Employee Feedback: Workplaces and Their Discontents

To gain the full commitment of the workforce, every company requires an open channel of communication. Even the smallest sense of dissatisfaction can have a negative impact on employee motivation, productivity and organisational commitment.

With the rise of the Internet and social media, employee discontent can go viral. Glassdoor.com has quickly grown into more than just a popular place to find information about company positions and salaries. The corporate information site is sending messages to your employees asking for anonymous feedback, and many are responding. Even seemingly innocuous responses can communicate a great deal:

At Microsoft the negative comments are pretty staid:"mediocre management" "dinosaurs at the top"

At IBM, they are more biting. One technical solutions manager ponders why IBM disposes of its most "important assets" like "used kleenex."

Worst still, it is highly unlikely, but not improbable,that a dissatisfied whistleblower could turn to Wikileaks — the site that has attracted the world's whistleblowers and conspiracy theorists.

Here, Microsoft is not doing as well. Disgruntled employees have caught microsoft sabotaging open source and lobbying for Obama.

An employee feedback system — the employee suggestion box — is a key communication tool for ensuring all channels of communication are open. Consider having both an anonymous box — the truth hurts but these will provide the most constructive feedback — and a box tied to a reward system.

1. Employee suggestion boxes are often neglected. Reward and incentives have been very successful in getting employees to share ideas and complaints.

2. Use a virtual employee suggestion box — a blog or Facebook page. Consider an internal Twitter with inspiring ideas and tweets that inspire colleagues to join in.

3. Appoint employee suggestion review teams with rotating members to keep staff engaged in processing feedback.

4. Be sure to develop categories to create structure and encourage feedback in core areas — cost savings, productivity, workplace wellbeing.

5. Like any forum, you require rules and a moderator. Senior management presence will make employees feel heard.

The price of a disgruntled employer has never been higher. Stifle any discontent before it leaves your company walls

Vacations are good for you

If your employees are griping about more holiday time, it is in your best interest to accommodate them. Likewise, if you have employees that make up the 20 percent of global benefits, concludes the study of 143 full-time employees.

The study's an important reminder of the importance of vacations to worker well being, and associated productivity, at a time when the workplace is workers — primarily senior level — who claim to be too busy and stressed to take holidays, pack suitcases and send them on their way — for a week or two. Vacations have a positive effect on job satisfaction, retention and professional well-being, according to a study conducted by the University of the Rockies. After 10 to 14 days, however, the benefits of vacations do not add any additional seeing an alarming increase in those postponing vacations. In the United States, those Ot taking a vacation has increased a concertingly 31 percent to 34 percent, from 2008 to 2009, according to Expedia's annual Vacation Deprivation survey.

Employee Productivity
The statistics are confounding given that over one-third of workers report that they are more productive following a vacation, concludes the Expedia, which are conducted in 11 countries by Harris Interactive. In fact, any activity that provides a disconnect from work, including vacations, can have a positive impact on worker job satisfaction, organisational commitment and long-term productivity, according to a recent study Enhancing Worker Productivity and Performance in the International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management.

Health and Employee Performance
The health benefits of vacations should not be overlooked. Numerous studies have found strong correlations between workplace stress and illness. In the European Union, for instance, 350 million sick leave days are lost annually due to workplace stress, at a cost of €20 billion, according to the Fourth European Working Conditions Survey 2007. A study in the European Heart Journal found that British civil servants who worked three to four hours of overtime a day had a 60 percent higher chance of developing heart disease.

Lessening the Workload
Vacations will not be fun, fun, fun for the whole office unless they are properly planned for. Without advanced planning, vacations can result in increased stress and lower productivity. A higher workload can create additional stress for office mates. A fair allocation of work and a proper briefing on, and handover of, tasks will alleviate stress on those left holding the office together.

References
Dr. Jonathan H. Westover, Andrew R. Westover, and L. Alan Westover. "Enhancing Long-term Worker Productivity and Performance: The Connection of Key Work Domains to Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment" International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management 59.4 (2010): 372-387.

"Overtime work and incident coronary heart disease: the Whitehall II prospective cohort study." European Heart Journal. doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehq124.

Telecommuting: There is no productivity paradox

The US government's recent plans to increase the number of employees who telecommute reignites the productivity paradox debate. Is telecommuting a boon or bane on productivity? A slew of new telecommuting studies provide support for home workers while introducing new concerns.

Productivity concerns have been a key cause of management resistance to telecommuting in the government, and elsewhere, according to a newly released telecommuting report by the Partnership for Public Service and Booz Allen Hamilton. Uncle Sam's position is clear. The federal government expects to realize huge gains in productivity with as many as 600,000 at-home workers by 2014.

With many of the world's most productive companies allowing anywhere from 20 to 70 percent of their staff to telecommute, there is a growing respository of knowledge and best practices to draw from. For a telecommuting arrangement to be productive, it must build in employee accountability and performance measurements. Benefits include:

1. Work-life balance results in more hours spent working. A newly released study of IBM employees by Brigham Young University concludes that telecommuting combined with flex time can add as many as 19 hours to the work week.
2. Flexible workplaces recruit and retain a more educated and experienced workforce. Cisco's teleworker survey finds that telecommuting benefits contribute to $277 million in annual savings.
3. Service continuity is a big productivity booster. It is possible to maintain productivity during weather and other service interruption events (Uncle Sam says it saved $71 million during blizzards last year).
4. Office rental and equipment expenses and carbon footprints are reduced.
5. Face-time can equal waste-time. Telecommuting employees are more productive when using formal virtual meeting and collaboration tools.
6. Time saved is redirected to work. Cisco employees report that they dedicate 60 percent of the time saved from telecommunicating to work.

Telecommuting still has a few obstacles to overcome. Loss of promotion opportunities is a major concern of telecommuters. A just released UC Davis Graduate School of Management study concludes that the employee with face time is more apt to climb the ladder. To ensure the best candidates are not overlooked, managers are being encouraged to discount "face-based dynamics," such as being a "good leader."

A study by the Lally School of Management & Technology at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has introduced an often ignored downside to telecommunication. In-office worker productivity can fall as a result of resentment over the daily commute, work overload and demotivation due to less direct interaction. These obstacles can be overcome by introducing performance measurements and accountability, providing more communications tools, creating face-to-face time and developing teams.

New Learning Flexibility Tool Links Employees and Context

The debate about segregating boys and girls in classrooms to accommodate their different learning styles rages on. Now David Kolb, the father of experiential learning and leading psychometric tests, has widened the learning divide with the recent introduction of a Learning Flexibility Index (LFI). Women, concludes the test, have a higher LFI than men. In the workplace, however, we cannot separate the sexes so who do we hire? The person with the highest LFI will function better in today's cross-functional and multidisciplinary workplace, concludes the Learning Flexibility Index study.

It is widely recognised that one's approach to learning can tell us a lot about his /her suitability for, and potential performance on, a job. Learning is the process of creating knowledge through transformational experience. According to Kolb's Experential Learning Theory (ELT), we do not have one fixed learning style but rather learning is a dynamic state, which Kolb captures in his cycle of learning — Concrete Experience, Reflective Observation, Abstract Conceptualization and Active Experimentation. In the dynamic state, one will fall within a dual dialectic between different learning modes.

Advancing on the Adaptive Learning Index (ALI), the LFI takes a closer look at how context influences learning flexibility. "Individuals who are men, older, highly educated, and specialists in abstract, paradigmatic fields are more assimilative in learning and have less learning flexibility," concludes the study. Those who tend to be abstract and reflective learners are more likely to be inflexible.

Age, however, is only one of many factors influencing learning flexibility. The study compares the learning styles of two males — a mid-forties executive with a high LFI and a minister in his thirties with a low LFI. Taking one dimension, evaluating an opportunity, the minister uses a reflective style whereas the executive uses an accommodating, concrete and active style. To influence someone, the minister uses a balancing style whereas the executive uses an abstract style.

The executive is more likely to excel in today's dynamic workplace. A female executive may fare even better. Women and those in concrete positions are even more flexible.

Here's an interesting development. Kobe's learning theory has been supported through tests undertaken in over 3000 studies. In coming years, will it be possible to forego learning tests altogether for a brain scan? In a recent study by the University of California, cognitive tests mapping the brain and aptitudes were performed on 6,000 volunteers. Aptitude and traits could be assessed in the areas of learning, math and memory, concludes the study.

Read more about the Learning Flexibility Index

Doing a 360 on Leadership Style

Talk show host Conan O’Brien famously walked out on the most sought after job in television this year due to bad relations with his bosses. At an annual salary of $12million, most people questioned why the chatty redhead did not just take it on the chin.

In fact, a negative relationship with a manager or supervisor was the top-ranked reason for leaving a job for 43 percent of respondents to a recent Watson Wyatt survey. It also largely determines the length of an employee’s stay, according to a 25-year-long Gallup Organisation study based on interviews with 12 million workers at 7,000 companies.

Bad employee-supervisor relationships also are the major cause of stress in the workplace— the fastest growing health-related cost in the workplace. All tallied, failed employee relations could be your company’s greatest expense. Senior leaders may feel that they are too busy strategising to connect. Middle managers underestimate their role as the missing link in employee engagement.

360-degree feedback is a useful process for managers in the middle to improve relationships at work.
While leading up, down and across the organization, be sure to:
- Directly connect with everyone around you
- Expand your views, knowledge and expertise to broaden your network
- Always act on principles, which will engender trust and hard work
- Define and uphold the values and objectives that align with your organisation

Keep in mind that 99 percent of leadership capacity is developed in middle management. Reducing the billions of dollars in losses due to bad employee-management relationships is up to you.