On positive reflection and workplace stress reduction

Quick shot for a 'I have about 7,817 emails to read/reply to Thursday' but want to put off that torture for at least 15 more minutes, (the time allotted to research, write, edit, and hit 'Publish' on this sucker).

Did you catch the HBR.org 'Daily Stat' item from this past Tuesday? If not, here it is in its entirety (please don't come after me Harvard):

Stress levels and physical complaints declined by roughly 15% after employees were directed to spend 10 minutes writing about three things that had gone well each day, says a team of researchers led by Joyce E. Bono of the University of Florida. At the end of the work day, the employees logged on to a website where they were asked to write about events large or small, personal or work-related, and explain why they had gone well. The findings suggest that this intervention could have important effects on employee stress and health, the researchers say.

SOURCE:  Building Positive Resources: Effects of Positive Events and Positive Reflection on Work Stress and Health.

Pretty simple right?

Take about 5-10 minutes at the end of the day and deliberately think about, and document, three positives from the day - work successes, some good news in your personal life, maybe even something simple like your favorite NBA team won the game last night. Do this every day and over time, at least according to this research, your overall stress level is likely to decline, and you will start to feel better overall.

Sounds like it makes sense, lots of us forget to think about thepositives in our work or personal lives and focus on the negative. If you are encouraged/forced to write down or log in an online tool somewhere only the positive things at the end of the workday I suppose that will help you 'shut down' from work in a generally better mood and mental place than you might otherwise. Especially if the final 'work' of the day was something unpleasant or difficult or simply just a pain in the neck, (like the task of reading all your email that I am currently avoiding).

What do you think, would this kind of intentional positive reflection make a difference in reducing your stress levels?

For me, I am not so sure. Maybe it is the cynic/pessimist in me, but the second I sat down to document the three positive items for the day, I would naturally look to pair or balance them with three negatives.

And then I'd probably be back to focusing on the negatives again and stressing and you know the rest.

But what the heck, I might as well give it a shot:

Three positives from yesterday:

1. Scored two First Class upgrades on my flights home from IBM Connect

2. My old reliable truck actually started after 4 days parked outside at the airport in mostly sub-zero temperatures

3. I made it home in time to watch KD and LeBron go at it in one of the NBA's best match ups

I guess all in all that makes for a good day.

I will let you know tomorrow if I feel less stressed. I still have all that email to read though...

Happy Thursday!

What if we had fewer managers?

For a few minutes yesterday I dropped in on the always interesting #Nextchat on Twitter which was on the always popular HR and Talent topic of employee engagement. In the discussion most of the comments and observations around the topic of engagement were what we have come to expect, (and know to be true). Nevertheless, there were some excellent insights shared by many of the participants.

But you know the story around engagement, right?

Employee engagement is a reflection of the 'extra effort' people choose to make or not make, bad company culture drives much of the measured low levels of positive engagement, and most interesting to me, that managers are the prime drivers or enablers of engagement in the organization.

If the organization has bad managers, or not enough good managers and then you will have an engagement problem, (and a retention problem and a recruiting problem, and on and on). Managers need to be engaged themselves in order to have a better chance at rank-and-file employee engagement. Managers are often the barrier to engagement, as they simply don't know or realize the importance of engagement in a broader organizational context. Managers are the devil's spawn and their mere presence haunts the hallways of the company headquarters.

Ok, that last comment was not really stated, but you get the idea. The manager as the key to engagement, (and lots of other really important talent management practices), was beat to death.

After watching the discussion carry on in that manner for a bit, I finally (at least to me), offered the only suggestion that might actually have an immediate impact, (not necessarily a positive impact, I admit).

Here it is:

Since 'managers' seem to be the cause of all the disengagement, then what if we simply had way fewer managers? #nextchat

— Steve Boese (@SteveBoese) November 20, 2013

 

I was kind of being a wise guy but not totally.

If (bad) managers are truly such an important driver of engagement and talent management, and we have known this for ages, and at least according to the consistently poor engagement levels we see in many if not most businesses we are doing a terrible job of selecting and coaching these managers, then wouldn't it make sense to simply have far fewer of them?

Find the 20 or 30 percent of the managers that actually are really good at engaging teams, guiding career development, challenging employees to reach their potential, etc. and just let them manage everyone.  Take the rest of the managers that aren't good at those things and either let them focus on the actual work they are good at or let them move on.  Or make them sort of 'technical' managers that don't have the messy 'people' manager side of things and can focus on the work, sort of like how football teams have offensive and defensive coordinators that set strategy and tactics but don't really have to deal with the players on an individual and personal level.

I don't know, it just seems like after years of lamenting about the shortcomings, disinterest, and general imperfections of 'managers'  that at least some of the problems could be solved by having fewer of them.

What do you think?

PREVIEW: My spot today at #SHRM13 on Systems of Engagement

Shameless self-promotion alert...

Today I will be presenting at the SHRM Annual Conference a new talk called From Transactions to Engagement: Harnessing Social Tools to Transform HR at 4:00PM CT in Room N228 (for folks who are reading this and might be at the Conference.

And for both the people that might be at the event and come to the session, as well as anyone else interested in this kind of thing, I have posted the slides I will be using today here:

From Transactions to Engagement - Steve Boese, SHRM 2013 Annual Conference from steveboese

Also the references, notes, and links for the slides are summarized in a document and posted here.

SHRM 2013 - Steve Boese Session - Resources and Links from steveboese

The shift from HR technologies that are primarily developed to support process automation, accurate record-keeping, and to assist organizations remain in compliance to one where the majority of HR and workplace tools are centered around people, their connection to each other, and to the organization, and to create and innovate while in process, is certainly in its early stages. But it is a process and journey than many progressive organizations are taking and that is supported by a wide and growing range of amazing technologies.

But I think this presentation is less about the specific technologies themselves, (although I will talk about quite a few of them and share some examples), and more about the changing expectations, challenges, and opportunities that social, collaborative, and mobile technologies are presenting to HR leaders today. Changing the focus and mindset of what workplace, HR, and talent management technologies have been traditionally used for, and unlocking the promise of what the new social and engagement-focuses tools are offering is what I want to emphasize today.

So hopefully if you are at SHRM today, you will consider dropping in to the session. 

And as a bonus - I have a bunch of HR Happy Hour T-shirts to give away to folks in the audience.

See you at the session (hopefully some of you!)

Pass it on: Connecting Engagement, Community, and Results

Earlier in the week I co-presented along with Trish McFarlane on how HR and leaders can use social tools and technologies to empower their organizations and engage employees, (because you know 'empowerment' and 'engagement' are important buzzwords). Kidding aside, we do have continuing evidence, even if it is mostly observational and anecdotal, that connecting people to each other, creating environments where they are free and also challenged to collaborate, and linking these efforts to greater organizational and/or personal goals are likely to lead to increased capability, engagement, and (trust me), operational results.

One of the examples we used in the presentation, and that I'd like to highlight here, is global financial giant Aon's 'Pass it On' program. The program, (home page screen shot below), is described in Aon's words as:

A multi-faceted, global program that combines elements of employee engagement, community service and client partnerships to demonstrate to the world how Aon's 60,000 colleagues in over 120 countries focus every day on empowering results for their clients and communities.

The program also leveraged Aon's jersey sponsorship and relationship with world famous football power Manchester United, in an interesting 'pass it on' project, where three Man United footballs were 'passed' around the world amongst Aon's offices and where local Aon employees recorded videos documenting the ball's journeys throughout the world, (one example is below, email and RSS subscribers need to click through)

Sure, Aon is a huge corporation, and has obviously poured pretty significant resources into the Pass it On project, but I think there are some simple and repeatable lessons that smaller companies can learn from this project.  One, is to connect an employee engagement initiative to the organization's external and perhaps better known market persona. Next, the introduction of a contest across the Aon regions played into the competitive nature of Aon employees and drove participation. Last, the awarding of the winner's prize of $10,000 to be donated to a charity of the winning team's choice further enhanced the value of the program and better connected local Aon offices to their local communities.

Finally, I was just glad we found an example to talk about in our session that wasn't Zappos or Google or LinkedIn.

Finally, finally - the link to Trish and my presentation is here.

Take the month off. Just report back with what you did

In a new spin of Google's famous '20% time' or the now commonplace 'hackdays' in many technology companies that both, (in different ways), provide free and unstructured or loosely structured time for employees to devise, experiment, imagine, and build new things, the software company 37Signals announced via a blog post last week that it is giving most of its employees, in June, an entire 'hack month'. What's a 'hack month'? Details here:

From the 37Signals blog post announcing the project:

This June will be a full month of free time to think, explore, mock up, prototype, whatever. People can go solo or put together a team – it’s entirely up to them. This is a month to unwind and create without the external pressures of other ongoing projects or expectations. We’re effectively taking a month off from non-essential scheduled/assigned work to see what we can do with no schedule/assignments whatsoever.

The culmination of this month of free work time is Pitchday – the first Thursday in July. That’s when everyone will get a chance to pitch their idea, mockup, prototype, or proof of concept to the whole company. The better the pitch, the more likely the project will happen.

Some people have already paired up and recruited others to work on an idea together. Some are going solo. And some are taking the time to work on a combination of smaller things they’ve been meaning to work on for a while.

I love the idea of companies letting go, even if it is for one day a quarter like many hack days, one day per week like the 20% time scheme, or even something more bold and potentially impactful as 37Signals' month-long experiment.  The key to these programs being more than just nice perks for an overworked and over stressed staff is the 'pitch' that happens at the end of the hack time. The pitch, since it typically has to be delivered in front of all their peers as well as company leadership places extra responsibility in the employee's and can serve to illustrate some really useful elements for company leadership in both staff skills and capabilities, as well as motivation and engagement.

Some of the benefits for company leadership of these kind of hack day programs that are often harder to come by during the course of 'normal' business:

Figure out who is all in - some people and teams will push really hard in these programs, will exert extra time and effort to make something great, to 'win', and to be recognized. Others, well, not so much. And the good thing is in the pitch meetings, all this plays out in public.

Figure out the untapped or unrealized talents in the organization - the inherent freedom to choose your project allows staff to experiment with skills and technology that they might enjoy, or at least be very talented with, but for some reason the 'real job' does not utilize. You will almost always be surprised what someone is really good at.

Find out which people are willing to learn new things - the jury may be out on so-called stretch goals, but observing which employees seem to embrace new things, to try and take advantage of the free time to learn new skills can be an important and illustrative predictor of who might be ready for a new project or a more challenging type of 'real' assignment. 

Sense where natural teams form and whether or not they work - A great aspect of hack day programs is that they allow and encourage teams to form across the organization often where the normal course of business does not require. Seeing where teams and groups form, and also who decides to work solo, can give leaders some clues towards project team composition, and creates opportunities for people from different functions to offer different insights in areas they usually would not see.

You can probably tell I am a huge fan of the hack day idea. Maybe extreme examples like the 37Signals hack month are not reasonable, or even wise, for most organizations, but certainly just about every organization could benefit from taking at least some time every few months to open up, let go of the reins, and see what the employees can really do. And the pitch day with the entire team assembled? That is money all day.

What do you think - does your organization have similar hack days? And if not, why not?

Happy Monday!