NHRD rolls out Mind Matters Week to help organizations focus on mental wellbeing

 

Mind Matters is a movement spearheaded by the NHRDN in partnership with White Swan Foundation, a non-profit initiative, to spread awareness on mental wellbeing and enable great workplace practices to support it.

National HRD Network has announced Mind Matters Week from October 5 to 10 coinciding with Global Mental Health Day on October 10. Mind Matters is a movement spearheaded by the NHRDN in partnership with White Swan Foundation, a non-profit initiative, to spread awareness on mental wellbeing and enable great workplace practices to support it. The objective of Mind Matters is to make Mental Wellbeing a strategic priority in organizations by creating awareness & reduce stigma around mental wellbeing. 70+ companies across India have joined the movement to play their part in normalizing conversations around mental wellbeing. 

For the corporates who join the movement - NHRD will be their extended arm in the journey. To enable companies to drive awareness of mental wellbeing in their organizations, NHRD would help them with a ready Toolkit which would have:

• Communication kit from Management to employees

• Framework for Managers on their role 

• Draft Mental Health policy

• Information repository on Mental Health at the Workplace 

• Resource list for Employee Assistance Programs

• Access to daily training sessions & webinars on mental health awareness, specific mental disorders, tools to manage it, etc during the Mind Matters Week (Oct 5 – 10). Session details are on website.

• Access to free LinkedIn courses on mental health during the Mind Matters Week

• NHRD Mind Matters Ambassador certification for upto 3 employees from each company

Speaking to People Matters, Krish Shankar, Group Head- Human Resources at Infosys, and Hon President of National HRD Network, India shared, “Mental wellbeing does not get adequate focus in India Inc! Fears from this pandemic, as well as reduced social interactions and long working hours, could make this a potential issue. We all need to be aware of this, and build capabilities in our organizations to promote mental wellbeing. To create this awareness, NHRD is planning a Mental Health Awareness week from 5-10th Oct, leading up to the International Mental Health Day on 10th Oct. Do join in and help spread the awareness."

Mental wellbeing: A growing cause for concern

Mental wellbeing is increasingly becoming a cause for concern. More so in India, given our low awareness, the stigma associated with it, challenging health infrastructure, and scarcity of mental wellbeing care workers and experts.

A report by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2019 revealed that 7.5 percent of the Indian population suffers from some form of mental disorder. Mental illnesses constitute one-sixth of all health-related disorders and India accounted for nearly 15% of the global mental, neurological, and substance abuse disorder burden. Without anticipating a coronavirus pandemic, WHO also predicted that by 2020, roughly 20 percent of India will suffer from mental illnesses and that means, today, more than 200 million Indians are likely to have mental illnesses and the situation is certain to worsen with the pandemic.

A study by Mental Health Research UK in 2019 found that 42.5 percent of the employees in India’s corporate sector suffer from depression or an anxiety disorder. This has a huge implication on productivity and morale; and it is imperative for corporates to recognize and take preventive steps to reduce the impact on business.

The inability to balance work-life, stretched commitments, nuclear families, lack of social support/interactions and increased levels of anxiety add to the already delicate situation. The treatment gap, which is defined as the prevalence of mental illnesses versus the proportion of patients that receive treatment, was over 70 percent. Stigma, lack of awareness and a dearth of mental wellbeing professionals are responsible for this gap. 

More so, the pandemic has further adversely affected the mental health of many employees, with increased work from hours and no disconnect between work and home life, compounded by the stress of lockdown restrictions. Keeping this in mind, it becomes even more important for organizations to take measures to alleviate the mental health of their employees. 

Source: People matters 29 Sep, 2020

7 Strategies for Better Group Decision-Making

When you have a tough business problem to solve, you likely bring it to a group. After all, more minds are better than one, right? Not necessarily. Larger pools of knowledge are by no means a guarantee of better outcomes. Because of an over-reliance on hierarchy, an instinct to prevent dissent, and a desire to preserve harmony, many groups fall into groupthink.

Misconceived expert opinions can quickly distort a group decision. Individual biases can easily spread across the group and lead to outcomes far outside individual preferences. And most of these processes occur subconsciously.

This doesn’t mean that groups shouldn’t make decisions together, but you do need to create the right process for doing so. Based on behavioral and decision science research and years of application experience, we have identified seven simple strategies for more effective group decision making:

Keep the group small when you need to make an important decision. Large groups are much more likely to make biased decisions. For example, research shows that groups with seven or more members are more susceptible to confirmation bias. The larger the group, the greater the tendency for its members to research and evaluate information in a way that is consistent with pre-existing information and beliefs. By keeping the group to between three and five people, a size that people naturally gravitate toward when interacting, you can reduce these negative effects while still benefitting from multiple perspectives.

Choose a heterogenous group over a homogenous one (most of the time). Various studies have found that groups consisting of individuals with homogeneous opinions and beliefs have a greater tendency toward biased decision making. Teams that have potentially opposing points of view can more effectively counter biases. However, context matters. When trying to complete complex tasks that require diverse skills and perspectives, such as conducting research and designing processes, heterogeneous groups may substantially outperform homogeneous ones. But in repetitive tasks, requiring convergent thinking in structured environments, such as adhering to safety procedures in flying or healthcare, homogenous groups often do better. As a leader, you need first to understand the nature of the decision you’re asking the group to make before you assemble a suitable team.

Appoint a strategic dissenter (or even two). One way to counter undesirable groupthink tendencies in teams is to appoint a “devil’s advocate.” This person is tasked with acting as a counterforce to the group’s consensus. Research shows that empowering at least one person with the right to challenge the team’s decision making process can lead to significant improvements in decision quality and outcomes. For larger groups with seven or more members, appoint at least two devil’s advocates to be sure that a sole strategic dissenter isn’t isolated by the rest of the group as a disruptive troublemaker.

Collect opinions independently. The collective knowledge of a group is only an advantage if it’s used properly. To get the most out of your team’s diverse capabilities, we recommend gathering opinions individually before people share their thoughts within the wider group. You can ask team members to record their ideas independently and anonymously in a shared document, for example. Then ask the group to assess the proposed ideas, again independently and anonymously, without assigning any of the suggestions to particular team members. By following such an iterative process teams can counter biases and resist groupthink. This process also makes sure that perceived seniority, alleged expertise, or hidden agendas don’t play a role in what the group decides to do.

Provide a safe space to speak up. If you want people to share opinions and engage in constructive dissent, they need to feel they can speak up without fear of retribution. Actively encourage reflection on and discussion of divergent opinions, doubts, and experiences in a respectful manner. There are  three basic elements required to create a safe space and harness a group’s diversity most effectively. First, focus feedback on the decision or discussed strategy, not on the individual. Second, express comments as a suggestion, not as a mandate. Third, express feedback in a way that shows you empathize with and appreciate the individuals working toward your joint goal.

Don’t over-rely on experts. Experts can help groups make more informed decisions. However, blind trust in expert opinions can make a group susceptible to biases and distort the outcome. Research demonstrates that making them part of the decision-making can sway the team to adapt their opinions to those of the expert or make overconfident judgments. Therefore, invite experts to provide their opinion on a clearly defined topic, and position them as informed outsiders in relation to the group.

Share collective responsibility. Finally, the outcome of a decision may be influenced by elements as simple as the choice of the group’s messenger. We often observe one single individual being responsible for selecting suitable group members, organizing the agenda, and communicating the results. When this is the case, individual biases can easily influence the decision of an entire team. Research shows that such negative tendencies can be effectively counteracted if different roles are assigned to different group members, based on their expertise. Moreover, all members should feel accountable for the group’s decision making process and its final outcome. One way to do that is to ask the team to sign a joint responsibility statement at the outset, leading to a more balanced distribution of power and a more open exchange of ideas.

Of course, following these steps doesn’t guarantee a great decision. However, the better the quality of the decision-making process and the interaction between the group members, the greater your chances of reaching a successful outcome.

Source: HBR 22 Sep, 2020

Technology: AI Should Change What You Do — Not Just How You Do It

 

Few leaders would dispute the fact that business today is driven by data and smart algorithms. Yet, rather than real digital transformation, many instead pursue digital incrementalism, using automation to cut costs or, worse — cut jobs. Doing so might buy you some time from impatient shareholders, but it will be short-lived unless you can face the challenge: How do you reimagine what you do for a new era of AI-powered competition? 

The high unemployment numbers of the Covid-19 recession have obscured a systemic problem: the accelerating effect of automation on the workforce. We have been here before. In each of the last few recessions, there have been significant spikes in labor-replacing automation. Although salaries may fall in a crisis, shrinking revenues and the impact on the bottom line typically drive companies to invest in new technology rather than hiring people.

For economist David Autor, the 2020 employment crisis will be further exaggerated by what he calls “automation forcing.” In his view, social distancing requirements and stay-at-home orders may drive temporary labor shortages, forcing firms to leverage emerging technologies to get things done with fewer people — whether it be “fewer workers per store, fewer security guards and more cameras, more automation in warehouses, or more machinery applied to nightly scrubbing of workplaces.”

That is one grim scenario, certainly, but not an inevitable one. One way out of the dystopian cycle of automation and job loss is if more organizations can harness technology to reimagine work — rather than merely replace it. To do that, we need to consider how AI and machine intelligence can enable disruptive business ideas and customer experiences, unlock new ways of working, and augment teams to innovate and solve problems more effectively.

Reimagine the customer experience.

One of the best examples of a traditional organization leveraging technology to disrupt an adjacent market is Marcus by Goldman Sachs. Marcus, a digital consumer bank, might be an unlikely spin-off from a traditional investment firm. Not so, according to Harit Talwar, global head of Goldman Sachs’ Consumer Business, who told me that these days the business sees itself as a “150-year-old startup.” At a time when many banks are leveraging basic automation to cut their operating costs, Goldman approached the digital transformation challenge differently. Rather than patching a broken system, they asked: What do people want?

After speaking to more than 10,000 consumers, Talwar and his team identified that people had three big pain points with typical retail banks — a fragmented and confusing relationship with money, opaqueness around the borrowing process, and frustration at the lack of respect for their savings. That insight was useful, but what compelled Goldman Sachs to act was knowing that it didn’t have to replicate the old banking models to compete.

“We did not need to set up hundreds of thousands of branches, or hundreds of thousands of feet on the street doing face-to-face selling,” Talwar explained to me. “The digital technology, the programmatic data analysis, the simplicity of interface design now make it possible to acquire and serve millions of customers, including mass affluent customers, in a simple and transparent way.”

Marcus may operate more like a tech company, but don’t try and tell that to Talwar. In his view, while engineering, data, and design are potent and vital ingredients of modern business, the real focus has to be elsewhere. “We don’t call ourselves a technology business; our business is solving customer problems.” For Talwar, AI is just a capability — the real future of finance is extreme customer-centricity.

“If you want to be a successful disruptor, whether starting a new business or whether as a decades-old organization, the first lesson is to ask: What it is that you’re trying to do, and for whom? What is the customer problem? Or what is the business problem you’re trying to solve? That is real innovation.”

Reinvent how you work.

The second challenge for leaders is identifying new ways of getting things done. While repetitive workflows and routine transactions are typically the first to be automated, machine intelligence is now starting to encroach on the more complex decisions previously reserved for humans. Rather than a threat, we should see that as an opportunity to revisit how we work, and why.

At UBS, harnessing AI is the cornerstone of group CIO Mike Dargan’s overall digital transformation plan. He explained to me that in the last few years, diverse AI projects have been appearing across the bank — from fraud detection to compliance, risk management to advanced HR analytics, and a new system that facilitates foreign exchange transactions. UBS’s digital transformation objective is to reimagine the bank’s entire value chain, from how they serve customers and produce investment strategies, to middle and back-office tasks.

The common thread that joins the AI projects at UBS is a new perspective about the kind of work machines should do, and where humans add the most value. According to Dargan, “As we automate away the simple tasks, roles become more sophisticated.”  

Dargan gave an example of the growing challenges of managing the firm’s complex network infrastructure, which generates thousands of logs daily. Rather than monitor these manually, they now use AI to read the system alerts, and Natural Language Processing algorithms to preemptively identify serious issues. True, that is work that people might do. But in Dargan’s estimation, it would have taken a team of at least 10,000.

As it is at many big organizations, the employment impact of automation at UBS is a nuanced one. Machines are handling more work, but arguably without a high level of automation, UBS employees would find it hard to get their jobs done. The firm now has more than 2,000 software bots operating across the business, growing steadily. During the pandemic, they even created six new bots in just three days, which were needed to assist client advisors in handling a massive flood of Swiss Covid-related loan requests. Telemetry — early warning and anomaly detection — followed by automation and self-fixing solutions, supported the firm’s stability, which was experiencing quadruple peak volumes because of volatility and volume in the market.

The digitization of financial services changes both the way people work, as well as how they interact and partner with other organizations. As in other parts of the economy, such as retail and logistics, banks will have to become platforms to grow and compete — no easy task for conventional players with creaky infrastructure and a conservative mindset. However, the prizes are substantial for those companies that can get it right.

Take Apple Card. A controversial but dramatic product introduction — described by Goldman Sachs CEO David Soloman as the “most successful credit card launch ever.” One of the factors that supported the accelerated timetable was that Apple Card was developed and released in an entirely cloud-based production environment. Think of it as the difference between traditional banking and “banking-as-a-service.”

Talwar describes their “banking-as-a-service” platform as a competitive moat and believes it is characteristic of how the firm plans to defend their position against traditional retail competitors with a differentiated technology stack that can scale, be agile, and remain relevant. Rather than build thousands of retail branches or rely on conventional marketing to acquire customers, Marcus has been able to leverage a technology stack based on API microservices architecture to build distribution partnerships with Apple, Amazon, JetBlue, and Intuit. In a sense, these are all relationships based on data sharing, intermediated by machine intelligence. In the case of Amazon, Marcus provides revolving credit lines to Amazon merchants, governed by data from their e-commerce trading activities.

From this perspective, you can arguably view the entire Marcus retail bank as merely an application running on the Goldman Sachs digital banking platform. Goldman, which has expressed an ambition to create its own “Financial Cloud,” is now looking to extend its reach into other parts of the financial ecosystem by providing customers with APIs into its transaction banking and risk management platforms.

Rethink your capabilities.

Finally, rather than using AI as a blunt tool to reduce headcount, we have to train people to use machines to change their work. After all, what is more valuable: people capable of doing their jobs, or team members who can design systems, train AI models, and build bots to do their team’s work? It’s a familiar story. Whether it be factory automation or the early days of the computer revolution, staying one step ahead of our tools has been the story of human co-evolution with technology since the beginning.

As Dargan at UBS puts it, “Banking is technology, but technology is people.” In 2019, the bank rolled out a digital learning curriculum across the entire firm, providing educational content on AI, blockchain, and cloud technologies. In the first 6 months of 2020, his tech-teams have clocked over 45,000 training hours, with 50,000 courses available. While he doesn’t necessarily see a future where everyone in the bank can code, digital literacy is now an essential skill. No job or function is immune to the coming changes, even technology roles. Over the last two years, UBS has trained 350 people in the operations space to design and manage automation bots — a work profile that even didn’t exist before.

Aside from training people with new skills, reimagining work also requires you to consider how teams collaborate. Marcus may be a digital bank, but that doesn’t necessarily avoid human interactions being stubbornly analog and siloed. At Marcus, a productivity breakthrough came when they re-organized their teams into agile pod structures. Now, regardless of their functional role as an engineer, a marketer, or a lawyer, Marcus employees are attached to workstreams focused on specific objectives — improving the customer onboarding journey, for example.

The agile structure can create challenges when people try to balance tactical goals with long term vision. In Talwar’s view, that’s where leaders can add the most value. They need to manage the trade-off between telling people what to do (like a conductor controlling an orchestra) and setting a common objective with some ground rules so that teams can find creative solutions themselves (like a self-organizing flash mob).

We are just at the beginning of a new era of AI-powered competition, and the playbooks for organizations and leaders are far from clear. One thing is sure: the successful firms of the future will be those that can leverage data, algorithms, and human talent to both sidestep industry boundaries and creatively meet customer needs.

For leaders of more established firms, this is no time for timid moves. Expect a widening gap between customer-centric organizations with a deep commitment to evolving their technology platform and those whose blind pursuit of operating efficiency leaves them defenseless against a more uncertain future. In the end, our best chance at reinvention is to answer a deceptively simple question: What is possible now in an age of smart machines that was not even conceivable before?

Source: HBR 21 Sep, 2020

Salesforce announces plans to hire 12,000 new staff in the next year

 

Salesforce CEO and co-founder Marc Benioff announced the company will be hiring 4,000 new employees in the next six months and 12,000 in the next year. 

The development comes on account of the fact that since the COVID-19 outbreak that has forced people to stay and work from home, the company’s online business software that supports remote work and ecommerce has seen significant demand.

In August, the cloud-based customer management software company announced that, at the end of the month, they would be making 1,000 job cuts. At the time of the earlier announced reductions, Salesforce employed around 54,000 people worldwide and the layoffs accounted for almost 2% of their total workforce. With the addition of 12,000 jobs, Salesforce will employ 65,000 people within the year.

Salesforce also revealed large second-quarter earnings, tracking $5.15Bn in revenue at a 29% growth rate, exceeding Wall Street predictions of $4.87Bn. “Join our 54K employee strong Ohana defining the future of software," Benioff tweeted. "Salesforce is the world's fastest-growing Top 5 enterprise software company.” 

Like many companies, Salesforce had flagged the possibility of slower revenue growth earlier in the pandemic as their customers navigated economic difficulty and struggled to pay their bills. However, this latest revenue growth is better than expected. Among their many solutions, Salesforce offerings include software that supports ecommerce and remote work, so it comes as no surprise that their business has seen a significant uptick since the pandemic began. 

With this latest announcement, Salesforce is setting the tone for an ambitious, quickly-expanding era in the company’s development. The company did not immediately respond to a request for additional details on the hiring, hence it remains to be seen exactly what form these new roles will take. 

Source: People matters 21 Sep, 2020

How the Average Person Can Actually Start An Online Business (and Scale It Into Something Real)

I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. 

This isn’t another “how to start a business” article that’s going to leave you with generic tips and general information that sounds good on the surface but provides you no real actionable advice. 

Rather, this article is raw, action-packed and may scare some of you. Continue reading at your own discretion. 

A 2018 study from Bankrate revealed that only 39% of Americans could have enough savings for a $1,000 emergency fund and 44% couldn’t cover a $400 out-of-pocket emergency expense. 

Starting a business can be a difficult task regardless of your financial status, but the degree of difficulty climbs much higher the lower you are on the economic class scale.

If you happen to be an average person, with an average bank account, a normal job, a family to feed and bills eating up a large percentage of your earnings, then the deck is stacked against you. 

Why?

It takes money to make money. Online sales are all about eyeballs. How many people can get you to see and interact with your offers?

I tell my eBook students — “you can write the best book in the history of the universe, but if no one ever sees it, you’ll never get a sale. On the other hand, you can publish the worst book ever published and with the right marketing techniques and finances to back it, you’ll get some initial sales, at least until you get a few bad reviews.”

If you start your own website, open a Shopify store, sell on Amazon, social media or any other online marketplace, you will be paying for those eyeballs through either advertising or fees. Sometimes both. The only potential exception would be those with a large and active social media following.

Long story short — if you are the average person without a legitimate budget, you’re kind of screwed. 

Learn from my mistakes 

Sometimes we all need a reality check. I wish someone would have sat me down and told me this when I was 23 years old because I wasted tens of thousands of dollars on failed online business over the years and it was money that I didn’t have. 

I’ve been the average guy with the average income, the average job and above-average bills. There was a point in my life that my monthly earnings were negative $1,000. I had to get a $20,000 personal loan to plus up my income to pay my bills for a year. 

Honestly, I don’t know what the bank was thinking by giving me that loan, but I’m glad they did because I had seriously considered filing for bankruptcy and if I’m being honest, I probably should have. 

This was one of the worst and most stressful time-periods of my life and if this article can save one person the heartache I went through, it’ll be worth it. 

Move over success 

A few years later, I was supporting US Special Forces as a military contractor in Syria. While I was sleeping in a tent, eating food out of a can and stealing WIFI from a neighboring country, I started an online jobs website for aviation professionals with security clearances interested in deploying to combat zones. 

The website itself did become profitable, but it was only a few hundred dollars of profit per month. While it wasn’t a massive win, there wasn’t much like it within the industry. 

The site's uniqueness along with the targeted audience I was able to build via Facebook advertising piqued the interest of the right people which lead to a single dinner and ended with me consulting with a multimillion-dollar corporation. 

Since then, it’s been all downhill. Sometimes all we need is a single breakthrough. 

If I can do it from a tent in Syria, you can do it from your couch. It didn’t happen overnight though. Here is the process I had to go through to get to that point. 

Overcoming average people obstacles

The mistakes I made that put me in the worst financial position of my life are the same mistakes that many others make on a daily basis. 

If you are in a position where you don’t have expendable income but want to start an online business, read the following advice carefully...

Be realistic

Realize that until you fix your own financial problems, starting a legitimate business will be out of the question. This was a tough realization for me, but I’ve learned that you can have the best business concept in the history of the universe, but if you can’t fund it and do it right, it’ll never succeed.  

Sell everything you can possibly sell. Especially liabilities that have monthly payments. If it wasn’t nailed down, I sold it. I lost money on most everything, but it was worth it in the long run. 

Consolidate debt and cancel all unnecessary subscriptions. This allowed me to lower my monthly obligations, decrease interest rates on certain debts and pay bigger chunks towards the debt. 

Focus on the money

Search for a higher paying job. Often, we underestimate ourselves and what we are capable of accomplishing. Put yourself out there and see what’s available. What's the worst a potential employer can say, no? This is actually how I ended up in Syria. I was able to more than double my salary by accepting a position that most people wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. I even grew to love the job, but initially, I was simply making a personal sacrifice to achieve a long-term goal. As an entrepreneur, if you are not willing to make sacrifices, you are in the wrong line of work. 

Use a skill, learn a skill or try something new. Stop worrying about starting a business and focus on actually earning money. I was able to earn an additional $1,500 a month by writing content for people’s blogs, creating social media content and writing small informational eBooks. Here is a solid hint. If you want to make money, be willing to do the grunt work. Do the things that people don’t like to do themselves. 

It wasn’t glamorous, but it accelerated my debt pay off. I was able to get most of my business by joining niche forums and Facebook groups. Here is a solid hint – niche forums and Facebook groups are two of the only places on the internet that you can get those eyeballs for free, but you have to be offering something they are actively seeking. 

I actually hadn’t ever done any of the services that I started offering, but with a little practice and learning from people on YouTube, I was able to surpass customers’ expectations.

Starting a business and scaling

Once you are out of debt or close to it and have at least $2,000 to invest, it’s time to start your online business. 

Here’s the process I like to follow:

Don’t think major corporations. Rather, start small and build. Use the new skills you learned to earn extra money during your debt payoff phase and start something you know can be profitable. We all have our dream business, but at this point, it’s more important to start something low risk and stable. Learn to be passionate about the process and business in general rather than a specific idea or concept. 

Once you have a steady flow of business, figure out how to outsource using freelancers. Implement processes to take yourself out of the equation to the point that you are simply managing the businesses and dealing with customers. This will allow you to continue earning from the business, but it’ll free you up to work towards your next business. 

Take the earnings from the first business and invest them into your next business concept. Ideally, you will only be investing the profits from business number one into business number two. This will allow you to continue to build your personal savings from your day job while still allowing you to invest in online businesses. 

Rinse and repeat. 

Don’t rush the process. Enjoy the journey. 

Personally, I like to have three to five businesses running at any given time. Two or three of them will be low-end grunt work type businesses that fund my ideal businesses.

The grunt work businesses are profitable because everyone hates to do their own grunt work. It’s the reason people pay to have their houses cleaned and their lawns mowed. 

You can easily and successfully scale without having to invest money earned from your full-time job. This allows you to continue to save and grow financially while you are building something real.

Takeaways

Starting a business can be difficult and is a process that shouldn’t be rushed. 

In reality, it’s a fairly simple process if you are patient. 

Fix yourself

Focus on the money

Start with something low risk

Outsource

Invest earnings into other business concepts

Repeat

In my opinion, this is the one process that gives the average person the best chance of being able to start a successful online business. 

Source: Entrepreneur India 01 Sep, 2020

LEADERSHIP & MANAGING PEOPLE: Don’t Just Lead Your People Through Trauma. Help Them Grow.

 

The last several months have stacked painful experiences on top of each other: a global pandemic, economic collapse, and new reminders of perennial racial injustice and police violence. This July, rates of depression and anxiety in the U.S. were more than triple those of early 2019. The simple question, “How are you?” has turned into an emotional minefield.

Workplaces are saturated with trauma, too, and leaders are agonizing over how to keep their teams healthy as everyone works remotely and juggles any number of stressors. The science of trauma offers some insight about this moment, and some surprising hope: Instead of asking how we will recover from these painful times, we should ask how we will be changed by them. In many cases, we have an opportunity to change for the better.

In October 2001, researchers surveyed thousands of Americans about their experiences in the wake of the World Trade Center attack. How often did they have intrusive memories of 9/11? How much trouble were they having sleeping, concentrating, and connecting with others? Four percent of respondents — and 11% of New York City residents — met the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, even though none had been in the towers that day.

Events like 9/11 are psychological earthquakes that shatter our assumptions that the world is safe and just, even if we’re not in imminent danger ourselves. They lay bare how vulnerable we are — and how little we control. PTSD is the most well-known outcome of trauma, and often presents as long-term, debilitating difficulty recovering a sense of safety and stability. However, it’s not as common as you might think. In an analysis of 54 studies surveying tens of thousands of people, psychologist Isaac Galatzer-Levy and his colleagues examined how individuals fared in the months and years after suffering traumas including serious injuries, loss of loved ones, and combat. They found that 65% of survivors showed a “resilient trajectory,” remaining psychologically stable.

Even more surprising is that many survivors experience increased well-being after trauma. In the aftermath of shocking events, people often start over and rethink their priorities. They might change careers to better match their values or reconnect with estranged friends. Many experience greater purpose, stronger social connections, or deepened spirituality. Psychologists call this “posttraumatic growth,” or PTG, and it’s fairly common: In one meta-study of more than 10,000 trauma survivors, about 50% reported at least some PTG.

No one would choose to endure trauma, but it’s helpful to keep in mind that even terrible moments can have positive effects. For all its horrors, the Covid-19 pandemic has forced many of us into a more sustainable way of life, and has encouraged kindness around the world. Anguish over police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, and too many others has galvanized a fight for racial justice. Employees are demanding more equality in company hiring and management practices and are encouraging their employers to support social justice initiatives.

Managers and leaders should take this to heart. Rather than aiming for a recovery or asking employees to return to normal, they should ask bigger questions about how their organizations can grow through this moment. Here two insights from psychological science can help: affirming values and emphasizing community.

Affirm Values

Many managers and leaders I’ve talked with are losing sleep not only over their own struggles, but over those of their colleagues and employees, whose sense of security and self-worth have been jeopardized. One way to combat these threats is to focus on the values that define us, regardless of the circumstances.

When psychologist George Bonanno and his colleagues surveyed people directly impacted by 9/11, they found that those who reported a clear sense of purpose and autonomy were more likely to remain resilient in the 18 months following the attacks.

A simple exercise in values affirmation can help boost team morale and restore a shared sense of purpose. Have team members list their most important guiding principles — for instance, helping others or expressing creativity — and write about why those values matter to them. Participating in an affirmation exercise like this produces powerful, long-term results, including fostering resilience and growth in the face of adversity.

Leaders can and should take this moment to affirm their organization’s values as well. Here it’s critical to be concrete. When the values on a company’s wall diverge from the reality on the ground, talk alone can produce disenchantment and cynicism. If you want to emphasize well-being for your team, allocate time and resources for employee mental health. If you want to address racial justice, go beyond bias training and rethink your company policies and systems; for instance, commit to diversifying top leadership. By linking words and action, you can help your team focus not just on what they do, but why they’re doing it.

Emphasize Community

Survivors are more likely to experience PTG when they have a supportive community with which they can openly share experiences. In one study, psychologists surveyed residents of Madrid following the 2004 terrorist bombing in the city at one, three, and eight weeks after the event. The attack socially magnetized Spaniards who immediately after talked more often with neighbors, friends, and family about their emotions. And eight weeks after the attack, people who had talked more in the early days felt increased solidarity and connection with fellow Madrileños, as well as a greater sense of meaning and positivity.

Social connection has rarely been more important, or more difficult to maintain. Our new video-conference reality lacks in-between moments in hallways and breakrooms, time for processing, kibitzing, and hanging out, all of which are vital to foster community. Thankfully, there are ways to restore connection, even at a distance. Leaders can build time into meetings for check-ins, and be open to the messy intimacy that comes with seeing coworkers’ homes and meeting their families and pets. Leaders can create peer-to-peer support networks in which working parents, those caring for sick relatives, and other groups can discuss struggles and compare notes.

Values-based leadership and attention to community are always smart, but now they are mandatory. Under so-called normal circumstances, teams that are clear on their purpose work harder, smarter, and more collaboratively. And when leaders exhibit empathy, their employees feel safer, work more creatively, and perform better. The pain of these past few months has destabilized us, but it has also held up a mirror, stripping away comfort and routine and revealing who we truly are. The choices we make in this moment will shape who we — and our organizations — become. In times of trauma, these strategies can help organizations not merely survive, but build what we wish had been there all along.

Source: HBR 14 Sep,2020

Only 16% new hires possess skills to meet job roles: Report

 

Organizations are struggling to hire quality talent as only 16 percent of new hires have the requisite skills for both their current role and the future, as per a new Gartner report.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced employers to rethink how to best get work done and what skills their employees will need to adapt in this new context.

The report stated, “Candidates are scrutinizing organizations’ responses to the pandemic, looking to see how companies have treated employees during this time.”

To hire quality talent, recruiting leaders must change their strategies from replacing the workforce to instead shaping the workforce by defining needs based on skills, sourcing talent more broadly, and creating responsive employment value propositions (EVPs).

 Lauren Smith, Vice-president in the Gartner HR practice said, “Traditional recruiting methods are unable to compete with the large-scale shifts to the workplace and the labor market”

The current unstable has made traditional talent pools less viable for sourcing talent as high-quality candidates with traditional qualifications are unlikely to leave their current positions. However existing roles may require up to 10 new skills by 2021.

Leading organizations have thus shifted their focus from replacing the workforce to shaping the workforce. As a result, the best-recruiting functions that excel in these workforce-shaping behaviors see a 24 percent increase in quality of hire, as per Smith.

The research further states that 43 percent of candidates today are self-taught in one or more of their role's requirements. Also, organizations are increasingly developing high-value skill sets in employees through accelerated training programs. Given that the pandemic has led to an acceleration in demand for new skills for the present and the future, it becomes imperative for both employees and organizations to relook at reskilling in order to stay relevant in the job market.

Source: People Matters 14 Sep, 2020

3 Steps for Taking Personal Development to the Next Level

 

There are two extreme reactions that can come out of people when the topic of personal development is brought up: an eye roll or enthusiasm to hear more. In the case of the former, many would say that it's obvious what needs to be done for self-improvement, i.e. good habits like diet/exercise, reading, sharpening time-management skills, networking/socializing, catering to hobbies, etc. But as with many other things, it's so much easier in theory than in practice, and this is why books, seminars, videos and programs that revolve around personal development fare so well. 

The need for guidance is especially urgent for entrepreneurs, most of whom are self-made and didn't necessarily grow up surrounded by role models for professional success. As a result, they are constantly battling their anxiety, fear and doubt.

Serial entrepreneur, author and speaker Geoff Hughes was one of these people. His formerly negative mindset, which mainly stemmed from his lack of self-confidence, led to a series of ups and downs in both his personal and professional life. However, it was only after embracing personal-development tactics that he became  more resilient, eventually earning seven figures and reaching new heights despite being diagnosed with Miller Fisher Syndrome (an autoimmune disease) on his 40th birthday.

Hughes now makes it his mission to help people unlock their true potential through media on his website and via his 12-week program called Monetize Your Mind. Both the program and the book are structured to help people eliminate self-doubt, so they can live a life full of purpose with wealth and health, leaving behind a legacy with zero regrets. 

I recently connected with Huges for a phone interview to discuss quick ways that entrepreneurs can get on the path to personal development, based on his own life experiences. Here's what he had to say.

Open your mind to change your perspective

Long before creating Monetize Your Mind, Hughes was going through an emotional rollercoaster. Many of his peers told him to look into personal development, and after hitting a series of lows, he opened his mind and gave into it.

"I wasn't feeling good about myself, and I decided to go on that first journey of personal development," he recalls. "I went to Landmark Forum, and it really enlightened me that it wasn't just my perspective that mattered. And I remember leaving that and saying I was going to change the world, I was going to be a different person, I was going to have different relationships."

Seek a mentor you can count on

When you start on the path to personal development, see if you can get yourself a mentor who is close to having achieved what it is that you want. They would not only be able to guide you on the ins and outs of reaching those goals, but they may also expose you to other brilliant minds that could collectively inspire you to be that much better.

Hughes recounts a time when, "I went to go look for this guy that was doing Internet marketing sales, because I just really wanted to get a better understanding of what he was doing. Coincidentally, he was starting a daily deals company as well in Vancouver. So I went over there, and we had a conversation. It was my first exposure to what it meant to be or what it was like to have a mentor. Thanks to him, I was exposed to different-thinking people, forward-thinking people, and became exposed to a whole different environment."

Educate yourself on what keeps you up at night

What is it that keeps you up at night? Maybe it's how to win over investors. Maybe it's how to get more leads. Maybe it's how to establish thought leadership or how to loosen up in business settings. Regardless of the subject, become a master on it so you can get greater clarity. For Hughes, concerns over his autoimmune disease threw a curveball in his self-development, and so he started to educate himself.

"Through that exploration, I became obsessed with the biomechanics of the brain, psychology and how everything worked," he explains. "And I decided to take all of the most amazing pieces that I learned and started integrating them into my life."

He charactierizes that process as "the most challenging thing that I'd ever experienced in my life, because I was recreating my self-identity. I came out on the other end fully aligned, but more than anything, I understood what was going on in the world, why people weren't seeing success, looking at things from a different economic visualization. I decided that I wanted to really make an impact on the world, and I've committed myself to teach people this stuff because, quite honestly, they don't teach this stuff in school."

Above all, Hughes is proof that we can absolutely overcome any negative effects of a shaky past. Success can be achieved for anyone, even if they don't have hotshot connections at their disposal. It all comes down to one's determination, persistence and perseverance. 

Source: Entrepreneur India 14 May, 2020

Jane Fraser to head Citi as CEO

With this appointment, Jane Fraser will become the first woman to ever lead a Wall Street bank when she succeeds CEO Michael Corbat in February.

Jane Fraser is currently head of Citi’s global consumer banking division, a major part of the bank that oversees checking and savings accounts but also Citi’s massive credit card business. She’s been with Citi for 16 years and had recently been tasked with leading the clean up of the bank’s troubled Latin American banking business. Now, as current CEO Michael Corbat prepares to exit the Citigroup, the company appoints Fraser as the next head. Fraser takes over from Corbat in February, 2021. 

Corbat led Citigroup for eight years, rebuilding the company after it nearly collapsed during the Great Recession and 2008 financial crisis. Now Corbat passes on the baton to Fraser at a crucial time not only for the Citigroup but for the entire economy.

Fraser will be the first woman to lead one of Wall Street’s big six banks, a major accomplishment in an industry, otherwise long dominated by men. She gets entrusted with the role at a time when the world undergoes a major global health crisis also damaging the economy in many ways.

In a prepared statement, Fraser said, “Citi is an incredible institution with a proud history and a bright future. I am excited to join with my colleagues in writing the next chapter.” 

Up until February, next year, the economy would still be coping from the impact of the pandemic. it’s almost certain the U.S. and global economies will still be dealing with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. 

Since early this year, banks have set aside billions to cover potential loan losses as businesses and customers alike have fallen behind on payments. With a vaccine still months away at least, and the U.S. economy in a deep recession, the problems for borrowers are expected only to get worse as the country heads into the fall and winter. How does Fraser help Citi survive and thrive amid the rapidly changing and uncertain business scenario is to look forward to. 

Source: People matter 11 Sep, 2020

Leadership without compassion is no leadership

 

But how many of us can truly live by this thought? Especially when feeling pressured, or overwhelmed or something even worse? Are leaders of today equipped with sensitivities that the workplace requires?

The current pandemic has taught us how important it is to live healthy and look after ourselves. It’s essential for our survival and well-being. And when I think about everything that is equally important, I am reminded of a quote from His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. In his book, The Art of Happiness, he writes “Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.”

Love. And compassion. 2 simple words. Deeply imbibed by the human race, needed for its existence. 

But how many of us can truly live by this thought? Especially when feeling pressured, or overwhelmed or something even worse? Are leaders of today equipped with sensitivities that the workplace requires? 

I’ve asked too many questions, without really making any headway. So let’s take a step back and try to look at how we can approach this.

What makes a Leader?

In my entrepreneurial journey, I’ve talked about the 6 Cs of Entrepreneurship: Curiosity, Clarity, Commitment, Conviction, Courage and Conquer. Those of us who can truly absorb these values, I believe, can go on to become leaders in their respective fields. But these are only the guiding stars that can help you in your journey. But what habits you inculcate in your journey, will shape your leadership. 

At times, we might only look at the roadmap as a bunch of numbers to achieve. A few milestones to reach. Increasing revenue, or else. Yes, these things are necessary too - that’s how the market is created. But at the end of the day, we’re all humans looking to make a mark. And we cannot do that without the love that will drive us to excel, or the compassion that is essential when we may fall. 

A truly great leader, already understands this. He doesn’t refer to the people of his organisations as ‘assets’ or ‘resources’ - and keeps his ‘people’ above the ‘performance’. If you already know of such leaders, congratulations. You’re blessed to be working in a great organisation. Such leaders will always value the human behind the employee number. And never vice-versa. No matter how pressurised he feels, or how angry he is seeing the sales figures. 

People > Process

Let me start this section by quoting the most popular question of HR managers: Where do you see yourself 5 years from now?

What HR managers are trying to figure out by asking this is quite simple. Is the person driven to excellence or is he okay with mediocrity. We all tend to think on similar lines, that driven individuals are going to take their organisations to excellence - while others might be content with mediocre work. This is where workplaces tend to begin focusing on processes. However, enforcing processes for the sake of following a process will never yield any amount of success. 

Let’s ask ourselves: do we remember managers who taught us how to drive business by sticking to processes? Or do we remember those who brought out the best in us, by showing us that a better way is always possible. By opening our mind to newer possibilities and being patient yet firm. 

Eventually, it will boil down to people. You can enforce processes to any degree within any organisation. But if the right people are not driving them, they aren’t going to succeed. 

Success thrives when leaders are compassionate 

Which brings me to my final point. I’ve had the pleasure of working with some great people before I ventured out on my own. Leaders who always took the time to sit down and have a talk. Person to person. Not manager to subordinate. 

Leaders that can wear the compassion hat with ease, tend to nurture a group of people who tend to want to do more. Not because of ulterior motives like more incentives. But because they genuinely care about the vision of their leader. And they can move heaven and earth to achieve that. 

You’ll find that such conducive work environments also tend to bring out the most innovative solutions to the most pressing problems. That’s because such mentors provide stability and psychological safety, which are key ingredients of a workplace to thrive. 

People are building the future, not machines

While the tech industry is abuzz with AI and ML, the terms don’t mean much till you account for the fact that they were all imagined and built and perfected by humans. Those creatures who will feed on compassion and love, and will empower others in the same manner.

Source: People matters 11 Sep, 2020

NSDC and LinkedIn partner to accelerate digital skills training for Indian youth

As per recent development, NSDC & LinkedIn have collaborated to accelerate digital skills training for Indian youth by providing free access to LinkedIn Learning resources, the partnership aims to upskill Indian youth and create a future-ready digital workforce.

With a vision to enhance employability and upskill India’s youth, National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) and LinkedIn, the world’s largest online professional network, have joined hands to provide access to free LinkedIn Learning resources for digital skills that are in demand in today’s economy. Under the partnership, 10 free LinkedIn Learning paths (consisting of 140 courses) for a range of in-demand tech jobs, will be made available for free on eSkill India digital platform until 31st March, 2021.

According to LinkedIn data, Indian professionals with digital skills are 20% more in demand than professionals without digital skills in 2020. With this in mind, the LinkedIn and NSDC collaboration aims to enable a future-ready digital workforce by providing access to free learning resources aligned with 10 in-demand jobs in today’s digital economy, identified using data from LinkedIn’s Economic Graph. The 10 free LinkedIn Learning paths will help India’s youth develop the skills needed for those jobs.

Each learning path includes a series of video content designed to help job-seekers develop core digital skills needed for an in-demand tech role, covering a broad range of skills from entry-level digital literacy to advanced product-based skills. Given the need for adaptable and transferable skills in the current times, LinkedIn is also making available 3 soft skills LinkedIn Learning paths for free on the eskill India portal.

As part of the partnership, LinkedIn will additionally be providing periodic labour market insights based on LinkedIn’s Economic Graph of 69+ million members in India. This will include in-demand skills, emerging jobs, and global hiring rates for NSDC to better understand the skilling ecosystem.

Dr. Manish Kumar, CEO & MD, National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), said, “The pace of digital transformation is changing our workplaces and the skills required for the future.  NSDC is facilitating online acquisition of skills through new-age platforms to create a technically competitive workforce. Our collaboration with LinkedIn reflects our commitment to advance digital competencies and skills of young professionals.”

Announcing the partnership, Ashutosh Gupta, India Country Manager, LinkedIn, said, “Upskilling will prove to be a crucial factor on India’s path to economic recovery. By making digital reskilling resources more accessible, we hope to level the playing field so that everyone has an opportunity to not just get back into the workforce, but to also reskill and obtain meaningful work. Our partnership with NSDC further reinforces our commitment to close the skills gap and help the Indian workforce upskill for jobs of the present and future. We hope to continue to use the power of our products and platform to build a more equitable and just future, and create economic opportunity for all.”

eSkill India, NSDC’s digital skilling initiative presently aggregates digital learning resources for 16.2 lakh+ minutes across various sectors and regional languages, providing the next generation of learners with the technology and skills needed to prosper in a digital economy.

Source: People matters 09 Sep, 2020

Google announces three-day weekend for employees

 

The new leave plan is meant for the employees' 'Collective well being.'

After extending its work-from-home model until 2021 summer, Google has announced a three-day weekend to ensure employees' well being during the Coronavirus pandemic upon us.

With an aim to make sure its employees are maintaining their peace of mind and not letting the work taking a toll over them, the tech giant has added an extra day to the two-day long weekend. The new leave plan is meant for the employees' 'Collective well being.'

The company is encouraging the entire workforce to take an extra day off and asked managers to support their teams for the same. As per a report, Google's internal forum for employees read, "We strongly encourage you to take this day off — and managers should actively support their team to reprioritize work commitments in order to do so."

Additionally, employees can also swap their third week off with another day if something of importance comes up on Friday. Even though the technical team doesn't have this provision as of now, Google is working on this to provide them with the benefits of relaxing.

Working professionals across the globe are celebrating this move. Companies across domains are taking care of their employees and launched policies that manage mental health. These trends are likely to go high in the coming days as well. 

Source: People matters 08 Sep, 2020

Becoming a More Patient Leader

 Leading effectively — especially during a crisis — takes patience. If you can’t retain your composure in the face of frustration or adversity, you won’t be able to keep others calm. When your direct reports show signs of strain, you need to support them, not get irritated. Solutions to new challenges usually take time to put into practice. However, in my work teaching and coaching high-potential leaders, I have seen that many just don’t have patience and don’t know how to find it. They want quick fixes and can’t wait for strategies to take hold. This tendency is only reinforced by our agile digital work world, which seems to prize hyperspeed.

To learn more about how patience affects a leader’s influence on direct reports during challenging times, I surveyed 578 full-time U.S. working professionals from a wide range of industries during the recent Covid-19 lockdown. Their average age was 39, most were college graduates, and more than half were in managerial roles themselves. I asked about their immediate supervisor’s leadership behaviors and level of patience and had them self-report their own levels of creativity, productivity, and collaboration. Their responses revealed that patience had a powerful effect: When leaders demonstrated it (meaning their employees’ ratings put them in the highest quartile), their reports’ self-reported creativity and collaboration increased by an average of 16% and their productivity by 13%.

I then decided to look at the impact patience had on different types of leadership behavior. Academic research traditionally breaks leadership down into two basic sets of behaviors – task-oriented and relationship-oriented. The best leaders consistently strike a balance between the two. I like to describe the most effective task-oriented behavior as futurist and the most effective relationship-oriented behavior as facilitator. Futurists create a powerful vision and outline the metrics needed to realize it. Facilitators foster collaboration and empower a team to reach a solution. The approaches are complementary, not mutually exclusive. But did patience affect them equally?

What I discovered was that patience made both approaches significantly more effective, though it increased collaboration and creativity an average of 6% more in concert with futurist behavior than in concert with facilitator behavior. The ability of patience to amplify the two approaches makes a lot of sense when you think about it. A futurist needs patience when explaining her vision to folks that may or may not “get it” right away or have doubts about the vision’s viability. A facilitator needs patience with a group’s collaborative process when members aren’t working well together or are taking longer than expected to come up with a solution.

How can leaders boost their patience?

If you want to build your patience, you need to recognize when it might be tested the most. If you know a challenge is coming, you can be more mindful about increasing your efforts to stay calm. A good way to manage the pressure you feel from the clock ticking is to reframe how you perceive time. Here are some helpful strategies:

Redefine the meaning of speed. The U.S. Navy SEALs are known for their saying “Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.” These rapid-response special forces teams are paradoxically methodical and patient in both planning and executing their time-critical missions. They have learned over 60 years of operating in crisis situations that working at a slow and smooth pace reduces mistakes and re-dos and in the end speeds up the mission. In short, they have learned that leaders shouldn’t “confuse operational speed (moving quickly) with strategic speed (reducing the time it takes to deliver value).” And this of course means that leaders need to clearly define what delivering value means from the start.

Thank your way to patience. Gratitude has powerful effects on a wide range of our attitudes and behaviors. For example, keeping a journal about things you are thankful for increases generosity with others and lowers stress. It is no wonder then that gratitude may also positively spill over to our ability to demonstrate patience. Research in experimental psychology has found when people feel more grateful, they are better at delaying gratification and are more patient.

In the middle of a crisis, it may be hard to feel grateful. However, as you practice gratitude – perhaps by keeping a journal or just by being mindful of the progress made by others – you may find hidden opportunities for thankfulness. Then, when you know something will trigger your impatience, you can take a moment to reflect on what is going well and what you’ve learned or have the potential to learn from the crisis.

The bottom line is, effective leadership behaviors are enhanced by a show of  patience. Engage patiently and you will see increases in your reports’ creativity, productivity, and collaboration. Rush and, sadly, you won’t see many benefits.

Source: HBR 02 Sep, 2020

Why Don’t More Organizations Understand the Power of Diversity and Inclusion?

Inclusive organizations consistently produce a competitive advantage over peers. So why don't more CEOs insist on racial diversity in their leadership ranks? asks James Heskett.

Several large organizations announced recently they would increase efforts to recruit persons of color, in part a response to the Black Lives Matter movement. Some of the same organizations made similar announcements in the past—yet the numbers of persons with minority backgrounds in those organizations have remained about the same.

This is in the face of research findings that organizations with significant minority representation are stronger than their peers. A McKinsey & Company study in May of top executive teams in more than a thousand organizations in 15 countries concluded that the most diverse organizations have an edge in their markets. These firms are “more innovative—stronger at anticipating shifts in consumer needs and consumption patterns that make new products and services possible, potentially generating a competitive edge.”

Of equal significance is a finding that the top third of the organizations in the study are pulling away from the other two-thirds in diversity and inclusion, registering increasingly higher probabilities of being the most profitable. They are exhibiting progress in achieving greater gender and ethnic diversity, and increasingly positive impacts on bottom-line performance, according to the researchers.

Differentiating between diversity and inclusion

I differentiate between diversity and inclusion by thinking of progress in diversity as depending primarily on successful recruiting of diverse talent. It can be measured. It’s what we see on the corporate dashboard of performance measures. It is quite likely that the rich get richer in this effort; organizations exhibiting greater diversity are more attractive to talented people with diverse backgrounds.

Talent retention depends to a large degree on inclusion. At least that’s what people of diverse backgrounds tell us. Inclusion is related to such things as “voice”—the belief by workers that they are heard—as well as recognition and equal opportunity in rewards and promotions. Harder to quantify than diversity, inclusion is more nuanced and measured in comments in interviews and surveys. It doesn’t provide the numbers and simple headlines often associated with diversity.

Some organizations are good at both diversity and inclusion; others can’t seem to get either right. Some companies, for example, are strong recruiters but lack the ability to be inclusive of talent with diverse backgrounds. Try as they might, they are not making progress on diversity. Instead, they have low retention rates for their diverse talent. In many cases, the “last in, first out” phenomenon may apply in times of crisis.

The key to achieving both diversity and inclusion is committed leadership at all levels, not just a few at the top who have already made it. Transformation has to take place on the front lines and the middle levels as well. This takes effort and time, perhaps more than many organizations are willing to invest.

Inclusion may present too many challenges; it requires leaders with the hearts and minds to understand personal challenges and provide mentorship for all of their direct reports, listening to them, and being willing to accept new ideas from them. They must recognize those with diverse backgrounds as resources rather than consumers of their effort.

Achieving these objectives requires more than training. It involves constant measurement, counseling, and follow-up with managers at all levels in the organization to produce results. Given the potential payoff, is this too much to expect of well-meaning leaders? Why don’t more organizations “get it” regarding diversity and inclusion? What do you think?

Source: Harvard Business School 31 Aug, 2020

74% of the professionals willing to work remotely

Flex workspace provider Awfis has launched a remote working report, to offer a glimpse into the changing needs and preferences of the urban Indian workforce concerning their place of work post the onset of COVID-19 and nationwide lockdown. 

The online survey brings to the forefront various challenges and opportunities employees have faced and identified with this new mode of operation. Additionally, the survey also focuses on employees' willingness and ability to continue to work remotely from their home as well as infrastructural requirements to aid them to operate effectively, amongst others. The remote working report also puts forth some vital aspects that organizations would need to consider while devising their long-term remote working strategies.  

The survey was conducted over a period of two months (June and July 2020) across seven metros in India, and analyzed inputs from 1000 employees across diverse industries. 

Key Motivations

• 74% of the respondents are willing to work remotely, and 80% pointed out that their job roles can be performed from a remote environment
• 29% of respondents reported saving INR 3-5k monthly as a result of working from home, which was otherwise spent on commuting, clothing, food, etc. 
• 60% of employees usually spend more than an hour in commute to and from the office. Therefore, due to work from home now, on average, an employee saves 1.47 hours of travel time every day. This translates to time worth 44 additional working days in a year.

Therefore, the positive sentiment to work from remote locations can be attributed to factors like significant cost savings, considerable time savings, better time management, and self-discipline. 

Key Challenges 

Isolation - 27% of the employees feel they lack opportunities for engaging with colleagues and developing strong networks. The inability to meet and collaborate might impact employees' creativity.

Work-life balance - 43% of employees report the inability to maintain their work-life balance while working remotely. Now that the lines between home and work are blurring, companies need to create policies that describe clear demarcations between the two, to make remote work sustainable in the long run.

Lack of adequate space & equipment - While 47% of the employees surveyed report a lack of comfortable desk and chair, 71% feel that they will be successful in working from home if they have a dedicated area to work from.

The way forward- Work from anywhere  

A hybrid model - a combination of virtual and physical environments, will come to define the future of how India works thereby giving rise to the emergence of distributed workspaces that will cut across physical headquarters, satellite offices, and homes pan India.

For example, a company with a strength of 100 employees will follow a 60/30/10 split for deciding the work location (work from home, work near home, or work from the main office) of its employees depending on work profiles, work style, and individual preferences. The coworking sector is poised to become 20% of the total CRE market in the next 2-3 years, as compared to the current 5%. 

Amit Ramani, CEO & Founder, Awfis, said, "The current situation has given way to a new style of working – Work from Anywhere. Organizations and individuals are gradually adjusting to this new normal. To be effective, organizations across diverse industries need to understand the changing requirements & challenges faced by their employees and provide them with the required resources. By means of this survey, we were able to deconstruct the employee perspective and share critical insights that would help managers and organizations in devising sustainable remote working strategies.”

 Source: People matters 02 Sep, 2020