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.

  • How Simulated Work Environments Can Drive Performance in the Classroom, and Ultimately the Workplace

    How Simulated Work Environments Can Drive Performance in the Classroom, and Ultimately the Workplace

    Continuing with our theme this month, we wanted to reflect on performance management in another arena – the classroom. After all, students are future employees and shouldn’t performance management in the classroom prepare them for performance management in their future careers?

    First, I want to share a thought from a local employer when asked about industry needs concerning current and potential programs that are developing the future workforce. The quote reads:

    “While there appears to be attention given to communication and employability (skills), these areas remain our greatest problem. We are looking for hard working individuals with a strong work ethic that do not have to be reminded of the basics, like showing up for work on time.”

    With that in mind, why not consider simulated work environments in school classrooms? Creative Teaching Site shares the following concerning simulations in the classroom:

    • They simulate an activity that is “real”, and so it can be said that they are “virtually real”. They simulate the activity so well that there is little difference between the simulated environment and the real one, and the same kind of learning experience can take place.
    • They are “hands-on”, involving students so they become participants, not mere listeners or observers. Students learn better from their own experiences than having others’ experiences related to them.
    • They are motivators for learning. Student involvement in the activity is so deep that interest in learning more about the activity or its subject matter develops.
    • They are tailored to the student. When simulations are designed specifically for their audience, they can take developmental requirements into consideration.
    • They are inspirational. Student input is welcome and activities are designed to encourage students to enhance the activity by contributing their own ideas.
    • They are developmentally valid. Simulations take into account the students’ developmental level.
    • They are empowering. Students take on responsible roles, find ways to succeed, and develop problem-solving tools as a result of the interaction.

    I love that the last bullet points out that students take on responsible roles. This ties back in to the concern voiced in the quote from our employer mentioned earlier. When students are empowered to make decisions and take on responsibility, they are becoming prepared for their future roles as employees.

    What are your thoughts on simulated work environments in the classroom?

  • Basic Feedback/Feedforward Stuff

    Basic Feedback/Feedforward Stuff

    One of the best ways to improve and sustain great performance at work is to ask for feedback and to give it, freely, continuously and in the spirit of driving better performance. Here are some posts to help you out with this quest:

    6 Steps for Maximizing Feedback Through Feedforward

    Drop Lots of FYIs to Communicate Effectively

    Goal Setting – Feedback

    3 Steps for Driving Employee Engagement through Personalization

  • You Go Jennifer Lawrence- Girls, Know and Stand-up for What You’re Worth

    You Go Jennifer Lawrence- Girls, Know and Stand-up for What You’re Worth

    Jennifer Lawrence, Hollywood’s highest paid female actress still doesn’t make as much as her male counterparts. And she’s pissed. But who she is pissed at may surprise you. She’s mad at herself.

    You can see more on the story that aired on NBC Nightly News last week here:

    http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/jennifer-lawrence-speaks-out-on-hollywood-s-gender-pay-gap-543867971910

    Kudos to Jennifer. When we can take ownership of the issues that affect us personally, then we are on our way to fixing them. Blaming others doesn’t help the situation.

    Women (and men) knowing what they are worth is a critical step in that ownership, then being willing and able to negotiate for that worth is vital. Jennifer knows now what the going rate is for her leading roles and is ready to negotiate for the next leading role that will surely come her way.

    Like this post?  You may also like:

    2 Ways to Get What You’re Worth

  • 3 Steps for Driving Employee Engagement through Personalization

    3 Steps for Driving Employee Engagement through Personalization

    Remember the wind chime, the umbrella, the party, snacks and bonus check in our last post?

    Well during the corporate foray of employee rewards and recognition efforts, everyone in the department, regardless of their level of involvement in the project, got the wind chime and the umbrella and the party and the snacks and, yes, the bonus check.

    In addition to the one size fits all approach whether earned or not, although an umbrella at some point is going to come in handy, and the wind chimes do actually still hang in my backyard almost ten years later, no one asked me, or anyone else if we particularly wanted any of it or we might have preferred say a rain jacket or maybe a decorative flag.

    You see, one of the main tricks of employers who do the employee engagement game well know that perks and benefits should be personalized, fitting with each individual’s motivational preferences based on their personalities, interests and place in life.

    As The 2020 Workplace: How Innovative Companies Attract, Develop and Keep Tomorrow’s Employees Todaystates,

    “Rather than a standard package of health, wealth, and paid time off, companies can provide employees with a budget and a widely diverse set of options. These can range from sponsoring paid community service time overseas to allowing for credits to buy a hybrid car or even financially supporting an increased personal skill, such as learning a new language. The options are endless.”

    So if you want to focus on making it personal, here are three steps:

    1. Ask.  Ask and ask often what employees want.   You need to do this in aggregate and individually.  We suggest you design a survey to ask employees what they want and value in order to design overall benefit package options and structure. However, each person should be asked individually by their manager what things actually motivate them and what situations they are experiencing in their life and in work that cause one thing to be more motivational over another. For a list of motivational factors we use, Gallup’s 12 engagement questions for this.  Regardless of the mechanism you use to measure employee engagement, these results should be positively correlated with desirable overall business results such as increased profits that every organization tracks.   More on these business results that should be seen in next week’s post…

    Are your rewards and benefits personalized?  If so, what positive results have you seen?

    If you like this post, you may also like:

    The Best Way to Thank Employees is to Make it Personal

    Want to keep great employees? Know how to compensate them.

  • What You Pay Does Matter

    What You Pay Does Matter

    “$11.32 an hour,” she said. “That’s what many people can earn sitting on their couch. How am I supposed to encourage them to get off the couch when many of the jobs they qualify for don’t pay that?”

    This statement came from a frustrated state career center worker tasked with getting individuals off federal and state assistance through a job placement program.

    I could turn this conversation into a political post, but I won’t go there.  Instead, I’d like to focus on how it illustrates a basic premise of motivation.

    I’m going to spend the next few weeks talking about how to give people what they really want out of work (motivational factors) through performance management and maximization practices, but let’s face it, when I do this, I’m making the assumption that a basic living wage, or even a wage that is competitive with the wage someone could go across the street and earn with the skill set they have, (a hygiene factor) is provided in all workplaces I’m addressing. I can talk all day long about how meaningful work leads to performance maximization, but if that meaningful work doesn’t meet basic needs, or if basic needs can be met by, well doing nothing, then people are going to turn to being unproductive or turn to walking across the street for the higher wage. They are going to sit on the couch either literally or metaphorically by the way the show up to work and well, do just about nothing, or by taking their skills and going elsewhere.

    It goes back to one of the basic premises of workplace (or well really any place) motivation that drives behavior:  hygiene vs. motivational factors. Thanks to Herzberg, we have this tried and true theory that tells us if you really want to get the most out of people, you need motivational factors in the workplace like challenge, autonomy, creativity, etc.- basically all things that lead to meaningful work- to actually have the power to truly motivate someone.

    However, hygiene factors keep people from being dissatisfied. And a lack of dissatisfaction is necessary for the motivational factors to work. Someone may be overwhelmingly content with the work they do, but if you don’t pay them enough to meet a certain standard of living, that oftentimes they compare to others around them that are doing the same or similar work, the motivational factors won’t work at least in the long run.

    So before you go giving someone autonomy and meaning in their work and assuming that will keep people satisfied at the least or motivated at the most, look at how much you are paying. Get out your local wage survey and examine if your wages are competitive with the competitor across the street and around the world.   Goodness help us all when the competitor across the street ends up being the federal assistance program (okay, maybe I did have to get a little political).

    When was the last time you examined your wage practices?