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How to Start a Hybrid-Remote Work Model

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As the pandemic subsides (at least for now,) many companies are summoning employees back to the office. Some companies are giving workers a combination of remote and co-located work.

To initiate a hybrid-remote model for your workplace, first reconstruct how your team gets its job done. Ask, “What activities can be remote?” instead of “what roles can be remote?”

Not every activity can be equally performed in a remote setting. Take into account the level of human and physical interaction needed for every task.

Consider breaking down business activities that were formerly bundled into a single job. Mix and match responsibilities and tasks in keeping with employee competencies and individual needs.

Every employee responds to work circumstances differently. Some employees are eager to return to work—especially if they’ve struggled with blurring home and office during the pandemic, or if they fear disadvantages such as a lack of visibility for promotions.

The Three Dreadful Stumbling Blocks to Time Management

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Ineffective time management is characterized by folks having too many things they need to do (and just a few they must do,) but not enough time for everything they want to do. The key to time management, therefore, is to identify your needs and wants in terms of their importance and match them with the time and resources available.

If your time-management efforts are not getting you the results you envision, you need to pay attention to three hurdles that can get you derailed easily.

  1. The foremost obstacle to time management is a lack of practical awareness of your job duties, as well as the extent of your authority and responsibility. Your efficiency could be acutely hindered by doing the wrong tasks—those that are relatively unimportant or not even part of your job description. You could also not be using the skills or time of others, perhaps not recognizing that you have the authority to do so.
  2. An associated obstacle to effective time management is your failure to prioritize tasks. You may not be able to prioritize because either you’re unaware of your job duties, or you don’t know how to set priorities. As stated by the Pareto Principle, you could be spending 80% of your time on tasks that account for a mere 20% of the total job results. As a result, you could be working on the trivial and the routine, but not the important. In other words, you could be working on the “can do” and not the “must do.”
  3. Equally important, your time management-plans often go off the rails because of “time thieves”—meetings, impromptu visitors, avoidable reports, telephone calls, delays, canceled engagements, redundant rules and regulations, and other claptrap.

Idea for Impact: Develop a high level of awareness in the areas discussed above. Use my three-part technique (time logging, time analyzing, and time budgeting) to control time, conserve time, and make time. Additionally, learn to farm more work out—delegating not only frees up precious time, but also helps develop your employees’ abilities, as well as your own. Try not to say ‘yes’ to too many things and avoid taking on too much.

Book Summary of Leigh Branham’s ‘The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave’

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Employee engagement and retention of top talent is a holy grail of people management—and nearly as hard to pin down.

Employees expect managers to be fair, pay fairly, listen, value opinions, relate, develop, challenge, demonstrate care, advance, and so on. But many employees don’t know when and how to voice their concerns, or negotiate for what they want.

All managers know that engaged employees are happier and more productive. Yet, managers and HR managers cannot simply make employee engagement “happen.”

'The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave' by Leigh Branham (ISBN 0814408516) In The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave, employee-retention expert Leigh Branham discusses how companies can tackle employee disengagement and retain their best and brightest people.

Using a copious amount of facts and figures from interviews and surveys, Branham explores seven reasons for employee disengagement. For each reason, Branham lists signs that managers need to keep their eyes open for, and shows how employers and employees could communicate and understand their mutual needs and desires.

“Some Quit and Leave … Others Quit and Stay”

According to Branham, employee disengagement—and eventual resignation—is not an event; rather, it is a plodding process of bitterness, discontent, and eventual withdrawal that can take weeks, months, or even years until the definite choice to resign happens. He lists the ten most common stimuli that trigger employee disengagement:

  1. Poor management
  2. Lack of career growth and advancement opportunity
  3. Poor communications
  4. Issues with pay and remuneration
  5. Lack of recognition
  6. Poor senior leadership
  7. Lack of training
  8. Excessive workload
  9. Lack of tools and resources
  10. Lack of teamwork

Branham claims to have synthesized some 20,700 employee-exit surveys and has identified four fundamental human needs (compare to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) that must be met by employers:

  • Employees need to feel proficient. They want to be matched to a job that aligns with their talents and their desire for a challenge.
  • Employees need to feel a sense of worth. They want to feel confident that their commitment and their efforts translate into meaningful contributions to their company’s mission. They desire to be recognized and rewarded appropriately.
  • Employees need to be trusted. They expect their employers to pay attention, and be honest and open in their communications.
  • Employees need to have hope. They want to be treated fairly, and given opportunities to grow their skills and advance their careers.

Why Employees Start Feeling Disconnected from Their Work

The core of The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave is a “how to” guide to address each of the seven reasons to enable a company to pursue the path to become an “employer of choice.”

Reason #1: The Job or Workplace Was Not as Expected. Many new hires join their companies with a wide range of misconceptions and unrealistic expectations. Some stay and adapt, others disengage and stay, and some others disengage and ultimately leave. Branham advocates creating realistic job descriptions, and open communications between managers and employees on achieving their mutual goals and expectations.

Reason #2: The Mismatch between Job and Person. Companies with strong reputations for selecting the right talent and keeping employees well matched with their jobs have a strong commitment to the continuous upgrading of talent. Managers can assign tasks so that employees can be more engaged through the use of their “motivated abilities.” Managers must keep an eye open opportunities to augment employees’ jobs by delegating tasks they might not have considered before.

Reason #3: Too Little Coaching and Feedback. Branham affirms that most managers do coaching and feedback merely as annual or biannual HR-required discussions that bind ambiguous targets to performance-ranking and pay scale. Managers must lead frequent, informal, on-the-job feedback conversations with employees. Branham identifies four principal themes that managers must address to make their performance management practice seem less controlling and more of a partnership:

  1. “Where are we going as a company?”
  2. “How are we going to get there?”
  3. “How does the manager expect the employee to contribute?”
  4. “How is the employee doing? What is going well? What are the key suggestions for improvement?”

Reason #4: Too Few Growth and Advancement Opportunities. Branham observes that most talented employees cannot pinpoint and articulate, and often underuse their greatest strengths. He encourages companies to provide self-assessment tools and career management training for all employees, enabling them to be the best they possibly can be. Most “employers of choice” have a strong mentoring culture. They communicate that employees must take the initiative in their own career development.

Reason #5: Feeling Devalued and Unrecognized. To Branham, many companies do not have a formal and informal culture of recognition because their managers are themselves too busy with their nominal responsibilities to pay adequate attention to employees’ performance. Or, they can’t discern between average and superior performance. He lists recommendations for competitive base- and variable-pay linked to achieving business goals. He reminds managers that employees are hungry to be listened to, and want their ideas sought and implemented.

Reason #6: Stress from Overwork and Work-life Imbalance. Branham observes that the relationships employees form with other employees is a glue that binds people to their workplaces. He encourages fostering social connectedness by assigning cross-functional team projects and organizing group outings.

Reason #7: Loss of Trust and Confidence in Senior Leaders. When senior leaders don’t back up pronouncements such as “people are our most important asset” with their actions, even mid-level managers begin to question the decisions and the actions of senior leaders. The result is a manifest lack of enthusiasm in the workplace, and in the rising complaints and questions about policies and practices. Leaders must set the tone for workplace culture and must back up their words with actions to discourage employee cynicism and disengagement.

Becoming an Engaged Leader is the Embodiment of What Leadership Means

Recommendation: Fast read Leigh Branham’s The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave. This book makes a great reading for managers and leaders who will need to scratch beneath the surface to recognize unhappy employees before it’s too late, and then engage their employees better and retain their top talent.

While many of the book’s themes may appear familiar, The 7 Hidden Reasons discuses many ideas and “engagement practices” in great specificity to help managers and leaders keep their antennae up for signs of bitterness and discontent, and correct before they lose their best and brightest people. This practical tome can also help employees discuss and resolve their needs and desires.

Developing a deep understanding of what causes employees to lose motivation, disengage, and leave cannot be ignored or overlooked. Managers and leaders who can resolve the divergence that employees feel between their personal values and the best interests of their businesses will gain immeasurably by having a highly engaged and productive workforce.

Before Jumping Ship, Consider This

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Dissatisfied with your job? Considering jumping ship? There’s no guarantee your next job will be any better. Many people who jump ship in frustration run into the same problems that were an obstacle with previous employers.

Consider working on a solution before trying to jump ship. Try to discuss your future with your boss.

  • Examine your motivations. Insist on realism. Do you have clear goals and priorities? Step back and assess what’s happening in your career journey. Don’t have unrealistic assumptions.
  • Start with a plan. What specifically are you seeking to make your job better? How can you get it? If you feel your career has become stagnant, realize that people who stay in one function or one industry may move up quickly in the beginning of their careers but often reach a ceiling later when they become too specialized.
  • Be brutally candid with yourself. Make sure you’re capable of handling the roles and responsibilities you’re seeking. Determine if they’re available.
  • Meet formally with your boss to discuss your plan. Take the initiative to lead the discussion; unlike at a performance review, here you drive the discussion.
  • During the meeting, ask your boss to evaluate your skills and your potential. Hear him out. Use active listening—repeat what he said to make sure you understand each other.
  • Give the boss your perspectives after hearing his. Don’t be confrontational. Try to cooperate. Think before you respond: reacting too quickly will set your boss on the defensive and guarantee an argument.
  • Once you’ve agreed upon a solution, do everything to progress it. Example: One woman wanted to be reassigned to her company’s trade sales unit. At her own initiative, she attended her industry’s trade shows, developed contacts, and learned what was necessary to succeed in sales and marketing.
  • Don’t expect quick action: changes take a little time. Perhaps you may be happier with a lateral move: many people think that careers should follow an upward trajectory. In fact, most jobs transitions don’t entail a promotion. Most successful careers involve a mix of lateral and upward movement.

Idea for Impact: Try to ask for honest feedback about what’s holding you back from a promotion. You’ll find it easier to tackle career frustrations in a familiar environment at your current employer rather than at a new company where you’ll be under pressure to learn the ropes and produce results quickly.

Eight Ways to Keep Your Star Employees Around

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Every manager should make employee retention a priority and regularly inquire, “How many of my star employees would leave my organization if they could?”

Employee turnover can be expensive. Managers must find and hire replacements, invest in training the new employees, and wait for them to get to up to speed—all while suffering productivity shortfalls during the transition. The more talented an employee, the higher the cost of replacing him/her.

Here’s what you need to do to keep your star employees around.

  1. Identify them. Find key attributes that distinguish top performers from average performers. Then rank your team against these attributes and identify those employees who are critical to your organization’s short- and long-term success.
  2. Perform salary and compensation research within your industry and offer an attractive-enough benefits package. Beyond a particular point, compensation loses much of its motivating power. Consider flexible work arrangements.
  3. Understand what your star employees value and help them realize their values and regard their work as meaningful, purposeful, and important. Often, the risk of losing employees because their personal values don’t correspond with the team’s values is far greater than the risk of losing them because of compensation.
  4. Get regular feedback from your star employees. Ask, “What can I do as your manager to make our organization a great place for you to work?” Let them tell you what they need and what they like and don’t like about their jobs. Adjust their assignments and their work conditions accordingly.
  5. Invest in training and development. Give star employees opportunities to develop their skills and increase their engagement and job security. Hold frequent and formal career discussions to determine employees’ goals and aspirations and coach them.
  6. Give your star employees the autonomy, authority, and resources to use their skills and do their jobs in their own way.
  7. Keep them challenged and engaged. Make work more exciting. Set aggressive, but realizable goals. Move your star employees around into positions in the company where they will face new challenges and develop critical skills. Employees would like to be challenged, appreciated, trusted, and see a path for career advancement.
  8. Appreciate and give honest feedback regularly. Make timely and informal feedback a habit. Don’t disregard employee performance until the annual review. Help employees feel confident about your organization’s future. Earn their trust.

How to Promote Employees

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Job Promotions Can Be Stressful

A job promotion is generally cause for celebration and gratification. However, it can be a source of deep anxiety for many employees: they tend to suffer additional mental strain and are less likely to find time to go to the doctor. Research at the University of Warwick found that “the mental health of managers typically deteriorates after a job promotion, and in a way that goes beyond merely a short-term change.”

Promote Employees Who’ve Shown Some Evidence of Success

Before you decide to promote an employee, ask yourself the following six questions about the candidate. The more affirmative answers to these questions, the better the chances for the promotion to succeed. Examine and resolve any “no” answers before considering the employee for other job transitions.

  • Is the candidate performing her current duties well enough to justify a promotion?
  • Can she hand over her current responsibilities to a new person?
  • Does she possess a sound understanding of the fundamentals of a business and have the requisite operating experience?
  • Is she keen to take on a new job? Is she familiar with the responsibilities and priorities of the new job? Is she willing to make decisions and be accountable for results?
  • Is she qualified and experienced enough to do at least part of the new job? Is she adequately trained or ready to be trained in the new job’s requirements?
  • Are her interpersonal skills adequate to work with employees, customers, suppliers, peers, and bosses in the new job?

Idea for Impact: If employees are not entirely prepared for new assignments, you are unintentionally setting them up for stressful transitions, bitterness, or eventual failure. Beware of the perils of promoting people too quickly.

Performance Appraisal Systems “Don’t Meet Expectations”

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Perfect Phrases for Performance Reviews » Douglas Max and Robert Bacal Across the corporate world, the annual performance appraisal system has been reduced to a perfunctory exercise to “do what HR needs and check-the-box,” and produce paperwork to weed out the laggards and reduce liability against discrimination lawsuits. So much so that one company I know recently distributed copies of the book “Perfect Phrases for Performance Reviews” to hundreds of its managers to help “use relevant phrases and standardize the vocabulary” and “ease the whole process.”

Empirical evidence suggests that, taken as a whole, the annual performance appraisal system has failed to “meet expectations.” It produces no durable improvements in employee behavior and seldom assists the employees meaningfully with career development. Nor does it have a discernible impact on organizational development. Thanks to a system that is highly subjective and easy to game, this annual ritual has become a stressful exercise for managers and employees alike.

At many companies, performance appraisals center too much on filling out forms. The actual performance appraisal meetings tend to be uncomfortable encounters for both managers and employees. Much time during these meetings is devoted to disputing the self-evaluations of employees, summoning up their failings, and defending the employee rankings previously determined by a “consensus” process administered by HR. Besides, during the ranking process, managers tend to overstate the accomplishments of their own employees and put down other employees—after all, managers do not want to incriminate themselves and admit failure in managing employees as successfully as their managerial peers might assert.

Core to this problem is that most managers fail to understand that employee performance management is about establishing relationships and ensuring effective communication about how employees, managers, teams, and organizations can succeed and create enduring value.

Performance management should not be limited to just once a year during the annual performance appraisal. Helping employees to reflect on their performance and learn from their mistakes, and coaching them should be part of the everyday interactions between employees and their managers. This way, the employees can solicit feedback promptly, know where they stand, and make small ongoing improvements. The managers do not have to wait until the appraisal time and then make an extraordinary attempt to convince their employees to correct themselves. The constant communication can eliminate any surprises for both the manager and the employee during the formal performance appraisal exercise.

As part of this informal practice, the managers can keep a diary on employee performance. Recording significant and relevant examples of an employee’s performance (achievements and shortcomings) can help the managers write objective performance summaries. In addition to diminishing the recency bias, the awareness that a manager might write up opinions may persuade an employee to pay attention.

For now, HR can develop a “Performance Improvement Plan” to overhaul the performance appraisal system and truly help improve individual and organizational performance.

More Ideas for Career Success

[Time Management #4] Budgeting Your Time by Your Priorities

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Preamble

This article is the final article in a series of four articles that presents the basics of diagnosing how you tend to spend your time and how you can develop the discipline of spending your time on what really matters to you. Here is a synopsis of the preceding three articles.

  1. The first article established that effective time management is truly not about managing time as such; rather, it is about managing priorities. See full article here.
  2. The second article outlined a simple exercise to help you track how you use your hours and minutes during a suitably long period of time, ideally a whole week. See full article here.
  3. Yesterday’s article described three steps to tally up your time logs, analyze how you actually use your time, and recognize non-productive tasks and activities. See full article here.

Today’s closing article details a simple process to list your life’s values and priorities and create a time budget to help you center your actions on the truly important aspects of your life and career.

Define Your Values and Priorities

A great deal of anxiety and stress in your life is largely from doing things that are inconsistent with what you believe and what you know you should be doing. Your lack of control over your time stems from doing things that are incoherent with your core values and priorities in life and career.

Matching your actions to the truly important aspects of your life will help you be more focused, more disciplined and more effective. With this objective, spend about 15 minutes to reflect on your life and career, clarify your short- and long-term goals and discover your overriding priorities.

Identify Your Priorities in Life

  1. With the help of your spouse or significant other, catalog the core values that you hold dear—the guiding principles of your life. Include personal characteristics, traits and achievements you desire to realize in the short-term and the long-term. Your list many include family, career success, well-being and happiness, prestige, wealth, sense of community or anything else that you feel is important.
  2. Rank your values and goals. Sort your list in order of their importance to you. Begin with most important value or goal and end with the least important. Judge between conflicting values to help you commit to ideas and activities that are truly important. Condense your list to 7 to 10 priorities.
  3. Rewrite your priorities in terms of actions and achievements that would satisfy each priority or the associated value. Consider the following example.

Example 1: Top Three Priorities of Linda, a Housewife

The previous article on time analysis featured Linda, a housewife who works part-time. Consider this list of her top three priorities in life.

  1. Husband and daughter. “Love and care for my husband. Support his career and goals. Nurture our daughter and give her the best upbringing.”
  2. Family and friends. “Provide for my aging parents. Support my entrepreneur-brother. Spend more time with dear friends.”
  3. Part-time work. “Learn and contribute in my profession as an accountant. Supplement family income.”

Identify Your Priorities at Work

Your desire to be productive at work should begin with understanding your most important tasks in terms of what your role demands of you.

  1. Collect your job description, your boss’s and your employees’ job descriptions, your organization’s objectives, any metrics that you report on a regular basis, your recent performance reviews, and your documented career plan. Review these documents.
  2. List and rank your priorities. What does your role require of you? What goals have your boss and your organization set for you? What are your key projects and initiatives? How your organizational objectives direct impact your own work? Do not list any more than three major priorities (priorities that require 25% of your time or more) and two minor, comparatively less-significant priorities.

Example 2: Top Priorities of Kumar, a Middle-Level Manager

The previous article on time analysis featured Kumar, a middle-level manager at an aerospace company. Kumar aspires to reorganize his time, adopt productive means to get his work completed by working no more than 45-48 hours per week. Consider the following list of his projects, in order.

  1. Project A
  2. Project B
  3. Coaching and developing team members
  4. Initiative M
  5. Project C

Realize How Your Current Actions and Priorities are Incoherent

The root of the feeling of being under constant time pressure is the disparity between your actions and priorities. You tend to take advantage of almost every opportunity that comes your way, irrespective of the significance of these opportunities in relation to your core values.

Compare your time log and time analysis report with your list of priorities and decide objectively how much time each of your activities was worth to you in contrast to the time you actually spent on it. You may realize that, perhaps, 80% – 90% of your time is wasted in non-effective activities.

As you review your time analysis report, think about everything that you do that should not be done at all or should not be done by you and recognize all the non-productive, wasteful activities. You will realize that you have been spending time instead of investing time in what really matters.

Resolve to eliminate all activities and commitments that are not aligned to your priorities. For example, Linda—the housewife referred above—spent six hours each week volunteering on the curriculum committee at her daughter’s school “just to be involved.” She realized the lack of value in spending six hours every week on an activity she did not contribute much and decided to withdraw from the committee. Kumar, the middle-level manager, spent way too much time attending meetings. He decided to attend only the most important meetings where his presence was truly required, participated via telephone wherever possible and spared 10 hours on his weekly calendar.

Prepare a Time Budget to Schedule Your Priorities

A time budget helps you decide how your hours should be used given the priorities you have identified for yourself. This is the first step in exercising more control over your time and your life. Preparing a time budget could be as simple as deciding how many hours you would devote to each of your priorities, or could be as complex as setting up your weekly calendar to reflect your priorities.

  1. Beginning with your top priority, setup appointments in your calendar and block-off as many hours of the week that are necessary for your priorities. If your most important priority in life is family (it should be,) first allot time for all the activities you desire to do or share your family—set aside time to coach your kids in basketball, set aside time to help your spouse with chores around the home, etc. At work, schedule time to work on your most important projects and initiatives.
  2. Locate your most important tasks hours when you tend to be most efficient. For example, if you tend to work best in the mornings, schedule your most important projects for the mornings.
  3. Schedule time for your minor projects and lower priorities around your major projects and higher priorities. Decide on the right time to do email, run errands, conduct regular staff meetings, etc.

Your time budget should essentially serve as a guide for how you will spend your time. As with a financial budget, you may not necessarily comply with your time budget. Nevertheless, it is important to prepare a time budget to help you direct how you should spend your time.

Your time budget will help you decide how you can live your priorities. You will realize that by complying with your time budget, your use of your personal time improves dramatically; you are able to focus and reduce anxiety.

Example 1: Time Budget for Linda, the Housewife

Linda prepared the following time budget to help her comply with her stated priorities in life. She eliminated or reduced activities that did not directly contribute to her priorities or were not as productive. For example, she

  • ‘found’ six hours by quitting from the curriculum committee at her daughter’s school
  • saved four hours by seeking her husband’s help to clean her home and hiring a landscaping service to tend to her yard.
  • reduced her time watching TV and on the internet.
  • ‘discovered’ more time for her family and friends, exercise and well-being.

Time budget example: mother with part-time work

Example 2: Time Budget for Kumar, the Middle-Level Manager

Kumar, who previously could not “get it all done” in over 65 hours each week at work, reorganized his calendar around his most important projects and prepared the following budget for 45-48 hours of productive work per week.

Time budget example: middle-level manager

Wrap-up: Managing Priorities (and Time) Effectively

This series of articles on the basics of time management described a simple and effective process of logging and analyzing how you use your time, and budgeting your time around your priorities. This process reveals time wastefulness and provides a structure to help you focus on your chosen priorities.

Your personal and professional values and priorities change often based on your progress in life and career. Plan to perform a detailed time analysis regularly—ideally once every six months,—monitor your time, review your priorities and adjust your time budget. Keep your focus on achieving the top priorities.

In sum, time management is, simply, an orderly discipline of controlling how you spend your most valuable resource. The singular purpose of this quest is to regulate the pace of life, reduce unwarranted stress, organize your actions and responsibilities according to the main values and priorities in your life, and realize a meaningful, purpose-driven life.

Mindfulness Can Disengage You from Others

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This BBC article warns that mindfulness has a way of stirring people to think of themselves in more independent—not interdependent—terms:

A recent study suggests that, in some contexts, practicing mindfulness really can exaggerate some people’s selfish tendencies. With their increased inward focus, they seem to forget about others and are less willing to help those in need.

To counteract these effects, experts suggest other mindfulness techniques such as “loving-kindness meditation” (deliberately thinking about our sense of connection with others) and “mindful listening” (paying particular attention to another’s descriptions of emotional situations.)

Mindfulness is an expansive nonjudgmental awareness of one’s experiences. While mindfulness may help you get a deeper understanding of yourself and comprehend “you” and “your mind stuff” deeper, it takes deep listening, sensitivity, and empathy to learn about “others” and “you and others.” As you tune more into yourself, you should become more able to tune into others.

The original practice and philosophy of mindfulness meditation actually consist of many of these other features mentioned in the BBC article. Somehow, those notions have gotten lost in the monetization and industrialization of mindfulness in the West.

Great Leaders Focus on the WHY and the WHAT—Not the How

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The most effective leaders provide their employees with a heartfelt portrayal of the WHY, a precise description of the WHAT, and freedom on the HOW.

The WHY encompasses a vision in a way that matters to people. As Howard Schultz, the Starbucks tycoon once said, “People want to be part of something larger than themselves. They want to be part of something they’re really proud of, that they’ll fight for, sacrifice for, that they trust.”

The British-American organizational consultant Simon Sinek‘s passable Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (2009; a good summary) identifies the difference between “giving direction and giving directions.” Great leaders, he explains, motivate with the WHY, a deep-rooted purpose, before defining the WHAT, the product or service, or the HOW, the process.

The latter, the HOW, is to be deprioritized—effective leaders leave it to their employees to figure out.

In contrast, ineffective leaders provide specificity around HOW to complete a task but fail to share the big picture, the WHY.

Don’t live in the weeds. Have faith in the ingenuity of your employees. Give much latitude in how they do things.

Idea for Impact: Define the job. Explain the responsibility. Equip your people with the tools and skills they’ll need. Establish expectations. Identify the standards. That’s the essence of delegation.