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The Best Way to Retain and Recruit Top Talent in a Post COVID Environment
I could tell before he opened the door to the car that something had gone wrong at school. My ten-year-old gets in the car, sits down, and scowls. I ask him what’s wrong and he doesn’t answer. I ask his sister what is wrong and she says she doesn’t know.

I’m afraid to have to tell him that we are now headed to do something that he does not like to do, which is to go to reading lessons. He loves his reading teacher, but he just hates to read. Especially when he is in a bad mood.

Sister goes to reading too, but for the exact opposite reason. She loves to read, so when she goes to reading she gets to do something she likes.

I try to think of a way to tell him he has reading for the afternoon without World War III breaking loose. I remember a podcast by the Neuroleadership Institute that I had recently listened to about how to return to the office well. In it, it talked a lot about the value of giving people autonomy, of giving people choices.

So, I asked my son, “Would you like to go to reading first or second?”

“Second!” he says “Definitely second.”

I drop sister off at reading and take him home for a snack and a little break. His mood begins to change, and by the time I take to reading, he is happy. His belly is full, he got to make a choice- a kind of choice that is usually made for him- and he was able to hit the reset button.

Mission accomplished.

Can it be this simple at work? Can just giving people choices over things make a difference? The research and brain science says it sure can.

Take for example studies (here is one in particular) that cite workers given the autonomy (permission) to decorate their own cubicles saw up to a 25% increase in productivity.

COVID has exacerbated the need for autonomy at the office for two reasons 1) Many of us have tasted autonomy in work by being able to work from home (or from anywhere) and we don’t want it stripped back. Taking autonomy away activates all kinds of stress in the form of a threat response. 2) COVID created a lot of stress from uncertainty, where there weren’t a lot of choices, and people need to be able to step back from that stress. One way to do this is to allow for choices or continue to allow choices around where, when, and how work gets done. These reasons and responses are two sides to the same coin.

So what can you do as a leader to help cultivate autonomy at work?:
1. Guide by principles not by mandates. The first thing to think about is making increased autonomy a driver in your decision-making as an overarching principle of when, how, and where work gets done and then go from there. It’s not a mandate of: Everyone must work from home now! Instead, different industries and situations may govern different ways of offering autonomy, but it can be present in any workplace at any time. Going to one extreme that seems to offer autonomy may actually limit people’s choices by making a mandate based on what one segment of your workforce wants, but isn’t reflective of what all want. Doing this actually fosters the opposite of autonomy by limiting choice and control through a one size fits all approach. Create guardrails for decision-making to allow for autonomy instead of one-way streets.
2. Ask people what they want. In order to determine what autonomy might best look like at your place of work, ask people what they would like to see when it comes to having choices over their work. Is where, when, or how the work gets done a priority for your workforce? How can you design principles that support those needs?
3. Experiment based on the research. Based on the global body of research out there and the research gathered from your workforce, design an experiment that increases the opportunity for choices for your employees. Decide your hypothesis (for example: If employees are allowed to work from home or at a place of their choosing outside of the office two days per week, productivity and satisfaction will increase), then decide how you are going to measure to see if your hypothesis is correct (for example, how will you measure productivity and satisfaction if you aren’t already?). Then, run the experiment for a period of time and see what outcomes are achieved. If you have favorable results, expand the choice offerings throughout your workforce. If not, try a different hypothesis and experiment.
4. Don’t be afraid to change. What may work now, may not work in the future. Be in tune and open to change by listening to your employees and having a learning mindset through experimentation. Then, don’t be afraid to change if needed to continue to foster autonomy at work.
Resisting the urge to command and control as a leader at work (and as a parent) pays dividends. It always has, but it is increasingly needed as leaders think about how to effectively transition after COVID in order to continue to retain and recruit top talent. Because top talent does have choices, and they will exercise the need to have it by going elsewhere if you don’t foster autonomy at your place of work.

How do you and how will you foster autonomy in work?
July 13, 2021
3 Ways to Think about levels of Pay + A “Bonus”

As you can tell from our previous post on all the hiring incentives that are out there now, it is a job-seekers market.

A recent LinkedIn update titled “Power shifts in a tight job market” summarizes what employers are doing to lure people to their open positions:

Employers eager to fill positions are offering more to attract talent — and they aren’t just upping pay or showing more flexibility — they’re also training workers and taking more chances on people who don’t meet traditional qualifications. “No experience necessary” roles have spiked by two-thirds compared to 2019, and posts offering starting bonuses have doubled, according to new data from Burning Glass Technologies. Meanwhile, minimum compensation requirements for people without college degrees are up 19%, per a Federal Reserve Bank of New York survey.

There are multiple factors impacting the supply and demand for labor. But it’s not just filling positions, it’s also about keeping people in positions. Particularly acute in production and manual service workers, a Conference Board report cites strong retention challenges:

As we think about what can be done to impact the recruiting and retention challenges of today, it may be wise to think about how you think about pay. Obviously, employers are increasing their wages. Historically, as you can see from the chart below, wages have not kept pace with productivity, so rising wage rates may help to impact this equilibrium.

But until we think about pay differently, honing in on what each level of pay actually provides, we may not be able to effectively impact the outcome of increases in pay on worker recruitment and retention.

Adam Grant, in his podcast WorkLife provides a framework for three ways to think about wages in the episode titled “Why It Pays to Raise Pay” and I’ll add one more as a bonus that he and his guests allude to:

1. Living Wage: Living wages provide what people need to be able to provide for their basic needs. Living wages allow people to meet the lower-order needs found in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that you see below. They provide for survival, and to a certain extent safety and security. (Other factors may impact safety and security needs being met beyond wages, as for example, safety not being present in a domestic violence situation of a wealthy family.)

Maslow would tell you in order for people to move up the hierarchy to things that provide motivation at work, you have to at least meet these lower order needs. By and large, pay is what provides for this.

What do you think a living wage is where you are? You can find out here: https://livingwage.mit.edu/

For example, here is Alabama’s data:

Some of these numbers were quite surprising to me. Be sure you look at the information on how these rates are determined here. Although you (and I) may not agree with all the things included in this living wage, what I find most fascinating here is this data seems to imply that most people with children really need two incomes to reach a living wage by combining their incomes. In addition, it is evident through the data how much of an impact childcare costs play into the variability of a living wage.

On a personal note, a ministry we’ve started through the Neighborhood Christian Center is helping one single mother provide a bridge for childcare expenses right now until she can see if she qualifies for a government subsidy program to help pay for their childcare. She has three young children and no support from their father. The cost for the three of them to attend daycare so she can work would require her to make $13.50 an hour JUST to cover daycare costs. Her pay rate right now is $10.00 an hour.

2. Fair Wage. A fair wage, I simply define as a market wage rate by position. Grant defines fair wage as “a living wage plus an amount that reflects an employees’ value for the organization or in the labor market.”

What is a fair wage where you live based on the positions you hire?

Just to give an example, here is the market wage in Alabama for a Production/Manufacturing Operator as reported from one of the subscription market wage sources we use:

It is interesting to compare these market rates to the living wage rates. Oftentimes, it appears as though market or “fair” rates are actually below living wage rates.

3. Generous Wage. A generous wage Grant defines as a shift in thinking to what the purpose of pay actually is. He says, “Instead of thinking of pay as a way to incentivize people, think of it as a symbol of how much you value them. When people feel valued, they add value.”

It’s easier to get concrete data to define what a living and fair wage is, but a generous wage is so ambiguous. It means different things to different people and to different organizations.

Grant provides a couple of concrete case studies in the podcast that can help you think through what generous wages look like. For example, PayPal committed to paying generous wages and defined it through measuring net disposable income, which is the money you have leftover after taxes and paying for all essential living expenses. The threshold they set for employees was having 20% of their take-home pay be in this category.

It can’t be understated, however, that in order to work, generous pay has to be combined with a bonus. And that bonus isn’t monetary.

4. Necessary Bonus: Treat people holistically. In order for a generous wage structure to work, it has to be predicated with the mindset of believing in people. This isn’t throwing money at a problem in order to fix it. That won’t work. One of Grant’s guests on the podcast states that companies who don’t or can’t get on board with this mindset, “Don’t believe in people. They don’t have the faith in a person’s ability to do a good job in their motivation and in their competence. And of course, in public companies, there is a tremendous emphasis on the short term and a lot of executive’s compensation is tied to short term performance….. Another thing that gets in the way is mediocrity is a lot easier to pursue than excellence.”

As she says, it’s easy to say, “Pay as little as you can.” That doesn’t take a lot of thought. But thinking about “how high you should go? How much should you empower your people?” takes a lot more work.

I hope this framework of thinking about pay provided here through the WorkLife podcast will, at a minimum, provide some food for thought for you to pursue excellence instead of mediocrity.

What will you do next to lead your company’s compensation policy?

Author’s Note/Opinion:

I am a capitalist at heart. This isn’t about paying people wages that do not allow for-profits or distributing wealth in a socialist way, it’s about paying wages that maximize profits and it’s about businesses taking ownership of generous pay, not the government being in charge of redistribution of wealth.

If businesses took ownership in paying people at least a living wage and hopefully seeing how profits can be maximized with generous wages, the government wouldn’t have to interfere in the market to impact the widening income gap in America. I believe that much of what is going on now when it comes to why people are sitting out of the labor market due to making as much or more on government subsidies, is a result of wages not having risen past the recession rates of 2008-2009 and that was more than ten years ago now.

It’s time for businesses to take an honest look at their role in the problem instead of pointing fingers at everyone else and trying to put out a fire that has been kindling for a long time with a shot in the dark sign-on bonuses and other short term bandaids to entice people to work but that totally negate the need to do the hard work of building better workplaces where people actually want to work and stay.

If you listen to the entire WorkLife podcast here, you’ll see that one company engaging in this type of excellence around pay mindset has seen their revenue triple, their customer base double, and their workforce growing by 70%. Taking a thoughtful look at your wages just isn’t the right thing to do for people to be able to earn a living, it’s the smart thing to do when it comes to maximizing your business’ potential.

June 15, 2021
4 Ways Leaders Can Keep Remote Work Pros from Becoming Cons

I may be the only person in America that actually considered getting office space instead of ditching it in 2020. Having run a business for almost ten years totally remote, I was beginning to question whether that was the best option for me and the business.

As a company, three of our core values- people first, passion, and productivity- are guided by this statement: “To help drive passion and productivity, we don’t care how or where work gets done, just that it gets done in a way that meets client needs. This coincides with our desire to put people first by allowing them the autonomy to make decisions based on their personal preferences. We believe this stimulates passion and productivity.”

I believe this guiding principle has led to my productivity and the productivity and retention of our team and echoes what has been found in research from Harvard Business Review, among others, that workers (specifically knowledge-based workers in the HBR article) are more productive remotely.

So what gives? This chart found at ventureharbor.com might provide some insights:

Like many others, I’ve been working largely from home with kids also going to school in our home on and off for the last year. Unplugging after work has also been a challenge when the to-do list is long and the interruptions are large (“Mom, my teacher can’t hear me, something is wrong with the sound on my computer!” “Mom, how do you spell contagious?” Mom, I’m hungry!….” It never ends…. Especially when there is also an 18-month-old that isn’t in school but is very BUSY all the time underfoot too.)

In addition, people seem to be working longer, or at least working on very different schedules. From a LinkedIn report on what WFH means: “Workers in Austria, Canada, the UK, and the US are logging 2.5 hours more each day on average, according to Bloomberg, with a longer workday becoming the new normal globally. But while many have more meetings and emails to catch up on, having a longer workday doesn’t necessarily mean more hours working, per The Washington Post. Some people have adopted new work schedules in which they work later but have longer breaks throughout the day.”

So even though remote work can and has brought about significant positive outcomes, including potential productivity gains, reduced office space costs, and employees having more autonomy, there are always two sides to every coin. What side of the coin someone is landing on is largely an issue of their current and specific personal circumstances and the realization that too much of a good thing is, well, bad.

Leaders need to be mindful that everyone’s situation is different and be aware that the advantages of remote work also lead to challenges. Once this is done, leaders can support their people at the individual level and provide resources to help support productive work.

Much of Microsoft’s research on what makes a great manager, which was published pre-pandemic, still holds true in a remote working world. This guides some ideas for practicing strong remote work leadership:

1. Set guardrails around communication, productivity, and working hour expectations. Many of our clients have talked extensively about the need for manager training around the new way of working, particularly respecting boundaries around work time and response expectations. One client told me, “I don’t want to go back into the office full-time, but I feel like I’m expected to be checking email before 7 am and I am often called routinely after 6 or 7 pm about unimportant work things by my boss. Most types of calls would not have been urgent when we worked in the office and could have waited until the next day, but now for some reason, these non-urgent issues seem to need to be resolved before the end of the day. The new expectation is, you’re right there by your computer all the time, so let’s just handle this now. There has got to be a healthy balance.” As a leader, make sure you are guarding people’s line between work and home when the home is now the office.

2. Realize these guardrails may be unique to each person. One person may need to be sending emails before 7 am because they are also a schoolteacher from 8 am to Noon when virtual school is taking place for their kids. They need to be productive first thing in the morning, take a break, then return to the “office” for an extended time than when the standard workday takes place. Talk to each of your employees (see number three, hold regular one-on-ones) and see what they need and how you can effectively communicate their needs and working arrangements to all team members that rely on and collaborate with them.

For example, I may need to work on the weekends (as I’m doing now writing this post) because this past week my kids were home all week due to the winter weather. But that doesn’t mean I’m expecting my entire team to be working on the weekends too. One of our team members has a lot of commitments with her family over the weekends, but her kids are older than mine, so she isn’t interrupted by their needs as much during the week even if they are home. Her regular schedule is working intensely Monday-Thursday so she can have time on Fridays to get personal things done and/or travel with her family for kids sporting activities. I don’t try to schedule anything for her or with her on Fridays. We have yet another team member that is a night owl. The girl can crank out some good work well after I go to bed and it is in my inbox the next morning. Yet another person has volunteer commitments that are meaningful to her and our work, so I try to be mindful of her commitments there when considering her workload and times for the meeting.

3. Hold regular one-on-ones but avoid virtual meeting overload. In a virtual setting, request that your people turn their cameras on while you are meeting one-on-one. This provides the needed context for what can be learned by what is not being said through people’s expressions and body language. You can do this while assuring them that you are not at all bothered by a kid/spouse/pet coming into the picture at times and that if they need to pause the meeting to handle something, that is fine. In addition, one guardrail to manage is to make sure that just because it is convenient and easy to convene a virtual meeting, doesn’t necessarily mean you need one. Make sure a meeting is the best way to facilitate communication. Don’t meet when an email will work just as well.

4. Provide specific resources based on each person’s needs. This may be office space for someone to utilize, not all the time, but at certain times when distractions at home seem to be the highest. As seen in the chart, loneliness is one of the biggest struggles with remote work. What can you do to support human interaction needs in a remote world? One simple thing may be encouraging people to turn on their camera while in virtual meetings so people can be seen, not only heard. Likewise, another may need to keep their camera off because their office is also the classroom and their six-year-old is working beside them. The chart also describes a problem, you may need to simply tell someone on your team to take a vacation. If you’re holding regular one-on-ones and understand people’s unique situations, you should know when someone is approaching burnout.

All in all, I’m still on the fence about whether office space is necessary for me and my team. But if it ever does become something we invest in, I know I’ll make sure that my team knows that the office is available for them, not a requirement of them. When clear expectations and a mindset of service excellence are set, I still firmly believe that people get their best work done when they get to decide how, when, and where to do it.

How are you managing the pros and cons of remote work?

February 23, 2021
Are Your Employees SAD? How to Help Employees Who Struggle with Seasonal Affective Disorder
It’s that time of year. The weather is changing, the leaves are falling, and you’re SAD. But you’re not alone. Nearly 10 million Americans suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. While SAD is most prevalent in those ages 18 to 30, it can affect anyone, and the effects are different for everyone.

Symptoms of SAD include:
- Fatigue
- Loss of concentration
- Insomnia/Inability to wake up
- Mild to severe depression
- Weight loss/gain
Employers may see these symptoms in the form of attendance issues, decreased productivity, mistakes in work completed, or a lack of concentration in meetings. Your initial reaction may be to consider disciplinary action, but before you do, consider the behaviors you’re seeing. Are these recent changes to an otherwise well-performing employee? If so, did these changes occur around the change of the season? While SAD affects most people in the cold weather seasons, some individuals do suffer SAD in the warmer season as well.

So how can you help an employee who may be suffering from SAD?
- Utilize your EAP. If your organization provides employees with an Employee Assistance Plan, now might be a good time to remind employees of this benefit. Send out a communication to all staff reminding them of the EAP benefit and the services it can provide to them.
- Up the lighting. Take a look around your facility at the lighting. Are all areas well lit or does your office exude that dim ambiance? While dim lights might be preferred in the summer months, you might want to turn up the lights in the cooler months.
- Encourage employees to get outside. If your office is in a great location for walks, encourage your employees to take advantage of that and get moving outdoors. Consider forming a walking team that meets daily to get outside and walk for 15-20 minutes. Think about setting up a basketball hoop, volleyball net, cornhole, or other outdoor activity to encourage employees to get outside during their breaks or lunch.
- Talk more. Check-in with your employees more often, just stop by to say hi and see how they’re doing. And be an active listener. If you listen, you may read between the lines that they aren’t as okay as they say they are.
- Offer flexibility. If possible, consider a more flexible work schedule. That may include shifting your hours and letting employees arrive a little later or it may mean allowing affected employees to work from home on their bad days.
- Offer up FMLA and/or ADA. Understand that while most people who suffer from SAD are able to struggle through, some aren’t. In some cases, SAD can be debilitating and lead to severe depression. In these cases, employees may need and qualify for FMLA and/or ADA accommodations.
October 20, 2020
3 Ways to Go Upstream

“What the world needs now is a quieter breed of hero, one actively fighting for a world in which rescues are no longer required. How many problems in our lives and society are we tolerating simply because we have forgotten we can fix them?” Dan Heath- Upstream

I just finished one of the most thought-provoking books I’ve read in a long time. But what made the book great was that it took the thought-provoking a step further and provided some keen insights and tools about acting on the information. Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen, by Dan Heath is worth the read.

As the subtitle implies, the premise of the book is that we spend so much time and resources on downstream issues. It provokes a focus on the upstream to fix things before they happen. How can we stop firefighting and be proactive? And how far upstream can we go?

The three key takeaways in the book to focus upstream are:

1. “Be impatient for action but patient for outcomes.” Quoting Maureen Bisognano, Heath says, “Change won’t come without action.” And it also won’t come without patient diligence.

2. “Macro starts with micro.” The key takeaway here is that you can’t fix big problems without getting close to them. “You can’t help a thousand people, or a million until you understand how to help one.” You have to name the person(s) and the problem by getting “proximate”.

3. “Favor scoreboards over pills.” “The problem comes when the obsession with testing becomes a hindrance to scale and learning.” You’ve got to be able to pivot once your impatient actions and microfocus tell you that a different direction is needed to get the outcomes and macro picture desired. Ask yourself, “How can we make progress this week?” “Take ownership of the problem and start slogging forward.”

The downstream problem I deal with the most in the work we do is workplace disengagement. Gallup estimates that the cost of disengagement in the U.S. is $450-550 billion per year. The cost comes in many forms, such as turnover and loss of productivity, but this figure only quantifies the cost to business. It does not quantify the cost to individuals experiencing a misalignment in their job and/or organizational choices.

Can you name someone (getting proximate) that has suffered the negative effects of hating what they do and where they do it? You may be able to name yourself. And if you can name someone or yourself, you know what negative effects come by working for the wrong organization because of workplace misalignment.

We are working now through impatient action and scorecards, not pills to help tackle the disengagement problem with MatchFIT. In seeking to help individuals and organizations find the right fit, we are workplace matchmakers. We start upstream at the beginning of the hiring process, and our goal is to make the workplace better through meaningful employment relationships.

We will be pitching our idea on Thursday, June 11th via the Alabama Launchpad competition. You can join us on Alabama Launchpad and EDPA’s (the host of the program) website and social channels to learn more about the details of our upstream effort. The event starts at 6:00 pm and we are scheduled to pitch at 6:40 pm.

What problem are you trying to tackle upstream?

June 2, 2020

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