Productivity – Page 8 – mardihumphreys.com

Something’s Burning

Last month we talked about burnout and how, as employees, we can both recognize and minimize it. On the other side of the organization, what can employers do to help extinguish burnout?

Why is Burnout the Employer’s Problem?

Because employees who burn out quit their jobs and replacing them is expensive. In their 2020 Recruiter Nation Survey, Jobvite found that retention is the second highest recruiting priority according to the HR professionals who participated. And according to Legaljobs, 45% of employees in the United States are job hunting. Turnover can cost an employer up to one-third of an employee’s annual salary due to lost productivity as well as recruiting efforts.

What Can Employers Do About It?

Set Reasonable Boundaries – For example, if you send emails at 7:46PM on weeknights, texts at 9:12PM on Saturdays, and/or direct messages at 6:12AM on Independence Day, then you are assigning someone a task. A valuable employee is at least going to stop what they are doing and reply no matter how many times you type, “No rush.” Even if you don’t expect the employee to do anything about your request at the time, you are still imposing a mental load on them. Now they have to remember to remind you of the thing you wanted them to do when you contacted them outside of normal work hours. Establish rules around communication. Include acceptable hours, expected response times, and appropriate modes. For example, if there is an emergency requiring their attention outside of normal work hours, then you will call them instead of email or text. Reiterate these boundaries once a quarter. BTW, most email platforms have a feature that allows you to send your message during someone’s normal business hours. Please use it.

Reevaluate Productivity Goals – Are pre-COVID KPIs still in place? Should they be? How reasonable are they? The workforce is moving toward a productivity model where job performance can no longer be measured by when, where, or how many hours employees work. Consider normalizing flexibility. For example, in performance reviews commend the employee for taking their earned PTO instead of praising them for perfect attendance. Best Practice: Leadership models taking time off, flexible work environments, and/or remote work days.

Communicate – Listen with empathy to your team on a regular basis. Can you set up in-person office hours or a virtual coffee once a week to bond with your team? Find common ground. Support and encourage self-care and mental health. Record a 30 second video on your company’s instant messaging platform and send it (during normal hours, please!) to your direct reports. Remind them that the intense project they’re working on will get done more efficiently if they rest their brains for a few minutes every hour. In 1:1 meetings, invite employees to discuss challenges outside of the job that are negatively affecting their ability to work. Is the solution something the company can provide as part of their benefits package?

As we approach the holidays, I hope both employers and employees get some rest from their work. Maybe in front of a roaring fire in your fireplace or, like me, a fireplace online. Please let those embers be the only burnout you allow.

As a manager, what strategies do you use to ease employee burnout? Please share in the comments.

Extra Crispy

Have you ever stared unblinking and thoughtless at your work computer screen for five seconds then freaked out a little when you realized that actually five minutes had passed? No? Just me? In researching solutions for my problem, I discovered I may be experiencing the phase before burnout. Wouldn’t it be useful if we were self-aware enough to recognize burnout before going up in smoke?

Burnout Has Phases

Honor Eastly coined a two-phase description: crispy and burned out. Crispy happens when you are stretching your limits, but like it. While it feels good, you ignore your need to rest and eventually get stuck in your process sparking burnout. How do you know you’re getting crispy? Here are some signs:

You wake up in the middle of the night thinking about your to-do list
Annoyances you used to ignore (e.g., your teammate forgetting to unmute himself on the weekly check-in Every. Time.) now drive you crazy
You are depressed

What You Can Do

Too much housekeeping at work stokes the fire. Taking notes for the team every meeting, buying birthday cards for staff, and emailing calendar invitations do not get you paid nor promoted. Since the work doesn’t count in managements’ eyes, you don’t take it into consideration when you wonder why you are exhausted. It’s time to ask others for help, (e.g., “You know what, Stan? I took the meeting notes last time. How about Joe does it this week?”)

Your chores fan the flames. For example, just eating can be work: buying groceries, preparing meals, cleaning up the kitchen, washing the dishes, putting the dishes away. You feel like this constant stream of tasks don’t count because you don’t get paid to do them, but they drain your time, energy, attention, and money. Recognize that life requires administration and pay attention to your unpaid duties. Can you streamline any of them? Divide some up with your partner? Outsource any? For example, can you afford to order food in once a week?

The hustle culture pours gasoline on the blaze. I discovered the symptoms of burnout after listening to this podcast. Experiencing some of them, I set a timer on my work intervals to remind me to take more breaks. At a meeting with my business coach I said, “I’m experimenting with forcing myself to take more rest breaks during the work day.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted saying them. When I heard them out loud, I felt like I was trying to defend being lazy. She reminded me that rest actually promotes better work results. That made me feel better temporarily, but then, why do I feel ashamed to rest during the workday? Why do I feel like I have to be on call 24/7/365? Because hustle culture trains us to be immediately responsive to others’ needs all the time. This behavior is unrealistic and unsustainable. Can you stop apologizing for being human? Can you get comfortable disappointing people?

When you start to feel exhausted for what you initially think is no reason, it’s time to stop, drop, and roll. Stop what you’re doing, drop the assumption that everything has to be done right now, and roll into a break.

How do you recognize when you’re moving from crispy to burnout? Please share in the comments.

It’s Just a Pause

I have a confession to make. I’m Team Oxford Comma. People can get passionate about correct comma usage. I did not realize there is such controversy over a crooked little mark. It’s just a pause, people! Sometimes a sentence has multiple commas because the author wants to slow down, make a list, or clarify. These three things are also useful in the workplace.

Slow Down

Plan A does not always work. When your team is trying to complete a project and hits an obstacle, pausing can help cool their frustrations. For example, I ask my clients to tell me what hurts. Their answers give me clues to solving their problems. Sometimes just thinking about the pain and how wide-spread it is sends them into a panic spiral. They talk faster, the pitch of their voices gets higher, their eyes get wider, their flight-fight-or-freeze mechanisms activate. That’s when I know it’s time to respond with slow, low, gentle-toned reassurances full of commas. By the same token, encouraging your team to take a pause helps everyone reset. Then you can calmly regroup and figure out together how to deal with the obstacle.

Make a List

Every task on your to-do list is the top priority and needs done yesterday, but you’ll get more work done if you stop what you’re doing. This is very counter-intuitive, but it’s like a flywheel. You can’t see the progression of the wheel turning while you’re pushing it. Much like you can’t feel the earth constantly turning while you’re standing on it. When you complete the push that makes the flywheel take off, you suddenly have lots of time. To get to the final push, sometimes you have to use a comma. Take a minute to box breath, then look at your task list. Determine which tasks are important and which are urgent. Take one action that gets one urgent task closer to completion, then pause. Look at your important tasks list. What is one action you can take in the next 15 minutes to get one item on it closer to completion? Then continue on with your urgent task list. At the end of the workday, reflect (another comma, btw). Celebrate how far you got on both the urgent and the important tasks, especially if you did not mark everything off both lists. Do not dwell on what is still left to do. Make a quick note of the next steps you’ll take on both lists tomorrow.

Clarify

Mental noise surrounds you 24/7/365. There is an overwhelming amount of information available to you. How do you make sense of any of it? Use a comma.

Pause – Stop. Breathe. Drink a glass of water
Reflect – Your wheels are turning, but you’re upside down. How did that happen?
Focus – What is the Why?
Refine – What is the most important next step or course correction?
Iterate – Take the next step
Repeat

How do you make the best use of pauses at work? Please share in the comments.

Emerging Expectations

A year ago Google gave their employees access to a pay calculator that let them estimate how permanently working remotely would impact their salaries. For most workers it meant a reduction. Since then Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft revealed similar policies. What is an employer’s justification for cutting pay if their employees work from home? Should you lower your expectations for compensation if it means you can work 100% remotely?

Employers Parry

Tech companies that have national and International workforces like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft revise an employee’s salary when the employee changes the location of their residence. For example, If the employee moves to a lower cost of living area, then their pay is reduced. Conversely, a few companies (e.g., Spotify, Reddit) raised the compensation of remote employees during the pandemic to match the salaries of their workforces that are based in New York and San Francisco. Google’s explanation for decreasing remote employee’s wages is that their compensation packages are always based on location since they pay employees top of the range for the market the employee lives in. Facebook said they had to adjust an employee’s salary to their location for accounting purposes and tax requirements. VMware and Gitlab also commented. Read more here. Companies cutting pay for working from home may be using it as a device to get employees back in the office. Maybe they think it signals a return to business as pre-pandemic usual. Maybe they feel if your manager doesn’t see you working, then you must not be. Maybe they believe physical presence boosts collaboration and innovation. These expectations need to be re-examined. We are living in a business as unusual, homing from work, videoconferencing our heads off era. Work-life integration advances both work and life.

Employees Counter-parry

Studies of productivity during the pandemic revealed that remote workers not only accomplished the same tasks as they did in the office, they also worked longer hours to do so. Employees feel like they should be paid for the work they do, not where they do it, but the majority of their managers disagree. Seventy-three percent of managers affirm that productivity was great. Their problem is, managing their remote workforce caused 69% of the managers to burnout. The study also indicates that 51% of company leaders believe employees want to return to an office and that incentives like free food and happy hours will lure them back. If employees are willing to give up promotions and wage increases to work from home, snacks are not enough of an incentive to return to an office. However, on-site childcare would be a good start.

Touché

This fencing match isn’t really about money. It’s about power. Employers have traditionally held all the power in the relationship. The pandemic gave employees a sense of agency and a means to prove they can handle it. A significant percentage of the workforce discovered that it does not make sense for them to stay in one place 9:00am-5:00pm Monday – Friday to do their jobs well. And so far nothing management has done to lure them back has changed their minds.

Would you accept a pay cut to work from home? Please share why or why not in the comments.

Transferable Skills

My mom’s birthday is this week. When I think about celebrating her, the usual motherly attributes come to mind. She is kind, supportive, available, etc. But none of those characteristics are number one on my list. The first thing I remember about growing up with my mother is leadership. Now, maybe that’s because leadership is always on my mind, but hear, er, read me out. A woman who chooses to raise a child is one of the first people to lead that child. Mothers teach how to eat, speak, walk, etc. When raising a child, a mother must learn skills that, coincidentally, make her an effective leader in the workforce. I’m not suggesting that every woman needs to have a child in order to be a good leader. I’m saying that motherhood is, by default, leadership training.

For the next month, we’ll examine some of the leadership skills a woman cultivates when she becomes a mother. In part one of this series, let’s look at how developing confidence through raising a child produces a confident leader in the workforce. Moms learn what works best for their families through trial and error. This gives them confidence to rely on their instincts in similar situations at work.

Flexibility

A mom must adapt to the circumstances and situations around her. For example, she is up every two hours during the night to comfort her child. The next day she is at work giving a presentation. Being flexible also fosters a growth mindset which is critical both for raising children and for leading coworkers. When a mom trains her child to be a life-longer learner, the child believes they can train to do whatever interests them. When a manager who happens to be a mom arranges upskilling for her staff, they believe they have the capacity to learn, unlearn, and relearn hard-skills like computer languages.

Analysis

A mom must make rational decisions for her child’s physical, emotional, and mental health. When researching options, she filters information through that lens. She collects feedback employing the scientific method: who, what, when, where, why, and how. She customizes that knowledge, data, and opinion to build a plan unique to her child. A mom in the workplace can apply this process when she decides what project to assign to which of her employees.

Juggling

A mom handles multiple tasks simultaneously. This requires her to learn how to determine what is important and what isn’t. Once she decides what tasks are important, then she can prioritize them. After that, she can organize multiple resources to accomplish what needs done. At home this may look like packing the same meal for both her and her child’s lunch because she is crunched for time. At work this may look like pulling certain team members from their work to contribute to a last-minute presentation requested by a client. This level of organizational dexterity builds trust with both children and coworkers.

What other aspects of motherhood do you think builds the confidence necessary to be an effective leader in the workplace? Please share in the comments.

Treat Me Right

I published this article about The Platinum Rule (TPR) over a year ago. The response I keep receiving merits a part two. As a refresher, you’ve probably heard of The Golden Rule (TGR). It says, “Treat others the way you want to be treated.” The next progression of this philosophy is The Platinum Rule (TPR). It says, “Treat others the way they want to be treated.” For example, if I followed TGR, I’d never give anyone a gift card to a restaurant because I don’t want to receive gift cards to restaurants. (Eating at restaurants is a minefield for this diabetic.) Following TPR, if my goal is to celebrate someone, then I should give them something they like, no matter how I feel about it.

In his book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie wrote, “Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when I went fishing, I didn’t think about what I wanted. I thought about what they wanted. I didn’t bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangled a worm or grasshopper in front of the fish and said: ‘Wouldn’t you like to have that?’”

Culture Creator

Employers would be wise to apply Mr. Carnegie’s logic to their workforce. In this movement dubbed The Great Resignation, we have moved on to the Great Reevaluation. The workforce is thinking really hard about the priority their jobs have in their lives. If they are currently dissatisfied with their situation, there are plenty of options from which to choose. The need for employees is so desperate that if employers want to both attract talent and retain it, they’d be wise to consider TPR instead of TGR. For example, if you are a Founder/CEO/President of a small business, then no one loves that company more than you do. It is on your mind 24/7/365. As the leader, your example sets the culture of your company. If you send emails at 10:07PM, then the employee who receives it thinks they have to get out of bed and respond. If you call from your car while dropping your son off at his play rehearsal, then the employee who answers feels like they have to stop making dinner to talk to you. If you review quarterly reports during your daughter’s swim practice, then the employee you texted questioning last month’s lagging sales feels like they have to pause their workout to reply. Your behavior sets a standard of being on-call all the time. Eventually you will burn out both yourself and your workforce. Once your company has this reputation, it’s difficult both to retain current employees and hire new ones.

Lead by Example

You can say that employees don’t have to reply right away, but your behavior gives the impression that an employee who cares about career growth with your company will be responsive. Your words whisper, but your actions shout. Thinking about work is actually work. It is invisible unpaid work that you create for your employees when you habitually cross their boundaries. Define what your business hours are. Set reasonable communication boundaries for both before and after those hours. Respect those boundaries. That is an effective use of the TPR.

What does your company do to apply The Platinum Rule to employees? Please share in the comments.

Battery Low

I have a wireless headset that audibly notifies me of certain conditions. When it connects she says, “Your headset is connected.” When it’s about to turn itself off because it needs charged she sternly announces, “Battery low.” I wish my brain would issue the same warning when I spend too long on a project without a break.

One of the factors in the Great Resignation is employee burnout. Are you fanning those flames? While growing up, maybe your parents and teachers trained you to finish your chores and homework before you were allowed to play. Now you’re internally compelled to finish a project before you can rest. The problem with that mindset is there’s always another project waiting.

I heard a word recently that’s stuck in my head: fallow. It’s an agricultural term referring to a field that annually grows crops and is intentionally set aside for at least one growing cycle. Going fallow allows the soil to recover. It gets rid of germs, stores nutrients, and retains water. I keep coming back to this concept in relation to my brain. When I think about letting my mind go fallow, I think of taking a vacation, a weekend off, or at least a lunch period. To me, getting rid of germs, storing nutrients, and retaining water sounds like washing my hands then eating a salad and chasing it with a bottle of water. But I’m beginning to think we all should let our minds go fallow multiple times during the workday. Research shows that breaks make us more effective, but are we taking them? If so, then are we doing them right?

What a break is not:

Switching from one task to another
Reading and replying to email
Returning calls
Running office errands
Cleaning

What a break is:

Standing up and stretching
Walking away from your workspace and equipment; around the block, if possible. Do something to temporarily get your blood flowing a little faster
Read a chapter in a novel
Text a friend
Play Wordle

Benefits

Some benefits of taking breaks are intuitive. For example, they recharge your energy, refocus your attention, and battle job burnout. There are also some not-so-intuitive benefits like increased productivity, physical and mental restoration, and increased employee engagement.

Methods

It’s counterproductive to only take a break when you’ve reached exhaustion. If brief rest periods make you feel guilty, then think of them as productivity breaks. Train yourself to perceive a pause as an efficient element of your energy management routine. Here are a few verified methods to help you develop a good habit.

Pomodoro Technique – 25 minutes of work, then a five-minute break, with a 15-minute break at least once every two hours.

Microbreaks – Five-minute breaks randomly taken at your discretion.

The Draugiem Group Way – in 2014 this company ran an experiment with their employees regarding the optimum time for breaks. Their findings indicate that working for 52 minutes then taking a 17-minute break is what the most productive members of their staff did.

How do you incorporate breaks into your workday? Please share your strategy in the comments.

Join the Resistance

When you give something your attention, you’re letting it rule your life for however long you think about it. This can be good, like visualizing what you want your slide deck to look like for next week’s presentation, or bad, like reliving last week’s argument with your supervisor. When it comes to deciding the best use of your time, energy, attention, and money, what you say no to is just as important as what you say yes to.

Attention Management

Attempts to increase productivity trace at least as far back as 1890 when William James wrote The Principles of Psychology. One of his statements is profound in its prophecy. He said, “My experience is what I agree to attend to.” Managing your attention is key to maintaining your priorities. Sounds easy, right? Then what’s stopping you from achieving your goals?

I can resist anything except temptation.
Oscar Wilde

The brainpower necessary to make wise choices is exhausting. Should you eat the doughnut or the apple? Should you watch TikTok or go for a run? Should you proofread your report or text your friend? When you concentrate on trying not to do something, it captures your attention. You’re more likely to give in to the temptation and do the very thing that you’re trying to resist. Instead, distract yourself. Also, limit your proximity to the temptation. For example, if you want to resist the doughnut and eat the apple instead, then hide the doughnut and put the apple at your workstation. Go for a walk around the block before eating anything.

Recognize the Real Enemy

Setting boundaries is easy. Holding them is difficult. Attention is like a muscle. You have to build it. You strengthen and lengthen your attention span every time you identify who, what, when, where, why, and how you got distracted from your goal. Then, change one or more of those variables to produce your desired result. For example, I’m a process improver. I analyze undesired results and reverse engineer them to identify where the outcome began to veer off course. Then, I imagine different choices to envision how they each may produce more desirable results. In terms of self-control, this could look like:

Undesired Result – Your deliverable was late
Veered off course – You missed one deadline
Analyze –
- Were other projects with similar deadlines competing for your attention?
- Was the deadline not communicated?
- Was the deadline communicated but you forgot to calendar it?
- Were you waiting for someone to get back to you with key information?
- Were you interrupted by an emergency?
- Were you distracted by social media?

The answers will dictate the next iteration of the deliverable process. For example, if you missed the deadline because you couldn’t resist the temptation to scroll through social media for hours everyday, then locking your phone in a drawer until break times will be added to the process because it will help you control your technology, behavior, thoughts, and environment. All these are factors that can distract you from reaching your goal.

How do you manage your attention? Please share in the comments.

I’ll Think About Procrastination Tomorrow

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make when they go by.”
Douglas Adams

I felt bad about moving the T in my S.M.A.R.T. goal back. AGAIN. Then I discovered Hofstadter’s law. In 1979 cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter said any plan you make will always take longer to complete than you expect it to; even if you over estimate how long the plan will take to complete. So, it’s not just me; it’s all of us. In fact, intentionally pushing back deadlines, or procrastination, can be a useful tool.

Purposeful Delay

The key to making procrastination a superpower is to do it intentionally. In 1927 Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnick proved that if you are interrupted during a task and you leave it unfinished, then you actively remember it until the task is completed. When you purposely leave a task unfinished in order to remember to do it, that is active procrastination. It’s different from passive procrastination, which is leaving a task unfinished because you don’t want to do it. For example, if you binge watch euphoria to avoid returning a client’s voicemail, then you are passively procrastinating. However, if by the end of an episode you discovered how to address the client’s concern and return their call, then you are actively procrastinating.

Problem Solving

If you pressure yourself to get everything done by the end of the work day, (shoutout to Team Inbox Zero!) then it takes self-control to let an issue go undecided. But when procrastinating to problem solve, you have to allow enough time for creativity to happen. The trick is knowing how long the creativity will take. You can’t tell your manager that you missed a deadline because you were thinking about all the possible solutions. For example, set a time limit, like half an hour, and do something totally unrelated to the challenge you’re trying to resolve. Walk the dog, play solitaire on your phone (or with a real deck of cards), shoot some hoops. Switch to a physical activity that engages more of your senses and less of your brain. Revisit the project after your set time is up. Whatever new avenues you now see to explore, limit your choices to those.

Priority List

Intentional procrastination is useful for prioritizing. In some cases if you put a task off long enough, then you realize you don’t need to waste your time doing it. For example, at the end of your work day you make a list of what you did not get done today and intend to get done tomorrow. If there is a task that ends up on that list every day for a week, then at the end of your work week think about why you didn’t accomplish it. Is the task necessary? Is it a lengthy process that needs to be broken down into multiple tasks? Is it a task you can delegate to a direct report?

How do you make time for procrastination and still meet deadlines? Please share in the comments.

Time for a Brand Refresh

Soft skills are hard. It takes years of practice to hone interpersonal skills, build character, and cultivate a professional attitude. They can take longer to learn than advanced JavaScript and are more critical to job performance. Soft skills are based on making wise choices. They are so important that four years ago I started writing about them weekly. In a world that daily iterates thanks largely to technology and COVID, soft skills are game-changers for the future of work. Employees who can successfully navigate fluid situations are extremely valuable. Over the next month we’ll explore four broad categories of soft skills: wisdom, communication, leadership, and self-awareness. First, let’s clarify terms:

Hard Skills: These are technical skills you learn through education, practice, and repetition. You can prove these skills with a degree or certificate; for example, mastering a second language, getting your PhD in physical therapy, or earning your Project Management Professional certification. These skills are temporary and change as technology evolves.

Soft Skills: These skills aren’t dependent on acquiring education. They are personal attributes you accumulate through life experience. They help you interact effectively and harmoniously with other people. They are broad and difficult to quantify. They are permanent and required for every job.

Wisdom is a Soft Skill

Wisdom is knowledge gained through experience over time. Organizational psychologist and bestselling author Adam Grant says, “Wisdom is being fast to learn from others’ errors to slow the rate of yours.” You attain wisdom by collecting as many facts and as much truth as you can to make the best decision you can in the time that you have to make it. Here are three ways you use wisdom at work:

Emotional Intelligence – You have learned how to competently manage your emotions when you are under stress. You recognize when emotions are governing someone’s behavior and can empathize with them. You are able to identify someone’s motivation and use it to influence them both verbally and non-verbally. For example, you have a personal rule to wait 24 hours before replying to an email that makes you angry.

Time Management – You can plan strategically (you have to-do lists for today, tomorrow, next week, etc.). You can remain focused long enough to get into flow. You have boundaries around work-life integration. You put in the time necessary to grow trusted relationships. For example, you booked a recurring calendar appointment for the last hour of your workday on Fridays to update your monthly expense report.

Performance Under Pressure – You developed the patience to prioritize instead of criticize. You recognize that a looming deadline tempts you to cut corners, but you also remember garbage in, garbage out. Experience has taught you that ideas and solutions come faster after you’ve taken a break. For example, your biggest client threatens to leave. Instead of looking for a team member to blame, you personally call the client for feedback.

The fast pace of business makes managing our impulses, waiting for processes to run their courses, and looking at the big picture and where our selfie fits in it hard. So may we please re-label soft skills with an adjective that better describes them? What do you think of human skills or professional skills? Please share your ideas in the comments.