5 Tips to Help You Successfully Lead With Empathy in the New Year

As this year kicks off, many corporations are planning and strategizing about what it looks like for employees to come back to the office either part-time or full time. There is a sense of excitement around moving forward even amidst the uncertainty of the ongoing pandemic. While this can be exciting and invigorating for leaders– having employees around again, socializing, collaborating in person– we can’t forget that the events of the past year and a half have had a lasting impact on each employee and the way they work.

Employee’s personal and professional lives have involuntarily fused as they’ve learned to work from home, juggling their personal and family needs in between Zoom meetings. While this started as a challenge for many, people have adapted. Employees have settled into a new way of work, a more flexible one, and coming back to the office can feel threatening to that flexibility. Between financial stress (like rent and mortgages unpausing), childcare concerns, health concerns, and more, many people are emotionally tapped.

To help our employees come back to the office, even if just part-time, successfully and productively, it’s important to lead with empathy – to rethink the way we do things to include the human factor.

5 tips to help you lead with empathy as employees return to the office

Start with self-reflection:

The key to leading with empathy is putting yourself in other people’s shoes. Starting with self-reflection can help you understand how your employees may be feeling as the new year and new way of working approaches. This requires slowing down and being honest with yourself. What things did you endure over the past year and a half and how did they interact with your work? How have they affected your mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing?

Consider how your personal life has merged with your work life, and then take a look at your team and consider the same aspect on their behalf. Gaining empathy and understanding for others personal experiences will give you a human-centric perspective and help you lead better as you step into the new year.

Acknowledge Grief:

The pandemic and social unrest that ensued in 2020 has caused us all to come face to face with grief in ways we haven’t had to in a long time, if ever. There is a sense of broader grief for the nation and for the world, and there is personal grief as people have lost loved ones, jobs, financial security, and more. This emotional weight doesn’t disappear when we return to the office. Grief is a new risk to our employees’ wellbeing that can’t go without being addressed in the workplace.

First, it should be acknowledged. Let your teams know that it’s not getting swept under the rug, and make sure any mental health resources your HR team provides are readily available. Second, leaders should model holding the tension of grief well, while still looking forward to a better future. Pressing forward is necessary, but it shouldn’t feel like a bulldozer to those who are still dealing with grief.

Over Communicate:

There is still a lot of uncertainty in the world today, and when it comes to their jobs, employees crave clarity and direction. During the transition of stepping back into the office this year, communication will be key.

Sending weekly updates, whole company announcements, and keeping an open flow of communication will help your direct reports transition and feel a greater sense of trust and security. It’s also important to clarify goals and expectations regularly to decrease stress and create a stronger sense of direction and purpose through the change.

Consider Personal Responsibilities:

Most people’s personal responsibilities look a lot different now than they did before remote work. They have had to figure out childcare, setting up a home office, juggling family responsibilities, appointments, etc. To help soften the blow of managing these responsibilities when returning to the office, consider how you can accommodate or help support them through these things in an effort to make business more human.

Giving employees autonomy and still allowing them flexibility can help make the adjustment easier for employees and increase their sense of psychological safety. Ask which days and hours work best for them to be in the office and accommodate if possible. If you don’t have a commuter program or a childcare allowance, consider how these types of programs can help your employees feel supported as they navigate in-office work.

Be patient with socialization:

After being home alone for so long, socializing with coworkers can be exhausting, especially for introverts. People will need time to readjust to in-person relationship building. There may be a sense of awkwardness or hesitation in getting back to a culture where employees share personal details about their lives.

As much as you may have tried to simulate this over video conferencing, the actuality of hallway conversations and water cooler talk could feel daunting to those who have been isolated for a long period of time. Be patient, and don’t expect everyone to get there all at once. Offer opportunities for team bonding and getting reacquainted with each other but, understand that this may take longer than you think.

Leading with empathy, as you step into 2022, will help sustain your employees and avoid them feeling burnt out from the stress of reentering the workplace. It’s important to adjust, to be flexible, to integrate feedback, and to hold your excitement about progression with the tension of how hard the past year or so has been. If you can start by acknowledging the human element, then your vision for the future along with your new-year strategies will be embraced and more readily adopted.

Work-Life Harmony Ideas To Help Slow The Great Resignation: Part 2

This is a two-part blog post originally written for and published by Forbes.com. This first part can be found here.

As written in the first part of this miniseries, the Great Resignation is solvable if we take a human-centered approach to business. Until now, most businesses have almost exclusively focused on external stakeholders and their bottom line. Today’s workforce is demanding a seat at the table. They, too, want to feel valued, respected and included. Below please find the remaining four actionable suggestions that can help to slow the Great Resignation.

Provide the necessary support.

Even when we provide employees more autonomy or flexibility, we are still responsible for ensuring that they have what they need to get their work done. This may look different from person to person, and that’s why it’s important to keep an open line of communication with each employee regarding their needs.

We can all agree that, at the very least, those who are remote need the basic home equipment to set up their own workspace. But what if we took it a step further and asked what would help them perform at their absolute best? For some, it may look like providing a childcare allowance. For others, it may look like commuter benefits. Of course, not all personal needs can be accommodated, but when we see our employees as individuals who have unique circumstances and commit to supporting them in any way we can, then we grant them a level of human-centric care that can go a long way in promoting work-life harmony.

Establish great boundaries that promote productivity.

Work inevitably takes up a large portion of most of our lives, and many are starting to push back on this notion. France, for example, has implemented a law where companies of a certain size cannot send emails outside of working hours. Certainly, the rationale for this law is beyond the scope of this blog, but it’s a great example of how boundaries can give more control and predictability to employees so they can more effectively manage their lives.

Some companies are trying shorter workdays, acting on the understanding of Parkinson’s law, that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” The eight-hour workday isn’t necessarily the most productive across the board. So, shorter hours with more focused work time could be a beneficial shift for some companies to try. This can help draw stricter boundaries around the time that work takes up in our lives and, in turn, can allow for work to be a part of our lives, rather than our entire lives.

Set realistic work expectations/workloads.

Employees feel a sense of overwhelm when too much is expected of them at work, or when they don’t know what is expected of them. Recent studies have shown that in 2020, more than half of employees were stressed at work on a day-to-day basis.

It’s easy to overlook this when it appears that everyone has too much on their plates. Overwhelm has become the norm. This constant sense of pressure encroaches on our employees’ sense of well-being and can quickly lead to burnout. It’s important as leaders to monitor our employees’ stress levels and identify if their workload or what has been communicated (or not communicated) as expectations are the cause of overwhelm. Get really clear on deadlines and performance goals and identify roadblocks that may be out of the employees’ control. Open communication with our employees about what is on their plates and agreement about what is realistic for them to accomplish is key in creating a healthier environment that promotes their overall work-life harmony.

Cross-train.

The ability for employees to take on tasks for one another when needed can add to the collective sense of teamwork and flexibility within the workplace. It creates a dynamic system in which team members are each valued for their expertise but also expected to hold up the company as a team. Imagine a world where an employee could go on vacation and not have to check their email once or answer a single incoming “emergency” work text. Imagine returning to work and not having to play catch-up.

Is that possible? With intentional cross-training, yes. When employees are cross-trained well enough, it gives your company “the flexibility to respond to fluctuating workflows,” as Chris Cancialosi writes.

This means that when someone needs to take time off or step out for an appointment, they get to step away without the stress or worry of tasks falling through the cracks. This creates an environment where employees get to fully recoup and reset when they need to, promoting their well-being and ensuring a sense of harmony between their work and personal life.

It’s important to mention that not all industries will be able to make these adjustments. For example, the healthcare or food service industries can’t allow workers the same kind of flexibility discussed here. However, employers can still get creative in making business more human. Maybe it’s a 4/40 schedule to provide longer weekends or adjusting shift lengths or start times to accommodate childcare needs. The point is, if an employee’s needs are met, they won’t go looking elsewhere for employment.

There’s no perfect formula across the board, but what’s important is that leaders are willing to try new things and adjust as they figure out what works best for their employees. When we allow employees the freedom to fit work into their life, rather than the other way around, we can help them achieve true work-life harmony. Consequently, we get to keep our good employees and play our part in shifting the paradigm to doing human-centered business that benefits our well-being and our bottom line.

Work-Life Harmony Ideas to Help Slow The Great Resignation: Part 1

This is a two-part blog post originally written for and published by Forbes.com. The second part of the post will be published on Forbes.com and here in January 2022.

The Great Resignation and related labor shortage we are currently experiencing across the country, where employees are leaving their jobs at high rates with no one to backfill, is alarming company leaders who seem at a loss for what to do.

What is causing this shocking phenomenon?

The truth is, there are many factors. Over 750K people have lost their lives due to COVID in the last 16 months and the national birth rate continues to decline. In addition, many people have realized that the way they were living prior to COVID was unsustainable. The forced slow down experienced during the pandemic gave people time to reflect and identify what is important to them. Many have realized they want more time with their families, more time for leisure activities and overall, they want more freedom.

Employees have also learned that they can be more productive outside of the normal work paradigm and so they are demanding more flexibility from their employers. “Work-life Harmony” is no longer just a perk, it’s table stakes. Employees are holding their employers to higher standards whether it be related to health and safety, DEI, or employee treatment (i.e., workload or respect). When they’ve evaluated their companies on these factors, many are simply “refusing to accept the unacceptable.”

Work-Life Balance VS. Work-Life Harmony (Integration)

The problem is the term “work-life balance” creates a false belief that it is possible to keep work and life separate yet equal. The reality, however, is that as a nation, we have now fully embraced technology and the two have not been separate for some time. Technology created a path for work to encroach on personal lives and there was no means to get personal life back. We didn’t adjust. People have been on a hamster wheel – fighting to achieve something that is not achievable – balance. Work-life integration, on the other hand, acknowledges that there is no clean distinction between the two and seeks to help them co-exist in harmony.

The Great Resignation has accelerated technology and as a result, people have realized that work-life balance is a losing proposition. It is very one-sided and work always gets the lion’s share of your time. By necessity, people are now demanding harmony. People want to work in a way that complements their lives. The COVID pandemic has helped them to see that this is possible, and now, they understandably don’t want to go back to a work situation that overtakes their entire lives.

So, how do we, as leaders create a work environment that will attract and retain talent? We need to create environments that promote work-life harmony. In other words, we need to shape business to be more human.

Below please find two ideas that will help you to create better work-life harmony for your employees. I have a total of six actionable ideas, and the other four will appear in a follow-up article that will be published next.

Promote Flexibility & Autonomy

Flexibility allows employees their autonomy. It means they, mostly, can choose when and how they work. This kind of work environment works well with some kind of Management by Objective (MBO) and/or a Management by Exception (MBE) type of leadership.

Coined by Peter Drucker, MBO is management process where goals are agreed upon by both parties. There needs to be some regular cadence to monitoring by the manager to ensure quality and ethical standards.

MBE is mostly attributed to Frederick W. Taylor and is an approach whereby the work is “more self-directed than boss-directed.” The employee is to raise the flag when something deviates outside of the agreed plan.

These approaches give employees a stronger sense of autonomy which allow them to manage the demands of their whole lives or preferences more wholistically.

Hybrid and/or Flexible Work Schedules

Many companies have moved to a hybrid work schedule, however, hybrid and flexible are not the same thing. Hybrid entails the expectation that an employee will work a certain number of weekdays from home and the rest from the office, and its typically still assumes the 9-5, 8-hour workday and includes mandatory anchor days. While this schedule may work for some, many employees are craving more: flexible work schedules.

A flexible work schedule goes hand-in-hand with promoting an employee’s autonomy. Allowing employees the option to work from where they see fit and being flexible with the hours they work can create more harmony between their personal and work lives. If an employee prefers to work from home in the mornings so they can get an earlier start, or work 4, 10-hour days so they can volunteer at their kids’ school or take weekend trips more often, allowing them the flexibility to do so can create an environment in which they can be the most present and productive in their current life state.

As you can see, neither of the options above is easy to implement, and this is compounded by the fact that each speaks to customization, which means complexity will go up. The days of one-size-fits-all are over. While that made managing the masses easier, it forced employees to adapt their lives. Today’s Americans are used to having it their way, and this now extends to how we want work. I have no doubt that those employers who adapt and innovate quickly to offer options that support the way that people want to live will surely win the war for talent.

5 Tips for Organizations to Maintain an Inclusive Culture During the Holiday Season

As we come to the end of 2021, organizations can put their DEI strategy into practice. Holiday parties should be about coming together, celebrating all cultures, and highlighting the successes over the year. Here are 5 tips on how to create an inclusive celebration where no one feels excluded.

The Name of the Event Matters

Be intentional, celebrate the diversity of your team. Have a “holiday celebration” that focuses on time together, laughter, and the celebration of getting through another year in a pandemic.

Decorations Have Meaning

Be mindful of decorations and what they represent. Avoid having a theme that represents only one religious’ practice.

Holidays Are Celebrated Throughout the Year

Be inclusive when planning the day and time of your celebration. Avoid celebrating with food and libations when one or more of your employees’ religious practices require them to fast or stay home on that day.

Food Represents Culture

Be conscientious of food choices for all your employees. Have a potluck where people bring food that represents their culture.

How to support employees who opt-out of the celebration:

Be thoughtful and don’t put pressure on your employees to participate in the celebration. Given another full year of video conferencing, some employees may want to spend time at home or in nature unplugged!

Happy Holidays!

5 Ways Leaders Can Better Promote Inclusion in the Workplace

When it comes to DEI initiatives many organizations find that the “I” is the hardest part. Leaders striving to create a more inclusive workplace quickly figure it out there’s no magic policy, program, or check list that can make employees feel recognized and included.

To help you walk the talk, we’ll break down what workplace inclusion is and share with you some of our top tips for embedding inclusiveness into all parts of your organization.

What is inclusion?

There are a lot of definitions of “Inclusion” out there, but here is one we feel does the concept justice:

Inclusion is a collection of actions, practices, and behaviors that both promote and result in people feeling safe, accepted, valued for who they are across different dimensions of diversity and for what they bring to and contribute within the workplace. This definition comes from Inclusive Leadership: Transforming Diverse Lives, Workplaces, and Societies by Bernardo Ferdman.

Actions are necessary, but what we are really after when we talk about inclusion is ensuring that all people in our sphere of influence feel that they and their contributions to the workplace are highly valued.

What does inclusion look like in the workplace?

Ferdman states in his book that if “people who are different in notable ways” do not experience inclusion, they might “be less likely to fully engage, participate, and contribute.”

If a workplace has a truly inclusive environment, then every person will feel equally welcomed to fully engage, be themselves, and contribute at work. An inclusive workplace offers space to acknowledge, honor, and discuss differences in perspective from people of all different backgrounds, ages, ethnicities, etc. This kind of work environment ultimately increases performance.

Without true inclusion, companies miss out on employees’ engaging their full, authentic selves within the workplace, which leads to missing out on employees’ best contributions and ideas. So, how do we make inclusion a reality?

5 Ways Leaders Can Foster Inclusion in the Workplace

Model Authenticity

Leaders pave the way for an inclusive work environment by showing up as their authentic self, so that others begin to feel safe doing so, too. We can do away with office politics by being truer versions of ourselves and showing up ready to welcome and embrace others in the same way.

In order to show up authentically, leaders can better align their “work persona” with their “home personas”. One way to do this is by showing your employees it’s okay to make mistakes. No one is perfect, and there’s no reason to act like that isn’t true at work. Owning your mistakes increases the sense of physiological safety in the workplace and encourages more authentic interaction with employees.

Include Your Team in Decision-Making

Seeking out your employees’ ideas and taking them seriously increases their buy-in, retention, and overall employee engagement. Not to mention, it’s also better for your business. Diversity of thought coming from people with different backgrounds and experiences “leads to better decision-making”. Try using surveys to gather feedback or even call a meeting with your employees to brainstorm solutions and set the standard that “no ideas are bad ideas.”

Now, many decisions cannot be made with your employees, but if you stay transparent about which decisions can solicit their input and which cannot, then you can keep the spirit of inclusion alive and well within your decision-making processes.

Work to Eliminate Bias

In HBRs Inclusive Leadership Assessment (ILA) of more than 400 leaders rated by more than 4,000 people who surrounded those leaders, it was found that the most important trait in fostering inclusivity was “a leader’s visible awareness of bias.” In order to work towards eliminating bias in the workplace, leaders must first not be afraid to identify it and acknowledge it publicly.

Once you are able to acknowledge personal and organizational biases toward certain approaches that stem from those with different perspectives and backgrounds, then you can work to diminish this bias. We can honor and lean into diversity truthfully by acknowledging and questioning our own biases.

Get Comfortable with Uncomfortable Conversations

As leaders, it’s important to lean into conversations that challenge us. It shows employees that we are serious about celebrating and embracing diversity within the organization and that we aren’t afraid to work through differences together in a respectful way.

Having conversations where our assumptions and perspectives are directly challenged feels very personal and emotional, so it’s wise to set aside specific times to have these conversations and prepare to go into them calmly and with an open mind. Try to focus on facts rather than feeling and make it clear to your employees that you are committed to finding a solution together.

Keep Yourself and Others Accountable

Inclusion may be part of your organizations core values, but does it really happen within your workplace? In order to make inclusion more than just a buzzword, leaders must be willing to hold others accountable. This means taking an active inventory of your business and assessing whether inclusion is happening day to day. If not, then it’s important to call it out and hold your organization to a higher standard.

On the flipside, when we, as leaders, fail to uphold our standard of inclusion, then we must work to improve. Ask for honest feedback from employees, and don’t response defensively when you’ve fallen short. Rather, ask how you can increase feelings of inclusion and always follow up to ensure you are growing.

The goal of these practices is that employees would feel safer, appreciated, and valued. As you continue to work toward creating a more inclusive work environment, ask your employees to join you and encourage them to share ideas.

Where you can’t implement their suggestions, come up with meaningful, alternative ways of achieving the same outcomes regarding inclusivity that their suggestions spotlighted. Ultimately, it’s our responsibility, as leaders, to change the organization’s culture toward greater inclusivity, but we must look to our employees to determine if we are succeeding.

3 Tips for Applying Equity Strategies to a Hybrid Workplace

With the ever-changing landscape of our employee workspace, creating equity within the workplace is more than a popular topic or initiative, it’s a necessity. Equity can have a lasting impact on an organization like increasing retention, internal promotions, and fostering dedication from employees to their jobs and their company for the long haul.

With the new challenges remote and hybrid employees are currently facing, many employees don’t feel that they are getting the treatment they deserve and are leaving their jobs at record numbers. So, how can we create a more stable and predictable workplace for our employees—one that aligns with the core values of a company, but also with the overall business goals? Managers must learn to effectively manage the dual zone: the hybrid and remote workforce.

It’s not an easy task, especially when, whether we like to admit it or not, remote workers face a greater challenge in avoiding biased perceptions from co-workers and managers simply because of the nature of their unsupervised workspace. This is something we must intentionally address and work to fix within our own spheres of influence.

Here are 3 tips to ensure your workplace is an equitable one:

1. Use Duties Rather Than Employees as Your Guide

Companies who once operated solely in person now have the difficult task of deciding which roles can be fully remote and which roles require a hybrid work format. The best way to avoid bias in this decision-making process is to first look at the job description of each role. Then you can determine which tasks within that job description are better suited for in-person work versus remote work. When you make it about the tasks rather than the individual contributor, previous judgements about that employee are less likely to cloud your judgement.

What do we mean by clouding your judgement?

Well, naturally, a star employee may be trusted to work remotely more than an average performer, or managers may tend to want to connect more in person with staff who are easier to manage. These biases, often gone unnoticed, can easily creep into the decision-making process when determining which kind of work format an employee will follow.

Tip Impact: When we are intentional about mitigating biases up front, employees are more likely to feel a sense of autonomy and predictability in their work life and the decisions around their workspace (i.e., remote or hybrid) are a result of fair assessment.

2. Remote Employees Need Impromptu Touchpoints Too!

Leaders are responsible for and should be mindful of granting equal access to their remote and hybrid staff. Those who are fully remote consequently don’t get the privilege of natural, impromptu relationship-building moments. Things like lunch breaks, hallway conversations, and the three minutes before a meeting starts all serve to build connections between coworkers and managers that lead to greater trust and a healthy and cohesive team.

How is this possible with remote employees?

If you have remote employees, you’ll need to be more intentional about relationship building time to simulate an in-person experience. These relationship building interactions may need to be inserted into your schedule to ensure they take place. You can build time at the beginning or at the end of meetings for people to share personal moments like binged watch shows, recent sporting or outdoor events, funny family or pet moments, etc. These moments can strengthen a sense of connection and reduce the feeling of isolation by your remote employees.

Tip Impact: These micro-relational deposits can add up to big gains over time. When employees feel a greater sense of trust with their manager, constructive feedback is received more openly. As an extra bonus, employees who have good working relationships with their manager are more likely to feel comfortable communicating their needs, which are important to understand especially since remote and hybrid employee needs are often different.

3. Visibility…A Primary Ingredient for Equitable Opportunities

Your remote and hybrid employees should always receive the same development and promotion opportunities, but there are challenges fully remote employees face in receiving a fair shot. Visibility is the main culprit in the disproportionate promotional opportunities remote employees tend to receive. Oftentimes, remote employees’ work goes unnoticed because their daily efforts go unseen. And though it’s not intentional, unlike hybrid employees, it can be harder for them to gain access to impromptu development opportunities.

How do I level the playing field?

Leaders must find ways to maintain high visibility of remote employees daily. One way is to be intentional about acknowledging their successes in group meetings and publicly recognizing notable contributions they make. When you praise employees out loud, coworkers and managers are more likely to remember their efforts and accomplishments.

Tip Impact: The clearer the path to success, the more committed employees will be. They’ll know that their goals are being acknowledged and will be able to see their future with the company and how to achieve it.

The three tips described above are some of the essential ingredients needed to be successful in cultivating an equitable workplace for both your hybrid and remote employees. If you, as a leader, can set up your employees for success by being agile and having the necessary resources to meet the individual contributor needs, your teams will be successful regardless of the workplace they inhabit.

5 tips to help you lead with empathy as employees return to the office

Here are 3 tips to ensure your workplace is an equitable one:

1. Use Duties Rather Than Employees as Your Guide

2. Remote Employees Need Impromptu Touchpoints Too!

3. Visibility…A Primary Ingredient for Equitable Opportunities

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