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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Raise your hand if you hate performance management

Performance management has got such a bad rep among both employees and managers. For employees, the performance review is the annual dooms day, and for managers, it is a month filled with endless bureaucracy. The sad thing is that performance reviews don’t really drive performance. They are necessary for other talent management processes, and should be done well, but any manager who thinks that the annual review is enough to check the box for performance management completed for the year is WRONG.

According to CLC (Corporate Leadership Council) research, the top three performance drivers are risk taking, informal feedback and clear performance standards. Managers who cut some slack for their team members to try out new things will find process improvements and increased productivity. If some of the new ideas don’t work out, they don’t slam the explorers. You need lots of new ideas to find one good idea. At the same time, these managers don’t allow risky and unsafe behaviors.

When it comes to performance management, the most effective way to drive performance is to be clear about expectations and give frequent feedback. No complex computer systems needed! The key is a skilled manager. Employees must know what the expectations are in the form of job descriptions, company behavior standards, and specific goals to accomplish what is important for the company. When the expectations are clear to everyone, employees are more likely to feel that they are treated fairly.

Once the manager has set clear expectations, it is equally important to let the employees know how they are doing against the standards. Most everyone comes to work to do their best. If they are doing their job right, or great, it doesn’t take a lot of effort to let them know that. If they are off track, the manager needs to alert them to the deviation. The earlier the correction is made, the easier it will be. The worst annual reviews take place when the employee hears from the manager that they have not met the expectations but didn’t know about it. Feedback is so simple and it is just about the most powerful weapon to boost your team’s performance.

So why do we even have annual reviews if they don’t really drive performance? CLC research reveals that annual reviews drive retention. It is a chance to discuss career development and how much the employee is appreciated. Annual reviews trigger a chain of events in a company that values its talent. The performance ratings from annual reviews are used to differentiate rewards and development. When the reviews are more forward looking, they become less dreaded and more valuable. Let’s not forget that bulk of performance management happens every day.

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Copyright 2010 Liisa Pursiheimo-Marcks, all rights reserved.
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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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Crystal clear goal setting

If you haven’t done so already, hurry up and huddle up with your team to clarify this year’s priorities and set goals. Goals give direction. Goals give purpose. Goals improve productivity. Managers are absolutely critical in goal setting. Their role is to create a crystal clear line of sight between the company strategy and the individual team member’s daily work. This not only ensures that company resources are aligned to drive the highest priorities, but it also improves employee engagement.

After the company has announced its top priorities for the year, it is the business units’ and functions’ turn to align their key strategies to make sure that the company goals will be achieved. Once the business unit goals are clear, the department or the team gets together to decide how they can best rally behind the unit goals. The team meeting should include robust debate and discussion on how to best use the existing resources. With the leadership of the team manager, the team will come up with their own goals. The team goals must drive the achievement of the higher level goals.

Now, the team members should see the alignment all the way to the top. They should understand why these particular team goals were selected as the highest priorities. Individual goals are needed to execute the team goals. If the roles in the team are similar, it is possible that all team members set the same goals. If the talents are different, the goals will vary.

Let’s review SMART goal setting: It is Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound. Specific goals drive performance better than “do your best” goals. If the employee can describe the success, it is more likely to happen. Measurable and Time-Bound refer to your agreement on how and when or how often you will review the goal completion. If you are not prepared to review, don’t make it a goal. To have goals that drive performance and motivate, they must be challenging. Employees find intrinsic motivation in work that has clear and challenging goals, sometimes so much that they can get in the Flow. Goals that are perceived as unrealistic disillusion employees from trying to meet them. Goals will be Relevant, when you use the cascade process to align them.

As a rule of thumb, basic job expectations should not be goals. A goal is a part of a company priority to take it to the next level. Everybody just doing the bare minimum is not going to cut it. To set a goal is raising the bar. When you meet your goal, it’s an accomplishment. Set the goals accordingly. Don’t set them to fail. Set them to be proud.

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Copyright 2010 Liisa Pursiheimo-Marcks, all rights reserved.
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Are your employees in the Flow?

Dr. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi first described the phenomenon called the Flow in the nineties. It is deep engagement in an activity, where you get so engrossed that you may lose your sense of time. People report deep satisfaction when getting to experience the Flow. Often, they experience it at work, but it can happen during leisure time as well, for example while reading or skiing.

Some call it the High, the Rush, the Groove at work. They would do it for free, and then again, you couldn’t pay enough to force anyone into the Flow. However, you can create an environment conducive to Flow.

Based on Dr. Csíkszentmihályi’s research, the Flow is more likely to emerge in the following conditions: There is a clear goal, a challenge that is commensurate to the skill level of the employee, light amount of pressure, immediate feedback on progress to goal, and no distractions.

Let’s look at distractions. How many of your employees are able to take even a couple of hours to work on a task, and not be expected to return calls, e-mails, IM’s, text messages. Uninterrupted work time is becoming a rarity. With it, we sacrifice the Flow, which is the most creative, the most productive and the happiest time among our workforce. How much Flow time can you afford to lose? You can start by scheduling some on the team calendar.

Clear goals do not equal dictatorial micromanagement, but sharing a clear vision and a clear purpose. When the manager knows the strengths and hold-ups of the employee, it is easier to work together to select the right level of challenges. Good Flow goals gently stretch the earlier limits of the employee’s capabilities, but are not too unrealistic. A light amount of pressure seems to help with the Flow, so “Take all the time that you need”  and “I need it by yesterday” are both extremes that will not help.

Immediate feedback on progress does not mean “Good job!” from the manager on frequent intervals. In fact, evaluative feedback is not helpful. Useful feedback in the Flow shows the employee how the work is progressing. This means metrics, charts, user comments etc. For a software developer, the code itself shows feedback on progress. The painter gets the immediate feedback on the canvas. The finance specialist sees it in the summary reports. The manager can simply help the employee to plan how to get to see the ongoing progress, if the link is not as clear.

What about rewards? For the employee, the intrinsic reward of getting to work in the Flow is the best reward of all. There are numerous studies that have proven that dangling an extrinsic reward such as a cash award in front of the employee makes them focus on the reward and find the least effort path – not necessarily the best path – to complete the task. As a side effect, they lose part of the intrinsic motivation for the task itself.

Switching your company culture to a more Flow culture will not happen overnight. You may need to teach your employees concentration skills, help wean them out from constant multi-tasking and gently push them to dare to stretch their limits. This will be a paradigm shift for your managers as well. The pay-off will be amazing creative solutions, completed in intense Flows, and employees who LOVE their jobs and your company.

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Copyright 2010 Liisa Pursiheimo-Marcks, all rights reserved.
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