Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Beyond Work

Beyond Work is our line of resources for people and community leaders looking for something new and innovative outside, be it a new job, career change, or personal development outside of work.

  • 3 Tips for Getting Over Your Holiday Hangover

    3 Tips for Getting Over Your Holiday Hangover

    You’re back from your holiday vacation and hopefully you unplugged while there. And now you have a vacation hangover. You’ve got way too many things to do for work, not enough time to do them in and your wondering, just like you’ve wondered the morning after you had one too many drinks, was it worth it? Should I really have even taken off for the holidays?

    I remember a time when we returned home from a work/play trip, the hangover hit me (and my husband) hard.  The around the world re-routing and delays of flights to get us home didn’t help nor did the three hours of sleep we got the night we returned due to the around the world trip home. My husband walked in from his first day back at work, looked at me without a hey, hi, how are you, and simply stated, “I don’t think our vacation was worth it.”  After which, he took the time to look at me, still in my pajamas, covered in spit-up from our small children, no shower in 48 hours, laundry piles all over our closet and again simply said, “Looks like your day went about like mine too.” Whereas he had been at work, I was trying to catch up on work and laundry and spend time with our two kids on our first day back.  Not good. We actually both needed a drink, or so we thought, to nurse our vacation hangover.

    If you took some of our unplugging tips to heart by getting stuff done before you left and scheduling a day or two to play catch-up when you returned (unlike us), you may not be hung over at all.

    But if you are, here are some tips to get over it:

    1. Realize you have to take recovery from your hangover one day at a time.  You can’t get everything done in one day, so don’t stress yourself out when you don’t.  Prioritize what is going to help you get over your hangover the quickest and tackle that first. Ignore your inbox if you have to. Those 987 emails can wait.  For me, tackling the grocery store and painting with my three-year-old was more important than the email inbox. It was a beast though when I got to it.
    2. Sleep. If you don’t catch up on it, you are never going to get anything done. Sleep some of it off to be more productive.
    3. Drink water. Lots of it. Especially if you’ve been on a plane. Even if you haven’t been on a plane, water can help cure any type and any size hangover.  Well maybe not a vacation hangover as much as drinking water, but it does beg the point of making sure you take care of yourself physically because if you don’t you’ll never get your productivity back.

    How have you nursed a holiday vacation hangover and gotten through it?

  • Change Management: Celebrating the Small Victories

    Change Management: Celebrating the Small Victories

    Change is never easy. I remind myself of this daily as I navigate some major changes in my personal life. And my experience has been a great reminder of why change is often viewed so negatively. It’s the unknown. While they say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, the thought of changing that pattern and not knowing what the result will be is often petrifying.

    I recently started working with a client who is experiencing a great deal of change in their organization and as a result, is seeing a decline in employee morale. As part of the change management process, I have begun meeting with managers on a weekly basis. While part of the goal of these weekly meetings is to talk through issues or concerns they may have, the primary goal is to help them focus on the positive and then find ways to share those positives with employees.

    I start each meeting with one simple (yet difficult) question. “What went well this week?”

    The natural reaction to this question is to try to think of major accomplishments, but when experiencing change and a decline in morale as a result of that change, employees need steady reassurance that the change is having a positive impact on the organization. Without that reassurance, morale will continue to drop. By showing employees the positive impact change is having, even if a small impact, you’re easing their anxiety over the change and gaining their buy-in.

    So, after watching the managers struggle during that first meeting to answer my question, I gave them some guidelines:

    • Think smaller. It doesn’t have to be a major accomplishment to be worth celebrating. Instead of waiting until the completion of a project to celebrate the work done, set milestones along the way and celebrate when you hit each mark.
    • Celebrate the now. If it’s progress today, celebrate it. Even if it falls apart tomorrow. Deal with tomorrow then, but today it’s a small victory and deserves recognition. And there’s always that chance that it won’t fall apart down the road.
    • Tie wins back to change. If the win was a result of a change that employees viewed negatively, acknowledge that the win was a positive result of that change.
    • Decide how to share with employees. Is it a win that everyone should know about, or just a specific department? And how will you communicate it to them in a way that will ensure they receive it?

    Even though we have only met a few times so far, I have seen a shift in the managers as well. The first week they were hesitant to claim any wins, but during our most recent meeting, they walked into the meeting with a few to share.

    So, ask yourself what went well this week and have you shared that with your employees?

  • Horizon Point’s Favorite Authors of the Year

    Horizon Point’s Favorite Authors of the Year

    We always do a book of the year and oftentimes a Top 10 list for certain types of books each year.   What I’ve found in my reading this year, though, is that there are some really good authors out there putting out more than one great read.

    They are thought leaders that write about things that span across the professional and personal and across industries and cultures.  They capture the heart and head with enjoyable prose and research-backed guidance. All help to guide better leadership, better workplaces, better homes, and better communities.

    Here are the authors we recommend putting on your 2019 reading list:

    Chip and Dan Heath.  These two wrote our book of the year – The Power Moments.  I’ve found their book Switch to be equally engaging and practical to apply.  I’m looking forward to reading the others they have out as well.

    Brene Brown.   A writer that gets to the heart of authenticity, Brene uses research and personal stories to create a narrative that is impactful. We read one of her books as a team and found that her voice may resonate more with women than men.  However, thinking about her voice whether it resonates with your gender or not, and reading prose of different mindsets is an important part of understanding others.  Men and women alike should pick up her work.

    Adam Grant.  Adam wrote our 2017 book of the Year, Originals. We also enjoyed hearing his insights at SHRM18, read about it here and here.

    Beyond Originals, his book Give and Take is powerful and we look forward to anything else he puts out on the market.

    Cy Wakeman.   I found myself saying “amen” over and over again and highlighting Cy’s work in both Reality-Based Leadership and No Ego, plotting ways to incorporate her insights into our leadership training content.  She gets that so much of what leaders deal with in the workplace is unnecessary drama and outlines practical ways, along with tools to use in the appendix of each book, to “ditch the drama.”

     

    Who is your top author for 2018?

     

     

  • Horizon Point’s Book of the Year

    Horizon Point’s Book of the Year

    In January, we declared this year the year of authenticity. Authenticity would be at the heart of what we would pursue as individuals and as a business.

    So, of course, we set out to find a book of the year about authenticity. There are a lot of books out there directly related to this, and we as a team read at least a few of them. But none of them quite fit what we were trying to pursue, of what we were meaning by living as an authentic leader and leading an authentic life.

    But, one favorite book stuck out for the year. We referenced it in more blog posts and kept coming back to it as a team, even though it was something we read in March of this year.

    This book, The Power of Moments, through research-backed analysis- describes how to create moments, or rich experiences through elevation, insight, pride, and connection.  It engages the reader in thinking about how to practically elevate themselves and others by creating more moments.

    Moments “rise above the routine and break the script”. They come from an action that creates insight. From practicing courage by pre-loading responses providing meaningful and personalized recognition, being obsessed with completion, and by creating shared purpose and meaning.

    Living authentically, we realized, comes from pursuing moments and helping create them for others.

    The ending of the book cites research on the five most common regrets of those who are dying. Number one on this list is not having the courage to live a life true to themselves instead of the life someone else expected them to live.  A life lacking in authenticity was the biggest regret, a life filled with minimal points of elevation, insight, pride, and connection.

    We hope you will pick up a copy of our recommended book of the year. We hope it will allow you to pursue in 2019 and beyond the authentic life. We wish you a life full of moments for yourself and for those you love and lead.

  • Five Elements of a Great Onboarding Experience

    Five Elements of a Great Onboarding Experience

    You found the perfect candidate, made them an offer they couldn’t resist, and now they’re ready to start work. While you’ve wowed them up to now, your onboarding and orientation experience is critical to keeping them and to your reputation as an employer of choice.

    • A study by Glint showed that employees who had a poor onboarding experience were eight times less likely to be engaged in their work, with 40% of those employees reporting disengagement just three months after hire. Those same employees reported that they would not recommend the company to others.
    • According to a 2014 study by SHRM, one company surveyed reported that new employees who attended a structured orientation program were 69% more likely to remain with the organization for three years.

    One of my favorite tasks in HR has always been designing and implementing onboarding and orientation programs for organizations. I love working with organizations to learn what processes they have in place, helping them determine where they need to make improvements, and then following up after implementation to see the results.

    So what makes a great onboarding and orientation program?

    1. Communication. As with most things, a great onboarding and orientation experience begins with communication. Even before a new hire’s first day, there is often communications that need to be sent out to them. This may include new hire forms, information on where they need to report on their first day, or even just a welcome email from the leadership team. Make sure this communication is welcoming, informative, and easy to disseminate. If you require new hires to fill out paperwork prior to their start date, provide clear and concise instructions on how to complete and return the forms. Try to think like a new hire, anticipate what questions they may have and answer them proactively.
    2. Preparation. The worst experience I ever had as a new hire was walking in on my first day and being asked to put together my own orientation packet! And it only got worse when I was shown to my office only to find out I had no desk, no computer, and a room full of storage boxes (and they had a month to prepare). Being ready for your new hire to show up on their first day goes a long way. Be ready to greet them at the front desk when they arrive, have their desk, computer, and any other equipment they need ready for them, along with all of their access and login information. Make sure that you communicate their start date with leadership and anyone else who may be involved in their onboarding and orientation so that they are not caught off guard. And maybe even have a few goodies waiting for them when they arrive that first day or plan to take them out to lunch.
    3. Elimination of downtime. One of the worst things I think you can do on a new hire’s first day is leave them alone. Think back over your first day experiences, were you ever left to your own devices? If you answered yes, chances are you also remember wondering why they weren’t prepared for you, why they didn’t have your first day scheduled out, and when someone was going to come to rescue you from your infinite boredom. There are so many tasks to accomplish when a new employee starts, so there really should be no reason to drop them in a room or at a desk and leave them. Designing a standard orientation schedule for their first day, and even their first week will help ensure that there isn’t an excessive amount of downtime for new hires. Consider what paperwork they need to complete, what policies and procedures you should review with them, what training should be completed and who will present it, and who they need to be introduced to. Consider establishing a mentor or buddy program where a tenured employee is paired up with new hires to help them get acclimated to the organization, then have that mentor or buddy help walk the new hire through orientation.
    4. Follow through. Onboarding and orientation are often used interchangeably, however, they are two very different things. While your organization’s orientation may take a day or even a few weeks, onboarding an employee may take up to a year. So what’s the difference? Orientation involves tasks like the completion of paperwork, reviewing company policies and procedures, introductions to team members, and introductory training to understand their role. Onboarding goes well beyond that and includes more in-depth training and management involvement. It is the process of helping the new employee get their feet wet and learn how to become a contributing member of the team. While orientation may be a very formal process, onboarding is often much more informal. Don’t drop the ball after the initial orientation. Make sure that the new hire is being provided with the tools, training, and resources they need to understand and be successful in their role.
    5. Follow up. Designing and implementing an orientation and onboarding program can be a huge undertaking. But all of that effort could be wasted if the program is not effective, so a critical step in the process is to evaluate the results. A great way to do this is to have new hires complete a post-orientation survey and provide feedback on what worked well, what didn’t, and what they felt was missing. I also recommend having a touch base conversation with the new hire after they’ve been with the company for 60-90 days and had a chance to get settled. Use the feedback from the survey and touch base meeting to continue to improve your organization’s onboarding and orientation programs. And as noted in the statistics listed above, another measurable indicator of an effective onboarding program is an increase in employee retention.

    Based on the five elements of a great onboarding experience, how would you rate your organization’s program?