Workplace Culture – Page 8

July 17, 2019June 29, 2023

There Isn’t a Magic Number of Racial Slurs an Employee Must Prove to Establish a Hostile Work Environment

Jamie Ortiz (of Puerto Rican descent) worked for the Broward County, Florida, School Board in various capacities for nearly 20 years, including, from 2009 through 2017, as an auto mechanic in the district’s garage under the supervision of Michael Kriegel.

According to the testimony of both Ortiz and many of his co-workers, Kriegel had some issues with Puerto Ricans and other Hispanics, which he expressed to anyone who would listen, including Ortiz, on a daily basis.

Kriegel made offensive comments and jokes about Puerto Ricans, such as, “I’m around too many Puerto Ricans, I better carry my gun with me”; “we need to lock our toolboxes because we’re hiring too many Puerto Ricans”; “this New York Puerto Rican is on me”; “Puerto Ricans like to do their own thing, they don’t follow orders”; and “it ain’t right you Puerto Ricans are making more money than me.” Kriegel never used Ortiz’s name and instead called him “Puerto Rican.” Kriegel also used the ethnic slur “spic” “several times.”

Ortiz also testified that Kriegel harassed him “every day on any type of work order.” Kriegel would wait for him to finish his bus route and say things like, “your Puerto Rican ass think you can do whatever you want to do.” Another time, Kriegel criticized Ortiz for using a certain bus and stated that he was “going to write your Puerto Rican ass up.” Over Ortiz’s objections, these and other comments did not stop.

According to Ortiz’s coworkers, Kriegel used the terms “spic,” “lazy spic,” “knock-kneed spic,” “dumb spic,” and “wetback,” either specifically about Ortiz or about Hispanic people more generally. Kriegel also made other discriminatory comments, including “here comes the Puerto Rican gang, I need to call the cops”; “the damn Puerto Rican again, I’ve got to go see what this freakin’ Puerto Rican is doing, they’re all the same”; “I would rather have, you know, three more of these guys than a smelly Puerto Rican in here”; “spics come over here and they want to eat up all the benefits”; and “had a lot of niggers and spics apply, and we won’t need no more of them here.”

Amazingly, the district court granted the employer’s motion for summary judgment and dismissed Ortiz’s racial harassment claim. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, however, was not having it.

Here, a reasonable jury could conclude that Ortiz’s workplace was objectively hostile to a reasonable person in his position. First, for nearly a two-year period preceding Ortiz’s EEOC charge, the frequency of the harassment was daily or near daily. Ortiz reported that, from the beginning of 2013 through September of 2014, Kriegel made offensive comments and jokes every day about Puerto Ricans. Likewise, one of Ortiz’s coworkers stated that he heard discriminatory comments by Kriegel about people of Hispanic origin on a daily basis during the same time period. Other coworkers reporting hearing discriminatory comments on a less frequent but still regular basis. This evidence is not consistent with the type of “isolated” or “sporadic” conduct that is insufficient to meet Title VII’s threshold. Rather, it reflects a work environment “permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult.”

[T]here is no “‘magic number’ of racial or ethnic insults” that a plaintiff must prove. …

I am flabbergasted that a federal district court judge could conclude that these facts did not, as a matter of law, constitute a racially hostile work environment.

Indeed, I’d argue that even one “spic” or “wetback” is enough to create a hostile work environment. A daily barrage of these slurs is the definition of racially hostile work environment. Bravo to the appellate court for correcting a very poor decision.

July 16, 2019June 29, 2023

As You’re Aware … Self-Awareness Is Critical to Your Company’s Success

The research indicates that more self-aware individuals understand others better, enabling them to lead more effectively.

However, while most people believe they are self-aware, a study by The Eurich Group shows that the quality of self-awareness is actually in short supply.

There are a number of reasons to believe that greater general levels of self-awareness at organizations lead to positive business outcomes. For example, studies such as those by Bass & Yammarino, Atwater & Yammarino, and Church showed that people with more accurate self-conception tended to perform better.

At the top level, the relationship between self-awareness and flexibility is demonstrated by a study of the Royal Navy, which found that more self-aware leaders were better able to tailor their leadership style to the needs of the situation at hand. Better employee performance plus more agile leadership typically leads to a better bottom line.

There’s also reason to believe that it might influence retention. My team at the Myers-Briggs Co. recently researched workplace well-being with over 10,000 global respondents, and found that individuals with a higher level of well-being — which can stem from self-awareness — had significantly higher levels of job satisfaction and were significantly less likely to look for a new job.

What Is Self-awareness, and How Does It Help You?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary self-awareness is “Conscious knowledge of one’s own character and feelings.” Researcher Anna Sutton further elaborates on this to describe it as, “The extent to which people are consciously aware of their interactions or relationships with others and of their internal states.”

Think about a time you took your car in for a tune-up. Nothing major was fixed, but afterward it drove like a dream. Similarly, increasing your self-awareness can help you perform better — by discovering how you operate, you begin to understand how to adjust your behaviors for better results.

You also begin to understand other people’s approaches too. In our own recent research on self-awareness, survey respondents reported that increased self-awareness led to improvements in confidence, decision-making, people-management and stress management. When we asked people about the advantages of being self-aware, the top responses were:

. Understanding of reactions and motivation.
. Management of self and others.
. Ability to adapt behavior.
. Relationship improvement.
. Personal growth.

Additionally, people said that self-awareness was particularly helpful when:

Working with others in a team (mentioned by 58 percent of survey respondents).
Coping with stress (mentioned by 54 percent of survey respondents).
Acting as a coach (mentioned by 53 percent of survey respondents).
Dealing with change (mentioned by 50 percent of survey respondents).
Managing and leading others (mentioned by 45 percent of survey respondents).
Dealing with clients (mentioned by 33 percent of survey respondents).
Receiving coaching or feedback (mentioned by 28 percent of survey respondents).

How Is Self-awareness Measured?

A number of models and assessments can be employed to measure self-awareness in individuals, but one particularly useful one comes from a 2015 study by Sutton, Williams and Allinson which identified four facets of self-awareness: Reflection, Insight, Rumination and Mindfulness. In our own research, here is a sampling of the included questions designed to measure these facets:

Reflection

I often reflect on my thoughts. I do not often think about the way I am feeling.
I enjoy exploring my “inner self.”
I often reflect on my feelings.
Others would benefit from reflecting more on their thoughts.

Insight

I am interested in analyzing the behavior of others.
I value opportunities to evaluate my behavior.
It is important to understand why people behave in the way they do.
When I’m feeling uncomfortable, I can easily name these feelings.
I usually know why I am feeling the way I do.

Mindfulness

I am often on autopilot and do not pay much attention to what I am doing.
Sometimes I am careless because I am preoccupied, with many things on my mind.
I often dwell on the past or the future, rather than the present.
My mind often wanders when I am trying to concentrate.

Rumination

I often find myself thinking about past negative events.
When things go wrong, I often ruminate on them for long periods of time.
I tend not to look back and think about how I could have done things differently.

How Can a Workplace Professional Promote Self-Awareness?

There are many ways to develop self-awareness, but a mix of methods will probably work best. Here are some of the most popular, based on responses to our survey.

Feedback from peers.
Completing personality questionnaires.
Feedback from family, managers, clients, subordinates and a wider network.
Training to become a coach.
Professional training.
360-degree tools.

However, the most popular methods aren’t necessarily the best. We looked at a number of commonly used approaches and found that the best methods, in order of effectiveness, were:

Training to be a coach.
Being coached.
Having structured feedback from your peers.
Completing personality assessments.

It wasn’t too surprising that “training to be a coach” topped the list, as this involves many, many hours of learning to understand oneself before being allowed to coach others. Of course, such training is also time consuming and expensive and not a realistic route for most employees.

On the other hand, “being coached oneself” as a way to help senior managers, is something that many organizations may invest in. It does, however, come with a significant cost and time commitment, so companies might want to look into having ‘structured feedback from your peers and completed personality assessments, which may in fact be the most cost-effective approaches in terms of providing the biggest payoff for a relatively low monetary investment.

Similarly, journaling, the practice of keeping a diary or journal that explores thoughts and feelings surrounding the events of your life, offers a low-cost way to effectively promote self-awareness.

However, companies should note that one of the interesting findings of our research was that “feedback from your manager” was seen to be one of the least effective methods. This is an important point because, as noted earlier, this kind of feedback was also listed as one of the most common methods of promoting self-awareness that organizations leverage.

Though we cannot say exactly why manager feedback was not seen as especially effective, there are a number of possible reasons. Some managers may be less close to their subordinate’s work than peers, seen to have particular agendas or as too busy with other aspects of their job. Whatever the reason, this is a troubling finding for managers.

You’re Self-Aware, Now What?

Self-awareness is really just the first step. Once individuals become more aware of their own personality preferences and have a structure to understand and describe them, they can start to recognize how their co-workers are similar to or different from them and begin to devise strategies to work with them more effectively. Linked to this greater understanding, managers and workplace professionals can put in place systems to help people work together more effectively. This could include approaches such as:

Establishing a modus operandi for working together that takes account of the rights and the responsibilities of different personality types.
Ensuring that important information is communicated in a range of different ways (rather than only in a style that suits the personality of the sender).
Allowing time for reflection during or after meetings.
Considering personality preferences when reorganizing office layouts.

Regardless of whether some or all of the approaches are taken, the key to successfully implementing any of these is the realization that we are different from others in ways that can be identified and described, and the harnessing of this diversity of personality in a positive way.

July 16, 2019June 29, 2023

Playing the Game of Baby Boomer Bingo

It’s no secret that the retirement of baby boomers is contributing to a shortage of workers.

Recent reports show that the United States is predicted to see a 38 percent increase in the over-65 population between 2015 and 2025, while the U.S. population of those between ages 18 and 64 is only expected to rise by 3 percent. Baby boomers are estimated to comprise 15 percent of the total global population, according to a resource on website employmentcounselor.net.

Around the world, employers are trying to retain these tenured resources with creative incentives. Some countries are increasing wages, and others are increasing retirement ages.

At the same time, companies are finding that the work styles of baby boomers are changing. After long careers spent largely working as traditional, full-time employees, many in this generation are shying away from retirement and are instead looking for smaller, more flexible work as contractors or consultants. In a tight labor market, this shift can be a significant opportunity for employers desiring the deep level of subject matter expertise, hard and soft skills, and management experience that boomers carry.

Boomers’ preference to continue working can be a big win for any company. To keep this generation in the workforce, however, companies will have to embrace several basic approaches to improve worker engagement. These approaches include creating flexible schedules and engagement models, partnering with senior workers in their career progression, and empowering senior workers with technology.

Embrace Flexibility

As baby boomers find their own balance between easing into retirement and staying productive, employers can aid the transition by providing flexible work options and alternative engagement models. For example, consider the sales executive who looks forward to cutting the hourlong commute from her morning or evening schedule.

For the employee, retirement may be a big, drastic step, but the personal and lifestyle benefits of removing the commute, even if just a few days per week, outweigh the anxieties of not working. By engaging that worker in meaningful dialogue around her real needs and proactively offering remote work as an option, the employer can dramatically alter the equation, often resulting in the employee staying on board for several valuable years. Similarly, flexibility in scheduling may include four-day weeks or alternative hours.

Along with schedule adjustments, an open mind about engagement models is also an advantage. Talent may come in the form of consultants or contractors, allowing a more flexible engagement model.

Hiring managers need to become comfortable in looking at both traditional employees and flexible workers when considering talent needs. That level of comfort requires an environment that enables the employer to quickly and easily identify and access all available talent, including permanent employment candidates and contractors alike.

Become a Career Partner

When employing baby boomers, it is critical to partner with them in their career progression and understand what they want from the position, as well as their overall career goals. For example, they may be interested in expanding their skills.

From technology to processes and new fields of expertise, workers of all generations value learning, and employers would do well to meet their needs with appropriate resources and learning programs. Likewise, visibility into job openings across the company is also valuable to pre-retirement workers. What the boomers desire in development (or increased flexibility) may come simply in the form of a role in a different department or functional group.

Along with traditional training opportunities and job visibility, boomers can benefit greatly from the give and take of knowledge transfer among workers in the organization. Mentorships are an obvious option for knowledge sharing from pre-retirement workers to those of other generations. Less obvious, but just as important, are reverse mentorship arrangements that give pre-retirement workers a chance to learn from younger generations.

Provide Up-to-Date Technology

Employers wishing to continue working with highly skilled baby boomers should not only provide them with workplace flexibility but also enable them to do that work with easy and transparent digital interactions. While baby boomers may have lived a substantial portion of their lives before the rise of digital communication, they also have grown accustomed to the consumer experience of using applications for everything from shopping on their phone to using Facetime to connect with distant family members.

In the workplace, baby boomers can benefit from the same level of technology enablement. For example, the use of cloud-based technologies for collaboration should make workflow, documentation, feedback, and approvals on projects transparent and accessible any time, any place.

Likewise, telecommuting tools like videoconferencing are no longer new, but many organizations have not fully adopted the concept in their core business. As more boomers opt to avoid or reduce the number of days spent commuting to onsite locations, use of these tools will become more widely accepted as part of corporate cultures and more widely sought after by generations approaching retirement.

Make Workplace Accessibility a Priority

Regardless of age, employees need to believe that their employer is committed to their well-being, and removing barriers to access is an important part of that commitment.

For workers with disabilities, an employer’s commitment to improving employees’ ability to utilize physical and virtual resources can be instrumental to a positive work experience. Considering that the percentage of the U.S. population with a disability jumps from 10.6 percent for those between 18 and 64 to more than 35 percent for those over 65, according to research by the University of New Hampshire, the importance of access and accommodation for baby boomers is clear.

The most obvious example of accessibility is the corporate website. Captions with audio and video, along with visual options such as larger formats and contrasting color schemes, can help to ensure that the employer does not place unnecessary barriers to work and interaction for employees.

Many organizations can help companies assess their accessibility and provide paths for improvement. At the same time, employers should consider that accessibility often leads to a better experience for everyone and not just workers with disabilities.

Engaging Talent of All Ages

Organizations will continue to compete for valuable baby boomer talent. The competition may come from different employers, or it may come in the form of competing life choices, from full retirement to relocation. In all cases, core principles that drive great talent engagement will make the difference between employers that successfully engage baby boomers and those that miss out on the opportunity these workers present.

These commitments — being flexible, empowering their careers, and providing the right tools and technology to get work done — are more than strategies for recruiting senior workers. They are basic paths for any company to become a better employer to the people it hires and aims to retain, whatever their age and experience group. When it comes to attracting and retaining talent of any age, what’s good for people is good for business.

Keep Looking Ahead

Companies face persistent challenges in attracting, finding and retaining critical talent. They are struggling to get work done in a market where demographics are shifting, and the technology is constantly evolving.

When positioning a talent acquisition strategy to better engage the workforce, regardless of generation, an open mind for change is essential. A new solution may supplant the technology that works today for virtual work.

The model that engages pre-retirement professionals as consultants may evolve as part of a total talent approach. Amid such conditions, the leaders, today and in the future, will be the employers that continually question how work gets done, who needs to do it, and how they will go about securing that talent.

July 15, 2019June 29, 2023

The 13th Nominee for the Worst Employer of 2019 Is … the Excoriating Executives

It’s been nearly a month since I posted the last nominee for 2019’s Worst Employer.

It’s not for lack of ideas; it’s just that the prior nominees have been so awful that the bar for qualification has been set pretty high. Thankfully, France Télécom has come to the rescue.

What did the former top executives at France’s national phone company do to earn their nomination?

35 Employees Committed Suicide. Will Their Bosses Go to Jail?

I’ll let the New York Times story take it from here:

The men — all former top executives at France’s giant telecom company — wanted to downsize the business by thousands of workers a decade ago. But they couldn’t fire most of them. The workers were state employees — employees for life — and therefore protected.

So the executives resolved to make life so unbearable that the workers would leave, prosecutors say. Instead, at least 35 employees — workers’ advocates say nearly double that number — committed suicide, feeling trapped, betrayed and despairing of ever finding new work in France’s immobile labor market. …

“They were stuck, cornered,” said Michel Ledoux, one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers. “The only possibility was to make them leave, one way or another.”

Weeks of wrenching testimony about despairing employees who hanged themselves, immolated themselves, or threw themselves out of windows, under trains and off bridges and highway overpasses, have suggested that the former executives went very far in “pushing the company into the new century,” as corporate strategy dictated. …

“The company was going under and it didn’t even know it,” Mr. Lombard, the ex-chief executive, testified. “We could have gone about it much more gently if we hadn’t had the competition banging on our door.”

Unfortunately for Mr. Lombard, he was recorded saying in 2007 that he would reach the quota of layoffs “one way or another, by the window or by the door.” The window is what a number of the employees chose.

“This isn’t going to be lacework here,” Mr. Barberot said in 2007. “We’re going to put people in front of life’s realities.”

If you harass employees to the point of mass suicide in the name of layoffs, you might just be the worst employer of 2019.

Big thanks to Kelly Paxton for bringing this story to my attention.

Previous nominees:

The 1st Nominee for the Worst Employer of 2019 Is … the Philandering Pharmacist

The 2nd Nominee for the Worst Employer of 2019 Is … the Little Rascal Racist

The 3rd Nominee for the Worst Employer of 2019 is … the Barbarous Boss

The 4th Nominee for the Worst Employer of 2019 is… the Flagrant Farmer

The 5th Nominee for the Worst Employer of 2019 is… the Fishy Fishery

The 6th Nominee for Worst Employer of 2019 Is … the Diverse Discriminator

The 7th Nominee for Worst Employer of 2019 Is … the Disability Debaser

The 8th Nominee for the Worst Employer of 2019 Is … the Lascivious Leader

The 9th Nominee for the Worst Employer of 2019 Is … the Fertile Firing

The 10th Nominee for Worst Employer of 2019 Is … the Exorcising Employee

The 11th Nominee for the Worst Employer of 2019 Is … the ****y Supervisor

The 12th Nominee for the Worst Employer of 2019 Is … the Disguised Doctor

July 2, 2019February 11, 2022

3 Ways HR Can Address Alcohol Addiction

More than 21 million people in the United States struggle with addiction. I used to be one of them.

After suffering several sports-related injuries, I developed an opiate addiction. And though I’m now in recovery, I remember clearly how difficult that battle was.

My story may sound out of the ordinary to some, but those 21 million struggling Americans say otherwise. And there’s a good chance that someone — or several people — at your company has battled addiction as well. As an HR leader, acknowledging that fact and taking it into account in your interactions with employees can be monumentally important to the health and well-being of your staff.

But that’s not always an easy task. Today’s American workplace is saturated with opportunities to grab a drink with co-workers, celebrate closing a huge deal over a few beers or have one cocktail too many at the annual holiday party. I believe that work and drinking should remain separate and that time spent in the office should be dedicated to productivity, but I’m aware that’s not the norm in every company culture.

For any HR leader hoping to navigate the rough terrain of alcohol in the workplace while remaining sensitive to the struggles and needs of your team, let these three principles be your guide.

Invest in Teaching Your Leadership About Addiction

Help educate the entire leadership team, not just your HR team. With 1 in 13 American adults dealing with alcohol addiction, executives and managers must grasp how prevalent this issue in the workplace.

HR can help leaders at your organization recognize the signs and symptoms of addiction so they’re prepared to help an employee who may need it. These signs can include:

Regular, unexplained absences or tardiness.
Sluggishness in the mornings.
Inconsistent job performance.
Appearing overly tired or sleep-deprived.

Leaders should know that addiction doesn’t discriminate. From lawyers to athletes to doctors and everyone in between, this disease affects every socioeconomic status. Never assume that people in your office couldn’t possibly be impacted.

Lastly, make it a priority to offer your company leaders a new perspective on addiction and destroy the typical stigma that surrounds it. Addiction is a disease, not just a bad habit or poor choice. You wouldn’t discriminate against an employee who requires time and medical treatment to recover. Dealing with someone fighting addiction shouldn’t be any different.

Give Your Employees Options

With this knowledge in mind, your company may choose to rethink how it incorporates alcohol into work-related events. Avoid pairing happy hours with huge company announcements, for example. Give all employees an easy way to opt out of events where alcohol will be present.

And of course, not every company gathering has to center itself around drinking. Instead, try to plan an equal amount of social and team building activities in which alcohol plays absolutely no part. Plan a team-building activity (axe throwing, anyone?) or take a group coffee date in the middle of the day. HR has the opportunity to get creative.

Practice a True Open-Door Policy

The most important option HR leaders can provide for their teams is the option to ask for help. Find a way to let all your team members know that your company has an open-door policy for anyone who may be struggling and that the leadership is willing to work with them in a confidential and supportive manner.

Many employees assume that termination will be the first course of action if they open up about their issues with addiction. Make it clear that their health and well-being come first and guide them toward help. This may come in the form of an employee assistance program or perhaps by connecting them with a local support group.

I’m more than lucky that my second chance at my life and career led me to American Addiction Centers, where sensitivities around drinking are always respected and where someone in recovery can remain focused on growth and success. But this is not yet the case across the country.

It’s far past time to acknowledge that addiction is real, it’s common, and there’s a good chance it’s affecting someone on your team. Let’s start to do better at offering a workplace in which everyone can thrive.

June 26, 2019June 27, 2019

Brené Brown at SHRM Conference: ‘Leaders Are Never Quiet About Hard Things’

There’s a leadership crisis at work and many leaders simply aren’t equipped to handle it.

The problem? Courage, or rather the lack of it. The good news is they can learn.

That was the message delivered by Brené Brown to kick off the second day of the 2019 Society for Human Resource Management Annual Conference and Exposition in Las Vegas.

“We need braver leaders,” said Brown, a best-selling author and professor at the University of Houston. “We need people who will build courageous cultures. Brave leaders will rehumanize work.”

The SHRM Conference brought together 20,000 HR professionals from June 23-26 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Brown joined entrepreneur Martha Stewart, business executive Vineet Nayar and TOMS Shoes founder Blake Mycoskie at the top of the speaker lineup for the HR industry’s largest annual conference.

A researcher by vocation, Brown has built a following through five best-selling books including her latest “Dare to Lead,” a TED Talk that’s been viewed more than 41 million times and her own Netflix special, “Call to Courage,” which premiered in April 2019.

At the SHRM conference, Brown highlighted the challenges facing organizations and spelled out broad steps HR organizations can take to help. At the heart of the leadership problem, Brown said, is that people need to have tough conversations. But many don’t know how and instead default to politeness and being nice to get along.

“We literally tap out because we don’t have the skillset,” Brown said.

The end result is organizations fail to improve productivity, drive innovation and boost individual and organizational success.

Barriers to Courage
There are several factors that hold leaders back, Brown told the audience. First and foremost, tough conversations are hard. But avoiding them only makes matters worse. For HR, that means equipping managers with skills to have challenging, productive conversations with their team members.

Many unproductive behaviors come from fears and insecurities that are often unspoken, Brown said. Leaders need to be able to probe the underlying reasons behind unproductive behaviors or else they end up “playing whack-a-mole,” dealing with one incident only to see it pop up again somewhere else.

Brown also said organizations need to embrace failure and help people avoid getting stuck in setbacks. That starts with teaching people how to bounce back, starting as early as onboarding.

One of the biggest barriers for leaders is action bias. Facing a challenge, many leaders go straight into problem-solving mode when they should instead step back and think, Brown said. The goal is to spend the time and energy to accurately identify problems. That means leaders need to embrace ambiguity and be comfortable not having the answer.

Tackling Bias and Discrimination
Leaders also need to embrace the mission of creating a more diverse and inclusive workplace. Bias, prejudice and the consequences of privilege at work are not going away. “Is it scary? Yes,” Brown said. Many leaders use their position as a shield, only dealing with issues when it affects them personally.

That’s short-sighted management. “If you can’t have those conversations, you will not be leading in the next five years,” Brown said.

Leaders and others in positions of power must recognize it’s their job, not that of people targeted by discrimination, to spark conversation about hot-button issues like bias. A leader’s role is “excavating the unsaid,” Brown said. “Brave leaders are never quiet about hard things.”

The good news is there are things leaders – and HR departments – can do to get better. “Courage is teachable, observable and measurable,” Brown said.

Embrace Vulnerability and Live Values
Vulnerability is the prerequisite of every meaningful experience in our lives, Brown said, and good leaders embrace the uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure that comes along with it. Vulnerability is a source of strength, creating the psychological safety and trust that are key to high performing work teams.

One important caveat: Vulnerability is not oversharing. It merely means showing up to listen in tough situations without judgment.

It’s also imperative leaders live the values they talk about. That means turning abstract ideas like vulnerability and trust into specific work behaviors. “It’s better to not have values than to have values that are not operationalized into behaviors,” Brown said.

For example, trust can be broken down into seven observable and measurable behaviors:

Respecting boundaries and actively checking to see where they lie.
Being reliable and doing what you say you’ll do.
Practicing accountability by owning mistakes.
Holding information in confidence and not sharing what is not yours to share.
Acting with integrity by choosing what is right over what is easy or fast.
Being nonjudgmental in talking about how others feel.
Being generous in interpreting the intentions and actions of others.

Developing the kind of leaders who can thrive in today’s work environment is no easy task but the end results are worth it, Brown said.

More 2019 SHRM Conference Coverage:

Exclusive Video Interviews from the 2019 SHRM Conference

The State of #SHRM19 Speech: Wait Until Monday

Day 2 at #SHRM19: It’s All About the Underutilized Talent Pool

SHRM Releases Annual Benefits Survey

June 18, 2019June 29, 2023

What’s a Hostile Work Environment? You’ll Know It When You See It

“I know it when I see it.” These are the famous words of Justice Potter Stewart defining legal obscenity in his concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964).

I feel the same way about a hostile work environment. For a hostile work environment to be actionable, it must (among other factors) be objectivity hostile. What does this mean? It’s hard to define, but I know it when I see it.

For example, consider the case of Curtis Anthony, an African-American quality inspector for Boeing at its North Charleston, South Carolina, plant, sued his employer for allowing a racially hostile work environment.

According to ABC News, his allegations include white co-workers urinating in his seat and on his desk, leaving signs with the “n-word” near his workspace, and ultimately leaving a noose above his workspace. Boeing, for its part denies the allegations, stating that Boeing spokesperson wrote, that Anthony “is a valued Boeing South Carolina teammate, [and] there is no validity to his allegations.”

Bingo. Hostile work environment. I can’t necessarily define it, but I know it when I see it.

Regardless of whether an employee can hold you legally responsible for, let’s say, another employee peeing on his desk, why would let this misconduct go unchecked? Even if you think it’s just horseplay, you can’t ignore it.

If an employee complains about misconduct, your reaction should never be, “Well, I understand, but it’s not that bad, or at least not bad enough for you to sue us; now go back to work.” Your obligations as an employer-recipient of a complaint of workplace harassment never changes. Investigate and take prompt remedial action to reasonably ensure that the harassment stops and does not repeat.

Otherwise, you are setting yourself up for a very difficult and expensive lawsuit. In other words, urine trouble (sorry … not sorry).

June 8, 2019June 29, 2023

5 Myths Surrounding Women in the Indian Workplace

“If one man can destroy everything, why can’t one girl change it?” — Malala Yousafzai

Women in India constitute 48.4 percent as compared to 51.6 percent of men in the total Indian population of 1.37 billion people.

A good ratio, right? Moreover, according to international non-governmental organization Catalyst, Indian women access higher education at the same rates as men at 27 percent.

But the ratios are not in favor of women when it comes to their participation in the workplace. Research by Catalyst notes that “only about 29 percent of Indian women work compared to 82 percent of Indian men.”

Indian women are in order first and foremost supposed to be a devoted wife, a doting mother and then a working professional. Women in India are expected to conform to traditional and societal norms.

Family always has to come before work. Women in India also have to be present and represent every ritual and cultural function conducted. And the older a female gets in India, the more she is bound in a “double burden syndrome” — balancing home and work.

But even women who get to join the workforce are not free of facing stereotypes and harassment. Women are rarely offered C-suite roles and similarly lofty positions.

There’s a lot that people hold against women in the workplace. It’s time to shatter the myths associated with women in the workplace and help increase their workplace participation.

Myth: Women Can’t Negotiate

The gender wage gap is the highest in India, according to Indian English-language daily Business Standard. Women in India are paid 34 percent less than what an Indian man is paid in the workplace, according to a research conducted by the International Labour Organization.

The prevailing explanation as to why women don’t earn as much as men is that “women aren’t aggressive enough.” People say that women don’t push their employers hard enough to give them a raise or that they can’t negotiate.

That’s not true. Women are as assertive as men when asking for salary appraisal. More and more studies in 2019 are showing that the rate of women and men asking for salary is the same. But, the conversion rates still favor male employees over women.

Myth: Too Emotional or Too Cold

In higher-level managerial positions, women often face a double bind. When they portray female characteristics, they are termed as emotional or sensitive. But when they follow traditional leadership roles, they are perceived as too difficult or too cold.

Lisa Feldman Barrett, the director of Northeastern University’s Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory, said that emotions are not something that we are born with but are rather created according to circumstances. And in India, women are groomed to be delicate, fragile and sensitive to situations. Therefore, it can be said that portraying high emotional intelligence is not biological but rather a social construct.

Myth: Women Don’t Belong in STEM

According to UNESCO, only 30 percent of women in India participate in STEM-related fields in higher education. What’s more disheartening is that the dropout rate among women in technology is even higher in junior to midlevel positions. Across Asia, the dropout rate is 29 percent.

Another reason why women continue to remain underrepresented in STEM fields begins very early in childhood.

Women are associated with arts and languages and men with math and science. When given a mathematical examination, women are under a lot more pressure to succeed than men. When applying this institutional fear toward a workplace full of men, it adversely

Myth: Women Are Only Good at Soft Skills

This is a judgment held against women, especially in the engineering field. Soft skills involve communication, creativity, adaptability, flexibility and teamwork. These are skills that every individual who works with other people needs to possess irrespective of profession and gender. To be a successful engineer, one needs to have both technical as well as soft skills.

Myth: Sexual Harassment Is a Woman’s Issue

The number of registered cases against sexual harassment in the workplace increased 54 percent from 371 cases in 2014 to 570 in 2017, according to the independent Indian English-language news site Scroll.in. But, as it is in most cases, the majority of these reported cases were from women. Due to maximum cases being reported by women, people assume that women are subject to harassment and therefore it’s “their issue” and they should resolve it on their own.

Sexual harassment doesn’t limit itself to a gender. While it’s important to understand that, it’s also important for people to stand by each other when such cases are reported. Men and women should be allies when someone reports against a “higher-up” or report when they have witnessed something.

Instead of holding their social conditioning against them, let’s all try to build a workplace in India where everyone has the same opportunities and treatment irrespective of their gender.

June 6, 2019

Relational Intelligence Can Give Companies a Leg Up

There’s a difference between how people behave in their personal life and how they behave professionally. But businesses can learn something from the tactics people use to repair personal relationships, according to therapist and author Esther Perel.

One of the speakers at the Unleash 2019 conference in Las Vegas in May, Perel has extensive experience counseling couples. She consults organizations on conflict resolution as well.

“As couples’ therapists, we have wide familiarity working with polarized systems,” Perel said. “I know [how] to work with relationships where one person doesn’t believe a word the other person is saying. That’s what couples who are arguing do. So we actually have an enormous amount of experience helping companies.”

Her session at Unleash focused on how organizations can use some of the tenets of couples counseling in their workplace when it comes to working on the relationship between the employer and the employee. She also spoke after the session to answer more questions on relationships in the workplace.

Perel prefers the term “relational intelligence” over the oft-used term “emotional intelligence.” That’s because it’s not a self-referential concept, she said. Rather, it’s knowing how to deal with other people and become in tune with the needs of other.

This skill set is especially important after #MeToo, she said. Now, she added, “there’s tremendous anxiety and restlessness in the workplace about how we relate to each other, how we establish boundaries and how we deal with disagreements breaches of trust.”

People carry narratives about relationships that influence their expectations from an interaction and their interpretations of the situation they’re in. Perel calls this their “relationship resume.” People come to work with this past. Were they raised to be trusting or suspicious? Did they grow up in a household where they were taught to ask for help or figure things out on their own? Do they prefer to work collaboratively or alone?

Answers to questions like this help explain what kind of team member a person will be, Perel said. That’s a missing set of questions that employers don’t consider when they hire.

Understanding boundaries is another key relational intelligence skill useful in both personal and professional relationships.

“These days we have narrowed the definition of boundary and we have sexualized it,” Perel said. But really the term “boundary” refers to a much broader scope of situations. Boundaries in sexual situations are just a small piece of it.

In the workplace, boundaries exist in any team. This can show itself in many ways. It’s the difference between an employee who’s involved in everyone’s business and the employee who hardly interacts with any colleagues. It’s the difference between teams that act like a secret society and teams with more “porous” boundaries.

There are several key boundary questions that exist in a team. They include, Who’s involved in this project? Who needs to say what to whom? What needs to be shared, and what can be kept to oneself? How much can you be absent for three days without anyone noticing? What is private versus what is shared? And what are decisions you make alone versus decisions for which you need to ask your manager permission?

When Perel is consulting organizations, she relies on the concept of “polarity management,”“an approach to conflict resolution that’s about identifying and managing unsolvable problems,” to communicate with her client.

The specifics of how to use polarity thinking warrants its own article. Looking at it more broadly, though, Perel explained some of the key tenets behind it. Before you tell someone what they’re doing wrong you tell them what they’re doing right. Also, you acknowledge that you know what losses someone will face by doing something different.

“Before you go directly from here to here and say, ‘This is wrong, you need to do that,’ you first address the loss. Every change comes with loss,” Perel said.

June 4, 2019June 29, 2023

By the Numbers: Diversity in the Workplace

Diversity is being heralded as both the right thing to do and a smart business decision for employers. But does the data show widespread diversity in the workplace yet?

Human Capital Media’s Talent Tracker is a custom analytics service developed by the HCM Research and Advisory Group. Talent Tracker integrates data from open sources originating from the U.S. Census, the National Center for Educational Statistics, World Bank and Bureau of Labor Statistics. Here are some of the latest statistics about diversity in the workplace.

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