The good news: Many companies invest in programs that support employee physical and mental health of their employees. They understand that flourishing human beings generally translate into happier and higher performing employees.
The bad news: Not all bosses have gotten the memo.
It’s bad enough that after having to dodge bullies in school; we still confront them even as adults. Even worse, the bully may be the person who’s supposed to be in charge of your mentorship and growth, yet it seems like they’re more interested in intimidation and threats.
So how do you know when your boss has crossed the line into being a bully, and what do you do when he or she has?
How to Spot a Bully at Work
Having cut my teeth at a Fortune 50 technology company, I’ve heard a lot of debate on whether a boss was tough or simply a bully. It can sometimes be hard to tell if a boss is pushing you to reach your limits or trying to push you off a cliff.
A boss that only wants to be liked and lets his or her team walk all over them is another kind of danger. But being assertive and demanding can go too far. Leadership is tricky; one must be aware of their own personality derailers, understand positive and impactful boundaries, and be able to inspire others to help drive lasting results, without being a bully.
The Workplace Bullying Institute defines bullying as “threats, humiliation, intimidation, work sabotage or verbal abuse.” In its 2017 report, they found that about 1 in 5 workers are bullied at work, and 61 percent of the bullies are bosses.
If you want to know if you’re being bullied, ask yourself how you feel. If you’re being pushed by a tough boss, you should still feel inspired and psychologically safe. If you feel nauseous at the thought of going to work, unable to sleep and stressed to the max, you might be being bullied.
Bullies come in a few varieties, some easier to spot than others.
The easiest one is the loud, abusive boss. They humiliate you in front of others. You’re the butt of their jokes. They curse at you. It feels like the playground and you’re being pushed in the dirt by the big kid.
There is also the boss who is a passive bully. They torment their targets with quiet but piercing techniques such as undermining their employees, dividing their team, gossiping and sometimes even creating lies. This one feels a little more like high school, whispering in the halls.
How to Handle a Bullying Boss
There is not a single or simple answer to how to manage a boss who believes the best way to develop employees is to give them tough love or build thick skin by being abusive, abrasive or explosive.
If you find yourself in this type of environment, let me start by saying it is not OK and it is not your fault. I understand how being in this type of situation can tear you apart emotionally and physically. Breaking you is what the bully wants to do.
The most important thing you must do is take care of yourself. Removing yourself from the situation is always an option.
Some may criticize me for suggesting you leave the bully boss situation, because it may look like you’re letting the bully win. But it is an option you have and sometimes this is the best option for you.
If you choose to take on the situation head on, here’s my advice:
Have a plan. Be thoughtful and deliberate about how you will show up, perform, communicate and get results.
Continue to perform. Bring others along on your journey and deliver results. The bully will have a hard time attacking you if others are involved and part of your work.
Document. Even the little things should go in a log. A bully often makes mistakes that will leave them vulnerable to being reported.
Be careful who you trust. You may find yourself in a situation where you are ganged up on because another person the bully attacks is looking for any break from the bad behavior and they actually side with the bully. It reduces their torment. It sounds crazy, but it happens.
Talk to someone. Many people think this is a sign of weakness but it is not. You might want to talk with someone outside your organization so you know it won’t get back to the bully.
Remember That Bullies Are Ultimately Pathetic
I have come across a few bullies in my career and they were miserable people. They talked about others all the time, bringing everyone around them down.
Their home lives were sad. They were often unhealthy. When they did smile, it was forced. They carried a lot of stress and it showed up in their work, relationships, family and community.
The one thing I remind myself of frequently is that bullies I have come across in my career have to live with themselves every day.
You can escape your bully, but they cannot escape themselves. In time you will rise above the situation and never look back and your bully has the pleasure of living in their hateful and unhealthy life. That is their punishment.
Most bullies lack confidence and feel powerful when others feel powerless. Bullies are often threatened by the person they are bullying. It sounds silly and it is, but it is often true. You must take care of yourself if you find yourself in a situation like this. This will impact how you show up for yourself, your coworkers, your team and, more important, your family and friends.
It’s never OK for someone to bully another person. If the bully is making it sound like it is to get the best results out of a person or toughen them up, feel free to call it out.
There is no place for an abusive boss, including verbal abuse. I believe strongly in accountability and I set a high bar — professionally and personally — for my peers, my team and myself. Please do the same for yourself.
All kinds of personal issues at work escalate into conflicts, and we usually resolve them privately.
Making the process public is a recipe for awkward, messy feelings, isn’t it?
Maybe not.
My consulting firm recently experimented with working through a conflict between two staff members in a collective way. That positive experience, along with insights from our culture work with clients and other research suggests we need to rethink the way we resolve interpersonal clashes in the workplace. In particular, there are four reasons why in many cases we should shift to collective conflict resolution.
And when we do, we help our organizations “go horizontal” — move toward non-hierarchical cultures that I and others see as the future of work.
The four reasons for resolving conflicts publicly are:
1. People feel safer to communicate. How can you feel safer with a bunch of people observing you? Because individuals can stretch truths and even (ouch) sometimes full-out lie. When there are witnesses, those behaviors are less likely. One of my colleagues who has experimented with a group approach to conflict resolution puts it this way: “Having witnesses helps me work my way through my emotions and communicate in the most precise and exact way I can.”
2. Conflict is usually wider than the pair being mediated. When we are upset with a situation we often talk about it to others. This usually leads to a one-sided perspective and some emotional offloading. If I go into a private room and experience a successful mediation process, those people who have been pulled into the conflict are still feeling it. The conflict still exists in others and can linger and return, like hot coals. If we acknowledge that conflict is in the system, we should invite those involved in the system to witness the untangling of it. That puts out the conflict “out” properly.
3. When a tension gets untangled it usually ends with solutions. If a conflict is settled privately it puts a lot of pressure on those in the situation to handle the follow up on their own. But if the resolution process is public, everyone understands the situation more fully and understands what else must be done. This generates a sense of mutual support. If you aren’t there to witness the untangling, you miss out on creating that help system and feeling shared responsibility thereafter.
4. Well-resolved conflicts can have a bigger societal impact. When people work out differences in a positive way, it can lead to profound change that ripples beyond the individuals involved. Author Diane Musho Hamilton notes that every tension with another person is an opportunity to transform the conflict into “patience, mutual understanding, and creativity.” She continues: “When we use the opportunity, we contribute to the shared endeavor of learning how to live peacefully with each other.”
When we see interpersonal conflicts at work as inevitable, as connected to wider systems and as a chance to cultivate a more nonviolent human race, we start to see why they may not be suited for hidden encounters between just two people. Or two people and a mediator. When quarrels are privately addressed, they not only carry a whiff of shame to them, they are lost opportunities. Why shouldn’t we bring the advantages of the full team to these snags, and allow the team to receive the full benefits of straightening them out — with positive outcomes spreading outward from every individual witnessing the work?
This rippling out gets at how collective conflict resolution helps organizations become more horizontal. By horizontal cultures, I’m referring to workplaces that are characterized by a focus on purpose, by transparency, by employees participating in decision-making and by relationships that are more deeply human than the transactional ones often found in traditional, top-down organizations.
Any two individuals involved in a spat are typically part of a wider social web. Treating the conflict as an opportunity to heal not just their immediate rift but strengthen the broader community reinforces an organization’s commitment to horizontal principles.
And those principles are increasingly vital to success. Hierarchical organizations are proving too slow and stultifying to solve today’s problems. Examples of companies embracing flatter, more participatory structures range from computer chip maker and artificial intelligence leader Nvidia to tomato processor Morning Star to Dutch home health care provider Buurtzorg Nederland. As these and other organizations show, the future of work is in flatter, horizontal cultures.
Publicly resolving conflicts in your organization can help you go horizontal, too.
More and more employers are adopting socially conscious practices that impact the manner in which the employer operates.
My firm’s headquarters are in a Certified LEED “green building.” Generally, companies in such buildings commit to reducing the use of plasticware.
In July 2018, American Airlines and Starbucks announced they will no longer use plastic straws. But, how far can and should these practices go? Could a company in a Certified LEED green building refuse a reimbursement request from an employee who had a business meal at a restaurant that uses only plasticware? Could American Airlines or Starbucks discipline an employee who was caught using a plastic straw at work? Likely, yes.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act protects employees from discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex and national origin. The American with Disabilities Act protects employees with disabilities; the Age Discrimination in Employment Act prohibits age discrimination.
But there is no employment law protecting an employee’s right to use plastic.
Should an employer’s “social consciousness” go that far? While an employer may legally be permitted to influence employee behavior by disciplinary enforcement of the employers’ socially conscious policies, should it do so? Let’s address socially motivated policies that may be legally permissible as well as questions employers should consider when determining whether such policies are good business practices.
Considerations for Employers
Shared workspaces provider WeWork recently announced that it is imposing a companywide ban on all meat. As part of the ban, the company announced it will no longer reimburse employees for meals that include red meat, poultry and pork (presumably fish and seafood are OK). Failed startup Juicero reportedly had refused to reimburse the cost of any business meals other than meals at vegan restaurants.
What about the employees who see nothing wrong with eating meat? Or with eating at a non-vegan restaurant? There is no law entitling employees to the right to eat meat (or eat non-vegan), so technically these policies are legal. While one could conjure up some possible “selective enforcement” argument that it is unfair, the practice is not likely unlawful (though in some very few instances it could run afoul of stringent state laws on reimbursing employees who spend their own funds for business purposes).
But are they advisable? Are employers who are implementing these socially conscious policies actually creating a more positive workplace culture? Or, are they inviting cries of hypocrisy from those who think they do not go far enough or cries of unfairness from those who think they go too far?
“These policies are easily attacked as hypocritical. WeWork, for example, claims its policy of not reimbursing for meals with meat supports sustainability. But what about the use of plasticware? Or what about car allowances only for electric vehicles? Without a policy on the use of plastic or about gas vehicles, is their sustainability stance pure or merely selective?
What of taking this benefit from those who see nothing wrong with meat? Or worse, what about the workplace morale of an employee whose family owns a cattle farm that produces beef? Perhaps that was the only way the family could afford to support themselves or send the children to college, and perhaps the family even supports other meaningful causes with its income from cattle. And, what of our culture’s “no one should tell others what to do” individualism?
The professed sustainability purpose, on the one hand, or the professed “inclusiveness” and camaraderie of the workplace environment on the other hand, can only reach so far. Both the purists and those excluded for not having “right” ideas are marginalized.
How Employers Should Move Forward
So where does this leave us? Certainly, employers should take into consideration employee rights and employment laws in having socially conscious policies that reach so far as to attempt to impact employee behavior. But the harder question is whether employers should make such attempts.
The answer is nuanced, and often the very purposes an employer seeks to serve with these policies have unintended consequences that weaken, rather than strengthen, employee morale or a greater purpose of workplace “culture.”
One other point deserves mention. Do employers make these decisions based on principle or on a market analysis? Are these decisions borne of a desire to cultivate a healthy workplace community by being part of a bigger, socially conscious vision?
Or, are these market-based decisions borne primarily of a desire to use social consciousness as a marketing tool? For example, what if we learned that WeWork, when first deciding on this policy, had conducted market research predicting that such a decision to adopt a vegetarian stance would enhance customer loyalty and market penetration and consequently increase revenue, and that this research was the primary driver of its decision? Would this socially conscious principle lose its power?
A principled decision often sees the bigger vision of work as an attempt to cultivate deeper meaning beyond a cost-benefit economic analysis. Such decisions can have a powerful positive impact on the workplace.
But, the market-based approach, the view that we should be socially conscious because it is good for business and a great marketing strategy, can certainly backfire. It is impossible to promote selflessness by touting its selfish benefits.
In today’s increasingly connected and international marketplace, HR professionals who have a strong understanding of global dynamics are going to have an advantage.
The question I often hear is, “How do I develop that global mindset?”
Many people in HR assume they can’t travel abroad and build valuable global knowledge unless their company sends them on an official work trip overseas. The reality is that you can take that initiative yourself and learn to become an effective global leader — whether you travel abroad regularly or not — and there’s a good chance your employer will take notice if you do.
These three steps will help you get started.
1. Develop Global Relationships Online
No matter what function you’re in within an organization, there’s a global community you can join via Facebook, LinkedIn or a professional association. These online communities are excellent ways to connect with your peers in other parts of the world and start meaningful conversations.
Investing time and energy in global social media groups can both help you with your professional development and expand your understanding of the global scope of your industry — all from your home or office.
2. Travel to an Overseas Conference, Then Hang Out
However, even if you’re active in every available international social media group for your profession, to fully expand your global understanding you’re going to have to travel. I would suggest figuring out how to travel internationally once a year — with an intention to visit a different country every trip. While this may sound daunting at first, there are practical ways to make it happen.
An excellent starting point is to attend a conference in another country or schedule an annual professional development trip overseas, then tack on some time to explore and network after your official business is wrapped.
For example, if you’re traveling to a three-day conference in another country, add a few days and use the connections that you’re making in your online groups to meet with people face-to-face in that city. There’s nothing better than immersing yourself in another culture.
3. Explore International Development Opportunities
A very powerful way to expand your global mindset is to travel with a group of like-minded professionals to really explore a specific country. A good place to begin is Nanda Journeys, a travel company that brings together travelers with purpose and passion to explore the world in a meaningful way — whether it’s nurses to Vietnam, dentists to Ecuador or HR people to Singapore.
An associate and I organize an HR delegation every year to a different country. In recent years, we’ve taken 21 HR-related professionals to Cuba for a week and another dozen to Japan. Last year we traveled with an HR group to the Czech Republic and Hungary. In each location, we meet with government officials, academics and business leaders about HR topics and talent issues.
On one of the trips, an attendee was the head of talent acquisition for a specific business unit inside a global organization, and she said the trip was part of her strategy to take on a more global job. This person was wisely investing in her ability to understand talent acquisition dynamics in other parts of the world.
When she returned her company took note of her willingness to invest her own funds and time in an international learning perspective and put her into a global job within a few months.
If you truly want to understand how things work in other parts of the world and make the investment to start your learning curve, your employer is likely to notice that effort and support your journey. And if they don’t then you have a great foundation to find an organization that’s more conducive to your global learning.
Last year, members of our HR community called me with common feedback that they were meeting so many people who are unhappy at work and life. Any research you choose to look at for the past 10 years averages nearly three-quarters of people are looking for jobs and many of them are unhappy with their work.
Mo Gawdat, the founder of onebillionhappy.org and former chief business officer at Google X, focuses on the relation between innovation and happiness. After losing his son Ali, he made it his personal mission to help 1 billion people become happier in all aspects of their life. I saw him speak last year and after he tells the room it is all right to be happy at work, Mo’s speech brought tears to thousands of attendees.
I agree wholeheartedly with Mo and my own belief is that we need to humanize, look ourselves in the mirror and be happy again at work and at home. We spend a substantial amount of our lives at work and I believe our happiness is impacted by how we feel in the workplace. This process of pursuing happiness highly resonated with me and the important role that HR professionals play in it.
Did you know that 65 percent of startups fail because the relationship between the co-founders also fails? This is same percentage for the top 10 countries with divorce rate worldwide. I think we can draw a correlation between the two: More relationships in the world fail than succeed.
If you haven’t heard of Esther Perel yet, be sure to catch one of her podcasts. A Belgium-born psychotherapist who now lives in New York, Esther helped change the lives of millions of couples. She is not afraid to tell people to “shut it!” and is working to unleash the chains of workplace relationships where jealousy, betrayal and bitterness can sabotage a business as much as a marriage.
We’re especially seeing this in HR technology. Josh Bersin, the world’s leading analyst on the future of work, highlighted the move from automation to productivity in organizations over the past two years.
In the context of the digital revolution, Esther blames our devices for causing all sorts of new vices in the workplace. Esther feels that digital communication is damaging, and because 2D communication deprives us of our senses, the level of distortion between Slack or email messaging and face-to-face to voice communication is massive. Arianna Huffington echos this and encourages everyone to start introducing her Thrive Global model in their lives to disconnect from technology and reconnect more with life.
So I ask you, how different can our world and workplaces be in five to 10 years’ time if we start making work relationships better and innovate to support this ideology?
I ask everyone to rethink their happiness at home and in the workplace, and share their thoughts on how we’re going to change the future of work for the better.
Julie Weber, vice president and chief people officer, watches Southwest Airlines soar to the top of the Workforce 100.
Per aspera ad astra is a Latin phrase that translates, “through hardships to the stars.”
The phrase serves as a reminder that progress is not always a straight-ahead path. Often there are forks in the road and winding turns that can hinder the journey. How one navigates those obstacles is the essence of one’s character. The same applies for companies as they strive for HR excellence. For many companies, the journey comes with a fair share of challenges, successes and lessons learned.
Workforce has recognized 100 companies for the past six years that have excelled in people management with the annual Workforce 100 list of best HR practices. Workforce editors and researchers initially partnered with employee review site Glassdoor in 2016 to get an internal perspective of employee satisfaction with their company. Before the partnership with Glassdoor the Workforce 100 list leaned in favor of large corporations and did not take into account the thoughts and responses of rank-and-file employees. Since the partnership began, the list has evolved to include smaller organizations and reveals the value of a strong employer-employee relationship. A company’s score is calculated using Human Capital Media’s Research and Advisory Group and Glassdoor rankings. The inclusion of Glassdoor to the methodology seemingly plays a role in the rise and fall of company rankings.
Over the past six years certain trends have become apparent. Some companies are consistently strong. Johnson & Johnson (No. 11), Salesforce.com (No. 18) and AT&T (No. 45) have appeared all six years. There have been one-hit wonder companies such as Netflix, appearing last year; and the Hershey Co., which only appeared in 2015. Other companies scored high in the first few years and have since fallen in the rankings. One example is McDonald’s, which scored third in 2014, then No. 17 in 2015 before dropping to No. 94 in 2016. Since then, the Golden Arches has not appeared on the Workforce 100.
While some, like McDonald’s, have tumbled down the ranks over the years, there have been companies that ascended to the top. One such company is Southwest Airlines. The Dallas-based airline first appeared on the Workforce 100 in 2015, ranking No. 48. The following year, the airline dropped two places to No. 50. Then from 2017 to 2018, Southwest rose from No. 17 to No. 11.
This year, Southwest ranks No. 1.
The Employee Experience
Julie Weber, vice president and chief people officer at Southwest Airlines, has approached human resources with an employee-first outlook. Weber serves more than 58,000 employees, ensuring that they have a fulfilling experience during their employment with Southwest.
“We’ve really put our employees first since the beginning with our founder, Herb Kelleher,” Weber said of the airline’s late iconic leader. “Our belief is that happy employees make for happy customers, which make for happy shareholders.”
One way that Southwest stands out lies within its centralized hiring practices. Companies in the retail or restaurant industries might look for seasonal employees but Southwest aims for the long haul with its hires. During the recruitment process, Southwest puts an emphasis on matching candidates to the company by attitude and culture fit.
“We look for entry-level employees who are highly motivated to work with us,” Weber said. Southwest’s continuous emphasis on employees, including their treatment before employment, has resulted in lower turnover rates.
Southwest also promotes a fun, engaging work environment for employees, including companywide Halloween parties. Employees are encouraged to wear their best costumes to work and to bring family members along for trick-or-treating around the office. Company leaders also host meals with employees going through leadership development programs.
“Though we have a highly engaged workforce now, it is ours to lose if we don’t maintain a focus on evolving the employee experience,” Weber said.
As companies grow, so do the needs of employees. Maintaining a positive employee experience can take extra effort. With a company as large as Southwest that spans across the country, evolving the employee experience means adapting to technologically advanced platforms. Under Weber’s guidance, Southwest has initiated an HR transformation in order to adapt its practices. One of the initial aspects of this transformation includes widening the scope of the talent-acquisition base to focus on the candidate of the future.
Southwest’s HR team led the airline to the top of the 2019 Workforce 100 list. From left are Kim Hull, senior director; Gregg Thorsen, senior director; Julie Weber, vice president and chief people officer; Danny Collins, managing director.
“We started with investing in tools that help us with talent acquisition and now we are really looking at the entire employee experience,” Weber said. Her goal with this process is to enhance Southwest’s ability to attract and connect with newer generations of candidates.
This transformation will also involve updating the company’s HR operating model so that employees will be able to access a one-stop shop. Weber wants to ensure that employees can easily access the HR services available to them, even from their phones.
“It’s a big undertaking. It will include investing in new technologies with a whole focus on improving the employee experience.”
While this transformation has been overall positive for the company, with change comes challenges. Part of Southwest’s journey toward transforming its HR operating model has been to keep their leaders and employee population enthused. Weber’s solution has been to maintain strong communication of the company’s vision and initiatives. Company alignment and visible leadership has ensured that these changes go beyond just the people department.
“We want to make sure that we are bringing people along with the journey and involving our HR professionals [and stakeholders] with these decisions. That way, we all own this transformation.”
Adapting to Change
T-Mobile is another company that has shown a consistent upward trajectory since debuting on the Workforce 100 in 2016 at No. 72. This year, T-Mobile climbed to 2nd. The telecommunications company is based in Bellevue, Washington, and counts more than 52,000 employees across the nation. Liz McAuliffe, executive vice president of human resources, believes that T-Mobile’s overall success starts with the employee.
“What really sets HR apart at T-Mobile is our core purpose. We are stewards of all T-Mobile employees in their personal growth and career success,” McAuliffe said. T-Mobile’s grass-roots approach to the company’s success relies on creating a culture that inspires its people to not only feel good about themselves but to reflect that goodness in others.
“We approach everything with this mindset,” McAuliffe said. “It’s a game-changer.”
Over the past five years, T-Mobile has evolved its HR operating model in order to meet and exceed the needs of a diverse employee population. To start, they’ve launched an ongoing effort to create a diverse and inclusive environment that will celebrate their employees’ unique selves.
This investment began in 2014 when T-Mobile launched diversity and inclusion networks nationwide. Today, the membership of those networks across the nation’s 50 chapters makes up approximately 42 percent of the company’s employee base. To further develop a diverse and inclusive workplace, T-Mobile initiated a companywide learning project called Insight Out. The program involves a combination of in-person and digital interactions to bring awareness to bias in order to create a foundation for more inclusive language, actions and behaviors.
“This isn’t easy,” McAuliffe said. “It requires courage, awareness, open-mindedness and commitment, but acting on this complex challenge reflects who we are at T-Mobile.”
LiveMagenta is another initiative that aims to transform the traditional face of T-Mobile’s employee assistance program. LiveMagenta would ensure that employees can access resources and benefits through a mobile-friendly app. “LiveMagenta [is] providing everything from financial experts to counseling services and life coaches,” McAuliffe explained.
While McAuliffe reports an overwhelmingly positive response to these initiatives, the company has also experienced the growing pains that come with change. “One challenge is delivering meaningful services that scale for 52,000 employees while still meeting the needs of employees at all levels and in widely varying roles,” McAuliffe said. Another challenge comes with operating an HR team at the same fast pace as the business itself.
McAuliffe said the solution for T-Mobile was found through a strong collaborative relationship with their business partners coupled with an efficient HR team. Listening to employee feedback has revealed how just how much these initiatives have improved things for the better. “[It] never ceases to amaze me,” McAuliffe said. “It’s truly magical when people can come together and deliver such fantastic results every single day.”
Recognizing Diversity and Inclusion
Goldman Sachs has also risen through the Workforce 100 rankings the past six years. Their trajectory began when they first appeared on the list in 2015 at No. 27. This year the company clocked in at No. 3.
For the investment banking company, the advancement of women and a diverse workplace has not just been a nice to-do. It’s been a business priority. Goldman Sachs’ Vice President, Media Relations Leslie Shribman offered insight to the company’s key HR initiatives in recent years. As a commitment to this advancement, the company announced last year that they aspire to have women make up 50 percent of their diverse talent worldwide, and 50 percent of all analyst hires by 2021. “We have invested in new programming to attract more women applicants to positions at the firm and have instilled accountability measures within our hiring process to review progress against our goal,” Shribman said.
The company also has demonstrated an inclusive atmosphere by implementing programs that focus on working parents. One example is LifeCare’s Milkship program for employees who are breastfeeding. This program offers a free full-service program for employees in the United States to safely ship their breast milk home when they travel overnight for business. Other programs include providing parental leave following the birth or adoption of a child, access to best parenting practices, and medical guidance should a critical situation arise.
Goldman Sachs has also made advancements in their programs to reinforce an inclusive environment. Three of these programs include their Women’s Career Strategies Initiative, Black Analyst and Associate Initiative, and Hispanic and Latino Analyst Initiative. The programs work to ensure a supportive environment by focusing on the networking and development opportunities for women and minority employees. “We believe our people are our greatest asset. We invest in their development and provide them an opportunity to work alongside talented colleagues to drive progress across markets, communities and the world,” Shribman said.
These programs are not laurels that Goldman Sachs wishes to rest upon. They have recognized that progress is an ongoing process. As the workforce changes, so must the HR teams that serve it. “We regularly evaluate how we can improve our programs, offerings and policies to best support employees,” Shribman said. “We are committed to continuing to provide our employees with the environment, resources and experiences that meet their needs and help them realize their potential.”
Benchmarking Excellence
Except for 2016 when they dipped to No. 14, Deloitte has held a consistent position in the top 10 on the Workforce 100. Based in New York, the professional services company counts 286,000 employees worldwide. Over the past five years, the company has continuously reshaped its HR operating model to keep up with an evolving workplace and workforce. Their focus has been channeled into modernizing their performance experience, promoting a culture of flexibility and well-being, and attracting, advancing and retaining women.
Global Chief Talent Officer Michele Parmelee spoke to the challenges that have come along with maintaining consistent progress of these initiatives. “Achieving gender parity at each level of the organization is challenging for even the most progressive,” she said. “We are leaving no stone unturned.”
As a company that serves employees across many different geographies and cultures, Deloitte has embraced the uniqueness of its workforce. The connection the company has to its diverse employee population comes with an environment that encourages authenticity. Thus, Deloitte’s main focus for employee experience has been to support its people in creating their own unique talent experience. “We want to create meaningful opportunities for each person to make an impact, grow, learn and lead at every point in their career,” Parmelee said.
According to employee review site Glassdoor, Deloitte employees have noted that one of the most positive aspects of working with the company has been its work-life balance, which reflects Deloitte’s commitment to a culture of flexibility. “Deloitte places trust in people to decide when, where and how best to work,” Parmelee said. For instance, Deloitte’s unit in the United Kingdom offers a Work Agility program that combines formal and informal work arrangements to support a flexible schedule. Within the United States, Deloitte has expanded its fully paid family-leave policy to offer up to 16 weeks.
“Wellness is also a major focus as we find it helps to build a sense of community and a sense of belonging,” Parmelee added. Their programs in Canada reflect this focus, where wellness centers deliver well-being services onsite to Deloitte offices in major metropolitan areas. These services include therapeutic treatments, team-building activities, and onsite quite space.
“Effecting real change is not only a mindset but requires a daily commitment and deliberate action,” Parmelee said.
Workplace harassment isn’t illegal unless it is harassment because of some protected characteristic (sex, race, age, religion, national origin, disability, or any other class protected by law).
Generalized workplace bullying or other mistreatment is not illegal unless it falls into one of those categories. Indeed, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly reminded us, workplace discrimination laws are not “a general civility code.”
Just because the federal workplace discrimination laws are not “general civility codes” does not mean that individual states can’t do more with their own laws.
For example, consider Tennessee’s Healthy Workplace Act. It encourages anti-bullying and respectful workplace policies by granting immunity to an employer from lawsuits alleging negligent or intentional infliction of emotional distress if that employer adopts such a policy. Tennessee even provides a Model Abusive Conduct Prevention Policy [pdf].
As originally drafted, Tennessee’s law only applied to public employers. Last week, Tennessee amended it to apply to all employers in that state.
Bravo to Tennessee for taking a stand against abusive bosses and other bullies at work. But also, how sad that we need a law to tell employees to treat each other like, well, like people.
The [Insert Entity Name] is firmly committed to a workplace free from abusive conduct as defined herein. We strive to provide high quality products and services in an atmosphere of respect, collaboration, openness, safety and equality. All employees have the right to be treated with dignity and respect.
The policy prohibits employees from:
Repeated verbal abuse in the workplace, including derogatory remarks, insults, and epithets;
Verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct of a threatening, intimidating, or humiliating nature in the workplace; or
The sabotage or undermining of an employee’s work performance in the workplace.
And it requires supervisors to:
Provide a working environment as safe as possible by having preventative measures in place and by dealing immediately with threatening or potentially violent situations;
Provide good examples by treating all with courtesy and respect;
Ensure that all employees have access to and are aware of the abusive conduct prevention policy and explain the procedures to be followed if a complaint of inappropriate behavior at work is made;
Be vigilant for signs of inappropriate behaviors at work through observation and information seeking, and take action to resolve the behavior before it escalates; and
Respond promptly, sensitively and confidentially to all situations where abusive behavior is observed or alleged to have occurred.
Such admirable goals. It’s just so sad that we need to legislate them into existence.
So here’s my version of the Healthy Workplace Act (and sorry for the language, but I figure we’re all adults here):
Effective communication with internal staff ensures that all parties are on the same page. Without alignment on company goals, mission and values, confusion can easily ensue. That’s where Robyn Hannah steps in. As senior director of global communication at Dynamic Signal, an employee communication and engagement platform based in San Bruno, California, she leads the communication strategy both internally and externally, ensuring that employees know how to complete items as fundamental as signing up for health insurance to as complex as delivering business goals.
In an interview with Talent Economy [Workforce‘s sister publication], Hannah shared her observations of internal communication practices, what she sees for the future and suggestions for how to start a strong internal communication strategy on a dime. Edited excerpts follow.
TALENT ECONOMY: What exactly is internal communication and why is it important?
ROBYN HANNAH: Communication is the vehicle through which we disseminate corporate goals, business objectives and company culture. These things that make up the fabric of our organization disseminate to our employees, and from our employees to our customers, through communication. I think it is fundamentally how we create alignment within our company; it’s how we allow employees to know who we are as a company and what our values are; it’s how they understand our company goals, whether that’s for the year or quarter; it’s how employees can prioritize.
If you’re dealing with a difficult customer and maybe they are operating outside of your business values, maybe you have to retire a customer. Some of those tough business decisions can be bounced against the framework of who you are as an organization, what your vision and mission and values are, and the only way for employees to know those things, to make those decisions and to have that criteria is by having some vehicle for delivery, which is truly internal communication.
“Someone has to create alignment. Your employees are your most-valued asset. You do not have a company without your employees.”
— Robyn Hannah, senior director of global communication at Dynamic Signal
TE: Historically, how has this role changed?
HANNAH: For different companies of different communication maturity levels, internal communication can mean different things. For some, it’s very tactical. It’s blocking and tackling. It’s here’s your information. For a long time, the intranet or maybe posters in a breakroom have been internal communication for a lot of organizations. But that doesn’t work anymore.
Technology has fundamentally changed the way that we communicate in our everyday lives. We live in this app economy where news and information and content push to us. No longer do we have this destination model. I don’t go to the New York Times on my browser, right? I get a push notification, and that information that is being pushed to me is based on topics that I’ve self selected are relevant to me.
I think internal communication at companies is starting to reflect more the way that we communicate in our everyday lives. The enterprise has been a little behind. There are still a lot of companies that are using intranets and posters. Part of the evolution is that we’re moving to proactively providing employees news and information that’s relevant for them to do their job, and we’re now able to deliver it in a way that’s convenient for them.
At Dynamic Signal, our employee communication and engagement platform is designed to meet employees where they’re at with targeted, relevant, timely content and information delivered to them on the channel that is most convenient for the way that they work. If you are in finance and you sit behind a computer all day, maybe getting internal communication about your open enrollment period or a new leadership appointment via email makes sense for you. Maybe you’ll read your email. But if you are a sales executive, when you’re looking in your inbox, you’re only looking for customers and trying to close business. You’ll mentally ignore those internal emails as, “I can get back to that later.” But what if they’re really important?
If the goal of internal communication is to align employees to business objectives and goals, disseminate culture and values, help employees prioritize their day and make sure that they’re getting the information they need as efficiently as possible, we need to find ways to get it to them in a way that makes sense for them. That’s a big part of the evolution.
Beyond that, what’s been really interesting is we’re seeing more and more appointments of chief communication officers. The CCO is a relatively new C-suite position, but it seems like every week we’re seeing more large companies appoint somebody as CCO. They’re really consolidating communication under one org, whereas in the past, maybe internal communication sat under HR or operations, and external communication — things like social media, public relations — sat under a marketing team.
The problem is that today, the speed of communication, the fact that everybody is on mobile and everyone is getting news and information at their fingertips all the time via news apps and Twitter, there’s no longer a sense of internal communication and external communication. It’s really confidential communication and everything else.
The other really important and I think notable advance in internal communication is around measurement. So many other parts of the organization, especially marketing, have become very data driven. And historically, internal comms has been seen as this soft, cushy part of the business. We put an email out there and said, “Open enrollment starts now. Please read. Action required!” We didn’t have any measurement. We didn’t know what was happening with penetration; we didn’t know what employee sentiment was; we didn’t know what employee engagement was; we didn’t know how employees were feeling or receiving the information. It was this sort of spray and pray mentality. Communication now looks at things beyond just open rates but engagement, time on page, are employees taking action on some of the information they’re given?
I think measurement is how communications will continue to earn a seat at the table. It’s hard to get budget or authority when you don’t have data. Communicators I think have always known that internal communication is critical when it comes to things like alignment, understanding business goals and objectives, driving culture throughout the organization. But if you have no way of measuring that, you can’t prove that. You can’t get resources or budget or headcount to support those efforts.
TE: In your position at Dynamic Signal, what do you communicate internally and externally?
HANNAH: There’s so much! We want to make sure our employees know how to enroll in the 401(k) or go see the doctor. We want them to have those sort of basic, HR communication functions, but it can also be the lunch menu for the week or our holiday schedule.
We have things like Women of DySi and Pets of DySi and DySi Cares, which is our CSR group. So we have these employee affinity groups that people can choose to join and connect with other employees around issues that are important to them. We have this whole internal channel of people who submit photos of their pets. It’s been fun to see these other sides of your colleagues’ lives that you wouldn’t normally see.
We also want our employees to be very well-informed about what our company goals are. Our CEO sends video messages saying, “Great Q1! Here’s what happened and what we’re looking to accomplish in Q2.” We also host all-hands meetings with an AMA [Ask Me Anything] session. We’ll send out that notification to all of our employees through different channels — whichever channel works best for them — and we let them know that this is coming up and they can submit questions that they want to ask the CEO. I think our objectives are always ensuring that employees feel celebrated, connected, aligned, know what our goals and objectives are and that they feel valued as people.
On the external side of things, we’re sharing what we’re doing in the industry, our thought leadership and some of our research externally, but it’s not enough for us to just share that from our own branded channels. In my role as far as public relations and media relations go, it’s exciting to get to go speak to communications professionals and share all of this, but it’s really important for us that our employees feel empowered to be storytellers, too.
We are very careful about who we hire because we want every employee to feel empowered to be a brand ambassador and an employee advocate. We push a lot of our news out to our employees to share across their own networks, in their own voice. And different employees share different things. That’s perfect because everyone brings a unique and diverse perspective to the company, and we use our communication tools to empower them to tell those stories externally. We believe that external storytelling success begins with internal communication.
“External storytelling success begins with internal communication.”
— Robyn Hannah, senior director of global communication at Dynamic Signal
TE: For smaller companies that might not have the funds for an internal communication role, who typically owns this, and what advice would you have for them?
HANNAH: Internal communication is a non-negotiable. Someone has to create alignment. Your employees are your most-valued asset. You do not have a company without your employees. And employees who don’t know what your goals are as a business, don’t know who you are as a company and what your values are and what your mission is, they can’t function and you will not be successful as an organization if you ignore the fact that employees are your most-valued asset. Whether it’s an executive or HR or someone in marketing, communicating with your most-valued asset — the people who truly represent your business to the world — is a non-negotiable.
I think you just have to start, even if you have nothing in place. Someone has to say, “Our employees are important; they need to know what’s happening in the company; they need to know what we’re driving to as a company; they need to know that we value them because we recognize we don’t have a business without them.”
If all you have is email, start with email. If all you have is an open space where you can gather people together, go face time. If you’re a small company and can get everybody in one space, great. Or use Skype or Google Teams or whatever digital tool you need to get people together.
My advice is to start doing something. And sometimes asking forgiveness is better than asking permission. We all have a phone in our pocket with video and camera capability. You can start a free social media account and start to take photos and video of your employees and what their day-to-day looks like. Celebrate the people who make your company what it is. Highlight and showcase them. Create a sense of pride and loyalty. Start to empower them to tell their story on social media. That doesn’t cost any money.
This story originally appeared in Workforce‘s sister publication Talent Economy.
When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico on Sept. 20, 2017, HR consulting company ADP jumped into action to support its 36 employees living in the U.S. territory.
In the event of a major emergency that impacts its employees, ADP conducts associate safety and welfare checks, which involve an emergency notification system that reaches out to workers via call, text and email to ask if they need assistance, said Zona Walton, senior director of global business resiliency at ADP. Her team achieves 100 percent response in these instances, no matter what it takes. In the event of Hurricane Maria, though, ongoing power outages made these safety checks more challenging and involved search and rescue efforts.
“It can take us hours, it can take us days, and it can take us weeks,” she said. In Puerto Rico, it took several days to locate all employees around the island. “We’re continuing to support Puerto Rico, and we probably will for quite some time, just because of the devastation on the island and the needs of our associates we have there,” Walton said at the time of publication.
ADP provides whatever the workers need, particularly MREs (meals ready to eat), water, flashlights and batteries, but they can also support employees financially. Through its ADP Cares fund, its employees make donations, which are then matched by the company. These funds are available as donations to workers in crisis. Financial support and outreach from employees — particularly in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria — have been incredibly heartwarming, Walton said.
“We see that from one event to the next,” she said.
Balance a corporate statement between acknowledging the tragedy but not panicking.
Walton said her team has activated crisis management for 12 events between Aug. 1 and Nov. 2 of 2017. These events have included hurricanes, wildfires and terrorist attacks that could affect the safety of their employees. Her team had to account for about 8,800 ADP workers.
Walton has seen an uptick in crisis management, partly due to an increase in terrorist attacks and extreme weather events, and partly due to an increased emphasis on employee safety and security, both at ADP and at companies as a whole.
“This is an evolving space,” said Trusha Palkhiwala, vice president of global HR services at ADP. “I think companies are trying to figure out where their right role fits.”
Sharing Sympathy
Although the humanitarian efforts in Puerto Rico have largely been about the physical safety of workers, other tragedies can call for emotional support, Palkhiwala said, leading ADP to communicate their employee assistance programs or even bring counselors to offices.
ADP CEO Carlos Rodriguez also reaches out in some cases. Without sharing political views, it’s normal for him to express sympathy for victims, Palkhiwala said.
Another CEO advised to take a similar approach to corporate communications. If it’s the CEO’s personality to contact employees or the company as a whole in the aftermath of tragedies, then they should, said Adam Ochstein, founder and CEO of StratEx, a Chicago-based human resources software company. However, if they don’t usually make a statement, doing so could come across as panicked.
And communication doesn’t have to be from the CEO, necessarily. “Whoever is kind of like that culture cop for the company should be the one that’s writing or driving the message on it,” he said. At a large enterprise, this could be a supervisor for a department or region who then accesses corporate resources such as EAPs. Also, it’s crucial to communicate these services in common areas, such as the company break room or portal.
Ochstein suggested balancing a corporate statement between acknowledging the tragedy but not to panic. “We’re not putting our heads in the sand. At the same time, we also don’t want to get everyone panicked either, but let’s talk about this, and let’s share how we’re all respectively feeling about it.”
“It’s OK to come across as vulnerable, upset and to show your humanity.”
— Adam Ochstein, founder and CEO of StratEx
As an example of how not to respond after a tragedy, he cited New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s statement about the Oct. 31, 2017, terrorist attack in New York City, which left eight people dead and 12 more injured. “The reaction by New Yorkers, as evidenced last night, this morning, people got up, they went to work, children went to school, and that’s what makes New Yorkers special. That strength. That resilience,” Cuomo said.
Ochstein liked Cuomo’s business-as-usual attitude, but if the statement “doesn’t have an empathetic chord struck along with that tough New Yorker bravado, then it comes across as cold and insensitive and callous,” he said. “One without the other causes issues. If I’m too mushy, then no work gets done and you paralyze people. If I have too much of that bravado, then I’m seen as insensitive and callous and unkind.”
In events that impact workers the most, Ochstein suggested business leaders post a blog, have a town hall session and have opportunities for the company and its employees to give back to their communities.
Additional advice from Ochstein includes expressing that an event is impacting them. “It’s OK to come across as vulnerable, upset and to show your humanity,” he said.
Ochstein also advised business leaders to be as prepared as possible ahead of events. In instances of natural disasters that are predictable, preparation is feasible. “The unnatural tragedies, unfortunately, there’s been a lot of those over the last several years, so sadly, we’re getting good practice,” Ochstein said.
The days of face-to-face meetings and group emails may soon be coming to an end. From texting job candidates and using Slack for project management, to building artificially intelligent chatbots that answer questions about human resources, communication technology in the workplace is evolving. All of this is a good thing, said Sharon O’Dea, a digital and social media consultant based in the U.K. These tools enable faster, more efficient communication, via the devices employees have in their hands all the time, she said. “We all use instant messaging in our personal lives. It is natural to see that shift into the workplace.”
Younger workers are far more likely to choose text or Slack over email or phone calls, which they view as cumbersome and outdated, said Adam Ochstein, CEO of StratEx, an HR technology and consulting firm based in Chicago. Email can also be tricky for contract workers and frontline staff, who may rarely check their emails but always have their phones. “They want to communicate in real time with their fingers, not their voices.”
The use of instant and automated technology to support communication isn’t going away, so managers need to get on board or risk creating information gaps in the workplace. A 2017 report from Dynamic Signal found that only 17 percent of companies had recently invested in technology for internal communication, even though 73 percent said communicating company information to employees was a “serious challenge.”
While chatbots won’t be taking over the way we engage any time soon, the tools we use are evolving, and skeptical managers need to get on board, Ochstein said. “If you want to be an employer of choice for this generation, you’ve got to adapt.
Conversation Bots
Along with changing how employees communicate, new technologies are also changing what information they can share, said Rob High, chief technology officer for IBM Watson, IBM’s cognitive computing system. “Artificial intelligence tools, at their most basic, improve the likelihood that employees can find and share information as they communicate.” This enables faster problem-solving and ensures they can make decisions based on data, not gut instinct. High envisions a day where AI conversation agents will be the third party in a conversation, automatically searching for information and providing context.
High’s team has also created the AI-driven IBM tone analyzer, which uses linguistic analysis to examine the emotion in text messages. The goal is to help employees vet the “tone” of texts and emails, just as you might spell-check before hitting send. “It’s an efficient way to reduce misunderstandings,” he said. High believes AI technology will change the way we communicate at work and at home.
O’Dea agreed. “Chatbots offer huge potential for employee communication. They can take over the tasks that are needlessly complicated.” She believes early applications will focus on things like filling out employment forms, requesting days off and accessing personal data. “Chatbots can provide employees with instant access to this information through an app, which is where they spend more of their time anyway,” she said. For those who think chatbots are too inhuman for workplace communication, O’Dea believes it’s the opposite. Many employee communication platforms and corporate emails are “generic and impersonal, but chatbots can have human conversations,” she said.
In an era of social sharing, the casual nature of texts in the workplace can put companies at risk.
The Trouble With Text
The adoption of instant communication in the workplace isn’t all good news. In an era of social sharing, the casual nature of texts in the workplace can put companies at risk. We’ve all read the stories of managers cursing out employees for some minor infraction or flirting in a way that makes someone uncomfortable, only to have those conversations go viral and result in someone getting fired.
“There is a fine line between casual conversations and inappropriate content, and instant messaging makes that line very easy to cross,” StratEx’s Ochstein said. It’s rarely intentional. He recalls a recent day at his own company when employees were using Slack to discuss whether the company’s “no-shorts policy” should be abandoned when temperatures rise above 90 degrees. That evolved into a conversation about why female employees were lucky because they can wear skirts, which led to a “guys vs. girls in the workplace” battle. “That’s when the HR team had to get involved and shut it down,” he said. “It was innocent banter, but all of [the] sudden it was going in a direction no one wanted.”
Such scenarios are all too common, particularly when teams work long hours together or are out celebrating a project success. “One person may think a text is funny, where the other thinks it’s inappropriate,” he said. “But once you send it, you can’t get it back.”
The instant nature of these tools also creates legal issues with hourly gig workers. If a manager sends an email at night, it is assumed a contractor will respond the next day, but if they send an instant message the implication is that they expect an instant response. “Does that mean you have to pay them for that time?” Ochstein pondered. “Once you cross that chasm, the legal stuff can get bad.”
That doesn’t mean companies shouldn’t use instant messaging apps to interact with employees, but they should define clear policies for their use. Ochstein advised “over-communicating” to employees about texting protocol and reminding them that anything they say on text is as admissible as any other document. He also urged HR leaders to promote a culture of caution. “Encourage them to pause and think about whether a message could be construed as not respectful,” he said. “If there is any chance it could be construed as rude or not respectful, don’t send it.”
