With the risk of dating this article, a lot of companies have been laying off large numbers of workers recently. 

While some of these are due to the economic downturn or revenue issues in general, many of these layoffs were ways to make companies “leaner”. Makes me think—where was this thought when they were creating their hiring plans?

There has been a race (in the tech world in particular) to say and show off how many people companies have hired. While that is great, very often you see people being hired in roles that are doubling in two different departments.

Eventually, if something even tiny goes wrong, they’re the first ones to go. Not to mention that the duplication of responsibilities across different roles can result in tensions and employee dissatisfaction.

I’ve been in a few situations where I’ve seen this before hiring and have had to fix the lack of communication between leaders.

This is why a good headcount planning/hiring planning strategy is incredibly important. Be it annually, semi-annually, or quarterly, getting all the team leaders together to discuss and understand how each team will grow and develop is key to sustainable growth.

Here I’ll take you my method for creating an efficient, sustainable hiring plan.

• What is a hiring plan in context to other forms of planning
• Moving towards a sustainable hiring plan
• Questions to ask during the hiring planning process

Definitions and some historical context

Before defining what I mean by hiring plans, I’d like to give a historic overview of how the area has developed with some technical definitions and differences between other similar terms.

Workforce planning

Historically, as part of the Human Resource function, the HR leader would work with executive leadership to define what was known as “workforce planning”. 

Now when you hear workforce planning you might think of prolonged meetings to develop a comprehensive and complicated business plan, covering anything from new hires to promotions and succession planning, in line with business objectives.

This is probably why it lost popularity. It seems a bit too onerous on both HR and the business and, because of how comprehensive it is, it naturally builds rigidity into the plan overall. This meant that sometimes companies felt like they are not agile enough to respond to market fluctuations—especially for smaller companies.

Talent planning

Then there is talent planning. Sometimes the term is used synonymously with hiring planning but, classically, it’s more focused on talent development and management. 

Talent planning spans the whole candidate-to-employer journey, but it looks at the journey from the perspective of how you plan for the person in the role. 

Usually, the steps are:

• Planning (workforce or hiring)
• Attracting
• Developing
• Retaining
• Transitioning (out or upwards).

It often looks at things like processes, tools, and learning opportunities talent has while in their role, so it is a bit more operational. 

It is also quite narrow in that it only looks at how to guide employees through the talent management pipeline.

Hiring plan/Headcount plan/Recruitment plan

A hiring, headcount, or recruitment plan is when you look at what the needs of the business are now and over the next three, six, or twelve months and then you create a plan around how you will meet those needs via people. 

Often, the easiest way to identify the need is to look at gaps in skills and experience. Creating an org chart to go with the new hiring plan helps visualize reporting lines and working relationships.

Eventually, this helps the talent acquisition team plan ahead for things like when to open the roles, how much resource to allocate, and work out prioritisation for the teams.

Often, hiring planning is considered more of an operational plan rather than a purely strategic one. This is because it should always be grounded in delivery within a specific budget, time, and resources, and it’s less likely to contain expansive analysis.

This is a crucial part of any new year/quarter/other period hiring, but it can be a bit too surface level if it’s on its own and not created in line with a workforce planning scheme.

To summarise:

Workforce planning —a comprehensive and expansive analysis of the current and future workforce.

Talent planning—is more part of talent managementHiring plan—an operational plan on who the company needs and how to execute the hiring.

Moving towards a Sustainable hiring plan

The three options above each have their own place within a company. But, often, the way reality works is that companies don’t have the time or resources to go through all of these plans. This is especially true if the company is a startup running a very lean operation.

This is why I’ve created a hybrid of the hiring plan and the workforce plan—picking up areas of both where you can make the hiring plan a bit more expansive and strategic and keep the workforce plan snappy and actionable.

The way I run this is by running a hiring planning session with every leader in the company for the next 12 months (could be less) and we walk through things like gap analysis and job creation.

Throughout that process, I ask questions that bring us into the realm of workforce planning. I seek to understand the wider business performance currently and business needs, and then think about whether any skill gap is coachable for the current team.

After that, it’s important to collate the headcount from all the different leaders together (including the job descriptions) and start identifying where some teams potentially may be hiring duplicates. 

This is something to watch out for in the following teams:

• Sales <> Marketing
• Engineering <> Product <> IT <> Data
• Finance <> Business Operations <> Data
• HR <> Finance
• Finance <> Procurement (if not within finance already).

For example, I once had to step in when Finance wanted to hire someone to head procurement but the supply chain team was already looking for someone to head up procurement!

As soon as Finance approached me to allocate the role to my team, I looked through the job description and recognised that it was the same job and highlighted this by bringing the leaders into a room and discussing it. 

Often, these situations are because one team feels like they aren’t getting enough information or bandwidth from another team and they think that hiring someone to bridge the gap and take over will help (but it never does).

As the company grows, each functional leader will likely be overseeing a larger group and the People Partners responsible for each area will run these exercises separately, feeding back up the chain to the C-suite on what they may need as headcount. This is called bottom-up planning. 

Often, the actual decision-making is top-down, where the C-suite will review the headcount together (likely up to a certain level, juniors and operational staff may go into a “volume hiring budget”, which operates on estimates) and decide the overall headcount plan. 

So the exercise above is scalable but, as the company grows larger, there are more people involved in the making of the hiring plan rather than just the Chief People Officer.

Walkthrough of the hiring planning process

The hiring strategy process flow goes something like this:

• Working out how your team will contribute to the company goal
• Identifying the skills/experience needed to get there
• Assessing specific skill needs/gaps
• Identifying strengths of the current team
• Assessing if the skill gap is coachable for the current team. If not—create the positions
• Work with HR/Talent Acquisition to create a job description
• Work with other team leaders to discuss your ideas for hiring this person so there’s no overlap
• Create a plan on when you need to hire and how you will do it.

Questions to ask while making a hiring plan

As mentioned above, what drives a hiring plan to become a more sustainable and strategic version is to ask the right questions.

Most line managers should be able to answer the following questions in a manner that helps you and them understand the most important aspects of their hiring needs and the scope and urgency of a role.

Q: What resources/budget do you have (if you have one)?

Let’s face it, this is very much the deciding factor here. If you go through the entire checklist and discover that you won’t be able to find the person you need with the budget you have, you will be able to go back to Finance/C-leadership to discuss this with the answers from below.

If you don’t have a budget, keep in mind the expense so you can advise finance. You may need to make tradeoffs on things like certain skills or seniority to fit a smaller budget.

Q. What will this person do here? What are the specific outcomes we expect of this role in the first 6 months/12 months/more?

I recommend talking about specific outcomes so that there is really a focus on why this person is needed. This is how you avoid hiring for skills only (i.e. “Oh this person’s skills would be nice to have in the team”—doing what?).

Q. Who will they interact with the most internally? Do we need their input in the hiring process or during the formation of the job description?

There are very few roles nowadays that don’t interact cross-functionally in the company. Getting outside opinions can broaden or narrow the role, but it’ll make it a better fit either way.

For example, if Finance wants to hire someone for Data, what is the current Data team not providing them with?

Q. Is there an overlap between the person in this role and anyone else in the company? If so, to what degree is there overlap and what are the differences making this role necessary?

Continuing with the example from above, if Finance hires a Data person, they will need to work with the Data team. But is it appropriate to have so much overlap, or can the Data team spare capacity to provide Finance with the information they need? Or, should the Data team just hire the person to keep the reporting lines clear?

Q. What experience and/or skills will the best candidate need to achieve success in the role?

This is so you and the hiring manager have some idea about what you’re looking for. Ideally, there should be some criteria that are a “must-have” and some that are “nice to have”. 

This should further cement the need for the role and start you thinking about the urgency. You should avoid being too nebulous e.g. if all you can think about is people that are good with communication and self-motivation, you may need to go back up to the outcomes. Of course, being overly prescriptive is also a hindrance.

(I cover this some more in my article on candidate sourcing).

Q. When is the role needed—yesterday, in 3 months, in 6 months?

This is where we start thinking about the urgency of the role. This will help you and the talent acquisition team plan when a role should be posted, what is the urgency, and how many resources to put into it right now.

Q. What happens if we don’t hire the person in 6 months?

This is more of a mental exercise to really think about the urgency. It’s easy to say “well we won’t achieve our targets” and be done with this prompt. 

Really take your time to think about what will happen if you don’t have this resource but the demands of your team remain the same. This is how to truly get the urgency of the role.

In my career, I’ve only had one manager tell me “Hey Mariya, my role is not urgent but wanted to give you the heads up that I need this resource in 6 months and it’ll be a tough one, so let’s post it now.” It brought tears to my eyes—be like that!

Q. Who can/will take up the mantle in the interim?

Again, this helps assess the urgency of the role and also gets the line manager thinking about creating a stretch goal for someone internally or making it part of their development plan. 

I’ve seen many a time when hiring is the first go-to, but, once we get to this question, we discover there are a lot of under-utilised people in the team already.

Q. What is the career path (if any)?

This is something any manager should think about when they look to hire anyone. Sometimes the answer is that there isn’t one because it’s a super senior role already (e.g. looking to hire a C-level role). 

Other times, however, it’s because the company needs this person only for a fixed amount of time when they look at it carefully. If so, perhaps getting a contractor is a better fit than a permanent staff member who’ll then be idle after the project.

Related read: Contractor vs. Employee: Pros And Cons, And Which To Hire

Q. Do you have the time to hire right now/when will you have the time?

Hiring should take a fair bit of the weekly calendar and, the more urgent the role, the more time someone should be prepared to dedicate to the recruitment process.

Job posting, checking the applicant tracking system, posting on social media, screening resumes, and interviewing all take time. 

Other things I also see people forget to factor in for time include feedback (top talent requires good feedback), background checks, and onboarding.

Often, discussions I have with hiring managers looking to scale teams quickly revolve around their team having the capacity to run a great onboarding process for all new employees.

No Q. what about company culture-fit?

Note that in none of the above I talk about “company culture fit”. This is because I’m of the firm belief that this can be really limiting at this stage and can be a source of bias.

Focus on things like behaviors, skills, and experience fit of the ideal candidate and you will avoid all your new hires looking like they came out of the same mold.

Armed with the answers to these questions, go back to your leader or leadership and discuss the hiring wider plan.

If you have a dedicated hiring team/resource, be prepared to debate the urgency of your role with other teams which have equally or more urgent roles. 

The answers to the above questions also have the benefit of guiding both the selection process and the hiring decision down the line so they are doing double duty!

Checklist

Most companies operate on an annual or semi-annual strategic hiring plan, so here is a checklist of what you should verify and plan for by the time the hiring period you have planned for starts.

• An overall hiring plan for the company
• A space for each team to hire throughout the period for the different roles they have
• You have verified with cross-functional stakeholders about the role you’re adding
• You’ve answered all the questions in the section above
• You’ve started creating job descriptions with HR/Talent
• You’ve started thinking about how to hire this person (the interview questions or tasks in the hiring process)
• Once you have posted and started hiring for the role, you start thinking about what the next iteration of your team looks like for the next round.

Caveats to avoid

If you follow the above you should develop a lean and sustainable hiring plan which will help you and your team achieve your goals and contribute to the overall company objectives.

However, I cannot stress enough that all of this is a way to avoid mis-hiring or over-hiring—not to justify crunching your current team!

I’ve seen situations where hiring managers do not understand, or think they don’t have the time to plan, so they make rash decisions that either lead them to overhiring or not hiring at all (“Because it’s too much hassle, Mariya!”). 

The latter means that the extra work will fall onto current team members that are perhaps already at full capacity or not trained to take on these tasks. This is the surefire way to burnout your team.

I remember once having to advocate that our Director of Warehouse should not be cross-trained in technical customer experience (CX). 

On the face of it, it made sense to that leader because the person was in the right timezone and they had a lot of idle time as there wasn’t a lot to do in the warehouse. However, I argued that: 

a) The person will need to be trained up in something they were not hired to do (in some jurisdictions that is a legal issue too). 

b) This will take up more CX team’s time than it would for them to cover those tickets for a bit while we hire a person in the timezone.

c) This will be the most highly paid CX person anyone has ever hired 

d) Perhaps the supply chain team has other projects in mind they can work on, and their skills are better suited to make them work at capacity.

When you put it the way above, it really doesn’t make sense to try and burn out two different teams to try to save on hiring one junior customer experience associate.

Closing thoughts

A hiring plan takes time. It can be labour intensive, and it can make you think of things you don’t have ready answers to. However, that shouldn’t stop you from going through the process and trying to go a bit deeper into the planning to make it more sustainable and accurate.

As if right on time, just as I was writing this article, a friend reached out to me with the following story. 

They were in discussion with a company that liked their skills but, over the course of almost 9 months, kept changing the roles my friend was being considered for. 

This is a waste of everyone’s time and likely an indicator that they really didn’t have a plan in place when they engaged my friend in a discussion. 

It makes me think that they saw their experience and fell for the trap of “We’d love to have someone with that experience on board” without knowing what they would do with them.

Eventually, they ended up abruptly pulling out of the process, wasting everyone’s time and leaving a bitter taste.

I wish I could tell you this is a one-off example of a particularly bad candidate experience, but it’s not. It seems to be the norm in this “hire first ask questions later” environment that we’ve bred. 

I’ve been part of these scaling efforts myself—doubled even tripled teams in a year—but I’ve always tried to be the voice of challenge in those rooms. 

This has helped the teams I’ve worked with have a clearer goal in mind so that they can, in turn, give the right candidates the best candidate experience and maintain a great employer brand.

Hiring goals should be treated just like any other goals—every minute you spend planning before you execute like mad is at least a few minutes you don’t spend backtracking and wasting.

I’m not saying that this means you will never make people redundant, but it’s always healthy to question yourself from time to time, to check if you’re on the right path.

To you, hiring and firing may eventually end up looking like numbers or line items but, to people, this is their livelihood.

Some further resources to help you hire the right talent when you need it:

• Employer Branding: Where To Start And How To Keep It Authentic
• How To Create A Great Candidate Experience (Even Through Rapid Scaling)
• The Key To Focused, Engaging Interviews (+ Template)

For more on hiring and other people and culture-related matters, subscribe to the people managing people newsletter, delivered once a week to your inbox.

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You may be new to nudging in the workplace, but you’ve more than likely seen it your professional and personal life. 

If you’ve ever had a parent or a partner try to subtly influence your behaviour by making small changes like changing the size of your dinner plates (or wine glass), then congratulations—you’ve been nudged! 

In our professional lives, you’ve been subject to examples of nudging in the workplace that you probably didn’t even notice.

While we may think of nudging in a negative context, that’s generally not the case. Nudge theory looks at how nudging can be a positive in the workplace, and those small changes can make a big difference in overall workplace culture. 

Nudges do not happen by accident. Just like data-driven advertising, there’s no coincidence that an employer’s actions will ultimately impact results. For ‘nudgees’ these actions may not even be noticeable but they’re an effective tool when it comes to behavioral change.

In this article, we’ll look closer at nudging theory and what constitutes a workplace nudge. We’ll also dive deeper into what makes nudges effective. Lastly, we’ll list examples of nudging in the workplace that may work well for your team.

What is nudging?

Think of a nudge as a trick for the brain. A nudge is like an unconscious reminder for our brains to do something, usually to perform a task in a certain way. 

Think of the signs that we see every day and how they influence our behaviour. A no smoking sign is more of a prohibition, but a sign in a bathroom that advises employees to wash hands tells our brains that we should probably clean ours as well—even if we don’t work there.

Nudge theory takes this a step further. Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, authors of Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness helped lay the groundwork for nudge theory—about using nudges as a positive influence in our lives. 

Their original work was with the ‘urinal fly’—a small decal in a urinal which, forgive us, gave men a target to aim for.

The move is subtle, but it made a huge impact! Less mess around the urinal meant cleaner restrooms and fewer cleaning costs, and those sorts of positive changes led to a happier environment overall. Richard Thaler later won the Nobel Prize for his work in behavioral science.

There were also great examples of nudge theory during the pandemic. There were more obvious examples, such as the ones that encouraged vaccination and companies that offered incentives (financial or otherwise) to employees who got vaccinated. 

There were also simpler nudges, such as arrows on the floors of supermarkets to direct and separate traffic, or to remind shoppers of social distancing. 

One key element to nudge theory, also known as choice architecture, is exactly that—the freedom of choice. Nudging is not forcing or obeying someone to follow a rule, nor it is providing a significant incentive.

Rather, it is a subtle move to encourage them to make better choices. You’re never forcing employees to make a choice; rather, you’re simply nudging them in the right direction. 

Want to know how nudging might be helpful in influencing your workplace decision-making? Here are a few types of nudges that might work for your team:

Top ten examples of nudging in the workplace

Take the Stairs

If you want to encourage employees to take the stairs without berating them about their fitness, make taking the stairs easy and fun! Ensure that staircases are clearly marked, and consider fun signage in the stairwells to promote positive reinforcement. 

Some office buildings have even gone so far as to paint a flight of stairs next to an escalator using fun colors, or even install piano keys (think of the movie ‘Big’) so that those active workers can make music as they go. 

There’s always freedom of choice to use an escalator or elevator, but the nudge leads people to burn those few extra calories.

Congratulate a coworker

In remote workplaces, there are great examples of digital nudges that can be programmed into commonly-used software and apps. 

One example is a platform called Assembly, which allows team members to give each other formal recognition using the Slack app for great work or showing great effort. If not Assembly, there are other similar integrations available as well.

Even despite remote work, this recognition can be cashed in as collected for monetary gifts and other tangible rewards. While there is no penalty for not using the system, that recognition highlights people’s behavior at its best, and can help encourage employee engagement. 

See a leader, be a leader

Have you ever wondered why photos of the boss up around the office don’t seem to motivate employees? Think of where employees’ biases may be and how to work with those. 

Any strong biases against management will make employees feel like they’re being watched and judged, even if that wasn’t the goal.

Instead, try a positive reinforcement tactic by displaying pictures of great historical leaders – Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, etc. 

You can find local examples, or ones that are appropriate for your workplace, but let their qualities influence people’s behavior and generate behavioral change. 

Healthy snacks in full view

While workplaces need to be sensitive about criticizing employees’ eating habits, there are subtle types of nudges that will encourage a team to make better choices.

If a lunchroom is full of fruit as well as chocolate, and both are located in the same place with the same ease of access – who in their right mind would pick the fruit first?!?

Instead, put healthy snacks like fresh fruit, nuts etc. at easy access, or at eye level in a vending machine. That doesn’t mean that you need to get rid of chips, cookies, or chocolate – just consider moving them slightly out of view, or out of reach.

Encourage going full cycle

While most workplaces try and promote a culture of healthy living, nudge theory would suggest that there are better incentives to accomplish this goal than by simply pushing unwilling employees to sign up for a fitness challenge, or scolding them for making certain choices.

Instead, think about how employees are getting to work. While some employees may need to drive still, others might consider biking or carpooling if nudged to do so. Think installing bike racks and security cameras close to the front door or reserving prime parking spots for carpool vehicles.  

Set on repeat

Workplace nudging can be as simple as something on your digital calendar. There are several tasks that employees do in a day, from checking emails to posting on a company’s social media to any other series of tasks that should be done at regular intervals.

Consider setting calendar invites with an option to repeat the task at set intervals. If the goal is to have someone check email daily at 9 a.m., or post on the corporate Instagram 3x a week, set an ongoing invitation for them to do so. They might move the timing around as needed on certain days, but the reminder serves as a great nudge.

Promote mobility

Employers often want to see their teams stay healthy and fit, but of course want to be careful not to shame an individual’s choices. This is where nudge theory comes in, and can help employees to make better decisions.

We often think of workplaces as having fitness challenges among colleagues, but there are other ways to encourage movement as well. Introduce standing desks at work stations to encourage standing, or move the printer far away so that anyone who needs to print gets a few steps in.

Also build in breaks that encourage people to walk or even stretch while working from home. Employers can enable an option for ‘walking meetings’ vs. gathering in a stuffy conference room – allowing important conversations to happen while on the move. 

Socialize with others

None of us are islands, especially if we’re all doing remote work. Think about what brings your employees together, and the behavioral change that occurs as a result. 

Social media is how so many of us connect and socialize today, but social media alone is not sufficient to sustain those crucial workplace relationships. Instead, think about how you’ll host your corporate events and get togethers. 

Try a little workplace nudging by mingling departments at events, or choosing a venue that encourages team members to meet someone new. Set regular calendar invites for optional after-work hang-outs to make people feel welcome. If breaking into small groups, include a bowl of conversation-generating questions at each table. 

Power down

As workplaces focus on becoming more environmentally conscious, workplace nudging can provide great education both on the importance of being mindful about water and power usage, but also show a reality of just how much we consume day to day. 

Consider leaving signs by light switches and electrical outlets about how much power lights and devices are draining when not in use. Some workplaces may also opt for signs in the washrooms about wasted water from unnecessary extra flushes, or leaving sinks running (if not automatic).

One of the most common places these signs have been found in offices for the last few years is by the water cooler. As small paper cups move out of style, more and more water coolers are accompanied by signs about saving the environment through fewer disposable plastic water bottles, or the impacts of the bottled water industry on the planet. 

Where to nudge next

There are great case studies out there that talk about the importance of nudging and their impact on behavioral economics. The truth is that simple nudges work because they’re small reminders for our brain that we should do the right thing, and that we may even be rewarded for it. 

Related reads:

• 30 Creative Employee Recognition And Appreciation Ideas
• 35 Employee Engagement Ideas (Including Remote-Specific)
• An Easy Guide To Employee Surveys (With Questions)

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Some of us learn best in the quiet of our homes, working at our own pace. Others enjoy the stimulation of a group environment, benefitting from the energy of face-to-face conversations. 

Blended learning programs serve both groups equally, providing a number of different learning paths that cater to a variety of learning styles.

In this article, I’ll share how blended learning works, along with some key benefits of blended learning to help you decide if this model is the right fit for your team.

We’ll cover:

• What is blended learning?
• How does blended learning work?
• What is the difference between hybrid and blended learning?
• Why blended learning is effective.

What is Blended Learning?

Blended learning is a method of delivering educational content with both in-class and online components. It’s a flexible way to provide learners with the opportunity to engage with course materials at their own pace, while also providing in-class support with face-to-face, instructor-led modules.

Class time is an excellent venue for role-playing, brainstorming, and small group, collaborative team exercises. 

Online training allows learners to access learning resources outside a traditional classroom setting, and may include learning tools like videos, games, tutorials, quizzes, and social media group chats. 

Generally speaking, online coursework would be available via the learner’s home page in the learning management system (LMS).

In its purest sense, blended learning is a combination of in-person and e-learning resources. But some models will replace the face-to-face classroom component with a virtual classroom in which the learners remain connected to instructors via live webinars, video conferencing, and email or chat.

How Does Blended Learning Work?

Blended learning allows curriculum creators to tailor the learning experience to a variety of factors. Maybe you’re working with:

• Time restrictions 
• A geographically dispersed team
• A mix of tech-savvy learners and more traditional learners.

Blended learning programs can be delivered in an endless variety of configurations to suit your team’s needs.

Example: You might decide to have two longer face-to-face sessions, complemented by online, asynchronous materials like games, quizzes, and homework assignments.

Maybe you ask your learners to complete specific modules online before returning for their next in-person session. Once face-to-face, you can discuss everyone’s progress and provide feedback. This is sometimes referred to as the flipped classroom.

What is the Difference Between Hybrid Learning and Blended Learning?

Hybrid learning and blended learning share several overlaps. Both are flexible learning methods that contain online resources. However, in a blended learning model, learners might attend a few in-class sessions and complete online exercises asynchronously in between. 

In a hybrid model, in-class sessions are attended by face-to-face learners in the classroom as well as online learners who are synchronously watching a webcast of the same session.

Why Blended Learning is Effective

There are several reasons why implementing a blended learning model might be right for your team. Let’s take a look at a few of the most common:

1. Reach Every Learner

Everyone learns differently. For some people, face-to-face instruction, group work and in-person sessions are highly effective. For others, self-paced work accessed on their own time is the best way to reduce stress and retain knowledge. 

Workforces consisting of a wide range of age demographics will often find that some groups are considerably more comfortable with technology, while others prefer in-person communication.

Blended learning empowers you to reach every kind of learner where they’re at, providing options so that everyone can perform at their personal best.

2. Enhance Engagement and Knowledge Retention

Blended learning improves student engagement because it keeps things interesting, offering both the human element of in-person instruction and options for fun things like gamification online.

Further, countless studies have shown that learners benefit from engaging in a variety of practices when picking up a new skill. Scientists call this interleaving, as opposed to the traditional learning method called blocking (in which learners focus on one skill at a time).

Statistically speaking, interleavers outperform blockers, both immediately and over the long-term. Blended learning presents the perfect opportunity for interleaving, since learners are given a wide range of in-class and online activities to complete.

3. Cost Effective and Easily Scalable

Though the up-front costs of investing in an LMS can seem daunting, blended learning represents a dramatic cost-savings in the long run. In-person sessions can easily become costly when geographically dispersed team members must be flown in to participate. The costs of paying instructors and speakers add up quickly too.

Blended learning allows you to cut down on in-person sessions by providing complementary online materials. Blended learning programs are also easy to scale. Online resources can be made once and reused countless times. Teams at a variety of locations can use the same online resources, while supplementing with local class sessions.

How Learning Management Systems Can Help

The blended learning environment serves a variety of learning styles, can help you cut costs, and is easily scalable as your organization grows.

Implementing a blended learning model requires some up-front planning, and a lot of back-end technical support. That’s where a learning management system (LMS) can help.

An LMS is a software application that houses, tracks, and delivers your training content. Your LMS will assess learning goals at both the individual and organizational level, monitor progress as you move towards meeting those goals, and collect and present material for supervising the process. 

Learners can access their online materials from within the LMS, and trainers can receive real-time data on how the curriculum is being received.

If you’d like to improve the efficacy and efficiency of how your organization delivers blended learning materials, check out our favorite tools:

• The Best Learning Management Systems for Employee Training  

To learn more about blended learning, professional development, and providing learning resources:

• How To Create A Learning And Development Strategy In 7 Steps
• How To Start An Effective Mentoring Program In 6 Steps
• How To Create A Culture Of Learning (with Noah Rabinowitz from Moderna University)

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The strategic planning process is a bit like charting a course across the ocean before leaving port. Though you’ll surely encounter surprises once you embark, your strategy map will help you get back on track and keep your eyes on your destination no matter what the journey throws your way.

In this article, I’ll explain what strategic planning is and help you understand how to implement the strategic planning process in 5 steps.

What is Strategic Planning? 

In the words of Dwight Eisenhower:

Plans are worthless. But planning is everything.

Strong leaders understand that while things rarely go according to plan in the real world, the act of planning enhances our goal-setting, solidifies our mission and vision, and gives us a competitive advantage by clarifying what truly matters most.

Strategic planning is a process in which leaders map out their vision for an organization and establish the steps that will ensure that this vision becomes a reality. Strategic planning helps leaders communicate goals to the rest of the team, and make sure that everyone understands their role in achieving them.

A strategic plan generally covers the organization’s direction for the next three to five years. It will typically include both long-term and short-term day-to-day goals, your mission statement and vision for the company, and an action plan outlining the tactics you’ll use to make progress toward your goals.

What’s the Difference Between a Strategic Plan and a Business Plan?

A business plan is generally created when a business is launched or dramatically changes how they operate. A startup will typically need to make a business plan before approaching a bank for funding. A business plan includes basic information like:

• How you generate revenue
• Your industry and market
• Key stakeholders, including owners
• Financial projections

A strategic plan is typically created after the business is launched. It includes detailed strategic information about the business environment, including:

• Long term goals
• Key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Vision statement
• Mission statement
• SWOT analysis (including new opportunities)
• Strategic objectives 
• Strategy execution plan
• How you will track progress
• A rough time frame for achievement of business goals

In short, your business plan will contain foundational information about how you operate, and your strategic plan will be an in-depth roadmap demonstrating your primary operational plans and how senior leadership plans to execute them.

Why is Strategic Planning Important?

There are several benefits of strategic planning:

Establish Direction

Strategic planning assists you in goal setting and helps you develop a business strategy against which all your other decisions can be checked.

Move from Reactive to Proactive

Having a strategic plan allows you to proactively take steps toward your objectives and adapt to industry trends rather than reacting to catastrophes and making shortsighted decisions.

Improve Operational Efficiency

When your organization understands its priorities and the initiatives that will support them, you can set aside budgetary resources accordingly.

Enhance Resiliency

Companies that keep their strategic goals front of mind are more likely to bounce back and return to their roadmap after a setback.

Increase Profitability

Your strategic plan should be monitored, and actions checked against a variety of metrics to ensure that sales and marketing efforts are aligned with your organizational goals and enhance your market share.

What are the 5 Steps to the Strategic Planning Process?

Ideally, your strategic plan will be created by a small group of five to ten key stakeholders. This group is generally referred to as your management committee. Though you will involve other team members in the process, your management committee will be responsible for the primary decision-making along the way. 

Step 1 – Define your Strategic Position

In order to decide where you want to go, you need to fully understand where you are. Some key elements you’ll want to focus on here include:

• Market and industry data, including trends and any potential threats.
• Customer feedback, including areas for improvement and suggestions for additional services.
• Employee feedback, including company culture, business processes, and product information.
• SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats).

Step 2 – Confirm your Goals and Objectives

Determining your strategic goals will set the stage for the remaining steps of the strategic planning process. You’ll want to return to your business plan and re-acquaint yourself with the destination you initially set for the business. Revisit the following:

• Long-term goals: Where do you want to be in five to ten years?
• Organizational values: What matters to your team?
• Mission statement: What is your primary purpose?
• Vision statement: How do you execute your purpose in the market?
• Competitive advantage: What does your organization uniquely have to offer?
• Financial projections: Where do you expect to be in the next three years? Look at cash flow and potential growth and investment opportunities.

Step 3 – Create a Plan

With the information you’ve gleaned from steps one and two, you can now begin creating your plan document. This is the phase where your senior leadership, represented by your management committee, has the opportunity to share how you plan to achieve your goals. In this strategy formulation stage, consider:

• Your SWOT analysis and what priorities it revealed.
• Objectives for the first year. You will be updating this annually as time goes on, with new objectives each year based on your progression toward the organization’s goals.
• How will you measure your progress? Determine KPIs and key results using input from the management committee and the individual teams who will carry out the work. 
• Clarify which initiatives are most important and determine a budget for them over the next few years.
• A high-level roadmap of your timeline. When do you anticipate that certain activities will be completed? Map it out quarter by quarter as best you can.

Step 4 – Begin Implementation

When putting your plan into action, the key to success is communication. Does everyone understand the organization’s mission and strategic framework? Do they know what role they will individually play in achieving your long-term goals? From there, establish your KPIs for each phase, and ensure that everyone in the organization understands the metrics on which their performance will be measured.

Step 5 – Review and Revise

Effective strategic planning involves frequent monitoring and revising. Share your plan document with the organization and check back in with relevant teams to understand the progress you’ve made. Remember: This is a living document that can be altered and improved. Use your strategic plan to inform your short-term decision-making, and continue to tweak the plan as new insights arise.

Final Thoughts

Successful strategic planning has ripple effects that take hold throughout the organization. In determining and implementing the methodology required to meet your goals, adopting a business model that streamlines their achievement, and employing strategic thinking to meet or exceed the KPI targets, you’re ensuring that everyone in your organization is aligned with a singular vision. 

If your company is looking for support in creating your strategic plan, consider working with a tool that can help. Check out our list of the best strategic planning software platforms on the market today.

For more information on effective strategic planning, don’t miss these articles from our subject matter experts:

• Workforce Planning: What Is It And How To Do It
• How to Develop an HR Strategy: A Comprehensive Guide

To stay up-to-date on all the latest in strategic planning and other human resources concerns, subscribe to our newsletter. You’ll be the first to receive new articles, podcasts, how-to guides, tool reviews, and product exclusives.

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Employers have a duty to provide a safe work atmosphere, and maintaining it can help reduce their costs and liabilities. Today, developing a safety plan and implementing it both involve the use of technology. 

As more businesses rely on connected devices and digital applications, SaaS company solutions are gaining momentum. They have even aided in addressing safety plans for people returning to the workplace after shutdowns from the pandemic. 

Businesses have already been using SaaS products to help improve outcomes of marketing, daily operations, and more. 

This blog will cover the main ways that software can help reduce safety risks and improve outcomes.

1. Better Management of Incidents

One issue that is sometimes overlooked with safety planning is wasted time. In some cases, organizations have safety procedures and protocols that are still connected to a significant number of incidents. They may not have the time to thoroughly investigate incidents and their critical root causes or contributing factors.

Without necessary changes, the same incidents and injuries keep happening. One reason management is especially challenging is some organizations handle several tasks manually. 

The number of person-hours spent writing reports, auditing and analyzing can add up quickly. If safety teams or managers have access to SaaS solutions that aid in incident reporting and analysis, they have more time to manage incidents effectively or investigate complex issues. 

In addition to that, they may be able to develop efficient solutions to problems that threaten workplace safety. Also, they may have more time to conduct the necessary training after making those changes.

2. Maintaining a Strong Safety Culture

An important part of improving a variety of workplace safety outcomes is having a strong safety culture. 

Research shows that when employees demonstrate a higher level of safety culture behavior, the psychosocial hazards in their environment are reduced since they have a better attitude toward safety issues. 

Building a safety culture may seem like a challenge. However, connecting safety to every possible aspect of the company culture can help.

One study showed that employees who were more engaged at work were five times less likely to cause a safety incident due to lost time. When workers have what they need to communicate, observe and perform their jobs safely, they can be more accountable. 

Managers or leaders can utilize software products to help foster employee engagement, encourage ownership of duties and more. The key idea is to perpetuate a safety culture by giving employees the digital tools they need to maintain it. Doing that can help them feel more confident and connected.

3. Collecting Valuable Data

SaaS products provide a central place for all important safety data. Today, some solutions also include data collected from connected devices. 

IoT devices are evolving, and their ability to generate data in real-time is helpful in the workplace. Relaying information digitally offers the potential to improve outcomes. 

For example, imagine that a factory has many connected machines. The devices can generate data about usage and much more, and a SaaS program can consolidate it into insightful information about use trends or mechanical issues. 

To provide another example, consider an industrial plant that has many gas detectors. If they are connected devices that communicate with a SaaS program, it is easier to track the source and location of leaks at the time they happen. In situations where timing is critical to reducing safety risks, online tools can be especially valuable.

Safety managers or teams can use generated information to pinpoint problematic trends and develop solutions. For instance, if hazards are identified, managers can create proactive solutions before incidents happen. 

With some types of programs and devices, managers can also discover employees’ behavior-related risks. This helps them create targeted training to reduce risks.

It’s important to remember that SaaS tools are not meant to eliminate face-to-face interactions. They can reduce unnecessary interactions but are designed to enhance the quality of necessary interactions.

4. Reducing Delays With Real-Time Data

When safety managers have access to real-time data, they can learn about risks as they develop.

Using that information proactively, they can create solutions or address problems immediately instead of waiting to learn from the negative effects of incidents. 

An outdated process involves investigating incidents, analyzing information and then creating reports. That entire process can take a considerable amount of time, which can lead to delays. Meanwhile, the unaddressed risks may lead to other incidents happening during the process.

With modern SaaS solutions, managers can access data whenever they want to see critical safety information. They can provide an efficient on-the-spot training session instead of waiting for the delays associated with conducting an incident investigation, generating a report and organizing a safety meeting. 

Providing real-time feedback to workers as issues arise is also a helpful approach since the details are still fresh in their minds. In addition to reducing safety risks, this solution may reduce unnecessary expenses related to lost productivity and more.

Identifying and mitigating safety risks in the workplace is a continual challenge. Trying to manage risks associated with equipment, procedures and behavior can take a lot of time without the right tools. 

With SaaS, safety managers and leaders can maximize the usefulness of data, foster engagement among employees and find other ways to reduce risks. Today, there are plenty of customized solutions for businesses of all types and sizes. 

As a start, check out this list of the 10 Best Safety Management Software To Keep Your Staff Safe And Sound In 2022.

Got a lot of SaaS solutions to manage already? 10 Best SaaS Management Platforms To Organize All Your Apps

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We’re passionate about the world of work, and how we can make it better. To help satisfy our curiosity, 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 Ian Ziskin — President, EXec EXcel Group LLC – shares his insights with us.

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

I have been in the Human Resources and Leadership profession for over 40 years and was very fortunate to find a career I loved very early on. 

My first 28 years were spent working in large corporations with a wide variety of roles in HR cutting across multiple industries and many geographies. I have moved 11 times during my career. 

Toward the latter part of my corporate life, I served as the Chief Human Resources Officer for two companies, most recently Northrop Grumman in the aerospace and defense industry.

A little over 12 years ago, I founded my own coaching and consulting business, EXec EXcel Group LLC, which has been a much more entrepreneurial experience. 

My business portfolio includes coaching, consulting, board advising and membership, speaking, teaching, and writing. I am the author of four books, the most recent of which was published in June 2022 called, The Secret Sauce for Leading Transformational Change. 

I really enjoy helping clients be successful and I value the flexibility I have to do what I want, when I want, where I want, and with whom I want. I am very fortunate and grateful to have had a great family and career.

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

My friends would say I care about them and their lives, am a good listener and advisor, that I ask good questions, and am a stickler for being on time (to the point of being annoying). They would also say that I work too much but I’m very passionate about what I do, and that I love my family, sports, movies, pretzel nuggets, and Diet Dr. Pepper.

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

I took my first CHRO job in the telecommunications industry a little over 20 years ago, right before the industry completed imploded. 

The company went from growing like crazy to laying off 14,000 employees almost overnight. People did not like seeing me coming, because they knew layoffs would not be far behind.

It was a very difficult and challenging time, and probably the least fun I have ever had in a job, but it also toughened me up and taught me a lot about the importance of making difficult business decisions while also treating people with dignity and respect.

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

Find a void and fill it. There are a lot of frustrations and obstacles that remain ignored or poorly addressed. If you can solve problems for people and fix what needs fixing, people will value you and see you as a credible leader.

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?

To me, building a better world of work means creating a work environment where people feel seen, heard, valued, and respected as individuals and for what they can contribute to the team and organization. 

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

The primary blocker to building a better world of work is poor leadership. The best leaders set a tone of trust and investment in people, listen, coach and develop, do what they say they will do, and hold others accountable to the same standards.

Poor leaders do the opposite and are the main blockers to building a better world of work.

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?

I believe strongly in taking personal responsibility for making things better. That is one thing we all control… how we personally contribute to making things better. 

The best way to do so is to listen to people, find what is getting in the way of them doing their jobs to the best of their ability, remove obstacles, and provide them freedom and encouragement to do great things.

I would follow Elon Musk and do the exact opposite of everything he does as a people leader.

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

The recent movement toward remote/hybrid work, while still emerging and being figured out, is a very positive move toward a better world of work. 

This redefinition of work and the workplace requires unprecedented levels of flexibility and trust. I see that as a very positive trend.

I’m curious, 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 would follow Elon Musk and do the exact opposite of everything he does as a people leader.

He seems to be a visionary inventor who has absolutely no common sense about what it takes to lead people or build a better world of work.

How can our readers follow your work?

www.exexgroup.com and www.transformationalchangebook.com

Thank you for adding your voice to People Managing People’s interview series on How to Build a Better World of Work! 

Add your voice to the conversation

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

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Back in 2019, master Go player Lee Se-dol retired from the game (a devilishly complex strategy game similar to chess) due to the dominance of an aritifical intelligence program that ‘cannot be defeated’.

Poor Se-dol! But, outside the world of professional gaming, which other jobs is AI set to replace?

The short answer is potentially all of them, eventually! However, for the purposes of this article, we’ll focus on the near-term, 10-20 year range.

But first off…

What is AI?

AI (artificial intelligence) sits at the cutting edge of computer science. Fundamentally, it’s man-made machines exhibiting human-like intelligence to learn to solve problems and complete tasks.

Our despondent Go player, Mr Se-dol, was beaten by a program called AlphaGo, an advanced AI program developed by an Alphabet subsidiary called Deepmind. 

Without going into too much detail, AlphaGo uses an advanced machine learning method that utilises neural networks. As the name suggests, these neural networks imitate the way the human brain works—an idea borrowed from neuroscience.

When AlphaGo defeated the Se-dol, the world #1 at the time, it demonstrated a level of creativity never before seen in machines. It was a stunning victory, apparently, leading the defeated master to admit “I thought AlphaGo was based on probability calculation and that it was merely a machine. But when I saw this move, I changed my mind. Surely, AlphaGo is creative.”

AlphaGo brought new knowledge to the Go world. Eventually, the creators are hoping to apply the technology outside the world of competitive gaming, for example helping research teams find new cures to diseases or material scientists invent new materials.

Currently, AI is being used by people the world over to aid with everything from healthcare to customer service to brewing beer to building robot bees. 

So, rather than replacing jobs, the programs are working alongside human teams to help them do their jobs more effectively.

For now.

As alluded to in the intro, if at some point in the future, and some futurists think this could be as close at 2045, a general-purpose AI (one that is equal to, or likely more advanced than, a human in intelligence) is developed, then probably jobs and work will be a thing of the past for humanity (yay!).

But there are a lot of caveats around this breakthrough (doh!), so let’s reign it in and focus on roles and sectors where AI is already making an impact. 

What jobs could AI replace in the near future?

Organizations around the world are already taking advantage of AI to improve their services and operate more efficiently. According to a Zippia study, half of US companies are utilizing AI in some way.

The good news for us is that, currently, they’re great at automating away tedious, repetitive tasks e.g. data entry that nobody enjoys doing and are prone to human error.

But, as AI, computing and robotics become increasingly advanced, automation will begin to disrupt more skilled jobs at a large scale. The Zippia study predicts that AI could make 375 millions jobs obsolete in the next 10 years.

In his book, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order computer science and AI expert, Kai-Fu Lee, predicts that AI could replace 40-50 jobs in US in the next fifteen years.

These are the jobs that technologists such as Lee believe automation could potentially replace humans in the next 15-20 years.

Factory And Warehouse Workers

As you’re probably aware, a lot of factory work is carried out by machines with the help of humans. However, as robots get smarter, the human element is rapidly diminishing. 

For example, to be able to add an affordable, mass-produced option to their line, Tesla set about automating their entire production process for the Model 3 and, after some “production hell”, just about achieved it. 

While people are still needed to maintain and upgrade the machines and deal with anomalies, there are no people in the production process itself. In a way, because of the Model 3’s AI-enabled autopilot capabilities, this is robots building robots!

Taking Tesla’s “Alien Dreadnaught” (Musk’s words, of course) as an example, it’s not difficult to see how moderate advances in AI could remove humans entirely from factories and warehouses, bar a few techy engineers on standby. 

Indeed, Amazon believes it’s around 10 years way from fully-automating its fulfillment centres.

Customer Support

AI Chatbots are capable of taking care of an increasing number of customer service tasks. By now you’ve probably dealt with a chatbot to get an answer to a query you had about a product or service.

Chatbots use a branch of AI called natural language processing (NLP) to hold conversations with customers and solve their problems.

Currently, these are pretty adept at handling repetitive questions that annoy customer service agents, leaving the smarter, more emotionally intelligent humans to deal with the more complex cases they prefer dealing with.

Some of these chatbots are already getting pretty advanced (Google’s Dialogflow really impressed me a few years back), and it can be hard to tell if you’re talking to a human or not. 

Therefore, it’s not difficult to imagine them being able to handle all but the most complex cases in the near future, especially as people get more used to the idea of them.

So, while humans will likely still be needed in some capacity, for example to help train chatbots, there’s a real chance that AI can replace customer service representatives in the near future.

Truckers

Self-driving vehicles, while not quite here yet, are edging closer to becoming a reality. They’re already passing tests globally, and some think that completely autonomous trucks could be on the roads making deliveries as soon as 2025.

It’s predicted that the rise of autonomous trucking will happen in phases, with less human oversight needed at each phase.

I’m betting that humans won’t be removed form the equation entirely for a little while yet, but the amount of human truckers freight companies need will be significantly reduced in the next 10-15 years.

Accounting

Some account and bookkeeping programs utilize AI to handle basic accounting tasks such as bank reconciliations and risk assessments.

This has lead some to decry that AI is coming for accountants! However, these tasks are pretty repetitive, amounting largely to data entry and number crunching, stuff that accountants don’t enjoy doing. 

Your accountant’s time is freed up for tasks they do enjoy, such as using their experience and knowledge to analyze data and advise their clients—a mix of hard and soft skills and intuition that currently AI isn’t close to replicating.

Radiologists

AI has a lot of useful applications in healthcare, for example helping to diagnose patients by analysing scans against huge datasets of previous cases.

In another recent victory-of-sorts for AI, a new model managed to score higher than 72% of general practitioner doctors when tasked with diagnosing written test cases of realistic illnesses. This is presumably why some forsee the role of radiologist becoming obsolete in the near future. 

But radiologists aren’t scared. 

While admittedly the AI can help with an important part of the medical process—diagnoses—there are still plenty of other duties that they perform (for example performing ultrasounds) that AI is a long way from being capable of.

Also, can you imagine receiving a medical diagnosis with no qualified human involved at all? I’ll leave it there.

Paralegals

Paralegals spend much of their working lives researching cases and reviewing contracts. This involves sifting through large amounts of data and presenting it to lawyers, often under tight time constraints.

Need to crunch a lot of data quickly? Enter AI! One piece of tech used by JP Morgan takes seconds to review what previously took humans 360,000 hours.

So, if a lot of the work that paralegals are being employes for is being taken by machines, are paralegals going to be phased out?

Paralegals and law academics think not. Like accountants, AI technology frees up paralegals time to work on more value-add, higher level issues such as finding patterns to improve processes and save money. The question remains though, how many will still be needed?

Middle managers

Middle managers are divisive. Some view them as ineffective, weak and incompetent, while others respect the important role they play in organizations. Really, it depends on the kind of manager you have!

Depending on your stance on the matter, it may or may not surprise you that some claim AI can replace middle managers. The rationale behind this is that much of the middle managers’s role—assigning work and ensuring targets are met, can be learned by an AI. 

The timeframe? 8 years.

But we’re dubious.

Properly managing people requires social and emotional intelligence e.g. care, empathy, motivation, team-building, coaching, and listening that are in the general-purpose AI realm.

Again, AI can help with the admin side of things (something most managers are surely happy to do away with) as well as forecasting. This frees up their time for the people management side of the job. 

AI the job creator?

A lot of focus is on AI and job loss, but what about AI as a job creator? One study by PwC predicts that job losses as a result of AI automation will be offset by economic growth and new jobs created as a result. 

New jobs that AI will help create are AI and machine learning engineers (unsurprisingly), data scientists, software developers and business transformation specialists. Quite specialist, I’m sure you’ll agree.

What’s evident from the above list is that people are going to require training and upskilling and reskilling to keep pace with the demands of the modern workplace!

There’s never a better time to invest in learning and development.

People Managing Robots

People have been scared of machines taking their jobs for generations. In fact, reading articles about robots taking jobs increases that fear, especially as sensationalism is commonplace in the media.

If you’re interested where your job stands in all this, there’s a website called willrobotstakemyjob, which uses, you guessed it, a machine learning algorithm to predict the probability of a job becoming automated. 

Of course, it’s all speculative at this stage, but there’s no doubt that emerging technologies will continue to impact the way we work.

While early in the 20th century some predicted machines would be doing everything for us by now, and humans would be working a mere 15 hours a week (we wish!), today there are more people working then ever before!

The job market has adjusted before, and maybe those would-be-truckers or factory workers will end up in more human-facing jobs, such as teachers or care workers, or programming the new generation of AI tools.

We’re fascinated by the future of work and the role new technologies could play, so look out for upcoming articles in the People Managing Robots series.

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Office space management is about so much more than desk placement. It’s about creating the best possible environment for your team to thrive, and making sure that every square inch shines with potential.

Do you remember the scene from “Step Brothers” when Will Farrell and John C. Reilly built bunk beds in their shared bedroom? “Look at all this floorspace! So much space! So many activities!” they cried. 

Suddenly they were making plans to open a store and conduct a step class where once there was only room to sleep. Such is the magic of effective space management.

In this article, I’ll share the benefits of office space management and the steps you’ll need to take to optimize your space.

• What is office space management?
• What are the benefits of office space management?
• Steps for optimizing your office space

 Let’s dive in.

What is Office Space Management?

Office space management involves researching, planning, and optimizing how your organization is utilizing space across your real estate portfolio. The process typically uses real-time data regarding space usage, available square footage, occupancy rates, real estate costs, and a variety of other metrics to produce plans and conduct forecasting.

Since the pandemic, workspace needs have changed dramatically. Where many teams were entirely in-person pre-covid, many have now transitioned to a hybrid work model in which physical spaces can be treated with a more flexible approach.

Hybrid workplaces will likely only have a few full-time on-site employees with most popping in occasionally. When they do, services like desk booking and hoteling, conference room booking, visitor management, and check-ins have the potential to drastically improve efficiency.

Space management tools monitor real-time and historic space allocation data to surface underutilized spaces and provide suggestions for how to transform them into more valuable floor plans. 

Maybe you discover that some of your meeting rooms could be repurposed as a hot desking area, or  seating arrangements for remote workers are best relegated to a specific area of the layout. Maybe two office locations can be combined into one. Office space management means using your available space to better serve your team and business.

What are the Benefits of Office Space Management?

There are several benefits of office space management. Let’s take a look at three of the most impactful:

Improves Employee Satisfaction

Adjusting your space management strategy can improve employee satisfaction by making it easier for team members to conduct their tasks within your work environment. Think about it:

• If an employee has to fight for a desk every time they visit an office, they’ll endure unnecessary stress and anxiety that could otherwise be soothed by using a mobile app to book the space in advance. 
• If on-site, staff must choose a new desk every day based on transient employees who come and go, they won’t feel as valued in their roles.

Office space planning is an employee-centric activity with the potential to show your employees that their needs matter.

Realize Cost Efficiencies

For the same reasons that office space management improves carbon footprint, it can also save money. Holding underutilized spaces in a real estate portfolio is costly, especially when the organization is paying to heat and light them daily.

By gaining an understanding of current and historical space utilization, companies can decide to condense spaces into more efficient configurations, surrendering leases or even selling off pieces of their portfolio to free up working capital.

Decreases Carbon Footprint

Environmentally conscious businesses keep an eye on electricity, heat, and water utilization to ensure that valuable natural resources aren’t going to waste. Optimizing your space can decrease the strain on the grid by narrowing the number of locations that are eating up resources.

Similarly, when employees are given the option of remote work, organizations can cut their carbon footprint by cutting back on commute times. When a company uses property management to shift seating allocations and create more sustainable options, the planet benefits too.

Steps for Optimizing Your Office Space

Now that we understand the benefits of space management, let’s take a look at how to implement office space planning in 5 steps:

Step One: Analysis

The space planning process begins with understanding your existing data. Take inventory of current metrics like:

• Technology used in the space
• Total square footage
• Total workplace capacity
• Capacity of each individual space
• Function of each area of the office.

Step Two: Use Tools to Track

Effective tracking is best done with the right tools. An integrated workplace management system (IWMS) can assist you with both planning and carrying out your space management strategy, including functions like meeting room booking and hot desking. 

Step Three: Ask the Team

Employee feedback is crucial to developing a space management strategy that works for everyone involved. Consider sending out a survey to employees. Ask questions like:

• How would you rate your workspace?
• Do you feel supported in completing your tasks at work?
• How can we improve the in-office experience?
• What’s your biggest challenge when visiting the office?

Step Four: Establish Goals

From the feedback you receive from staff, you’ll be able to narrow down the central objectives for your optimization plan. How can these goals be achieved using the space that you currently have?

In re-allocating resources, office space management software can be an invaluable tool to assist you in dreaming up new solutions and building out floor plans to support them.

Step Five: Implementation

To effectively implement your office space management plan is an ongoing process. Past the initial launch, you’ll need to continuously monitor utilization and regularly gather feedback from your team. This way you can quickly identify problems and create adaptive solutions.

How can office space management software help?

Office space management software can handle many of the tedious administrative tasks associated with office space management. 

These tools allow employees to place self-serve bookings for desks, meeting rooms, and parking spaces, and also assist you in creating interactive floor plans to forecast and reimagine your space utilization.

To help choose, check out our list of the best office space management software platform on the market today.

And, for more information on the modern workplace, don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter. You’ll be the first to know about brand new articles and podcast episodes as soon as they drop.

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Change is happening faster than ever before. In organizations across the globe, people can likely point to numerous significant changes in working processes, customer expectations, and communication preferences. 

Team members, business leaders, and external stakeholders have changed the expectations of what it means to “work effectively” or “contribute value.” Organizational change initiatives are popping up everywhere and the needs are vast. 

Leading change and helping groups of people escape the status quo is a daunting task often riddled with misleading information, false assumptions, and problem-solving methods that only try to change a few small things in the hope that will be enough. 

Leaders facing the challenge of influencing and navigating change in our evolving environment have two choices

1. Make others change
2. Support others as they adapt to the change themselves. 

Gone are the days where the command and control leadership style is the gold standard. Now, command and control leaders be considered egotistical and, ultimately, weak.

Today, leaders with the most influence are those that help people navigate change effectively.

In today’s world, strong leaders don’t intimate their employees to do their bidding. Instead, they guide, coach, and influence followers to adapt, navigate change, and build capabilities to accomplish the team’s most important goals. That’s adaptive leadership at the core. 

Through overseeing mergers and acquisitions, I learned the unique value of adaptive leadership and leading adaptive change.

In this article, I take a proactive approach towards helping leaders understand their role in leading change across their organization by leveraging the adaptive leadership model and six key behaviors of adaptive leaders. 

We’ll cover:

• What Is Adaptive Leadership
• Types Of Adaptive Leadership Challenges
• Principles Of Adaptive Leadership
• Qualities Of Adaptive Leaders
• Examples Of Adaptive Leadership
• Adaptive Leadership Criticisms
• How To Develop Your Adaptive Leadership Skills.

Let’s dive in.

What is adaptive leadership?

Interestingly, there are differing opinions to be found across leadership-focused publications about what exactly adaptive leadership it.

For example, some articles state adaptive leadership is about the leader adapting. This— according to the authors of the theory—is inaccurate. 

In this article, I present adaptive leadership as it was communicated by the theory creators themselves, Harvard University professor Ronald Heifetz and his colleagues Marty Linsky and Alexander Grashow.

Adaptive leadership theory, and the practice of adaptive leadership, focuses on the impact leaders have as they encourage people to adapt—to face and deal with problems, challenges and changes. 

The goal of adaptive leadership is to encourage people to adapt, change and grow by learning new ways of being so they may effectively meet their current and future challenges. 

Adaptive leadership is not about adapting to different situations and solving problems for people. 

Adaptive leadership is follower-centric, meaning, your job as an adaptive leader is to help others navigate change vs. figuring out how to be the change yourself. 

Adaptive leadership is about helping others to face difficult challenges and holding space or creating opportunities for people [followers] to learn new skills or methods to handle the problems themselves, including supporting required changes in perceptions, behaviors, beliefs and attitudes. 

Leaders who leverage adaptive leadership theory utilize a loose recipe of leadership behaviors and activities to guide followers through change.

Adaptive leaders help others achieve collective goals by:

• Mobilizing people, setting them in motion
• Motivating people, giving them the energy to accomplish the task
• Organizing people, providing structure for the work ahead
• Orienting people, sending people in the right direction
• Focusing people’s attention on what is most important.

This means adaptive leadership is not about the leader changing to meet the needs of the people. Instead, adaptive leadership is about leaders helping people [followers] to adapt to navigate the changing environment successfully. 

Types of Adaptive Leadership Challenges

Adaptive leadership theory characterizes all challenges leaders face as either adaptive, technical or a combination of both, offering a process-focused approach to helping followers navigate change associated with each type of challenge.

In the Adaptive Leadership model, problems or challenges workers face are either: 

Technical Problems

Problems clearly defined with known solutions that can be implemented through existing organizational procedures. 

Technical problems are often easy to identify and can be quickly solved by an authority or expert. Solving technical problems requires knowledge and the ability to execute. 

Example: Your HRIS is currently not allowing new reports to be created. This has happened before, and you were able to resolve the issue by calling the vendor and having them check your account. 

Adaptive Problems

Problems that are not clearly defined and that do not have a clear solution. Adaptive problems require changes in values, beliefs, roles, relationships, and approaches to be successful.

Solving adaptive problems requires innovation, experimentation and learning and, often, adaptive challenges impact people’s emotions. In fact, in adaptive challenges, people are often part of the problem!

Example: A midsize, family-owned software company merges with another small software company.

The merger creates confusion and chaos between employees of both organizations as the culture, hierarchy, and processes between the two companies are vastly different. 

The new leadership of the combined company must align and integrate the two groups of staff, and deliver value to the combined set of customers, without losing too much revenue in the process. 

Some problems are purely technical, but there are many problems that come bundled and are both technical and adaptive. Any technical problem that involves a change in human behavior, such as the use of a new system, is both a technical and adaptive problem. 

Some problems are purely adaptive. These purely adaptive problems are often human behavior-centric and do not have a known or process-driven solution. 

The single biggest failure in the exercise of leadership is to treat adaptive challenges like technical problems, and therefore to apply technical solutions. The need to differentiate between technical and adaptive challenges is crucial.

Ronald Heifetz

A tip for identifying what type of change you’re facing: a crisis is often an indicator of an adaptive problem. Technical fixes will not resolve an adaptive problem. 

Adaptive leadership is especially concerned with helping people [followers] solve adaptive problems as it defines methods to address adaptive or adaptive/technical challenges. 

Principles of Adaptive Leadership

The model of adaptive leadership focuses on leader behaviors and the adaptive work required to lead followers in navigating and solving situational challenges that are both technical and adaptive or purely adaptive in nature.

The adaptive leadership model highlights six key leadership behaviors that are used together in a non-linear fashion to support followers in navigating change and solving problems. 

The six leader behaviors of adaptive leadership are: 

1. Get on the Balcony

Understand the big picture and gain a clear view of reality while leaving personal issues on the floor, seeing the forest through the trees.

2. Identify the Adaptive Challenge

Distinguish between technical and adaptive challenges

Four types of Adaptive Challenges:

1. Gaps between espoused values and behavior
2. Competing commitments e.g. quality vs. cost
3. Elephants in the room
4. People avoiding work. 

3. Regulate Distress

Help others recognize the need for change without being overwhelmed by it. To do this, a leader must: 

• Create a holding environment or a safe place to discuss everything and ask tough questions
• Provide direction, protection, orientation, conflict management and productive norms
• Regulate their own personal distress and the distress of workers, specifically, keeping it in the productive range or not going into a distructive space. 

4. Maintain Disciplined Attention

Encourage people to focus on the tough work they need to do and keep at it! 

5. Give the Work Back to the People

Avoid micro-managing and empower individuals to solve problems or create solutions in ways that are a good fit for the team. 

6. Protect Leadership Voices from Below

Consider the ideas of everyone and pay special attention to people that are marginalized or even deviant in the group. All voices are important to consider when solving adaptive problems. 

Leaders who effectively embody the adaptive leadership approach, and desired leader behaviors, create an environment where Adaptive Work can occur.

In this space, leaders and followers engage in the holding environment interactively, where they identify, test, and reflect on their efforts in solving problems. 

When combined with the leader behaviors, the holding environment created by adaptive leaders allows people a safe space to experiment, fail fast, and learn about what might be a good solution to a current or future adaptive problem.

It is in the holding environment that people learn how to adapt to change themselves and build self-efficacy for tackling future adaptive challenges. 

There is no prescribed order for the leader behaviors to follow, thus, adaptive leadership incorporates many of the behaviors concurrently and interdependently with some being more important than others depending on the situation. 

Overall, adaptive leadership works best when leaders engage in all of the identified leader behaviors with the intention of helping followers do adaptive work. 

Qualities of Adaptive Leaders

While not directly included in the behavior set for leaders by Heifetz, the following qualities are often associated with Travis Bradberry’s definition of adaptive leadership based upon research associated with his book, Leadership 2.0, where he sought to uncover what skills set adaptive leaders apart. 

In my experience, these qualities are beneficial to have in a leader attempting to guide others through change. 

• Emotional Intelligence – EI or EQ, a set of skills that help us understand our own emotions and the emotions of others so we can manage them effectively and build relationships. 
• Organizational Justice – Fairness in decision-making, sharing information effectively, and being genuinely concerned about an outcome that is right for impacted people.
• Character – Leadership that is transparent and forthcoming. Admits mistakes, learns and moves forward with a focus on authenticity and realness. 
• Development – Continuous learning and innovation. Lifelong learning and application to real-world scenarios. Running the experiment, failing fast and always seeking to improve.

These adaptive leadership qualities, while not directly related to Heifetz’s adaptive leadership behaviors, do serve the model by describing some key elements of what may make an adaptive leader effective and well-prepared to help others navigate change and thrive. 

Examples of Adaptive Leadership

As mentioned in the intro, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are significant change events impacting every aspect of the organization and the experience of being an employee in said organization. 

When people experience the impacts or shock of being acquired or merging with another organization, they face many challenges, both technical and adaptive, throughout the lifecycle of the organizational integration. Inevitably, they’ll look to leaders for support in navigating change to reach a new normal. 

In my work at Smarsh, I lead the initial stages of acquisition integration for acquired companies. 

In other words, when Smarsh acquires an organization, it’s my job to partner with the leaders of the acquired organization to inform team members about the change in ownership and get them well on their way to becoming effective employees of Smarsh. 

Along the way, we always face technical, technical/adaptive and purely adaptive challenges. 

Here are a few examples of technical, technical/adaptive and adaptive challenges we face in M&A integration from the perspective of the acquiring organization: 

Technical Challenges (easy to understand, fixable by someone that knows how)

1. Get census report from acquired company’s HRIS
2. Connect network infrastructure between companies
3. Update LinkedIn company page indicating the new company name.

Technical/Adaptive Challenges (harder to understand, complex, fixable by someone who knows how and can experiment, exercise adaptive leadership behaviors and adapt their way to a successful solution)

1. Set up all acquired company employees in payroll and HRIS systems
2. Onboard acquired company employees to new email systems
3. Consolidate customer billing systems and processes.

Adaptive Challenges (hard to understand, easy to deny, complex, fixable through practicing adaptive leadership behaviors and leading others in adapting their way to a successful solution) 

1. Define new organizational hierarchy for combined organization
2. Commit to combined sales team incentives for combined deals
3. Navigate healthcare plan changes for acquired company employees.

For each category of challenges, there are proven techniques to get going towards solving these problems.

Technical challenges are the most straightforward, followed by technical/adaptive challenges and, finally, purely adaptive challenges which require significant collaboration, innovation, experimentation and learning. 

As a leader working to lead folks through these changes, I would constantly be looking at the six adaptive leader behaviors and checking in with each one over time, in a non-linear fashion, to be sure that I’m able to create space (holding environment) for adaptive work to occur within my teams.

Some of the behaviors will be more outwardly visible to others, but they are all important to creating an environment where people can experiment, innovate, fail fast and learn. 

As you approach various types of challenges, consider adaptive leadership as a tool to provide insights and guidance for good practices in each step of the non-linear adaptive leadership framework, focusing on the behaviors and activities of the leader as they lead their followers through change.

Adaptive Leadership Criticisms

Adaptive leadership is quite strong in that it provides a non-linear process, variance in types of challenges to be addressed, and specific behaviors to embody when leading others through change.

Personally, I would argue that adaptive leadership foundations and methods are always worth trying when considering technical/adaptive and adaptive problems. 

With this said, adaptive leadership is somewhat new in comparison to other leadership theories (such as transformational leadership), which means adaptive leadership has not had the same opportunity for rigorous empirical research.

In addition, a criticism of adaptive leadership is the fact that it does not include a moral dimension and the model also lacks a connection to how doing adaptive work leads to socially useful outcomes such as those involving diversity, equity, inclusion and organizational justice. 

More research is required in these areas to expand empirical evidence for adaptive leadership while improving the theory’s connections to social justice issues, especially in the context of adaptive or technical/adaptive challenges.

How to Develop Your Adaptive Leadership Skills

An adaptive leader is constantly learning and growing. They are open to new ideas and ways of doing things.

Here are some tips for developing your skills as an adaptive leader:

1. Learn from others

There’s a lot of wisdom to be found in the experiences of others. Seek out mentors and other leaders who can help you grow and develop your skills toward becoming an adaptive leader. 

Apply the adaptive leadership model in your review of case studies and consider if the challenges faced are technical, technical/adaptive, or purely adaptive in nature. 

Learn to identify what type of problem you and the team are facing, and consider what additional adaptive forces may be at play, especially when considering a technical problem. 

2. Be open to change and invest in your follower relationships 

Leaders who are adaptable are not afraid of change, and they know that flexibility is essential in order to be successful. Learn to lead others in being open to change as well. 

Creating adaptive space for experimentation and being open to change will create a culture of innovation and trust. Trust is key. 

3. Keep the adaptive leadership model handy and refer to it often

One of the best ways to make a practice permanent is to keep it visible and refer to it often. 

Teach your colleagues about adaptive leadership and ask them to consider how to create space for adaptive work in your organization. 

When you hit a roadblock, consult the adaptive leader behavior list and consider if there’s an opportunity to exercise any of the behaviors to create space for followers to adapt towards a positive outcome.

Practice these three steps to gain clarity and determine how to move forward in the context of adaptive work: 

1. Observe
2. Interpret
3. Intervene

Repeat this exercise to continue experimenting and learning how to lead effectively through change. 

Over time, your understanding of the scenarios at hand and your navigation skills will improve. 

Of special note, be sure to “get on the balcony” early and often. In my experience, it’s rarely about what it’s about—so get up there and see what’s actually going on!

4. Stay current with trends and changes in your industry 

Adaptive leaders need to be aware of the latest developments in their field so that they can stay informed such that they can identify a technical or adaptive change.

Read industry journals, attend conferences, and network with other professionals in order to stay informed and consider what current or upcoming changes in your environment might influence a technical change to become adaptive or vice versa. 

Has something changed such that you can make the right thing the easy thing? Amazing. 

5. Practice self-reflection

A big part of being an adaptive leader is being able to reflect on what has happened in your organization and how your behavior as a leader has influenced the behaviors or attitudes of followers (both positively and negatively).

Take time for self-reflection and ask others for feedback so that you can continue to grow and develop as a leader who seeks to create space for followers to do their best adaptive work. 

Get ready to help others navigate change!

Are you ready to support people in navigating change? 

Get started with the behaviors above and start talking with your colleagues about the difference between technical, technical/adaptive and adaptive problems! 

If you’ve found this helpful, subscribe to People Managing People to stay up to date on the latest people-centric trends and opportunities to become a stronger leader. 

Some further resources to help you on your leadership journey:

• Clarity, Responsibility, And Accountability (CRA) Model Of Leadership
• How To Become An Effective Change Leader
• People Management Tips For New And Experienced Managers
• 10 Best Leadership Development Programs to Grow Future Leaders in 2022
• How To Master Self-Leadership To Become A Better Leader (with Dave Ulrich)

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