Category: Workplace Culture

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4 tips for using technology to improve your internal communications strategy

How to use technology in your internal communications strategy

Summary

  • Strong internal communications help employees feel connected and engaged with company leadership.

  • Digital workplace communications are evolving — employees prefer strategies and platforms that help them collaborate with their coworkers and stay up-to-date with scheduling needs.

  • It’s possible to overwhelm your workers with too many pings and updates. Use technology efficiently in your internal comms plan.

An effective internal communications strategy is to your employees like a lighthouse in the middle of a storm: a beacon of light that they can follow even in the midst of unexpected obstacles and turbulence. They can stay focused on the task at hand to overcome any challenges and arrive safely back at port — or, in your company’s case, to seamlessly reach the goals you collectively set out to achieve.

But fragmented communications and radio silence from leadership can make employees feel lost and uninformed. They might not be prepared to face challenges head-on and effectively meet business needs. And, most importantly, they might lack the confidence and the desire to keep pushing forward if they feel like they’re not getting clear directions from company leadership. One study found that 85% of employees say they’re most motivated in their roles when management offers regular updates on company news.

Internal communication mistakes can also lead to low morale, reduced productivity, and increased employee turnover. If you’re using outdated communication methods or ignoring employee feedback about the way your organization communicates, you might already be suffering these consequences. 

And if you don’t have an internal communications plan at all, you’ll want to get one in place so your workers can receive regular insights from your senior management team, understand the company mission and goals, and send dynamic updates about their own availability. Because technology is the linchpin of internal comms in today’s digital-first working world, you’ll need to make sure you’re implementing these tools in your employee communication.

1. Offer a variety of communications channels

Some employees may feel comfortable asking questions over the phone or via a messaging tool, but others prefer to communicate face-to-face. The same truth holds for workplace conversations, from asking about your PTO or health care benefits to reporting harassment. Don’t assume that “young people” prefer digital communication and “older people” prefer in-person conversations. Employees don’t fit into cliched stereotypes like that, and some will need to have in-person conversations about certain topics. 

Still, digital, mobile-enabled communication is one of the key tools to keep an organization’s strategy from being outdated. For instance, in today’s hybrid, digital-first work environments, many employees prefer collaborative platforms to support their communication goals and needs. At least one-third of business users would choose Slack or Microsoft Teams over a traditional channel like email. And for hourly workers, dynamic, real-time communication is often needed to stay up-to-date on schedules and shift openings.

Give employees options, and make sure that one of the options is a communication tool that allows employees an easy, convenient way to reach out privately to their employer — and their teammates — at any time. Your communication tools should make it easy for workers to communicate with each other and their managers about shift changes, availability, task management, and other updates.

2. Consider how you will communicate in response to a crisis

Whether a natural disaster, PR mishap, or global pandemic, crises are a time when employers especially need an action plan to stay on top of internal communications. 

For example, with natural disasters like winter storms and hurricanes — which may disrupt an employee’s commute or comfort level of going into work at all — organizations can communicate with employees through corporate social media channels, mobile communication platforms, or even simple phone trees to keep everyone in the loop. For employees who have to work remotely following the aftermath of a storm or other crisis, workplace communication that keeps them updated on the facts and that shows sympathy for the struggles they’re going through will be appreciated. That’s important for managing your company culture through difficult times.

This is another situation in which internal communication tools will benefit employers and employees. Managers can give employees time-sensitive updates as soon as possible — and post them more frequently. Employees can reach out to their managers to ask about projects they’re working on and shifts they want to pick up to stay informed about quickly changing priorities and plans. 

It’s also really key to offer your workers the opportunity to give feedback about your crisis communications plan. Harvard Business Review writes, “Organizational leaders must communicate the channels available to offer feedback and should emphasize how much they care about hearing from employees at all levels.” Consider creating an anonymous channel for employees to leave their thoughts and make it clear that they can reach out to HR and their supervisor if they want to talk.

3. Keep remote teams engaged

Of course, even outside of pandemics or blizzards, it’s commonplace for employees to work remotely or hybrid. And more effort to communicate is required to help remote workers feel connected with the rest of the team. 

According to previous Workforce coverage, people are most engaged when their jobs provide them with a sense of autonomy, purpose, and mastery. Autonomy means they are able to work according to their own schedule and the way they like to work. There’s no micromanagement, provided deadlines and key performance indicators (KPIs) are met. Purpose means feeling that the work they do matters and that they’re aligned with the values of the organization. Mastery means performing high-quality work and improving every day.

This is a good thing for managers. They don’t need to overdo their digital communication with remote workers, lest they micromanage. Rather, what managers can do to engage remote workers is let them know what is expected and provide them with clear initiatives and timelines so they know what success looks like. Clear, direct communication is appreciated in this case, and an easy-to-use digital solution is an effective way to keep these conversations with remote workers going. 

4. Watch out for digital overload 

Employees must manage a steady stream of virtual messages, from emails to instant messages and pings from project management and shift scheduling apps. It’s easy to get bogged down by this never-ending flood of information. As helpful as technology can be in a good internal communications strategy, the possibility of overdoing it to the point where employees can’t check all their messages in a timely manner is very real.

Employees can work on their time management skills. That might mean shutting down their email or messaging apps while they work on time-consuming tasks to avoid getting distracted by a deluge of notifications. You could also create some type of request system so that people know when to come to them with tasks (or when notifications are muted for deep work), how much notice they need, and a timeframe to complete it. Your internal communication processes should be designed to inspire deeper collaboration and clear up basic questions instead of creating more.

Employers, meanwhile, can address this information overload by being strategic about how they share information and company announcements. Coordinating schedules and plans, sending out announcements, and receiving automatic updates on shift tasks can all be done through one workforce management platform. 

Keep messages brief by finding a digital tool that eliminates manual scheduling via phone calls and texts. Most importantly, listen to employee feedback if communication processes are getting overwhelming.

Take a collaborative approach to your corporate communications

It might seem natural to take a top-down approach to your internal communications strategy, dishing out company-wide news to employees in a weekly newsletter and soliciting feedback only in a quarterly survey. But true communication is a two-way street. As much as your employees need to hear from leadership about business goals, direction, and updates, company leaders should keep up to date with employees. 

What are their career aspirations? Are individuals and departments on track to reach business objectives? An effective IC strategy, powered by collaborative tools and practices, will enable you to listen to employees on key issues and measure their feedback. Together, you can work towards company goals, improve processes, and raise productivity.

Whether you have a mostly remote workforce or a storefront full of shift workers, Workforce.com can help. Its employee communications feature allows managers to share company or team announcements, send important documents, and give feedback to employees — all with the convenience of using your own mobile device.

Book a call today to find out more about how you can boost your workforce’s internal communication strategy.

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7 ways to improve employee relations management (2023)

Summary

  • Effective employee relations management leads to a happier and more productive workforce.

  • Communication, conflict management, regular feedback, familiarity with company values, career development, flexibility, and work-life balance are all ways to improve relations management.

  • Fostering a better work-life balance among your staff is important for maintaining their physical and psychological well-being.

Employee relations management refers to the work done by employers and HR professionals to maintain a positive and fruitful relationship with their team members. The goal is to maintain a positive and productive work environment in which everyone contributes toward achieving organizational goals while growing personally and professionally. 

Effectively managing employee relations has become even more important over the past few years as recent events have put a lot of strain on employer-employee relations in both large and small businesses. 

  • The COVID-19 pandemic created a sudden shift toward hybrid and remote work that has forced many human resources teams to figure out new ways to stay connected with their workforce without geographic proximity. 
  • The Great Resignation saw employees leaving their jobs in search of better quality of life and more rewarding work experiences. 
  • There have been mass layoffs as companies struggle to adapt to a changing economy as a result of inflation, war, and an impending recession. 

Having an effective employee relations strategy brings about a number of benefits: 

  • Employee buy-in of company goals: Employees feel a stronger connection to the company culture and take ownership of the organization’s shared goals and objectives. 
  • Employee engagement: A positive relationship between the HR department and staff increases employee engagement, which, in turn, leads to better motivation, initiative, and employee performance.  
  • Employee retention: Positive employee relations improve job satisfaction, making it more likely that your employees will want to stick around. 

1. Prioritize effective communication

Honest and open communication is the foundation of any healthy relationship, and the same goes for building good employee relations. Effective communication creates connections between employees and management, creating an environment where everyone’s needs are taken into consideration. 

Don’t simply opt for a wishy-washy “open door policy” (every employee’s nightmare). Make a point of scheduling check-ins with employees and even entire teams. This reduces the chances of negative situations in the workplace spiraling out of control.

Effective communication is vital in developing an internal workflow that brings out the best in all parties, making it easier for everyone to produce good work. There should be empathy and understanding of everyone’s experiences and needs across the board, from company ownership and HR managers to the rest of the team. 

2. Familiarize everyone with the organization’s mission and vision

Your mission and vision shouldn’t just be something new employees read on a slide during their onboarding and then forget about. It is important that they are ingrained in the everyday activities of your company and explained in your employee handbook. 

Share and discuss your company values on a regular basis to ensure that everyone is on the same page. Your team needs to understand how their work is directly linked to the implementation and achievement of the company’s goals and strategic vision. 

Any changes in the organization’s vision, mission, or broader policies should be communicated clearly and in a timely manner. This fosters a culture of transparency and continues to reinforce open communication across the team. 

3. Give and encourage regular feedback

Giving and receiving constructive feedback is a crucial part of developing effective employee relations. Employees must be encouraged to give feedback about their work environment. They must also regularly receive feedback and appreciation for the work they’re doing.

Your employees are 2.7 times more likely to be engaged if they believe that they will be recognized for their work. In an SHRM survey, HR professionals agreed that implementing recognition activities increases employee retention and helps to attract new hires. 

Ask your employees for regular feedback on how they feel about work and the direction the company is moving in and if they have any suggestions for improvements. This could be done in a number of ways, such as in focus groups, anonymous surveys, or even entry and exit surveys. 

You can also collect and provide feedback after every workday using Workforce.com’s shift feedback tool. 

When an employee has done a good job, it is important to show recognition and appreciation. The type of appreciation you give an employee depends on your company’s situation as well as that specific employee’s preference. Your show of appreciation could be public through employee recognition software, a weekly newsletter, or even a LinkedIn recommendation. You can also award a job well done with incentives such as bonuses or extra time off, with team building activities, or by offering stipends for health and well-being initiatives. 

4. Train leaders in conflict management

Conflict in the workplace is inevitable from time to time. That is why it’s important for HR teams and leaders to know how to effectively resolve disputes and issues between team members when they arise. 

  • Keep an eye out for early signs of a conflict that will help you attend to it before it escalates. Such signs include a drop in work quality, employees taking an unusually high number of sick days, or requests to change teams. 
  • Communicate with each party and take the time to understand what happened but also why it happened. 
  • Be careful about the way you frame your questions. Avoid framing questions in a way that places the blame on one party or the other. So instead of saying, “Why did you shout at X during service yesterday?” you can ask, “Can you tell me more about what happened between you and X yesterday?”
  • Make final decisions based on company values and procedures. This is important in situations where you can’t find a solution that will make all parties happy. It is also important to document the case and the resolution, along with an explanation of why you made the decision you did. It is also important to communicate the reasons behind this decision to all parties and to be open to hearing concerns.

Conflict resolution is an important and tricky part of employee management, but if done objectively and systematically, it will lead to more effective results. 

5. Take an active role in your employees’ career development

Taking an active interest and role in your team’s career development is a sure way to improve employee satisfaction and strengthen employee relations. Expanding your workforce’s professional horizons also means that they will be better trained and better equipped to deal with difficult situations, such as unplanned, understaffed shifts. 

There are a number of ways you can do this. You can offer mentoring programs, provide on-the-job opportunities to work shifts they don’t normally work, reimburse tuition fees for courses, or send them to conferences. 

One of the most practical ways to develop employees is to assess, track, and manage their skills. Explicitly outlining and tracking the skills employees need to improve helps them level up their productivity, and in the long run, their careers. 

6. Offer more flexibility 

Flexibility at work is becoming increasingly important for employees today. Studies show that workplace flexibility leads to higher productivity and more connectivity to the workplace culture. It is also a great way to reduce employee absenteeism. In shift-based work, flexibility is best achieved through collaborative scheduling. 

Collaborative scheduling comes in two forms – shift bids and shift swaps. Shift bids are when managers publish a number of shifts that need to be filled, and employees can bid for the ones they want. Shift swaps allow employees to request replacements on an ad hoc basis, subject to a manager’s sign-off.

Offering flexibility among shift workers can get complicated and messy if you’re still using spreadsheets and decentralized communication. Luckily, cloud-based employee scheduling software exists to streamline the whole process.

7. Actively promote employee work-life balance

Employees who enjoy a good work-life balance are satisfied and fulfilled both in the office and in their personal lives. They are more engaged at work while maintaining enough time and energy to dedicate to their personal and family lives. 

The World Health Organization argues that the experience of work on an individual can be either beneficial or disruptive to their mental health. A workplace that values employee needs inside and outside of work leads to happier, healthier, and more productive workers. 

Employers must regularly communicate with their employees to detect and overcome any cases of burnout that could be physically and psychologically detrimental. 

Webinar: Supporting Employee Mental Health

There are a number of different things managers and HR professionals can do to enable their employees to achieve a better work-life balance, such as helping them have enough time and energy outside of work. There are also a number of ways companies can invest in employee wellness.

While at work, it is important to put systems in place that reduce workplace stress and improve happiness and productivity. Human resource management software like Workforce.com can help managers create more effective, less stressful work environments through things like better scheduling and staff communication.

Streamline employee relations management with Workforce.com

Employee relations is a very human endeavor. That said, technology can facilitate many of the processes needed to effectively manage employee relations. Workforce.com offers solutions like flexible scheduling backed by AI, labor forecasting to reduce under or over-staffing, and enhanced employee communications solutions.

To find out more, get in touch with us today.

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5 Surprising Lunch Break Statistics in the US (2023)

Summary

  • Research shows how taking lunch breaks enhances employee engagement and productivity. Despite this, lunch breaks are getting shorter and many employees fear being judged for taking them. 

  • While there is no federal law stating that companies should offer breaks, many states have implemented their own. 

  • Employers should properly schedule and track compliant lunch breaks to avoid lawsuits and improve workplace culture. 

What do lunch breaks look like in your office? Are your employees “desktop diners,” eating their packed lunches in front of their screens (most likely scrolling through social media) before getting on with their workday? Do they venture out in search of fresh air and some time away from their screens? Or has your company ended up with a workplace culture where employees skip break time altogether? 

There’s plenty of evidence showing that taking a proper lunch break in the middle of the day is vital for people’s well-being and maintaining a better work-life balance. Employees who take their lunch breaks have been found to have higher levels of job satisfaction and productivity and are less likely to suffer from burnout. 

Whitepaper: How to Reduce Burnout of Hourly Employees

Here are five statistics we’ve collected that should give you a clearer picture of the state of the American lunch hour. With these findings in mind, we have prepared some tips on how your human resources team can implement break policies and create a work environment that does lunchtime right.

1. Employees who take their lunch break are more engaged

In late 2017, Tork carried out a survey amongst 1,600 North American employees throughout the United States and Canada. The Take Back the Lunch Break survey findings show that North American workers who take their lunch break show higher levels of engagement than those who didn’t.

The respondents who took their lunch break scored higher with metrics that are normally linked to engagement: job satisfaction, the likelihood to stay with their current company, and the chances that they would recommend their company as a good place to work. Ninety-four percent said that they feel happier when they take their lunch break.

Another study found that 39% of employees who regularly took their lunch breaks reported having a better work-life balance. 

2. Taking lunch breaks boosts productivity

Research also shows that work performance and productivity increase when employees take their lunch breaks during work hours.

Tork’s Take Back the Lunch Break uncovered some interesting stats on this. They found that:

  • 94% of respondents said that stepping away from a task they’re working on helps them to get a fresh perspective on it.
  • 91% of employees and 93% of bosses surveyed agreed that taking a break helps them maintain mental focus.
  • 88% of employees and 91% of bosses said that they feel refreshed and reenergized after taking a break.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has found that work environments that increase employee anxiety and depression cost the global economy an astounding $1 trillion per year. ezCater’s The Lunch Report study uncovered links between lunch breaks and mental health:

  • 40% of employees said taking a lunch break reduces stress.
  • 39% felt more productive after a break.
  • 37% reported feeling less burnt out when they regularly took time to rest. 

3. Younger employees fear being judged for taking their breaks

Findings from The Lunch Report also show that a quarter of Gen Z workers hesitate to take their lunch break because they worry about what their bosses might think.

Another reason Gen Z and millennial workers cited for skipping their lunch break is that they feel they have too much work to do: 

  • 21% said they don’t have enough time for a proper break.
  • 1 in 5 don’t take breaks so that they can finish work ASAP.
  • 19% said that they have too many meetings or tend to have meetings during lunch hour.

4. Lunch breaks are getting shorter

A study from 2018 found that the average lunch break is getting shorter as we move further away from the concept of the “lunch hour.” The average break in 2018 was 39 minutes; this was down from 43 minutes in 2014. 

The study found differences in lunch break lengths across the country. Workers in Salt Lake City, De Moines, and Cincinnati take the shortest breaks, while those in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Miami break the longest.

5. Some people don’t take their lunch breaks … and some do so at their desks

Tork’s 2022 study, as part of its continued Take Back The Lunch Break campaign, reveals how many employees are not taking any breaks multiple times a week — 39% of respondents said that they “occasionally, rarely or never take breaks.” The study found that 91% of people are working just as much or more than before the pandemic. Despite this, people are still not taking the breaks they need. 

The study also found that “women are over twice as likely (67%) not to take a break than men (33%).” Women who do remote work are more likely to spend the breaks they do take doing household chores than their male counterparts. 

The Lunch Report also found that 1 in 10 employees never break away from their desks, and 70% “eat while they work at least once a week.” They found that only 10% of Gen Z workers said that they never eat at their desks. In comparison, 26% of millennials and 48% of baby boomers said that they never dined at their desktops.

How employers can create a lunch break culture that fosters a happier workplace

As an employer or a People Ops professional, there are a number of ways you can ensure that your company culture is one that does lunch breaks in a way that is beneficial to your co-workers as well as your organization’s bottom line. 

Know the law

On a federal level, there are no laws that dictate whether or not you need to enforce lunch breaks in your workplace. When employers do offer breaks, federal law states that any breaks under 20 minutes need to be paid by the employer. Any breaks over the 30-minute mark are classified as off the clock.

Some states have implemented their own laws on lunch breaks in the workplace. In Kentucky, for example, companies need to offer their employees a meal break. This is a reasonable unpaid period (normally between 20 and 30 minutes) taken any time after the third and before the fifth hour of consecutive hours of work. Kentucky companies must also offer rest breaks of 10 minutes after every four hours of work. This time is paid. 

Management should set an example

Many workers still feel uncomfortable taking their breaks for fear of being judged by their superiors. This doesn’t help when many C-Suite executives and management personnel can often be seen skipping lunch breaks themselves or eating at their desks. 

A simple way to create a company culture of taking lunch breaks is for management to actually take their lunch breaks and do it visibility. In the case of remote teams, management can use things like “Out to lunch” statuses on Slack and by blocking parts of their daily calendars for lunch.

Actions like these give your employees “permission” to embrace their own lunch breaks and not feel like outliers when doing so. Tork’s study found that over 9 in 10 employees claim they are more likely to stay at a company where management actively encourages their teams to take their lunch breaks. 

Create or enhance your break room

Having a designated break room within your office is a great way to harness a healthy lunch break culture within your organization. If you do have a room you can utilize as a breakroom, or if you already have one, there are a number of things you can do to encourage your employees to actually make use of it:

  • Provide enough seating space for everyone.
  • Decorate the space to make it feel welcoming.
  • Make sure it is well-equipped with the appliances and storage space needed, e.g., fridge, microwave, and coffee-making facilities.
  • Encourage social interaction by leaving activity items such as cards and games.

Consider catered lunches

Some companies occasionally offer in-office catered lunch to their employees as an incentive. While this is an added expense, research shows that paying for your employees’ lunch from time to time can have a positive impact on morale and engagement. 

The Lunch Report found that 23% of respondents would return to the office full-time if catered lunches were made available for free, and 65% said that they would plan to work on-site more often if complimentary lunches were provided.

Manage your company’s lunch break culture more effectively with Workforce.com

Enhancing your lunch break culture is highly beneficial to your business, but it does add a layer of complexity to your scheduling. Workforce.com offers employee scheduling and time tracking solutions that help make your life easier and ensure you remain compliant with any state laws.

Workforce.com’s scheduling automatically populates shifts with compliant lunch and rest breaks according to local state law. Your employees can view all of this information right on their phones. The Time Clock App allows employees to easily clock out and back in for breaks, as breaks are tracked in real time.

With Workforce.com, your staff will take the breaks they need, and you will avoid unnecessary fines. To find out more about how Workforce.com can handle your scheduling needs, give us a call today. 

Or, for more information on how to improve your scheduling, check out our free webinar below:

Webinar: How to Optimize Your Staff Schedules

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10 employee timekeeping & tracking best practices

Summary

  • Using a software solution to improve your time-tracking is a great way to ensure you’re recording time and attendance data regularly and accurately. 

  • Following our time-tracking best practices helps you identify problematic patterns that lead to employee lateness.

  • Understanding the extent and causes of lateness inside your company will allow you to implement changes that will help reduce tardiness altogether.

Your employees turning up late to work from time to time is normal and to be expected, to a certain extent. The problem is when patterns of habitual tardiness start to emerge. 

The most obvious issue with employee tardiness is the added costs to your business. An employee who is 10 minutes late every workday will have taken the same amount of time as one week’s paid vacation by the end of the year. 

Besides the cost, employee lateness and absenteeism can negatively affect productivity, which trickles down to your customers and can tarnish your company’s brand image. Tardiness can also mean more pressure if work is shifted onto other team members, leading to burnout and low morale. 

Accurate employee time-tracking and consistent recordkeeping help you identify the patterns and causes of employee lateness. Business owners often turn to time-tracking software to do this and to prevent tardiness from getting out of control.  

Here are 10 employee timekeeping best practices you can use to encourage timeliness and efficiency at your business.

1. Keep precise records

Accurate time and attendance data is the foundation of any timekeeping initiative. Without knowing exactly who is on time, who’s late, how often they’re late, and by how much, fixing the problem feels like working in the dark. Having access to this data in real time makes employee time tracking easy.

Use time and attendance software to put this informational bedrock in place from the start. Once you know that you are accurately recording attendance data in a usable form, you’ve made any new timekeeping initiative much easier to manage.

2. Track data regularly

Manual entry timekeeping systems are prone to errors, yet so many small businesses still rely on spreadsheets for tracking employee hours. The longer you leave gaps in the data, the greater the chance that employees will forget what time they arrived or left.

If your company is still using manual timecards and employee timesheets, you should be collating that data daily, when possible, or weekly at the very least. Don’t get complacent if you’ve swapped manual methods for a software system. Be sure to generate attendance reports at a similar cadence, at least once a week. The sooner you spot a problem, the more quickly you can address it.

3. Spot problematic patterns

Consistent data tracking helps you spot the problematic patterns holding your business back.

Once you have your regular cycle of time and attendance data in place, take a holistic view of what it is showing you about your business over time. Look for deeper recurring patterns related to particular shifts, managers, or locations. There may be a simple fix for hotspots of poor timekeeping methods, but if you don’t know a hotspot exists, you’ll never be able to address it.

Webinar: The Best Way to Replace Call-Outs

4. Have a clear point of contact

A clear management hierarchy means there’s no confusion over attendance issue reporting.

Make someone responsible for time management and maintaining accurate timesheets. This could either be on a per-shift basis or per location or department. Make it clear their role isn’t simply to punish late arrivals but to work with employees to resolve issues that might be affecting their attendance.

5. Use a point system

More companies are switching to point-based systems to track and penalize employee tardiness. These attendance point systems work by automatically assigning staff points for various infractions such as clocking in late, leaving early, or never showing up. HR can use these point records to build a case and take appropriate action against repeat offenders. 

This kind of system is perhaps the most practical way of dealing with lateness. Since points are automatically accumulated for showing up late, employees are much more likely to be incentivized to be on time to avoid verbal and written warnings. 

Webinar: Points-Based Attendance

6. Normalize healthy working hours

If staff are constantly expected to work late, they’ll be tempted to claw the number of hours or minutes back from somewhere else.

This is the flip side of making sure everyone arrives promptly. Show staff they’re expected to leave on time as well as arrive on schedule while still encouraging those who actually want overtime hours.

The WHO recently released estimates of a 29% increase in deaths from heart disease and stroke brought on by long working hours. Even if those figures are off, the days when people would tolerate overwork are on the way out. Be ahead of the curve in this area, and staff will notice.

7. Introduce and automate break times

Offering breaks means staff have fewer reasons to be late in the first place.

Breaks and paid meal periods are not required by labor laws in the US, but they benefit employees and employers alike. Staff who take lunch breaks are more productive, loyal, and engaged.

Research shows that one in 10 employees never break for lunch, and nearly half just eat at their desks three or more times a week. If managers are seen taking their lunch break away from their desks or workstations, that gives employees permission to do the same. An effective employee scheduling system should allow you to automate these breaks into the daily workflow, sending staff reminders when it’s their break time. These reminders encourage staff to actually take their breaks, unlike in non-automated systems where properly timed breaks can often go overlooked.

If staff feel the company values their time, they’ll value the time they give to the company. When they know they’ll have an opportunity during the day to make that important personal phone call or just grab a sandwich, there’s less reason for them to cram those things in before work, which makes them late.

8. Use predictive scheduling

Often lateness occurs because people are trying to accommodate their lives around erratic working hours.

Predictive scheduling is already legally required in some states, but it’s worth considering, even if it’s not mandatory. Setting schedules two weeks in advance gives employees time to plan. By reducing the number of frantic child-minding emergencies and other last-minute problems, you reduce the reasons for people to arrive late to work.

Webinar: How to Optimize Your Staff Schedules

9. Lead by example

Creating a company culture in which timekeeping is valued starts from the top.

Hold yourself, managers, and even executives to the same standards as other staff. Make it clear that being diligent with work time is expected of everybody. If management rolls in at 9:30 am several times a week, don’t be surprised if staff start to view prompt attendance as a moving target and follow suit.

10. Set and reward goals

Rewarding staff for being at work can be seen as a false economy, essentially paying them twice for doing what they are already contracted to do. That doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to incentivize good attendance.

Applying bonuses to teams rather than individuals helps boost morale while maximizing engagement and attendance. Rewards don’t need to be financial in nature. If employees maintain punctual time reports by the end of the week, give them an early finish on Friday. You could even show appreciation through something simple like praise in the company newsletter or being given control of the workplace Spotify for an afternoon.

Identify and address lateness before you have an absenteeism problem

Proper attendance tracking is about more than just reprimanding people for being late. Patterns of poor punctuality are a warning. Addressing them is a health check of your company’s staff engagement and an opportunity to create a happier, more productive working environment.

Use attendance tools like Workforce.com to fully integrate these ideas into your business.

If you find your employee tardiness problem is morphing into a more severe absenteeism problem, it may be time to take additional measures. Watch our webinar on absenteeism below featuring Anne Laguzza, CEO of The Works Consulting. 

Webinar: How to Reduce Absenteeism

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6 proven ways to prevent nurse burnout

Summary

  • Nurse burnout is a serious issue in the healthcare business and has several negative consequences for all parties involved.

  • Long work shifts, stressful work, high patient-to-nurse ratios, a shortage of nurses, and a lack of sleep are some of the causes of nurse burnout.

  • To prevent nurse burnout, leaders should address nurse concerns, support nurse wellbeing, encourage breaks, offer flexible hours, optimize nurse workflows, improve nurse-to-patient ratios, and work collaboratively with nurses.

As of February 2021, 47% of nurses wanted to leave their jobs in the US since their work was negatively affecting their health and wellbeing. The numbers are worse during the coronavirus pandemic, with 6 out of 10 health workers reporting that the pandemic has negatively impacted their mental health. Clearly, burnout is becoming a sad reality among nurses.

Nurse burnout has several negative consequences. It not only impacts their health, but it can also reduce the quality of treatment provided to patients, increasing the risk of medical errors. The emotional fatigue burnout creates also leads to high turnover rates for healthcare institutions, as was found in a study by the journal of applied nursing research.

What causes nurse burnout?

Nurse burnout happens due to several reasons, a few of which include:

  • Long work hours: Nurses are being given long work shifts with no time to rest. This takes a toll on nurses, as longer shifts are correlated with higher levels of burnout.
  • Stressful work: Nurses constantly have to deal with stressful medical situations, especially ICU and critical care nurses.
  • Staffing problems: In a recent survey, 83 percent of responding hospital and health system executives predicted nursing staff shortages. This shortage places higher demands on currently-employed nurses.
  • High patient-to-nurse ratio: The higher the number of patients being treated per nurse, the higher the chances of nurse burnout. A study noted a direct relationship between a high patient-to-nurse ratio (i.e., over 8:1) and medical errors.
  • Poor sleep quality: Research shows that 67% of nurses reported having experienced sleep problems, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. A lack of sleep can negatively affect nurse health, leading to burnout.

Clearly, leadership must step up to prevent nurse burnout. Here are a few things they can do:

Address nurse concerns

Leadership can acknowledge, empathize, and address nurse concerns to make nurses feel valued. Nurses must be encouraged to openly share their concerns regarding burnout, so leaders can have a go at resolving them.

This can be done by allowing nurses to voice their concerns via an internal online forum or during one-on-one or team meetings. Shift feedback tools are also great for enabling nurses to leave feedback after each shift, so leaders can monitor nurse concerns and identify any early signs of burnout.

For instance, leaders can empower nurses to voice their concerns by giving them the opportunity to participate in decision-making, especially when it relates to their work. Nurses can be involved in discussions related to how patients should be treated, cleanliness and hygiene, break policies, standard of care, and more. Research has found that nurses are more likely to be fully engaged if they’re given autonomy and control over their work and if their opinions are valued by leadership, helping prevent burnout.

Support nurse physical and mental well-being

Leaders must ensure they’re paying heed to their nurses’ physical and mental well-being.

Employee well-being can be supported through sponsoring workout classes, partnering with gyms to encourage regular workouts, hosting meditation classes, starting a wellness program, or creating social events like potlucks or workplace birthday celebrations.

The Massachusetts Health and Hospital Association developed the Caring for the Caregiver initiative, which includes a focus on gratitude for nurses’ work, workplace safety, and wellbeing. As part of this initiative, they created a podcast called the Medical Professionals Empowerment Program, or MedPEP. Each episode contains tips to improve the health, wellbeing, and effectiveness of medical professionals.

Another great option to support nurses’ mental well-being is to provide on-demand psychological counseling services to help nurses cope with stress and emotional fatigue. Rush Health took a proactive stance by anticipating the risks of burnout and providing 24/7 psychological support to their employees for free. They’ve since reported a dramatic increase in the utilization of these services, especially participation in psychotherapy, coaching, and stress management training, which went from a few hundred employees in August 2020 to more than 1,500 in December 2021.

Encourage nurses to take breaks

While the law may not make it mandatory for employers to provide breaks, leaders should ensure nurses aren’t overworking themselves. Breaks ensure nurses are well rested to perform their duties with care.

Encourage nurses to take short breaks every 2 hours. These can be breaks between 5 minutes to 20 minutes long, so they’re counted as paid breaks. Breaks longer than 30 minutes could be unpaid.

Katrina Emery, a MICU nurse working on her doctor of nursing practice (DNP), started a “restorative break initiative” to ensure nurses get the breaks they deserve and also to shift the culture to one where breaks are mandatory. She started the initiative as data shows that 35 percent of nurses rarely or never take a break, and almost half of the nurses didn’t know the number of breaks allotted in their shift. The nurse scheduling software used by leadership should automate and administer breaks so nurses are aware of the breaks they get and also commit to them.

Offer flexible hours

Offer flexible scheduling so nurses can pick the shifts they’d like to work. Working on shifts of their choice where they work with coworkers they get along with, or at times that suit them, can help prevent burnout.

Flexible scheduling becomes easy with an employee scheduling software that empowers nurses to pick and swap shifts at the click of a button with managerial approval. Try to limit scheduling staff for long shifts greater than 12 hours since long shifts increase the risk for fatigue-related incidents and increase the time workers are exposed to infectious diseases.

In a recent study, 55% of nurses reported that more control of their schedule would decrease exhaustion, and 60% mentioned that they would have a better work/life balance if they were involved in their shift scheduling. Clearly, if leaders want to prevent nurse burnout, they must allow flexible scheduling by giving nurses control over their schedules.

Optimize nurse workflows

Nurses don’t always focus on their core priorities. Burnout can happen when nurses do too much work outside of their core domain. Workflows need to be optimized in a way that allows nurses to focus on what they’re best at.

For example, a nurse may be doing too much administrative work, which might be unnecessary and counterproductive. Working to optimize workflows so nurses can focus on their core duties and delegate the rest of the work to the right people can help prevent burnout. Using an electronic health record system for administrative tasks might help in automating repetitive workflows, freeing up time for nurses to take care of patients.

Improve nurse-to-patient ratios

Not only are proper staffing levels important for CMS compliance regarding things like PBJ reports, but they are also important for nurse well-being. The more patients each nurse looks after, the higher the risk of burnout. Improving nurse-to-patient ratios could help prevent burnout and also benefit both patients and hospitals.

By improving nurse-to-patient ratios, it’s possible to improve mortality rates in hospitals. A study found that with every nurse hired, there was a 7% reduction in mortality rates. Clearly, there’s a strong case for improving nurse-to-patient ratios, and while improving nurse-to-patient ratios may require bringing on additional staff, the investment can offset other expenses, such as high nurse turnover, poor patient satisfaction, and even poor patient outcomes.

One way to go about improving nurse-to-patient ratios is to utilize demand-based scheduling. Automation like this uses historical foot traffic and demand data to optimally build schedules around appropriate nurse-to-patient ratios. Managers can easily match the right amount of nurses to projected demand every day and make edits in real-time when conflicts arise, ensuring hospitals are never over or understaffed.

Leaders should collaborate with nurses

Leaders should work collaboratively with nurses to support nurse well-being. They should constantly monitor burnout rates through regular check-ins with nurses and step up to control burnout rates. Controlling nurse burnout becomes possible through the use of technology, having open dialogue with nurses, making them a part of well-being initiatives, and recognizing and appreciating their contributions.

To find out more about how workforce management prevents nurse burnout, contact us today or sign up for a free trial to see how nurse scheduling software can help.

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Leaders’ Guide to Winning Back Employees in 2022: Closing the Gaps in Employee Expectations

Historical novelist Mary Renault said, “There is only one kind of shock worse than the totally unexpected: the expected for which one has refused to prepare.” This guide presents four interconnected gaps in meeting workforce expectations. If these gaps resonate as the “expected” for your organization, then review the solutions 1) with an eye on how you believe the gaps will further unfold within the context of your organization, and 2) considering how well each solution could play a role in creating an improved employee experience. 

The Control Gap – Solution

A sense of control is perhaps the deepest need for humans and the root of all human behavior. As in life, people don’t feel good at work when choice is taken away. It is with this backdrop that the idea of what work looks like and who decides is shifting. People see the trickle-down effect work has on their life and want change. The desire for greater control, flexibility and empathy is driving many to break away from the controls, constraints, politics, and bureaucracy common across organizations. Stories abound providing social proof and hope that work scenarios exist where people can take back their lives with options that improve their well-being, while also meeting their financial needs. As concerns for mental health grow so do a sea of platforms that enable people to test nontraditional work options as contingent work and the gig lifestyle grow. 2022 will build on the learnings from leading remote workers over a longer than expected period. Organizations know what can and cannot be accomplished outside of traditional work boundaries. They also witnessed the positive effect when workers tasted higher levels of control, autonomy, and self-determination in their work. 2022 will be about evolving worker control as employees proved they can deliver the same outcomes but in ways that work for them and their personal situations with less oversight. 

The Empathy Gap – Solution

Remote work enabled leaders to peer into the lives of employees and gain new perspectives. Leaders gained a more intimate view of the struggles in balancing lives and work. People become more than workers with jobs but individuals with complicated lives trying to make a living. Leaders learned about family situations, constraints, and personal stories, which facilitated new levels of empathy. 2021 showed that empathy makes a difference and embracing the economics of emotional capital is good business. The connection between workplace flexibility and employee well-being is so clear that it will drive organizations to expand their support to provide greater life management services. Management has long been about driving how employees think and behave. However, most steer away from how employees feel. In fact, prior to the pandemic, many leaders probably thought talking about how employees feel was crossing a bridge too soft. The hard truth is that emotions drive how people think and behave and are behind most complex business dynamics and personal relationships. Creating cultures of care is core to improving an organization’s empathy levels and emotional signature, which for many is underwater. All this is more than an organization and its leaders having a greater awareness of employee needs. It’s about the ability to transition and thrive in new and evolving work models and having the capability to bring out the best in every individual worker as workers gain greater control over their work. 

The Digital Gap – Solution

Studies show 4 out of 5 digital transformation investments go to waste due to human factors related to resistance. The problem is that transformation goals have been more about automating processes than enabling humans and enriching their work experience. Once employees value digital transformation as evolving their work lives versus an impending threat to their employability, organizations will begin to see a better return on their investments. Transformation must shift from a focus on machines delivering isolated productivity gains to machines linking people, process, and technology in ways that humans see as beneficial. This means improving the job performance experience, enhancing skills, showing how advanced technology can enhance their intellect, creativity, and ability to collaborate with colleagues. Most importantly, employees want digital transformation to promote flexibility in how they manage their work and deliver outcomes in ways that work best for them.

The Employability Gap – Solution

Workers are making two dramatic shifts in terms of their employability mindset. The first is that they are putting their employability over workplace longevity. The second is they are taking ownership for what employers have been promising but not delivering in terms of their market value. Employees will evaluate how well their current jobs do in giving them confidence of where they feel they sit on the employability scale. People feel they are on the right end of the scale when they are periodically being offered new roles. Sitting on the wrong end means they feel it would be difficult to get another job. In 2022, we will see career-minded and externally connected workers voting with their feet if they feel their personal brand can become more relevant and distinctive elsewhere. In response, organizations need to dig into the underexamined concept of “sustainable employability.” Just as employees are no longer looking for lifetime employment, organizations should be preparing for a new season in the employment market. A season where employee time with companies will trend to shorter and shorter tenures. The shorter tenure model is an agile response to dynamic market conditions that can add new levels of value to both the employee and the health of an organization. When organizations have robust employability pipelines it stretches their current employee base and promotes an ongoing refresh of their workforce with a new crop of willing talent.

Conclusion

Control and empathy are about shaping work and work culture. Greater control over one’s work promotes self-determination and the idea that humans are qualified to make their own decisions about their work and lives. More control does not mean executives relinquish power. Employees are fine to not have power if they feel they have a level of control and choice. Today’s crop of executives that have been battle-tested by pandemic conditions understand that emotionally intelligent cultures shape an organization’s emotional signature, which in turn enables positive work experiences. The coming year will show that an organization’s internal emotional signature can be as valuable as its external brand. The second set of gaps, digital and employability, are about enabling human performance and growth. Digital transformations that present enriching value propositions will positively change worker perception of technology and change. Finally, better practices for sustainable employability will create conditions where success is measured by the growth and mobility of talent and how effective an organization’s employability policies and emotional signature are in attracting new talent to fuel shorter and more dynamic talent cycles. 

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Practical tips for better employee experience going into 2022

Summary

  • “Antiwork” culture is fueling the labor shortage.

  • To attract workers again, employee experience needs to be improved.

  • Addressing the fundamentals of workforce management can make employees happier, engaged, and productive. 

Most people at some point have felt the urge to pull a Christopher McCandless. The notion of dropping everything and running away to the Alaskan wilderness in an old van is a refreshingly romantic one, especially for the unfulfilled employee. Who needs overbearing managers, rude customers, and exhausting overtime hours anyways, right?

“Antiwork” and the American labor shortage

Rejecting the status quo in favor of pursuing unconventional lifestyles and career paths is back in vogue now, thanks to an existential crisis sweeping the workforce. Spurred by the pandemic, disillusioned people everywhere are questioning what it means to be happy in their work.

These sentiments are in large part felt by young people part of the “antiwork” movement. They are tired of the structure behind traditional work-life – all the clock-ins, deadlines, barely livable wages, and whatnot. 

As a result, America is facing an unprecedented shortage in labor. According to a Peterson Institute for International Economics report, the country still needs 6.2 million jobs filled. Even still, many are choosing to opt out of the workforce. 

Perhaps it is time employers take a look inward for a moment to reevaluate how employees feel about their jobs. A report from Gallup measuring factors like employee stress, anger, sadness, and worry says that overall employee engagement is down 2% globally, with only 23% of people saying they are very happy working for their employer. In America and Canada, only 34% of employees said they felt engaged in their work. 

So, workers are angry and worried in the workplace; that isn’t great. And it certainly isn’t helping the labor shortage. Heading into 2022, businesses should seek to reevaluate their understanding of employee experience and strive to improve it. 

Of course, this is not all about the worker; poor employee experience translates to both time and monetary costs for businesses. Frustrated and disengaged employees usually take longer to complete tasks, and their work is often below standard. This can all lead to higher employee turnover, which is very costly to businesses. Sometimes, replacing a worker can cost nearly 20% of what they make annually. 

Improving employee experience

There are many informative lists out there regarding how to improve employee experience, with most suggesting things like team bonding events and haphazard appreciation gestures. While useful at times, these tend to be very vague attempts at solving the issue. Instead, it is worth tackling employee experience from a workforce management perspective. Many issues in employee experience stem from improper scheduling and attendance practices. Solving these problems will not only improve how employees feel about their jobs, but will also help businesses retain employees, attract new hires, and control labor costs. 

So, here’s what you can do:

Raise wages

This may seem obvious and overly simplistic. However, it is often because of this simplicity that managers overlook raising wages.

In these times, workers want to be recognized as human beings, and as such, be compensated accordingly. They want living wages more than they want 90-day bonuses. Some businesses already recognize this, choosing to adopt “pro-employee” mentalities and accept short-term increases in labor costs.

“There are a number of ways you can attract folks,” says Andy Cole of Elite Staffing during a Nov. 8 Workforce.com webinar. “But what we feel right now is that wages are by far the number one reason as to how you get people in the door.” As COO of a staffing agency covering 2,000 locations, Cole understands well what workers value most right now and going forward into 2022. 

Offer opportunities for shift feedback

Employees like to be heard, especially when it comes to how they feel about their shifts. Providing them with a tool to automatically rate shifts every time they clock out will give managers valuable insight into how satisfied employees are with their hours, coworkers, and environment.  

It is important to receive feedback on a regular basis. Doing this helps managers identify and resolve underlying issues employees may have early on before things get out of hand. 

Utilize shift swapping functionality

Sometimes, life happens. And when life decides to happen, rigid schedules can become a nightmare. Offering flexible technology that lets employees easily find shift coverage can go a long way in improving employee experience. 

“I think [my employees] being able to select the position or the shift for that day is really helpful because they feel like they’re helping the team,” says Katie Strehlow, an HR generalist for a baseball team in California. “They come in with a positive attitude, which always leads to a better work performance.” Her employees use shift swapping technology on their phones; she says it has led to an increase in engagement, satisfaction, and performance. 

Clean up your leave management

Recently it was discovered that Amazon has been incorrectly handling paid and unpaid leave for employees due to flaws in their time and attendance software. Many of these employees were wrongfully fired after the software marked them as “no shows” while on leave. If Jeff Bezos’ empire gets leave management wrong, so can any business. 

Employees must have proper visibility into their paid and unpaid leave. They also need to know that it will never be mishandled or miscalculated. Leave management systems that cater to employee experience should be accurate, transparent, and easy to use; ensuring these things helps employers build trust with their workers. Leave management should also integrate with scheduling systems, so as to easily avoid accidentally scheduling people when they are away. 

Enhance scheduling visibility

With fair workweek laws popping up across the country, it is becoming apparent that employees highly value predictive scheduling practices. Employers should make sure they send out schedules far in advance so as not to surprise their workers. 

In addition, schedules should be published onto a single live platform for all employees to view anytime, anywhere – this eliminates the confusion and frustration that comes from repeatedly sending out different schedules across an entire workforce. 

Personalize with granular employee data

It is helpful to have an in-depth workforce management system that provides data down to the individual. Understanding employee preferences through metrics like where and when they consistently show up late, or for what shifts they usually request a swap, helps managers address underlying experience issues. 

Granular employee data also helps managers equitably distribute shifts. For instance, managers can actively see while scheduling which employees have been given the fewest hours, and then react accordingly. Segmenting data in a personalized way like this also provides insight into sales vs labor hour metrics; managers can use this information to recognize and help out employees who might be struggling with productivity. 

Automate time tracking

According to a recent article from Forbes, outdated legacy systems are often unable to efficiently automate time tracking; the inconvenience of this harms employee experience and increases administrative costs. 

Hourly employees want their lives to be easy, especially when it comes to monotonous tasks like clocking in and out and filling in timesheets. They also want peace of mind regarding the timeliness and accuracy of their paychecks. Automating time and attendance guarantees employees are paid correctly every time, eliminating the headaches of variables like overtime and pay differentials. An automated system like this also serves to make your employees’ jobs easier, improving their overall experience. 

Slick and easy UX

If employees are unable to navigate basic tools for their jobs, their experience is undoubtedly going to get really sour, really fast. Complicated and broken UX can cause anger and stress for employees and its something businesses should seek to eliminate. 

UX experts note easy logins, straightforward interfaces, consistent styles, and easy to find policies/contact info as several principles that should be considered when designing systems to maximize employee experience.

It comes down to the basics

To improve employee experience, you first need to solve workforce management. Scheduling and timekeeping are the fundamentals of how a business, and its staff, operate on a day-to-day basis. Streamlining these areas always results in higher employee motivation, engagement, and happiness. 

Want to get started? Hop on a call with us today. We’ll talk you through it.

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Human Performance Experience at Work: The New Normal for Workers

Work has long been associated with toil, drudgery and a history of egregious working conditions, catastrophic disasters, physical injury and mental anguish. The last milestone in terms of universal experience advancement for working people was the introduction of the 8-hour workday, 40-hour workweek and the limitations placed on child labor. In the 80 years since, generations of workers have experienced organizations making advancements across the physical, technical and cultural aspects of their working environments. However, most advancements targeted improving employee productivity and not specifically improving the worker experience.

Rewind the last 18 months and it’s clear that COVID-19 required organizations to challenge dated assumptions about employees and work. Lockdown conditions also forced employees to experience constraints from a shared perspective and rethink their personal and professional lives. As both industry and workers form their collective responses to the effects of COVID-19, the result cannot be anything other than exponential human growth, which propels the world to gain fundamentally more than it lost.     

The pandemic continues to prove that social learning and collective behavior change are best achieved through shared experiences. Responding to the crisis presented the world with a contextualized experience on a grand and unprecedented scale in that it enabled humans to experience constraints within the context of 21st-century expectations. Context-relevant experiences, especially when shared, provide a richer opportunity for humans to construct and adopt new values as they collectively reconsider social, economic and health-related expectations and priorities most relevant to their work/life experiences.

The true meaning of experiential moments

Society has witnessed new behavioral norms emerge as people observed and identified with one another on universally shared work and life challenges. The struggles to balance constraints across work and personal lives created a pent-up appreciation for “experiential moments”. People reflected on the importance of time and gained a higher consciousness of what experience should mean for them. Viewing the world with a more primal lens presented employees with a new mandate relative to their wants and expectations around work-life balance and quality working conditions.  At the same time, a compelling body of research had revealed that employees are more fatigued and stressed than ever before and the vast majority report feeling disengaged in their work.

Prior to the pandemic, the arrival of millennials in the early 21st century showed that this new generation of workers was drawn to organizations that embraced social responsibility and showed purpose in delivering cause-based products and services. While this trend remains, COVID-19 has refined employee expectations across generational lines. The idea of socially responsible employers has expanded to include the desire to work with organizations that show purpose in enriching the employee experience. Employees want workplaces that meet their intrinsic needs in ways that positively impact engagement, cognitive development, happiness and well-being. The recent withdrawal of defending Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles from individual all-around competition to focus on her mental health will serve as the high watermark for society in addressing the impact of work stress on mental and physical health. 

A more human-centric approach to enabling the workforce

The trend to create a reshaped version of the healthier organization is fueled by growing research in Human Experience Management (HXM). This field evolved from the idea of Human Capital Management (HCM) and will continue to expand at a record pace. HXM, with its more human-centric approach to managing the workforce experience, is a stark improvement from simply managing humans as capital. As the HXM movement has taken shape across organizations, it has focused on what HR departments can do to improve single-factor HR transactional experiences—factors that are common to every employee’s overall job satisfaction and journey within the organization. Focusing on common employee experiences is a start, but it’s not enough. Employees increasingly expect their daily work processes and activities to be on par with the commercial consumer-grade processes that they experience in their personal lives.

To satisfy evolving experience expectations, organizations must evolve to embrace a more job task-based category of HXM referred to as Human Performance Experience (HPX). As work continues to become more complex, connected and driven by automation, organizations need to improve the flow of work experience for the connected worker. HPX is about supporting those in the trenches where work gets done. This means providing individualized support for workers that positively shape the work experience and address how they behave, how they work and how they want to interact to feel connected with their teams. From a fundamental design and usability perspective, employees want helpful, useable, desirable, valuable, accessible and credible solutions. Embedding the principles of high concept, high touch experiences into the heart of today’s connected worker solutions will only happen by design and not default. It involves providing smarter experiences that directly support job and task-related processes and adapt to employee actions, decisions and preferences.

Integrating connected technologies with human-centric design principles

HPX centric solutions represent new opportunities for those striving for connected worker solutions that couple Industry 4.0 connected technologies with Industry 5.0 human-centric design principles. HPX solutions create integrated performance environments where job task experiences are more adaptive and personalized based on worker preferences and personas. Most importantly, solutions that embed HPX centric design leverage theories that drive worker engagement and experience enablement. Incorporating design theories such as the Expectancy-Value Theory support an employee’s expectations and beliefs about job tasks. For example, the Expectancy-Value Theory highlights factors that dictate an employee’s engagement and how to optimize the employee work experience. The first factor relates to attaining value where the employee is motivated by their expectation of performing the job task successfully. The second is the intrinsic value or enjoyment the employee gets from performing the job task. The third is utility value, where the employee believes that performing the job task will be useful in achieving future goals. The final component is in the perceived cost of performing the job task in relation to competing goals.

Cyber-physical connectivity and advanced people analytics enable a new generation of connected worker solutions that drive HPX practices. Advancements allow for more intuitive people analytics and integrated data collection, which equip solutions to deliver worker-centric experiences that improve as more data is collected. For example, people analytics embedded in connected systems can connect “stress moments” to actual work experiences. The key to developing HPX solutions is understanding that job task values are strongly tied to self-efficacy beliefs and achievement-related choices.

Experience-centric solutions can ensure the work experience is documented by incorporating feedback loops and people analytics for every step within the chain of job task procedures. Digital connectivity also enables access to multi-directional feedback channels. These channels can ensure the employee’s voice is more easily heard and that actions are taken based on their feedback. They can provide employees timely guidance and give them an immediate view of the impact of their efforts. Connected capabilities that capture and aggregate employee feedback and operational data can provide insights on what employees, teams and business units think, feel, and believe about work processes compared to what happened. The digital shadowing of employee actions and flow of work data provides organizations the insights they need to change how work, technology and data are designed, offered and implemented to keep employees safe and happy as they work to meet productivity goals.

Various categories of connected worker technologies are now emerging and improving deployment approaches that better engage employees. For example, one trend in employee enablement capabilities is citizen development, aka do-it-yourself (DIY), solutions enabled by tools like Microsoft’s Power BI Apps. Such human-centric approaches are rapidly changing the traditional views of how work can evolve. The beauty of human-centric performance experience solutions is that they enable organizations to put work in the hands of the actual experts. DIY solutions put the worker at the heart of empowering work design considerations and innovation opportunities. The DIY movement is a “hands-on” employee engagement and experience category that puts problem-solving and innovation capabilities into the hands of workforce experts who are frontline and best positioned to identify and resolve problems more rapidly regardless of their hierarchical rank. Enablement provides employees with a greater voice in the execution and ownership of their work and contribution to their teams.

HPX solutions like DIY are early examples of how connected worker advances are helping to digitally embed foundational principles of high-reliability organization management and management theories that accelerate continuous improvement. For instance, DIY solutions play well into social learning theory as they reinforce and support employees in both being an agent for change as well as a responder to change. This is exactly the idea behind equipping employees with the tools to change their environment, act as role models and reinforce behaviors that promote healthier work cultures. Great design in HPX solutions can also improve the cognitive abilities of their users while they work. This means using HPX solutions to leverage the work experience to improve an individual’s perception, attention, memory, and higher function skills while working. Most importantly, HPX solutions play an influential role in driving collaboration, innovation and workforce engagement.

Connected solutions promote both the individual and social dimensions of work by enhancing experiences in interacting with others and sharing information and work experience outcomes across teams and groups. Humans are social beings and as more work is automated, employees must be actively engaged and interconnected to their wider work environments. Experiences are rooted in people’s identity, connection and social behavior, and they are becoming more cognizant about their needs and what they want out of their experiences. They want work experiences that support and develop their self-awareness, respond to what drives and motivates them and put them in control of their space to pursue what they want to become and see the impact they have. Solutions like DIY enable opportunities for social proofing as employees see coworkers tackling challenges, driving innovation and sharing success through documented learnings.

As the relationship between automation and human skills advances, talent deployment will become the highest priority and single most important factor to ensure business resilience and reliability in the face of unforeseen demands and change. COVID-19 proved that businesses need an increasingly more versatile workforce—whether working in traditional, virtual or hybrid working environments. We are now in a gig economy where the employer-employee balance is changing. The assumption that organizations can hold employees as captives will fade as employees continue to use their growing voices and employee experience scores hold organizations measurably accountable. Versatility will go to organizations that are the healthiest in terms of their ability to deliver a human-centric employee performance experience. In doing so, organizations will attract the best talent, enjoy lower staff turnover rates, and realize higher productivity.

HPX represents the next disruptive dimension of human experience and organizational development by providing a deeper, richer and more profound level of human support that leverages the digital economy. When organizations can align and integrate the physical, cultural and technical related dimensions of work, the result will be a new bar regarding experience congruency for the workforce. When employees enjoy a positive work experience, they are engaged, enriched by automation and want to succeed. HXP is not just about making your people feel better; it’s about enabling them to bring the very best of who they are to their work and grow in the process.

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How many N-words create a hostile work environment?

Supreme Court

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court was asked to answer these questions:

  • Whether an employee’s exposure to the N-word in the workplace is severe enough to send his Title VII hostile-work-environment claim to a trier of fact.
  • Whether and in what circumstances racial epithets in the workplace are “extremely serious” incidents sufficient to create a hostile work environment under Title VII, rather than nonactionable “mere utterances.”

These questions stem from Collier v. Dallas County Hosp. Dist. (5th Cir. 2020), which held that an African-American employee had failed to create a question of fact for a jury on his race-based hostile work environment claim based on his allegation that he had seen the one instance of the N-word scrawled on the wall of the hospital in which he worked (along with a pair of swastikas

While recognizing the offensiveness of the graffiti, the appellate court affirmed the dismissal of Collier’s harassment claim.

Though disturbing, the particular facts of this case … are insufficient to establish a hostile work environment under our precedent. For example, we have found that the oral utterance of the N-word and other racially derogatory terms, even in the presence of the plaintiff, may be insufficient to establish a hostile work environment. …

The conduct that Collier complains of was not physically threatening, was not directed at him (except for the nurse’s comment), and did not unreasonably interfere with his work performance. In fact, Collier admitted that the graffiti interfered with his work performance by only one percent. Moreover, Collier does not argue that he felt humiliated by the graffiti, nor would the record support such an assertion. Accordingly, on the record before us, Collier’s hostile-work-environment claim fails because it was not “sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the victim’s employment and create an abusive working environment.”

We do not yet know if the Supreme Court will take up this issue, which remains split among the various appellate circuits. Regardless of your potential liability, however, if the N-word rears its head in your workplace, you have one, and only one, appropriate response. Stop it from happening again, period. Investigate and if you can determine the responsible party, terminate. If you can’t determine the responsible party, send a strong and clear message to all employees that such language and misconduct is not tolerated, and offenders will be terminated.

All employees have the right to work in an environment in which they feel safe and free from the risk of harm. That word creates the exact opposite environment, and should never be allowed. Hard stop.

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My one work rule to rule them all

Unify those far away workplaces with global mobility tools

George Carlin was a genius.

He just had a way of breaking down language into its most simple parts. Whether it was The 7 Dirty Words or The 10 Commandments, Carlin was just brilliant with language. For example, he dismantled each of the 10 Commandments into just two:

First:

  • Thou shalt always be honest and faithful, especially to the provider of thy nookie.

And second:

  • Thou shalt try real hard not to kill anyone, unless, of course, they pray to a different invisible man than the one you pray to.
I thought of this yesterday after stumbling upon a tweetstorm authored by Kate Bischoff reacting to the New York Times article suggesting that Jeffrey Toobin’s long and esteemed career justifies that he should get his job back despite his Zoom full monty faux pas.
After asking, “Is this even open to debate,” I settled on my one work rule to rule them all. Here it is:

Don’t be the asshole!

Don’t believe me?

  • Don’t cheat or steal = Don’t be the asshole.
  • Don’t sexually harass = Don’t be the asshole.
  • Don’t refuse to wear a mask or follow other safety rules = Don’t be the asshole.
  • Don’t no-call/no-show = Don’t be the asshole.
  • Don’t fight = Don’t be the asshole.
  • Don’t be insubordinate = Don’t be the asshole.
  • Don’t whip it out at work, or a Zoom call = Don’t be the asshole.
  • Don’t use the n-word = Don’t be the asshole.

If you don’t want to lose your job for something you do or say, don’t be the asshole. Employees, it’s really that simple.