Human Resources

Can’t Ban Political Talk at Work

September 2, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

When politics and social issues are increasingly divisive, workplaces find it challenging to forbid political conversation entirely from the workplace. In April, project management software company Basecamp faced uproar when trying to ban politics at work. Co-founder Jason Fried announced that Basecamp would no longer tolerate discussions around political or social issues “where the work happens,”

Today’s social and political waters are especially choppy. Sensitivities are at 11, and every discussion remotely related to politics, advocacy, or society at large quickly spins away from pleasant. You shouldn’t have to wonder if staying out of it means you’re complicit, or wading into it means you’re a target. These are difficult enough waters to navigate in life, but significantly more so at work. It’s become too much. It’s a major distraction. It saps our energy and redirects our dialog towards dark places.

Basecamp’s ban was meant to prevent distraction and souring of work relationships, but the mandate swiftly backfired. Twenty out of some 60 employees threatened to quit.

Banning Political Discussions Isn’t That Simple

Can't Ban Political Talk at Work I think banning political talk is a lazy way for leadership to not deal with issues like racism, misogyny, stereotyping, and contempt that may be festering among employees.

Often, when people say they want more political discussion in the workplace, they actually mean that they want more political discussion about viewpoints they want others to conform to. Workplaces with lots of political discussions are ones where most of the staff has identical socio-political leanings. Employees with divergent political leanings tend to be reticent and stay out of such talks.

It’s neither productive nor possible to not talk about politics and society at work. Companies can’t tell employees to not bring their real selves to work. People are opinionated about politics, and everyone has views and tries to defend them. Besides, politics isn’t a neatly self-contained issue that doesn’t overlap with anything else. When an employee’s attitudes aren’t in line with the company’s—or even the majority’s—attitudes, “put up or shut up” policies end up more damaging than the bickering or backlash they are intended to avoid.

Group settings are better when divergent opinions are known. An inclusive workforce must be able to embrace a diverse range of views. Conversations will come up anyway, and instead of banning these conversations and encouraging employees to take them outside of work, employers must institute protocols for airing and understanding opposing opinions and dealing with offensive behavior.

Idea for Impact: Canceling conversations about the significant issues of the day simply silences those with unpopular attitudes instead of encouraging a culture of growth.

Wouldn’t You Take a Pay Cut to Get a Better Job Title?

August 27, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Venture capitalist Ben Horowitz on giving employees ego-boosting new job titles to appease them for not receiving a promotion or a pay increase:

Marc Andreessen argues that people ask for many things from a company: salary, bonus, stock options, span of control, and titles. Of those, title is by far the cheapest, so it makes sense to give the highest titles possible… If it makes people feel better, let them feel better. Titles cost nothing. Better yet, when competing for new employees with other companies, using Andreessen’s method you can always outbid the competition in at least one dimension.

Millennials tend to consider work as the defining aspect of their identity (see Horowitz’s What You Do Is Who You Are (2019).) Job titles aren’t just descriptors of what they do but a reflection of who they are—not just service technicians at an Apple Store, but Geniuses. A self-elevating job title helps them cling to the notion that work has meaning and, consequently, their work-lives make sense.

Moreover, since they’re experiencing more of their lives online than any generation before them, millennials tend to be conscious of their personal brands on social media. Being a ‘senior numbers ninja’ rather than a mere ‘cost accountant’ offers instant branding appeal.

Idea for Impact: However superficial they sound (“bogus grandeur,” I called them previously,) a fancy title could help you land a better position further down the line. Get creative with your job title even if you have to take a hit on your expected salary—it could pay off in the long term.

How to Start a Hybrid-Remote Work Model

June 19, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

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.

How to Start a Hybrid-Remote Work Model

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.

Create a Diversity and Inclusion Policy

April 24, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The moral and business cases for diversity are well known—a diverse and inclusive workplace earns deeper trust and more commitment from their employees.

Create a Diversity and Inclusion Policy Having a diversity and inclusion policy is simply the right thing to do—leaders have to make their values and intentions clear.

As a company, you’re not legally required to have a written diversity and inclusion policy. Nevertheless, it’s a good idea to create and actively use one.

Diversity and inclusion are ongoing initiatives—not one-off training. (Sadly, diversity classes are sometimes just a tactic for reducing employee lawsuits.) A policy encourages your employees to treat others equally with civility and decency and helps managers value employees for their strengths.

In many discrimination claims, employers may have a defense if they can show that they took all reasonable steps to deter discrimination. A comprehensive policy and recent appropriate training can help employers distance themselves from liability for acts such as harassment by an individual perpetrator employed by your company.

A policy also demonstrates that your company takes its legal and moral responsibilities towards being a diverse and inclusive employer earnestly.

Idea for Impact: A strong diversity and inclusion policy can help your company embed good practices—not only across your organization but also throughout your supply chains, including the customers and the communities your company serves.

Not Everyone is Chill About Tattoos and Body Art // Workplace Norms

December 10, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Over the last decade or so, body art has gained more acceptance as a form of personal expression—akin to clothing, jewelry, or hairstyle. Workplace attitudes toward body art have slowly shifted.

Certain trades—especially arts and media—value individuality, especially in creative roles. Visible tattoos and body piercings are common and acceptable. However, consulting, law, management, recruitment, and other “traditional” trades are likely to find body art less compliant with the industry norms. Having a tattoo can even be seen as unprofessional and defiant—even intimidating.

You have the right to express yourself as long as you are respecting the company’s norms

For some conservative people, visible art suggests that you may have a problem with authority. One study showed that tattooed people are perceived to be less honest, motivated, and intelligent.

At some workplaces, your insistence on leaving large earrings and nose piercings on or dressing in short sleeves that reveal your tattoos signals to that employer that you don’t care about norms. You may be judged as a willful person insistent on exerting your individuality rather than fit in and belong.

Your appearance and behavior are expected to reflect your workplace’s values and culture, particularly in customers’ presence.

Employers are free to impose dress codes and grooming guidelines. Discrimination law does apply to matters related to age, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, nationality, and religion—but not your sense of fashion.

Idea for Impact: Offensiveness is subjective, and everyone draws their lines differently

Don’t put yourself at a disadvantage. Consider the micro-cultural stereotypes concerning body art.

Seek a happy medium between personal style and dressing for work. Cover up and limit the number of visible piercings.

If you’re starting a new job and aren’t sure how body art will be perceived, consider a pilot. Instead of going “all in,” test the waters by displaying a little body art and see what sort of response you get.

I’m Not Impressed with Your Self-Elevating Job Title

October 12, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Ben Horowitz of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz discusses giving employees ego-boosting new job titles to appease them for not receiving a promotion or a pay increase:

Should your company make Vice President the top title or should you have Chief Marketing Officers, Chief Revenue Officers, Chief People Officer’s, and Chief Snack Officers? There are two schools of thought regarding this.

Marc Andreessen argues that people ask for many things from a company: salary, bonus, stock options, span of control, and titles. Of those, title is by far the cheapest, so it makes sense to give the highest titles possible… If it makes people feel better, let them feel better. Titles cost nothing. Better yet, when competing for new employees with other companies, using Andreessen’s method you can always outbid the competition in at least one dimension.

And, as a counterpoint, the pitfalls of job title inflation:

At Facebook, by contrast, Mark Zuckerberg… avoids accidentally giving new employees higher titles and positions than better performing existing employees. This boosts morale and increases fairness. Secondly, it forces all the managers of Facebook to deeply understand and internalize Facebook’s leveling system which serves the company extremely well in their own promotion and compensation processes. He also wants titles to be meaningful and reflect who has influence in the organization. As a company grows quickly, it’s important to provide organizational clarity wherever possible and that gets more difficult if there are 50 VPs and 10 Chiefs.

It’s become trendy to create and bandy about outlandish job titles and inflate career profiles.

I’m never impressed with self-elevating titles (e.g., Revenue Protection Officer for a Train Ticket Inspector, Director of First Impressions for a Receptionist) that make you sound like a pretentious, egotistical, and obnoxious person.

Your job title is supposed to help me understand what you do without having to open up the dictionary.

Yes, vague and puzzling job titles surface partly because the world is changing, and so are trades and occupations. Some new job titles are going to be needed.

But it’d be great if we could get by with a much smaller and simpler inventory of descriptive job titles.

Idea for Impact: Avoid bogus grandeur—challenge job title inflation. Don’t assign senior-sounding job titles to those with middle-ranking wages.

Putting the WOW in Customer Service // Book Summary of Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness

July 30, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

To keep your customers in the present day, you can’t be content just to please them. If you want your business to thrive, you have to produce enthusiastic aficionados—customers who’re so keyed up about how you treat them that they want to tell stories about you. These customers and their cult-like loyalty become a key element of your sales force.

American entrepreneur Tony Hsieh built the online retail store Zappos on the fundamental idea that great service is not a happenstance. It starts when leaders decide what kind of experience they want their customers to have—and articulate that approach in a clear mission and vision. As in the case of luxury hotel chain Ritz-Carlton, leaders keep the mission alive by empowering their employees to go the extra mile for the customer. Above all, when it comes from the heart, great customer service keeps customers coming back over and over.

In Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose (2010,) Hsieh discusses the importance of cultivating happiness as a launch pad to better results for your business.

How Zappos Profits from The Happiness Business

Hsieh did not create Zappos. He was one of the startup’s initial investors but got sucked in to help the original founder after six years. Zappos operated in survival mode for a while. As it began to outlive its financial struggles, Hsieh and his leadership team went about building an intentional corporate culture dedicated to employee empowerment and the promise of delivering happiness through a valued workforce and devoted customers.

Over the years, the number one driver of our growth at Zappos has been repeat customers and word of mouth. Our philosophy has been to take most of the money we would have spent on paid advertising and invest it into customer service and the customer experience instead, letting our customers do the marketing for us through word of mouth.

Hsieh tells his entrepreneurial life experiences, often presenting biographical stories to make his line of reasoning. Many great entrepreneurs got started early, and Hsieh is no exception. He started with worm-farming (age 7,) button-making (elementary school,) magic tricks involving dental dams (high school,) burger joint (college,) and web-consulting (post-college) before having considerable financial success with the internet advertising firm LinkExchange (sold in 1998 to Microsoft for $265 million.)

In 2009, Hsieh sold Zappos to Amazon for $847 million under pressure from Sequoia Capital, a major financier of Zappos. As a point of reference, Hsieh later recalled,

Some board members had always viewed our company culture as a pet project—“Tony’s social experiments,” they called it. I disagreed. I believe that getting the culture right is the most important thing a company can do. But the board took the conventional view–namely, that a business should focus on profitability first and then use the profits to do nice things for its employees. The board’s attitude was that my “social experiments” might make for good PR but that they didn’t move the overall business forward. The board wanted me, or whoever was CEO, to spend less time on worrying about employee happiness and more time selling shoes.

How Zappos Fostered a Culture and a Business Model Based on the Notion of Happiness

Delivering Happiness - Tony Hsieh of Zappos Zappos’s corporate culture is guided by ten core values, which aspire to empower employees, create a sense of community in the workplace (employees are encouraged to “create fun and a little weirdness” in the office and build personal connections with colleagues,) and serve a higher purpose beyond bottom-line metrics.

Zappos’s core values include: deliver WOW through service (#1,) be humble (#10,) do more with less (#8,) be passionate and determined (#9,) and create fun and a little weirdness (#3.)
Zappos wants only those employees who really want to work for the company. All new employees attend a four-week training program that immerses them in the company’s strategy, culture, and customer-obsession. Zappos offers $2,000 to walk out at the end of the first week, and the offer stands until the end of the fourth week. Only a small number of new employees take the offer.
Zappos challenges all employees to make at least one improvement every week. Allowing employees to improve the tasks they’re doing and enhancing the processes that they’re responsible for executing allows them to make their jobs more meaningful.
Instead of measuring call center efficiency by the time each call center operator spends on the phone with a customer, Zappos developed its own scorecards. Zappos quantifies such things as the personal and emotional connections operators make with customers using measures such as measuring the number of thank you cards.

Zappos is Obsessed with Impressing Customers

By focusing on company culture, everything else—such as building a brand with sustained revenue growth, fast turnaround times at warehouses, and passionate employees—fell into place.

Happiness is really just about four things: perceived control, perceived progress, connectedness (number and depth of your relationships,) and vision/meaning (being part of something bigger than yourself.)

Recommendation: Read Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness. This insightful tome is brimming with practicable ideas on customer service, building a positive company culture, best hiring practices, how to motivate and train your team, and setting business goals and values. The core elements of Zappos’s DNA—purpose, happiness, culture, and profits—are an effective framework for making happiness a business model.

How to Develop Customer Service Skills // Summary of Lee Cockerell’s ‘The Customer Rules’

July 13, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Becoming great at customer service doesn’t require you to excel at a zillion things. You’ll just need to identify the core principles and get the basics right.

“At the end of the day, everything a business leader does is in the service of customer service … the customer always rules, and there are Rules for winning customers, keeping customers, and turning loyal customers into advocates and emissaries for your business,” writes Lee Cockerell in his prescriptive manual on The Customer Rules: The 39 Essential Rules for Delivering Sensational Service (2013.)

Cockerell is a veteran of the hospitality industry and an eminent corporate trailer. He spent eight years with Hilton, 17 years with Marriott, and 16 years with the Walt Disney. Before retirement, he was the executive vice president of operations at Walt Disney World in Florida and oversaw the resort’s 40,000 employees at 20 hotels, four theme parks, and two water parks.

Non-obvious Customer Service Insights

Cockerell structures his guidebook along 39 tips to serve customers with consistency, efficiency, creativity, and sincerity. He glosses over everything—hiring right, communicating a clear and relevant customer promise, fostering a customer-oriented culture, and creating a superior employee experience. Those employees can deliver a great customer experience, respond to complaints, and practice verbal skills to express empathy.

Make customer service every employee’s responsibility. Everything every employee does can have tremendous repercussions on the service your customers receive, and therefore your bottom line. “Pay close attention to every decision you make, every policy you announce, every procedure you introduce, every person you hire, every promotion you award, every e-mail you send, every conversation you have, every hand you shake, and every back you slap.”
You win customers one at a time and lose them a thousand at a time. Satisfied customers will spread the word only if they’re truly blown away their experience. Angry customers are “far more motivated to shout about their feelings, and furious exposes get a lot more attention than glowing testimonials. Humans are wired to pay more attention to the negative than the positive.”
Anticipate your customers’ needs. Discover what customers aren’t getting from your competitors and give it to them. Customers’ problems are a good source of business innovations. “Great businesses stand out by being different from the rest in the right way: by finding customer needs that are going unmet and figuring out a way to meet them.”
Keep an eye on your competitors. Be a copycat. Look outside your industry for great ideas and tweak them for their own purposes. “Don’t just imitate; pay attention to everything around you, spot the best ideas, and then find a better way to apply them.”
Treat customers the way you’d treat your loved ones. “First and last impressions have a tremendous influence on a customer’s lasting impression. A cheery hello and a sincere good-bye can leave a customer with a memory of a positive experience, regardless of what happens in between.”
Treat every customer like a regular. Familiarity breeds repeat business. “Do whatever you can to make regular customers feel like family and new customers feel like regulars. Remember the theme song from the TV series Cheers? Don’t you want to go “where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came”? Make all your customers feel that you’re really glad they came.”
Prioritize WIN, “what’s important now,” your customers’ immediate needs, desires, and concerns. “Even a nod, a gesture, some brief eye contact, a pleasant “I’ll be right with you. Please make yourself comfortable”—that’s all it takes. People want to be acknowledged.”
Surprise your customers with a little extra when they least expect it. Neuroscientists have confirmed that the human brain “craves the excitement of surprise. The region of the brain called the nucleus accumbens, aka the pleasure center, experiences more activation when a pleasurable stimulus comes unexpectedly than it does when the same pleasure is predictable. “So if you get a present for your birthday, that’s nice. But you’ll like it a lot more if you get a present and it’s not your birthday.””
Don’t try too hard. “Being excessively solicitous and eager to please is annoying.” It makes you seem phony. “Think how annoying it is when a server at a restaurant stops by your table every five minutes to ask if everything’s okay with your meal.” No one likes to be pestered constantly. “If your customers have to stifle the urge to scream, “Go away!” or, “Leave us alone!” you’re trying too hard.”

Recommendation: Read Lee Cockerell’s The Customer Rules. With plenty of anecdotes, experiences, and very short no-nonsense chapters, this book is an enjoyable summary of the many simple—but often overlooked—first principles of building a customer-oriented culture and delivering great customer service.

How Ritz-Carlton Goes the Extra Mile // Book Summary of ‘The New Gold Standard’

April 13, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Psychologist Joseph Michelli’s The New Gold Standard (2008) describes how luxury hotel chain Ritz-Carlton has programmed its organization to foster customer-centric behavior in employees at all levels.

Ritz-Carlton’s clearly-defined and well-implemented cultural principles, called “Gold Standards,” enable the company’s employees to deliver the exceptional service that its refined customers have come to expect. Ritz-Carlton’s brand recognition is so deep-rooted that such phrases as “ritzy” and “putting on the ritz” have become part of the lexicon.

Values First

Ritz-Carlton propagates its customer-centricity goals by making a compact trifold “Credo Card” part of each employee’s uniform. These cards describe the “ultimate guest experience,” and they are shared with guests eagerly. Michelli writes, “Ultimately the value of the Credo or any other core cultural roadmap is the opportunity it affords those inside the business to realize how the ideal customer and staff experience looks and feels.”

Ritz-Carlton Gold Standards Credo Card - Customer Service Service Principle #10 of Gold Standards states, “When a guest has a problem or needs something special, you should break away from your regular duties to address and resolve the issue.” Irrespective of rank and title, every employee can spend as much as $2,000 per day per guest without a supervisor’s approval to solve a guest’s problem. This distinctive policy not only permits the employees to fulfill their guests’spoken and implied needs but also empowers employees to use their best judgment to create memorable and personal experiences for guests.

While some might think that this type of empowerment is both ill advised and financially irresponsible, leadership at Ritz-Carlton has determined the trust they place in employees is well founded. Rather than being extravagant with the resources entrusted to them, the employees tend to be very cautious … the advantage of the $2,000 staff empowerment is that the employees don’t have to delay a service response by taking it up to the next level in the organization, and they can take the initiative to enhance guest experiences.

Ritz-Carlton Gold Standards of Customer Service

Empowerment through Trust

Guided by co-founder Horst Schulze’s oft-cited business principle, “Ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen,” Ritz-Carlton selects, trains, and cultivates a dedicated workforce of outstanding professionals who are just as deserving of respect as Ritz-Carlton’s upscale guests.

Ritz-Carlton’s customer-centric principles and culture inform its hiring and training processes and preside over the rewards and promotion systems. Managers use every opportunity to go over the company’s values and remind everybody to polish up on caring for guests. For example, at the start of each shift, everyone—from laundry staff to executives—participates in a 15-minute “lineup” to talk about the nitty-gritty of the Gold Standards.

Michelli observes, “When it comes to the Gold Standards, Ritz-Carlton leaders and frontline staff alike can appear, from an outsider’s perspective, to be teetering toward the fanatical.” No wonder, then, that Ritz-Carlton has become a paradigm for the highest level of sustainable customer experience. In the year 2000, the company launched the Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center to offer courses and to consult for anyone interested in its cult of customer service. In 2001, when Steve Jobs and Ron Johnson were preparing to launch Apple Stores, they sent executives to Ritz-Carlton’s leadership program to learn about offering the best customer experience. Apple’s notion of anticipatory customer service and the concept of Genius Bars originated from Ritz-Carlton.

Delivering Wow!

During the “lineup” meetings, Ritz-Carlton managers and leaders also reinforce the customer-service principles by sharing “Wow!” stories of delighting guests. The internal communication department collects such stories each week and publishes them in the in-house newsletters. “Positive storytelling. The ability to capture, share, and inspire through tangible examples of what it means to live the Credo and core corporate values.”

The New Gold Standard includes many anecdotes from hotel guests, employees, managers, and executives to explain how Ritz-Carlton has “going above and beyond the call of duty” embodied in its culture.

A breakfast waiter scurried to a neighborhood grocery store to buy a guest’s preferred grape jelly when the dining room did not have it on hand.
At the Ritz-Carlton Dubai, a manager and a staff carpenter built a temporary access ramp made of wood boards to allow a guest and his wheelchair-bound wife to access the sandy beach, dine by the ocean, and watch the sun go down.
When a guest called the Ritz-Carlton Naples to notify that she had run out of gas, a doorman filled up a few five-gallon gasoline containers and drove 40 miles to help out the stranded woman and her children.
During Hurricane Katrina, employees of the Ritz-Carlton New Orleans pushed laundry carts loaded with luggage and guests through flooded streets to get them to safe locations.

Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center $2000 Empowerment Lest the reader dismisses these as cherry-picked examples of “overdoing it” in Michelli’s laudatory narrative, these cases in point are demonstrative of the Ritz-Carlton DNA. The employees feel thoroughly invested in and trusted by their employers. And Ritz-Carlton recognizes that customer loyalty is dependent upon the frontline employees who administer such sophisticated service daily.

Idea for Impact: Foster a foundation of customer-centricity

Speed-read Joseph Michelli’s The New Gold Standard. It offers ample insights into establishing your own gold standards for achieving excellence in customer service.

Create a customer-centric culture that identifies, nurtures, and reinforces service-excellence as a primary guiding principle. “Leadership often involves fostering the environment in which everyday creativity emerges in response to the needs of specific customer groups.”
Foster a culture where employees take up personal accountability for resolving customers’ problems.
Train employees to anticipate and fulfill the unmet—even unstated—needs of customers.
Reiterate that providing a ‘wow!’ experience should be each employee’s goal during every interaction with a customer.

Human Resources

Banning Political Discussions Isn’t That Simple

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

You have the right to express yourself as long as you are respecting the company’s norms

Idea for Impact: Offensiveness is subjective, and everyone draws their lines differently

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

How Zappos Profits from The Happiness Business

How Zappos Fostered a Culture and a Business Model Based on the Notion of Happiness

Zappos is Obsessed with Impressing Customers

Wondering what to read next?

Non-obvious Customer Service Insights

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Values First

Empowerment through Trust

Delivering Wow!

Idea for Impact: Foster a foundation of customer-centricity

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