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.

Poor people have big TV's. Rich people have big Libraries...

This is one of my favorite Jim Rohn quotes. Do you spend more money on books or big televisions? One thing that has always amazed me is when an individual will not think twice to purchase a new car or dress, yet choke on his tongue when he consider spending a small amount of money on books.

Let's see why successful people spend time on books, education and knowledge.

Desire vs Ambition : A difference 

We all desire a bigger house, a better job, and a newer car, but only very few are willing to do what it takes to get there. The habits of the most successful people in the world are not a secret. In fact, they are pretty widely known. Every self-made millionaire and billionaire businessperson invest in their own education. They have ambition, not just a desire. This means they read books and trade publications, attend seminars and workshops.

Gear up for success

If you have the ambition, you will set the conditions up for your success. If you don’t read, if you don’t attend conferences and workshops, it’s not too late. Start now! As they say, the best time to plant an oak tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is NOW!

Below are few home libraries for some CEOs of leading companies

Bill Gates Library 

An enormous library houses a manuscript Gates paid more than $30 million for.

The 2,100-square-foot library has a domed roof and two secret bookcases, including one that reveals a hidden bar. On the ceiling you'll find a quote from "The Great Gatsby" that reads: "He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it."

The library is home to the Codex Leicester, a 16-century Leonardo da Vinci manuscript that Gates bought at auction for $30.8 million in 1994.

Elon Musk Library

Billionaire Elon Musk says he was 'raised by books'. Books have been an important part of the Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s life. In an interview with Esquire magazine, Musk said when people ask him how he learnt to build rockets, he often likes to say it is because he reads books. He have a towering library with white selves in his 20,000-square-foot French Nouveau mansion. Musk also use his iPhone for reading books

As a child, he would often retreat into fantasy and science fiction, to cope with being picked on, according to a profile on him in the New Yorker magazine, and these books helped him shape his future self.

Jeff Bezos Library

In 1994, attracted by the rapid growth of Internet, Bezos quit his job as VP of D.E. Shaw & Co. and moved to Seattle. During the cross-country drive from New York to Seattle he wrote the business plan for an online book store that was called Cadabra. Which he later renamed as Amazon. The e-commerce billionaire bought a 26,900-square-foot former museum-turned-residential home in Washington D.C., which is now the largest house in the nation’s capital. The house have two large libraries which act as Study for Bezos

I would like to end this article with another famous quote from Jim Rohn…

”Formal education will make you a living, self-education will make you a fortune.”