2019 Business Supplement

Issue 8

1300 Piccard Drive, Suite LL 14 • Rockville, MD 20850

Spring 2019

Business Supplement

The Tricks and Secrets to Mastering a Remote Workforce How Leaders Can Get Honest, Productive Feedback How to Minimize Meeting Madness Making Sure Your Employees Succeed Filling the Gaps: Pros and Cons of Hiring Part-Time Employees Stop Procrastinating…Now Firing for Online Behavior How to Build a Positive Company Culture

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Table of Contents

Business Supplement 2019

Features

Departments

8 The Tricks and Secrets to Mastering a Remote Workforce

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Calendar of Events

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President’s Message

By Elizabeth Dunn

These days, remote work has entered the business mainstream, with about 43 percent of the U.S. workforce occasionally doing their jobs from outside the confines of a corporate office. While some large employers like IBM, Bank of America, Aetna, and Yahoo made headlines in recent years for ending or scaling back their telecommuting programs, the number of remote-first startups has surged. Acceleration Partners is one of more than 170 fully remote companies with 20 or more employees in the United States today, up from 26 in 2014, according to FlexJobs, an online platform specializing in remote and flexible employment. So, what can entrepreneurs learn from the companies that have made remote work work?

38 Advertisement Index

12 How Leaders Can Get Honest, Productive Feedback

By Jennifer Porter, The Boda Group

Without clear performance targets and data measuring how close or far they are from reaching them, leaders will continue to find it difficult to grow and improve. When delivered thoughtfully, however, feedback can provide leaders with the actionable data they need to become more effective. If you want to get the feedback that is necessary to improve your leadership, there are a few steps you can take.

15 How to Minimize Meeting Madness

By Kelly Chance

In many organizations, meetings account for a surprisingly large percentage of the 40-hour workweek.

Short or long, many employees view these gatherings as lost time. They become hurdles to getting the day’s real work done. The reasons why meetings have become so unpopular vary. They can lack focus, seem repetitive, or regularly devolve into social events. For organizations in which employees feel as if they are drowning in meetings, here are a few questions to consider to ensure everyone’s time is being well spent.

18 Making Sure Your Employees Succeed

By Amy Gallo, Harvard Business Review

It’s common knowledge that helping employees set and reach goals is a critical part of every manager’s job. Employees want to see how their work contributes to larger corporate objectives, and setting the right targets makes this connection explicit for them, and for you as their manager. Goalsetting is particularly important as a mechanism for providing ongoing and year-end feedback. By establishing and monitoring targets, you can give your employees real-time input on their performance while motivating them to achieve more.

24 Filling the Gaps: Pros and Cons of Hiring Part-Time Employees

By Macon Cauthen

Offering part-time work options is an effective way to attract top talent while keeping your company nimble and ready to staff up or down according to your needs. But, blending part-time workers with your full-time workforce takes some finesse. Before rolling out a part-time option, consider these pros and cons to determine whether it makes sense for your business.

28 Stop Procrastinating…Now

By Amy Gallo, Harvard Business Review

It seems that no one is immune to the tendency to procrastinate. When someone asked Ernest Hemingway how to write a novel, his response was “First you defrost the refrigerator.” But putting off tasks takes a big hit on our productivity and psyche. Procrastination is not inevitable. Figuring out why you postpone work and then taking concrete steps to prevent it will help you get more done and feel good about yourself.

32 Firing for Online Behavior

By June D. Bell, SHRM

When an employee posts something offensive, HR professionals are often on the front line of protecting the employer’s brand. Hiring managers also may be expected to act as defenders of the company if a candidate’s online posts have the potential to reflect poorly on the organization’s image.

36 How to Build a Positive Company Culture

By Alan Kohll, TotalWellness

Company culture is an integral part of business. It affects nearly every aspect of a company. From recruiting top talent to improving employee satisfaction, it’s the backbone of a happy workforce. Without a positive corporate culture, many employees will struggle to find the real value in their work, and this leads to a variety of negative consequences for your bottom line.

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the Analyst Business Supplement 2019

1300 Piccard Drive, Suite LL 14 • Rockville, MD 20850 (301) 740-1421 • (301) 990-9771 (fax) • www.awt.org

2019 AWT Board of Directors

President David Wagenfuhr President-Elect Thomas Branvold, CWT Secretary Michael Bourgeois, CWT Treasurer Matt Jensen, CWT Immediate Past President Marc Vermeulen, CWT Directors Steven Hallier, CWT Andy Kruck, CWT Stephanie Keck, CWT Bonnee Randall Ex-Officio Supplier Representative Garrett S. Garcia Past Presidents Bruce T. Ketrick Jr., CWT Jack Altschuler Bruce T. Ketrick Sr., CWT John Baum, CWT R. Trace Blackmore, CWT, LEED AP Ron Knestaut D.C. “Chuck” Brandvold, CWT Robert D. Lee, CWT Mark T. Lewis, CWT Brent W. Chettle, CWT Steven MacCarthy, CWT Dennis Clayton Bernadette Combs, CWT, LEED AP Anthony J. McNamara, CWT James Mulloy Matt Copthorne, CWT Alfred Nickels James R. Datesh Scott W. Olson, CWT John E. Davies, CWT William E. Pearson II, CWT Jay Farmerie, CWT William C. Smith Gary Glenna Marc Vermeulen, CWT Charles D. Hamrick Jr., CWT Joseph M. Hannigan Jr., CWT Casey Walton, B.Ch.E, CWT Mark R. Juhl Larry A. Webb Brian Jutzi, CWT

Staff

Executive Director Heidi J. Zimmerman, CAE Deputy Executive Director Sara L. Wood, MBA, CAE Senior Member Services Manager Angela Pike Vice President, Meetings Grace L. Jan, CMP, CAE Meetings Manager Morgan Prior Exhibits and Sponsorship Manager Barbara Bienkowski, CMP Exhibits and Sponsorship Associate Manager Brandon Lawrence Marketing Director Julie Hill Production Manager Jennifer Olivares Website Manager Jeyin Lee Technical Writer/Copy Editor Lynne Agoston Accountant Dawn Rosenfeld

The Analyst Staff

Publisher Heidi J. Zimmerman, CAE Managing Editor Lynne Agoston Production Manager Jennifer Olivares Technical Editor Michael Henley, mdhenleywater@gmail.com (303) 745-3890 Advertising Sales Heather Prichard, advertising@awt.org

The Analyst is published quarterly as the official publication of the Association of Water Technologies. Copyright 2019 by the Association of Water Technologies. Materials may not be reproduced without written permission. Contents of the articles are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily express the policies and opinions of the publisher, editor or AWT. Authors are responsible for assuring that the articles are properly released for classification and proprietary information. All advertising will be subject to publisher’s approval, and advertisers will agree to indemnify and relieve publisher of loss or claims resulting from advertising contents.

Editorial material in The Analyst may be reproduced in whole or part with prior written permission. Request permission by writing to: Editor, The Analyst, 1300 Piccard Drive, Suite LL 14, Rockville, MD 20850, USA. Annual subscription rate is $100 per year in the U.S. (4 issues). Please add $25 for Canada and Mexico. International subscriptions are $200 in U.S. funds.

Calendar of Events Association Events 2019 Annual Convention & Exposition

September 11–14, 2019 Palm Springs Convention Center and Renaissance Hotel Palm Springs, California

2020 Annual Convention & Exposition

September 30–October 3, 2020 Louisville Convention Center and Omni Hotel Louisville, Kentucky

2021 Annual Convention & Exposition

September 22–25, 2021 Providence Convention Center and Omni Hotel Providence, Rhode Island

2022 Annual Convention & Exposition September 21–24, 2022 Vancouver Convention Centre Vancouver, Canada

2023 Annual Convention & Exposition

October 4–7, 2023 Amway Grand Hotel and Grand Rapids Convention Center Grand Rapids, Michigan Also, please note that the following AWT committees meet on a monthly basis. All times shown are Eastern Time. To become active in one of these committees, please contact us at (301) 740-1421.

Second Tuesday of each month, 11:00 am – Legislative/Regulatory Committee Second Tuesday of each month, 2:30 pm – Convention Committee Second Wednesday of each month, 11:00 am – Business Resources Committee Second Friday of each month, 9:00 am – Pretreatment Subcommittee Second Friday of each month, 10:00 am – Special Projects Subcommittee Second Friday of each month, 11:00 am – Cooling Subcommittee Third Monday of each month, 9:00 am – Certification Committee Third Monday of each month, 3:30 pm – Young Professionals Task Force Third Tuesday of each month, 3:00 pm – Education Subcommittee Third Friday of each month, 9:00 am – Boiler Subcommittee Third Friday of each month, 10:00 am – Technical Committee Quarterly (call for meeting dates), 11:00 am – Wastewater Subcommittee

Other Industry Events

AWWA, Annual Conference & Expo, June 9–12, 2019, Denver, Colorado BOMA, Annual Meeting, June 22–25, 2019, Salt Lake City, Utah ASHRAE, Annual Meeting, June 22–26, 2019, Kansas City, Missouri ASHE, Annual Convention & Expo, July 14–17, 2019, Baltimore, Maryland ACS, Fall National Meeting & Expo, August 25–29, 2019, San Diego, California WEFTEC, Annual Technical Exhibition and Conference, September 21–25, 2019, Chicago, Illinois RETA, Annual Convention, October 8–11, 2019, Las Vegas, Nevada USGBC, GreenBuild, November 20–22, Atlanta, Georgia IWC, Annual Conference, November 10–14, 2019, Orlando, Florida

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President’s Message

By David Wagenfuhr

As a small business, we are always on the lookout for business resources.

Some of the benefits that AWT provides, such as the discount programs and the Business Owners Meeting, help us spend time working on the business, making it grow. I would like to give a special thanks to the Business Resources Committee for all its great work.

If you weren’t able to join us in New Orleans for the Business Owners Meeting that took place in late February, I encourage you to consider it for 2020. We are still finalizing the date and location for next year, but the meeting consists of over a day to spend with other water treatment company owners. Some topics this year included strategic operating systems, using financials to make business decisions, tax strategies for small businesses, the fundamentals of operations, and hiring and recruiting.

In the meantime, please enjoy this Business Supplement. You’ll find articles in this issue about working with a remote workforce, having better meetings, hiring part-time employees, and getting honest feedback. In addition, there are articles on helping employees succeed, how to stop procrastinating, online behavior best practices, and building a positive company culture.

I hope you find the articles in the Supplement helpful. As always, I welcome your feedback and can be reached at president@awt.org.

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The Tricks and Secrets to Mastering a Remote Workforce

By Elizabeth Dunn

for making it work as well as, if not better than, a centralized workplace. So Glazer had to figure them out as he went along.

Robert Glazer didn’t set out to build a 100-percent remote workforce. But in 2007, while forming his company Acceleration Partners, he realized two things: One, fierce competition in hubs like New York and San Francisco had driven the salaries of even less-desirable candidates through the roof; and two, there was untapped talent in Acceleration’s niche field of affiliate marketing across the country.

So Glazer began figuring out how to run a company flexible enough to hire workers who could work remotely.

Back then, this was a rarity. Telecommuting was a concession you might make to individual workers, not a corporate strategy. There were few established protocols

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Ten years in, Acceleration has grown an average of 30 percent per year while piling up accolades for its workplace culture from the likes of Glassdoor, AdAge, Forbes, and The Boston Globe. Glazer sees his company’s flexible work policy not as a handicap that it has overcome but as a key driver of its success.

These days remote work has entered the business mainstream, with about 43 percent of the U.S. workforce occasionally doing their jobs from outside the confines of the Analyst Business Supplement 2019

The Tricks and Secrets to Mastering a Remote Workforce

continued

a corporate office. While some large employers like IBM, Bank of America, Aetna, and Yahoo made headlines in recent years for ending or scaling back their telecommuting programs, the number of remote-first startups has surged. Acceleration Partners is one of more than 170 fully remote companies with 20 or more employees in the U.S. today, up from 26 in 2014, according to FlexJobs, an online platform specializing in remote and flexible employment. So, what can entrepreneurs learn from the companies that have made remote work work?

distributed workforce. Toptal, which runs a network of elite freelance software developers and designers, has grown to a few hundred global full-time employees since its founding in 2010. It chose the structure to reach the best talent available.

In Glazer’s case, it starts with hiring. “I think there’s a misperception that anyone can work remotely,” he says, “but we’ve figured out how to screen from the 200 to the one who can.” Acceleration looks for specific attributes in a new hire: Has the person worked remotely before? Is she a voracious learner? Is she an independent decision-maker?

Typically, Acceleration likes to see candidates who gravitate to telecommuting to enable their life’s other passions—such as travel, triathlons, or parenting—rather than those looking for a more relaxed pace of life. This makes for a more fulfilling life for the employee and results in them being a more energized member of the company.

Jeyakumar says that getting the right digital tools in place to enable remote collaboration has been critical to Toptal’s success. It’s nothing exotic: The company uses Slack for informal communications, Google Drive for collaborative projects, Zoom for videoconference calls and an online platform called Wrike for project management. Onboarding new employees always involves making sure they have their tools set up properly and know how to use them.

There are also behavioral and cultural norms around remote work that everyone has to adhere to, Jeyakumar says. For instance, Toptal has a naming convention for Slack groups to keep things organized, and video is encouraged to be turned on during conference calls so that team members can see each others’ faces. “I’ve worked remotely in previous jobs and felt like a second¬class employee,” Jeyakumar says. “There’s a lot of stuff you miss out on, because not everyone is thinking about remote colleagues.” He says that the organization recognizes that some in-person contact is critical for relationship building, which is why the money Toptal saves on office space is funneled into team retreats -- including a recent one to Mexico.

Still, structure is a necessity. While geography and business hours at Acceleration are flexible, the company ensures results by keeping performance goals rigid.

Managers track output and customer satisfaction rather than hours. An “accountability chart” lists each employee’s top five responsibilities, and each quarter, every employee sets personal performance goals based on the company’s quarterly targets. Progress is reviewed when the three months are up. The company’s financials are also open-book, so anyone can see how anyone else measures up in terms of the bottom line.

With the right systems in place, remote companies have proven themselves capable of maturing successfully into large, complex organizations.

The strategy has also allowed Acceleration to close the gender gap by tapping into a pool of talented, driven women looking to balance careers with family. Women make up 80 percent of Acceleration’s workforce, with about an equal proportion holding management roles.

Automattic, the parent company of the website platform WordPress.com, is a kind of senior citizen in the remote workspace, having operated a distributed workforce since 2005. The company has grown to more than 774 employees in 67 countries. As at Toptal, Automattic leans on digital collaboration tools—teams use a series of

Acceleration Partners isn’t the only startup to have achieved enviable productivity and growth through a

“In the San Francisco Bay Area at the time, between trying to get top-quality engineers and renting office space, you’d burn through your seed money in a couple of months,” says Rajeev Jeyakumar, Toptal’s former vice president of business talent. Rather than relax its standards, Toptal decided to mine less-competitive markets.

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The Tricks and Secrets to Mastering a Remote Workforce

continued

internal blogs to communicate, as well as Slack, Trello, and Mural—and the whole company gathers annually for a weeklong meetup. Automattic has also learned that it can be hard to predict who will work well in a remote culture. So every new hire starts on a trial system, during which candidates work on contract for a few weeks.

are a good fit and lots of analysis,” Bell says. That means putting a formal process in place to evaluate requests to work out of the office and setting up parameters when it comes to things like where the work will happen and how collaboration takes place.

All that being said, does a company need to have remote work in its DNA to be truly successful with telecommuting? Bradford Bell, associate professor of HR studies and director of industrial and labor relations executive education at Cornell University, doesn’t think so. While recent research shows that having a higher percentage of employees in a team working remotely does lead to better overall outcomes with telecommuting, there are two things that any company can do to improve the chances of getting the most out of distributed workers.

“Companies that are really successful with remote work are very thoughtful about who should be remote working—how good a fit are they personally, what jobs

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Another huge determinant of success or failure: leadership buy-in. Bell says that having leaders and managers who believe it’s possible to be productive outside an office—and who do some of their work outside themselves—can make a big difference in the organization’s ability to incorporate remote work. Many, Bell says, agree to the setup to try to retain a valuable employee but believe deep down that “working at home” means not working at all. That’s not a recipe for success. “A belief that the employee can’t contribute in the same way will be a self-fulfilling prophecy,” says Bell.

This story appeared in the September 2018 issue of Entrepreneur. Reprinted with permission.

the Analyst Business Supplement 2019

AWT Committee Leadership Enhance Your Career and Your AWT Membership Join an AWT Committee Today!

Members who have participated in an AWT committee will refer to their participation as a benefit and tell you how valuable it has been to their professional development. Joining an AWT committee will allow you to: • Get to know more water treatment professionals and suppliers, better establishing your network.

• Test and expand your leadership skills.

• Share your expertise with other industry professionals.

• Broaden your understanding of the water treatment industry.

To become active, please contact us at (301) 740-1421:

For more information about each committee go to https://www.awt.org/about_AWT/committees.cfm.

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How Leaders Can Get Honest, Productive Feedback

By Jennifer Porter

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How Leaders Can Get Honest, Productive Feedback continued

As an executive coach, I work with many successful leaders who want to become even more effective.

Recently, I asked a client of mine what kind of feedback she was receiving to help her be a better leader. She said, “My last performance review was really positive. My boss told me I’m doing a great job and I should just continue to do what I’m doing.”

That felt nice to hear, I’m sure. But it is also completely unhelpful to her growth and development.

Ask for feedback skillfully. Asking “What feedback do you have?” rarely elicits a useful response. Instead, ask about specific events (“What did you hear when I shared my strategy?”), worrisome patterns (“How often do I interrupt people in meetings?”), personal impact (“How did it feel to you when I sent that email?”), and lastly, recommendations (“What can I do to help build my relationship with Priya?”).

According to research on effective learning, to improve performance, people need three things: • A clear goal • A genuine desire to achieve that goal • Feedback that indicates what they are doing well and what they are not doing well Unfortunately, the feedback many leaders receive is not helpful. It’s often infrequent, vague, or unrelated to specific behaviors—and as a result, leaders tend to be less proactive about getting more of it. Low-quality feedback is not useful, positive feedback is undervalued, and negative feedback delivered unskillfully can actually cause physical pain.

Without clear performance targets and data measuring how close or far they are from reaching them, leaders will continue to find it difficult to grow and improve.

When delivered thoughtfully, however, feedback can provide leaders with the actionable data they need to become more effective.

If you want to get the feedback that is necessary to improve your leadership, there are a few steps you can take.

Build and maintain a psychologically safe environment.

Sharing feedback is often interpersonally risky. To increase the likelihood of your colleagues taking that risk with you, show them that their honesty won’t be met with negative repercussions. You can do this before you ask for feedback by being curious, rewarding candor, and showing vulnerability. Being curious starts with having the right mindset or believing that you have something

useful to learn. It is demonstrated by asking your teammates open-ended questions that you really don’t know the answers to: “What could go wrong if we try this?” When you listen to and genuinely explore your colleague’s different, and possibly risky, perspectives— even if you disagree with them—you are rewarding their candor. Acknowledging your weaknesses or mistakes along the way are great ways to be open and vulnerable.

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Request both positive and negative data. Clients tell me all the time that they just want to hear “the bad stuff” when it comes to feedback. What they fail to appreciate is that positive feedback that targets a specific behavior is useful. It tells them what they don’t need to work on and increases their motivation to focus on the behaviors that they do. For clarity, positive feedback is not the same as praise. Praise tells us someone is happy with us and thinks we are performing well. Praise sounds like: “Nice job!”; “You were great in that meeting.”; “Killer presentation!” While it feels good, praise does not give us enough information to understand what we are doing effectively so that we can repeat the behavior.

When receiving feedback, give your full attention and listen carefully. Eliminate distractions, including your phone and laptop, and focus fully on the person giving the feedback. Having your phone present, even if you’re not looking at it, negatively impacts relationships and reduces your ability to connect with others. Listen carefully to what the other person is saying, resisting the impulse to evaluate the accuracy of the message.

Don’t debate or defend. If you find yourself disagreeing with some feedback, practice self-awareness and notice this reaction, but do not offer contradictory evidence or challenge your colleague. If you debate, you will look defensive and not open to feedback, and you may decrease the likelihood of that person offering you

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How Leaders Can Get Honest, Productive Feedback continued

Sustain progress and share updates. You need to repeat new behaviors for at least two months for them to become new habits. If you go back to your feedback providers and tell them what you are doing differently, you’ll give them a catalyst to change their perspectives, validation that you heard and appreciated what they had to say, and the opportunity to see you as a person who is committed to your professional development.

feedback in the future. None of these are the outcomes you’re trying to achieve—so don’t do it.

Own your reactions. You may feel happy, angry, confused, or frustrated by what you hear. Recognize that your reactions are about you and not the other person. If you asked for feedback and someone was brave enough and generous enough to share it with you, it’s your responsibility to own and explore your reactions. Instead of finding fault in the messenger, become curious about yourself. Ask: Where is this anger really coming from?

What about this is confusing? What part of the message is actually true for me, even if I don’t want to acknowledge it?

Great leaders are great learners. Their never-ending pursuit of information pushes them to constantly improve and sets them apart from the rest. Getting and learning from feedback isn’t always easy, but it is necessary if we want to become better. It’s rare that our colleagues will offer us the kind of feedback we need to develop, and also rare that we respond in a way that rewards their efforts and helps us improve. It’s worth building the skills to do this well if we want to reach our full potential.

Demonstrate gratitude. Say thank you in a way that conveys sincere appreciation. If you’ve heard something helpful, the person giving you feedback likely spent a good amount of time considering your performance and how to thoughtfully discuss it with you. They took a risk by being candid, so let them know how much you appreciate their effort and courage.

Reflect and evaluate. Now that you have some new data, reflect on what you’ve heard, even if you don’t like reflection. By thinking through the meaning and implication of the feedback, you can learn from it and consider what parts to work on, what parts to disregard, and what parts require deeper understanding. To do this, it helps to think about your development areas, the value you place on this individual’s perspective, and possibly, what you have heard from others as well. This is also the time to come back to what you may disagree with. Given that your objective was to learn others’ perspectives on you, ask yourself if it’s really worth the potential damage to go back and “correct” the information. Typically, it’s not.

Jennifer Porter is the managing partner of The Boda Group, a leadership and team development firm. She is a graduate of Bates College and the Stanford Graduate School of Business and is an experienced operations executive and an executive and team coach.

Copyright © 2019 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Make a plan and take action. All of the steps before this set you up to make a plan and put it into practice.

Pick one or two capabilities you want to improve, get really clear about what “improved” looks like, and then consider the steps necessary for you to learn and adopt that new behavior. Making a plan and taking action are not only important for your learning and development, they’re also a signal to those who shared the feedback—you are serious about improving and you value their perspectives.

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How to Minimize Meeting Madness

By Kelly Chance

In many organizations, meetings account for a surprisingly large percentage of the 40-hour workweek.

There are several varieties, from quick campfire chats where everyone pulls up a chair for a brief discussion, to all-day affairs.

Short or long, many employees view these gatherings as lost time. They become hurdles to getting the day’s real work done. The reasons why meetings have become so unpopular vary. They can lack focus, seem repetitive, or regularly devolve into social events.

So what makes a meeting more effective and therefore, more valued?

In general, the best meetings are well organized and forward-looking. They leave participants feeling better informed, empowered, and armed with a clear vision of what must be accomplished. Purposeful meetings achieve business objectives. They take the proper amount of time. They also serve to improve collaboration, allowing once siloed workers to identify how their efforts align with others and new ways to work together.

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For organizations in which employees feel as if they are drowning in meetings, here are a few questions to consider, in order to ensure everyone’s time is being well spent.

Does the Meeting Have Clear Goals?

While weekly team gatherings are commonplace in many industries, one frequent mistake is a failure to state specific meeting objectives up front. Gatherings that lack clear goals often degenerate into ramblings, leaving participants with little information relevant to their work.

Organizers should always clearly state a meeting’s purpose, and that purpose should always be rooted in achieving business goals. This can be reinforced verbally at the beginning of the gathering or through a written agenda distributed to all participants.

In some cases, a meeting’s goals are more general. For example, some companies gather employees together to inspire or improve morale. Even in these cases, organizers should still be clear about the intended purpose and the messages that employees should walk away with.

If the goal is information sharing, organizers should make sure there are not other more appropriate forums the Analyst Business Supplement 2019

How to Minimize Meeting Madness

continued

to disseminate the data, such as group emails or brief status updates posted on internal office blogs.

Is Face-To-Face Communication Required?

Is the meeting topic so complex or sensitive that face-toface delivery enhances understanding compared to a more stoic email or memo? With complex matters or when announcing major items, such as bold new strategic initiatives, face-to-face communications often work best.

One major benefit: Meeting organizers can immediately read whether or not employees have bought in to an idea.

They get instant verbal feedback and can answer burning questions on the spot.

Meetings involving complex or sensitive employee matters—such as changes that could result in staff reductions—need to be highly organized and thought out with clear take-away points for all participants.

Organizers should also work to keep meeting comments focused on germane matters to enhance clarity and maximize time.

Do I Have a Clear Business Purpose for Calling the Meeting?

Are team meetings being held simply out of habit? If so, organizers should assess the benefits of these gatherings and set a clear agenda for future meetings if the decision is made to continue.

Are There Topics That Require Buy-in and Feedback to Move Forward?

Imagine sending an email to a team of 10 people asking them to unanimously decide on one option or another. In this scenario, the team would lack the ability to hear one another out in real time. They would be unsure whose decision trumps whose.

productive. A 30-minute meeting places greater onus on the organizer to proactively develop clear goals, get started on time, quickly communicate desired outcomes, and keep participants on task.

Will a Meeting Help With Team-Building Efforts?

When meetings have a solid business purpose, they can pull employees out of their bunkers and encourage them to communicate with each other. Organizational silos develop when employee discussion dissipates. To combat this problem, a regularly scheduled monthly meeting might bring work teams and employees closer together as they discuss project progress and see how their work functions overlap.

A word of warning: While some meetings can help bring people together, sometimes they can result in coworkers isolating one another or criticizing their counterparts’ efforts in front of the boss. Leaders must not let this happen. It should be proactively stated that meetings are a place for open, direct communications, where ideas are professionally debated and respectfully discussed. If organizers sense that tensions are on the rise, they should respond quickly.

Are the Right People Seated at the Table?

When organizing a meeting, it is important to identify the mission-critical people who need to attend in order for a project to move forward. On the other hand, non-mission-critical staff should be allowed to continue their work without being sidetracked.

Employees requiring the information that comes out of a meeting do not always need to be there. Decide beforehand who must attend and who can be provided with recap notes on key decisions and action items.

While meetings will likely always play a crucial role in the workplace, regularly considering the goals of these face-to-face gatherings and their alternatives is never a bad idea. Maintaining control over the number and frequency of meetings can also help improve morale, increase productivity, and reduce stress.

In situations like this, meetings are clearly the better option compared to endless chains of reply all emails.

They are an easier way to get mission-critical parties together to quickly reach agreement on next steps.

Are Meetings Dragging on Longer Than They Should?

Meeting participants tend to lose focus after about an hour. Therefore, shorter meetings are frequently more

Reprinted with permission from The Business Journals 2018.

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Members and their employees

Making Sure Your Employees Succeed

By Amy Gallo

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Making Sure Your Employees Succeed continued

It’s common knowledge that helping employees set and reach goals is a critical part of every manager’s job.

Employees want to see how their work contributes to larger corporate objectives, and setting the right targets makes this connection explicit for them, and for you, as their manager. Goalsetting is particularly important as a mechanism for providing ongoing and year-end feedback. By establishing and monitoring targets, you can give your employees real-time input on their performance while motivating them to achieve more.

What the Experts Say

So, how involved should you be in helping employees establish and achieve their goals? Since failure to meet goals can have consequences for you, your employee, and your team, as well as the broader organization, you need to balance your involvement with the employee’s ownership over the process. Linda Hill, the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and co-author of Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader, says “A manager’s job is to provide ‘supportive autonomy’ that’s appropriate to the person’s level of capability.” The key is to be hands-on while giving your people the room they need to succeed on their own. Here are some principles to follow as you navigate how to best support your people in reaching their objectives.

Connect employee goals to larger company goals For goals to be meaningful and effective in motivating employees, they must be tied to larger organizational ambitions. Employees who don’t understand the roles they play in company success are more likely to become disengaged. “Achieving goals is often about making tradeoffs when things don’t go as planned. [Employees] need to understand the bigger picture to make those tradeoffs when things go wrong,” says Hill. No matter what level the employee is at, he should be able to articulate exactly how his efforts feed into the broader company strategy.

Make sure goals are attainable but challenging Since employees are ultimately responsible for reaching their goals, they need to have a strong voice in setting them. Ask your employee to draft goals that directly contribute to the organization’s mission. Once she’s suggested initial goals, discuss whether her targets are both realistic and challenging enough. “Stretch targets 19

emerge as a process of negotiation between the employee and the manager,” says Srikant M. Datar, the Arthur Lowes Dickinson Professor of Accounting at Harvard University and contributor to the Goal Setting module of Harvard ManageMentor. Be careful though: your team members are likely to resent you if you insist on goals that are too challenging. At the same time, you don’t want to aim too low either. If you are overly cautious, you will miss opportunities and settle for mediocrity. “When done well, stretch goals create a lot of energy and momentum in an organization,” says Datar. But, when done badly, they “do not achieve the goal of motivating employees and helping them achieve better performance as they were designed to do,” he adds. Even worse, poorly set goals can be destructive to employees’ morale and productivity, and to the organization’s performance overall.

Create a plan for success Once a goal is set, ask your employee to explain how he plans to meet it. Have him break goals down into tasks and set interim objectives, especially if it’s a large or long-term project. Ask your employee: what are the appropriate milestones? What are possible risks and how do you plan to manage them? Because targets are rarely pursued in a vacuum, Hill suggests that you “help your people understand who they are dependent on to achieve those goals.” Then, problem solve with them on how to best influence those people to get the job done.

Monitor progress Staying on top of employee progress will help head off any troubles early on. “We often get problems because we don’t signal that we are partners in achieving goals,” says Hill. Don’t wait for review time or the end of a project to check in. Review both long-term and short-term goals on a weekly basis. Even your high-performing employees need ongoing feedback and coaching. Ask your employee what type of monitoring and feedback would be most helpful to her, especially if the task is particularly challenging or something she is doing for the first time.

When Things Go Wrong

Very few of us reach our goals without some road bumps along the way. Build relationships with employees so that they feel comfortable coming to you if and when problems arise. If your employee encounters an unforeseen obstacle, the goal may need reworking. First, however, the Analyst Business Supplement 2019

Making Sure Your Employees Succeed continued

ask him to bring a potential solution to you so you can give him coaching and advice. If his efforts to solve the problem fail, you will need to get further involved.

What About Personal Goals?

Some managers neglect to think about what an employee is personally trying to accomplish in the context of work. “If I account for the interests of the whole person, not just the work person, I’m going to get more value from them,” says Stewart D. Friedman, Practice Professor of Management at the Wharton School and author of Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life. For example, if your employee has expressed an interest in teaching, but that is not part of his job responsibilities, you may be able to find ways to sculpt his job to include opportunities for training peers or less experienced colleagues.

The first step is for you to understand what these goals are. Ask employees if they have any personal goals they want to share with you. Don’t pressure them; they should only share these aspirations if they feel comfortable.

Friedman suggests you then ask, ‘What adjustments might we try that would help you achieve your goals?”

This allows the employee to take ownership over the solution. Just as with work goals, you need to be sure personal goals contribute to your team, unit, or to the company. “It’s got to be a shared commitment to experiment and mutual responsibility to check in on how it’s going. It’s got to be a win for both,” says Friedman.

When Goals Aren’t Met

There will be times, even with the best support, when employees fail to meet their targets. “Hold people accountable. You can’t say ‘Gee, that’s too bad.’ You need to figure out what went wrong and why,” says Hill.

Discuss with your employee what happened and what each of you think went wrong. If the problem was within his control, ask him to apply the possible solutions you’ve discussed, take another stab at reaching the goal, and check in with you more frequently. If it was something that was outside of his power or the goal was too ambitious, acknowledge the disappointment but don’t dwell on it. “Do the diagnosis, get the learning, and move on,” says Hill.

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It’s possible that you may have contributed to the problem. Be willing to reflect on your role in the failure.

Were you too hands off and you failed to check in frequently enough? Did you not review his work in a timely way? Have an open discussion about what you can do next time. “If you don’t hold yourself accountable, they’re going to have trouble with you,” says Hill.

Principles to Remember Do: • Connect individuals’ goals to broader organization objectives.

• Show employees that you are a partner in achieving their goals.

• Learn about and incorporate employees’ personal interests into their professional goals.

Don’t: • Allow employees to set goals alone.

• Take a hands-off approach to high performers—they need input and feedback to meet their goals as well.

• Ignore failures—be sure people have the opportunity to learn when they don’t achieve goals.

Case Study #1: Being a partner in goal attainment

Meghan Lantier is known at Bliss PR for being a natural people developer. As the vice president of the firm’s financial services practice, Meghan manages several senior account executives, including Shauna Ellerson* (*Not her real name; changed since publication). Meghan has overseen Shauna’s work since Shauna started at Bliss four and a half years ago. Since the beginning, they have set goals through a collaborative process: Shauna develops draft goals, Meghan comes up with ones she believes Shauna needs to focus on, and then they identify the overlap between them. “I want to make sure they are manageable but stretched too,” says Meghan. The two regularly check in on these goals. Meghan takes a hands-on approach, providing Shauna with regular input.

They also sit down together at least four times a year to have a more formal discussion about Shauna’s ambitions.

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Making Sure Your Employees Succeed continued

One of Shauna’s goals is to become more of a thought leader on one of their largest financial services accounts.

She has mastered the day-to-day work of managing the client and now needs to focus on the bigger picture.

Shauna has been working on this goal for several months now by speaking up more in client meetings and providing more input into the content, not just the process, of their work. “We don’t need a goal review session. I give her constant feedback in the context of the work,” says Meghan.

Meghan also knows that ultimately Shauna is responsible for her own achievements. “I’m fully invested in making it work, but I realized the limitations I have as a manager to make it happen,” she says. It hasn’t been necessary to talk about the consequences if Shauna fails to meet the goal—there are natural consequences in Bliss’s highperforming culture. If you don’t succeed, you don’t get the better assignments.

Case Study #2: Supporting personal goals Amy Werner took a job at the New York City-based search firm On-Ramps just over three years ago. Amy joined at an integral time in the firm’s growth and quickly became a key asset to the small firm. Sarah Grayson, one of the firm’s founding partners, manages Amy and explains, “Amy has a lot of institutional knowledge and is a high performer.” When she first began, she was working toward a degree in social work but taking classes at nights and on the weekends. A year and a half into the job, Amy’s school schedule became more complicated. Her internship requirements made working a traditional, full-time schedule difficult.

Because of her star performance, Sarah and her fellow partners were keen to keep her on board while

23

encouraging her to complete her degree. Amy remained full time but now works two days a week in the office, completing the rest of her hours on nights and weekends.

As Amy says, “They have been nothing but supportive.”

The firm has a semiannual review process where goals are set and discussed; they also do more frequent checkins on goals during weekly meetings. Amy and Sarah have talked a lot about how On-Ramps can support Amy, not only by providing a flexible schedule but by thinking about the intersection of her studies and her work. They’ve found that there are lots of transferable skills between her job as a search associate and her work as a social worker, such as interviewing and client management. In explaining why they are so supportive of Amy’s educational activities, Sarah says, “We wouldn’t have done this for a low performer. We have to ask ourselves, ‘What would it take to hire another Amy?'” Amy will be finishing her master’s degree in May, and she and Sarah have begun to discuss what’s next for her.

Both hope that there is a way to combine her skills in search and her interest in social work to create a job that is ideal for both her and On-Ramps.

Portions of this article were adapted from the Goal Setting module of Harvard ManageMentor. This content was adapted for inclusion in the HBR Guide to Giving Effective Feedback.

Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business Review and the author of the HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict at Work. She writes and speaks about workplace dynamics. Follow her on Twitter at @amyegallo.

Copyright © 2011 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

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Filling the Gaps: Pros and Cons of Hiring Part-Time Employees

By Macon Cauthen

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Filling the Gaps: Pros and Cons of Hiring Part-Time Employees continued

We’ve come a long way from the days when a person spent an entire career at one company, working full time, 9-to-5, five days a week. Today’s employees want more options, and working part time is one of them.

So, what exactly qualifies as part-time work? The answer varies depending on the company. There’s no federal law that sets the number of hours an employee must work to be considered part time or full time. However, many companies classify part-time workers as those who work fewer than 30–35 hours per week.

Offering part-time work options is an effective way to attract top talent while keeping your company nimble and ready to staff up or down according to your needs.

But, blending part-time workers with your full-time workforce takes some finesse. Before rolling out a part-time option, consider these pros and cons to determine whether it makes sense for your business.

Pros of hiring part-time employees 1. Greater flexibility Part-time employees allow you to staff according to your company’s exact needs and weather ups and downs with ease. For organizations in volatile industries, it doesn’t always make sense to ramp up your roster of full-time employees during busy times if during downturns, they won’t have enough to do. Or worse yet, you have to lay off those same employees.

If you hire temporary part-time employees to help carry the workload, you avoid that hassle while giving your full-time employees an extra level of support. Part-time workers can also fill in for employees taking sick or maternity leave, and long-term part-time employees can work schedules not covered by full-time employees. For example, if your company has retail customers or offers after-hours technical support, part-time staff could help with night and weekend hours so that you don’t have gaps in staffing.

2. Cost-effective solution Part-time employees offer a significant cost savings over full-time employees, especially with the skyrocketing cost of providing health care benefits.

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With full-time employees, you’re on the hook for providing a full-time salary, benefits, sick leave and retirement programs. You’ll also need to factor in workers’ compensation, should an on-the-job injury occur, or unemployment insurance, if you have to lay off employees.

That’s not the case with most part-time employees, who typically don’t qualify for benefits.

3. Seasonal support Frequently, situations arise when you need specialized expertise for a very specific amount of time. Let’s say your company needs more cashiers to check out customers during the peak of the holiday shopping season, or accountants to handle your company’s books during tax time. When you hire part-time employees, you can bring on staff with the expertise you need, when you need it. When the project or busy season ends, you can part ways.

4. Expanded pool of candidates When you consider part-time employees, you’re opening the door to a talent pool you probably would have otherwise overlooked (e.g., moms re-entering the workforce or retiring workers who are not quite ready to leave it).

Not all exceptionally skilled and talented individuals are seeking full-time employment, so you cast a wider net in your recruiting efforts when you consider part-time candidates. What’s more, you may even increase employee retention by offering part-time options to your existing workforce.

Cons of hiring part-time employees 1. Less invested in your company There’s always the risk that part-time workers won’t be as committed or loyal to your company. Part-time employees may feel they don’t owe your company loyalty because they don’t receive benefits, or because they don’t feel as valued as their full-time coworkers. Many don’t have that deep connection with a company that fulltimers do. Unlike full-time employees, part-time employees have less time to invest in learning the ins and outs of the organization, and they may lack valuable institutional knowledge. the Analyst Business Supplement 2019

Filling the Gaps: Pros and Cons of Hiring Part-Time Employees continued

2. Lack of face time Part-time workers just aren’t around as much as full-time employees. Because of that, it’s hard for other employees to get to know them and work with them as a team.

Full-time employees might not feel comfortable around part-timers. They may feel like they don’t interact with them as often, or even know what they’re working on.

If you focus on giving them work that’s exciting and engaging, your employees will reward you with commitment and connection. If your company can afford it, offering some level of benefits—such as paid time off, health insurance, or retirement programs—can help strengthen the bond between part-time employees and your organization.

3. Workload differences may cause resentment It’s natural for part-time workers to work fewer hours, but workload differences can still cause resentment.

Full-time employees may feel that they work harder than part-timers and contribute more to the company. And, while full-time workers probably should expect to have more responsibility than their part-time counterparts, it can still be disheartening for an overwhelmed full-timer to see their part-time co-worker take long lunches or skip out early.

To smooth over issues involving face time and workload differences, clearly communicate your expectations for full-time and part-time employees, and guide both sets of workers on how to work as a team. Create regular opportunities for full-time and part-time employees to interact with each other and stay abreast of what everyone’s working on.

4. Potential for inconsistent work Part-time workers don’t work the full workday, so they may have to clock out before they see a project through to completion, or waste time playing catch up when they clock in. Because they work less, and likely aren’t as familiar with the company’s policies and mission, the quality of their work can suffer (as well as their productivity).

Managing the cons

Fortunately, if you’re gravitating toward adding parttime employees to your workforce, you can easily manage the cons.

Let’s start with commitment and connection. The qualities that employees seek in an employer are changing. They’re not necessarily interested in building a tenured career with any one company. Instead, more and more professionals desire a deeper connection to the work itself. They want work that expands their skillset and challenges them.

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Make sure to schedule meetings or social events at times convenient for both part-time and full-time workers.

And, to avoid inconsistent work, develop strategies to ease handing off tasks to other employees, and invest in additional training to shore up part-timers’ institutional knowledge.

The future is flexible

The world of work continues to evolve at a rapid pace, with both companies and workers desiring more flexibility in terms of who does the work and how it gets done. If you want to be on the right side of that evolution, hiring a mix of part-time and full-time employees is a smart solution, and one most companies can achieve with a little extra effort.

To learn more about the legal considerations of hiring part-time employees compared to full-time employees, download our free e-book, Employment Law: Are you putting your business at risk?

Republished with permission, Insperity 2019.

the Analyst Business Supplement 2019

Stop Procrastinating…

Now

By Amy Gallo

It seems that no one is immune to the tendency to procrastinate. When someone asked Ernest Hemingway how to write a novel, his response was “First you defrost the refrigerator.” But putting off tasks takes a big hit on our productivity, and psyche. Procrastination is not inevitable. Figuring out why you postpone work and then taking concrete steps to prevent it will help you get more done and feel good about yourself.

What the Experts Say

According to Ned Hallowell, a psychiatrist and the author of 12 books, including Driven to Distraction, delaying work is often a symptom of how busy you are.

“We procrastinate because we all have too much to do,” he says. And of course, we want to dodge things we don’t like. “Many people procrastinate because they fear the drudgery or the difficulty of the task they are avoiding,” says Teresa Amabile, the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and co-author of The Progress Principle. But, as you have 28

likely learned, it doesn’t pay to dawdle. “Putting it off doesn’t make it go away. Getting it done does,” says Hallowell. Here are five principles to follow next time you find yourself deferring important work.

1. Figure out what’s holding you back When you find yourself ignoring or delaying a task, ask yourself why. Hallowell points out that there are two types of tasks most often deferred: • Something you don’t like to do. This is the most common one. As Hallowell says, “You don’t put off eating your favorite dessert.”

• Something you don’t know how to do. When you lack the necessary knowledge or are unsure of how to start a job, you are more likely to avoid it.

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Stop Procrastinating…Now continued

Once you’ve identified why you’ve put something off, you can break the cycle and prevent future bouts of procrastination.

2. Set deadlines for yourself One of the simplest things you can do is create a schedule with clear due dates for each part of a task. “As soon as you get the project, chunk it down into a few manageable segments that you can complete in sequence,” Amabile advises. Then, assign deadlines for each piece. “Put an appointment in your calendar to work on a small piece of the next segment each day to allow yourself to get it done a bit at a time,” she says.

These “small wins” make the work more manageable and contribute to your sense of progress. And achieving them is much easier than trying to barrel through a complex project.

Setting deadlines also makes sure the project doesn’t get buried. For things that you are likely to put off, add reminders in your calendar or put a Post-It on your computer screen. Use whatever visual cues will ensure that you don’t avoid the project.

3. Increase the rewards We often dally because the reward for doing a certain assignment is too far off. Regina Conti, an associate professor of psychology at Colgate University and an expert in motivation, provides the example of doing your taxes. “A person may want to complete their taxes to avoid the legal penalties of not doing so, but because those penalties are far in the future and the task is a boring one, they will not have much incentive to get started with the project,” she says. To make a task feel more immediate, focus on short-term rewards, such as getting a refund. Or if there aren’t any, insert your own.

Treat yourself to a coffee break or a quick chat with a co-worker once you’ve finished a task. You can also embed the reward into the task itself by making it more fun to do. Work with someone on a particularly difficult project or set up a game for yourself so that doing the task isn’t so boring or onerous.

4. Involve others One of the principles Hallowell often repeats in his work is “Never worry alone.” If you don’t know how to do something, ask for help. Turn to a trusted colleague or a friend for advice. Or, look for an example of the project 29

you are working on to use as a starting point. “Others are a great source of extrinsic motivation,” says Conti.

Asking someone to review your work can spur you to get started knowing they will expect it. You can even enter an anti-procrastination pact with a co-worker: share what you are working on and hold each other accountable to set deadlines.

5. Get in the habit “People throw up a hand and say ‘I’m such a procrastinator’ as if they have no control,” says Hallowell. “You do have control over this and you’ll be very proud when you change it.” Hallowell says that he used to be a procrastinator but trained himself to stop. “I don’t procrastinate at all now. I just do it,” he says. There are immediate benefits when you start getting things done right away, and it’s a habit you can cultivate.

Amabile suggests tracking your improvement. “Spend just five minutes a day to note the progress you made, any setbacks you encountered, and what you might do the next day to enable further progress,” she says. She recommends you do this in a work diary. Then see yourself, and talk about yourself with others, as someone who gets things done. “The most powerful event, for maintaining positive inner work life, is making progress in meaningful work,” says Amabile.

Principles to Remember Do: • Identify which tasks you are most likely to put off.

• Use deadlines to motivate you to get things done within a certain timeframe.

• Reward yourself for reaching milestones.

Don’t: • Call yourself a procrastinator as if it is an intrinsic part of who you are.

• Tackle arduous tasks on your own—ask others to help you get over the hump.

• Try to finish a project in one sitting—break it down into smaller, achievable chunks.

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Stop Procrastinating…Now continued

Case Study #1: Know why

Lisa Freitag, a marketing consultant for an online company based in Silicon Valley, noticed she was putting off planning on a major marketing event. Every time she thought about what needed to be done, she got overwhelmed and decided to work on something else. This was odd for her: she was used to taking on big projects and blazing through them, regardless of their complexity. This project was different in that it involved several other people, including many top executives. “I procrastinate when I have to rely on other people. I prefer to just take something and run with it,” she says.

For this event, she was worried about depending on others, especially busy leaders with many competing commitments.

Lisa’s anxiety wasn’t helping her, and she needed to get the project going. “I wrote down a list of everything that had to happen, mapped it out on a calendar, and then backed out to figure out what I needed to do first,” she says. Since many of the tasks required input from others, she wrote down what she needed from each person by when. This helped her to make clear requests to everyone involved. “I realized I was playing a very important role in keeping people on track, and the executives involved appreciate that that’s what I was doing,” she says. The project still caused Lisa stress, but she got through it. “I made a deal with myself. Each day, I told myself ‘I’m going to work on it for 20 minutes now and then 20 minutes in the afternoon,’” she says. Once she put a little time into it, she found it got easier with each day. Lisa also set a long-term reward for herself: when the project is complete she’s planning a team dinner.

Case Study #2: Keep it top of mind

Janet Benton was an executive assistant at a medical device company when her boss assigned her an important but lower priority project she was having trouble completing. Soon, Janet realized she too was putting it

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off. She couldn’t find the time to even start the project with all of the other pressing tasks on her plate. But since she had no one to delegate the project to, she decided to make progress on it in small increments. “The trick is to recognize there are steps that can be taken even if you can’t get to the final destination on the same day,” she says. She broke the project down into separate tasks that she could accomplish in 15 minutes. Using Outlook, she then scheduled time twice a day—once in the morning and then again after lunch—to take on two of the tasks.

“If you give yourself an Outlook reminder and it keeps popping up, you’re more likely to deal with it,” she says.

Before she left each day, she wrote down the two things she was going to do the following day.

She also kept herself accountable. “The final fail-safe was to secretly vow that two days could not pass without some kind of progress,” By doing that, she was able to gain momentum on the project, and it became part of her daily priorities. “That overlooked project was soon completed and turned back over to a very grateful boss.

And it was off my desk, which made me happy as well,” she says.

Janet also developed other coping mechanisms to make sure projects that she might put off stay in her physical line of sight. “I always put that pesky project in an off-color folder and put it under my to-do list at the day’s end, on top of my keyboard or computer.” That way, when she comes in the next day, she has a reminder that she can’t let it go.

Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business Review and the author of the HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict at Work. She writes and speaks about workplace dynamics. Follow her on Twitter at @amyegallo.

Copyright © 2011 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

the Analyst Business Supplement 2019

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Firing for Online Behavior

By June D. Bell

The bombs people drop on social media can detonate right away or lurk like hidden land mines. In some cases, someone is terminated from a current job for recent problematic posts. Take comedian Roseanne Barr, for example, who tweeted last spring, “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby,” referring to Valerie Jarrett, a black woman who served as a top aide to President Barack Obama. Barr quickly deleted the racist, Islamophobic post and issued an apology, but ABC executives still dropped her from her sitcom.

media comments cause them to lose their jobs. He and other experts believe that this type of termination is becoming increasingly common.

Or take Kenneth Storey, a University of Tampa visiting assistant professor who lost his job days after his tweet last summer suggested that the Texas victims of Hurricane Harvey were experiencing “instant karma” for voting Republican. Storey deleted his tweet, but not before a screenshot of it had gone viral.

Adding pressure to HR’s role is the ubiquity of social media and the speed at which comments can erupt into full-blown crises. “Sometimes it’s not even a 24-hour news cycle anymore—it’s a 15-minute one,” says Betty Lochner, an HR consultant and owner of Cornerstone Coaching and Training in Olympia, Washington. “If you jump in there and get involved in a conversation that would’ve petered out on its own, that isn’t the best response either.” But doing nothing may not be a viable option when business leaders are subject to intense pressure to terminate an employee who’s behaving badly.

Determining how to respond is no easy task. HR professionals and executives must weigh the potential damage to a company’s image and reputation against their desire to foster a supportive workforce that doesn’t micromanage workers’ actions.

In other instances, individuals lose jobs for social media posts they made long before their employment began.

That’s what happened to “Guardians of the Galaxy” director James Gunn, who was fired in July after comments he wrote on Twitter several years ago involving pedophilia and rape resurfaced. Even though Gunn said he regretted his words, it wasn’t enough to save his job.

When an employee posts something offensive, HR professionals are often on the front line of protecting the employer’s brand. Hiring managers also may be expected to act as defenders of the company if a candidate’s online posts have the potential to reflect poorly on the organization’s image.

Attorney Eric Meyer, who blogs about workplace issues, tracks news about employees whose offensive social

“A firefighter, for example, who puts out a racist meme ...

CEOs, public figures, you name it. The frequency with which I see incidents of people getting fired doesn’t seem to have declined. I don’t see any evidence that it’s getting corrected anytime soon,” says Meyer, a partner at FisherBroyles in Philadelphia.

Crossing the Line

The internet has obscured the boundaries between people’s personal and professional lives, as more workers friend and follow their colleagues. The result is that employees may become privy to details about their co-workers’ off-duty activities, including their political affiliation, religious beliefs, drug use or participation in controversial causes, that otherwise would’ve remained private.

Firing for Online Behavior continued

Can Workers Grouse About Their Jobs on Social Media?

Businesses can bar the use of social media on the job, but they can’t stop employees from discussing work-related issues, whether they’re venting in the break room or posting on Glassdoor.

As long as workers are engaged in a dialogue with each other, criticism of working conditions, pay rates, and management is considered “concerted activity” protected by federal labor law.

But that doesn’t give employees free rein to air their grievances. If people aren’t engaging in a conversation with co-workers, they can be fired for their online behavior.

“An employer could terminate an employee for saying, ‘This employer’s a cheapskate, or cheats on my wages, or is stealing my tips,’ or whatever the issue is,” says attorney Mark Kluger. “If it’s not clearly part of an ongoing dialogue between that employee and co-workers, it’s not protected by the National Labor Relations Act.”

“Social media has opened the door for us to know people’s intimate views on things that are not work related,” says Joey Kolasinsky, SHRM-SCP, HR manager at Encore Electric Inc. in Denver.

As people conduct more business and socializing online, Facebook and Twitter have become 21st century watercoolers, where workers flock to grouse, joke, and vent.

“These are conversations that previously would have happened in someone’s home or in a bar or on a soccer field, and it would have gone under the radar,” says attorney John Polson, a partner with Fisher Phillips in Irvine, California.

But in today’s hyperconnected culture, an online comment or photo can spread like wildfire from one co-worker to another and then to multitudes of strangers.

In the early days of social media, business leaders thought they could keep tight control over workers’ use of the platforms. Less than a decade ago, many companies introduced policies forbidding workers from making any negative comments online about the employer, says attorney Mark F. Kluger, who has written more than 100 social media policies for corporate clients. Some employers even required workers to supply the passwords to their personal social media accounts—a practice that is now illegal in some states.

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But starting around 2010, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) began fielding complaints from workers who had been disciplined for their online behavior. The NLRB warned employers that their social media policies could not punish workers for discussing wages, working conditions, and terms of employment, all of which are considered “protected concerted activity.” That can include complaints about management, low wages, and lazy colleagues, and those protections extend to nonunionized workers as well.

In addition, five states—California, Colorado, Louisiana, New York, and North Dakota—protect employees from retaliation for engaging in lawful off-duty conduct and political activities, no matter how distasteful their colleagues may consider their affiliations. “If any companies in those states were to terminate an employee because they were a member of the Nazi Party, they might have a problem,” says Kluger, an attorney with Kluger Healey in Florham Park, New Jersey.

Workers can, however, be axed for engaging in hate speech and making disparaging comments about protected categories of race, religion, and gender. They can also be shown the door for disclosing confidential information and trade secrets, defaming competitors, or misrepresenting the company. In general, though, a business has great latitude in deciding whether to terminate for online behavior. the Analyst Business Supplement 2019

Firing for Online Behavior continued

“It is entirely case by case,” Lochner says. “A company has to decide: What’s its reach? What’s the damage?

There is no black-and-white answer.”

Don’t wait until a crisis erupts to decide which types of off-duty conduct are unacceptable. HR professionals, company leaders and other decision-makers should agree on a list of core company values so that they will know which behaviors violate organizational principles, Lochner says.

Ultimately, business leadership must determine which behaviors cross the line. That evaluation process could begin whenever an employer learns about a potentially problematic post. “There’s not a cutoff or a statute of limitations for information,” says Jeff Polsky, an employment lawyer with Fox Rothschild in San Francisco.

Setting a Policy

A social media policy and related training can help employees better understand the importance of demonstrating professionalism online and provide guidance on what types of online conduct may lead to termination.

The HR team at ad agency RPA in Santa Monica, Calif., provides its 750 employees with a company policy and training on managing perceptions in the workplace. A recent session covered how offhand online remarks can affect someone’s image and reputation.

“We try to offer employees tools for understanding the implications of something you might express in the social space,” says Laura Small, vice president, director of people, at RPA. The training was especially well received by recent college graduates, who had little prior instruction on the business etiquette of social media, despite being avid users of the technology.

When employees misstep, the gaffes are usually due to what Small describes as “a lack of awareness” as opposed to malice. In one case, an employee saw a negative comment a colleague made online about the services of one of their company’s clients. The two employees were Facebook friends, and the content appeared on a personal page. The colleague contacted Small, who met with the person who made the post and explained why it was inappropriate. Mortified, the worker apologized.

“We don’t want to kill free speech, but we want to be respectful of the clients we represent,” Small says.

Even a comprehensive social media policy cannot anticipate every instance where it might be applied.

“There’s no one-size-fits all,” Polson says. “You need a policy tailored to your specific business. And you don’t want to be too broad; you don’t have to have a policy for every decision you make.”

Key Components of Your Social Media Policy An effective and comprehensive social media policy should be included in your employee handbook.

The policy should ask employees to: •

Refrain from identifying themselves as representing their employer and/or their employer’s views unless they are authorized to do so.

•

Preface their opinions about their industry, employer, or work duties with a disclaimer stating that their views do not necessarily represent their employer’s.

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•

Avoid sharing any proprietary or confidential information about the company or its customers, prospects, partners, or suppliers.

•

Never post anything threatening, harassing, bullying, or defamatory or that could contribute to a hostile work environment by disparaging others based on race, gender, disability, religion, or any status protected by law or company policy.

the Analyst Business Supplement 2019

Firing for Online Behavior continued

Striking a Balance

Many businesses monitor their online presence, receiving alerts whenever the company name appears in news coverage or is mentioned on social media. But employers should tread lightly when scrutinizing employees’ comments on their personal websites, blogs, and social media accounts. The risks of performing such oversight outweigh any benefits, HR experts say. If an employee mentions a medical condition, pregnancy, or disability that she has not disclosed to HR and is then terminated or laid off, she could claim that she was subject to discriminatory treatment as a member of a protected class. “Are they going to come back to me and say, ‘Hey, HR knew that I had cancer because they were following me’? Where is that line?” Kolasinsky asks.

The team at SnackNation, a rapidly growing snackdelivery service based in Culver City, California, takes a largely hands-off approach to its employees’ social media use, says Greg Waechter, head of people strategy. “I’d like to think we hire adults,” he says of the company’s 155 employees, many of whom are Millennials. “We don’t as a company have the time and bandwidth to monitor everyone’s social media, and if you do crack down on someone, you become the cop and the bad guy.”

Social Screening

Most employers do conduct some form of screening for the online behavior of job candidates. Last year, 70 percent of 2,380 hiring managers and HR professionals reported that they use online information to vet candidates, a CareerBuilder survey found. That’s up from 60 percent in 2016 and just 11 percent in 2006.

Fifty-four percent opted not to extend a job offer to candidates whose social media presence raised red flags.

Those dealbreakers included discriminatory comments about race, gender and religion; derogatory statements about former co-workers and their previous employer; and evidence that they supplied inaccurate information about their qualifications in their resume or application materials. However, a separate study by the Society for Human Resource Management found that 39 percent of HR professionals allow candidates to explain information of concern before they make a final decision on hiring.

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Conversely, don’t think that a lack of an online presence will work in a candidate’s favor: 57 percent of hiring managers and HR professionals in the CareerBuilder survey said they were less likely to interview someone who was invisible online.

Still, not every company opts in favor of this form of screening. Reviewing a job candidate’s social media history can bias recruiters and screeners and short-circuit hiring decisions, says Carol Sampson, executive director of Foundations Human Resources Consulting in Lexington, Kentucky. “My strong preference is to rely on the validity and strength of your selection process to weed out or select candidates.”

But that can leave HR professionals and managers in the dark when a social media bomb detonates. So if you go that route, be sure to have a clear strategy in place for how to respond—and communicate your decision— should that happen.

New Frontiers

Social media has edged what once were personal beliefs and closely held opinions into the public realm.

Retaining a bright line between the workplace and employees’ nonwork activities has become increasingly challenging. “The rules governing behavior on social media are vague and ever-changing, just as social media itself is changing,” Sampson says. “And much of what occurs on social media [happens] without our knowledge and therefore is impossible to manage.”

HR, workers, and managers must continue to feel their way around in a world where their desire to engage with others online must be balanced against their expectations of privacy and restraint. “It’s amazing how much of a frontier the social space still is,” Small says.

June D. Bell is a San Francisco-based journalist who covers California labor and employment issues for SHRM. © 2019 SHRM. All Rights Reserved. SHRM provides content as a service to its readers and members. It does not offer legal advice, and cannot guarantee the accuracy or suitability of its content for a particular purpose.

the Analyst Business Supplement 2019

How to Build a Positive Company Culture

By Alan Kohll

Company culture is an integral part of business. It affects nearly every aspect of a company. From recruiting top talent to improving employee satisfaction, it’s the backbone of a happy workforce. Without a positive corporate culture, many employees will struggle to find the real value in their work, and this leads to a variety of negative consequences for your bottom line.

According to research by Deloitte, 94% of executives and 88% of employees believe a distinct corporate culture is important to a business’ success. Deloitte’s survey also found that there is a strong correlation between employees who claim to feel happy and valued at work and those who say their company has a strong culture.

There’s a reason why companies who are named as a Best Place to Work see so much success. These organizations tend to have strong, positive corporate cultures that help employees feel and perform their best at work. Research gathered by CultureIQ found that employee’s overall ratings of their company’s qualities—including collaboration, environment and values—are rated 20% higher at companies that exhibit strong culture.

But why is corporate culture such an important part of a business? Take a look at some of the benefits of a positive company culture: • Recruitment. Many HR professionals agree that a strong company culture is one of the best ways to attract potential employees. A positive culture gives an organization a competitive advantage. People want 36

to work for companies with a good reputation from previous and current employees. A company with a positive culture will attract the type of talent that is willing to make their next workplace a home, rather than just a stepping-stone.

• Employee loyalty. Not only will a positive culture help recruitment efforts, it will help retain top talent as well. A positive culture fosters a sense of employee loyalty. Employees are much more likely to stay with their current employer when they feel they are treated right and enjoy going to work every day.

• Job satisfaction. It’s no surprise that job satisfaction is higher at companies with a positive corporate culture.

Employers who invest in the well-being of their employees will be rewarded with happy, dedicated employees • Collaboration. Employees are much more likely to come together as a team at companies with a strong culture. A positive culture facilitates social interaction, teamwork, and open communication.

This collaboration can lead to some amazing results.

• Work performance. Strong company cultures have been linked to higher rates of productivity. This is because employees tend to be more motivated and dedicated to employers who invest in their well-being and happiness.

• Employee morale. Maintaining a positive company the Analyst Business Supplement 2019

culture is a guaranteed way to boost employee morale. Employees will naturally feel happier and enjoy their work more when they work in a positive environment.

• Less stress. A positive company culture will help significantly reduce workplace stress. Companies with a strong corporate culture tend to see less stressed employees, which helps boost both employee health and work performance.

One great example of a positive company culture comes from Sweetgreen. This fast-casual health food restaurant believes that the most important ingredient to success is a positive company culture. Sweetgreen promotes a positive corporate culture by offering special perks that help boost positivity and morale throughout the company.

Some of Sweetgreen’s hallmark initiatives that have helped create a positive company culture include: • Family fund: Sweetgreeen provides emergency financial support for employees during times of need.

It’s funded through voluntary paycheck deductions from corporate employees. The Family Fund has assisted team members in paying for temporary housing due to a fire and has also helped assist an employee who needed to travel to care for a sick loved one.

• Notes of gratitude: Employers host a “Gratitude Night” to thank employees for making a positive impact on their customers. The corporate office reviews letters sent in from happy customers and writes personal handwritten notes to employees who have helped these customers. This type of event highlights employee achievement and gives them some public recognition for their hard work.

• Working with impact projects: Sweetgreen offers employees the opportunity to get involved with impact projects to support the community.

Sweetgreen recently partnered with the LA Food Policy Council to revamp a small, family-run grocery market.

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Sweetgreen is just one example of the many forwardthinking companies that are dedicating their time and resources to building a positive company culture and supporting the well-being of their workforce. Other companies would greatly benefit from following the lead of these companies and building their own unique, positive culture.

One of the best things about building a positive culture is that it can be done with any budget, at any size company, and within any industry. As long as employers take the time to genuinely invest in the happiness and well-being of their workforce, a positive culture will grow and thrive.

Employers can use the following tips to help build a positive corporate culture at their workplace: Emphasize employee wellness. No organization can expect to foster a positive culture without healthy employees. Employees need to feel their best—physically, mentally and emotionally—to contribute to a positive culture. In many ways, employee wellness is a foundation for a positive corporate culture. Leaders should ensure that employees have the resources, tools, and onsite healthcare opportunities they need to live their healthiest life—inside and outside of the office.

Grow off your current culture. Building a positive corporate culture doesn’t mean employers should completely scrap everything their company currently stands for. Rather than expecting employees to do a complete 180, employers should work on enhancing the current culture they have. Ask employees what they do and don’t like about their current culture and work environment. Leaders should use these suggestions to help create a positive corporate culture that’s appropriate for their workforce.

Provide meaning. Meaning and purpose are more important in the workplace now than ever. A majority of employees crave meaning and purpose in their work.

Without it, job satisfaction takes a major hit. And a company certainly can’t build a culture without any meaning behind its work. Create a mission statement and core values, and communicate these to employees.

Give employees specific examples of how their roles positively impact the company and its clients. the Analyst Business Supplement 2019

Create goals. No organization can have corporate culture without clear goals in place. Employers should gather with their team to create goals and objectives that everyone can work towards. Creating a company goal brings employees together and gives everyone something specific to work towards—other than a paycheck.

to research gathered by CultureIQ , 86% of employees at companies with strong cultures feel their senior leadership listens to employees, as compared to 70% of employees at companies without strong culture. Listen to employees, and make sure they feel their voices are heard and valued.

Encourage positivity. To build a positive culture, employers need to start by encouraging positivity in the workplace. It’s essential to promote positivity on a daily basis. Employers should lead by example by expressing gratitude, smiling often, and remaining optimistic during difficult situations. Employees are much more likely to engage in positive behavior when they see their employers doing so.

Empower “culture champions.” Similar to “wellness champions,” culture champions are employees who embody the values and missions of a company. They are excited to promote a company’s aspirations and encourage others to do the same. Identify these employees and encourage them to keep spreading the cheer.

Foster social connections. Workplace relationships are an essential element to a positive company culture.

When employees barely know their colleagues and rarely interact, there’s no possible way for a strong culture to grow. Leaders need to provide employees with opportunities for social interactions in the workplace. Consider weekly team meals, happy hour excursions, or even a book club to get things started.

Listen. Being a good listener is one of the easiest ways employers can start to build a positive culture. According

One of the most important roles a leader has is creating a positive culture. Be sure to cultivate a positive culture that enhances the talent, diversity, and happiness of your workforce. Building a unique, positive culture is one of the best—and simplest—ways to get your employees to invest their talent and future with your company.

Alan Kohll is the founder and president of health and wellness service provider TotalWellness. Follow TotalWellness on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Reprinted with permission from Forbes 2019.

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