Virtual work

There are multiple benefits of working remotely both for the company and for the employee. Virtual work cannot be avoided when organizations grow domestically and later globally. Companies can achieve significant savings in facilities and travel costs by allowing employees to work virtually. It creates more work options when commutes are long or the employees need flexibility with work/life balance. Offering the remote work option increases the available talent pool. However, virtual work must be managed right to create the expected benefits.

Working remote doesn’t work for every job. Remote work is ideal in these conditions:

• Knowledge work. If your employee spends most of the day processing information or sharing expertise with others, remote work could be a good choice. If their work is production or service, you most likely need the person’s physical presence.
• The focus is on results, not on face time. If the progress is measured by milestones and deadlines, go for it. If daily presence with external or internal customers is needed, think again.
• Ability to work independently. If the employee works independently at the office, why not in the home office? However, if the person requires a lot of supervision or the help of peers, remote work may not be such a great idea.

How to make virtual work go smoothly for the organization, the manager and the employee?

1. Set clear goals and expectations. How will you measure progress? How do you expect to track time?
2. Set a communication schedule. If you had weekly meetings at the office, you should have them on the phone or video. Integrate the remote team members into the team and company meetings. In times of change or uncertainty, increase the frequency of communication. Remember that your remote team members don’t necessarily hear the office gossip, so you need to keep them in the loop in another way.
3. Use technology. In addition to phone and conference calls, there is slide and desktop sharing technology to facilitate team meetings. Video conferencing services can be free or fancy. Discussion groups, chats, instant messaging all bring team members closer. Use recording, if time zones are an issue. The important thing is to not to exclude the remote team members.
4. Create face time. It is incredible how much better people work together once they have met each other once. For project teams, do everything you can to get them together. Go and visit your remote team members or allow them to travel and visit your office to build relationships.
5. Facilitate informal relationships. In addition to business as usual, allocate some time to let people get to know each other personally. Share pictures and stories. Again, people work better together when they have a human connection.
6. Manage remote careers. Remote employees sometimes get overlooked in career planning. Coach them to highlight their results and achievements, network internally and be visible, even if not physically.

Virtual employees will increase as a proportion of the future talent pool. Embrace the trend and get smart about your virtual talent.

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Facilitating networking to improve business

I attended a fascinating presentation by Maya Townsend of Partnering Resources. The topic was network analysis in organizations, and the discussion meandered into many other aspects of networking in business. As an excellent conversation, this triggered many additional thoughts afterwards that I want to put together to make my case that networking is an essential function that needs to be built into high performance organization.

Most organizations state among their core values something around teamwork or collaboration. This is not just to make everybody feel warm and fuzzy, but because it makes business sense. People working together get things done more creatively and more effectively. We have all experienced how much more willing we are to help someone whom we have met in person. Virtual teams struggle with this phenomenon in reverse.

Every organization has its power players. Some have position power, some have informal power. A network analysis can reveal who the informal leaders are. Information, expertise and social connections are channeled through these people, usually not according to the organizational hierarchy. Knowing these movers and shakers is critical in change initiatives or in analyzing an organizational problem.

High performers are natural networkers and learn fast how to build strategic networks. To build a truly high performing organization, everybody would do well to be good at building important connections inside and outside of work. The company can assist by building networking infrastructure and skills. A mentoring program can create vertical connections. Intranets and expert wikis create platforms for informal learning and linking through expertise. Company events and buddy programs give a chance to form true human connections. Sometimes classroom training not only serves as professional development, but also as an excellent bonding and networking opportunity. Even office design can enhance networking with employee lounge areas and attractive cafeterias. Access to social networking tools, like LinkedIn and Facebook, is increasingly important, especially for the Millenials, with other generations catching up fast.

In addition to creating the right environment, the organization should consider providing training on basic networking skills. For some, it may come natural; for the rest, a little help may be needed. Whether it is networking etiquette, the use of the social media or basic interpersonal skills, increased collaboration both internally and externally will pay back the efforts.

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Happiness at work

Positive psychology is gaining in popularity. No longer is it enough to find ways to cure mental illness, but psychologists are now researching ways to help people live more fulfilling lives. I wanted to dig in deeper to see what positive psychology has to say about happiness at work. Does happiness really matter for productivity? And if it does, what can we use from the current research that can be applied in today’s workplace?

The Gallup Management Journal Employee Engagement Survey shows a strong correlation between employee engagement and happiness. Happy employees are more equipped to handle change and new challenges. According to another Gallup poll, employees who considered themselves happy spent 80% of their work time on task, versus unhappy employees who only spent 40% of their time on task. Professor Teresa Amabile from Harvard Business School studies employee innovation and performance. Her research discovered that employees were more creative on the days when they were on a good mood.

To increase happiness, there are elements we can control and some that we can’t. Research suggests that some people are born to be sunnier personalities than others. But, even the grumpsters can increase their level of happiness by focusing on the controllable factors. Our level of fulfillment improves, when we find a greater purpose and focus in our daily activities, play to our strengths, learn and grow, and have meaningful relationships. A good workplace can contribute to these happiness drivers.

Purpose and meaning

Organizations that are able to communicate a greater purpose and create an emotional attachment with their employees can reach over 50% increase in discretionary effort. Organizational communications and employment branding do part of this, but the most critical role falls to the managers who create the link between the organizational goals and the day-to-day work.

Strengths and growth

Recognizing individual strengths and letting employees leverage them not only creates happiness, but is a wise investment for the company. The most intense level of happiness is experienced in Flow, where the level of challenge is highest and skills are stretched to meet it. Continuous learning and growth guarantees on-going opportunities to reach Flow.

Meaningful relationships

One of the strongest engagement drivers is to have a best friend at work. Human connections create a sense of purpose and belonging. Organizations should be cautious of evaluation and reward systems that incentivize individualism and internal competition. Cultures that nurture teamwork and service orientation are more likely to promote happiness and loyalty.

Last but not least, positive language by itself is a self fulfilling prophesy. When employees and managers pay attention to positive events, they are more likely to feel happy. Positive feedback, gratitude and recognition are small gestures that go a long way to promote happiness and productivity. What’s the downside?

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Why is nothing changing after training?

According to Robert Brinkerhoff research, only about 15% of learning impact is determined by the actual training event. Up to 85% of the learning impact is influenced by external factors: what happens before and after. As so much scrutiny is put on the actual training event, and not much attention is paid to what really matters, it’s no wonder that most training sessions become a nice, although high quality, break from the daily grind but not much more.

Typical pitfalls of training with low impact are:

• Wrong people sent to the training
• Lack of purpose / expectations
• No opportunity to apply new skills and knowledge
• Lack or reinforcement after training
• Work environment makes it difficult to apply new skills and knowledge
• Wrong learning attitude

1. Send the right people to the training

The reason to train a person is to improve or learn a new skill, behavior or knowledge. This can be achieved through many methods. Sometimes just handing a simple job aid or a book could do the trick. If a fundamental behavior change is expected, one-on-one coaching over a long period time is often more appropriate. In some cases, the whole team needs to adopt a new methodology, approach or tool, and training everyone at the same time is the most efficient. If your employee is having a behavior problem, training is not the silver bullet. I have seen whole teams sent to a behavior improvement class so that the manager could avoid having a frank discussion with just a couple of employees. Sit down with your low performers and communicate your expectations. If it truly is a skill gap, you may consider training. In most cases, it is matter of close monitoring and getting back on track. Send your high performers to state-of-the-art workshops and conferences where they really get to expand their expertise.

2. Set the expectation for learning

Whether it’s your whole team or one or two individuals, plan ahead to make the most of the learning experience. If you are not concerned with the ROI of the learning, why bother sending them at all? Be clear why they are going to this particular training and why they were picked. Make the new skill part of their performance plan, and expect them to share the key learning points with you and the team.

3. Ready to apply

Prepare for their return so that learners will immediately be able to apply what they learned. If it is new software, the tool should be installed on their computer, ready to use. If they are going to learn negotiation skills, agree with them in which deal will they be testing the new skills. If there won’t be any chance to apply upon return, delay the training.

4. Reinforce and enforce

Inspect what you expect. Ask for a briefing on the key learning points. Work together to create a simple action plan to ensure that the skills are applied immediately after the training. Monitor progress and celebrate success together. Give feedback and coaching as much as you are familiar with the topic.

5. Create a supportive work environment

Cynical coworkers can certainly kill any budding new skill. Set rules of engagement for the whole team to expect support. If the whole team is learning new methods, share war stories, wins and best practices as they emerge. Remove obstacles such as bureaucratic processes or old systems that can be counterproductive to the excitement of gaining new skills.

6. Select people with a positive learning attitude

To create an innovative organization, you need people who are curious, open to change and who want to continuously improve and learn new things. Make this a performance evaluation and promotion criteria and, more importantly, a  selection criteria for new hires. Nothing stops progress more than an employee who thinks he or she knows everything there is to know and poisons the learning environment for everyone else on the team.

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Copyright 2010 Liisa Pursiheimo-Marcks, all rights reserved.
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Meaningful relationships at work

One of the Gallup’s Q12 questions is whether you have a best friend at work. At first glance, this seems like a strange question to have risen to the top 12 questions to ask, but Gallup has proven that having a best friend at work correlates with retention, engagement and profit generation.

Meaningful relationships at work build trust. Where you find trust, you will also find accountability. Smart employers will create a work environment that nurtures relationship building. Leadership style is the most critical in creating the right environment. A participative style that engages the team members and values everyone’s input is more likely to create deeper relationships than a top-down directive leadership style.

The overall company culture will clearly impact the work environment. If the culture is very fast paced and task oriented, and relationship building is not valued, the employees will feel discouraged to take any time away from their tasks to get to know their coworkers. This will make the relationships transactional. A sign of a task oriented culture may be that the employees prefer to send a thread of e-mails instead of simply picking up the phone to resolve an issue.

Another organizational mechanism that may complicate trust and relationship building is the forced ranking process. By its nature, it has a risk of promoting an individualistic and competitive culture, unless the process is managed with care, and the managers are highly trained about the performance standards and knowledgeable about potential rating biases.

To build more relationships, the company may just create more opportunities to do so. It can happen in team meetings, happy hours or more elaborate team building events. Eventually, it boils down to a chain of small moments when people get to know and trust each other. They come out of their cubicles, or look around in their production lines.

At the personal level, most of us spend more time at work than at home. It should be time that we enjoy, with people whom we appreciate. Challenge yourself to find out one new unique thing about your coworker. Make a real connection.

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Copyright 2010 Liisa Pursiheimo-Marcks, all rights reserved.
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