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Making Your Work More Meaningful

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Curiosity is critical to professional success. A curious mind will spot and solve problems, while being unafraid to try something new. It will seek out the insights of others, and open itself to expanded thinking. A curious person will never succumb to apathy, instead pushing consistently for growth, innovation, and improvement. Anyone seeking to build a successful career must embrace curiosity.

But curiosity isn’t just essential to professional advancement — it’s central to crafting purpose and meaning at work. We all want to feel that our work is meaningful, and we all have an opportunity to make it so. But it takes curiosity — about ourselves, our work, and the people we work with — to unlock deeper purpose each day.

Craft Your Work

One of the best ways to enhance the meaning you get from work is through job crafting — the art of making small changes to your work life to turn the job you have into the job you want. The idea is that by making small changes to your work, you can tailor it to your unique passions, personality, and interests in a way that maximizes its meaning to you and others. My favorite example is Curtis Jenkins, a Dallas bus driver who managed to revolutionize his position to create what reporters called a “yellow bus utopia” while changing hundreds of lives. 

Curiosity is a necessary pre-condition for job crafting. It starts with a self-evaluation. Ask yourself questions such as what am I good at (really)? What do I love to do? What makes me happy on the job? A thoughtful self-understanding explored deeply and with an open-mind can provide the foundation upon which job-crafting is built. 

Then, apply this self-awareness to the job: 

  • What elements of my job could I tweak to be more meaningful for me and more impactful for others? 
  • Can what I currently do be done differently? 
  • Is my job, as structured, solving the most important problems — for the organization and those we serve — in the best ways? 

To get started on this practice, make a list of the core people you serve in your work, then list the outcomes of your job that help to serve them well. Then reflect on your current tasks and see if there are ways in which you could serve those people as well or better by doing your work differently. You may find ways in which to craft your work that are both better for them and more meaningful for you.

Make Work a Craft

The second way to make work more meaningful is to make it a craft. For much of history, people would often practice professions inter-generationally. Trades like farming, carpentry, and cobblery might pass generation to generation in a family. And often a person would painstakingly perfect the craft over a lifetime. This quest for perfection and constant improvement created the most memorable achievements in history — from the murals of the Sistine Chapel to breakthroughs in genetics and the elegant simplicity of the original Mac. 

This commitment to craftsmanship offers a sense of purpose in and of itself. As I explain in my book, we all gain meaning from work well done. There’s intrinsic motivation and purpose in knowing that we’ve put our best efforts into something, that we’ve honed a craft in a way that challenges us.

But how can we find opportunities for craft in our modern jobs? After all, building financial models or leading a team in a factory can feel a bit distant from Michelangelo’s historic masterworks or the genius of Steve Jobs. But craft is not about historical impact. It’s about self-improvement and a quest to push the limits of our own performance — to take on new challenges and achieve something hard and unique. When I was an analyst at McKinsey, this looked like building beautiful Excel models with elegant formulas that could last clients years. I did this whether the partners noticed or not because I took pride in challenging and improving myself. In your job, it’s something else. Curiosity can unlock it. 

Ask yourself: 

  • What are the core elements of your job that require excellence? 
  • What skills do you need to perform that job well? 
  • What are one or two areas you can focus on now to make a craft, and how can you improve day-by-day until you do those things better than anyone else and to the best of your ability? 

To begin, pick one area of your work you’d like to try to hone and perfect. Make this something you enjoy that is important to your job. Then assess the 5-10 ways you could make it better and begin working to improve them and challenge yourself. Keep notes each day or save old versions sequentially so you can see your improvement over time.

Connect Work to Service

There’s almost nothing in life that improves our sense of well-being and purpose like service to others. Numerous studies have shown that acts of service have an immediate impact on happiness and fulfillment. And in my own life, I’ve rarely felt as purposeful as when building a Habitat for Humanity home with colleagues, serving in a soup kitchen, or reading to kids at a local school.

Service doesn’t have to be confined to volunteer work in a community, however. As I’ve outlined in a previous article, there are at least six opportunities to serve others in any job: clients or customers, colleagues, capital, community, partners, and people we love. Knowing this and seeking opportunities for service in each of these areas can bring meaning to work. 

But identifying the people we serve and ways to serve them requires deep-seeded curiosity. Consider these questions: 

  • Who are my clients? 
  • What do they need? 
  • What are the key obstacles to their well-being that I’m helping to overcome in my work, and how can I do it better? 
  • Which colleagues need my help the most? 
  • How can I effectively offer that with no expectation of return? 
  • Which two or three people could I best serve today?

These questions, founded in curiosity, are at the heart of service to others. Pick two of the six areas you like above — colleagues and customers for example. Think of 2-3 individuals in each of those two groups you could serve better and spend the next month trying to really understand them, and ways to use your work to serve them well. 

Invest in Positive Relationships

In social science literature, perhaps nothing is as central to happiness as meaningful positive relationships with others. Such relationships are essential to Martin Seligman’s PERMA framework for flourishing and the findings of the Harvard Grant Study that “Happiness is love.” And those findings are echoed in the works of many others.

Relationships aren’t confined to our personal lives. Each workday we spend more than 8 hours with work colleagues, whether remotely or in person. And trying to navigate work in the absence of meaningful relationships is a recipe for disappointment. Positive relationships at work can help us to flourish, can make others happy, and can create extraordinary corporate cultures. 

At work, as at home, relationships rest on empathy and curiosity. We can’t have a relationship of mutual care and respect with someone if we don’t display a genuine curiosity for that person. Ask: 

  • Who are they? 
  • What matters to them? 
  • What are their anxieties and fears, passions, and purpose? 
  • On any given day, how are they feeling? 
  • What are they interested in intellectually? 

Constantly approaching others with curiosity will naturally build your own empathy and show those people you care — creating meaningful relationships in the process. When you are interacting with work colleagues over the next month or two, consciously make a game of trying to know them better. Ask more questions than you answer. And carve out time for conversations and interactions with your colleagues that don’t just accomplish your work tasks but (in a professional way) enhance the relationship you have with them. Improving your work relationships will make you and those around you happier, and it will probably make you more productive as well. Curiosity is undoubtedly essential to professional success, but it’s also at the heart of purpose. Living with greater curiosity at work can help us to craft jobs and professional environments that help us and others flourish.

CURIOUS ABOUT THE IMPACT OF OUR UNBIASED HR SOLUTIONS?

Take the first step towards transforming your remote work culture by requesting a free demo assessment from Great People Inside.        

Our team of experts will guide you through the assessment process, showcasing the effectiveness and value of our tailored solutions for your organization.        

During the demo, you will have the opportunity to explore the comprehensive features and functionalities of our psychometric assessments, experiencing firsthand how they can empower your HR strategies and drive positive outcomes. From personality assessments to cognitive abilities and team dynamics evaluations, our assessments provide valuable insights to enhance talent management and foster inclusive remote work environments.        

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to test the power of unbiased HR solutions. Request your free demo assessment from Great People Inside today and embark on a journey of fair and effective talent management in the remote work era.        

Together, we can unlock the true potential of your remote teams and achieve remarkable success. Request a Free Demo Assessment.        

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Sources:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2022/07/26/10-tips-for-defining-and-achieving-meaningful-work-in-your-career/
https://stressandresilience.com/3-ways-to-make-your-work-more-meaningful/
https://achievecentre.com/blog/5-practical-ways-to-make-work-meaningful/

Positive Work Culture Can Be More Productive: Here’s How

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Too many companies bet on having a cut-throat, high-pressure, take-no-prisoners culture to drive their financial success.

But a large and growing body of research on positive organisational psychology demonstrates that not only is a cut-throat environment harmful to productivity over time, but that a positive environment will lead to dramatic benefits for employers, employees, and the bottom line.

Although there’s an assumption that stress and pressure push employees to perform more, better, and faster, what cutthroat organisations fail to recognise is the hidden costs incurred.

First, health care expenditures at high-pressure companies are nearly 50% greater than at other organisations. The American Psychological Association estimates that more than $500 billion is siphoned off from the U.S. economy because of workplace stress, and 550 million workdays are lost each year due to stress on the job. Sixty percent to 80% of workplace accidents are attributed to stress, and it’s estimated that more than 80% of doctor visits are due to stress. Workplace stress has been linked to health problems ranging from metabolic syndrome to cardiovascular disease and mortality.

The stress of belonging to hierarchies itself is linked to disease and death. One study showed that, the lower someone’s rank in a hierarchy, the higher their chances of cardiovascular disease and death from heart attacks. In a large-scale study of over 3,000 employees conducted by Anna Nyberg at the Karolinska Institute, results showed a strong link between leadership behaviour and heart disease in employees. Stress-producing bosses are literally bad for the heart.

Second is the cost of disengagement. While a cut-throat environment and a culture of fear can ensure engagement (and sometimes even excitement) for some time, research suggests that the inevitable stress it creates will likely lead to disengagement over the long term. Engagement in work — which is associated with feeling valued, secure, supported, and respected — is generally negatively associated with a high-stress, cut-throat culture.

And disengagement is costly. In studies by the Queens School of Business and by the Gallup Organisation, disengaged workers had 37% higher absenteeism, 49% more accidents, and 60% more errors and defects. In organisations with low employee engagement scores, they experienced 18% lower productivity, 16% lower profitability, 37% lower job growth, and 65% lower share price over time. Importantly, businesses with highly engaged employees enjoyed 100% more job applications.

Lack of loyalty is a third cost. Research shows that workplace stress leads to an increase of almost 50% in voluntary turnover. People go on the job market, decline promotions, or resign. And the turnover costs associated with recruiting, training, lowered productivity, lost expertise, and so forth, are significant. The Center for American Progress estimates that replacing a single employee costs approximately 20% of that employee’s salary.

For these reasons, many companies have established a wide variety of perks from working from home to office gyms. However, these companies still fail to take into account the research. A Gallup poll showed that, even when workplaces offered benefits such as flextime and work-from-home opportunities, engagement predicted wellbeing above and beyond anything else. Employees prefer workplace wellbeing to material benefits.

A POSITIVE CULTURE fosters Wellbeing

Creating a positive and healthy culture for your team rests on a few major principles. Our own research (see here and here) on the qualities of a positive workplace culture boils down to six essential characteristics:

  • Caring for, being interested in, and maintaining responsibility for colleagues as friends.
  • Providing support for one another, including offering kindness and compassion when others are struggling.
  • Avoiding blame and forgive mistakes.
  • Inspiring one another at work.
  • Emphasizing the meaningfulness of the work.
  • Treating one another with respect, gratitude, trust, and integrity.

As a boss, how can you foster these principles? The research points to four steps to try:

1. Foster social connections

A large number of empirical studies confirm that positive social connections at work produce highly desirable results. For example, people get sick less often, recover twice as fast from surgery, experience less depression, learn faster and remember longer, tolerate pain and discomfort better, display more mental acuity, and perform better on the job. Conversely, research by Sarah Pressman at the University of California, Irvine, found that the probability of dying early is 20% higher for obese people, 30% higher for excessive drinkers, 50% higher for smokers, but a whopping 70% higher for people with poor social relationships. Toxic, stress-filled workplaces affect social relationships and, consequently, life expectancy.

2. Show empathy

As a boss, you have a huge impact on how your employees feel. A telling brain-imaging study found that, when employees recalled a boss that had been unkind or un-empathic, they showed increased activation in areas of the brain associated with avoidance and negative emotion while the opposite was true when they recalled an empathic boss. Moreover, Jane Dutton and her colleagues in the CompassionLab at the University of Michigan suggest that leaders who demonstrate compassion toward employees foster individual and collective resilience in challenging times.

3. Go out of your way to help

Ever had a manager or mentor who took a lot of trouble to help you when he or she did not have to? Chances are you have remained loyal to that person to this day.  Jonathan Haidt at New York University’s Stern School of Business shows in his research that when leaders are not just fair but self-sacrificing, their employees are actually moved and inspired to become more loyal and committed themselves. As a consequence, they are more likely to go out of their way to be helpful and friendly to other employees, thus creating a self-reinforcing cycle. Daan Van Knippenberg of Rotterdam School of Management shows that employees of self-sacrificing leaders are more cooperative because they trust their leaders more. They are also more productive and see their leaders as more effective and charismatic.

4. Encourage people to talk to you

Especially about their problems. Not surprisingly, trusting that the leader has your best interests at heart improves employee performance. Employees feel safe rather than fearful and, as research by Amy Edmondson of Harvard demonstrates in her work on psychological safety, a culture of safety i.e. in which leaders are inclusive, humble, and encourage their staff to speak up or ask for help, leads to better learning and performance outcomes. Rather than creating a culture of fear of negative consequences, feeling safe in the workplace helps encourage the spirit of experimentation so critical for innovation. Kamal Birdi of Sheffield University has shown that empowerment, when coupled with good training and teamwork, leads to superior performance outcomes whereas a range of efficient manufacturing and operations practices do not.

When you know a leader is committed to operating from a set of values based on interpersonal kindness, he or she sets the tone for the entire organisation. In Give and Take, Wharton professor Adam Grant demonstrates that leader kindness and generosity are strong predictors of team and organisational effectiveness. Whereas harsh work climates are linked to poorer employee health, the opposite is true of positive work climates where employees tend to have lower heart rates and blood pressure as well as a stronger immune systems. A positive work climate also leads to a positive workplace culture which, again, boosts commitment, engagement, and performance. Happier employees make for not only a more congenial workplace but for improved customer service. As a consequence, a happy and caring culture at work not only improves employee well-being and productivity but also improved client health outcomes and satisfaction.

In sum, a positive workplace is more successful over time because it increases positive emotions and well-being. This, in turn, improves people’s relationships with each other and amplifies their abilities and their creativity. It buffers against negative experiences such as stress, thus improving employees’ ability to bounce back from challenges and difficulties while bolstering their health. And, it attracts employees, making them more loyal to the leader and to the organisation as well as bringing out their best strengths. When organisations develop positive, virtuous cultures they achieve significantly higher levels of organisational effectiveness — including financial performance, customer satisfaction, productivity, and employee engagement.

CURIOUS ABOUT THE IMPACT OF OUR UNBIASED HR SOLUTIONS?

Take the first step towards transforming your remote work culture by requesting a free demo assessment from Great People Inside.

Our team of experts will guide you through the assessment process, showcasing the effectiveness and value of our tailored solutions for your organization.

During the demo, you will have the opportunity to explore the comprehensive features and functionalities of our psychometric assessments, experiencing firsthand how they can empower your HR strategies and drive positive outcomes. From personality assessments to cognitive abilities and team dynamics evaluations, our assessments provide valuable insights to enhance talent management and foster inclusive remote work environments.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to test the power of unbiased HR solutions. Request your free demo assessment from Great People Inside today and embark on a journey of fair and effective talent management in the remote work era.

Together, we can unlock the true potential of your remote teams and achieve remarkable success.Request a Free Demo Assessment.

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Sources:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamcraig/2017/07/25/3-reasons-why-positive-work-cultures-are-more-productive/
https://www.lollydaskal.com/leadership/heres-the-proof-that-positive-work-cultures-are-more-productive/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/positive-work-cultures-more-productive-scott-maurer/

You Want a Performing Team? 100% Effort Is Not The Answer

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100% effort never translates to an optimal performing team. Despite some companies’ attempts, we can’t fix today’s burnout culture with a wellness app. What it takes, instead, is a mindset and culture shift among managers and organisations everywhere.

The old management mindset

An outdated way of thinking about peak performance is “maximum effort = maximum results.” It doesn’t actually work that way in reality, but many managers still believe that it does. They might talk a good game about “practicing self-care,” but their core assumptions are often more akin to a bad 1980s motivational speaker. (Think: “No pain, no gain,” “No guts, no glory,” and “Give it 110%!”)

When managers expect 80+ hours a week from people while offering Friday yoga to combat stress, they unintentionally create a toxic contradiction. It’s a classic example of what we call in psychology a “double bind”: Employees can’t talk about the contradiction, and they can’t talk about not being able to talk about it.

As a result, many well-intended efforts to end the burnout epidemic don’t actually work. If you think individual overachievers are solely to blame for exhaustion, then you’ll only end up addressing the wrong problem. Consider McKinsey’s research on burnout, which showed that “in all 15 countries and across all dimensions assessed, toxic workplace behaviour was the biggest predictor of burnout symptoms and intent to leave by a large margin.”

Not only does this old mindset not produce high performance, it also creates a downward spiral of toxicity begetting burnout begetting toxicity. What we need instead is a new management mindset, supported by data, for how to really get the best out of our people. Instead of “maximum effort = maximum results,” a better formula is: “optimal effort = maximum results.” Less effort can actually lead to more success.

The new management mindset

Here’s what actually works: the 85% rule. The 85% rule counterintuitively suggests that to reach maximum output, you need to refrain from giving maximum effort. Operating at 100% effort all of the time will result in burnout and ultimately less-optimal results.

For example, when sprinters are told to accelerate to their 100% level too soon, they end up running a slower race overall. As Carl Lewis, who won nine Olympic gold medals, explains, the notion of “no pain, no gain” is ridiculous. He says, “Your training should be sensible. In many cases it is more important to rest than it is to drive yourself to the point of pain.” Lewis’s coach, Tom Tellez, suggests that the peak performer in sprinting relax their jaw, face, and eyes. “Don’t grit your teeth,” he advises. “If you do, that tension will run all the way down your neck and trunk to your legs.”

How to build a high-performing team — without burning people out

Create a “done for the day” time

Where possible, managers should establish a “done for the day” time. When managers are ambiguous about the length of workdays, they risk introducing decision fatigue, diminishing returns, or even getting negative returns from their employees.

Toxic managers see setting a reasonable hard stop for the day as impossible. A colleague told me that their boss said in no uncertain terms: “You can’t get ahead here if you want to be home for dinner with your family.”

Transactional managers see employees having a done-for-the-day time as a necessary evil: “I suppose you need to do what you need to do.” They let people keep to the schedule begrudgingly.

Transformational managers insist upon a reasonable time for employees to leave work. For example, when a new employee at a private equity firm was eager to make a good impression, he stayed late. After all, he had been trained at previous companies to expect kudos for the extra effort. But this company and manager were different. When his manager saw him still sitting at his desk after everyone else had gone home, he said, “Why are you still here? We don’t stay late here unless there is an absolute emergency. We want you to be fresh tomorrow morning. Please go home.”

Ask for a little less than maximum capacity

Effort and fatigue can create confusion for people regarding the quality of their performance. People can mistake the perception of maximum effort with what actually produces maximum results. However, the highest effort doesn’t always equal the highest performance. Managers can take advantage of this by inviting team members to work a little below what they perceive to be their maximum capacity.

To help coach employees to get to and stay in this sweet spot, managers can ask, “What does it feel like to be at 100% intensity?” and then follow up with: “How can you keep this closer to the 85% level?” This type of perceived level of exertion is a concept used in physical rehab to prevent latent — or hidden — fatigue, but it can also be used by managers to help their employees stay in their sweet spot.

Ask “how am I making your work more stressful than it needs to be?”

Top performers are typically already self-motivated, so managing them like everyone else will only exhaust them, leading them to become a flight risk. A study at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and the Faas Foundation of over 1,000 U.S. employees found that 20% of employees reported being both highly engaged and having high burnout.

This “engaged-exhausted group” were passionate about their work, but also had a high level of stress and frustration. These were the employees with the highest risk of quitting their jobs — higher even than unengaged employees. This suggests that companies may lose their most capable employees not due to a lack of engagement, but rather because of their high stress and burnout levels.

To avoid this, managers can ask their top performers a simple but powerful question — “How am I making your work more stressful than it needs to be?” — and then take the necessary actions to improve upon the situation.

Encourage 85%-right decisions

When making decisions as a team, don’t push for “100% perfect.” Let people know when an 85%-right decision is acceptable.

Research has uncovered two distinct types of perfectionists. The first is “excellence-seeking” perfectionists: people who hold high standards for themselves and others. The second type is “failure-avoiding” perfectionists: people who are consistently anxious that their work is not sufficient or adequate, who fear losing the esteem of others if they fail to attain perfection.

Asking for 85%-right decisions takes unnecessary pressure off your highest-performing employees — and it keeps your team moving forward, rather than waiting for the 100%-right decision before they take action.

Watch out for high-pressure language

As a manager, it is vital to be mindful of the language you use when communicating with your team. The use of high-pressure terms such as “ASAP,” “NEED,” or “URGENT” in emails or meetings can create excessive stress and pressure for your team members.

To avoid this, it’s essential to foster open communication about genuine deadlines, the reasons behind them, and the potential trade-offs. Instead of expecting employees to always agree to every request, consider asking them, “What do you need to say no to in order to say yes to this?” By granting autonomy in choosing their projects, you can ensure that your star employees maintain high performance levels while also avoiding burnout.

End meetings 10 minutes early

A manager shared this with me recently: “If you can be any kind of manager, be the kind who ends the meeting early.” It struck me as both funny and true.

Many employees still feel like they live the “Zoom, eat, sleep, repeat” life that was so common during the pandemic. Certainly, far more meetings are now held on video than ever before. And we know that video “exhaust(s) the human mind and body” faster than in-person meetings or just being on the phone.

Research from Microsoft’s Human Factors Lab found that our brains work differently when we take 10-minute breaks between meetings. That small break stops stress from building up, while back-to-back meetings decrease people’s ability to focus and engage.

Set your own intensity level to 85%

It’s important that managers also set their own minds to 85% intensity to model to their team that it’s okay not to be stressed out of their minds all the time. When managers say that employees should not work late nights or on weekends, but then send emails at 2 a.m. on Sunday morning, their actions speak louder than their words.

Research shows that employees look to their bosses for cues far more than many managers realize. In a curious finding, researchers found that baboons look to their alpha male “boss” every 20 to 30 seconds, and humans may not be so different. So, if you’re going to write emails late and on weekends, at least schedule them to be sent at 9 a.m. Monday morning.

The 85% rule may seem counterintuitive. However, in this time of ongoing, persistent burnout, it has the power of relevancy. As Dr. Stephen Ilardi, a psychologist at the University of Kansas, has written, “Human beings were never designed for the poorly nourished, sedentary, indoor, sleep-deprived, socially-isolated, frenzied pace of 21st-century life.”

Certainly, we can do better. Managers who adopt the 85% rule as their new mindset can help to reduce this frenzy while actually improving their team’s performance.

CURIOUS ABOUT THE IMPACT OF OUR UNBIASED HR SOLUTIONS?

Take the first step towards transforming your remote work culture by requesting a free demo assessment from Great People Inside.

Our team of experts will guide you through the assessment process, showcasing the effectiveness and value of our tailored solutions for your organization.

During the demo, you will have the opportunity to explore the comprehensive features and functionalities of our psychometric assessments, experiencing firsthand how they can empower your HR strategies and drive positive outcomes. From personality assessments to cognitive abilities and team dynamics evaluations, our assessments provide valuable insights to enhance talent management and foster inclusive remote work environments.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to test the power of unbiased HR solutions. Request your free demo assessment from Great People Inside today and embark on a journey of fair and effective talent management in the remote work era.

Together, we can unlock the true potential of your remote teams and achieve remarkable success.Request a Free Demo Assessment.

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Sources:

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/high-performing-teams-a-timeless-leadership-topic
https://gigazine.net/gsc_news/en/20230613-top-performing-85-effort/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-achieve-high-performance-your-team-aiming-85-effort-ansari

Let Your Team Struggle In Order For Them To Grow

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In theory, most leaders know how important it is to delegate challenging tasks to employees both to help them grow and create a collaborative, empowered, productive team. But, faced with real workplace demands, it can be tough to put this into practice. Many of my clients say things like “I’m the only one who can do the job” or “If this project doesn’t go smoothly, the whole team will suffer.”

Empathy can get in the way, too. When you see an employee struggling, it’s only natural to want to step in and help. But from the other side, this can feel more like micromanagement than support. And when leaders over-function by keeping too many tasks, they allow their teams to under-function.

Here are some strategies you can use to make delegation easier.

Shift from doer to leader mindset

In my corporate job, we promoted the best doers into leaders. This came with an assumption that they would magically shift from being good at and motivated by performance excellence and rewards to excelling at and caring deeply about developing others’ potential. The mindset shift may be the hardest part of all. So, how can you facilitate this in yourself?

Notice your payoff from doing. The thrill of achievement provides a quick dopamine hit. But that’s something you need to resist to get to the greater fulfillment of having helped others improve.

Claim your leadership identity by getting clear on values. Ask yourself: What three words do I want people to use to describe my leadership style? For example: Do I want to lead with control, urgency, and expertise? Or, with patience, curiosity, and empowerment?

Be intentional about responding, not reacting. In the moments where you are triggered to step in, ask yourself:  Would that be aligned with my values and who I want to become as a leader?

Embrace the discomfort of the learning process

Many leaders have said that, after witnessing an employee falter, taking back the work felt like the most supportive thing to do. But there is power to holding space for struggle. Yes, this creates discomfort for both leader and employee because it’s a new way of working for everyone. However, as Gallup reminds us, one of the keys to engagement at work is the opportunity for stimulating challenges. And when you push through the struggle, the result is growth for all parties.

How can you embrace, rather than resist, the struggle of learning?

Name your emotions, which according to psychologist Susan David, offers clarity and resiliency and can empower you to respond in an intentional way, aligned with your values.

Normalise being uncomfortable, embrace the struggle. Neuroscientists know that these are the periods in which learning happens and perseverance is developed.

Reframe the situation. One potential reframe is: “I was allowed to struggle and that’s where I gained confidence in my skills. So I’m going to give my employee the same gift of time to solve the problem on their own.”

Distinguish between high- and low-stakes tasks

Leaders often tell me they remain stuck as doers because employees make too many high-impact mistakes that require intervention. But this usually happens when the bosses themselves hold on to all the work for far too long and are then forced to delegate at the wrong moment. The key is to instead hand off tasks when the stakes are low and missteps tolerated, or even expected.

What makes an environment low-stakes? Failure will support learning more than it would hurt reputation. Mistakes will not impact team or company success. The environment is safe for stops and do-overs. The people involved have support and compassion for less experienced colleagues on learning curves.

To know which tasks are ripe for delegation, consider ones that now feel easy or rote to you but would be good development opportunities for those on your team? Also think about work that drains your energy and doesn’t align with your skills, talents, and strengths but might excite and feel like a perfect fit for others. 

For example, if your employee’s goal is to develop better presentation skills, try a low-stakes activity like asking them to lead the next staff meeting before a high-stakes one like conducting a client meeting. Or, if they want to get better at influencing others, challenge them to get buy-in from a small team on using a new tool or work process before asking them to persuade your whole division to implement it.   

Be curious and facilitative

Early in your corporate career as a trainer, people may tell me that you are visibly nervous during sessions you are leading. You may explain to your boss that I was worried about not having answers to participants’ questions. Her response: “What if your role isn’t to have all the answers but to facilitate the expertise in the room?” This changed my perspective.

Like trainers, leaders can’t be expected to have all the answers. But they do need to have patience and curiosity and ask insightful questions to facilitate learning. For example: What has your current approach been? Can you apply past experience to this problem? What is this situation teaching you?

Finally, practice compassion and grace. This doesn’t mean tolerating poor effort or careless mistakes. Instead, it means offering understanding and accommodation in the face of someone not doing something exactly how you would do it.

You got to have the courage to delegate to colleagues and team members even if it means watching them struggle. That’s the only way that all of us — leaders and employees — grow.

CURIOUS ABOUT THE IMPACT OF OUR UNBIASED HR SOLUTIONS?

Take the first step towards transforming your remote work culture by requesting a free demo assessment from Great People Inside.

Our team of experts will guide you through the assessment process, showcasing the effectiveness and value of our tailored solutions for your organization.

During the demo, you will have the opportunity to explore the comprehensive features and functionalities of our psychometric assessments, experiencing firsthand how they can empower your HR strategies and drive positive outcomes. From personality assessments to cognitive abilities and team dynamics evaluations, our assessments provide valuable insights to enhance talent management and foster inclusive remote work environments.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to test the power of unbiased HR solutions. Request your free demo assessment from Great People Inside today and embark on a journey of fair and effective talent management in the remote work era.

Together, we can unlock the true potential of your remote teams and achieve remarkable success.Request a Free Demo Assessment.

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Sources:

https://tanveernaseer.com/how-to-help-struggling-employees-find-their-space/
https://www.betterup.com/blog/motivating-a-team
https://www.mindtools.com/aqdolgk/building-trust-inside-your-team

Making Performance Reviews Fairer in a Hybrid Workplace

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Performance reviews are an essential aspect of workplace culture and have become even more critical in the age of hybrid work. A fair and impartial evaluation of employee performance can drive motivation, increase engagement, and lead to overall better results. However, conducting fair and accurate reviews can be challenging in a hybrid environment where employees are working from both in-person and remote locations. To ensure a fair process, companies must be consistent, objective, and inclusive in their approach, while also fostering open communication and encouraging employee input. By taking these steps, organizations can create a performance review process that is both effective and equitable, helping to drive business success and improve employee satisfaction.

Emphasise Culture and Values

It is crucial for hybrid workplaces to have all employees understand and act according to the values of your organization — regardless of where they work.

One way to reinforce a common set of values is through your approach to performance appraisal. For example, online retailer Zappos evaluates employees both on performance and whether they are promoting Zappos culture in their day-to-day work. According to founder and former CEO Tony Hsieh, “We’ll fire people if they’re not good for the culture, even if they are doing their work perfectly fine.”

Similarly, the performance evaluation program at Johnstone Supply, a New Jersey based HVAC supply company, places its values front and centre. According to CHRO Chris Geschickter, “When we do performance reviews, our values are our leading criteria. The majority of how we do performance evaluation is by reflecting on our core values, and then assessing whether an employee’s behaviour is aligned with them, in terms of customer service, teamwork, and such. To us, performance evaluation is a conversation throughout the year, with a lot of self-evaluations.”

Values-based approaches to evaluations create a common platform for assessing performance of differently situated employees while promoting a unified workplace culture. While incorporating values into performance evaluation isn’t necessarily new, redoubling efforts towards this seemed to resonate particularly strongly in hybrid environments.

Continually Track the Most Important Metrics

Dallas-based tax services firm, Ryan, LLC, shifted to a Results-Only Work Environment in 2008, allowing employees to work from anywhere and at any time. Their transition has been a huge success — turnover has plummeted; morale, engagement, customer satisfaction, and financial performance have soared.

Key to making it work is a performance appraisal approach that uses a set of agreed-upon performance metrics that are consistently tracked, and can be accessed at any time on a convenient intranet dashboard. Former CHRO, Delta Emerson, explained, “Managers and employees can log on and see their dashboard. It displays their revenue targets and other performance goals, as well as where they stand and how their performance feeds into incentive pay. Finally, we hold managers accountable by tracking turnover and engagement scores in their groups.”

It’s important to note that Ryan’s approach — which provides clarity on goals and continuous measurement of performance — translates perfectly to hybrid work environments. Their system is fair and transparent for both those employees who mostly work at the office and those who mostly work remotely, and, importantly, creates accountability for managers in engaging and retaining employees.

Leverage Technology

With agreement on which metrics of employee performance to track, companies can then leverage technology to further level the playing field. General Electric, for example, uses an app-based system that allows employees to share performance milestones with their teams and managers.

While the company once prided itself on its process of formal, competitive annual performance reviews, this new approach encourages collaborative performance conversations. Managers use it to provide frequent feedback through performance “touchpoints” to employees. And peers use it to provide real-time developmental feedback and recognition.

This approach focuses employees and managers on continuous improvement and development, bolstering decisions on raises, promotions, and developmental opportunities which now occur year-round. As a result, the app-based system helps level the playing field by ensuring employees, managers, and co-workers can better “see” each other’s work and provide feedback no matter where work gets done.

If your workplace has changed, your evaluation process must too

The move to remote or hybrid environments for many companies has been a bumpy one. What I saw in my research though is that traditional good management including frequent goal-setting, peer feedback, and progress reporting, still mattered. The difference was in how companies now need to apply these principles. And while I saw companies applying them in the variety of ways I outlined above, they all were successful for three reasons.

First, they defined performance in terms of customer satisfaction, company values, core activities, and project completion. Second, they incorporated regular goal-setting and feedback sessions. Finally, they encouraged collaboration and team building by sharing performance assessment responsibilities across the workforce.

The lesson, then, is that creative approaches to performance evaluation are not only possible, but required at hybrid workplaces. It is the only way to ensure that all employees are evaluated and developed according to their merit, regardless of where they do most of their work.

Given our current situation knowing that your colleagues or employees are best suited for this new scenario we find ourselves in. Finding the right talent, the best fit for the job and your organisation can be a very challenging task. It is now important to find out whether your managers or your team is well-equipped of working together from various locations. It requires deep knowledge of their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, interests, work style and other characteristics. Our technology and solutions will do the work for you, helping you discover if your people are resilient during times of hardship, if they are autonomous, if they are team players, without actual human contact. Given that our platform is cloud-based, everyone can use it from home as well. Humanity finds itself at a crossroad for various reasons now, why not help people discover and develop themselves from the comfort of their own homes?      

Request a free demo: 

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Sources:

https://headtopics.com/us/making-performance-reviews-fairer-in-a-hybrid-workplace-34961716
https://lattice.com/library/how-to-successfully-conduct-performance-reviews-in-a-hybrid-workplace
https://content.mycareersfuture.gov.sg/how-conduct-fair-transparent-performance-appraisals-hybrid-workplace/

Dominant Vs. Prestigious: What Kind of Leader Are You?

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It is widely known that there are leaders who have different approaches and styles which, ultimately, leads to various consequences when they do something wrong or out of line. On the other hand, some leaders get out of situations their own actions created, or are simply given the benefit of the doubt. In a recent study published in the Academy of Management Journal, it has been revealed that leaders are dealt with their mistakes in direct correlation with how they achieved their status in the organisation.

In the field of social psychology, there is a theory that goes around explaining how leaders achieve their status and how they exert influence on various groups of people. Essentially, there are 2 distinct paths: through prestige or through dominance. There is a clear pattern in which leaders are being punished for their misdemeanours directly depending on which way they have obtained their status.

Leaders who obtain this status through dominance are very assertive and forceful-minded people and do not hesitate in getting their opinions known and do not flinch when they have to influence other people through intimidation or coercive tactics. Due to their ruthless proactiveness some people may think that they are integral in a group’s success. The best example of such a leader is Steve Ballmer, former CEO at Microsoft, who was known for being a very tough individual, who had a lot to ask of its teams and which definitely represents the ‘model’ for dominant leaders.

On the other hands, prestige leaders act like a teacher, they are people who are more than willing to share their skills, time, expertise and knowledge with other members of the group. Due to the fact they help members of their teams develop and hone their skills, they are also viewed as quintessential to a groups’ success. Such an example in this case would be Satya Nadella, current Microsoft CEO and is known in the world of business for his collective and established approach which in turn makes him the archetype for the prestige leader.

It is widely known that aggression has numerous levels on its scale and we all have to agree that there are some jobs which require a certain degree of combativeness, it could be a decisive quality in some distinct scenarios. For example, there are CEOs who are better suited to negotiate and facilitate hostile takeovers, litigation lawyers who are required to take charge of the courtroom, or a police officer. These careers ‘demand’ behavioural traits which are closely aligned to aggression due to the simple fact that they can be extremely advantageous.

As mentioned earlier, dominant and prestige leaders are being punished differently for their mistakes or lack of results and there are two reasons why. Firstly, dominant leaders are perceived as highly unethical and selfish and because of this they are having difficulties in making themselves believed when an error occurs. It will always a subject of discussion whether it was intentional or not. However, prestigious leaders are treated completely different in a similar scenario due to the fact that people trust them.

Secondly, it is widely accepted that ‘prestige’ leaders possess altruistic traits and a strong moral compass. Hence, a mistake done by a prestigious leader would be seen as far less reprehensible, less immoral and less unethical due to their virtuous nature and history. In layman terms, these types of leaders have ‘moral credits’ in their ‘moral bank account’ which makes small ‘withdrawals’ whenever a problematic situation arises. In the case of ‘dominance’ leaders, their ‘moral bank account’ is virtually empty, thus leading to situations in which they are being judged more harshly as being immoral and unethical.

In order to further demonstrate the aforementioned study’s findings, statistics and players from the National Hockey League (NHL) have been carefully observed over the course of 2 seasons. The hypothesis that was followed through was on players who were penalised for minor fouls. These fouls are usually difficult to assess and are awarded almost instantaneously by the referee, which are prone to a bias assessment of the situation. Over the course of 2 full seasons of NHL, it was discovered that high-status players who are associated with dominant traits have been penalised more by the referees in the cases of minor fouls. This, of course, was the opposite for high-status prestige players. The discrepancy in punishment was discovered to be about 13%, which in time translates to 4,33 minutes spent on the sidebar over the course of 1 season.

In relation to their employees, dominant leaders struggle more in terms of employee retention given the fact that their aggressive style of management makes employees unhappy and losing their desire to do good work. This obviously leads to a toxic workplace environment. Furthermore, if the situation prolongs itself in time it can lead to productivity losses, high absenteeism rates and an abundance of employee turnover.

There are, of course, various strategies through which ‘dominance’ leaders can change their behaviour in order to, at least, improve their relationship with the employees.

  1. Opening, encouraging and maintaining an open communication between the leader and its team, whilst also starting a two-way street in terms of feedback to and for the leader.
  2. Speak directly to the leader and appeal to his sense of logic and explain how the actions he or she takes impact the whole business.
  3. If you are dealing with a narcissistic leader, it would be recommended to present your feedback in regards to their behaviour by explaining that it could negatively impact their goals. Avoid making direct behavioural criticism.
  4. Refuse rewarding or promoting leaders who are aggressive and that can be detrimental to the company’s bottom line.

In conclusion, it is recommended to address the behaviours of dominant leaders from the beginning of their tenure and to highlight the utmost importance of stability in the decision-making process, which could directly increase the productivity, satisfaction and quality of employees.

There is a real value in providing companies with the tools to carry out regular organisational assessments and this is where Great People Inside comes to your aid. Our online platform offers the best solutions and tools for your company to thrive in every type of industry and any possible situation your organisation may find itself. In terms of lowering your employee turnover rates, we recommend our GR8 Full Spectrum assessment for hiring and 360° Survey for retention. Finding the right talent, the best fit for the job and your organisation can be a very challenging task. It requires deep knowledge of your own organisation’s culture and a keen understanding of the candidate’s personality, strengths, interests, work style and other characteristics. Our technology and solutions will do the work for you, helping you find employees who can flourish and reach the highest performance required to constantly bring your company forward.

Request a free demo:

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Sources:

https://hbr.org/2019/07/aggressive-leaders-are-more-likely-to-be-punished-for-their-mistakes

https://www.fastcompany.com/3048494/the-difference-between-strong-leaders-and-aggressive-leaders

http://www.wiseworkplace.com.au/_blog/WISE_Blog/post/the-cost-of-aggressive-leaders/

Great People Inside Conference “Visionary HR”, Kronwell Hotel, Brașov

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Registration is up and running for the Great People Inside Conference: Visionary HR, the only international human resources event that takes place for the XVIth consecutive year in Romania.

Anthropologist and Pulitzer winner, Jared Diamond declared that ‘a society’s ability to grow/expand and make new conquests is directly linked with its availability of embracing innovative and disruptive technologies.’ Nowadays, at the end of each year, it has become the norm to ‘start the race’ in predicting future trends in any industry imaginable and HR is no different. However, predictions have never been easy to make. As Philip E. Tetlock stated – Professor of Psychology and Political Sciences at both the University of Pennsylvania and at Wharton School of Business – we are facing an uphill battle in our capacity to forecast future trends of events.

Visionaries (innovators and ‘early adopters’ alike) are the people who are setting new standards, are changing the status quo and creating new possibilities. Just think about the vision necessary to allow people to fly for the first time at the beginning of the 20th century.

At this rate, it has been estimated that investments in the global sector of human resource management (HRM) will reach 30 billion dollars in 2025.

In other words, the creation of innovative HR solutions is in a continuous expansion, whilst the field of human resources is currently experiencing a fantastic influx of innovation.

Uncertainty in the current economic climate, the progresses made in the field of technology and the extensive disruptions in the labor market have put organizations under more pressure than ever before.

Although predicting the future is troublesome, it is also essential to identify and to understand social, economic and technological fundamental trends or ‘mega trends’ which will affect organizations in the next ten to twenty years in order to anticipate and prepare ourselves for the transformations that will supersede.

This year, on the 9th and 10th of October, at Kronwell Hotel in Brașov, the Great People Inside Conference: Visionary HR will generate, along these two days, interesting and provocative discussions in regards to modern pressing issues such as digitalization, artificial intelligence, autonomous learning and current technologies are profoundly changing the management practices of HR and the way in which we can create a future centred on people. For more details regarding the event you can check it out here!

parteneri conferinta great people inside

 

Inspiration at Work: Importance and Significance

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Inspiration at work is always an added bonus. When we are inspired, everything we have to do simply clicks. We feel that our work has purpose and all of our skills are being used in the best way possible. In layman’s terms, we are doing what we are supposed to be doing. Unfortunately, inspiration can come and go as it pleases; it can vanish into thin air. This usually happens when your boss gives you a negative review on some of the work you’ve done or you’re simply content about a particular task at hand. Even if you are one the few people that have a job that they love, it’s in our human nature to experience periods of time when we have to dig deep to find some excitement about your job.

Todd Thrash and Andrew Elliot, two psychologists who have been studying inspiration in the last few decades, have spotted 3 elements which occur the moment a person is inspired:

  1. The person sees new possibilities.
  2. Receptive to outside stimuli.
  3. Energy and motivation.

Inspiration does not represent a static state of mind, which is fortunate for us because it means people can cultivate it. Although we cannot force inspiration upon us, we can create an environment that favours inspiration.

Feeling stuck is a normal reaction when you don’t feel inspired. The key here is not to wait for positivity to hit you because your inaction is your worst enemy in this scenario. Studies in cognitive behavioural therapy have concluded that people’s behaviours alter the way they feel and think. Consequently, when people act differently they feel differently. Instead of waiting for a change coming out of thin air, try and put yourself in motion somehow. You are in control of your work environment and not the other way around. This can help you discover new methods in which you can solve your duties.

Continuous learning is very important. If you have a good number of years of experience and have excelled in your field, it is somehow natural to think that you may not require additional training or learning. However, researchers have discovered that when we stop believing we require further expertise we become more close minded or as it also known ‘earned dogmatism’. If we train ourselves to always be fresh and on top of things the more likely we are to get inspired. Given the fact that nowadays it has become more and more difficult to have some time for ourselves, it is absolutely vital we devote at least a few hours a week for enlightenment purposes only in order to assure ourselves of longer periods of inspiration and engagement. For example, Bill Gates used to take a few weeks of work twice a year just to map out new ideas.

Making new friends is always a good idea. When we spend time with people they affect our mood and energy, whilst also having the same conversations with them week in, week out. It is recommended to start and meet new people. It is important you try and meet people who can challenge you mentally and do things differently from you. These types of people can stimulate new ideas with the added bonus of learning from their vast experience.
Furthermore, think about friends whose qualities you admire tremendously. Try and focus on qualities, not perfection. They do not even have to know you are trying to emulate them in certain aspects. It is actually better to be a distant observer due to the simple fact that you can extract and dissect the necessary information much easier.

When questioned, most entrepreneurs and business people say that their passion and inspiration derives from their desire to serve their customers, to lead a company in an upward direction and to support the development of a product that may revolutionise the market. Unfortunately, inspiration and passion can fade away and, of course, people start questioning themselves. It happens over the course of one’s life, to discover that their once meaningful job has become close to meaningless. It begins with the slow erosion of spirit and enthusiasm due to the fact that there is no longer any purpose in their work. People start feeling trapped, restless and they see no end in sight.

This happens because people start confusing the achievement of daily goals with accomplishing truly meaningful work. Thus, they continue to worry and set goal after goal, until they realise boredom has set in. When this happens, it is imperative that people respond to this problem through a conscious choice on how to solve it. More often than not, people don’t realise they are fed up with their job because they lose track of what is meaningful about their work. In their attempt to separate their work and personal life, some people go to such an extent that they do not bring their values into the office environment. Even more so, they engage in activities that clash with home persona.  Some people discover that their work has become their life, even though their family is what they value most, but they still work 12+ hours and miss birthdays and holidays in order to be successful at work.

Like all things in life, there is no one-size-fits all solution. There is no one method that can bring back your passion and inspiration. There is a combination of strategies that can guide you towards the path you desire, but that must be discovered on your own, due to our uniqueness. The only common trait in everyone’s strategies should be reflection – evaluate where you stand at the moment, where you’re headed and what you really want to become.

Inspiration isn’t elusive. It is within our grasp if we search for new opportunities from which we can extract new ideas and insights. Even though sometimes it may not feel like you’re getting the best deal out of a situation, it will still push you to new boundaries and experiences which will inevitably lead to something that resembles inspiration.

Great People Inside provides easy-to-use tools and processes to attract, assess, match, select, onboard, manage, develop, benchmark and maintain workforces anywhere in the world.

Finding the right talent, the best fit for the job and your organisation can be a very challenging task. It requires deep knowledge of your own organisation’s culture and a keen understanding of the candidate’s personality, strengths, interests, work style and other characteristics. Our technology and solutions will do the work for you, helping you find employees who can flourish and reach the highest performance required to constantly bring your company forward.

Request a free demo:

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Sources:

https://hbr.org/2002/04/reawakening-your-passion-for-work

https://hbr.org/2017/09/how-to-rediscover-your-inspiration-at-work

https://www.inc.com/kevin-daum/8-ways-to-be-re-inspired-at-work.html

Remote Work – Better for Productivity?

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Few people know that the 8-hour work schedule has its origins from the times of the Industrial Revolution and not the Information Age. During the second half of the 18th century, the standard norm was workdays of 10-16 hours due to the fact that factories required to be run 24/7. This type of schedule had become absolutely brutal and exhausting for workers, but change only started to happen with 1817 when Welsh activist Robert Owen advocated for 8-hour workdays, his slogan being: “Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest.”

Close to a century later, in 1914 to be exact, the 8-hour schedule became the norm when Ford Motor Company started working on 8-hour shifts whilst also doubling workers’ wages. The result was obvious for everyone to see, a dramatic increase in productivity. Nowadays, it may seem unfathomable to work for more than 8 hours, but history offers us a lesson into how things have developed along the way. At the moment, we may witness another disruption into the workday schedule. In a recent research revolving around this issue, it was suggested that in an 8-hour shift, the average worker is productive for a mere 2 hours and 53 minutes.

It is becoming more and more obvious to many of us that the modern workplace is not the well of productivity everyone hoped for. Furthermore, for many of us, the workplace is actually filled with distractions of all natures. Combine this with the everyday hassle of commuting and you got yourself one long day of work. Of course, situations such as these can be avoided through a flexible schedule arrangement, this being an option more sought after than ever before.

In one of the most recent FlexJobs surveys on remote work, it has been discovered that 66% of professionals they’ve interviewed said they would be more productive if they could work from home, rather than the office. The most common reasons why they favoured working from home:

  • 76% wanted fewer disruptions from co-workers.
  • 70% reduce stress levels from commuting.
  • 69% wanted to avoid office politics.

The survey also revealed something incredible, only 7% of the people interviewed said that they are productive during regular office hours. If only so very few people are productive during their regular schedules, then there is something inherently wrong with our traditional workplace model.

In the past, there were fewer distractions and fun past time activities. Also, there was no internet and the sheer volume of information that we are being bombarded with. Due to these changes and shifts in programmes and schedules, there are people that don’t fit into the normal productivity ranges. There are people who are at their best really early in the morning, while others’ productivity goes through the roof during night hours. That is why it is a bit foolish to expect that all your employees to give their best during the 9-5 programme.

Your average worker gets disrupted every 3 minutes, and recovering from that is time-consuming. We need, on average, about 23 minutes to return to a task after being disrupted. Furthermore, discoveries in the field of neuroscience have all but confirmed what we were all thinking: the human brain cannot concentrate for 8 straight hours.

One of the career specialists at FlexJobs, Brie Reynolds, said that given the meteoric rise in remote work and freelancing, workers have become more aware of the future of work environment. This has risen from a simple combination of factors that encompass demographics and remote-friendly technology. Millennials have been growing up with technology by their side, so it is more than natural for them to expect they can work remotely. There are companies that now offer flexible hours to their new employees. And if your job requires the simple use of a laptop, then you can basically work full-time for any company in the world. At the moment, what we are experiencing in the workforce, is a hybrid model where people work alternatively from home and from the office.

For employers, Reynolds has a simple suggestion: “crafting remote programmes which help employees be at their productive best, whilst keeping the good parts of in-office interactions.” For the time being, the hybrid model seems to the best approach, given the simple fact that many companies are still struggling with coming up with the necessary tools and programmes in order to make remote work a success for their operations.

However, in a recent Gallup survey, it has been revealed that although remote work is on the rise the United States, employees that work exclusively from home are the least engaged. The reasons for this are isolation and ambiguous job descriptions. There are some companies that have been successful in implementing a proper remote work programme. These organisations, as pointed out by Gallup, were disciplined in creating proper plans and processes for this to work. Some of the techniques they have used include:

  • Face-to-face meetings with remote working employees.
  • In-depth training programmes.
  • Implementing a ‘buddy system’ for new employees during their first few months.

Implementing successful remote work programmes is going to require a lot of work for your organisation. However, given the fact that more and more talented workers want flexible working hours (and it cannot be negotiable), you simply cannot ignore this trend.

Great People Inside provides easy-to-use tools and processes to attract, assess, match, select, onboard, manage, develop, benchmark and maintain workforces anywhere in the world.

Finding the right talent, the best fit for the job and your organisation can be a very challenging task. It requires deep knowledge of your own organisation’s culture and a keen understanding of the candidate’s personality, strengths, interests, work style and other characteristics. Our technology and solutions will do the work for you, helping you find employees who can flourish and reach the highest performance required to constantly bring your company forward.

Request a free demo:

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Sources:

http://fortune.com/2015/08/04/brian-shapland-productivity-at-work/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/irisleung/2017/08/31/report-only-7-of-workers-feel-productive-during-regular-work-hours/#10571760744e

https://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/in-an-8-hour-day-the-average-worker-is-productive-for-this-many-hours.html