Why We Procrastinate When We Have Long Deadlines

“Can you get that to me by the end of the day?” isn’t a request many employees like to hear. But for many people, having shorter deadlines instead of longer ones — “Do you think you can do that by the end of the week?” — might actually help them complete a task and see their work as being less difficult.

In a recent study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, my colleagues Rajesh Bagchi and Stefan Hock and I demonstrate that longer deadlines can lead workers to think an assignment is harder than it actually is, which causes them to commit more resources to the work. This, in turn, increases how much they procrastinate and their likelihood of quitting. This is true even when the deadline length is incidental, such as when a venue or guest isn’t available for an extended period of time.In our research we asked volunteers at a local community center to answer a short survey about retirement planning. We set two incidental deadlines. In one group, the online survey could be accessed throughout the next seven days, but the other group had 14 days. Results showed that participants who faced the longer deadline wrote longer responses to the survey and spent more time on it. But there was a catch: Those same participants were more likely to procrastinate and were less likely to complete the assignment than their time-constrained counterparts.

Source: HBR 29 Aug, 2018

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When Is Teamwork Really Necessary?

Most leaders assume that they need to foster teamwork among the people whom directly and indirectly report to them. Teaming is now seen as the workplace equivalent of motherhood and apple pie — invariably good. The problem is when leaders try to drive the wrong kind of collaboration on their particular teams. The result: wasted time and unnecessary frustration.Consider the example of Nicolas, a regional sales vice president at a medical devices company. When promoted to his new role, he inherited a group of district sales managers responsible for selling to hospital systems in their respective geographies. Although his one-on-one meetings with these reports, which involved progress reviews, motivation, and coaching, were highly productive, his monthly team meetings weren’t. While the group liked getting together and engaging in some joint activities — such as goal setting, best-practice sharing, and talent development — people often wondered why they were in the room.Catherine, a senior marketing director leading a cross-functional product development team at the same company, provides a contrasting case study. Although she sometimes needed to work with team members individually, most productive work happened in weekly meetings, to which she brought focused agendas and effectively facilitated discussions about key issues. The participants rarely felt they were wasting their time.

Source: HBR 16 August, 2018

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Employee Engagement : Work Less and be more productive

How many hours do you work every week? The standard in India, if you're working for eight hours every day for five days, is 40 hours. And yet, there are countries where people work for lesser hours and produce more. There are various types of arrangements companies and various countries are providing which facilitates the employee to work lessor hours and be more productive.

 Lets look at some of concepts, which have been adopted

Four-day week
A Four-day week is an arrangement where a workplace or school has its employees or students work or attend school over the course of four days rather than the more customary five. This arrangement can be a part of flexible working hours, and is sometimes used to cut costs, as seen in the example of the so-called "4/10 work week," where employees work a normal 40 hours across four days, i.e. a "four-ten" week. Denmark was first in europe to provide this facility. Utah State in United State had Four-day week system from 2008 to 2011. Four days work week is also introduced in Gambia for public officials. In New Zealand, trust company Perpetual Guardian announced in February 2018 that it would begin trialing a four-day work week in March 2018.

35-hour working week
The 35-hour working week is a measure adopted first in France, in February 2000. This is done to take advantage of improvements in productivity of modern society to give workers some more personal time to enhance quality of life. Germany, Switzerland and Ireland are among 35 hours working countries.

Shining Mondays 
The Japanese government is mulling over plans to give Monday mornings off to its workers to fight overwork. The government plans to enact “Shining Monday” – where once a month, workers will get to have a lie-in on Monday morning, and only clock in after lunch.

The economy, trade and industry ministry believes that “Shining Mondays”, part of a wider campaign to address the punishingly long hours many Japanese work, will give employees a much-needed lie-in at the start of the working week. The move comes as the country has been plagued by the rampant occurence of “karoshi” (death by overworking) over the last few years. The move aims to improve the country’s poor record on work-life balance.

Norway's employees work the least, and are still the most productive
The people of Norway are expected to work for only 27 hours every week--one of the shortest in the world--and still they have ranked as the second most productive country in the world by a survey. Add to this mix the report of another study which claims that the Norwegians form the happiest workforce in Europe, and you'll be more surprised than ever.

Despite Norwegian workers enjoying one of the shortest workweeks at 27 hours, they still manage to yield a productivity sum of 39.72 GBP (337 kroner) per person for every hour worked, and the output per person has grown by nine percent over the past year.

Denmark's labor laws : "Flexicurity"
Denmark's labor laws are based on a concept called "flexicurity" - a unique model in which it's easy for employers to either hire or fire workers, but workers are also protected by a generous government safety net. Unemployment benefits can last up to two years.

Danish workers average 33 hours a week and have a right to at least five weeks of paid vacation each year. The work culture in Denmark is similar to that in the rest of Scandinavia. Flexible work schedules are common and paid vacation time is ample. When the OECD ranked nations based on work-life balance last year, Denmark came out on top.

Employee Onboarding : Statistics, Trends and Best Practices

Organizations used to think of onboarding as the automation of paperwork – a “set it and forget it” approach focused on ensuring all the new-hire documentation was completed in a timely fashion. But nowadays, in an increasingly competitive talent landscape, where employees determine whether to stay at a new job within their first six months, onboarding must play a much more important and expanded role focused on employee activation and retention.

Owing to the changing business dynamics and long training periods, organizations need to start the skilling processes right from the time the new hires receive their joining offers. Onboarding and Pre-boarding programs can act as effective mediums to help new hires from campuses and lateral hires become job-ready by upskilling in new-age technologies or skills of the future.

Few studies have been going on how Indian companies are approaching employee onboarding. This involved understanding the current state of the onboarding process in the organizations, the role of onboarding technology in accelerating skill development among new hires and how pre-boarding can fast-track the skill readiness of a new hire.

Some Statistics from results of surveys done by various agencies

1. Only 13 percent organizations are leveraging pre-boarding as a mean to train and upskill talent.
2. In most of the organizations, onboarding is limited to employees’ induction into the organization’s history, mission, and values.
3. Only 24 percent organization are utilizing a dedicated onboarding technology solution.
4. Employees that feel undervalued look for other jobs.
5. New hires who undergo proper onboarding also outperform their non-onboarded peers within three to five years.
6. Nearly 20% of employees don’t believe that their companies will take care of them.

Here is a look at Top trends in employee onboarding.

Personalisation
Imagine a restaurant serving you your favourite meal, exactly the way you like it, without having to ask. You’d be impressed right?

Personalised onboarding is kind of the same principle. More than just providing the right training, personalisation is about making the new hire feel like their expertise, preferences and interests have been taken into account in almost every aspect of their onboarding.

In other words, a strategic onboarding program must be personalized to the individual being onboarded and their specific needs. The program must account for their role within the organization, their prior experience, their current skill levels and, ideally, their personality.

Cultural Assimilation
Cultural assimilation is a movement striving to smooth a new hire’s transition into a company. More than just a “mission, vision, values and strategy” presentation, cultural assimilation is about designing activities and interventions in which new hires find out what it’s like to work in an organisation.

Organizations want to achieve from their onboarding strategy include “orient new employees to the organization’s vision”, “familiarize employees to the culture of the organization”, and “foster a positive experience for new employees.”

Skill Onboarding
To speed up the process of skill onboarding, organizations are not sticking to just one way of making candidates job ready. While Mentoring (49 percent) and Classroom training (40 percent) are popular mediums of delivering training, Online Training emerged popular among organizations to fast-track the skilling during pre-boarding and onboarding (50 percent). It was found that online mediums have been quite effective in speeding up the training processes and enhancing the learners’ engagement.

Data Driven Improvements
Thanks to built-in survey tools and integrated performance management processes, businesses now have both qualitative and quantitative data available to them. Employers can track trends in performance against engagement levels, and pinpoint specific aspects of the programme that may be impacting onboarding outcomes.

Social Networking
It is no wonder, that more and more businesses are giving digital savvy recruits social intranet access almost as soon as they are offered a job. Social enterprise software opens up opportunities for new hires to connect with other staff, learn more about the business, post pictures or videos, talk about interests and hobbies, get advice, and build networks all before they even start their job on day one.

When implemented well, social intranets are boasting staff participation rates of up to 85%.

Digital Onboarding
The overall adoption of technology solutions in onboarding is yet to reach critical mass in India. Currently, 24 percent of the organizations responded that they are utilizing a dedicated onboarding technology solution. One of the reasons for this resistance could be lack of a defined onboarding process or over-dependence on human resources to conduct the onboarding process.

Top companies like L’Oréal are already developing apps to update and streamline their onboarding while others are investing in onboarding systems, all in the name of engaging and retaining their new hires.

Even beyond the new hire process there are opportunities for organizations to employ strategic onboarding: consider onboarding programs when an employee moves into a new role or position, joins a new team, transfers locations, and so on. These present golden opportunities to reinforce the individual’s value and importance within the company and ensure their work remains tied to positive business outcomes.

With Onboarding being a focus, now it's a great time for organizations to examine their current onboarding program to see if it plays a successful role in activating and retaining employees – after all, they may be the organization’s most valuable asset.