Let’s Stop it! - Workplace Trends That We Don’t Want To See In 2017
As we welcome the New Year, I find a lot of people predicting the workforce trends that we are likely to see. Some interesting ones include improving the candidate/ employee experiences, multi-generational (yes, Generation Z is here!) and multi-skilled workforce, continuous assessments, HR Big-data analytics and Artificial Intelligence in HR. Very interesting times indeed if we believe the Issac Asimov’s in the field of HR!
On the contrary, I strongly feel we still need to unlearn old practices before we learn and adopt the new ones. There are a lot of aspects we need to either minimise or completely stop to ensure that our people in the coming year will be able to balance their work-life priorities and also be happy and productive at the workplace. This becomes critical when we are going to see almost 4 generations of people - with different needs, working styles, and aspirations - rubbing shoulders (and brains) against each other at the workplace. I have identified ten such practices that we hopefully will be able to put behind us in the coming year. Some of these are based on my own experiences, while the rest have been complied based on various interactions I have had with my HR counterparts in other organisations.
1) Stiff and Formal Work Atmosphere – Unfortunately in many organizations mundane aspects like dress-code, punctuality, how people interact with each other etc. take precedence over the workforce’s competency and effective execution of tasks. I have also seen paranoid Managers either out rightly blocking certain websites or alternately spying on their team members during and after work hours. Offices were created to be social places where like-minded people associate and collectively deliver value to their customers and stakeholders. If the focus is more on keeping everything formal and not trusting your own employees, the detachment of the workforce to the organisation is going to be likely. Doing away with such polices is likely to not only make the workplace less stressful, but also bring a sense of belonging to the employees which improves their morale and engagement levels. Chances of these employees continuing longer and becoming committed ambassadors of the organisation are the desirable and positive outcomes.
2) Relativity of Time – Many of us would have heard statements like “my time is more expensive than yours!” or “Is this the most important task that you are doing?” This makes one feel that the time of a person with higher levels of authority is relatively more important than that of their subordinate. Everyone has the same number of work hours, and provided the person is professionally competent, which is often true for the majority of the workforce, s/he should be given the liberty to prioritize and execute their tasks. When bosses intervene and try to micro-manage, they not only demean the decision making ability of the team member but also give out the perception that only they know how to manage time effectively or even worse, only their time matters. One should not feel that the boss’s time and tasks should always take precedence over their regular planned activities, as most are evaluated and rewarded on achievement of their own goals and not their boss’s. Potential collective time wasters like meetings should be planned carefully and everyone should be given the same yardstick for managing their respective times.
3) Nepotism – A fair and high-performance oriented workplace requires each person to be treated equally. When ideas are shared or suggestions made, it should not matter where it comes from as long as it is good and relevant. However, nepotism is one of the biggest poisons to a thriving high-performance workplace. Some people have the boss’s ear and influence their thoughts by just being “who” they are – a friend or relative. Though some organisations have explicit polices against hiring blood/close relatives, like spouse and siblings, friends and other relatives are often overlooked. Removing nepotism in all forms will give a clear perception to the workforce that it is only their performance that matters.
4) Putting Activity over Achievement – All traditional methods of measurement of workforce is based on time rather than successful completion of tasks. Even for monthly payroll inputs -attendance, punctuality, approved leaves etc. are often the only considerations. Hence most people get away with mediocre performance for significant periods of time, i.e. till they are formally assessed during performance appraisals which often are done only annually. Moving towards continuous assessments should be the way forward, where people are assessed on completion of goals/objectives and rewarded accordingly instead of waiting for a specific period of time like the completion of the annual appraisal cycle.
5) Discrimination based on employee position/seniority – In many organisations’ standard policies, typically laid out in the HR Handbooks, discrimination amongst employees based on their position and seniority is often evident. This includes policies like travel eligibility (Business vs. Economy class), daily allowances on work related travel, car lease entitlement, etc. It defeats the organisation cultural aspect of “workplace equality” that most organisations nowadays tom-tom. Why is such further discrimination required, when it is anyway done by way of the senior position a person holds in the organisation and the higher compensation they get? To add further insult to injury, some other perks based on seniority are typically not even found in the handbooks but practised anyway – like additional flexibility at work, longer vacation time, higher insurance coverage etc. It is high time we move away from such practices and have the same level of benefits for all classes of employees. Additionally, it will save HR in these organisations “the blushes” in explaining the implementation of such discriminatory benefit policies for different levels of employees.
6) Stretching the Work Hours – From great leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Abdul Kalam to IT industry icons like Narayan Murthy and Azim Premji, we come to know that highly productive people do not necessarily stretch their work hours. The truth is that work is continuous and never ending – when one task ends another begins. Hence, trying to finish everything in one day by stretching the work hours is not going to help. In fact, the adverse effect is that it completely upsets the work-life balance leading to stress (physical and mental) and negatively affecting one’s social group (family and friends). An organisation which asks its employees to stretch regularly should expect mediocrity in the long term. In fact research shows after 55 hours of work in a week, the productivity drops to zero for each additional hour worked. It means that a company might be paying overtime for zero economic output in return. This also implies that the people who linger in the office after their regular work hours, typically 8-9 hours per day in most companies, often have more personal reasons to do so. Hence it should be discouraged through policies – no/limited overtime payment, or no compensatory offs etc. – and proactive managerial interference.
7) Not availing Earned Leaves – Recent surveys have shown that most people willingly forfeit their earned leaves for payment in lieu of it citing work deliverables and not getting approvals from their Managers. Some go to the extent to boast how few leaves they have availed over the years. I am quite sure the Group Medical Cover brokers and family members might be the only worried lots from this trend. However, Managers and sometimes organisational Management, miss the bigger picture while focussing on such short term productivity gains. Taking vacations is not only essential for the emotional well-being of the employee, but it also acts as a preventive measure against various lifestyle diseases like diabetes, hypertension etc. Moreover a happy and fit employee is going to be more engaged and productive in the long run, which ultimately leads to better organisational performance.
8) Individual achievements over Team – We often place and reward individuals over teams. This is done through rewards & recognition programs, like Star of the month/Quarter/Year or Spot awards. Many organisations have introduced team awards, but it is not very popular as the prize and award is shared by the entire team. The top-performers in such teams often do not feel like sharing their achievements with their less productive team members. Whether we like it or not, such self-centred thinking is ingrained within all of us. In fact, even in team sports like Cricket an individual performance of scoring a century sometime supersedes the team results. However, in the end what matters is whether we win or lose as a team, as no individual regardless of how competent he is can multiply his/her available time and effort – both often remain a hard constraint. Encouraging collective performance and having well-designed rewards around it will likely give a better result and produce a winning team. Otherwise it will remain a group of talented individuals competing against each other.
9) Disengaged employees who continue to work – A workforce trend that I have observed based on multiple ‘employee happiness and engagement’ surveys and initiatives is that at any point in time around 10-20% of employees are unhappy and likely to be disengaged from work. If such people who are perpetually unhappy in their roles, regardless of their skills and knowledge leave the organisation voluntarily, it is actually a blessing in disguise for the organisation. The problem is when these disengaged people continue in their roles. In such instances they not only hamper productivity and performance, but also negatively influence the other employees with their lack of effort/interest. Additionally, they are likely to share negative feelings and spread unnecessary rumours across the organisation – as an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. Unless these disengaged employees are proactively identified and appropriate action is taken at the right time by the Managers, it will result in the best people leaving the organisation while the disengaged ones’ continue with their painful tenure.
10) Traditional Annual Performance Appraisals – The last but not the least is the typical 90/180/360 degree annual performance appraisals. The administrative task, both by the employee and their Managers, of maintaining a log of their achievements, challenges, and sometime failures throughout the appraisal period (of a year) is a total drain on productivity. It is as absurd as Usain Bolt winning the 100m Olympic race in Rio in 2016, but getting the Gold Medal a year later. Such systems take away the motivation and drive, especially of the most productive employee. They realise that regardless of how they perform, the rewards in terms of compensation or promotion will only happen at the end of the assessment cycle. Hence, many prefer to change jobs to get that hike/position instead of continuing with the organisation where they have proven themselves. To overcome this situation, half-yearly cycles have been introduced by some companies, as they feel it is easier to allocate budgets this way based on company’s performance. It is only a marginal improvement though.
The best solutions are already identified and being presently implemented by few leading organizations, but need to be actively adopted by the rest. This system evaluates performance continuously against pre-defined goals and other parameters, and builds a reward system around it. It also gives the message that rewards immediately follow results, creating a positive buzz across the organisation and bringing a welcome atmosphere of positive completion. It is better for budgeting as well, as the people get rewarded based on the economic value they have actually bought to the organisation, in terms of savings, revenues, delivery etc. Additionally, the perennial HR tasks of a) conducting salary surveys, b) creating an annual increment budget, c) getting it approved by Finance and Management, e) formally initiating the performance appraisals, and the multiple steps that follow, can also be done away with for good!
As we welcome the New Year, I find a lot of people predicting the workforce trends that we are likely to see. Some interesting ones include improving the candidate/ employee experiences, multi-generational (yes, Generation Z is here!) and multi-skilled workforce, continuous assessments, HR Big-data analytics and Artificial Intelligence in HR. Very interesting times indeed if we believe the Issac Asimov’s in the field of HR!
On the contrary, I strongly feel we still need to unlearn old practices before we learn and adopt the new ones. There are a lot of aspects we need to either minimise or completely stop to ensure that our people in the coming year will be able to balance their work-life priorities and also be happy and productive at the workplace. This becomes critical when we are going to see almost 4 generations of people - with different needs, working styles, and aspirations - rubbing shoulders (and brains) against each other at the workplace. I have identified ten such practices that we hopefully will be able to put behind us in the coming year. Some of these are based on my own experiences, while the rest have been complied based on various interactions I have had with my HR counterparts in other organisations.
1) Stiff and Formal Work Atmosphere – Unfortunately in many organizations mundane aspects like dress-code, punctuality, how people interact with each other etc. take precedence over the workforce’s competency and effective execution of tasks. I have also seen paranoid Managers either out rightly blocking certain websites or alternately spying on their team members during and after work hours. Offices were created to be social places where like-minded people associate and collectively deliver value to their customers and stakeholders. If the focus is more on keeping everything formal and not trusting your own employees, the detachment of the workforce to the organisation is going to be likely. Doing away with such polices is likely to not only make the workplace less stressful, but also bring a sense of belonging to the employees which improves their morale and engagement levels. Chances of these employees continuing longer and becoming committed ambassadors of the organisation are the desirable and positive outcomes.
2) Relativity of Time – Many of us would have heard statements like “my time is more expensive than yours!” or “Is this the most important task that you are doing?” This makes one feel that the time of a person with higher levels of authority is relatively more important than that of their subordinate. Everyone has the same number of work hours, and provided the person is professionally competent, which is often true for the majority of the workforce, s/he should be given the liberty to prioritize and execute their tasks. When bosses intervene and try to micro-manage, they not only demean the decision making ability of the team member but also give out the perception that only they know how to manage time effectively or even worse, only their time matters. One should not feel that the boss’s time and tasks should always take precedence over their regular planned activities, as most are evaluated and rewarded on achievement of their own goals and not their boss’s. Potential collective time wasters like meetings should be planned carefully and everyone should be given the same yardstick for managing their respective times.
3) Nepotism – A fair and high-performance oriented workplace requires each person to be treated equally. When ideas are shared or suggestions made, it should not matter where it comes from as long as it is good and relevant. However, nepotism is one of the biggest poisons to a thriving high-performance workplace. Some people have the boss’s ear and influence their thoughts by just being “who” they are – a friend or relative. Though some organisations have explicit polices against hiring blood/close relatives, like spouse and siblings, friends and other relatives are often overlooked. Removing nepotism in all forms will give a clear perception to the workforce that it is only their performance that matters.
4) Putting Activity over Achievement – All traditional methods of measurement of workforce is based on time rather than successful completion of tasks. Even for monthly payroll inputs -attendance, punctuality, approved leaves etc. are often the only considerations. Hence most people get away with mediocre performance for significant periods of time, i.e. till they are formally assessed during performance appraisals which often are done only annually. Moving towards continuous assessments should be the way forward, where people are assessed on completion of goals/objectives and rewarded accordingly instead of waiting for a specific period of time like the completion of the annual appraisal cycle.
5) Discrimination based on employee position/seniority – In many organisations’ standard policies, typically laid out in the HR Handbooks, discrimination amongst employees based on their position and seniority is often evident. This includes policies like travel eligibility (Business vs. Economy class), daily allowances on work related travel, car lease entitlement, etc. It defeats the organisation cultural aspect of “workplace equality” that most organisations nowadays tom-tom. Why is such further discrimination required, when it is anyway done by way of the senior position a person holds in the organisation and the higher compensation they get? To add further insult to injury, some other perks based on seniority are typically not even found in the handbooks but practised anyway – like additional flexibility at work, longer vacation time, higher insurance coverage etc. It is high time we move away from such practices and have the same level of benefits for all classes of employees. Additionally, it will save HR in these organisations “the blushes” in explaining the implementation of such discriminatory benefit policies for different levels of employees.
6) Stretching the Work Hours – From great leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Abdul Kalam to IT industry icons like Narayan Murthy and Azim Premji, we come to know that highly productive people do not necessarily stretch their work hours. The truth is that work is continuous and never ending – when one task ends another begins. Hence, trying to finish everything in one day by stretching the work hours is not going to help. In fact, the adverse effect is that it completely upsets the work-life balance leading to stress (physical and mental) and negatively affecting one’s social group (family and friends). An organisation which asks its employees to stretch regularly should expect mediocrity in the long term. In fact research shows after 55 hours of work in a week, the productivity drops to zero for each additional hour worked. It means that a company might be paying overtime for zero economic output in return. This also implies that the people who linger in the office after their regular work hours, typically 8-9 hours per day in most companies, often have more personal reasons to do so. Hence it should be discouraged through policies – no/limited overtime payment, or no compensatory offs etc. – and proactive managerial interference.
7) Not availing Earned Leaves – Recent surveys have shown that most people willingly forfeit their earned leaves for payment in lieu of it citing work deliverables and not getting approvals from their Managers. Some go to the extent to boast how few leaves they have availed over the years. I am quite sure the Group Medical Cover brokers and family members might be the only worried lots from this trend. However, Managers and sometimes organisational Management, miss the bigger picture while focussing on such short term productivity gains. Taking vacations is not only essential for the emotional well-being of the employee, but it also acts as a preventive measure against various lifestyle diseases like diabetes, hypertension etc. Moreover a happy and fit employee is going to be more engaged and productive in the long run, which ultimately leads to better organisational performance.
8) Individual achievements over Team – We often place and reward individuals over teams. This is done through rewards & recognition programs, like Star of the month/Quarter/Year or Spot awards. Many organisations have introduced team awards, but it is not very popular as the prize and award is shared by the entire team. The top-performers in such teams often do not feel like sharing their achievements with their less productive team members. Whether we like it or not, such self-centred thinking is ingrained within all of us. In fact, even in team sports like Cricket an individual performance of scoring a century sometime supersedes the team results. However, in the end what matters is whether we win or lose as a team, as no individual regardless of how competent he is can multiply his/her available time and effort – both often remain a hard constraint. Encouraging collective performance and having well-designed rewards around it will likely give a better result and produce a winning team. Otherwise it will remain a group of talented individuals competing against each other.
9) Disengaged employees who continue to work – A workforce trend that I have observed based on multiple ‘employee happiness and engagement’ surveys and initiatives is that at any point in time around 10-20% of employees are unhappy and likely to be disengaged from work. If such people who are perpetually unhappy in their roles, regardless of their skills and knowledge leave the organisation voluntarily, it is actually a blessing in disguise for the organisation. The problem is when these disengaged people continue in their roles. In such instances they not only hamper productivity and performance, but also negatively influence the other employees with their lack of effort/interest. Additionally, they are likely to share negative feelings and spread unnecessary rumours across the organisation – as an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. Unless these disengaged employees are proactively identified and appropriate action is taken at the right time by the Managers, it will result in the best people leaving the organisation while the disengaged ones’ continue with their painful tenure.
10) Traditional Annual Performance Appraisals – The last but not the least is the typical 90/180/360 degree annual performance appraisals. The administrative task, both by the employee and their Managers, of maintaining a log of their achievements, challenges, and sometime failures throughout the appraisal period (of a year) is a total drain on productivity. It is as absurd as Usain Bolt winning the 100m Olympic race in Rio in 2016, but getting the Gold Medal a year later. Such systems take away the motivation and drive, especially of the most productive employee. They realise that regardless of how they perform, the rewards in terms of compensation or promotion will only happen at the end of the assessment cycle. Hence, many prefer to change jobs to get that hike/position instead of continuing with the organisation where they have proven themselves. To overcome this situation, half-yearly cycles have been introduced by some companies, as they feel it is easier to allocate budgets this way based on company’s performance. It is only a marginal improvement though.
The best solutions are already identified and being presently implemented by few leading organizations, but need to be actively adopted by the rest. This system evaluates performance continuously against pre-defined goals and other parameters, and builds a reward system around it. It also gives the message that rewards immediately follow results, creating a positive buzz across the organisation and bringing a welcome atmosphere of positive completion. It is better for budgeting as well, as the people get rewarded based on the economic value they have actually bought to the organisation, in terms of savings, revenues, delivery etc. Additionally, the perennial HR tasks of a) conducting salary surveys, b) creating an annual increment budget, c) getting it approved by Finance and Management, e) formally initiating the performance appraisals, and the multiple steps that follow, can also be done away with for good!
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