Strategic Human Capital Insights

So, now your employees want to continue to work remotely. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons from both the employee and employer perspective.

In response to COVID-19 and quarantine restrictions, many employees were forced to work remotely. A situation that would have once seemed inconceivable, has now become a reality. As many employees have started to now return to the office, what are the pros and cons of working remotely?

From the Employee Perspective: 

Pros of Working Remotely

• Working remotely really suits my lifestyle.

• I can get my work done so why do I need to go back to the office? I have flexibility about when I put my 8 hours in. 

• Why does the company need to spend money on office space? I can work from anywhere.  Why don’t they give me the money instead of using it for a facility? 

• Can’t I work part-time from home and part-time in the office?

• I really like not having to get dressed up for work.

The employee handbook may be underestimated, but it is certainly strategic!

Do you really need an employee handbook? This question predictably comes up when I speak with company management, often because the Employee Handbook is considered moderately useful but not on the top of management’s priority list. Why is that? Because often the Employee Handbook:

• Isn’t current
• Doesn’t cover the full range of issues
• Isn’t specific enough to be meaningful
• Isn’t given to new employees
• Isn’t used by management

However, one thing is for certain, when something goes wrong in an organization, the following happens:

• From the manager’s perspective: Managers look to the Employee Handbook for guidance and protection from liability.
  
  
• From the employee's perspective: Employees look to the Employee Handbook for guidance and protection from liability or loopholes created by omission or ambiguity.

Both employee and manager loyalty has always been considered a good thing. So what’s changed? When does being loyal long-term, at all costs, go from a virtue to a liability?

The concept of "change" has changed everything. When companies grew at normal rates, and change was incremental and predictable, manager and employee loyalty could keep pace with each other and with the direction of the organization. Now, however, when organizations are growing fast and adapting to new technology, new processes and methods, increased customer demands, and additional new employees, the predictable static environment that many employees are comfortable with, have morphed into chaotic, change-driven, unpredictable frontiers where the old rules and controls have evaporated. Increasing, the latter describes today’s work reality. 

Here are some important questions to consider when thinking about manager loyalty:

• What does it mean for the employee who is attached to the old rules and controls and is having real issues adapting to the new work reality? 

• What does it mean for new employees who don’t know the old rules and controls and don’t really need to work under those constraints since that work environment has shifted?

• What does it mean for the manager who must manage these two conflicting and competing employee needs?

If a Human Capital approach is your goal, then delegation must be in your leadership toolkit

In an earlier blog, we asked the question, “Is your current leadership team up to the Human Asset Management Task?"

Quality leadership is a critical element for a robust human asset management strategy. If we agree that a critical function of the leadership role is to continually develop employees (the asset in human asset management), then employees must be a critical competencyof the leadership role.  Employees are your implementation squad. They make things happen, or not!  It’s easy to talk about developing employees, but actually doing it and doing it well is another story. The barrier to developing great employees is the key leadership skill of delegation.

Delegation is the most underrated skill, which is ironic because it is not only one of the MOST IMPORTANT skills, but also one of the MOST DIFFICULT and MULTIFUNCTIONAL skills that a manager must perfect. Leadership, you can’t think that employees will create themselves into their own self-appreciating assets. Some will, but most will not. Why? Employees are not typically privy to the macro-organizational issues of human asset management, nor do they systematically know exactly what they need to do. Leadership and delegation is your job, not theirs.

Is There a Difference Between Delegation and Dumping?

Helping employees become more productive is often associated with del­egation. So, let’s take a journey into ‘delegation land.’ We often outline what the person needs to do, tell them to do it, and naively call it dele­gation. The art of delegation is one of the most challenging and complex tasks a manager can perform. It is the most critical managerial task for the organization, and yet it eludes most managers. Why? Because it is a multi-step process that requires assessment, execution on the part of two people, accountability, and the genuine investment of time. The most common manager response to delegating is, ‘I can do it faster myself.’ Haven’t we all said that? In reality, under the delegation banner, we have proper delegation, over delegation, under delegation, micro delegation, and dumping. Let’s focus on the last category – dumping!

There is an essential distinction between proper delegation and the others. The problem arises when the manager assumes that the dele­gation has occurred by just telling the employee to do something, and the employee is fully accountable. This could not be further from the truth. In reality, dumping has taken place. 

Here are four critical challenges the manager must initiate to avoid dumping and develop the management skill of delegation.

Leadership Landscape: Identifying & Understanding the Subtleties of Transition Leadership

Today, we are experiencing unprecedented change in ways we could not have imagined. One day, life was normal, and the next day we were dealing with a ‘new normal’ for which there was no blueprint. This is discontinuous change at its finest. During this time, change leadership skills are more important than ever before. Managing people whom you will need to bring with you on the change journey and critical thinking through your business operations that need to adapt to our new VUCA reality are the ‘new normal.’ This is the new reality. Our old reality is gone.

The Internal People Side of Change Management: Transition Leadership and the Change Trajectory

Transition Leadership:  Dealing with how employees transition through the phases of change. 

Transition Leadership focuses on the people side of change management. Transition Leadership requires the leader to go far beyond the processes used in change management to the gray area dealing with employees’ emotional reactions and responses to change. Here the leader must fully understand the psychology of how change impacts the organization at the individual level.

Leadership Landscape: Beware of the External Horizon

Of the many facets of Change Management, this focuses on the leader, the environment, change, and the process responses required for success. 

• Some leaders make things happen - The Proactives
• Some leaders watch what happens  - The Passives
• Some leaders wonder what happened? – The Reactives

Our first focus will be on the knowledge and skill sets required to manage the elements of change coming from outside the organization. Think of it this way - no one else in the organization can do this but you, the leader.

Here’s what we mean by Change Management: Change Management deals with change that comes at an organization from the external environment. That external environment can be external to a division while still internal to the organization. From completely outside the organization, other changes can come from industry, competition, regulation, government, etc.

When we talk about resistance to change, it's easy to say, "Organizations don't change, people do, or don't".  While true, change will only occur when change cascades down throughout every level of the organization.  

Case Analysis: Phoenix Strategic Performance 

How often does a significant strategic organizational shift occur, and then the follow-up implementation is treated as ‘business as usual’ (BAU)?  This happens more often than it should.  Why?  It appears to be less disruptive and seemingly easier.  However, we know it is organizationally naïve to believe that ‘business as usual’  will somehow meet new strategic goals.  Yet, this happens all the time.  In our latest case study, we focus on just such a change. 

There has been a dramatic change in the market place.  Our senior leadership has decreed a strategic change, however, there has only been an insignificant and painless amount of change in implementation of that strategy.  The change in strategy is in response to a dramatic shift in the marketplace - a ‘change in kind.’ 

Anti-Change Is Systemically Embedded.  And We STILL Ask, “How Come Change Management Is So Difficult?"

We use the term change very casually these days.  Change literature is all around us.  Change management is now considered a core management skill.  Organizations talk about how employees need to embrace change. So if there’s all this noise about change, why is the reality of change management more like pushing molasses up a mountain?    

Let’s take a look at what is really at the core of why organizations exist.  By understanding what is really at the core of why organizations exist, we might then be able to understand why studies still show a 60 – 70% failure rate for organizational change projects.