I’ve been working hard in the past few months with my designer to redesign our website. And now it’s here! Anyone who’s undertaken a website redesign knows how much energy and time it takes. So it feels right to celebrate this milestone in Novacrea’s history and make a proper announcement of it to all.

This new website is designed with a more focused message of who we are and of the services we offer–customized employee surveys, employee engagement consulting, and action planning facilitation. It highlights our goal to embrace new tools in social media. It shows our vision of integrating research in positive psychology, talent management, and design thinking to bring  you customized solutions that keep up with the rapid changes in the world of work.

We’ve integrated my blog and Twitter feeds on the site, so you are only one click away to read about what we’ve been up to, our thoughts on employee engagement, and observations about workplace trends.

We’ve also created a page of Frequently Asked Questions in addition to the description of our consulting process to help you learn more about working with us. I love the slides on the homepage. They encapsulate our consulting philosophy. Employee surveys don’t have to be dry or boring. Research shows that people remembers stories better, and are more apt to take action when you present them with information that’s in a story form rather than in bullet points. That’s our goal in presenting survey results. We want to help you tell your organization’s stories and identify strengths and barriers to success. And by doing so, motivate you and your employees to take action to make your organization a better place to work.

There’s more. We now have a link to our online Demo Survey. I invite you to take a test drive and check out the types of survey questions we design. We love designing customized surveys for our clients, and helping them uncover the stories that lie behind their data.

In addition, we’ve a sample report that you can download. We strive to make our report engaging while presenting survey data in a small, easily digestible size. Feel free to download a copy and I welcome your feedback!

I invite you to explore our website, check out the case studies, download a sample report, comment on my blog, and sign up for my blog to keep in touch.

Have a great 2012!

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Fun with yoga, photo by Pi Wen Looi

I’ve been practicing yoga on and off for more than 10 years. I always enjoy my class and feel refreshed after the class. Today, as my yoga instructor led us through various poses, I saw the connection between practicing yoga and creating a work environment that engages employees. Here are the insights I gathered:

Insights

Model the desired behaviors. In addition to telling us what poses to do, my yoga instructor demonstrated the pose herself. She showed us the correct alignment of arms and shoulder, and used visual cues to help us “get it.” Similarly, leaders in an organization need to model the desired behaviors for employees and articulate clearly what is expected of employees, how their performance will be measured, and what it means to contribute to the success of the company.

Provide resources. In class, students have the necessary props, blankets, mats, and straps to do their poses and deepen their practice. At work, it is equally important to provide the necessary tools and resources to support employees to do their jobs well.

The most common complaints about resources we have seen from our employee surveys are related to outdated systems, a lack of supplies, and not hiring people with the right skills (and attitude) for the jobs. I encourage you to review these three areas regularly to ensure that your employees have the right tools and resources to do their best work.

Emphasize continual improvement. In a yoga class, students can continually make micro adjustments to their poses and deepen their practice. Likewise, to remain competitive, an organization needs to continually improve its processes, products, and services. Leaders who support and encourage their employees to learn new skills, attend seminars, use social media to connect and learn with each other will see employee engagement improve. You will also see improved productivity and increased customer satisfaction.

Mistakes are encouraged and used for learning. Students in my yoga class are at different levels, sometimes they fall or wobble in their pose. Sometimes they flip upside down and do a few seconds of handstand. My instructor emphasized that we practice at our own level. It’s okay to fall, have a laugh and try again. Like kids, we fell, we laughed, and we tried again until we could hold a pose for a few seconds or a minute.

Imagine how much more creative energy you could release from your workforce if you fostered an environment where mistakes were used for learning? This does not mean employees are not held accountable for their performance, it means you use mistakes as a just-in-time coaching moment, debrief with your employees, and learn from the experience.

Make it meaningful. Most students come to class to improve their health and flexibility. Some students want to find respite in quiet meditation and calm their minds. They find doing yoga meaningful however they define meaning in their practice.

Research has shown that employees are more engaged when they feel that their jobs are meaningful. You can help employees see the meaning of their jobs by showing the connection between their contributions and your company’s vision and goals. You can make the jobs more meaningful for employees when you match the job tasks with their intrinsic values. For example, employees in the healthcare industry find their jobs meaningful because they help save lives. Janitors or housekeepers at Joie de Vivre don’t see their jobs as just cleaning the toilets or setting the beds, but as providing joy to their hotel guests.

Show respect. Before we start the class, our instructor acknowledged students’ coming to class on a busy day and take time to practice. At the end of our practice, students rolled up their mats, picked up their props and put them back in the proper place. These are small guestures. But these guestures show the instructor’s respect for the students’ commitment to practicing yoga; and the students’ respect for the instructor and space by cleaning up after practice.

At work, leaders and employees can show respect by truly listening to each other. Say “good morning” or “how are you?” when you walk by an employee. Acknowledge employees’ contributions. Praise their good work in addition to giving constructive feedback. We have seen numerous employee comments that tell stories of rude behaviors of their supervisors that deteriorate employee morale. You don’t have to be part of that story.

Conclusions

Engaging employees is a continual process. Just like practicing yoga, you can always get better, go deeper. Likewise, leaders, managers, and employees can always go a step farther to foster a work environment that is respectful. Leaders and employees can have regular discussions and craft jobs that are meaningful for both employees and the organization. Last but not least, pay competitively, and provide the necessary resources to help employees do their best work.

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Image by Fellowship of the Rich via Flickr

This is an article I wrote two years ago, it’s still relevant today!

Times are tough these days. But there are a few things you can do to engage your employees and prepare your company for future growth when the economy recovers.  A key factor in maintaining or improving your employee engagement is through effective employee communication.

Our employee research shows that employees want to feel valued by their company. Employees want to be involved in their work and want to understand their company’s direction, mission, and vision. In addition, employees want to have the necessary information to do their work, such as operational processes and product information, in a timely manner. For example, customer care employees need to know the launch of a new product before their customers learn about it from promotion materials.

You can increase employee engagement at your organization through these action steps:

Listen to employees and take action on employee feedback.
Conducting regular employee surveys is like taking the pulse of the health of your organization. Through anonymous employee surveys, employees can provide valuable suggestions for ways to improve communications and operations.  Management can gain insights from employee feedback and make changes that help the company grow. A great majority of the companies that are on The 100 Best Companies to Work For list conduct annual employee surveys, these companies enjoy better employee engagement scores and higher profitability.

Provide positive feedback in addition to constructive criticism.
Managers and supervisors play a key role in improving employee engagement through their interactions with employees. Research by Gallup and the Corporate Leadership Council found that employees who received positive feedback from their supervisors were more engaged and had better future performance than employees who received feedback for “room for improvement.” These studies show that focusing on employees’ strengths, rather than their weaknesses, can improve employee performance and engagement.

Be consistent in your message and communicate with employees regularly.
For companies that are going through significant changes, their employees often tell us that they are confused either because they receive inconsistent information from their direct managers and senior management, or that they don’t receive enough information about the company’s new direction. Howard Behar, former president of Starbucks and author of It’s Not About the Coffee, advises senior leaders to be consistent when communicating with their employees about their company’s mission, vision, and values. Behar said, “It’s so important to not get bored with your own message.” For thirty years, Behar had given the same speech about its company’s values and what it means to work at Starbucks to its employees, but he would do it in thousands different ways using different stories. While a company’s business strategy and company direction can change to meet changing business demands, it is imperative that management continues to rally their employees behind a common vision and mission during times of change.

Include employees who work offsite or on shifts.
Employees who work offsite or who work evening, night, or weekend shifts often are frustrated with a feeling of “disconnect” or being under-valued. These employees usually do not get to attend meetings with senior management, which typically are held during “normal” office hours. In addition, some second or third shift employees are frustrated with a lack of proper documentation of process changes that happened during an earlier shift. This leaves employees hunting for the critical information and essentially decreases their productivity. Creating a documentation process, knowledge database, or wiki where critical information is deposited and can be accessed by all employees can help improve communications with these employees.

What’s Next
Here are a few questions to help you navigate through these demanding times to continue to keep your employees engaged:

• Do you know your company’s overall employee engagement score?
• Do you know your department’s employee engagement score?
• Do you foster a company culture that encourages positive feedback and rewards employee performance?
• What programs or practices do you have in place to encourage communications between departments or divisions?
• How do you keep employees who work offsite or non-traditional hours equally informed as the rest of the company?
• Do evening and night shifts employees have a chance to meet any of the senior leaders during their shifts?
• Do you conduct regular employee surveys, use a company intranet, newsletter, or wiki to promote two-way communications between employees and management?
• Do your leaders follow up on employee suggestions?

Now is a great time to review your company’s communication practice and take action to address employees’ concerns. Most importantly, senior leaders will need to commit to following up with employees’ suggestions after soliciting their input. Otherwise, employee trust will erode and employee engagement will plunge.

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Since today is 11-11-11, I thought I’d have some fun playing with 11′s. In no particular order, here are 11 people I’d like to meet, 11 places I like to visit, and 11 activities I’d do if I were not consulting.

Image by AlbinoFlea via Flickr

Eleven People I’d like to Meet:

1. Henri Matisse
2. Henry Moore
3. Alexander Calder
4. Mies van der rohe–I love his Barcelona chair although it’s mostly form and not function.
5. Alton Brown
6. Candice Olsen
7. Samantha Brown
8. Li Bai (李白）, a Chinese poet
9. Qi Bai Shi（齐白石), a Chinese painter
10. Dan Pink
11. My paternal grandfather

Image via Wikipedia

Eleven places I’d like to visit or revisit:

1. Barcelona
2. Tibet
3. Mongolia
4. Buenos Aires
5. The Swiss Alps
6. Shanghai
7. Beijing
8. Kyoto
9. Hokaido
10. The Grand Canyon
11. Yellow Stone

Chihuly exhibit 2008, photo by Pi Wen Looi

Eleven activities I’d do if I were not consulting:

1. Photography
2. Creating albums
3. Creative writing
4. Reading
5. Biking
6. Hiking
7. Dancing
8. Designing spaces
9. Decorating
10. Practicing yoga
11. Day dreaming

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Image by atconc via Flickr

A recent Technisource survey found that IT Employee Confidence Index has dropped from 56.2 to 47.3 in the third quarter of 2011.  Only 13% of IT workers believe the economy is getting stronger.  But, 32% of IT employees are still likely to look for a new job while in their current position, and their confidence in their ability to find a new job has not declined.

What does this mean to your company? Are you seeing disengaged IT workers in your organization?

Here are four ideas to retain your high-performing IT workers:

Engage them in meaningful work–help them see the big picture of how their work fits in with your company’s overall strategy and mission. Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School and coauthor of “The Progressive Principle” found that the most important driver of employee engagement is for employees to feel that they are making progress in meaningful work. This could mean employees feel they are contributing something of real value and something they really care about to their team, their organization, or the community they live in.

Empower them to improve their skills–provide opportunities for employees to keep up with the latest knowledge and skills to keep them employable. This may sound counter-intuitive, but our survey results consistently show that employee learning and development is one of the top three key factors of employee engagement. By investing in employee development, you can reap the benefits of a better skilled workforce and higher level of employee loyalty.

Provide flexibility for employees to have a good work/life balance–many IT professionals need to work during weekends or late hours to update company systems or to ensure that the system runs smoothly. Recognize that these employees may not have the luxury of weekend time-off with their family or friends, design people practices and guidelines that enable their managers to facilitate a healthy work/life balance for these employees.

Pay equitably–design your compensation strategy such that high performers are rewarded accordingly. Best employers consistently reward their high-performers with base pay that is 3x or more compared with the average employees. Get more insights on pay equity and consistency from our friends at Compesation Cafe.

What activities or people practices do you find helpful in engaging and retaining your IT professionals? Share your feedback with us!

Related articles

• The Crisis of Meaning (charlesthrasher.wordpress.com)

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Image by _Hadock_ via Flickr

I am in the process of revamping my website, so I’m transferring some of the articles I wrote to this blog. These are oldies but goodies!

I wrote this one three years ago when many companies were laying off workers. It is as applicable then as it is now, with updated data from the Conference Board.

The latest Conference Board Employment Trends Index™(ETI) for August 2011 is 100.8, down from July’s revised figure of 101. The August figure is up 4.1 percent from a year ago, but still lags behind the August 2008 index of 109.3. Recent news such as that of Bank of America and BAE Systems indicate that many companies may plan to layoff workers in this weak economy.

While most companies take great care to help laid-off employees with their transitions, many companies are not doing enough for the layoff survivors. Consequently, employee morale drops and company productivity suffers. If your company has laid off staff, here are five tips to motivate and re-engage the remaining employees.

Reemphasize your company vision, mission, and values.
Employee morale is negatively impacted after layoffs. Often, employees feel confused about their company direction and priorities. As a leader, you can re-emphasize your organization’s mission and values to recreate a work environment/culture that engages your employees. Take this opportunity to talk with employees about the culture and work environment that you want to create after layoffs. Speak positively about the company mission and goals after downsizing and thank employees for their contributions. Articulate clearly what you need to do as a group to move forward. Review your rewards and recognition program to ensure the remaining employees feel valued and appreciated.

Be visible and accessible to employees.
Employees want reassurance about their job security and their future. They want to hear it from senior management and not from the rumor mill. Senior management must be visible and accessible to employees to listen to employee concerns and answer their questions. Have an all-hands meeting to reiterate company direction and answer employees’ questions. Encourage managers to have regular departmental or team meetings where employees can ask questions, discuss their fears and concerns, and mourn the loss of their coworkers.

Continue to build trust with employees through effective communication.
After layoffs, the “psychological contract” between employees and their employer has been violated. As a result, employees lose trust in company leaders and wonder if they’ll lose their jobs next. It is critical that you have an effective communication strategy to reassure employees that you value them and their contributions to your company. Through effective communication, you’ll help employees let go of the old ways of doing things and integrate with new processes or methodology.

Reassess work processes and identify ways to improve efficiency.
Employees who survived layoffs are likely to take on more responsibilities. They may feel overwhelmed and burned out. As a leader, you want to help employees set clear priorities and worthwhile objectives. You want to focus your energy on accomplishing tasks that support the most important goals. This is also a good time to review work processes, identify ways to improve efficiency, assess what’s working and what’s not to improve your company’s competitiveness.

Continue to train and develop employees despite tough economic times.
During a downturn, many companies are likely to cut training budgets. However, doing so will only further erode employee morale and can decrease productivity. Often, layoff survivors wonder if they have the necessary skills and knowledge to take on expanded roles. As a leader, you can discuss training and career development plans with your employees to reassure them that the skills they have or are learning are highly valued and marketable. Through this process, you’ll help employees feel confident. In fact, these steps outlined above are best practices that employers of choice use to engage their employees as a matter of course. During times of major changes, you will need to up the efforts of implementing these best practices. Doing so will help you build a more positive work environment and motivate employees to give you their best work.

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Before the redesign

• EDGE was an off-site, vendor led leadership training program
• 2,000 engineers have gone through the program since its launch in 2006 through 2009
• Program contents remained the same from 2006 – 2009 although the business world had changed significantly during that time
• Used some Googlers facilitators to facilite the training

Impetus for change

• The economy went downhill and Google needed to contain costs
• A need to update course contents to make them more relevant
• Google facilitators were under used

Some wise words before the redesign

Celeste emphasized the importance of soliciting feedback from your target audience and knowing your audience before changing any training design. It is even more so in this case. EDGE is a well-received leadership training program. Google engineers are proud to attend EDGE as they see this as a badge of honor to be nominated to attend the leadership training.

The redesign process

Understand the current state: Celeste and her team used observational methods, focus groups, and surveys (of past attendees) to get a thorough understanding of what worked and what did not work for EDGE.

Create a master mind project plan: Redesign is messy. By design, a redesign process is decidedly non-linear. But fear not. It helps to have a master project plan where you can stick your big ideas and vision. Celeste and her team referred back to this master project plan regularly to check in and to add more ideas as the project progressed.

Establish your scope of authority: In the heat of excitement and enthusiasm, it is easy to lose track of what you can do and what you cannot do within the scope of the project. Early in the process, it is critical to establish your credibility and authority. Get buy-in from your stake holders, involve your community–including past program participants, their managers, and facilitators. Make sure that their views are heard and well represented. Meanwhile, talk to your audience one-on-one, shadow them for a day if necessary to understand their work process and technical terms used.

On-boarding new facilitators and set them up for success: It takes a village to build something great. Recruit new facilitators who are enthusiastic and effective. Some of Google’s EDGE facilitators are also past program participants who volunteer their time to facilitate EDGE. Set them up for success by giving them access to all the resources you have. Ignore the voice in your head, “am I losing control by giving all the resources and information to my facilitators?” No, you are not.  Their success will reflect well on you as the project leader.

Friend your course evaluation data: Review the course evaluation data, take a deep dive to understand the numbers and written comments. Use these feedback to decide which elements of the training program to keep, drop, or update.

Evaluate and revamp: Look for significant drops in course evaluation survey results, dig deeper to understand why. Then make changes and evaluate again. It is a constant cycle of continual improvement, which reflects Google’s mentality of “launch and iterate.”

Empower your learners and create strong communities: Learning programs need to be relevant and engaging. For EDGE, Celeste and her team focus on imparting the idea that leadership is a verb, not a noun. To this end, course participants learn from their community, have time to reflect often, use what is available in the room to relate to leadership theory, and have a mid-course debriefing session and end-of-course debriefing session. At the end of the course, they partner with another participant to design their action plans and hold each other accountable.

Measure impact: Two months after the course, participants receive a survey and they are asked to rate their partners. The survey is designed to measure the impact of the course on their daily work, not just their overall satisfaction with the course.

After the Redesign

• Updated course contents, removed activities that are “fun” but not relevant to leadership development
• Brought the program in-house, facilitated by Googlers
• Continued to improve course materials based on participant feedback and course evaluation
• Adapted contents and action planning process for Asian and European countries

Although these steps are used to redesign EDGE at Google, they are relevant for designing any user-centered learning programs.

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I just moved and have been spending some time getting my office organized. While the new place is quieter than my old location, it lacks direct sunlight. Bummer! But my new office has floor- length windows and it looks out to the woods. It’s quite tranquil except for some unsightly scenes at the bottom of the floor-length windows.

I’ll admit that I’m super sensitive to views and want my work environment to look beautiful so that when I’m in my office, I feel GREAT and HAPPY! Thus the beginning of small projects to beautify my office and block out unsighty views. Today, mission accomplished! I stand back and take it all in, I feel joy and actually want to go into my office to do work!!

This brings me to the question of what makes a positive work environment that sustains employee engagement. The physical space is clearly an important element for me, as I wrote in my previous post “Top 10 Ideas to Engage Your Employees.“ But I also enjoy working with colleagues who are professional and respectful, and the opportunities to learn and grow.

What is your idea of a positive work environment? I’d love to hear your stories, see pictures, or your sketches of what you’d consider a positive work environment.

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A team of ASTD Golden Gate Chapter‘s Community Outreach Program (COP) volunteers designed and facilitated the first of three large-scale community meetings in Japantown last Wednesday. The City’s Planning Department and the Japantown Organizing Committee had developed a set of recommendations for revitalizing Japantown. This meeting was aimed at getting the community’s feedback and input to these recommendations.

Our team of volunteers, led by Kris Schaeffer, worked closely with Paul Lord, senior planner of the San Francisco Planning Department, and Bob Hamaguchi, Executive Director of Japantown Task Force, Inc., and his team to design a meeting that would get input from the community. Nearly 50 Japantown residents and Japanese Americans who are interested in preserving the culture and heritage of Japantown attended the meeting. At this meeting, we solicited input for land use, built form, and the future of Japan Center. There was a content leader for each of these topics.

The Facilitation Process

In the large group, everyone heard John Rahaim, Director of the San Francisco Planning Department, and Ross Mirkarimi, District 5 Supervisor, kicked off the meeting by acknowledging the impact of upcoming changes and their support for the community’s input.

Then the content leaders provided brief background information on the topic for the participants. All participants also received an information packet that contains detailed descriptions about these topics. Kris explained the meeting process before the participants broke into three smaller groups, one topic per group.

There was a COP facilitator and two recorders in each small group. The content leader reiterated the issues and opened up for input. The facilitator captured key points that we wanted input about and listed them on the flip chart so participants could refer back during the discussion. To avoid group think, participants wrote their ideas on stickies. After five minutes of writing, the facilitator asked volunteers to take turns read out his/her response and probed further if necessary. Recorder #1 collected the stickies, sorted, and posted them on a flip chart. Recorder #2 jotted down any additional responses from the participants.

After 20 minutes, the participants rotated to another group until they had a chance to learn about and provide input to all three topics. Then the participants gathered once again as a big group and hear the summaries from each topic leader.

Continual Improvement

COP volunteers conducted exit interviews with the participants to get their feedback on the meeting process, what they liked and what we could do differently for the next community meeting. Their feedback will be used to refine our design for the next meeting.

Recognition and Feedback

After the meeting, Paul Lord thanked the Japantown Organizing Committee members and all the volunteers. Paul intuitively understands the importance of being transparent in the communication process and getting community input. In a follow-up email, he wrote, “we are accomplishing a lot through your continued efforts to communicate recommendations and  ideas with the greater public in Japantown….you are conducting business in a valid and transparent public process where all those who care to have a chance to participate.” [Italics mine]

This is indeed a key to sustainable engagement–whether it’s at a community level or organizational level. You need to provide opportunities for those who care to provide input and help shape the future of the community or organization.

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It turns out that having competitive pay is a key driver of employee attraction but not retention. According to this CEB study, you need to do more to keep your key talent. The top three highest ranking drivers for employee retention are having effective managers, providing career advancement opportunities, and having good senior leadership reputation.

What does this mean for you as a HR partner to help your company attract and retain the best talent? First, start by assessing your employees’ perceptions of their manager’s and senior management’s leadership quality and your employees’ perceptions of advancing their careers within your organization. You can do this by conducting a formal survey or focus groups, or mine your data of 360 feedback and employee complaints and grievances.

Next, review your assessment results and determine what you can do the address the key issues identified in the assessment. Based on our work with clients in various industries, the following are common themes that employees raised with regards to these three topics.

In terms of manager quality, does the data show that your managers need coaching to provide effective feedback and develop employees? Are they accessible to employees and help create a cohesive team environment? Do your managers communicate clearly and regularly with employees about the company’s and their department’s goals, processes and operations? Most importantly, are managers modeling the desired behaviors for employees? In other words, are they walking the talk or just talking the talk.

In terms of senior leadership reputation, employees are looking for signs that say senior leaders conduct business in an ethical manner, lead their organization through positive changes, communicate with employees openly and honestly, and care about employees. To this end, does your company have a plan for senior leaders to communicate your company’s mission, vision, and goals on a regular basis with all employees? Do senior leaders seek employee input before implementing major changes? And are they doing a good job leading the company for business success?

With respect to career advancement opportunities, employees are looking for opportunities to grow with their jobs and move up within the company–either within their department or across departments. Providing career advancement opportunities to employees seems like a straight-forward concept. However, what is not immediately apparent are the processes that help employees advance their careers within the company. We’ve heard employees complaint that their manager is reluctant to let them move to another department because they are doing extremely well at their current jobs.  This does not help employees progress within the company. It may even demoralize employees so that they would only do an okay job instead of an excellent job, or may lead employees to look elsewhere to advance their careers.

In addition to having internal job posting and encouraging internal career mobility, you will need to think about how your employees can gain the skills needed to be competent in their next jobs. Do you have the best practice for developing talent at your company? Furthermore, do you reward your managers for growing talent? For more ideas on employee development, get tips from the 20 Best Companies for Leadership on how to develop talent and leaders and check out Working Mother’s 2011 best companies for women’s advancement.

Even in the current economic climate, many companies already feel the pain of a talent shortage. As the great recession will slowly but surely come to an end, numerous studies have shown that employees are getting ready to say sayonara to their current employer. What are you doing now to keep your best talent from walking out the door?

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