In our Office Snacks series, we interview members of our community to delve into their varied buffets of experience and come away with juicy insights and ideas.

Join us in our next installment below as Teemu Lilja, Learning Culture & Community Lead at Telia and Board Member of the Swedish Learning Association—shares his insights with us.

Hi Teemu! We’d love to get to know you a bit better, where are you based?

I was born and raised in Stockholm, the beautiful capital of Sweden.

How’d you get to where you are today?

My background is in sales and my journey is a little unusual. I went from being a quite good sales rep, to a quite good sales manager, to a quite good sales coach, to a quite good sales trainer, to running learning for one of Sweden’s largest sales-organization. 

And now, as of January 2023, I’m responsible for defining and developing the learning culture at Telia and scaling it in all of our markets through communities of practice.

So, that would be the short version of my career progress, but I think that what got me here is the team I’ve been working with and maybe most importantly the leader of our team. 

For the past 4 years, we’ve been pushing for and pivoting from being a very traditional learning team to a performance-orientated team.

This meant going from providing training and administrating learning platforms to actually addressing and solving business problems.

That pivot meant that we fundamentally needed to reinvent and change the way we do learning at Telia. We did it, and it was not easy, but it was worth it!

How does your typical day look, do you have a set routine?

I basically have three main focus areas. Stakeholder management, change management, and also being involved in high-priority transformation projects supporting change and go-to-market streams.

So, a typical day would be back-to-back meetings all day long and working on my actions all night long… not really, it’s not that horrible!

I have routines to not just sit in meetings all day but to be the best version of myself both at work and, most importantly, at home for my wife and my two kids.

I block time every morning to leave the kids at preschool as late as possible and prepare for the day. I also block time every lunch to eat, take care of myself, and get some fresh air or exercise. And I block time every evening to work on the actions I’ve got during the day. Between these there are a lot of meetings.

It looks pretty boring when reading it, but it works for me!

How do you describe your job to others?

That’s actually a tricky one because there is this old perception of automatically connecting the word learning to training. And the tricky part is to convince people it isn’t.

I like the sound of being a “problem solver”, but, in the end, I’ve always described my job as helping people to perform their jobs better.

Whether that is by improving the performance of a specific role, or process, or supporting implementations of some kind. For those purposes, we have a set of tools, and training can be one of them.

I haven’t really come up with an elevator pitch for my new role, but maybe a good enough description could be that I orchestrate how the people of Telia learn on the job.

What’s your favorite part of your job?

I’ve found two moments very satisfying. One of them is when we’ve done a great end-to-end job. When we can show an isolated demonstrable impact of our initiatives after defining a real business problem, analyzing it thoroughly, designing and developing the right resources or experiences to address it, and then running a pilot that in the end actually solved the problem. That’s an amazing part of my job.

Another favorite part of my job, which is connected to the first one, is hearing the “Ahaaaaa” from my team members or stakeholders when our efforts actually solved a problem. You know, the moment when they just get why we do things differently nowadays.

The best aha-moment comment from one of my colleagues is “Teemu, now I understand that everything we’ve done so far has been crap!”. That kind of comment is gold because that shows progress in our mindset shifts.

What’s the most challenging?

The most challenging has definitely been to get everyone on our own team on board. Because what we’ve done is a massive change in both what we do and how we do it.

Even though this pivot to performance (more on this next) is a no-brainer for me, it was new for all of us and it’s not necessarily what people signed up for or what makes them tick.

I mean, if I like building PowerPoint presentations and standing in front of a classroom all day, and my happy sheets are telling me that I’m doing a great job and I feel important, then my motivation to change that could be pretty low.

Building that motivation or desire to change and actually believing in it is an individual process. You can try to influence it and support people through it… but you can’t force it. 

It takes time and, even though I understand and respect that process, it has been both challenging and frustrating because we need everyone on board to deliver on what we just promised our stakeholders.

How do you approach learning and development at Telia?

My fundamental belief is that learning and development are just a part of a process. The end goal is not the learning or the development itself, that’s a means to an end. 

I mean, we learn and we develop so that we can do something more effectively or efficiently on the job, right? Or to be able to do totally new things at work. 

The key word here is “do” and that “doing” always ends up increasing or decreasing some kind of performance indicator that is of importance to the business.

Our philosophy is to move from being obsessed with learning to being obsessed with performance.

This mindset shift alone changes everything. 

It gives us no choice but to come close to the business, dig deep into problems, and understand the workflows of our target groups and the tasks that are being done in those workflows. So we put a lot of effort into defining the scope, the end goal, and basically collecting and analyzing data before doing anything else.

That work gives us clarity of what the problem actually is and some kind of hypothesis of what could possibly solve the problem. 

The next step is to run experiments in pilot groups, measure the outcomes against reference groups, and iterate from what we learn until we see the desired outcomes on the KPIs we set out to improve.

We promise to create measurable and meaningful business impact and to deliver on that promise. We cannot only exist on a strategic level, creating one-size-fits-all programs with generic content and prove our value in adoption or happy sheets. 

Instead, we need to organize ourselves with roles and responsibilities in a way that enables us to do the necessary work. And we need to have people in those roles with the right skills to do it. 

As the person responsible for learning culture and communities, I decide what common methodologies we use throughout our processes and create awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement locally to scale a common way of working in our learning community of practice.

I have one full-time colleague working with impact and insights to help us follow the overall progress of the shift in methodologies and create a common framework with resources for scaled local adoption of how to conduct relevant analysis.

I have one colleague working full-time on creating a learning tech ecosystem to enable and reinforce our common methodologies and learning culture. This person is a solid software developer, which makes us not as reliant on IT to make integrations or necessary development.

We have a couple of people working on improving our own processes such as automating manual steps and integrating different tools with each other. We need to free up time to do even more great stuff!

We also have an internal digital production team working with audio and video production, animation, e-learning production etc. Basically designing and developing content for learning experiences or resources.

And we have business partners, or performance consultants, working close to our different markets and leading the learning streams in locally prioritized projects and initiatives. 

We believe that this setup enables and supports all the different steps in 5Di, which is the fundamental process we follow. Every step of the process requires a different set of skills and can be reinforced by different sets of technologies.

What’s been your most successful initiative to date?

It depends on the definition of success, but one great example is when a stakeholder from retail ordered training for all store employees on our check-out system.

The defined problem was that people were making errors when creating customer receipts, which lead to a lot of time correcting the receipts in the back office afterward. 

Analysis showed that the check-out system itself was easy to use, but the sales reps thought that it was complicated to understand. The different article number combinations were hard to remember and time-consuming to find on the intranet.

So what we ended up doing was making the document easier to understand, developing a link into the check-out system at the moment where people need to find the article numbers and combinations, and setting up a blocker for people to just discount something on receipts. 

So, basically, making people need to find the combinations and have the performance support one click away. We tried it out… zero training… but zero mistakes made after that

What’s the biggest misconception about learning and development?

Probably that we’re only capable of delivering training and that what we do is not measurable in business KPIs. But, then again, that’s not a misconception. Those expectations are just consequences of what we’ve done before.

Which are your most-loved tools that help you with your job?

If I can talk about methodologies as tools, which I think they are, then I would say ADKAR, 5Di, HPLJ, and 5MoN as the best tools ever created. But if that’s too high-fly then any of the resources for any of the methodologies are great tools!

What’s your number one piece of advice for organizations starting out with L&D?

It would be to start with the end in mind. Learning is not the end, it’s a means to an end. Your success depends mostly on the business conversations you have with your stakeholders and the analysis you conduct with your target groups.

The rest is easy!

Lastly, and most importantly, what’s your favourite office (home or otherwise) snack?

Beer sausage (not sure if it’s called that in English, but it’s these long, thin spicy sausages). They are just amazing!

What’s your favorite office snack?

Work in People and Culture? Want to share your ideas?

Applications to be interviewed are open to anyone (yes anyone!) so don’t hesitate to fill in the form for an opportunity to share your knowledge and ideas.

The post Office Snacks: Teemu Lilja appeared first on People Managing People.

via People Managing People https://ift.tt/g5XRHBJ

Feedback is essential for all of our growth, but it can be difficult to receive, and, sometimes, even more, challenging to give. 

In recent years, there’s been this push towards a policy of not giving feedback post-job interviews, commonly from big-tech and larger companies.

Some have credited litigation-obsessed cultures and avoiding liability, others say it’s more of a time-saving measure.

I think it’s a mix of both but, if your main reason is the first, my question would be why? Has anything happened in the interview process to warrant liability for discrimination and unfairness? Rather than burying it behind a policy of “no feedback”, wouldn’t you want to deal with any biases or problematic interview culture?

In this article, I’ll share my best practices for giving candidate feedback—what to record, how and when to deliver to make it part of a positive candidate experience (even if the answer is no). We’ll cover:

• Why giving feedback is important
• How to record candidate feedback
• What feedback to record
• How to deliver feedback
• Candidate feedback example

Let’s dive in.

Why Giving Candidate Feedback Is Important

Interviewing can be very stressful for many people. This often means that we don’t appear in our best light, fumble here and there, lose structure in our answers, and the myriad of other reasons that can make us unsuccessful.

This is where I think giving candidate feedback can be so incredibly important. It’s a great opportunity for both sides to practice giving and receiving constructive criticism aimed at helping the candidate (and hiring team) develop and improve.

Keyword there—constructive. This is not a time for the company to talk nebulously about how someone doesn’t have the right “fit” without elaborating on what that fit is (and if you can’t elaborate on what it is, it’s perhaps a time to re-evaluate your criteria or your communication skills!).

Another side benefit of requiring well-constructed interview feedback is that it helps future or current people managers and leaders practice giving feedback in their day-to-day work to their teams.

This is incredibly important if you want your team to progress and deliver at a high standard, but all too often I see newer people leaders being nervous or unclear about their feedback. This leaves the teams not sure where they stand and just breeds a lot of uncertainty.

When giving constructive feedback, I’ve often received the question “Can I interview again for the role?”. I always say yes, but it depends on the feedback.

Most of the time the feedback requires a person to go and develop certain skills or gain experience, and that won’t happen in a week. So I make sure to set these expectations and perhaps give them just general advice on what they can do (if I know) to develop in those areas. 

By giving feedback you’re not giving them the answer to “hack” the interview process, but what to work on. It’s a subtle difference, and, in my experience, the right candidate will appreciate it. 

Providing the right feedback completes the candidate experience journey by creating people who would be happy to engage with your process again. You never know, they might come back more ready in a few months and land the role!

How To Record Candidate Feedback

The first step to being able to give great feedback is to take good interview notes. This is a skill you’ll have to develop and I’m afraid I don’t have any shortcuts. 

Initially, I found it easier to have a pen and paper in front of me. As I was talking to people, I jotted down some of the interview questions I had lined up and numbered them. Then I went through the interview and made a note of the number when a new question came up. After that, I was able to graduate by typing up answers as I go.

Whether it is shorthand or full prose, the point is you should have enough information about what the candidate said to be able to back up your decision-making.

Most modern applicant tracking systems (ATS) have a tool of some kind to help you keep notes during interviews (it could be called an “interview kit” “scorecard” or “feedback form”). 

Depending on the ATS, you may also have stars or “yes” or “no” or a numerical score that you can assign. Speak to your ATS provider or your recruitment team to configure those if they are valuable to you. 

Making sure you have good notes from everyone in the hiring panel gives the best overview of how each candidate is performing during the recruitment process.

Personally, I’ve always found the Strong No, No, Yes and Strong Yes the most valuable. Numerical scores and stars usually take a lot of time, a strong hiring team, and a lot of data and interview feedback examples to train everyone in the interview team on what a 3 vs 4 star looks like. It can invite more subjectivity.

Memory tip. Best practice means you should have your feedback in the system and a decision made within 24 hours of interviewing. This is to make sure you remember everything that happened. 

Sometimes people may need a bit of time to reflect and that’s fine, but it’s happened so many times where a hiring manager hasn’t submitted feedback in a week, says to me “I needed to think about it”, and then writes feedback on the wrong candidate!

Legal tips

Be aware that in many jurisdictions, such as the UK and the European Union, there is legislation strictly governing data access and protection. 

Candidate feedback is considered data relating to a specific candidate and, under that legislation (General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR), they have the right to request any data any company has on them. 

Many other countries have taken GDPR as a template for data legislation and have either passed or are working on similar laws (Brazil, India, Turkey, and California, USA so far), so this is something everyone should be mindful of.

What this means is that you need to make sure that your recorded feedback is objective, clear, and relevant to the job skills, experience required, and the candidate’s performance at the interview in relation to those. 

No comments about what they were wearing, any accents they may have, and certainly no comments that may be discriminatory. I give these warnings because I’ve seen them. While I’m glad I managed to catch out such blatant bias and address it with the people at the time, make sure that any recorded feedback doesn’t land you in hot water.

And no you can’t go around the legislation by trying to limit the feedback or anything like that. If you are found to have hidden information about the candidate the fines are really hefty. 

My standard is this—if the Amazon team hasn’t figured out a way to limit feedback then no one can!

What Feedback To Record

In the legal tip above I mentioned a bit about what not to record, but let’s focus on what you should have in your interview feedback to make it clear, helpful, and an accurate representation of the candidate’s interview performance.

Format-wise it’s really up to you how you do it, but here are a few key elements:

There should always be some level of detail on the answers the candidate gave (be it prose or bullet points) and a conclusion based on those answers. This helps you and everyone else who is reading this understand why you have the conclusion you do.

Being a very mean recruiter, I directly call up interviewers who leave a one-sentence or, even worse, one-word “No” scorecard answer and grill them on it. 

This has helped me catch out interviewers who were distracted during the interview, cannot remember what the candidate said, or, as mentioned above, had some kind of bias they don’t want to admit to having. On some occasions, they just didn’t have the time, but that’s the minority.

I understand it will take time to do all of this, but job seekers take time out of their day to interview with your company. Yes, you will give them a job, but they will give you in return their skills and work. The least you can do is pay attention and be curious about what they have to say at the interview, otherwise—why have the interview at all?

Effective interview feedback aims to answer the question “why yes or no on this hire?” at a glance. Your feedback should, no matter the format, answer the question so that your team members can understand your reasoning without having a meeting with you.

Save everyone a meeting unless it’s really necessary, such as if you said “yes” and another hiring panelist said “no”—then there is a reason to discuss more deeply.

How To Deliver Feedback

We’ve talked about the what, the where and the legal, let’s talk about how. Before we go on, I have to acknowledge that it can be difficult to give feedback, especially as it’s most likely to be related to a negative outcome for the candidate.

It’s honestly my least favourite part of the job, and it’s why ensuring you have something tangible and constructive to share is super important.

What to share, when, and how?

What

Personally, I don’t see the point of dragging the candidate along too much. Say upfront if they didn’t make it through the next stage or if they did. Then you can go into a bit more detail and the reasoning.

I like to start off with the positive and then go into what could be improved. If I have the detail I go for recommendations, which in the past have included things like:

• Other roles they may be better suited for
• Skills and knowledge they may need to develop
• Structuring their answers in a clearer way
• What to focus on and talk them through tips for future interviews.

When

As much as possible, try to be timely with your feedback. If the hiring panel has done their work and submitted their feedback within 24 hours, ideally I strive for 72hrs after that to deliver the feedback to the candidate. 

It’s not a great idea to leave the candidate hanging—no one likes to be on the receiving end of that, or, God forbid, be ghosted, so why would we want to inflict that on others? 

How

Depending on how much you have to say, you may want to give the candidate a quick phone call or arrange a video call with them.

I usually give candidates the heads up that they will have this session with me after their interview to discuss feedback, positive or negative (positive likely coming with the next stage or offer).

If you’re rejecting a candidate based on a screening, an email might be more appropriate to save everyone time. 

There’s been a few incidences where candidates have asked me why I’m wasting their time calling them, but those have been so rare that they stick out in my mind. In the age of ghosting, most candidates I’ve given feedback to have been receptive and appreciative of it.

A note on positive interview feedback

Not all feedback needs to be negative, or explanatory as to why the candidate has received a rejection, all of the above is applicable to positive interview feedback as well. 

When candidates go through the next interview stage, I like to take a bit of time to talk to them about what the hiring manager found as a positive and anything that needs to be addressed for further stages. Everything can be a learning opportunity!

Candidate Feedback Example

Candidate Name	X
Candidate Source	(applied/sourced)
Questions and Answers	Question: Tell me about a time when you had to forego a short-term gain for longer-term profits? What was the trade-off, how did you recognise it and justify it to others? Candidate’s response: During their time at Company X they made a connection with a company that wanted to purchase their product. The candidate ran a discovery call as part of their consultative approach where they covered X,Y, Z.Over the course of the call, the candidate realised that the company wasn’t ready for a wholescale ERP rollout as they lacked a lot of operational processes that are needed to build this up and were are in the midst of hiring people to create those. Candidate recognised this and spoke to their manager to discuss what the rest of the pipeline looks like and whether they would have capacity to support a company that needs as much handholding as they do. Ultimately, while it was going to make reaching the target a bit difficult for the quarter, they spoke with the product team and realised that the client would need to roll out certain processes before they return to rollout an ERP. Follow up: What did you do to mitigate the loss? Worked with marketing to review the pipeline and refine the target audience. Also worked with the content team to create a blog where they discussed how they walked away from a deal, because they want to make sure it’s right for the client. (Follow up – who initiated that content creation – content) How did you follow up with the client? Candidate caught up regularly with the stakeholder and 12 months later they were ready to roll out. By that point the client company had grown a lot bigger so it was also a larger-sized deal. Question 2…..Their Questions {Record of their questions here}
Pros and Cons	Pros – Candidate is really in tune with cross-functional collaboration as evidenced by them going up to product and marketing to ensure they are not overselling – Candidate is also very proactive in communicating with their manager – Understands their product well enough to foresee issues potential clients might have and when they would be ready for it Cons – Was not very forthcoming with outcomes and details of who did what. Fell into the “we” until they were prompted every time to clarify who initiated what. – May still require some development in the communications area as their answers were not very well structured and sometimes they were going off on slight tangents, especially on the product tech (did eventually return to the point).
Conclusion	I think with a bit of coaching they could be an excellent consultative seller. They understand complex technical products well and they are able to think about future issues and look for mitigation. At the level we are hiring for at the moment we do not need someone to come in at the very senior or strategic level, but, with the right coaching, they can certainly work their way there and head more cross-functional projects (which they seem to enjoy). A “yes” overall.

The above feedback is great (it’s shortened, you will likely have a record of more questions). I like it because:

1. It’s well structured so you know what was asked and how well the details the candidate gave corresponded to the question.
2. The commentary was all something that could be said to the candidate directly and can be given as constructive feedback and points of improvement. 
3. There are details of potential follow-up questions
4. There are clear Pros and Cons where the interviewer went into a bit more detail about how the candidate came across overall, not just what they said. Here you can also see the interpretation of what the interviewer perceived from the answers. 
5. The conclusion follows on from the feedback given so far and gives the context that the role they are hiring for will be something suitable to the candidate’s current development. 

Should you deliver feedback to every candidate?

My recommendation is to be able to give some sort of feedback to every candidate you’ve engaged with. 

Oftentimes, candidates that I’ve rejected at the CV review stage are so many I can’t physically type out specific feedback for each, there just aren’t enough hours in the day! 

However, I usually have a few templates saved for candidates that may be too junior, candidates that may be too senior, candidates that may be in the wrong location, etc and I send them the appropriate template. This at least goes some way for them to understand why they weren’t picked.

The way I think about it is--the more time the candidate spends with your interviewing process, the more time you should spend giving feedback. 

If you have a candidate who had a first screen but didn’t go through, you can follow up with them via a quick call, or even a quick email, to explain.

If a candidate has made it to the final stage, but then not quite made it, give them a call and spend time explaining what they did well to get them so far in the interview process and why ultimately you’re not proceeding.

It’s a matter of courtesy and respect first of all, and you may also have a fair bit of constructive feedback since they have spent so much time with your hiring process.

Making It A Two-Way Conversation

It’s also important to listen to any feedback that the candidate has too. Feedback from candidates has helped me help hiring managers interview better across cultures and levels of experience. 

One example that stands out was when an interviewer, who had never interviewed a graduate before, apparently kept asking really intricate questions that only someone with years of experience would know.

Had I not listened to a candidate when they wanted to raise that with me, I wouldn’t have caught it and raised it to the interviewer.

Wrapping up

Taking notes and delivering well-structured feedback is an essential skill to master. Whether it’s about candidate performance or team performance, it’s always useful to know where you’re doing well and where you can improve, so make sure to pass that knowledge on.

Having an honest and open conversation with the candidate only helps improve their interview experience with your organisation, no matter what the outcome is.

In an age where candidates are often treated like numbers and ignored, you will stand out as an employer if you do take the time to give back to candidates.

This is doubly important if you have company values such as empathy, transparency, and honesty as part of your employer brand because then you’re showing candidates that you’re living up to your advertised company culture. 

I’ve had many a time where unsuccessful candidates shared the position with their network just because their experience with my hiring process was so positive!

Best of luck and hit me up in the comments with any questions or feedback. Subscribe to the People Managing People newsletter for regular content on how to hire and retain top talent.

The post How To Give Effective Candidate Feedback appeared first on People Managing People.

via People Managing People https://ift.tt/06sOwKg

Big Tech has always been seen as “culture-obsessed” and viewed by many as a dream place to work. Yet the golden era appears to be over and workplace issues in tech land are piling up.

Mass layoffs and resignations, allegations about toxic cultures, and a certain social media boss’s outlandish leadership style have been fueling a media storm.

But what does the workforce believe to be Big Tech’s biggest problem in 2023?

To find out, our data analysts reviewed nearly a quarter of a million Glassdoor reviews for 25 of the world’s largest internet companies with annual revenues exceeding US$1 billion and headquarters solely based in the US. The list included Google, Meta, Twitter, and PayPal, amongst other notable tech giants.

Big Tech’s Biggest Problems According to Employee Reviews

The study, which analyzed 245,990 Glassdoor reviews, reveals ‘management and leadership’ is the biggest issue within Big Tech companies, according to current and former employees. It was cited negatively 47,246 times—or 19% of the time.

The second biggest issue within Big Tech corporations relates to employee ‘health and wellbeing’. Complaints including “long hours”, “work-life balance”, “stress” and “burnout” were mentioned 10% of the time in staff reviews (26,329 times).

Despite Big Tech being early adopters of the well-being agenda, the data corroborates earlier statistics published by the workplace app Blind which found close to 60% of tech professionals suffer from burnout.

Complaints about ‘company values and culture’ feature 9% of the time in employee reviews (23,621 mentions).

Interestingly, negative opinions on companies’ ‘diversity, equality and inclusion’ (DEI) programs are minimal—with keywords including “bullying”, “racism”, and “sexism” mentioned just 1,136 times (or 0.5% of the time).

In recent years, tech majors have stepped up hiring and made DEI a priority. But as the industry grapples with the hangover from over-hiring, rising interest rates, and changes in consumer behavior, many tech companies have announced deep cuts, especially to DEI roles, risking their diversity gains.

Big Tech’s Biggest Positives According to Employee Reviews

The study shows employees think their ‘financial compensation, benefits, and rewards’ are the biggest pro of working in tech companies. This category was mentioned positively within staff Glassdoor reviews 29% of the time (72,433)—the highest figure by over 10%.

Sizeable total compensation (salaries plus bonuses or equity) is a big draw for tech jobs, but it’s also led to unsustainable salaries and cost-of-living inflation in tech hubs, such as Silicon Valley, which is affecting Big Tech’s ability to hire talent and afford its wage bills as share values become more volatile.

It’s also worth noting that money isn’t everything, and today employees are placing more value on self-care, personal development opportunities, and time away from the workplace.

This leads to the second most common positive aspect of working in Big Tech; ‘company values and workplace culture’ keywords are cited in a positive way 24% of the time (58,963 mentions), too.

The fact this was mentioned so many times, in both positive and negative reviews, suggests that perspectives on what constitutes a good company culture vary among staff and across Big Tech companies.

‘Learning and career development’ related pros feature 3.5% of the time in the reviews studied. Praise for “training” and “career progression”, amongst other relevant factors, was not overly prevalent but still mentioned over 8,500 times.

While it can sometimes be overlooked by employers, there are several reasons to invest in employee development, including increased proficiency and enhancing your value proposition for potential hires.

Again, ‘diversity, equality and inclusion’ was cited very few times as a pro of working in the companies analyzed. Just 70 mentions of related keywords featured positively in the quarter of a million reviews studied, suggesting DEI programs are typically not something employees praise their Big Tech employees for—at least publicly.

How Do Individual Companies Compare?

Taking a closer look at how the individual companies compare, the data reveals some interesting results.

‘Company values and culture’ is mentioned positively 42.4% of the time by employees at Workday, an HR software vendor. And Expedia tops the list for its approach to health and well-being, with staff expressing positive opinions 16.5% of the time.

“Financial compensation, benefits, and rewards” were cited as positives over 55% of the time in reviews for Meta, suggesting the tech giant has consistently prioritized generous compensation for employees, past and present.

Ecommerce platform, Wayfair, on the other hand, performs the worst in this category, with staff citing this as an issue 16.5% of the time. They also have the biggest problem with poor management and leadership, according to the reviews and companies analyzed, with reviews negatively talking about this 37.4% of the time.

Netflix, Chewy, and Zillow are each the most highly praised of all companies analyzed for “diversity, equality and inclusion”, “learning and career development”, and “management and leadership” respectively. But all three companies are also the most poorly rated in the study when looking at other areas.

Being highly commended for certain factors, and yet still receiving numerous complaints about others, shows how easy it is to focus on one area of the business to the detriment of others. 

Balance is key, but listening to your employees and their priorities is likely the best way to keep as many people happy as possible. For help with this, take a read of 8 Effective Ways To Get Employee Feedback (+ Pros and Cons).

Conclusions

The findings suggest that to increase employee satisfaction Big Tech companies should focus on the quality of their managers.

Indeed this corroborates our research into why people quit their jobs, which revealed that bad leadership as being one of the leading causes of employee turnover.

Some resources to help here:

• People Management Tips For New And Experienced Managers
• How To Build Emotional Intelligence And Be A Better Leader
• Clarity, Responsibility, And Accountability (CRA) Model Of Leadership
• 5 Challenges Of Managing Remote Employees And How To Overcome Them

Methodology

People Managing People used the Screaming Frog SEO Spider to scrape the pros and cons section of every review left on the Glassdoor profile of the 25 largest internet companies with headquarters solely in the US as of the 14th December 2022. Overall, 245,990 Glassdoor reviews were analyzed.

Please note Booking Holding had a limited number of reviews, so we analyzed Booking.com instead as the company’s main subsidiary.

We created a seed list of keywords relevant to employment experience and grouped these into categories based on similarity. We then identified the number of times each keyword was mentioned in the pros and cons sections of each company’s reviews, as well as working out the overall group figures by totaling together the individual figures for each keyword within a group.

The number of mentions was also converted into percentages by dividing the number of mentions by the total number of reviews analyzed—this applies per company, per group, and for overall figures.

Please note that keywords could be mentioned multiple times in one review, so the data shows the percentage of the time that a keyword is mentioned, not the number of reviews a keyword is mentioned in

The post Study Reveals Big Tech’s Biggest Problems In 2023, According To Employees appeared first on People Managing People.

via People Managing People https://ift.tt/o7TJpbf

We’re passionate about the world of work and how we can make it better. To help, we’ve launched an interview series where we pick the brains of experienced leaders, business owners, managers, and individual contributors to get their thoughts on how we can collectively build better workplaces.

Join us in our next installment below as Jes Osrow, Co-founder and Fractional Head of DEI at The Rise Journey shares her insights with us in “A Better World of Work is One With No Ego”

Hi Jes! We’d love to get to know you a bit better, tell us a bit about your backstory.

Career-wise, I started out at a liberal arts college triple majoring in Fine Arts, Theatre Management and Spanish. It may seem out of place when you learn that I am the co-founder of an HR strategy and organizational culture consultancy. The Hill Magazine does a fantastic job bringing light to my entrepreneurial backstory in “A multifaceted leap from the stage to entrepreneurship.”

I sort of fell into an HR role. When I was 23 working my first full-time job in NYC, I was the executive assistant to the CFO of a sports startup and one day I was told to run payroll, start hiring people, and to implement an intern program.

From this role, I was able to get incredible hands-on experience. Undoubtedly, I made a ton of mistakes but I learned so much in the process. I witnessed a lot of glass ceilings getting shattered for women and many historic achievements for LGBTQ rights. 

I also saw a lot of things that were far from great and not DEI-friendly in the slightest. That is what initially led me toward a career in HR and sent me down the path of trying to figure out how to make workplaces work for everyone and not just for a specific type of person.

In an interview with Authority Magazine, titled “5 Steps We Must Take To Truly Create An Inclusive, Representative, and Equitable Society,” I talk a bit about my experiences growing up and how they impacted my perspective on a lot of things in life and eventually helped me recognize that HR is somewhere where I could make a difference. 

If we were to ask a friend to describe your personality to us, what would they say?

My mother always described me as a cruise boat director. She saw that I would perform my best when working with a team or a “crew” and be in the position where I am involved in every conversation. As she might describe it: I want to have my finger in every pie. I want to know everything that is going on, but I also want to enable people to do things well independently. 

I probably could talk to a rock if I needed to.

To be able to show up and get things done is a valuable quality. When in doubt, take action and sometimes done is better than perfect.

Thinking back to your career journey, what’s an interesting story that stands out? 

This story is set before I was working a full-time job and was instead working four part-time jobs. I was an administrative assistant to a former CMO of NBC Universal, an executive assistant to the CEO of a dance nonprofit, and I was also a nanny for an 8-year-old whose parents were world-famous artists.

The fourth job was working as a personal assistant to Sonja Morgan from The Real Housewives of New York. I remember when I first went into the interview, it was at her personal brownstone on the east side.

We were interviewing in her kitchen and her stylist came down to ask her to come upstairs to get ready for her next event. Sonja had me come and as I was walking upstairs to her bedroom I saw there were two other assistants having issues trying to sync Sonja’s phone contacts across multiple devices.

I said, ‘I’m pretty good with computers, let me see what I can do,’ and within about 20 minutes I was able to sync her multiple mac computers with multiple iPhones.

That got me the job. For me, that story reinforces what it means to be a person of action. To be able to show up and get things done is a valuable quality. When in doubt, take action and sometimes done is better than perfect. 

What’s the most impactful lesson you’ve learned over your career thus far?

Take action. Bet that person that gets sh*t done. 

I can’t count how many times I’ve been offered an opportunity because I raised my hand and was the first one to say, ‘Sure, I will do it,’ and whether I figured it out later or I knew what was going on then and there, I jumped in. This has led me in my professional life and my day-to-day life.

My business partner, Jessica Lambrecht, describes me as a woman of action and I take a lot of pride in that because I do it intentionally and I do it to make progress and to move things forward.

Oftentimes you are afraid to start something and it feels easier to make excuses when, in reality, it’s actually even easier just to open up a document and get started.

Thanks for giving us some insight into who you are! Let’s jump into things. When you hear the phrase “build a better world of work”, what comes to mind?

For me, building a better world of work means a workplace that isn’t singular; it’s grandiose. My mind goes to the movie, “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” and how many different scenarios are going on. 

How do you become a workplace that is flexible and agile and that can change and evolve? It’s not from just one singular path, method, or technology.

When I talk about accessibility, a lot of people always assume it’s immediately around disability. But it’s bigger than that, and accessibility often gets left behind. 

It’s important to acknowledge that everybody works differently and accessibility can support everybody in a way that is not just safe and healthy, but enjoyable and, dare I say, fun.

When I think about how I work, I know when I am talking or doing interviews like this, it’s always helpful for me to be moving. I just think more clearly.

Having something where I can keep my blood pumping is something that helps me work. I’ve never had a workplace enable that until Covid when we were given a WHF stipend and I was able to buy myself a treadmill for under my desk, which was fantastic for my regular health in addition to my work health.

Figure out how each person does their job well and then figure out how you can create an accessible environment for them to do it better than well.

Building a better world of work means workplaces where everybody can work and enjoy it. Whether someone wants to have a demanding career and aggressively work up the ladder, or just clock in and out, we need to be accepting of all preferences, make it work for them, and compensate them fairly.

(note: I’m a huge advocate for disability in the workplace, and talk a bit about how to support employees in an interview with HR Director and I also am an advisor for Chronically Capable and Dsclo.)

For you, what’s the main blocker you see as standing in the way of building a better world of work?

Ego! Ego has no place when it comes to DEI work. We need to be able to come to work as our authentic selves. The sooner we can do that, the sooner we can start making progress. 

You should not be afraid to not know something—you should be excited to learn and have light shed upon topics that you are unfamiliar with. When you learn that you are not doing something correctly, own it. 

There is nothing wrong with having an error or misjudgment as long as you acknowledge it and recognize the impact. Make space for the error, talk about it, pivot your thinking, and move forward with action. This creates a space where everyone is at ease and trust can be built because your values are worn on your sleeve and reflected in your actions.

What’s one thing within our control that we can practically do to build a better world of work today? And, how do you recommend going about it?

For C-suite, one thing you can control is budget. Give budgets! Look at what your budgets are for technology, engineering, recruitment, DEI, disability accommodation, etc.

Figure out where you can make changes and even things out. If you don’t know what your employees need, do a listening tour. Listen to your employees and work with them to get their needs met.

Another thing you can control is making sure that people are being compensated equitably. If you are not 100% positive that there are no inequities, then you need to have someone externally run a pay equity audit to understand what’s going on, who’s being paid what, when, where, why, and how. Identify promotion priorities and what raises are taking place, etc.

Listening tours and pay equity audits are both things that you can control and something that you can take action on right now. I see firsthand how much these actions can impact the long-term success of a growing business!

Can you share one thing you’ve experienced, seen, or read about that is leading us toward a better world of work?

Collaboration as Leadership. The idea is to re-humanize the workplace. 

I have seen this movement proliferate through social media in the form of sharing more personal stories. It may not always be humanization to leaders, but people are seeing each other in different lights. We are recognizing that our work and our lives are all intertwined and the more we can embrace that and celebrate that, the better.

When we can do better for all of our people, all of our people do better for each other.

DEI is a part of it, but it is not the only catalyst by any means. This type of movement is what gives me hope that more and more people will get on board and more people who believe that way now will become our future leaders. I am constantly thinking about how we can continue to push this idea forward in the workplace and beyond.

Thanks Jes! How can our readers follow your work?

Follow Jes Osrow on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesosrow/

Visit The Rise Journey’s website: https://www.therisejourney.com/

Access free HR resources through Rise With OPHR: https://www.risewithophr.com/

You can also subscribe to The Rise Journey’s newsletter to stay updated on new offerings to help empower workplaces.

Add your voice to the conversation

Join our interview series and share your ideas for how we can build a better world of work!

The post A Better World Of Work Is One With No Ego appeared first on People Managing People.

via People Managing People https://ift.tt/OVYtS5z

Companies are always on the lookout for talented people. In this interview series, we talk to seasoned HR professionals to pick their brains for ideas and insights on finding the right talent for our organizations.

Sarah serves as VP of People at Airbase. She joined Airbase in 2021 bringing a wealth of experience in fast-growing companies, including Box and Plenty, where she was VP of People. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley.

Hi Sarah! Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before diving in, our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us the backstory about what brought you to this specific career path?

I worked in human resources and people functions for over a decade before joining Airbase. Before Airbase, I helped architect the practices and philosophies of the People function at Plenty, a San Francisco-based indoor vertical farming company, where I was made VP of People.

At Plenty, I was responsible for managing all people practices for the company. The role included recruiting, people operations, people partners, total rewards, learning and development, and diversity and inclusion.

Plenty was experiencing rapid growth when I started as the 6th employee, and I oversaw the appointment of hiring 600 people during my three and a half years at the company. A lot of this was providing calm in the wake of tech startup chaos!

I also spent six and a half years at Box, a cloud content management company, where I was responsible for building out the technical function of the team, opening and running Box Austin, and the overall strategic direction of the recruiting function, while also managing the team on an interim basis before going to Plenty. 

Prior to my professional career, I was a two-time world champion baton twirler and I believe my experiences in sport have played a vital role in my career path as a business leader. Prior to my first position at Box, I had no work experience. I’d spend all my time crafting my skills and training to become the best baton twirler I could. I did this throughout, and even after, college.

When I turned 25, my resume was virtually empty. My job history at this point had simply been my athletic career. I had to work extremely hard to get my foot in the door and accepted an entry-level position at Box. My professional career now is intrinsically connected to my time as a world baton twirling champion—the passion, desire, commitment, and discipline.

The skills I developed in people management—resilience, grit, team structure, and how to create a thriving, winning mentality—were derived from my time in the sport I holds deepest to her heart.

To this day, I always keep my baton at my desk—it helps me think!

It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you first started? Then, can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

When I first entered the corporate world, I had a skewed perception of what a manager was supposed to be. In my mind, they were supposed to have all the answers and dictate exactly how to build my career. 

But, after a conversation with my first manager, who is now a dear friend, I realized that a manager is just a person. The responsibility for shaping my own career and finding the answers lies with me.

It’s important to take initiative and come to them with career development goals, seeking their advice and feedback. Reflecting on this realization now, it was more of an “a-ha” moment than a funny one.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson” quote and how that was relevant to you in your life? 

One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned in my career came from my background in athletics—failure is a constant, and the ability to persevere through it is crucial. 

To overcome failure, it’s essential to have the right mindset. When trying to acquire a new skill, for instance, instead of getting overwhelmed, breaking it down into manageable chunks and focusing on progress, no matter how small, builds inner resilience. This grit and resilience are vital for success in any field.

Are you working on any exciting new projects at your company? How is this helping people?

One of our main focus areas during the past year was to establish a strong foundation for our organization. This included implementing an HRIS system, such as Bamboo, an ATS system like Greenhouse, an analytics platform, and creating basic policies for the first time.

This year, we plan to build upon these foundations and adapt to the current global economic situation. One of the initiatives we’re particularly excited about is finding ways to foster communication and collaboration among managers across the entire company.

Wonderful. Now let’s jump into the main focus of our series. Hiring can be very time-consuming and challenging. Can you share with our readers a bit about your experience with identifying and hiring talent? What’s been your most successful recruitment-related initiative so far?

When it comes to finding and hiring top talent, there are no secret formulas or shortcuts. The fundamentals of the hiring process are similar across all companies. The key to success is not the process itself, but how it’s executed.

When facing challenges or struggling to achieve desired results, it’s essential to revisit and evaluate the process to ensure that things are being done correctly, and that qualified candidates are being identified.

Similar to a sales cycle, this means being clear about what you’re looking for—and not looking for—in a candidate, and having a structured interview process in place.

Once talent is engaged, what’s your advice for creating a great candidate experience and ensuring the right people go through the process?

When it comes to the candidate experience, it’s important to make it feel as human and personalized as possible. Interviews can be nerve-wracking for candidates, so it’s essential to provide a point of contact who can guide them through the process and ensure they know what to expect, how to prepare, and who they will be meeting with.

We strive to do everything on our end to set candidates up for success and make the experience as comfortable as possible.

Based on your experience, how can HR and culture professionals work with the broader organization to identify talent needs?

I believe that achieving a balance between qualitative and quantitative data is crucial when it comes to talent management. This year, we’re doing something new, but effective, by conducting a talent review.

This involves sitting down with larger teams and evaluating the past year’s performance, hiring decisions, market trends, and areas of improvement. We will be looking at metrics such as attrition and performance, while also taking into account qualitative analysis.

By approaching talent management with a blend of data and analysis, we can make informed decisions and effectively communicate them to the broader organization.

It’s important to keep in mind that there are many ways to measure and quantify people-related aspects, so it’s important to think creatively and holistically.

Is there anything you see that recruiters, internal or otherwise, do regularly that makes you think, “No, stop doing that!”?

When it comes to recruiting, it’s important to find recruiters who are focused on finding the right person to fill a seat, rather than just filling a seat for the sake of it. This is not always a reflection of the recruiter themselves, but rather the organization’s view of their role and how they are measured for success. 

Additionally, there is often a significant amount of spamming in the market, where recruiters reach out without having looked at a candidate’s background. This can be frustrating as it shows a lack of attention to detail and a focus on a numbers game rather than quality candidates. It can be frustrating when a candidate’s name is misspelled, even though it’s in their email address, which shows a lack of attention to detail.

With so much noise and competition out there, what are your top three ways to attract and engage the best talent in an industry when they haven’t already reached out to you?

When it comes to recruiting and hiring, we put a lot of effort into being intentional and targeted with our outreach efforts. This includes identifying the right candidates to reach out to and being clear about the reasons for our outreach. 

We also invest time in crafting clear and compelling job descriptions and highlighting the unique aspects of our company through our employer value proposition and other materials.

We aim to provide a clear picture of what it’s like to work at our company and give candidates the opportunity to self-select, recognizing that we may not be the right fit for everyone.

What are the three most effective strategies you use to retain employees?

1. Don’t try to be all things to all people. One of the key factors that attracted me to Airbase is the company’s understanding that it is not the job of the HR team to make everyone happy. Attempting to do so is a futile task, and many companies mistakenly believe that if someone is leaving it is a problem that the HR team should have prevented. 

2. Communication. At Airbase, we have managed to maintain industry-average attrition by being clear about who we are and who we aren’t. This means that not everyone has to agree with everything, but we do a great job of explaining the thought process and rationale behind our decisions and treating our employees like adults by allowing them to make their own decisions.

3. Pay. Additionally, we have implemented solid compensation review processes, and have been transparent about the changes we have made and why. To summarize, the key to our success is being clear about who we are and treating our employees with respect and kindness.

Here is the main question of our interview. Can you share five techniques that you use to identify the talent that would be best suited for the job you want to fill?

1. Thorough discovery meetings with Hiring Managers to truly understand how the hire will impact the overall success of the business and team.

Example discovery Qs:

1. What are the must-have qualifications and how will those help this person be successful?
2. What skillsets are currently missing on the team that we can bring in?
3. Who will they partner internally with most and what type of client exposure will they have, if any?
4. What does our A-player look like on paper?

2. Mandatory Kick-Off meetings with the full interview panel to level-set and calibrate on the needs of the search prior to conducting formal interviews:

Example criteria to align on:

1. Defining what “good” or “proficient” means in XYZ.
2. Defining what “Sr.” or “Jr.” experience looks like in XYZ

3. Evaluating candidates on overall alignment with the business:

1. What experiences, personalities, skillsets, and backgrounds do they bring to the table that will help us innovate our way of making decisions and/or thinking?
2. Does the candidate have industry/domain experience, or have they built something from scratch before?
3. Stick to behavioral-based screening questions for non-technical evaluation to assess culture add.

4. Mandatory debriefs to talk through feedback for each candidate that went through a full round of interviews, separately, to avoid contrast bias.

• Example: Talking about two candidates together in one meeting may cause unconscious bias because one performed better than the other (when in fact, neither was the right fit. Hence determining your A-player beforehand).

5. Looking back: we take the time to reflect on past hiring efforts and take those learnings into future hiring initiatives to help guide finding the right talent.

Examples of just a few metrics that help focus our strategy going forward:

• Pass through/candidate conversion rates
• Quality of source
• Offer acceptance rate
• Time to fill
• Market intel.

Thanks Sarah! Some great insights in there! How can our readers follow you work?

You’re welcome! You can follow me on LinkedIn.

The post Focus On Execution To Find The Right Talent For You appeared first on People Managing People.

via People Managing People https://ift.tt/Vp7HYCK

How to build relationships working remotely is a key challenge for many remote workers and teams.

Research by Buffer found that, in a remote work environment, 52% of respondents reported feeling less connected to their colleagues, highlighting a key opportunity for improvement in the way that we build relationships in the remote work environment.

I’ve been building relationships remotely using for over 15 years. Some of my closest friends, mentors, and colleagues are people I’ve never met in person. The good news is, there are now more methods and tools than ever to facilitate remote connections.

Here, I’ll share some of my personal secrets and tips for building relationships with people you don’t often get to see face-to-face and in person. We’ll cover:

• Why strong relationships are important
• Challenges of building relationships remotely
• How to foster and build relationships working remotely
  • On an individual level
  • Leader/managerial level
  • Organizational level

Why Strong Relationships Are Important

Strong relationships are important at work because they promote trust and collaboration in an environment of mutual respect, open communication, and shared understanding.

Stronger bonds also increase job satisfaction and morale in the workplace, and having strong relationships with coworkers helps create a sense of belonging and security, which make it easier to establish a positive work-life balance (which we all should want!).

Yes, it takes effort, particularly in a remote setting, but here’s why it’s beneficial to invest time and energy into building strong relationships at work:

• They build trust and help to deliver great work as more people feel empowered to connect and contribute ideas. Also, everyone needs a favor sometimes.
• They aid with talent development and career opportunities, especially in the case of internal promotion and mobility
• Relationships with colleagues help protect mental well-being, and your investment in those relationships contributes positively to the well-being of others
• Relationships can simply make work more enjoyable, we all need a work friend or two.

Connection researcher, Susan McPherson, recently published a book where she highlights the importance of building relationships at work, even if you work remotely. As Susan says, “Anything good that’s ever happened to me professionally happened because of the connections that I made.”

In short, making connections matters!

The Challenges Of Building Relationships Remotely

Relationships can be difficult to forge at the best of times and especially if you’re starting from scratch and need to build a relationship completely remotely.

Remote relationships can often feel like a double-edged sword. While having a long-distance connection can offer newfound friendship and motivation, it also presents some unique challenges.

The challenges that individuals, managers, and organizations need to overcome are:

Less time spent together

Despite all the benefits that remote working can bring, less team interaction, which naturally happens when everyone works in the same space, makes it harder to get to know each other.

Consider the experience of someone you only know remotely. If you don’t know them that well, and you have other stuff going on, you might not be as inclined to help them. Now contrast that with the potential of a friend from your in-person life needing help with something; you’re much more likely to jump in and save the day.

It’s harder to meet people from other business areas

Without the usual watercooler chats, shared lunches, or company socials and events, it can be difficult for employees to get to know and form relationships with coworkers from different departments.

This not only makes it more difficult to collaborate across the organization but can also leave remote workers feeling disconnected from their co-workers and the company culture. 

I started working at my company in person, in the office, and it made it easy to get to know everyone! That meant that, when I needed help with a purchase order, I knew I could reach out to Alec from the accounting team for help. Even if he wasn’t the exact right person to solve the problem, he would help me find out what to do next.

Similarly, people notice who talks to and collaborates with who around the office. Do you see one of your close coworkers talking to upper-level management all the time? They might be able to help you find a mentor because of these conversations.

These opportunities are harder to spot in a remote work environment (assuming you’re not calendar stalking, of course).

The way we communicate changes

Meeting people in person provides an entirely different experience than communicating through digital tools. 

With physical interaction, we can detect body language, facial expressions, and other nuances that provide us with more information than simply relying on words. 

In-person conversations also make it easy to ask questions and discuss ideas spontaneously, without the need for delays or waiting for someone to respond (this can get sooo awkward, especially if there’s any lag in the video/audio).

Digital communication removes these advantages and forces us to rely heavily on text to communicate our thoughts effectively. 

People may choose their words more carefully, or have difficulty understanding sarcasm or emotional cues in written form. This leads to a less fluid conversation and often results in a misunderstanding of the speaker’s intent or tone. Think about if someone has ever taken a “LOL” or “yup” the wrong way in a text, the same thing happens in work conversations. 

Looking at Albert Mehrabian’s 7-38-55% rule, we only get up to 7% of understanding through words, an additional 38% through tone of voice, and the remaining 55% of understanding is reliant on body language!

This is exactly why people misunderstand texts, understand better when tone of voice is introduced, but then understand best when they get the full words/tone/body language package. This is also how you and your pets understand each other, 55% of understanding of a message comes from body language!

Ultimately, digital communication tools are an easy way to stay connected, but it’s hard to replicate the deep, spontaneous conversations we can get from face-to-face interactions.

How To Build Strong Relationships Working Remotely

If you work in our current era, chances are you need to build or help facilitate relationships with remote colleagues, classmates, or collaborators.

Now I’ll share some of my methods for fostering strong remote relationships as an individual, manager, and organization.

On An Individual Level

You have the ability to build amazing relationships virtually, I promise! As an individual, your interactions with other people make a huge difference in building relationships and inspiring trust. Try out these methods:

Seek connections intentionally

First and foremost, to build effective and trusting relationships virtually, the connection needs to happen! People want to be heard, seen, and understood—especially online—so reaching out with intention is a must!

Finding people to connect with may start by looking for new hires in your company or forums or groups related to your topic of interest. These will give you a starting point for creating conversations with like-minded individuals.

For example, if you’re an aspiring writer, join online writing communities and get involved in discussions about topics related to writing. You can also participate in virtual events such as conferences, webinars, and workshops that can provide valuable knowledge while also expanding your network.

Now, if you’re anything like me, you’ve sat at the end of a phone line or text message screen waiting for someone (or that special someone) to reach out to you. You wait by the phone, waiting for the call or text to come, and it takes forever! 

Well, have I got news for you. Assuming you haven’t already reached out to them obsessively, it’s your job to make the connection.

Science of People researcher Vanessa Van Edwards recently reminded me that people like people who like people! Seems odd, but this means that if you want someone to reach out to you, YOU need to reach out to them! Be intentional in your outreach.

If you’re reaching out to a new person, or someone that doesn’t know you, open with a friendly comment, a swift introduction, and a question. Open the conversation and give the other person an opportunity to respond.

If you want to learn from someone, tell them. If you think you can help someone get up to speed at your company (they might be new), tell them! Show your value and invite the conversation.

I’ve made a habit of reaching out to new hires in my organization, even if we aren’t going to work together closely.

I send a short note on their first day or two just saying hi, introducing myself, and offering to help in any way I can. This usually moves to a casual exchange and then a coffee chat (video call). Bam! Relationship started, trust being built, and the new member of the company feels welcomed and supported. Win-win!

Jump on a call rather than email (if it makes sense)

Sure it’s easy and fun to throw instant messaging chats and emojis around all day, but, remember, words are only 7% of understanding and you can miss out on deeper conversations.

You miss a lot of critical information when you only use text methods of communication. Reduce confusion and drive clarity by picking up the phone (+38% understanding), or, better yet, jump on a video call to connect as best you can remotely (up to 100% understanding because 55% is body language)! 

I’ve seen people navigate the change from a “voice-only” organizational culture to a “video-on” culture and nine times out of ten people prefer video-on! Take the jump and try it! If you have a laptop with a webcam or a smartphone, you are capable of a video call.

Just look at how much more understanding you get from body language here, all without words or tone of voice! I can almost hear the person on the left saying “hi!”.

Don’t worry about a messy room, undone hair, or not the right outfit. We’ve all been at home for so long, a) no one cares what you look like and b) no one cares what your background looks like (and you can use virtual backgrounds).

Also, if your organization doesn’t already have video conferencing tools, you might be able to leverage some free tools such as Google Meet or a basic account in Zoom to get started. 

Learn to ask the right questions

Connecting with others isn’t just getting on a video call and gossiping about other colleagues or talking about the weather.

Connection researcher Susan McPherson suggests leveraging her “Gather, Ask, Do” method of making meaningful connections. She advocates for using the 3-part method to build intentional, real connections and relationships with others. 

The Gather, Ask, Do Model

Gather: reflect on yourself, determine your values and goals, and determine how you could help. Focus on JOMO—the joy of meeting others. Everyone we meet can help us learn or connect to someone or something else we might not have known before. 

Ask: Ask meaningful questions of others so you understand how you can help or learn from them best. This is the most important part of the whole process. When you talk with others, consider what’s important to that person, what challenges them, and what their unique superpowers are. Consider how you can help them. If you listen carefully, you can then move to the do phase.

Do: Take action based on your connection and conversation. Following through, and making that follow-through visible to your conversation partner, builds trust and deepens relationships because you actually did the thing you promised yourself or your connection you would do.

Facilitation skills

If you think about the best teachers, managers, and leaders you have had in your life, they likely have this one thing in common—they are intentional facilitators.

When working with virtual teams and looking to build connections, facilitation makes all the difference between someone feeling like they are observing the meeting or if they are actually participating.

Intentional facilitation is a virtual meeting game-changer, but it requires thoughtful planning and effort. Facilitators should focus on creating experiences where conversation flows naturally by guiding the conversation along topics that are relevant to both parties without making either one feel judged or pushed aside. 

As a facilitator, you should ensure that each participant has an opportunity to voice their opinions in a respectful manner and that all participants have access to the same information and have equal opportunities to contribute.

By taking the time to carefully plan and facilitate conversations between people who aren’t able to interact face-to-face, intentional facilitation helps build remote relationships based on mutual understanding, respect, and trust.

Leader/Managerial Level

It’s part of the leader’s job to help knit teams together and provide clarity and direction. This is trickier in a remote setting, but certainly doable using these methods:

Bring everyone together at a regular cadence

Leaders of remote teams need to be mindful of the importance of bringing people together at a regular cadence and providing opportunities to foster a strong sense of community and collaboration.

By setting up regular gatherings, leaders are able to keep their teams connected and on the same page. This not only helps ensure that everyone is aware of what everyone else is doing, it also allows team members to bond with one another and build relationships outside of typical “work meetings.”

People need meaningful connections in order to stay motivated, productive, and focused on achieving their goals—something that cannot happen if they don’t have the opportunity for frequent interaction (and a little fun).

Video conference tools make bringing dispersed teams together a breeze, and each time is easier than the last (practice makes permanent). 

When I lead virtual team meetings, we do a little business and a little fun. We start with some fun via an icebreaker, then do some business, then end with some more fun.

My favorite icebreakers and energizers are easy to do, and you’ll probably learn something about your colleagues along the way! When you host or join your next virtual team meeting, consider kicking it off with one of these icebreaker questions! 

Allow time for small talk in meetings

Allowing time for small talk in virtual meetings can help people stay connected, even when they are physically apart. 

Small talk is often seen as a waste of time and energy, but it can be an important tool for fostering connection and engagement among virtual teams.

Having a few minutes at the start or end of each meeting to chat about personal matters, non-work related interests, current events, or anything else unrelated to the task at hand helps with overall communication and building a sense of camaraderie. You may even notice that some people like to join meetings earlier for this reason!

Small talk helps team members to build rapport with one another, which is essential for creating effective collaboration in a virtual environment. Without small talk, team members are more likely to feel disconnected from their colleagues, which could lead to feelings of loneliness or isolation.

In my teams, we often have recurring check-in, sync, or standup meetings, but we have an agreement that we don’t start the business talk until four minutes after the meeting starts. 

The first four minutes of the meeting are for small talk, show and tell, celebration, or talking about our personal projects. Once the four minutes are up, we say, “OK, let’s get to it” and the planned meeting agenda begins. 

Facilitate virtual team activities

Facilitating virtual team-building activities with remote teams can be a great way to help foster strong interpersonal relationships and promote engagement among team members. 

Virtual team-building activities can include online games and competitions, group video chats, virtual happy hours, or even virtual workshops designed to bring out creativity and collaboration among the group.

Providing an opportunity for employees to come together, connect, and interact in an informal atmosphere helps create a sense of community—which is essential for effective communication and collaboration in a virtual environment. 

For example, playing online games together can provide an ideal platform for connecting with colleagues while still fostering collaboration within the team.

Online games are interactive, fun, and often require problem-solving and creativity—making them perfect for helping remote teams work together towards common goals while getting the chance to relax together too.

In my teams, we often hold virtual Happy Hours where we play online games together, such as those offered in the Jackbox Suite, or other online collaborative game platforms. Beyond Jackbox, one of our repeat favorites has been drawing games such as Skribbl.io. 

We’ve also done crafts together, such as creating customized terrariums where we each were sent the materials for the craft and then joined a live class to put them together, hosted by Craftiful Studio.

My team loved this activity. If you choose to host this with a group, I do suggest scheduling some time before the class starts to chit-chat (reference the above point about small talk being important) or enjoy a beverage together.

Bonus: This one is alcohol-forward, so it’s a bonus! ONLY if your whole team is into cocktails, consider a virtual cocktail-tasting event! Straightaway Cocktails makes a very cute sampler set that one of my virtual groups has used to throw our own virtual cocktail-tasting party! 

Each member of the group purchased the sampler set, and then we joined a Zoom call and worked through them one by one, sharing our notes, what the flavors reminded us of, and what we liked best.

This is also a great way to include family members of people in your virtual team who want to share in the fun! If you have a big enough group, contact Straightaway Cocktails directly and have a member of their team lead the tasting! 

Make it a Double: If you’re looking for something themed differently or with more variety, check out Priority Experiences for a super rich list of opportunities for your virtual team! 

These activities are not inexpensive, but you get what you pay for! Priority Experiences has a lot of options beyond alcohol, from chocolate tasting to cooking classes, and international options are available to suit your global team (harder to do than you’d think).

Important! If you’re scheduling virtual team activities, schedule them during normal working hours. Don’t make your people pick between taking time away from their family and having virtual cocktails with coworkers.

Yes, it’s okay to stop “normal work” at 3 pm once in a while to enjoy each other’s virtual company. Don’t make people “work extra” to participate in team activities. 

Encourage 1:1 connections across swimlanes

As a leader, I encourage people to connect across swimlanes, especially when working in a virtual environment.

This is because connecting with people at work who you might not normally interact with can be beneficial in a number of ways, including diversifying your network and expanding the range of perspectives and support you have access to.

Instead of just interacting with the same small group of colleagues, reaching out to others across departments or locations allows for more diverse conversations and opinions, which may prove useful in problem-solving scenarios or in gaining a better understanding of different aspects of the company.

Additionally, connecting with people from different backgrounds or roles within the company helps to break down hierarchical structures and makes everyone feel like they are an equal part of the team.

By taking the time to connect with colleagues who you may not normally interact with, you’re also helping create a more inclusive workplace environment and encouraging collaboration between individuals who may have never considered engaging with each other before.

I actively encourage 1:1 connections across the company by seeking opportunities for folks to connect with someone new for guidance, advice, or to cross-check work output. 

People love to give advice and be seen as a coach or expert, so approaching this from a “Maybe this person could help you, you should reach out to them” stance usually helps ease the discussion and answer the “Why is this person wanting to talk to me?” question that often comes up when someone you don’t know reaches out at work.

Pair people on work items

Pairing people on work items when working remotely can be a great way to increase engagement, collaboration, and creativity.

Having two employees working together on a project allows them to draw on each other’s strengths while providing feedback and support where needed. This can help lead to more effective problem-solving and innovation and aids knowledge sharing, which is important when working remotely you don’t always overhear information that is critical to your own work!

It’s also worth noting that pairing is also especially effective for new team members (virtual onboarding is super difficult!) as it helps new starters get up to speed faster and build relationships.

Sure, pairing might not seem like the right thing to do on tasks that may not necessarily require two people, but the work output and the people will benefit from the pairing.

For example, I have often paired two project managers from different areas of the company on one large cross-functional project. Project managers don’t often work together because they manage separate projects on their own, but pairing them together helps to build relationships across the team, and each learns so much from the other!

Pairing people in the virtual workplace can help remote teams feel more connected and break down silos within the company as everyone is collaborating towards a common goal regardless of their individual roles or departments. By combining different ideas and strengths, teams are equipped to create something that could never have been achieved by just one person alone.

Share a bit of your not-at-work self

Yes, even you as a leader should share a little bit about your life with your colleagues and direct reports.

Sharing about your life with your team when trying to build culture and connectedness virtually is a great way to help create relationships when you can’t be physically together. 

Opening up about personal interests, family, hobbies, or any other topics outside of work allows for more meaningful conversations and helps break down the barriers between each team member as well as build trust.

Sharing also contributes to a psychologically safe work environment as employees feel more comfortable talking openly without fear of judgment. Sharing about your life can encourage collaboration through shared experiences.

On my teams, we have a tradition of hosting a summer picnic/cookout/camping trip. This wouldn’t have become a thing without us sharing about our hobbies, weekend plans, and where we feel the most like ourselves. 

From these conversations came the idea for the event that’s been a smashing success for over 5 years, including the last few years where we have worked completely remotely. 

Organizational level

If you’re working in a remote organization, especially at a managerial level, here are some tools and methods you can use to help facilitate better working relationships

Give space for people to share about themselves and connect informally

If you’re like me, you’ve become chat-centric in the world of remote work, meaning, most of the quick collaboration and conversations you have with others at your company happen on a chat platform such as Slack or Microsoft Teams.

In my experiences with these tools, people want to share funny stuff, pictures of their pets, the amazing lunch they just made, etc. Enter the rise of social, informal chats that drive social connection, community, and belonging!

Not-so-work-related chat channels are great for teams and organizations that are growing and distributed across the globe. Informal chat channels on specific topics (or not) allow for more casual interactions which can help build relationships between team members, even if they’re not directly connected on projects or might not see each other in meetings.

In my experience, not-so-work-related chat channels have included #Random (yes, it’s random stuff), #Puppies (pictures of dogs), #Kitties (pictures of cats), #New Parents (all things babies), and #Foodies (pictures of food, recipe sharing).

Having informal chat channels provides people with outlets to share ideas and accomplishments, ask questions without feeling like it needs to be relevant to their job functions, and learn more about each other.

Bonus: If you don’t have a naturally chatty bunch at work, there are apps that can help get the informal, not-so-work-related conversation flowing! Apps like Donut pair people one-on-one to meet new folks across the organization without the awkwardness of the email intro from a manager.

Mentorship programs

Mentorship programs are a great way to connect different people across groups and hierarchies.

People love to give advice and see someone else succeed with their help, so mentorship programs give an opportunity for experienced staff to feel valued and fulfilled while helping lesser experienced staff learn about the organization in ways that otherwise would typically not be possible.

I have run multiple mentorship programs and have been both a mentor and mentee. Mentorship has made a significant impact in my career growth, and I have seen those I have mentored grow exponentially both professionally and personally, including beyond our mentorship time together. 

Mentorship programs are also a great way to encourage diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in an organization. 

Related read: How To Start An Effective Mentoring Program In 6 Steps

Gather at retreats, summits, or ‘workcations’

While this article has aimed to provide some helpful tips for bringing people together virtually, there still is no true full replacement for getting together face-to-face.

For this reason, leaders of highly collaborative, strategic teams should try to get team members together every year for a summit, retreat, or workcation.

Bringing remote employees together for in-person retreats and summits is a great way to strengthen team relationships and spark innovation. It provides an opportunity for diverse teams to work together on projects collaboratively which can lead to new ideas and solutions coming from this collective effort.

Spending time with colleagues outside of the virtual workplace helps foster strong bonds between team members, which ultimately leads to better collaboration when working remotely. It also creates opportunities for mentorship as more experienced workers are able to provide tips and guidance directly to others who might be struggling with certain tasks or processes.

If you’re not convinced yet, remember that an in-person retreat gives everyone the chance to connect with the company’s mission or values through shared experiences and conversations. This helps form a stronger sense of purpose in the organization as employees can see how their individual efforts fit into the bigger picture, leading to greater employee engagement. 

Bringing people together in person transcends the relationships built virtually and crystallizes them through shared experiences, problem-solving, and celebrations.

With that said, if push comes to shove and you can’t bring people together in person, you can always hold something remotely! Check out this Guide to Virtual Event Planning. 

Remember, connections are powerful

Working remotely can be challenging when it comes to building relationships with colleagues. 

However, with a few intentional steps like seeking connections, jumping on video calls, building facilitation skills, bringing remote employees together in person for retreats and summits, or even just scheduling virtual coffee chats on a regular basis, we can foster meaningful connections that will help strengthen the organization as a whole.

Connecting with your colleagues virtually is an investment in the relationships you have with them at work and beyond.

Remember, we spend most of our waking hours at work, so it’s beneficial to all when we invest time in building relationships that are trusting, collaborative and productive. 

What have you tried in your organization to build relationships remotely? I’d love to learn from you! Let me know in the comments, and be sure to subscribe to the People Managing People newsletter to say up-to-date on emerging opportunities to be better at your job and grow in your career.

Further resources:

• 5 Challenges Of Managing Remote Employees And How To Overcome Them
• 27 Best Practices For Managing Remote Teams In 2023
• How To Hire Remote Employees And Tap Into Global Talent
• How To Bring Creativity & Fun To Remote Teams (with Paul Lopushinsky from Playficient)
• 3 Ways To Build Your Professional Network And Make Meaningful Connections
• 11 Tips For Effectively Onboarding Remote Employees

The post How To Build Strong Relationships Working Remotely appeared first on People Managing People.

via People Managing People https://ift.tt/0vPnfQr

As any HR leader will tell you, crises are an inevitable part of the job. Tough situations pop up, and often they’re out of our control. How can companies weather a crisis and turn it into an advantage in the long run? In this interview series, we talk to seasoned HR leaders who share their strategies for weathering the storm and turning a crisis into an advantage.

Paaras Parker is Chief Human Resources Officer at Paycor. She’s a seasoned leader with deep experience in talent acquisition, organizational and leadership development, diversity, equity & inclusion and learning and has held high-level HR roles at Macy’s and Global Novations.

Currently, she’s committed to building on and expanding Paycor’s dynamic culture, recruiting and developing talented people, and giving them an opportunity to succeed. Paaras joined Paycor in 2022 from Kroger, where she most recently served as Head of HR for 84.51°, Kroger’s technology & digital and alternative profit unit.

Hi Paaras, welcome to the series. Can you share your story of when an organization you’ve worked at entered into a crisis? What happened? What did you do?

The COIVD-19 pandemic was a critical experience that impacted us all in one way or another. We have all talked about the impact of COVID-19 for the last few years, but it was one of the biggest challenges I faced that altered how I thought about work daily. 

As a business, we doubled down on all forms of communication to ensure the messages were clear, timely, and concise during this time of immense change. Our leadership team held daily calls Monday through Sunday to effectively define direction, any changes or updates, and who and what we would communicate.

We kept an open conversation with our associates, clients, and partners at all times—even when we didn’t know everything. 

I learned it was better to share what I did know vs. staying silent too long. In a time of crisis, it’s natural for people to fill in silence with assumptions. Sharing what we knew helped drive trust and confidence. 

What was your mindset during such a challenging time? Where did you get the drive to keep going when things were so hard?

I was empathetic. We all were. Everyone was going through COVID-19 at the same time. Everyone might have had different driving factors, but a crisis doesn’t allow for much stability for anyone, so any time you can align on a vision or find a solution it’s really exciting.

My team and I were able to accomplish so much during this time because we had a plan. We over-communicated to show constant alignment, we had to prioritize projects and delegate tasks to work effectively.

Most importantly, we celebrated both our wins and failures. This is what truly got me through, and allowed me to show up every day refueled, and re-energized. 

Can you please tell us how you were able to overcome such adversity and how the company ultimately turned the crisis into an opportunity or advantage? What did the next chapter look like?

Generally speaking, during a time of crisis, humans are more inclined to want to accomplish things and feel successful. When a crisis occurs, there is a natural adrenaline and a desire to serve.

The key during a crisis is being able to understand what “good” looks like in the very moment and communicate that to your employees. You have to communicate and make it something tangible so everyone can deliver against it.

Our employees had to learn new ways of working via Zoom meetings and no longer meeting face to face. As a leadership team, we sent frequent health and safety updates to our employees as well as how we were performing as a business during uncertain times. 

If you can be clear on the status of the business and what success looks like, then you can properly navigate through any hard moment. I believe this is how you must operate if you want to come out winning and better at the end of it. 

Here is the main question of our interview: Based on your experience, can you share five actionable pieces of advice for HR leaders about How Companies Can Turn A Crisis Into An Opportunity or Advantage?

1. Declare

What “declare” really means in a crisis is you are calling “it” something. Declare that you know that something is going on and if it has a name—declare it. 

In March 2020, our “it” and crisis was a global pandemic, called COVID-19. In a crisis, you have to face it head on like “We are going through COVID-19, as a company, community, and society and our commitment to you and our customers is…”.

Don’t pretend a crisis is not happening, empathize with what it might feel like to not know and start setting the state of what people can expect from you as you go through the crisis together.

2. Communicate

Set up a communication cadence. Be clear on who your stakeholders are, what information they need to know, and the best way to get this information to them. 

Additionally, ensure that your company knows the experts you are going to rely on and take guidance from. In the case of the pandemic, the CDC was a key resource that was leveraged.  

It’s important to set these parameters so that people can be confident in the decisions you are making as a leader and understand where and who your facts and data are coming from. 

3. Prioritize

Prioritizing is a big one. Often in a moment of crisis, you must double down and prioritize to deliver against the things that are most important. 

No crisis is the same and the type will determine how you react. For example, when I worked in retail, if we had a bad storm that impacted a region and had to shut down stores, we fundamentally could not work normally and we had to acknowledge that. We had to reprioritize the work in a sustainable way that could be done until we were able to re-establish our new “normal.” 

Making sure you are really crisp on the biggest priorities is essential so people know what they no longer have to do, and so they can prioritize the work in front of them.

4. Delegate

Innately people want to help so identify who is best suited to drive the outcomes you need. 

This is the turning point of a crisis where you can develop people in new ways that may not have been available before. Once people are identified the next part of delegation is giving people space to deliver where they can, try new jobs, make mistakes, and excel.

5. Celebrate 

Celebrate and acknowledge when things go well. Celebrate as often as you can, and also differentiate and recognize those who are excelling and going above and beyond or other specific moments.

Don’t only celebrate the wins. Own and celebrate when it does not go right—it is okay to fail and try again!

Be vulnerable and be open to new ways of working, learning, and accelerating. This shows employees they do not have to be perfect all the time, and that you are not going to be perfect all the time and that’s okay. It shows that you have agility and can change course and adapt. It also sets the stage when you come out of crisis to capitalize on those behaviors. 

Leverage this time to create new ways of thinking and checking in, not only to get you through crisis but also hopefully to accelerate your growth and accomplishments that come afterward. 

What are a few of the most common mistakes you see leaders make when their company hits a crisis? What should be done to avoid them?

Often leaders want to instill confidence and a thought-out plan and, as a result, they end up waiting too long to act on it. I think these mistakes come from a great place, but communicating fast even if you have to change the direction soon after is okay. 

I think calling it what it is is important and saying, “Hey, we are getting to you as fast as we can; we are sharing information as we know it,” and what that might mean is if anything changes you are making a commitment to come back and update that information as it becomes more relevant.

I think there is a tendency to wait to get more information, or wait to see what someone else is doing, which is important—especially for a public company. However, if you’re honest and share what you know, when you know it, and set the expectation that you also expect it can change, then I also think that goes a long way.

What advice would you give to HR leaders and organizations who have yet to hit their first real crisis?

First, make sure you spend time to have a great relationship with your CEO. Having an open and honest line of communication with the CEO is a fundamental pillar of business operations whether you’re in a crisis mode or not. 

If you are in a state where you haven’t hit a crisis, take the time to think about a couple of times you’ve gotten close and create a plan for them. Even if you don’t know what it will exactly look like, you can start getting into the practice of executing against one and it will become muscle memory.

When you make these plans share them with your team and discuss what role everyone will play. Don’t wait for a crisis to hit to have a plan, find one that’s occurred and leverage that to know what your plan of action might be.

If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. ?

Kindness! If we could have a collective movement on kindness we could impact so much. I genuinely believe if people lead with kindness and always assume positive intent, the world would be a better place. 

Thanks so much Paaras! How can our readers continue to follow your work online?

Connect with me on Linkedin or Instagram.

The post Why Celebrating Wins And Failures Will Help You Overcome A Crisis appeared first on People Managing People.

via People Managing People https://ift.tt/nfJgiFh

Have you ever thought about quitting your job? I’m sure this thought crosses most people’s minds from time to time.

There’s no question that people across generations are seriously evaluating what’s important to them in their careers right now, but these numbers are somewhat staggering: CNBC found that more than half of US workers are thinking about leaving their job in 2023.

Gone are the days when we devoted our lives to one company for long stretches of time. So, what can keep us motivated, willing to withstand the hard days, and showing up daily to battle it out in the trenches?

It’s feeling like we have an ally. 

An ally is someone who understands us, knows us for our strengths, and stands behind us without judgment or hidden motives. We all deserve to have an ally—that’s why the most important role anyone can play in the workplace is the ally.

As a DEI Practitioner and Learning and Development professional, I’m passionate about the employee experience. I spend my days thinking about how we can all evolve the world of work through a lens of justice, social equity, and inclusion.

While people managers are at the crux of these efforts, directly accountable for a diverse and inclusive team culture and well-positioned for lasting change, each and every person can choose to be a better ally in 2023.

So, if you’re looking for ways to level up your allyship skills in 2023, read on to learn more about:

• What allyship means
• The role it plays in the workplace
• The practical skills for better allyship

What Is Allyship?

Allyship aligns with the relationship-oriented activism bell hooks writes about. 

She writes, “we learn to value loyalty and a commitment to sustained bonds over material advancement. While careers and making money remain important agendas, they never take precedence over the valuing and nurturing of human life and well-being”.

Allyship is an authentic alliance. It’s an active and intentional connection with another person. To be a real ally for someone is to empathize with them—to act as if whatever they’re going through is happening to you.

Allyship must become synonymous with the ethics we value most in the workplace. Original definitions of allyship refer to allies as being countries in support of other countries who are at war. Nowadays, we hear the word used commonly across social justice movements, and, like many words we hear in movement space, the validity and relevance of this word are hotly debated.

The biggest criticism the term allyship has received is that it doesn’t imply impact, thus being ineffective. So, let’s revisit the term to see if we can inspire impact or, better yet, evolve the meaning to help us become better allies. 

Merriam-Webster includes this list of synonyms for the word ally.

Like hooks writes, allyship values loyalty. We are authentically loyal to those who stand up for us, advocate for us, and fight for our successes, and loyalty is the result of a culture where respect, care, trust, and commitment are present.

It’s important to see the distinction between loyalty and codependency too, as loyalty doesn’t imply someone being dependent on others. That’s why another word I used to describe an allied relationship is sovereign. I love this because it acknowledges that allyship does not imply control or manipulation, but an empowered dynamic.

Effective allyship doesn’t breed sameness. Instead, it nurtures two different people to walk the path together as individuals.

Finally, there are no self-proclaimed allies. A person can only be deemed an ally by another person. That’s because it’s solely characterized as having a real, definable impact on another person.

The Role Allyship Plays In Inclusive Workplaces

We’re all fighting different battles every day. That’s why allyship is the most important role we can play in the workplace.

Allies act with care, respect, responsibility, commitment, trust, and knowledge. They help create more diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplaces by ensuring people, particularly those from underrepresented groups, are treated fairly and by creating a culture of belonging.

As an ally, you may not fully understand or relate to the lived experience of someone with a marginalized identity. Whenever you’re in doubt about how to be an ally, ask yourself the question, what if it was me that was going through this?

If you’ve never been in the same position as the individual, that’s key information for your own self-awareness and a green flag to hold space for that person. Allies let empathy and compassion guide their actions.

Navigating turbulence in the workplace like racism, sexism, and other harmful biases is a critical aspect of allyship. Strong allies can leverage their own privilege by advocating for those on the receiving end of harm and not letting their own anxieties result in avoiding the issue.

There will always be ambiguity during culture change and as we push for more equity across organizations. Developing strong allies can lead to well-supported, cohesive teams.

Skills To Work On To Be A Better Ally

Allyship requires us to examine our entire skill set as professionals, and the top skills employers are looking for in 2023 are largely behavioral. Commonly referred to as “soft skills”, relational skills like teamwork and collaboration, intercultural sensitivity and competency, and emotional intelligence are increasingly in demand, and this is allyship.

So, allyship and our ability to understand and relate to others, extend empathy and compassion, and skillfully navigate turbulence and ambiguity are highly regarded by employers looking to design equitable and inclusive organizations.

Let’s explore 3 practical skills to be a better ally: cultural competency, feedback (giving, asking for, and receiving), and authentic relationship building. These are skills that any person can develop, regardless of being a manager or individual contributor.

Consider these 3 skill sets to strengthen your impact as an ally. 

Cultural competence

When I use the word cultural here, I’m not referring to workplace culture, but literal cultural differences in humanity. This can be an important distinction when leveling up as an ally. 

If you’re a manager and you don’t think cultural competence applies to you, you have a significant gap in your priorities—you simply aren’t considering diversity, equity, and inclusion in your hiring process as much as you think you are. 

If you’re an individual contributor, leveling up in your cultural competence is a critical element to your contribution to a high-performing, cohesive team.

Project Ready, an online professional development platform grounded in equity and justice, defines being culturally competent as those who understand, communicate with, and effectively interact with people across cultures.

Cultural competence encompasses:

• Being aware of one’s own worldview
• Developing positive attitudes toward cultural differences
• Gaining knowledge of different cultural practices and worldviews
• Developing skills for communication and interaction across cultures.

Cultural competence is the ethics of care, respect, responsibility, commitment, trust, and knowledge we outlined earlier in action.

These 8 human competencies are a good start to becoming culturally competent: 

1. Understanding and honoring the histories, cultures, languages, and traditions of diverse communities
2. Valuing the different abilities and interests of diverse communities
3. Respecting differences in the home lives of diverse communities
4. Building on the different ways of knowing and expertise found in different cultures and communities
5. Recognizing that diversity contributes to the richness of our society and provides a valid evidence base about ways of knowing
6. Understanding that a strong sense of cultural identity and belonging is central to developing positive self-esteem
7. Identifying and challenging personal cultural assumptions, values, and beliefs
8. Demonstrating an ongoing commitment to developing their own cultural competence.

As you hire new people on your team or get to know your current direct reports better, let your 1 on 1 meeting with them be an opportunity to learn about them in this way. 

Regardless of your role, set aside the demands of the job and get curious about the backgrounds, families, traditions, and values of your colleagues.

Giving, asking for, and receiving feedback

We know that feedback is crucial for our growth and personal development, and I’m proposing that feedback skills are truly what makes anyone an outstanding ally. 

A person’s ability to give and receive empathetic feedback (especially difficult), holds the potential to bring the change organizations need to achieve greater diversity, equity, and inclusion.

In all my years as a DEI practitioner, I’ve seen countless initiatives for more sensitivity training, unconscious bias training, and extreme shifts to call out culture—especially with social media on the rise as an increasingly visible way to learn about what language and behavior is and what is no longer acceptable in our workplaces.

To me, this exacerbates an already inflamed problem by putting the focus on what we now know to be weaponized incompetence—where someone’s ignorance and newfound awareness of their contribution toward another’s experience of racism, sexism, homophobia and more become front and center in the conversation. Maybe this was an effective strategy at one point to bring attention to these issues, but it’s time to evolve. 

Now, so many people are terrified of saying the wrong thing that they just say (and do) nothing.

The truth is, it’s extremely difficult to stay completely current with how language is evolving every day. So, instead of being scared into silence (or worse, apathy), what if we built our workplaces around cultures of feedback?

Let’s equate feedback with the currency of the ethics we’re discussing: care, respect, responsibility, commitment, trust, and knowledge.

Next, we’ll explore each aspect of feedback: giving, asking for, and receiving. 

Giving Feedback

Let’s start with the most challenging aspect of allyship—speaking up and advocating during times of injustice, particularly when the injustice isn’t happening directly to you. 

We can frame this skill set as managing up, which is something anyone can benefit from learning to do.

The first step of giving effective feedback as an ally is to become better at identifying the moments of injustice.

Here are some things to start noticing about where you work. Take a mental inventory of how your culture operates and the gaps.

• Are there knowledge gaps, blind spots, or biases in daily operations? (hint: there always are.)
• Do you see opportunity gaps (e.g. patterns of people getting hired and promoted, patterns of people getting invested in, certain folks accessing available opportunities, or straight-up pay inequity)?
• Do you notice minimal representation or disenfranchised voices (e.g. what do leadership teams look like, who speaks the most in meetings, who’s always taking the notes)?
• What would the attendance be like if you were to host a workshop with your colleagues to discuss topics affecting race, gender, abilities, experiences, or backgrounds?
• Do you and others believe all opportunities in the company are open to anyone who is qualified?

Then, start noticing how these or other dynamics contribute to a culture of oppression in the workplace.

It’s important to remember that, in a situation where someone has caused or is causing harm to another, it’s the result of harmful systems, not that of one individual in that moment. 

Here’s an example. 

Let’s say you’re on a team that has done some hiring in preparation for the selling season. Your manager has onboarded an employee who is a person of color and is working remotely/locally based in the sales region.

This new hire has recently changed industries and has a lot to learn in their new role. Typically, in any industry, it takes 6 months to 1 year to ramp up in a new role—particularly in a sales role where you’re building new relationships and learning new products or services.

However, there are people on the team, including that person’s manager, who consistently backchannel and speak poorly of this person’s performance, who, after only 3 months, hasn’t yet become self-sufficient in the job.

In my experience as a DEI practitioner, employees of color and women are more commonly measured by their present-day performance and not their potential. The system in place judges them more harshly and invests in them less. These types of scenarios are key opportunities for allyship.

As an ally, how could you use your feedback skills to advocate for this new hire? 

Dr. Marshall Rosenberg is well known for his teachings on non-violent and compassionate communication, where we ground difficult conversations in our observations, feelings, needs, and requests.

He founded the Center for Nonviolent Communication (NVC), whose mission is about “connecting with ourselves and others from the heart. It’s about seeing the humanity in all of us. It’s about recognizing our commonalities and differences and finding ways to make life wonderful for all of us.”

Compassionate communication is a deeply intentional and effective way of speaking to one another in times of turbulence. 

You could start the conversation by sharing your observation: “I noticed this new employee isn’t gaining traction in their new role yet.”

Then, maintain your curiosity: “I’m curious if they are receiving the same support that I received as a new hire.” 

Then, share your personal feelings with “I” statements: “I feel for them, I know what it’s like to not feel confident in a new role.”

Then, share your needs as their ally, again with “I” statements: “I’d like to see them set up for success. In my experience, new hires need and strongly benefit from effective onboarding and mentorship.”

Then, we move to a practical, solution-oriented request: “How can we work to ensure:

• Clear, transparent, consistent onboarding practices
• Tolerance for people who have different needs
• Mentorship and collaboration on creative solutions for support?”

Once you’ve made it this far, remember, you’re simply stating an observation and opportunity for growth—you’re also demonstrating that you’re invested in collective success and want to see everyone thrive.

This can be a powerful approach to managing up or across teams, and, ideally, you’re giving this feedback directly to someone who can influence these systems (a manager or HR). 

Giving Feedback as a Manager

What if you’re the manager who’s preparing to give feedback to their direct report on their performance, and you want to establish yourself as their ally?

Well, let’s be honest, when performance review time comes around, how confident are you in your ability to give effective feedback? Is it the only time of year you give feedback? Therein lies the problem.

In my experience as a direct report, the quality of feedback I’ve come to expect from my managers over the years comes across as a last-minute effort and a major missed opportunity to demonstrate their commitment as my ally.

So, when it comes to delivering feedback to individuals on your team, see this as the perfect opportunity to show them you’re an ally and invested in their growth, potential, and success. 

 In a recent piece from Fast Company, the author aligns feedback with allyship,

“As leaders, we need to go beyond feedback and shift our focus from critic to ally. When you’re someone’s ally…you display caring for them, confidence in them, and commitment to them. In your presence, they drop shame and defensiveness, and instead focus on becoming better.”

Here are 3 things to consider when giving feedback to your direct reports, or managing up to other leaders to help them see you as their ally:

1. Show empathy. When faced with challenges, let them know you understand how difficult, annoying, and frustrating this moment must be.
2. Express your confidence in them. Show that you believe in their ability to handle struggles reinforces their own self-assurance.
3. Be collaborative/offer to brainstorm together. But first, make sure to ask permission. Then, ask them if they would be willing to think with you about the situation and solutions that they believe they could be successful in.

Giving strong feedback takes lots of practice, and it’s fair to say that not every manager has the bandwidth consistently throughout the year to give the knowledgeable and caring feedback every person deserves. 

So, managers, if you take one thing away from this section, let it be this: tell your direct reports that they’re doing a good job more often. Let it come from an authentic place, but if you feel that they’re doing well--tell them. So simple, yet often missed. No one hears it enough.

Asking for Feedback 

Remembering to ask for feedback is a habit we can easily forget to maintain. As a manager, having structural practices to elicit honest feedback from your team can help you prioritize doing it (before it’s too late and you receive their letters of resignation). 

Stay interviews (versus exit interviews) are a simple tactic for eliciting feedback from the people on your team who have displayed their loyalty to you. It’s a great way to clearly understand what you’re doing right and hold space for opportunities for improvement. 

Stay interviews can help:

• Build trust between managers and their team members
• Engage with employees to show their opinions are valued
• Learn why employees want to continue working for the company and why they might want to leave
• Find out if there are any issues that should be resolved between the employee and any of their superiors or team members
• Understand the employee’s stance on their current position and what they’d like to have changed
• Determine what challenges employees appreciate and what motivates them to work toward the organization’s mission
• Gain a better understanding of the employee’s unique fears, dreads, hopes, and strengths
• Gather actionable information about current and upcoming employee trends in the office. 

All of this is valuable data for being a committed ally to your direct reports. You’ll build trust, better understand their needs, and become armed with information to better support your team. 

Now, if you’re an individual contributor looking to get feedback around your allyship, rest assured, the more you put yourself out there, advocate for others, and speak up against injustices, it will come.

As an individual contributor, you may not have the structural power to elicit regular and consistent feedback, however, if you are: 

• Actively demonstrating your cultural competence of others
• Skillfully delivering direct feedback to those complicit in doing harm
• Hosting DEI workshops, book clubs, or events at your company
• Serving on committees and ERGs
• Writing publicly on social media about social issues
• Getting to know people different from you on a personal level
• Most importantly, operationalizing your DEI values and behaviors.

You’ll 100% hear about it from others. 

Once immersed in the work of allyship, other people will undoubtedly notice your efforts, and you will receive everything from criticism to praise. The important thing to remember is to not let the criticism stop you or the praise turn you complacent. If no one notices your efforts, that’s feedback too!

Something to consider might be, who’s the feedback from?

Most likely, you’ll receive feedback (positive and negative) from people from ethnically advantaged groups also examining their allyship. People love to point fingers at others for not getting it right!

If you’re receiving earnest feedback from employees of color, women, or any historically disadvantaged group, congrats—you’re making an impact. If it’s negative feedback, this next part is for you.

Receiving Feedback 

There will be times when people have feedback for your allyship. See this as a good thing. 

You likely haven’t perfected your allyship and, truth is, no one will. It will always require growth and lifelong learning. We’re never done! 

Remember, feedback equals respect (and care, responsibility, commitment, trust, and knowledge—all the things we’re working towards in our work ethic of allyship). 

There’s a science to processing the feedback we choose to accept and it also takes some practice. Receiving feedback is hard—we know this, but it’s a critical skill in allyship and no one is exempt.

Organizational Psychologist, Dr. David Burkus compiles four simple and highly effective tips for how to get better at receiving feedback.

1. Don’t get defensive: choose gratitude 
2. Actively listen: restate what you heard 
3. Acknowledge the changes: figure out how to apply them
4. Rinse and repeat: seek out more feedback.

Ego has no place in our workplace anymore. Let’s stop with the fake it ‘til you make it narrative—we’re all learning and growing and no one’s perfect. Humility goes a long way. 

Interpersonal Relationship Building  

There’s no question that things like clear and honest communication, consistent practices and procedures, and grounded expectations of one another are all vital to healthy relationship building between managers and the individuals on their team.

That being said, one aspect of relationship building that so often gets missed is initial and ongoing efforts to build trust.

Building trust, early and often, is the most critical first step for anyone on this journey of allyship, regardless of your title, as trying to earn or repair lost trust later is far more difficult. 

I rely heavily on Brene Brown’s BRAVING Trust concept. She presents an increasingly practical way of establishing trusting relationships from the start. To be an ally is to strive to meet each of these qualities whenever possible. 

From Dare to Lead |The BRAVING Inventory – Brené Brown

Print this out and look at it every day. In almost any situation, there’s a behavioral decision you can make to be increasingly trustworthy to others. 

Allyship as a Work Ethic

You heard it here first, allyship is the top skill of 2023 and beyond. So, let your allyship skills be a part of your professional development plan this year.

Furthermore, let’s push for systemic change and redefine what a good work ethic means with allyship. 

We know that the values of an organization’s culture and ethics shape the way we speak to and treat each other, so let’s expand allyship beyond our interpersonal relationships and collectively define allyship as the only acceptable work ethic and the primary system of values we use to define world-class organizational culture.

If you found this article useful, subscribe to the People Managing People newsletter and receive regular content to help you progress in your career and build healthy, productive workplaces.

The post Allyship: Why It’s The Top Skill Set Of 2023 appeared first on People Managing People.

via People Managing People https://ift.tt/SRfE3ok

We’re passionate about the world of work and how we can make it better. For this to be achieved, we need ideas from a wide array of people from different backgrounds and experiences. 

In this interview series, we pick the brains of experienced leaders, business owners, managers, and individual contributors to get their thoughts on how we can collectively build better workplaces.

Join us in our next installment below as Rachel Bellow, Co-founder of Bonfire, host of The Big Payoff, and guest lecturer at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Managemen shares her insights with us.

Hi Rachel! Welcome to the series, we’d love to get to know you better. Please provide an overview of your backstory.

Looking back on my career, I realize that I’ve always been fascinated by power, mainly because my experience of power (my own, and the kind of power that I respect) was so different from what was conventionally recognized and rewarded as “powerful.”

I understood early that power wasn’t something you “had,” but something you “did,” and that it all came down to radiating impact.

What effect could I produce in the world? How could I make what mattered to me matter to others, and how could I help what mattered to others matter more in the world? Those questions provide the through-line for a career path that might otherwise be seen as a drunken gerbil’s walkabout.

I’ve worked across sectors (nonprofit, for-profit, governmental) and industries (the arts, branding and marketing, venture capital, philanthropy, entrepreneurship), and what all these ventures have in common is my drive to find big markets for big ideas—ones that make the world more equitable, more enlightened, more beautiful, or more sustainable.

My longtime business partner, Suzanne Muchin, and I have created several businesses based on this motivation, the latest of which is Bonfire, a talent development accelerator for women on the rise.

If we were to ask a friend to describe your personality to us, what would they say?

That depends on whether they’re speaking on or off the record. On the record, they’d probably cite my energy, quirky thinking, and collaborative ethos. Off the record, they’d point to the fact that I’m dangerously unfiltered, savagely irreverent, and ruthlessly judgmental.

Thinking back to your career journey, what’s an interesting story that stands out?

Years ago, I was hired by a powerful, well-known man who will go unnamed (unless you call me and then I’ll tell you) to advise his company and coach his CEO, Suzanne Muchin.

I flew to Chicago to meet her, we sat down for breakfast and didn’t leave the table until the lunch service began. By that point, we’d decided to find a way for her to leave the man’s employ and me the consulting assignment so we could go into business together.

What’s the most impactful lesson you’ve learned over your career thus far?

If you pitch your career tent on your deepest neurotic material, you are bound to be successful.

When you hear the phrase “build a better world of work”, what comes to mind?

What I envision is a workplace culture that is in sync with the culture outside the organization, one that celebrates the diversity of individuals, rewards employees using a nuanced understanding of the difference between output and outcome, values “soft skills” as much as technical skills, and that respects the need for rest and renewal as an essential part of high performance.

If we build workplace cultures that place the needs of ALL human beings at the center, and if we then organize work around those needs versus the reverse, we will have a better world of work.

For you, what’s the main blocker you see as standing in the way of building a better world of work?

A thought cannot know anything bigger than itself. The current paradigm of work was built by men, for men (no blame by the way, why wouldn’t they?), but the paradigm cannot deconstruct and reconstruct itself.

There must be some special animating force that is inspired, mobilized, and equipped to help rewrite the rules of the workplace. At Bonfire, we believe that force is women.

What’s one thing within our control that we can practically do to build a better world of work today? And, how do you recommend going about it?

Women are naturally predisposed to go above and beyond their assigned jobs to ensure the engagement and well-being of their teams and to attend to a larger DEI agenda.

This isn’t anecdotal, lots of data supports this, including the most recent McKinsey Women in the Workplace study.

Women must begin to view themselves as the architects of the future workplace and must unlearn the ways of working (and leading) that they have been taught by the current paradigm of work, and learn new ways of showing up, standing out, and breaking through in their workplaces.

Can you share one thing you’ve experienced, seen, or read about that is leading us toward a better world of work?

Every month, Bonfire holds half-day sessions for cohorts of women who have been nominated by their employers to undertake a six-month development program.

The experience of watching these women, cohort after cohort, move from deep uncertainty to full-throated conviction in their own power to change the world of work is what pulls me out of bed every single day.

I have seen these women not only awaken to their own sense of purpose but to then use what they’ve learned to lift others at their company. It gives me hope in humanity and makes me proud to be a woman.

Thinking about building a better world of work, is there a company and/or leader who stands out to you as someone we should follow? If so, what are they up to?

I think Esther Perel is unfailingly fascinating and has original things to say about work from a relational point of view (www.estherperel.com). Not your run-of-the-mill angle, that’s for sure.

Thanks Rachel! Some great insights in there. How can readers follow your work?

For more about Bonfire visit bonfirewomen.com

Add your voice to the conversation

Join our interview series and share your ideas for how we can build a better world of work!

The post Build A Better World Of Work By Putting The Needs Of All People At The Center appeared first on People Managing People.

via People Managing People https://ift.tt/agMvWFk

If you’re operating in a competitive local labor market, it can be hard to find the right talent. Global HR services open your business up to a wider talent pool, connecting you with qualified candidates from across the world. Further, they help remove the obstacles to hiring employees from international locations, ensuring that you remain compliant with the regulations that are local to your new team members.

In this article, I’ll be explaining how global HR services can help your organization, how they work, and the different types of HR functions they typically perform. 

What Are Global HR Services?

Global HR services help small to mid-sized companies access top talent from other geographic areas without having to set up a legal entity in each country within which an employee resides. This may involve outsourcing services such as:

• Payroll processing
• Compliance with local regulatory guidelines
• Financial services
• Talent acquisition (covering applicant tracking and the full recruitment process)
• Employee benefits administration
• Onboarding
• Performance management

Working with a global HR services partner means that your organization doesn’t need an enormous in-house human resources department to hire new employees from other countries.

Having the local knowledge and expertise provided by your HR consulting partner also helps you enhance employee engagement and increase retention, making sure that all the HR needs of your team members are being met in accordance with local expectations and standards.

How Do Global HR Services Work?

Global HR services allow you to streamline your in-house HR functions, either via a monthly rate per employee or by paying per service you wish to secure. Pricing depends on the extent of the services you use, and the number of employees you need to cover.

Depending on the type of global HR service you’re working with (see below definitions), the company either acts as your partner, sharing human resources management tasks with you or acts as the official employer of your team member, taking over all HR management tasks.

Services to Support International Teams 

Global HR services can be broken down into a number of different functions. Let’s take a closer look at some of the most common global HR solutions:

Global Payroll Services

Global payroll services help you consolidate all the financial tasks for international employees. Each location has different salary expectations, minimum wage requirements, deductions, and taxation. Using HR software for global payroll can help you cut back on your HR team’s admin time, freeing them up to focus on things like employee development.

Most global payroll service providers offer the following features:

• Consolidated dashboard: A central location containing a streamlined view of all your international employee data.
• Local expertise: In-country personnel that have experience in the local tax, labor, and employment laws to ensure regulatory compliance.
• Global reach: Operations in multiple countries (anywhere from 50 to 240), and payment support for multiple currencies (between 50 and 100).
• Coverage for multiple employment types: Support for hiring and paying full-time and part-time employees, freelancers, and contractors, as well as PEO and EOR arrangements (read more below).

To access our list of the best global payroll service providers, read our article:

• 10 Best Global Payroll Solutions for Distributed Teams

Employer of Record (EOR) Services

An Employer of Record (EOR) acts as a surrogate employer for team members in other countries. Though the team member works for you, the EOR is their legal employer and performs many of the traditional talent management tasks including payroll and employee benefits. It’s a bit like having an external HR department to handle all the human capital management for international team members.

EORs allow you to expand your business into another geographic region without having to set up a legal entity there (a perfect fit for small businesses and startups). They enable you to add employees as an expense, rather than adding them directly to your payroll. EORs also commonly provide a singular pool of candidates that they offer to multiple companies. This enables you to access top talent at a reasonable group rate.

If your organization is looking to work with an EOR, check out our list of the best and brightest:

• 10 Best Employer of Record (EOR) Services

Professional Employer Organization (PEO) Services

A Professional Employer Organization (PEO) acts as your partner, helping you to carry out HR processes like benefits administration, tax filing, and payroll. Technically, this arrangement is considered to be co-employment. From a risk management perspective, keep in mind that this means your organization is still partly responsible for any liabilities incurred from the PEO services since your team members are employed directly by your organization.

When using a PEO, your organization is responsible for establishing a legal entity in each of the countries where your employees reside. The primary benefits of working with a PEO are that small businesses and startups can provide team members with high-quality healthcare benefits and HR professional services without having to hire an in-house HR department. PEOs are increasingly common, with roughly 173,000 small businesses to mid-sized businesses in the U.S. currently using their services.

We’ve compiled a list of our favorite PEOs, including pricing, features, and integrations. Take a look:

• 10 Best Professional Employer Organizations (PEO)

Connect With the Best of the Global Talent Pool

Not only does international staffing instantly connect you with a wider range of candidates, but it also enhances your team’s diversity and enriches your corporate culture with some fresh perspectives. The top HR services know how to use their global expertise to help you bridge this gap, taking you from a small business operating locally to a growing organization with a reach that extends around the world.

For more information about hiring the best and brightest from abroad, check out this awesome article:

• How to Hire Remote Employees and Tap Into Global Talent

And to stay up-to-date on all the latest trends in international recruiting and global HR, don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter!

The post How Global HR Services Can Support International Teams appeared first on People Managing People.

via People Managing People https://ift.tt/iDyUvCg