IMP Home Working

A short video giving tips and ideas for those who are perhaps working from home for the first time. In particular in these particular strange times of lockdown it focusses on structure, communications and personal wellbeing.

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Managing and leading remotely

For those who find themselves leading and managing remotely, again, potentially for the first time during lockdown.

The video offers tips and ideas around setting the right tone, providing clarity amid uncertainty, effective communication for teams and individuals, and tailoring your approach. 

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The importance of timely decisions

A recent study carried out by researchers from the University of Exeter revealed that bosses misdemeanours can rub off on their teams. The study by an international team of researchers found that managers who procrastinate when making decisions and undertaking tasks leave employees feeling less committed to the organisation and more likely to display abnormal and unpleasant behaviour.

Dr Allan Lee of Exeter Business School said

‘We have found procrastination from managers can be detrimental to their staff, and companies need to take action to ensure there are better relationships between managers and employees.”

Lee and his team previously found managers who had mood swings had the worst impact on employees on workers anxiety. Even a poor but consistent relationship with a manager was preferable to one influenced by mood swings.

It’s good to say thank you

Research from One4all Rewards found that 83% of workers said that being thanked by their employer increased their feelings of loyalty to the organisation and that 65% thought gratitude for employee efforts was a critical trait for managers.

However, 77% of UK workers said that their manager neglected to thank them regularly. Alan Smith UK managing director of One4all Rewards said it was ‘clear to see’ that taking time to simply thank staff for their work and effort has a huge impact.

Coaching through change

While change is never predictable, feeling equipped can make transition easier according to research by City & Guilds Group.

76% of UK professionals interviewed said they thought coaching was helpful when going through periods of organisational change. It was said that coaching enabled employees to focus on current challenges rather than long term workplace issues.

Of the 1000 people surveyed, 79% said coaching was useful for adopting new technologies and ways of working.

64% said that coaching had become important in facilitating intergenerational working. The research also suggested coaching prevents talent from being wasted.

Among those surveyed that had changed role within an organisation, 27% said it had taken them around 4 months to work to the best of their ability afterwards. However, people who didn’t receive coaching at this critical moment were over eight times more likely to say they didn’t feel able to work at their best of their ability compared to those who did.
John Yates, managing director of City & Guilds Group says:

“With unpredictable times ahead and on-going change presenting challenges to businesses, employers need to support staff at all levels to maximise their individual performance, as well as that of the organisation.”

Quote of the day

On the subject of employee recognition…during a discussion on management behaviours, a group was discussing the impact of senior managers and the importance of greeting their team when arriving in the office each morning.

One delegate was moved to say:

‘The director comes in every morning, goes straight into their office without even making eye contact with the team, let alone saying good morning. To be honest, I don’t want to say good morning to them, but it’s not the point!!’

Fair enough?

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The value of eating together

You’ve been in the office since 8 o’clock, wrestling with the enormous piles of work, calls from customers, responding to emails from your manager, drafting reports and lots more to be accomplished for the day. As the clock ticks towards lunchtime you are faced with a choice: Sandwich at the desk, or take a break.

Cornell University study reveals that eating meals together can boost people’s productivity levels at work. Having a nice lunch with colleagues may help build camaraderie and foster deeper work relationships.

During these breaks, while discussions might not resolve issues on the work front, you might feel more relaxed.  This could help you cope with pressures during the next strenuous hours of the day.

Firefighters who eat together, for example, perform better together in their life-or-death line of work than those who don’t.

“There’s a different kind of bonding that comes with sharing food and drink with somebody,” says Kevin Kniffin, visiting assistant professor of organisational behaviour and leadership at Cornell University who authored the study. “The kind of bonding that can come through eating together has value in terms of cohesiveness in the work team.”

As a manager, having a shared lunch with colleagues might help your company in developing a good teamwork spirit.

Lunches with colleagues boosts productivity levels

After studying fire stations for 15 months, Kniffin and his colleagues found that firefighters who ate together worked better together. “Those who don’t fight fires each day can still take away some lessons from the study”, says Kniffin.

In this virtual era, employees frequently pick up tablets and smartphones as their best partners to talk about an issue at work, rather than their real colleagues. Humans are generally social creatures and even if technology could resolve all our work issues we still need to meet people every day and care for real human interactions. Lunch break is a great time to refresh, relax and feel good.

Leave your tasks on mind at your work desk, take a real break (however short) and you might feel more motivated for the rest of the day.

Effective networking tool

It might be impossible for you to know well colleagues working in other departments, but lunch time is a great opportunity to get to know colleagues on a personal individual level.

When you know more people in the office, you get to understand different perspectives on company’s wide goals or talk together for solutions with someone from a very different background.

Helps create happy workplaces

Everybody, regardless of their job role and duration with the company can engage in a casual conversation and this could bring about a friendly work environment that everybody wishes for!

However, it’s always wise to stay off the office gossip, especially if you’re eating in a communal space, chances of being overheard by others hold highest probability.

Closer to my home in Brighton the Brighton & Hove Food Partnership has eating together as one of their core values which they believe fosters a healthy and productive workplaces with a creative culture.

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Organisational culture

Among countless articles on culture, Business Dictionary describes it as follows:

The values and behaviours that contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of an organisation.

Organisational culture includes an organisation’s expectations, experiences, philosophy, and values that hold it together, and is expressed in its self-image, inner workings, interactions with the outside world, and future expectations. It is based on shared attitudes, beliefs, customs, and written and unwritten rules that have been developed over time and are considered valid. It can be shown in:

  • The ways the organisation conducts its business, treats its employees, customers, and the wider community
  • The extent to which freedom is allowed in decision making, developing new ideas, and personal expression
  • How power and information flow through its hierarchy, and
  • How committed employees are towards collective objectives.

 

It affects the organisation’s productivity and performance, and provides guidelines on customer care and service, product quality and safety, attendance and punctuality, and concern for the environment.

  • If we are to take this as a reasonable definition, what questions does it raise for leaders & managers within organisations?
  • Does our organisational culture give us competitive business advantage?
  • Do management & employees fully understand its benefits?
  • Actual values vs Espoused values – do we demonstrate them in everyday dealings or are they just laminated on the wall?
  • Are the values translated into clear objectives, expectations & behaviours?
  • Are these objectives, expectations & behaviours recognised, measured & rewarded?
  • Do we ask for stakeholder feedback on our values & behaviours?
  • Are they regularly reviewed?
  • Do we recruit to them?

 

Organisational culture can also be simply identified as ‘It’s just the way we do things round here’ as stated in the Harvard business review. Indeed it is often a strange brew of the formal and the informal with sub cultures existing in different parts of the organisation.

Whatever we feel about organisational culture and leadership there is no doubt that we know that it can have significant impact on employee engagement, performance and reputation as recent high profile cases (VW for example) have shown.

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Annual review vs continual feedback: solving the riddle

Annual reviews are less helpful than continuous feedback according to a recent study by Rice University.

Researchers found that this is particularly true if the manager has little day to day contact with that particular member of staff.

Its findings also highlighted the likelihood of employees being given a higher rating than they deserve for fear of demotivating the employee.

Critical success factors for successful feedback were highlighted as follows:

  • Knowledge of job holders responsibilities
  • Quality of feedback (specific information)
  • Delivery style (consideration for the recipient)

Whilst these findings may seem fairly unsurprising, the skill of giving feedback is a critical one if managers are to build effective relationships and develop their team.

Key points for giving feedback:

1) Be clear about what you want to say in advance. Be clear about the context of the conversation

  • Start with the end in mind
  • Be clear about what the recipient needs to know and what actions they need to take

2) Ask questions to gain the recipients perspective

  • Use conversation starters such ‘How did you find it…
  • Move from the generic to the specific ‘I just wanted to talk about this particular area, can you tell me your thinking….
  • If the recipient does not respond to questions, then…

3) State clearly what the issue is, and what is needed to rectify it

  • Be descriptive rather than evaluative in the language you use

4) Give feedback on behaviour not attitude

‘I noticed you were late this morning’ rather than ‘You have a poor attitude on timekeeping’ is less confrontational and factual so is more difficult for the recipient to argue with

5) Ensure positive feedback is given regularly and equally as constructively to ensure regular feedback becomes the norm not the exception

Considering these issues when giving feedback will make feedback constructive and useful for both parties

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