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Hello world. It has been a long time since I have written anything; I have been a bit busy with work, study and family. Hopefully I can get into a better habit.
Over the last few weeks I have been reading a book called Retiring the Generation Gap: How Employees Young and Old Can Find Common Solution. Based on research regarding intergenerational conflict, how different generations really are, and what workplaces can do reduce conflicts among people of different generations, it is based on US research conducted over seven years.
The main point I learnt from this book is that all generations have similar values; they just express them differently. It also highlighted that if you are party to a conflict that appears to be about generation-based values differences it is most likely that the conflict is between individuals and that it has nothing to do with their generation and the conflict is about difference in behaviour rather than about a fundamental values difference.
The research from this book highlighted that top ten values for all generations were:
I am currently studying Managing Innovation and Continuous Improvement. When some people think of innovation they think about new technological advances. For organisations to survive in today's fast changing world, innovation should exist at the strategic, tactical and operational levels.
To create a culture of innovation you need to foster an environment where employees are encouraged to explore, to learn, to extend themselves, to fail and to be able to suggest ideas without the fear of being judged. This sounds so simple but in reality it just does not happen!
Think of a time when you have been in a meeting where a suggestion has been made and instead of the group extending on the idea, somebody shoots it down in flames. Or a suggestion is made to management but no feedback is given... it somehow got lost in that management black hole. Depending on how resilient the person is, they may make a few more suggestions, but in the end people eventually stop trying to suggest ideas, become unmotivated and may even start looking for work elsewhere. In the end this is not good for business. Your organisation may even have innovation as one of its values, but if employees are experiencing the things I discussed, then innovation will not grow.
Innovation and Imagination at Work by the Australian Institute of Management states seven barriers to delivering innovation and ten factors for success.
Seven barriers to delivering innovation:
Underestimating what is required
Inadequate formal systems
Inadequate resources for the change process
Insufficient front-line input
Lack of knowledge management
Inadequate governance
Inadequate strategic planning
Ten success factors for building an innovative environment:
Ensuring commitment of the leadership team
Ensuring adequate management capability
Incorporating systematic innovation
Identifying key skills gaps
Using the front-line as a business driver
Building adequate infrastructure
Implementing formal structures and systems
Developing capabilities
Developing accountability
Ensuring organisational continuity
Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to encourage the team you are in to look at the work they do, how it impacts the business and to make suggestions on improvements. Give employees time to research and explore what other organisations are doing. Encourage them to network outside of the team. This could be with other people within the organisation, with clients and with other people outside of the organisation in similar professions. This will help them expand their knowledge and encourage different thinking.
A few years ago I attended an AHRI conference where I listened to a speaker talk about Australian Social Policy and how there were over 600,000 children in Australia who lived in a household with no employed parent and on welfare. The speaker then went on to speak about the impact of this to the child and the Australian economy. This presentation affected me in a couple of ways.
The first was that I wanted to personally try to make a difference; even if it was a small one, to show a child that life can be better and that they can choose how they can live their life. When I came home from the conference I spoke to my family about what we could do to make a difference in at least one child's life. We set on the path of becoming respite foster carers and for the last two and a half years have cared for two children for three days every month. This for us is very rewarding as we have seen the changes in behaviour and growth of these two children.
The second was a comment from another person in the crowd when we were walking out of the room which was, "What did this have to do with HR?" You may be thinking the same thing. Let me give you my perspective on why this has everything to do with HR and the organisation you are working for.
Research on welfare dependency in families shows there is an increased probability that children from homes receiving welfare will also be dependent on welfare. That means that these children are likely to become unemployed or work in unskilled jobs. These are children that if they had the right type of influences during their schooling years may become one of your prospective employees.
I find that when it comes to recruitment and talking to managers they are focussed on the people they want now and not in the future years. With shortages in the labour market, arising from demographic shifts and from a lack of people with the skills required for available jobs, HR has to start influencing management that they should also be thinking and influencing their prospective employees coming into the Market in the next five to ten years and beyond.
My thought is that organisations should start influencing from the early years of school. This could be achieved by providing a framework for the current employees to volunteer to mentor, tutor, talk to children about the work they do and the choices they made and basically becoming part of the school community. Organisations could provide scholarships for children or they could partner with not-for-profit organisations such as The Beacon Foundation, Barnardos or The Smith Family. There can be positive outcomes for organisations engaging in Corporate Social Responsibility programs particularly in increasing the Employer Brand. There would also be positives for the community and the economy such as having children leave high school with the confidence to make decisions regarding their future; either in further education, training or employment.
If you are interested in further reading on this subject, you might find the following material useful:
In an earlier post Murphcommented regarding confidence to ask for flexibility of working hours. She has seen too many part timers stall their careers as it is assumed that if you only want to work four days per week, you are not committed to the job.
Work/life balance is becoming increasingly important to employees; their reasons for this are dependent on what is happening in their life. For example, you could have someone who wishes to care for their aging parents, a divorced parent wanting to spend quality time with their children, someone who wants to study or even somebody who loves to go surfing when the surf is good. Each particular example would require a different flexible working approach.
With a growing skills shortage and the aging workforce, organisations are starting to see flexible working practices as a way to attract and retain their employees. Organisations are finding that introducing flexible working options provide the following advantages:
Becoming an employer of choice and realising the employee value proposition
Reduced absenteeism
Reduced attrition
Improved productivity
Reduced stress levels and improved morale and commitment
Potential for improved occupational health and safety records
These days flexible working practices are not only about part-time work. Organisations are offering various flexible working practices such as:
Compressed working week
Flexitime
Job sharing
Telework or home based work
Rostered days off
Shorter work days
Phased retirement
Paid maternity, paternity, grandparents, carers, volunteering, cultural, study and bereavement leave
On site or near site childcare (I have been lucky to experience this and I visited my daughter during breaks)
Sabbaticals
However, I have found that creating policies on flexible working practices is not enough. You need to also have a culture and systems which support flexible working practices. For example, there is no use having a home telecommuting policy if your IT systems do not support it.
Another issue is the unwritten ground rules, i.e. even though there is a policy on flexible working practices there is the culture of "that is not how things are done around here". I call this unwritten rule the 'presenteeism culture', i.e. managers and colleagues who believe they need to see you to believe you are working. For me this also highlights that there is very little trust within a team. Managers and colleagues should be focusing on performance and actually empowering their staff, not focusing on attendance and supervision.
Dr Babara Griffin, from the University of Western Sydney, has recently studied the impact of bad manners in the workplace. Dr Griffin used data from Hewitt Associates' Best Employer Survey of more than 54,000 employees from 179 organisations across Australia and New Zealand. From this data she found that one in five employees experience a significant incident of bad manners at work once a month.
Bullying has a large impact on employee engagement including whether an employee will stay in an organisation, will speak positively about the organisation and more importantly whether the employee will go that extra mile when needed. Bullying also causes psychological distress and poor physical health. Bullying not only impacts the person being bullied but other people who see this occurring in the workplace, as well as family and friends.
I have started to read the The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t. There is an example in the book of one bully costing an organisation US$160000; 60% of recovery was deducted from his year-end bonus. The cost represented the time spent by others in dealing with the bully and assisting victims, counseling sessions, recruiting and inducting new people (due to attrition) and training. This amount could have been higher if a person being bullied decided to sue the organisation for psychological distress.
Imagine you have a number of bullies in your organisation... What this is costing and what is the impact on your employer brand?
In the book Bob Sutton suggests ten steps to enforcing the No Asshole Rule. These are:
Say the rule, write it down and act on it.
Assholes will hire other assholes therefore ensure you have civilized people interviewing.
Get rid of assholes fast.
Treat certified assholes as incompetent employees. Do not reward them if they are doing extraordinarily well but persistently bully others.
Power breeds nastiness.
Embrace the power-performance paradox but do everything you can do downplay and reduce status differences.
Manage moments - not just practices, policies and systems.
Model and teach constructive confrontation.
Adopt the one asshole rule (apparently when there are rare occasions of bad behaviour it reminds people how not to behave).
The bottom line - link big policies to small decencies.
So, what can you do? Ensure you have bullying and harassment policies, but more importantly ensure everyone in your organisation is expected and does walk the talk. If they don't then do something about it. Taking a stand against bullying requires strong leadership from everyone in the organisation from the CEO down.
