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Search results for: “productivity”

  • Are Your Top Employees Also Your Most Toxic?

    Are Your Top Employees Also Your Most Toxic?

    Picture this: There is an employee at your company that you’ve had multiple complaints against. They treat other employees with a total lack of respect and maybe even the treat customers the same way. They have created a hostile work environment in which other employees dread having to work with them, go out of their way to avoid them both in their tasks and just around the office in general, and customers refuse to deal with them. But they are one of your company’s top performers or they have a knowledge base that no one else in your company has. They exceed every performance expectation, get the job done faster than anyone else, and they are a subject matter expert.

    You go to leadership and voice the concerns you have and the complaints you have received regarding this employee and their toxic behavior and the response you get is “we can’t lose them, they are one of our top performing employees and we couldn’t possibly lose their expertise.” And so nothing is done. Maybe your told to have a conversation with them regarding the feedback you’ve received, but if they fail to change their behavior, it is allowed to continue and expected to be tolerated.

    I recently came across a video from Gary Vaynerchuk, Chairman of VaynerX and CEO of VaynerMedia, in which he talked about why you might need to fire your top employees (warning: he uses very colorful language to get his point across!) I found myself nodding my head repeatedly during the three and a half-minute clip.

    According to Vaynerchuck, “If you tell your people that you care about them, but you ‘look the other way’ when certain employees are mean to everyone else, you’re sending a very clear message.”

    In today’s world, company’s are built on their culture. If your actions or the actions of your employees do not match your core values, your company culture will suffer and in turn so will your bottom line. Employees will spend more time lamenting over how unhappy they are in their jobs or the company and less time being productive.

    Retaining an employee because they are a key performer or a subject matter expert may seem like the right decision, but the consequences of doing so may cost the organization more than that one individual is worth.

    According to SHRM, the cost to replace an employee is between 90-200% of their annual salary. Imagine how much it would cost your organization if five employees resigned as a result of your decision to keep one toxic employee. In addition to the cost of replacing them there is also the cost of lost productivity caused by their departures.

    Do you have a top employee that is toxic? Are they single-handedly destroying your company’s culture?

  • Employee Health Clinics: A Creative Solution to Climbing Costs

    Employee Health Clinics: A Creative Solution to Climbing Costs

    Healthcare costs have risen an average of five to seven percent each year for the last five years. With costs steadily increasing, employers are starting to look for creative solutions to combat this steady climb in costs. One solution many employers have adopted is Employee Health Clinics.

    What is an employee health clinic?

    It is when an employer or group of employers work with local health care providers to create a health clinic specifically for use by their employees and dependents. The employer usually pays a monthly fee per employee, often between about $50 to $100. Some employers opt to charge employees a small copay for visits between about $5 and $15; much less than they would pay through their health insurance provider to see a doctor. In addition, the employer usually pays or splits the cost of lab work and prescription fees with the employee and those services are obtained by the health clinic at wholesale rates.

    How can an employee benefit from an employer health clinic?

    As noted above, visits to the employee health clinic are often at no cost or low cost to the employee and their dependents, including lab work and prescriptions. Clinics are usually set up onsite at the employer or in a nearby location. This helps to minimize the time away from work needed to seek medical care, thus encouraging employees to seek care when needed. Many employer health clinics also provide wellness care and have staff on-call after hours.

    How can an employer benefit from establishing a health clinic?

    By creating the convenience of an onsite or nearby health clinic, employees are more likely to seek medical treatment because they don’t need to take time off to do so. Clinics are often open before and after work hours and/or have staff on-call after hours. For an employer, this helps reduce absenteeism and increase productivity. Preventative care offered by the clinics can help to further reduce these problems for an employer, as well as also help to reduce the number of major health care claims to their primary insurance provider. This allows employers to cut their overall healthcare costs by reducing the annual premiums paid to the insurance company.

    Employer health clinics can also help to manage minor worker’s compensation injuries and illnesses, working closely with the employer to get employees back to work faster and determine light duty assignments available when needed. This helps to reduce an employer’s overall worker’s compensation claims.

    Many health clinics also provide wellness education including biometric testing, flu shots, and wellness seminars.

    Employer health clinics are usually staffed with nurse practitioners or physician assistants, which helps to control the costs incurred to run the clinic. Some clinics have a full-time or part-time physician on staff or on-call as needed.

  • 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?

  • Bullying Doesn’t Just Happen at School: Workplace Bullying

    Bullying Doesn’t Just Happen at School: Workplace Bullying

    I recently saw an article about a nine year old boy in Denver who took his own life after being bullied during his first four days of school. My youngest son is eight and I can’t imagine him ever feeling like his only choice is suicide.

    When my oldest was in elementary school he was bullied by another child at his daycare. While he has always been a very headstrong child, the bullying continued to the point where he had put up with enough. Together we sat down with his martial arts instructor, who is phenomenal at working with children to tackle such hard issues, and he helped us to formulate a game plan on how to handle it. With his help, my son was able to show his bully that his words weren’t having the effect he was aiming for, and eventually the two actually became friends.

    Bullying isn’t limited to children. A survey sponsored by the Workplace Bullying Institute in 2017 showed that a staggering number of U.S. workers experienced bullying in the workplace.

    • 5 million U.S. workers reported experiencing bullying in the workplace
    • Women experience bullying, from both women and men, at a much higher rate with 65% of male bullies targeting women and 67% of female bullies targeting women
    • 61% reported that they were bullied by a boss
    • 25% reported that their employer did nothing while 46% reported that their employer conducted a “sham” investigation

    Bullying in the workplace has an impact on the organization as well, including increased turnover, loss of valuable talent, decreased productivity, increased absenteeism, and even the risk of litigation. So how can employers minimize these risks?

    1. Have a well-defined Harassment Policy. Workplace bullying is a form of harassment. While most bullying may not be illegal, that doesn’t make it okay. Make sure your Harassment Policy includes workplace bullying. Train your leadership on what bullying is, how to conduct themselves to set the example, and how to handle it if an employee reports bullying. Review your Harassment Policy with all new hires, and annually with all staff.
    2. Have and follow a formal investigation process. Your policy should include information on how reports will be handled. Determine who will conduct the investigation, how it will be conducted, and make sure your findings are well documented. Do not ignore reports of bullying and do not put off investigating those reports.
    3. Take proper action to eliminate the behavior. Once you have completed a thorough investigation, determine what action needs to be taken to make the bullying behavior cease. That could be anything from a documented verbal conversation with the accused up to termination. If the accused is not terminated, monitor the situation to ensure that the actions have in fact ceased. Do not assume that it has and let it go.
    4. Promote a workplace that welcomes diversity, inclusion, and a difference of opinions. Work hard to promote an organization that encourages teamwork, uniqueness, and freedom to communicate- even when what an employee has to say may go against the grain. Pay attention to where there may be breakdowns in this and work to build them up. Host company functions that encourage employees to get to know each other. Provide new employees with mentors who can help guide them and integrate them into the organization. And have an open door, where employees feel comfortable voicing concerns or issues. And again, take those concerns or issues seriously because not doing so leads to a breakdown of trust.
    5. When needed, provide employees with outside resources to help them cope. I’m a huge proponent of Employee Assistance Programs. If you have one, make sure both the accused and the accuser are provided with that resource. If you don’t have an EAP, there are other resources available to employees that may help them. You never really know why someone bullies, or what is going on in the mind of someone who is being bullied. Sometimes it takes a trained professional to assist them.

    60.5 million is a staggering and unacceptable number. Bullying is not an inherent trait, it is a learned behavior. Just as I aim to teach my children acceptance and kindness, employers can aim to promote those values in throughout their organization as well.

    Below are some additional resources on bullying:

    www.stopbullying.gov

    https://www.apaexcellence.org/resources/special-topics/workplace-bullying

    https://www.employmentattorneyla.com/blog/2016/05/workplace-bullying-online-anti-bullying-resources-for-employees.shtml

  • Mental Health in the Workplace… What Can You Do?

    Mental Health in the Workplace… What Can You Do?

    Recently I talked about authenticity during employee hardships. With recent events in the news, including the deaths of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, I wanted to dive deeper into how employers can help employees in need.

    Mental health is an ever-growing concern in our nation. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness:

    • Approximately 1 in 5 adults (43.5 millions) in the U.S. experience mental illness in a given year.
    • One in 25 of those Americans suffer a serious mental illness in a given year that substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activities.
    • 9% of adults in the U.S. have had at least one major depressive episode in the past year.
    • 1% of adults in the U.S. experienced an anxiety disorder such as PTSD, OCD, or specific phobias.

    With mental illness so prevalent in our nation, what can employers do to help employees who suffer from mental illness?

    1. Understand, and make sure employees understand, what mental health benefits are covered under your health insurance plan. Going over the benefits coverage annually during open enrollment is a perfect time to educate employees on what is covered. If an employee comes to you, remind them that their insurance includes coverage for mental health services.
    2. If you don’t already have one, consider adding an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) to your benefits package. Employees can contact the EAP confidentially, receive immediate counseling services for work related or personal issues, and if needed, the EAP will assist the employee with finding a mental health professional in their local area. Employers see an increase in productivity, reduced time off, reduced turnover, reduction in work related injuries, and more. It’s a win-win.
    3. Listen. Listen to your employees and take what they say seriously. If you have an employee who comes to you concerned about a co-worker, don’t take their concern lightly. If an employee comes to you to discuss a problem they are having, take the time to sit and really hear what they have to say. Sometimes all that is needed is someone to listen and show compassion. Sometimes more is needed, and that is when #1 and #2 may come in handy.
    4. Understand that sometimes it is bigger than you. There may be cases in which you aren’t equipped to help. I once called the local police and had them conduct a welfare check on an employee who showed signs of extreme mental distress and made an insinuative comment to a coworker one day before leaving work about what he’d do if he had a gun. (I had also provided this employee with information on his mental health coverage and the EAP).

    There are also many programs and resources that employees can access within their communities, as well as online. These include:

    • National Suicide Prevention Lifeline- 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
    • Alabama Department of Mental Health- 1-800-367-0955
    • National Alliance on Mental Health- 1-800-950-NAMI
    • Project Semicolon- projectsemicolon.com

    Remember that mental illness may be covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act. If an employee comes forward with their mental illness and requests accommodations, be sure to follow your organization’s ADA accommodation request procedures. If an employee needs to take leave for a mental illness, be sure to see if they qualify for leave under FMLA.

    For more information on mental health in the workplace, check out the Center for Workplace Mental Health.

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