Category: Workplace Culture

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Wellness: The Next Frontier

Castor oil. Yep, that’ll keep the body well. Or maybe Gripe Water, for British babies with colic, and perhaps the best-named old-fashioned home remedy.

But we know what leads to wellness, at least since the 18th century: An apple a day keeps the doctor away.

Those and many more formed the basis of many companies’ wellness programs for years. I know when I went to my doctor for my annual checkup and asked what I could do to keep young and healthy and was told “diet and exercise,” I asked what else he might have to offer.

But here’s the thing: There’s no “one-size-fits-all” wellness program for all employers. Sure, this week it’s watch your fat intake (although a study in March 2014 indicated that perhaps some saturated fats might actually be good for you), and don’t smoke, and get a modicum of exercise now and then. But those aphorisms do not a wellness program make.

Neither does buying gym memberships for all of your employees. Those who previously went to the gym will thank you for the nice subsidy of what they would have paid for anyway, and those whose last experience in a gym was PE in high school will just yawn. Your return on investment will be minuscule if anything at all.

No, to be serious today in affecting the ever-increasing health care costs, reducing absenteeism (and its related costs), presenteeism, and the general productivity of the workforce, something much more tailored to each organization’s specific makeup must be considered and subsequently implemented.

This requires a much more data-driven, scientific approach. The first step in building a wellness program is determining what it is your employees and their dependents have been spending the plan’s money on. Second, which of those items are preventable, or could be reduced or eliminated via a specific type of intervention? It is only then that you should begin to build your wellness program. I like to refer to that process as “targeted wellness.” It’s targeted to your own employee population and their dependents, and the type of plan expenses you see occurring over a period of time, typically one year or more.

For example, a smoking cessation program is great, and you can often find a decent ROI on it in a general population. But what if your employee base is all 20-somethings who happen to be Olympic swimmers? Think smoking cessation will have much of a return on investment?

Let’s say you do a deep-dive utilization review, examining your claims data and cross-tabbing it by the demographic characteristics of the claimants, as well as whether the treatment is recurring or nonrecurring, preventable or nonpreventable and benchmarked against the larger general population, again by demographics, region and employer size. Only then can you see how your plan’s expenses compare, and then begin targeting by specific disease or condition type where to focus your organization’s wellness efforts.

As an example, a midsize employer with approximately 1,000 employees had in place a generic wellness program. In reviewing its effectiveness, it asked its wellness vendor for an ROI for the effectiveness of its wellness approach. The vendor was unable to provide any kind of meaningful statistics, and so the employer turned to a targeted wellness approach.

It began by performing an extensive utilization review of the health and prescription drug expenses for the prior three years. Examining the results of that review determined that some of the items that its old wellness program focused on weren’t even an issue for its employees and family members, while its plan expenses for diabetes were more than 225 percent above the norm for a group with its demographics and geographic locations.

It then designed an entire initiative around diabetes education and proactive intervention where either hemoglobin A1C tests or prescription protocols weren’t being followed. As a result, it saw a marked decline in costs related to diabetes treatments in the subsequent plan year.

So with wellness, the bottom lineis the bottom line, in addition to providing a more meaningful benefit to employees and family members. Designing a targeted wellness program positively affects employer and employee health cost, can positively impact absenteeism, presenteeism and productivity, and can improve the health of employees and their families.

Gary B. Kushner is the president and CEO of Kushner & Co., a benefits consulting firm. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.

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Are Internal Promotion Rates Increasing?

Dear Sizing Up the Future:

First, there really is a skill shortage. A recent survey by Accenture found that 46 percent of U.S. executives worry their companies won’t have the skills to compete during next year or two. This skills gap spans the globe, from North and South America to Europe and Asia. Although unemployment is high, people with needed skills are in short supply.

Here is a five-step plan for dealing with it. 

1. Complete competency maps for mission-essential jobs. That will tell you which types of knowledge, skills, work attributes and experience people need to competently perform those jobs. Use the competency maps to conduct a competency assessment that identifies skills gaps. Use this information to develop career paths, succession plans and recruiting strategies.

2. Determine who could be moved to new positions and who must remain until the skills gap is minimized. After that, develop skill-acquisition initiatives to prepare talent for lateral or upward moves. These initiatives could include formal job-skill training as well as shadowing, mentorships, informal learning from peers, online forums and so on. You should have a mix of e-learning/mobile learning and instructor-led training to sustain engagement and interest.

3. After addressing internal development needs, look outside the organization for new talent. It’s possible to expand your talent pool by loosening the qualifying criteria. The current trend is to stop looking for the “perfect” candidate and hire based on potential and more generalist skills. You may also want to look for candidates from outside the core industry who have the aptitude to do well in yours.

4. Be selective when interviewing candidates, but look for opportunities to hire rather than reasons for rejecting. To help with selection, use online resources that are inexpensive and accessible. Do actual follow-up on references and request them to provide additional references.

5. Build your talent network. Many organizations are partnering with local colleges and universities, tech schools and trade schools to identify programs that can teach the skills needed to be successful in their business/industry. Talk with your local colleges to see what they offer and share what you need. Be open to internships that bring smart seniors or graduate students to your workplace to help with meaningful projects. Look to organizations that are closely related to yours that might serve as a talent source for you. Maybe they have someone who has topped out and is looking for more of a challenge, one that your company could offer. Rather than raid a competitor, become a partner who provides job opportunities that a smaller company might not have. It’s a good recruiting tool for them and you could pay them a finder’s fee.

SOURCE: Alan Landers, president, First Step Training, San Diego, April 3, 2014

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How Do We Keep Up With Change?

Dear Staggered:

You are entirely on point in realizing that the choices you face with respect to learning and development are more important than they ever have been. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but the health care industry isn’t all that’s changing. So, too, is the deal in the workspace, the expectations of employees and clients, and a delivery window that is shrinking by the day. So, your L&D approach must take into account highly targeted, strategically anchored content offerings, intelligent and efficient delivery modes, and a host of changing expectations. Here are a few thoughts:

Voice of the Customer

The first stop on your journey should be to make sure that the client’s voice is well-represented. Don’t assume that you know what clients are facing and what they need from your organization. Take the time to engage them and ask about both their immediate and anticipated needs. Listen hard, and then make sure that their needs are well-represented in your L&D plans and priorities.

You would do well to look at your workforce as clients, too, albeit the non-paying type. They can tell you a lot about what’s working and what’s not with respect to their preparation, and identify some needs that paying clients haven’t even thought about yet. Avoid at all cost the trap of letting trainers clutter the agenda with their favorite chunks of content. Then, be exceptionally well-prepared to fight for the right L&D priorities and the resource Commitment (capital ‘C’ intentional) to breathe life into them.

One Size Fits One, But …

On one hand you’ve got to achieve critical mass by making sure that certain competencies are well-shared in the organization. But on the other hand, you need to do a fair amount of micro-targeting. People will no longer endure, let alone embrace or pay for, learning content that is poorly designed, delivered in the wrong mode or at the wrong time, or attempts to treat everyone the same.

Find a way to get senior executives, the organization’s rock stars and other centers of influence seriously involved. See to it that everyone has a personal development plan and is expected to accomplish it. For that matter, all staff members should negotiate both the terms and funding for their development plan. In other words, let them own it. Be willing to take a fresh look at various delivery modes, including gamification, coaching, shared services and the use of MOOCs. Don’t be afraid to incorporate a heaping dose of fun.

Career Development Isn’t What It Used to Be

During the last 60 years, average job tenure in the U.S. has shrunk from nearly 20 years to about four years. Indeed, in a gig economy the word “career” has taken on completely new meaning, since a person’s body of work can be literally all over the map, housed in an assortment of short, disparate stays. For L&D purposes, that means you’ve got a much shorter and steeper runway to help people gain the needed proficiency.

Nowhere is that more evident than with your leadership cadre. Not unlike football quarterbacks who go straight from the college ranks to starting NFL jobs — something that used to take five years — emerging leaders are commonly thrust into managerial roles with little to no preparation whatsoever. On Friday, you’re an individual contributor, and on Monday, having had all weekend to get ready, your life changes.

Unlike the college player, most of them have not even had the benefit of coaching, because their bosses are completely overwhelmed by their own jobs. Make a determined effort to provide your emerging leaders with some coaching. If you can do nothing else, make sure that real leadership qualifications are baked into the selection criteria for management positions at all levels. Good luck.

Bill Catlette, Contented Cow Partners, Jacksonville, Florida, April 7, 2014

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How Do We Deliver Performance-Based Learning?

Dear Map But No Direction:

Learning in the workplace needs to be constantly adapting and evolving to continue to build talent in the most effective way for the learner. Performance-based learning, or PBL, is a great way to accomplish this. Although it can be difficult to design and implement, conducting it properly pays a huge return on investment.  

PBL is a type of teaching and learning that emphasizes gaining specific skills for a job. The outcome of learning is the focus rather than the functions and information being taught.

Studies have shown that PBL can cut lesson time by up to 50 percent for students while increasing their retention. Employees absorb the necessary skills and require fewer “touch points,” making them more effective on the job and within a shorter time frame — a big win for management.    

With an organization of 600 people, taking the time to focus on which employees need improvement with what skill may seem overwhelming and unrealistic. Your PBL curriculum can be manageable if you divide it into these three steps:  

  • Determine your competencies.
  • Design your training around learning outcomes.
  • Make it tangible, real and a little sticky.

Determine your competencies: Meet with your team leads and/or managers to determine core competencies. If possible, conduct a companywide survey to gain a pulse on what skills are lacking. The questions and outcomes must focus on which skills need improvement, not just the knowledge that has to be acquired.

To help your training take shape, take the top 15 to 20 needed skills and group employees with like needs. Your curriculum will become specialized and therefore more realistic to manage.

Design training around learning outcomes: Customize your training based off the survey results. Tailoring your training modules (instead of offering a blanket studying course) will encourage participants to learn vs. coasting through the curriculum. You can design your training program by:

  • Intermixing live training, webinars and e-learning to reinforce the outcomes by capitalizing on different learning styles.
  • Structuring time and encouraging employees to practice, make mistakes, reflect and try again.
  • Allowing for peer-to-peer regroup sessions to discuss the lessons and help each other improve.

It will take more upfront work, but learners need to learn by doing. Through PBL, employees can master a skill and there is less downtime spent on retraining those skills.

Make it tangible, real and a little sticky: To have a truly successful PBL curriculum, students need to take responsibility for their own scholarship. Education allows for increased confidence and ability. However, as with all lessons, an air of uncertainty and self-doubt can ensue. Overcome these limitations and make it stick at your organization by:

  • Re-evaluating the skills learned to ensure PBL is still applicable and effective.
  • Delivering direct and sincere feedback in a comfortable environment.
  • Having virtual (weekly newsletter, social media, community board, emails, etc.) and in-person (morning meetings, evaluations, etc.) recognition sessions on PBL skill accomplishments.

SOURCE: Brad Karsh, JB Training Solutions, Chicago

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How Important Is Sticking to Job Descriptions?

Dear Concerned:

I can tell you are worried about unintended consequences if executives do not address the issue of increasing workloads head-on. I am breaking your question into two parts to address each one individually.

First, can an employee be asked to take on tasks that are not specifically listed in the job description? To answer this it’s important to clarify the purpose of these documents. A job description is a tool that enumerates the key responsibilities for a job. It serves many different functions. It is initially used in recruiting to help candidates understand what is expected and what skills are needed to be successful. Once an individual is on board, the job description is often consulted to design employee training, establish salary ranges, set department goals and work with employees to address their performance. They are good tools and they are valuable for workforce structure; don’t throw them out.

On the other hand, a job description is not a task checklist for a particular individual. In fact, the best job descriptions I have seen contain a disclaimer of sorts. The document describes the work and then says something like “and other duties as may be necessary.” It’s impossible for someone to capture every aspect of a role in a job description. As you said, these are more fluid than static. It is therefore acceptable — in fact it’s quite common — for a manager to ask his or her direct reports to take on work not listed in a job description. This is especially true if the requests for additional work are occasional or intermittent. 

Second, as you point out, job description or no, there is a negative impact to the organization when employees constantly feel overwhelmed by their workload. The solutions are slightly different, depending on the root cause for this problem

Often employees tell me they feel afraid to discuss the impact of taking on additional work with their boss. Consequently, they say yes to everything, knowing there is no way that it can all get done effectively within reasonable time frames. I call this problem “commitment management.” There are ways to help employees and employers negotiate these requests effectively. Read “Who Will Do What by When” by Tom Hanson and Birgit Zacher Hanson; it explains a simple process that can be followed. 

Another possibility is that the employees don’t know how to prioritize the work, so they feel everything must be done immediately. I call this problem “priority management.” The solution to this is for employees to approach their bosses and ask them for help establishing an order for completion of tasks and a timeline. Most often, employees learn that there is more flexibility in the schedules than they thought.

Finally, many people have trouble managing their time and therefore are unable to complete the important work quickly. Hundreds of books have been written on this topic. One I like is called “Getting Things Done”by David Allen.

I think there are solutions to the concerns you raise. Hopefully this feedback gives you a framework for a productive conversation with the executives.

SOURCE: Ellen Raim, vice president of human resources, Cascade Microtech, Beaverton, Oregon, March 25, 2014

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The Last Word: Tossed Salad Insults

It was lunchtime. I had just scored a burrito the size of my forearm from my favorite taco shop and got on the elevator to the 12th floor when I was joined by three women. One of them hit the button for the seventh floor, which I think is home to an insurance company’s administrative offices. A fourth woman entered as the doors closed, also bound for the seventh floor.

“What’cha got there?” a member of the trio asked their late-arriving colleague. The smell of warm burgers and hot fries wafted across the car just as I noticed their McDonald’s bags; no such odor drifted up from the fourth woman’s meal.

“I got a salad,” she offered with a slight sigh in a low, monotone reply. Apparently she was steeling herself for the impending response that she knew was coming.

“A salad?!” barked the trio’s expert in haute cuisine. “Whaddaya want with rabbit food? You tryin’ to lose weight? You got yourself a man now?”

“I’m just watching what I eat,” the lone girl replied somewhat sheepishly — I guess because she chose to nibble on veggies rather than a No. 6 combo from Mickey D’s.

A rapid-fire Q-and-A ensued regarding booty size and their appeal as boy magnets, prompting me to ponder the grilling I’d get if they knew I substituted quinoa for rice on my burrito. But rather than bailing on this awkward elevator trip, I tuned out the chatter on fresh greens, posteriors and boyfriends until the door slid open at seven. As they filed out, I felt the sense of relief you get at the grocery store after slipping past one spouse dressing down the other for grabbing the wrong type of laundry detergent: “I told you perfume-free! Can’t you remember those two words?”

Now, I know friends razz each other. We’d be a boring lot indeed if we didn’t occasionally zing each other over our favorite music or the growing stack of dirty Tupperware on our desks.

Whether it’s a cross-country call from a colleague gloating about the weather, teasing someone on a bad hair day or questioning a repetitive lunch choice, ribbing can build enduring workplace relationships.

We quickly learn colleagues’ foibles and favorites; some have taken those observations and lifted needling to high art. Entire sitcoms are based on workplace digs, and let’s face it, no matter how uptight we get, jokes and laughs help loosen up an all-too-stressed-out workplace.

But the line between pushing the envelope and pushing someone’s buttons can be paper-thin. And crossing the boundary into bully territory is just around the bend from that.

Perhaps I’m taking the elevator banter a little more personally than I should, but I’ve been there. Several years ago I ballooned up to being 40 pounds overweight because of poor food choices and a lack of exercise, leading to an assortment of aches, pains and stress. That kind of bulk isn’t easy to lose either.

Doing a 360-degree about-face with your eating habits is an incredibly difficult task, especially at lunch. Making the choice is one thing, but following through and maintaining a dietary lifestyle turnaround — especially when it’s so much simpler to chow down on fast food at your desk — is an entirely different story.

Perhaps worse, according to a recent study from GrubHub, 40 percent of employees admit to occasionally skipping lunch because of heavy workloads; others don’t do themselves any favors, the study adds, by prioritizing work over nutrition and postponing their meal until late in the afternoon.

Yet the majority of people who do eat lunch can get mighty sensitive when their choice of foods and eating habits is called into question. I get defensive, and judging by her immediate reaction, I suspect the woman on the elevator did, too.

Food choices can be a sense of ethnic and personal pride. Laugh at my homemade dumplings heating up in the microwave and you’re trampling my heritage. Crack wise about my salad and you’re assaulting my personal preference to take a stab at a healthier lifestyle.

I’ve harped often enough in this column about the value of managers encouraging healthy, fit employees. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. But this time I’ll take it a step further: Kidding a colleague who opts for a salad over a sloppy joe — even if it’s all in good-natured fun — is still in bad taste.

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How Do We Deal With the Old Guard?

Dear Old Guard:

Sounds like a classic case of culture clash: You need to remedy two ills lingering from your past as you proceed to build a new IT team. First, I’d prescribe a healthy dose of change management. Unfortunately, the “old guard” IT professionals that you describe are frequently the least receptive to change. It’s certainly ironic given that tech is all about innovation, but the greatest resistance to change often emanates from seasoned IT professionals who dismiss new trends while clinging to legacy technologies. This makes your situation particularly challenging.

Your question also alludes to pretty significant issues related to your employment brand. A company teetering on the edge of closure twice in the past 10 years, with a 300 percent reduction in workforce, will likely not offer a very attractive employment alternative for the “new breed of IT people” you now want to hire. Your brand as an employer will also require some rehabilitation.

My prescription is for you to start afresh. You could embark on an extensive change management program with the old-guard IT leadership in place, but it will take a lot of time and is not guaranteed to work. 

Instead, go for a quicker cure which will accelerate change, albeit not without some initial pain. Hire a new CIO with the vision you want and the qualifications needed to rebuild from the top down. This person can bring a fresh perspective and might be better able to assess existing talent and who is likely to adapt to this changing environment. It also provides the much-needed infusion of new thinking needed to excite the new breed of employee you want to hire. A new person in that critical leadership role, with no history with your organization, stands a much better chance at developing an employee value proposition that fosters your new company’s burnished employment brand.

Initially, this approach may be a bitter pill for some of the old guard to swallow, but it also is the quickest way to get IT back on its feet.

SOURCE: J. James O’Malley, Partner, talentRISE, Chicago, March 25, 2014

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5 Myths About Unconscious Bias — And 6 Ways to Reduce It

WF_WebSite_BlogHeaders-12There’s no denying it, unconscious bias is trendy. It’s so trendy, it’s even become an acronym in some of my circles, known affectionately as “UB.” But as often occurs when a term or concept becomes common or mainstream, myths and misinformation abound:

Myth 1: We don’t need to worry anymore about conscious bias or bigotry. We are not “post-racial.” Individual acts of verbal, physical and emotional violence against people due to their real or perceived group membership are still relatively common. One of my least favorite statistics is that the number of active hate groups in the U.S. has increased by 56 percent — to over 900 — since 2000, particularly since President Obama took office in 2008.

Myth 2: I don’t have any unconscious biases. It’s frightening to think we may not be 100 percent aware or in control of what we think and do. But brain science shows that if you’re a human being, your brain operates through biases. Homo sapiens evolved to constantly and unconsciously make immediate decisions based on limited data and pre-existing patterns. We are descended from the more skittish members of our species, so we’re hypersensitive to anything the old parts of our brain deems dangerous. Biases have thus served us for eons, and continue to do so, but are not effective in helping us interact effectively with diverse humans in today’s workplace. Bias elimination is not only ineffective, it’s impossible — the focus should be on bias reduction (see myth 5), choosing behaviors more mindfully, and mitigating any negative impacts of those behaviors. Check out “Blind Spot: Hidden Biases of Good People” for a fascinating read.

Myth 3: I know what my unconscious biases are. By definition, UB is — well — unconscious. You may have a sense of what some are, but be blind to others. Consider taking one or more of the well-researched Implicit Association Tests. Keep in mind that our UB can often conflict with our conscious beliefs and values, and we may even hold negative UB against our own group! I’ve been doing some form of intercultural or diversity work for almost 25 years and many of my early role models were African-American women, and yet I showed a negative bias toward African-American men on one of the tests. Rather than deny our UB, we can be curious about where they come from and how they get so ingrained in our minds despite our good intentions and be more mindful of our actions. UB only become problematic when they manifest in ineffective behaviors.

Myth 4: Hooray! Since everyone’s biased, we can move on from that tired conversation about racism/sexism, etc.! Although everyone’s biased, biases are not equal in their impact at a group level. Negative UB held by a numerical majority or power-dominant group have a disproportionate ability to do harm to numerical minorities or power non-dominant groups.

Myth 5: Since UB is unconscious, there’s nothing I can do about it. Excellent suggestions abound about how to mitigate the effect of negative UB in talent management and hiring practices through awareness, calibration and effective behaviors. However, there seem to be few evidence-based strategies to reduce harmful negative biases in the first place other than these:

  • Awareness of what our particular unconscious biases are (Pope, Price & Wolfers, 2014).
  • Empathy, particularly “perspective taking,” or the ability to feel or imagine what another person feels or might feel (Todd, Bodenhausen, Richeson & Galinsky, 2011).
  • Exposure to counter stereotypical role models. (Dasgupta & Asgari, 2004 and three other studies).
  • Exposure to positive images to counteract negative bias (Dasgupta & Greenwald, 2001).
  • Using imagery to imagine alternatives to negative stereotypes  (Blair, Ma, & Lenton, 2001).
  • Training to improve one’s ability to distinguish between faces of individuals in “other” racial groups (Lebrecht, Pierece, Tarr, & Tanaka, 2009, January).

 

What will you put in motion today to reduce the negative impacts of your unconscious biases?

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Don’t Let Wellness Panels Grow Fat and Lazy: Experts

Knowing employees spend more than 2,000 hours annually at work, many organizations have realized it makes good business sense to keep them healthy.

But according to Bswift, a provider of software and services designed to streamline benefits, human resources and payroll administration, while 85 percent of large companies and 81 percent of smaller companies have wellness programs in place, only 44 percent of these programs have employee participation rates topping 50 percent.

One of the key aspects of a successful worksite wellness program that engages employees is a committee that focuses on its creation, implementation and maintenance.

Committees provide opportunities for management and employees to be involved in the program’s development and promotion, ensuring initiatives are visible to the workforce and sustained over time.

While the tendency is to recruit the most qualified committee members and hang on to them for long periods of time, Dean Witherspoon, president and founder of Health Enhancement Systems, said that to get employees on board, companies need wellness committees that don’t last.

‘Don’t allow anyone to serve more than six consecutive months.’
—Dean Witherspoon, Health Enhancement Systems

Witherspoon, whose company creates employee wellness campaigns, suggests organizations limit the size of a committee to 20 people broken into four teams of four or five subcommittee members that tackle a specific project, which can be completed in three months or less.

“You should disband the committee when the project is complete, and don’t allow anyone to serve more than six consecutive months,” he said.

He also recommends limiting individuals to just one term in any two-year period. It’s a model inspired by Tony Schwartz of consultancy The Energy Project. He suggests intense bursts of work followed by time off for rest.

“Sprinting toward a performance goal is preferable to treating performance like a marathon, where there’s no end in sight and the approach is to work continuously without stopping,” said Arden Pennell, director of faculty and content at The Energy Project. “Sprinting, or working fully fueled for distinct amounts of time with a clear finish line, enables us to give it our all. With a sprinting approach, when we’re working, we’re really working. And when we’re renewing and refueling our energy, we’re really refueling.”

For a committee that demonstrates the fuel necessary to engage employees and accomplish the tasks at hand, Witherspoon suggests hiring for passion, which he said is often a greater predictor of volunteer success than background. “More than anything, look for energy,” he said.

Employees may already know wellness initiatives demonstrate that their company is committed to leading them to better health. A well-informed wellness committee that brings together a variety of talents and perspectives while enhancing the credibility of the program is also important, they added.

Ladan Nikravan is a Workforce associate editor. To comment, email editors@workforce.com. Follow Nikravan on Twitter at @ladannikravan.

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Management à la ‘Mitty’

"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” reveals some secrets about managing people.

I’m talking about the recent Ben Stiller movie, not the 1939 James Thurber short story. As great as the original tale about a daydreaming middle-aged man was, it didn’t touch on the workplace. But Stiller’s movie remake is largely about Mitty’s job at Life magazine. In describing work at Life, you might say, it tells us plenty about life at work.

At first blush, Walter Mitty’s worklife is anything but enlightening. Mitty (Stiller) and his colleagues walk into a world of typical corporate cubes, and an apparently drab morning quickly gets worse with word the magazine is being shut down in favor of an online version. The news, from a mean-spirited new manager, could cost Mitty and others their jobs.

At Life, Mitty works in an anachronistic underworld to the contemporary cubes. He’s the “negative asset manager” — in charge of all the film negatives that Life has collected over the years. These include images from the magazine’s top photographer, who still shoots with old-fashioned film. Mitty and his direct report Hernando (Adrian Martinez) work in a dimly lit space full of tightly packed shelves. It’s more a craft workshop from mid-20th century America than a contemporary knowledge workspace.

When Walter and Hernando can’t find the negative that’s intended for the cover of Life’s last issue, Mitty is propelled into a series of adventures. But even with Walter far beyond the confines of the office for much of the film, the movie offers wise workplace commentary.

1. Have faith in people to do their jobs. Mitty’s dramatic journeys have much to do with a personal quest to discover himself. But they also are driven by the pride he takes in his work. At one point, he tells the nasty new boss that he had handled more than a million negatives during his 16-year career without losing one.

To be sure, people will fall down on the job. Yes, some will deliberately harm their employers. But organizations have a fundamental choice regarding workers: see them as half-full or half-empty. And have you noticed that the organizations that start from a position of trust tend to do well and be recognized as great places to work? Like Google, which gives employees “20 percent time” to pursue projects they care about.

2. Encourage camaraderie and collaboration. Crucial to Mitty’s progress in the film is the way he works with colleagues to hunt down the missing negative. Hernando scours the archives to ensure the image isn’t anywhere in the office files. And then Mitty’s colleague Cheryl (Kristen Wiig) helps him make sense of the few clues he possesses. She also defends Walter in the wake of a dissing by the new boss, and her friendly words encourage him to take big leaps.

These examples of teamwork and esprit de corps aren’t just feel-good Hollywood moments. They are ingredients for hard-nosed business success. Growing amounts of research points to the importance of collaboration for innovation and organizational agility. And a positive peer culture matters as well. Gallup has tied having “a best friend” at work to higher engagement, and therefore to better business results.

3. Respect workers. The absence of respect is mostly what Walter gets from his new boss, who pings him with a paper clip, belittles him as the “dream machine” and mocks Walter’s years of perfect performance. By contrast, Walter himself proves to be a humane, effective manager. He treats Hernando as a near-equal. And Hernando clearly cares about doing a good job of fulfilling Walter’s command to search the archives.

As today’s talent wars heat up, organizations would do well to be more like Mitty than Mitty’s new boss in the film. The latest survey of undergraduate students by consulting firm Universum finds that “respect” for an organization’s people is the top preference among young people as they consider companies.     

There’s something of a turnaround for Mitty’s boss at the conclusion of the film. I won’t spoil the ending, but it is an uplifting reminder of how our organizations depend on the dedication and efforts of rank-and-file workers.

Faith, camaraderie and respect. On one hand, these lessons from Walter Mitty are old-school truths about managing people. They date to the golden years of Life in the 1950s and ’60s, and all the way to ancient times. But the clutter of life — or at Life — can cover them up and turn them into secrets. If you need help rediscovering them, see this movie.

Ed Frauenheim is Workforce's associate editorial director. Comment below or email him at efrauenheim@workforce.com. Follow Frauenheim on Twitter at @edfrauenheim.