what business you’re in, you could be thinking about fitting green innovation into your business model. This can be done by just improving efficiency. Even incremental improvements in process efficiency, where you use less energy, can accumulate quite a big effect.

Again, we can see this in the auto industry where cars have become more efficient. We now have smaller cars with much cleaner and more powerful engines. That innovation was largely driven by change in fuel and clean air standards. This is an example of how government policy matters when it comes to driving the incentive for companies to pursue climate-conscious innovation.

There are tons of opportunities for innovation that help the climate. I do think companies need polices that provide those incentives. I would tell companies to have a clear strategy of how you are adding climate change as a priority into your innovation portfolio. Ask yourself how this is going to create value and think about your broader competitive advantage.

Workforce: Any final takeaways for companies that are thinking about approaching innovation?

Pisano: Take your time. There is no magic bullet for these kinds of strategies. I wish I could offer you three easy steps but if innovation were easy then it wouldn’t be a source of competitive advantage. If it were easy, then it wouldn’t be valuable.

It is hard to build an organization that is capable of innovating and doing it over and over again. If you can do that, then your organization has a fantastic competitive advantage.

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Focus on Employee Work Passion, Not Employee Engagement

employee work passion

Every day the spirits of millions of people die at the front door of their workplace.employee work passion

There is an epidemic of workers who are uninterested and disengaged from the work they do, and the cost to the U.S. economy has been pegged at more than $300 billion annually. According to a recent survey from Deloitte, only 20 percent of people say they are truly passionate about their work. Gallup surveys show that nearly 70 percent of the workforce is not engaged, with an estimated 23 million “actively disengaged.” These employees have quit and stayed — they show up for work but do the bare minimum to get by, don’t put in any extra effort to care for customers and are a drain on organizational resources and productivity.

On the trust front, the findings are just as stark. Studies show that 50 percent of employees who distrust their senior leaders are considering leaving the organization, with 62 percent reporting that low trust causes unreasonable levels of stress. According to workplace consultancy Tolero Solutions, 45 percent of employees say lack of trust in leadership is the biggest issue impacting work performance.

Building and sustaining high levels of engagement is a critical competency for today’s leaders. In our technology-fueled, digitally connected world where new products, competitors and business models seem to emerge overnight, one of the few competitive advantages an organization possesses is its people. The level of skill, talent, creativity, innovation and passion in the workforce of an organization can mean the difference between mediocre and exceptional results.

Focusing solely on engagement is not enough to get us there. We must shift the focus from engagement to the creation of a high-trust culture where employees are passionate about their work.

From Employee Engagement to Employee Work Passion

Employee engagement is a broad and complex problem that organizations spend $720 million a year trying to solve, according to a Bersin & Associates report. Yet when it comes to engagement there isn’t even a commonly accepted definition of the term. Descriptions vary widely, with elements that include commitment, goal alignment, enjoyment and performance, to name a few.

We make a few critical distinctions between the concepts of engagement and employee work passion.

First, employee work passion is supported by a theory and model that explain how work passion is formed. We believe employee work passion is better understood by considering the influence of research on social cognition, appraisal theory, job commitment and organizational commitment. Therefore, it is a different and more expansive concept than engagement.

Second, the combination of relationship, organizational, and job factors influence an individual’s level of work passion. Whereas engagement is often linked to job satisfaction, employee work passion considers the cognitive and affective appraisals people make when assessing their environment and the meaning they ascribe to their thoughts and feelings.

Employee Work PassionThird, the literature on engagement usually describes three states of engagement: engaged, disengaged, and actively disengaged. This three-part description lacks a positive upper range of active engagement — distinguished by the concept of employee work passion, this passionate commitment comes from repeated involvement in self-defining activities. Employee work passion goes beyond simple engagement in various work activities to the incorporation of self-defining activities that become a central feature in an employee’s identity.

Creating Employee Work Passion

To understand how employee work passion occurs, one must consider the process an individual goes through when deciding to employ a specific behavior. As stated earlier, much of the research on engagement does not take the full scope of this process into account. Through deeper exploration of the literature, we began to incorporate significant ideas found in cognitive psychology.

Employee choices are driven by the understanding of how the experience or event being appraised impacts well-being. Since people are meaning-oriented and meaning-creating, they are constantly reacting (cognitively and affectively) to their environment to form judgments (appraisals) about how their well-being is affected by environmental events.

Cognition and affect go hand in hand, happening almost simultaneously, over and over, as individuals make sense of a situation. The conclusions they reach about what is happening, what it means to them, how it will affect them, how they feel about that, what they intend to do, and — finally — what they actually do, are all filtered through the lens of who they are.

The model suggests that the appraisal process begins with an assessment of the organizational, job and relationship factors. During the appraisal process, an employee makes sense of how they feel about the extent to which the 12 factors are present in the work environment.

There are multiple steps in the appraisal process. First, individuals make cognitive (thinking) and affective (feeling) judgments of their environment: What do I think about what’s happening around me and how does it make me feel.

Next, an employee’s passion moderates, or shapes, those appraisals into intended behaviors. Passion can be categorized in two ways: obsessive and harmonious.

Obsessive passion can be described as activity individuals engage in because they “have to,” “must do,” or “needs to,” often to their own detriment (such as addiction, compulsiveness, etc.).

Harmonious passion are those activities that could be described as “gets to,” “wants to,” or “can’t wait to” perform. Harmonious passion is exhibited when people lose themselves in the flow of an activity. The final step of the appraisal process occurs when individuals form conscious intentions to behave in certain ways, as measured through the five intentions. These intentions ultimately lead to either positive or negative job and organizational behaviors.

Trust’s Role in Employee Work Passion

High levels of trust between leaders and employees foster engagement and vitality in an organization’s culture. The 2017 “Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement” report from the Society for Human Resource Management showed the top two contributors to employee satisfaction were respectful treatment of all employees at all levels (65 percent) and trust between employees and senior management (61 percent).

Studies have shown that committed and engaged employees who trust their leaders perform 20 percent better and are 87 percent less likely to leave the organization, and that high-trust organizations experience 50 percent less turnover than low-trust organizations. Despite the amount of evidence pointing to the personal and organizational benefits of having a high-trust culture, however, many organizations lack an intentional approach to building trust.

Trust doesn’t come easy and it doesn’t happen by accident. One challenge in building trust is that it is based on perceptions — one person’s idea of what trust looks like in a relationship can be different from another’s. So, it is critically important for leaders and organizations to establish a shared definition for and understanding of trust.Employee Work Passion

A leader’s trustworthiness is composed of four elements that we’ve captured in the ABCD Trust Model. Leaders are trustworthy when they are:

Able: Able leaders have the expertise, training, and qualifications to perform well in their roles. They also have a track record of success as they demonstrate the ability to consistently achieve goals. Able leaders are skilled at facilitating work getting done in the organization. They develop credible project plans, systems and processes that help team members accomplish their goals.

Believable: A believable leader acts with integrity by dealing with people in an honest fashion; e.g., keeping promises, not lying or stretching the truth, not gossiping, etc. Believable leaders have a clear set of values. They communicate these values to their direct reports and use them consistently as a model for their behavior: They walk the talk. Finally, treating people fairly and equitably is a key characteristic of a believable leader. They are attuned to the dynamics of distributive and procedural fairness (see sidebar) and uphold those principles in the workplace.

Connected: Connected leaders show care and concern for people, which builds trust and helps create an engaging work environment. Leaders can create a sense of connection by openly sharing information about themselves, the organization and by trusting employees to use that information responsibly. Taking an interest in people as individuals, not nameless workers, shows that these leaders value and respect their team members. Recognition is a vital component of being a connected leader and praising and rewarding employees’ contributions builds trust and goodwill.

Dependable: Being dependable and maintaining reliability is the fourth element of trustworthiness. One of the quickest ways leaders erode trust is by not following through on commitments. Conversely, leaders who do what they say they are going to do earn a reputation of being consistent and trustworthy. Maintaining reliability requires leaders to be organized so that they can follow through on commitments, be on time for appointments and meetings, and get back to people in a timely fashion. Dependable leaders also hold themselves and others accountable for following through on commitments and taking responsibility for their work.

The trust one places in a leader comes in two forms: cognitive trust and affective trust. In relation to the ABCD Trust Model, cognitive trust is based on the confidence one has that a leader is able and dependable. This is trust from the head, where rational thought and experience rule. Affective trust, or trust from the heart, is formed by emotional closeness, empathy or friendship. It aligns with “Believable” and “Connected” in the ABCD Trust Model. Our research has shown a large degree of correlation between trust (cognitive and affective combined) and all five work intentions.

Next Step for Leaders

When looking to create a culture where trust flourishes and employees are passionately committed to their work, leaders should examine how the ABCDs of trust are modeled in everyday behaviors, and the extent to which the 12 factors of employee work passion are present. Leaders should ask themselves the following questions:

Does our culture allow individuals to find meaning in their work, their roles and our organization’s purpose?

Are policies, procedures, benefits and compensation transparent and equitably applied to all?

Does our organization provide growth opportunities? Do our feedback mechanisms allow individuals to improve?

Do individuals understand what is expected of them and have a reasonable amount of autonomy when engaging in projects and tasks? Does our organization provide opportunities for individuals to collaborate with others?

Are job roles balanced and reasonable, with enough variety to challenge people perform at optimal levels?

Does our organization have an intentional approach to building trust? And do leaders exhibit the ABCDs of trust in their relationships?

While it may seem daunting to address and incorporate the ABCDs of trust and the 12 factors of employee work passion into the workplace, organizations that do so will be rewarded by trustworthy and passionate employees dedicated to creating devoted customers, achieving sustainable growth and increasing profits for the organization.