by AlexFunkhouser
You’ll be surprised how well your team delivers when you hand over the reins once in a while.
Remote work and hybrid work are surely here to stay, and they offer plenty of perks. But when your team is rarely together, it can be a challenge to create engagement and inspire motivation.
advertisement
Engagement is critical for business because it drives effort, performance, and retention. But engagement is also important for people. Mental health challenges have risen along with more remote work, and people report they are feeling more social isolation, depression, and anxiety in the last couple of years. We crave human connection and feeling engaged with our work and our colleagues is a fundamental way we meet this need.
Check in with people regularly, ask questions about how they are doing and offer support. Respond efficiently to emails, IMs or phone calls and hold regular one-on-one meetings—virtual or face-to-face—so people know they can count on times when they can provide you with updates and obtain guidance.
As a leader, you can ensure distance doesn’t become detrimental, even when your team is remote, by staying accessible, empowering your team, giving feedback, keeping the focus on the future, and creating shared experiences.
Read the complete FastCompany Article BY TRACY BROWER: https://www.fastcompany.com/90688388/remote-team-bonding-is-here-to-stay-here-are-5-ways-to-keep-your-team-engaged-from-a-distance
by AlexFunkhouser
Something seemed very wrong with the way I’d been taught to think about my career progression. Like so many of us, I’d heard professional journeys described as climbing a ladder or following a path. But as I moved forward in my work as a journalist, I wasn’t moving in a straight line. The field I was pursuing, called audience engagement, was relatively new. I certainly hadn’t taken any courses on it in college, and two of the companies I would later work for didn’t even exist when I graduated. How was I supposed to know which path to take when it was still under construction?
I also didn’t see the ultimate goal of my career as reaching the top of the food chain. I have no desire to be a CEO. And I kept meeting talented professionals, people I admired greatly, who viewed the twists and turns of their careers as a drawback, not a benefit. With an apologetic air, they would talk about how they explored different areas of their work and how they struggled to come up with a simple, clean story to explain their résumés.
‘I started telling students to consider their careers, not as a linear progression straight up or ahead, but as a river delta—a fertile area to explore that flows toward an ultimate objective.’
The looks of relief on their faces as they realized they don’t have to commit to a one-size-fits-all path clearly showed me that there’s a better story we can use for our work in today’s information economy. And to be honest, I wouldn’t want to work in a field full of exact duplicates who travel from point A to B with no deviations. It’s the diversity of thought and experience that drives creativity and innovation.
Read the complete FastCompany article BY BRIDGET THORESON: https://www.fastcompany.com/90686046/forget-the-ladder-heres-a-better-framework-for-your-professional-journey
by AlexFunkhouser
Research suggests that a four-day workweek could make workers more productive. Now you just need to convince your manager.
If weekends seem to fly by, be thankful you weren’t born during the early 20th century when having one day off a week was the standard for most employers. In 1922, Henry Ford doubled time off by implementing the Monday-through-Friday timeline at The Ford Company.
A five-day, 40-hour workweek may work well when output is measured by items coming down an assembly line, but productivity is different when it comes to knowledge work. COVID disrupted standard ways of working and created an experiment where companies learned that productivity isn’t measured by hours in a chair.
Perhaps it’s time to rethink the workweek and do things differently, says Joe Sanok, author of Thursday is the New Friday: How to Work Fewer Hours, Make More Money, and Spend Time Doing What You Want.
WHY LESS IS MORE
Researchers in Iceland tracked a group of 2,500 employees who worked a four-day workweek with the same pay and found that their wellbeing dramatically increased, and they reported less stress and burnout and better work-life balance. Microsoft Japan experimented with a four-day workweek and experienced a 40% boost in productivity, although they’ve since discontinued the practice.
Read the complete article BY STEPHANIE VOZZA: https://www.fastcompany.com/90683509/how-to-convince-your-boss-to-consider-a-four-day-workweek
by AlexFunkhouser
The term “hybrid work” has come to mean more flexibility around working both remotely and in the office. But perhaps we could be applying the same term to the speed of work as well.
There seem to be conflicting answers. On the one hand, NPR recently reported that unemployment is down and job growth is up. In addition, earlier this year the Federal Reserve forecasted rampant economic growth, while Forrester predicted 6% growth in business and government spending on tech goods, software, services, and staff in 2021 (and 6.5% growth in 2022). From this perspective, work-life sure seems like it’s speeding up.
But hang on a minute.
Millennials are quitting their jobs (even six-figure jobs) to prioritize their mental health, travel the world, and pursue more fulfilling, flexible careers. Offices are opening back up, but employees are revolting: Apple staff is conflicted about Tim Cook’s return to work policy; Amazon employees disagree with the company’s policy and are calling for permanent remote work; and when forced with the decision, are just opting to quit instead.
Sounds like we’re slowing down.
How do we measure progress in a world where success is defined in two radically different ways?
Or, said differently: what should work feel like? And who decides?
The big question every company is faced with today is how to allow for the optionality we’ve all now been introduced to through the pandemic without causing chaos: half the team remote, working from home (or a beach somewhere in Belize), the other half showing up to the office, business-as-usual, coffee cup in hand. Is it paternalistic for companies to design cultures of speed? What does this mean for Silicon Valley’s mantra, “Move fast and break things?” What do you do when the generation that makes up the majority of the workforce wants to “move slow and fix things?”
Read the complete FastCompany article BY BREE GROFF: https://www.fastcompany.com/90682079/leaders-are-thinking-about-hybrid-work-in-a-one-dimensional-way-this-is-a-better-approach
by AlexFunkhouser
There are nine key factors that impact employee retention—and they are much more important than pay and benefits.
If you are like most managers, you probably frequently ask yourself:
- “How do I get the best out of my team?”
- “What truly motivates them?”
- “How can I help them unlock their potential?”
You may also ask, especially around performance review time, “How can I manage their performance without a lot of stress or sweaty-palm-inducing conversations?”
There have been reams of information written about employee motivation and performance over the last 100 years. But we’ve found there are nine key factors that impact these metrics—and they are much more important than pay and benefits.
I call these nine factors the Currencies of Choice. I discovered them as the result of reverse engineering during 5,000 exit interviews I conducted with an international team of recruiters over the course of 15 years.
This research, along with numerous studies from organizations and managers who regularly use the Currencies of Choice model, shows that intrinsic motivators are much more effective in keeping employees motivated and engaged—and helping them perform well and realize their potential—than pay and benefits.
Read the complete article BY KIM SEELING SMITH: https://www.fastcompany.com/90679528/i-spoke-to-5000-people-and-these-are-the-real-reasons-theyre-quitting
by AlexFunkhouser
One of the nice things about the work-from-home environment is that you have a lot of control over your social network. Meeting someone is an intentional act. You have to set up a time and mode for the meeting. You can choose the view you want on videoconference software.
When there is someone at work you don’t get along with, you don’t have to see them that often. You certainly don’t have to schedule one-on-one meetings with them (assuming they are not your boss), and you can mostly ignore them in group meetings. You may even have a work friend you text during meetings about them (not that I’m recommending that).
It’s important that you make other people aware of your concerns before heading back into your workplace.
As more and more offices are returning to some in-person work, though, the haphazard encounters of daily life are likely to bring you into contact with that dreaded colleague. On top of that, your in-person reactions to other people have to hide that contempt you may be feeling.
Read the complete FastCompany article BY ART MARKMAN: https://www.fastcompany.com/90677037/how-to-deal-with-the-coworker-you-hate-as-you-return-to-the-office
