The post Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs): Employee Listening Study in Canadian Municipalities – 2026 appeared first on TalentMap.

The post State of Employee Listening in Canadian Municipalities – 2026 appeared first on TalentMap.

The tension is real, and managing it effectively requires rethinking how we approach work. That’s why Sean Fitzpatrick, founder and CEO of TalentMap, invited Jody Thompson, co-founder and CEO at CultureRX®, LLC, and co-developer of the Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE) model, and Nicole Chamblin, leadership and team productivity coach at Visions Productivity Solutions, to join him for an engaging discussion about the underlying assumptions we make about when and where work happens.

Check out the highlights of the webinar and watch the full session on demand. 

Do People Need to Be in the Office to Get Their Work Done?

The traditional view of the office as the primary workplace is being challenged, as the forced shift to remote work taught us that people can be productive in any location. “People now have seen what’s possible, working remote, working from home,” Sean said. Moving forward, focus less on mandating a certain number of days in the office, and more on understanding the specific needs and requirements of each role. From there, you can empower employees to work in the way that allows them to be most productive and engaged. “People want one thing, and that’s choice,” Jody said. “The office can be there — I’m not anti-office — but the office is a tool.”

The answer to whether people need to be in the office is not a simple yes or no — it depends on the job responsibilities and what environment best supports the results the organization needs. For example, a surgeon or receptionist typically needs to be on-site to achieve their goals effectively, while an accountant may achieve better results working from home. These examples underscore that choice must start with clarity around job responsibilities and what is required to to achieve performance goals. 

“Let’s get clarity around your roles and responsibilities, and then you decide: Which ones do you need to be in the office to do and which ones can you get done effectively from home?” Nicole said. “And as long as the work gets done, the work gets done right?” Rather than imposing a one-size-fits-all policy, engage more with employees to understand the unique needs and preferences of each individual and team.

“What are the ideas you have to improve [your role]?” Sean suggests asking. “But it all predicates on an understanding of the results. What are you trying to achieve? And then you have ideas geared towards that.” By involving employees in this decision-making process, you can create a more tailored and effective hybrid work strategy that aligns with both employee needs and organizational goals.

Does Employee Presence Equal Productivity?

The answer to whether employee presence equals productivity is… it depends.

Before the pandemic, managers assumed team members were working because they saw them at work. But productivity isn’t about where employees are; it’s about the results they achieve. “Let’s talk about the work, period — not location,” Jody said. “Time and presence is the old currency at work.” 

For many roles, employees can be just as productive working from anywhere — provided they have the right tools, support and clarity around expectations. However, if a role requires being on-site to achieve results — such as working on a collaborative innovation project or engaging in activities that require physical presence — and employees are not showing up, then the issue shifts. It’s not a policy or compliance problem: it becomes a performance issue. Giving employees the choice to decide where and how they work best is key, as long as their decisions align with achieving desired outcomes.

Encouraging employees to come into the office should focus on opportunities that enhance collaboration, spark innovation and foster connection. In-person interactions can lead to valuable conversations, build relationships and ultimately drive change. At the same time, employees should clearly understand the benefits of working in-person for specific tasks while being trusted to decide when remote work allows them to perform better.

This dynamic approach requires managers to rethink how they lead. “Are we clear on what real productivity means for our organization, in each role at each level?” Nicole said. But in many cases, that clarity is lacking, even at the highest levels. “How do we help a manager work with their staff to get clear on the role,” Sean said, “when the role might be not fully clear from the top?” Setting clear performance expectations ensures that leadership, managers and employees align on what success looks like — whether in the office or elsewhere.

To support this shift, invest in training and development programs that help managers focus on outcomes rather than inputs. Teach them how to set clear, measurable goals, provide meaningful feedback and empower their teams to take ownership of their work. When managers are equipped to lead for results, it becomes easier to balance flexibility with accountability, creating a workplace where productivity thrives — regardless of location.

Can Old Ways of Working Engage an Evolving Workforce?

Our reliance on outdated models or “how we’ve always done it” is putting engagement on the line. As the workforce continues to evolve, with younger generations entering the job market, businesses are facing increasing pressure to adapt to their changing needs and expectations.

Younger workers are rejecting rigid, directive workplace norms, Nicole said. Instead, they demand alignment between their work and personal lives, prioritizing flexibility, purpose and meaningful contributions. If employers fail to meet these needs, these employees are willing to seek opportunities elsewhere, she warned. To attract and retain this new generation of talent, you must be willing to embrace a more flexible and purpose-driven approach to work. 

The path forward may not be easy, but by shifting your mindset and approach, you can create a workplace that meets the needs of both the organization and its employees. By empowering employees with choice, equipping managers to lead for results, and embracing the evolving workforce, you can unlock the full potential of your workforce and thrive in the new world of work.

To learn more about navigating location requirements, watch the full webinar on demand.

The post Rethinking the 9-to-5: Where and When Work Truly Happens appeared first on TalentMap.

The post Adopting Engagement as a Mindset With Ashley Ridgeway-Washington appeared first on TalentMap.

“We fix work by fixing ourselves first,” she notes, stressing that personal agency is critical in navigating the complexities of modern careers.

Our conversation touches on how employees can redefine success on their own terms, how leaders must shift their roles from managers to mentors and why self-leadership isn’t just a personal responsibility but a collective one. Listen in to begin rethinking your relationship with work.

Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube Music

Self-Leadership: Moving Beyond Career Management

Laurie challenges the typical understanding of leadership as something bestowed by title or position. Instead, she suggests that self-leadership is about internal growth and making deliberate choices. “Self-leadership … is the art and science of individual accountability,” she explains. Laurie’s view isn’t about striving for the next promotion but about taking responsibility for the full scope of your life — both in and out of the workplace.

She observes that the modern workforce, especially younger generations, are increasingly uninterested in rigid career ladders and more focused on aligning their work with their personal values. “More and more younger workers want to be considered part of a collective. They like a brand, they like a mission, they like an idea,” she says. “But they can manage themselves. They believe in self-leadership — and they actually need less from managers.”

Autonomy in the workplace doesn’t mean complete independence, but rather a more fluid relationship between individual agency and organizational culture.

The concept of self-leadership also requires a deep understanding of when to take ownership and when to adjust your environment. Laurie challenges employees to ask themselves, “Why did I enter this workplace, and what am I bringing to it?” This introspection is at the heart of her argument: success at work starts with understanding your own values and aligning them with your actions.

The Evolving Role of Leaders and HR

Effective leadership is a partnership, not a hierarchy. Laurie’s vision of leadership is one where managers act as enablers, not just supervisors. “We have a real opportunity for leaders and managers to be advisors, to be mentors, to be coaches — or at least not to be the task masters or task mistresses that they were back in the 1980s,” she says.

HR plays a pivotal role in this evolving model. Laurie argues that HR professionals must rethink their purpose beyond compliance and policies. She challenges them to become facilitators of leadership by enabling managers and employees alike to step into roles of self-leadership. “You are creating an HR business partner, a people business partner, who’s really focused on resourcing when needed, enabling, coaching and getting training into the organization,” Laurie says. “But it’s not your local HR lady’s job to plan the picnic anymore.”

Laurie suggests that organizations should foster environments where both leaders and employees engage in meaningful, reciprocal conversations. This kind of environment creates space for innovation and employee engagement rooted in real connections, not mandated procedures.

Life Crafting: Redefining Success Holistically

Laurie introduces the concept of “life crafting” as a broader, more integrated approach to success — one that blends personal fulfillment with professional achievement. She pushes the conversation beyond traditional “work-life balance,” framing the issue instead as an ongoing, intentional process of designing your entire life. She encourages listeners to ask: Who am I? What do I want, not just at work, but in life?

During the pandemic, many people were forced to rethink their careers in the context of personal priorities. Laurie believes this reflective moment isn’t over and should continue. Her idea of life crafting invites us to continually reassess not just our jobs, but our relationships, hobbies and community engagements. For Laurie, the future of work is deeply interconnected with the choices we make outside of it.

Laurie’s approach offers an important caveat: work can fund an interesting life, but we can’t rely on work to fill emotional voids or serve as the sole source of meaning. “If we’re not engaging in relationships with family members, we’re not connected in our community, if we’re not out there doing volunteer work, if we’re not learning and growing — we’re not thriving,” she says. “Work is never going to satisfy that pit.” This holistic perspective on work pushes the boundaries of how we define success and well-being in the modern world.

People in This Episode

Laurie Ruettimann: LinkedIn

Resources

Punk Rock HR

Betting on You: How to Put Yourself First and (Finally) Take Control of Your Career

Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

Transcript

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, we do have a 21st century workforce working within 20th century parameters where people have to stay employed for a lot of reasons under this idea of full-time employment because in America that’s how we get our benefits or in some countries you rise up the ranks and you get to a leadership role. And more and more younger workers want to be considered part of a collective. They like a brand, they like a mission, they like an idea, but they can manage themselves. They believe in self-leadership and they actually need less from managers. And so we’ve got this real disconnect between the way our systems are structured and what the 21st century worker actually wants.

Sean Fitzpatrick:

Hi, welcome to another episode of Leading Through Listening, the podcast where we’ll dive into real stories of how leaders have transformed their employee experience. We’ll explore topics like innovative ways to build leadership by focusing on how to ask the right questions of your people. We also cover how to understand what they’re saying and most importantly, strategies to involve them in the change you want to make.

I’m your host, Sean Fitzpatrick, and today I’m thrilled to welcome someone who embodies what it means to lead with intention and empathy. Our guest today is Laurie Ruettimann, an acclaimed leadership expert, LinkedIn Learning instructor and thought leader who has helped countless organizations transform their leadership practices. Laurie’s LinkedIn Learning courses have garnered over two million views. They cover leadership transformation, management readiness, self-leadership and more.

She challenges traditional management mindsets and guides leaders towards creating workplaces where employees are heard, valued and empowered. Laurie is known for her no-nonsense approach to leadership and her passion for helping managers navigate the complexity of the modern workforce. Today we’ll explore some of her insights on how leaders can ask the right questions, listen openly and lead in a way that fosters loyalty, growth and transformation. You can learn more about Laurie and her work at her website, LaurieRuettimann.com. Laurie, welcome to the show.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, Sean, thank you so much. I’m really honored to be here. How you doing today?

Sean Fitzpatrick:

Very good, very good, thank you. You have a very interesting journey. You started off in the HR world and then you’ve sort of migrated or navigated yourself into a real expert on helping advise and challenge the way HR thinks about itself. And I guess what I’d like to start with before we get into some of the details on leadership is just tell me about your journey. How did you get here?

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, Sean, it’s a bunch of bad mistakes and accidents that brought me to where I am today, like anybody’s journey, right? But also good leaders and mentors and people who had wisdom along the way. You’re right, I did start out in human resources and worked with people who are great and worked with people who maybe should have had other jobs. And in the process I learned that we fix work for other people by fixing it for ourselves first. And I really took that lesson to heart and asked myself, do I want to work in HR or do I have a passion around leadership and work and the economy and power and politics? And when I kind of figured out what my core values were, that’s when I decided that I wanted to go out and consult and advise and more importantly write and speak about the world of work.

Sean Fitzpatrick:

I read your book, I thought it was really good. Betting On You, I thought that was a fantastic book around bringing this mindset of just taking responsibility for yourself, whatever role or career you’re in and sort of driving your own career forward. So it’d be great to hear a little bit about why you end up writing that book. I often find when you’re writing, it does two things. It conveys information and value to others in the published form, but it also crystallizes your thinking and clarifies your thinking. That whole process does that. So it’d be interesting to hear a little bit about how that book might have helped your thinking around leading yourself.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, thank you for asking. I’ve been blogging for many years and talking about the world of work, and one of the things about storytelling is that it’s always better when you can include the personal in a business story. And so that was my approach to blogging for many years. And people kept asking me to write a book and tell more of my story and I thought, all right, I don’t want to write a memoir, but I want to write something that’s fun and interesting that is both for the leader and the worker around my thoughts around career management and leadership and presence and all the good stuff. And I have this one thesis and that thesis is that, as I mentioned before, we fix work by fixing ourselves first and imbued in that is this idea of self-leadership, which is the art and the science of individual accountability.

And even when I’m talking about human resources or I’m talking about the unemployment numbers or the world economy, I am always really always talking about self-leadership because I think we are individually responsible for our experiences in this world. And so throughout the book, there are stories around how I took individual accountability both personally and professionally, but also how I teach it and how I make sure people see individual accountability rooted in leadership, rooted in well-being, rooted in the employee experience.

When I think about the employee experience, for years I thought it was a leadership responsibility, but now I see through research, through consulting, that it’s also the employee’s responsibility. That if they’re not getting what they need, it’s time to look inward and ask why are my values so misaligned and what can I do to fix this? So that’s really the heart and soul of Betting On You, and thanks for the really great review. It’s been almost four years since it came out and it’s always nice to hear that people enjoy it.

Sean Fitzpatrick:

I’m glad you brought that up, that sort of engagement or the employee experience, it is a two-way street. So it’s not just, ‘Hey, leader, manager, boss, what have you done for me lately?’ It’s that individual responsibility of how do I craft my role? How do I craft the relationships that I have? And that brings me, going from your book to some of your LinkedIn Learning courses that you’ve authored.

You talk a lot about some of those courses around self-leadership. I guess it’d be interesting to hear from a leadership or manager, what does that look like? What does practicing, an example of self-leadership might look like? In particular how it helps others, and I’m going to make this complicated here for you, bringing in your HR background now, how does HR help leaders, managers, individual contributors take more of a self-leadership role? What are some things that they could do?

Laurie Ruettimann:

I think it’s really fascinating when we talk about self-leadership because rooted in self-leadership, individual accountability, is this belief in oneself that we can control our destiny, that we can control our outputs. And right off the bat, so many people enter into a work relationship and don’t feel they have any control. 

And so my question to those individual workers is why did you enter into that relationship in the first place? That it was a one-way relationship, knowing that the environment may be toxic, may be terrible, it may have limited growth, it may not be a good values match, how did you get here? That’s a huge metaphysical question, but I think when HR professionals are dealing with employees who are dissatisfied, instead of trying to create programs or address things through meetings, it’s a simple question to ask to the worker like, what’s going on in your life that brought you here in this moment to my office where you are so absolutely dissatisfied and maybe can we talk to the EAP? I think that’s a real good resource.

A lot of times we live lives outside of work that make us so desperate for a job identity and we bring all of that baggage to our jobs and wonder why our jobs let us down. And so the point of Betting On You, at least from a worker perspective, is that you could really work in any kind of job. You could have any sort of career, but it’s important for you to know who you are, what you stand for, and what you won’t stand for, and also to live a big, bold, interesting life outside of work and bring that good stuff to your job. Know that your job is supposed to fund the really interesting life outside of work, not that a job is supposed to fill a void in your soul because the rest of your life isn’t going well.

And I think that was an interesting and important discussion to have around the pandemic when the world was difficult and when the world was bleak, people were looking to work. And I think work can have a part in making us feel satisfied and important and like we contribute. But if we’re not engaging in relationships with family members, we’re not connected in our community, if we’re not out there doing volunteer work, if we’re not learning and growing, we’re not thriving, work is never going to satisfy that pit. There’s no HR program to make somebody want to learn. HR can’t make people curious. And I think once we start having more honest conversations about that, well then we’re on the right path to really talking about true “engagement.”

Sean Fitzpatrick:

I tend to agree with you, but it’s also challenging because people are so busy and you’ve just a lot going on to have someone sit down and you’re asking them to reflect in many ways, on some really hard things that they may never have reflected on before or if they may have thought of but quickly dismissed because the work to go through that is not easy. And in fact, I would almost argue you go through that type of self-reflection almost throughout your entire life. You’re often reflecting and changing and reflecting. One of the things you hear a lot about, especially with the Baby Boomers retiring and so on, a lot of them, once they retire, they become depressed or more anxious than when they were [working].

In fact, you hear about them now, a lot of them are deciding to go back to work or taking back work on part. So the whole focus is when do I retire, what’s my number, what’s my date? And then when they get there after maybe a honeymoon period of three or four months, six months, they’re like, my life’s not as cracked up as I wanted it to be. How do I get back in? And that’s often what they turn to. May not be the right thing or they may not need, but they turn to work to fulfill them again. So it’s a challenge because to get people to sit down and focus on themselves and reflect on themselves is something that people don’t do a lot of or not everyone does.

Laurie Ruettimann:

But that’s the beauty of a new model of leadership. Because before we would have these leaders who were really focused on KPIs or MBOs back in the Gen X day when I started out, and now we have a real opportunity for leaders and managers to be advisors, to be mentors, to be coaches, or at least not to be the task masters or task mistresses that they were back in the 1980s, right?

Sean Fitzpatrick:

The environment we’re in now really enables that, or at least the opportunity is there now compared to 50 years ago where sometimes you literally didn’t have that options of flex. But the options available to a lot of people now in terms of the type of work they can do, where they can work from, how they do their work, how often, there’s so much more opportunity and flexibility it probably is a good idea if someone isn’t happy to now take that chance to sit down and figure out what is it that I want to do? Because there is so much out there that you can do.

And I wondered, maybe you might’ve noticed that, I think Covid helped accelerate maybe some of that thinking because people had a break and they slowed down and said, you know what? I don’t know if I still want to do this type of work. I want to maybe do something different or I want to explore, because it forced them to be home with their family every day. It forced them to see different sides of themselves and then this is not so bad. It’s a little bit different to maybe I sort of enjoyed that a little bit more than I thought I did. So I wonder if you saw that, that it might have accelerated the thinking around how to think about work and where it fits in your world in terms of your mindset.

Laurie Ruettimann:

I think that’s a really important point. There were so many of us that were forced to re-examine our lives during the pandemic, and now with this pushback towards return to office or limited flexibility, many people think, “Oh, I don’t have the freedom to do that anymore. I can’t think critically about what I want to do with my life.” And I would say the opportunity to do that is when you have a paycheck versus when you don’t. So if you’re in an opportunity where you’re feeling really pressured and you’re feeling like, oh, I have to perform, sure, you have to perform, but it’s important to think about can I perform in a different way that serves me but also allows me to have a work ethic, allows me to do what I need to do at work and do it with excellence, but also come home and live a really great life?

I think what happens is people just get so caught up in the moment that they don’t do anything well, and that’s often by design. We started the conversation talking about designing our jobs, job crafting, I really believe in taking a step back and doing life crafting. Who am I? Where do I want to go? Back in the day, we used to joke about interview questions like where do you want to be in five years? And you’re like, I don’t know where I want to be in five years. Well, I hate to tell you, you should really think about where you want to be in five years because five years is not guaranteed to you. Five years is a gift.

And the more agency you can have in making your decisions, the happier you and your family are going to be and the better you’re going to perform at work. So take an active role, that is the essence of self-leadership. And not only Sean, does it apply to workers, it applies to leaders, too. Leaders have a higher disengagement rate than employees at this point. Managers are exhausted. They’re tired. And so again, we fix work for others by fixing it for ourselves first. Start to address your issues. You’re the canary in the coal mine, and when you fix it for yourself, you’re going to have a positive downstream effect on your entire organization.

Sean Fitzpatrick:

I like that concept of life crafting. It sort of opens up even broader beyond just the work and thinking about, well, what do I want? Yes, work’s a component of it, but I’ve got a broader sort of experience out here. How do I sort of think about all aspects of my life and how do I craft it in a way that works for my personality, my style, what I like, what I don’t like, that type of thing. I really like that concept. If you haven’t already, you should trademark that one.

Laurie Ruettimann:

There are no new ideas in this world. And so life crafting, taking a more human-centered approach to work, all of this is out in the ether. And I’m inspired by great thinkers like Amy Edmondson and Brené Brown and Dan Pink, and they’ve been inspired by others and we’re just all kind of in this really interesting ecosystem of rethinking the world of work. And I’m really grateful for the leadership of others and hopefully people learn from me as well.

Sean Fitzpatrick:

Well, you brought up Amy Edmondson and she has done some really interesting work, particularly around this concept of psychological safety in the workplace. Well, you could almost argue psychological at home too would probably be important sometimes. But really the whole concept I think describes work environments or any environment where candor is expected and you can really speak up without fear or fear of retribution that you might say something that’ll get you into trouble because you’re saying it with the mindset of here’s what’s happening, here’s the way I see the world.

You’re not trying to say things that are going to be vindictive, but you might say things that might upset somebody in the group or environment you’re with, but that’s okay because that might be the way someone seeing it. So that whole fear of retribution is still prevalent both in today’s workplace and today’s homes. And how do you create an environment where we can speak up as to things we like about our work or about other environments and we don’t like so much about our work, get people in a safe spot where they can start to explore these ideas and concepts.

Laurie Ruettimann:

I’m really lucky to be friendly with Amy Edmondson. She’s been on my podcast Punk Rock HR twice, and she has this new book out that’s all about intelligent failure. I believe it’s called The Right Kind of Wrong. And what I’ve learned from Amy over the years is that psychological safety doesn’t give us the freedom to just show up and complain about things and expect that our bosses are going to listen, and it doesn’t give us the freedom to go wacky at work and try things that aren’t intelligent. 

Instead, she really believes in almost like a beta-test approach to the world of work. So for example, if you work in an environment that’s really risk-adverse and doesn’t have a history of psychological safety, it doesn’t mean that in very small ways you can create psychological safety in your own micro environment. You can listen to people, you can test the water with the people around you and create a movement that gets a little bit bigger and a little bit broader hopefully within your organization.

She doesn’t say, “Wait for leaders to just open up this world of psychological safety.” She says, “Try it with yourself. Try it with your community first.” And that’s really inspiring to me. Make sure you’re not so critical of failure. Make sure that when you’re making a new venture into something different at work, you’re going slow and you’re thinking through this process intelligently. It’s almost like don’t wait for others, although hope that others catch up. Try it for yourself, and go slow and go small. And so these little experiments Amy talks about in her work have really motivated me and inspired me.

Oftentimes, we just expect everything once we try something new, everything is either great or it’s not. And with binary thinking, you’re set out to failure. Don’t throw the baby out with a bathwater. Just because you work in an environment where an idea was shut down doesn’t mean that you can’t take a little nibble at the apple in a different way down the road.

Sean Fitzpatrick:

That’s interesting because I know often we do employee feedback, employee surveys, and often that’s one of the comments, “Oh, we provide ideas, but no one listens or our manager never listens to us or leaders don’t care what we say.”

Laurie Ruettimann:

Yeah, not every idea is great, by the way, that’s what you say to those employees.

Sean Fitzpatrick:

That’s true. You’re right? Not every idea is great. And some of them, they might have listened and said, “Well, it’s not a good idea. I can’t do anything with it.” But I also like the idea of advising or coaching team to say well, maybe that approach didn’t work, but try a different one, experiment with a different one. That whole idea of taking small bites as opposed to painting everything with, oh, it’s just not safe to speak up here.

Well, maybe just in that environment, that time, it wasn’t, but maybe you could try over here or try a different way there. I like that concept of experimenting, taking little bites. It sort of reminds me a little bit of agile thinking, agile [inaudible 00:19:26], we just try something, evaluate it, make some changes, try something again on little sort of sprints or adjustments and work towards something that you’re going there in a iterative type of way as opposed to a big jump or a big gap going from here to there immediately type of thinking. So, interesting.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Sean, I have often heard from leaders and workers alike, “Oh, this environment is toxic.” But when you’re unhappy, every environment feels toxic. And a lot of times when people speak up or people are in work environments, they’ll just up and quit and they’ll go on to the next job. And lo and behold, six months, a year later, they’re still unhappy. And that is called the arrival fallacy. You get promoted, you get a new job, you relocate, everything’s supposed to be great, and nothing has changed because you haven’t changed. 

And so for me, one of the lessons I’ve learned in life from working with really talented individuals, from studying them, is that if you expect change and you hit a roadblock, it’s not enough just to say, well, this is the roadblock and it’s stupid that it’s here. It’s really important to look at yourself and look at what you did to get there and see if there maybe could have been a different approach.

And I think that’s core and critical to self-leadership: Looking at your role in this. Not blaming yourself, I’m not talking about victim-blaming, but really assessing is my strategy right? Is my attitude right? Are the questions I’m asking, right? Are my expectations even realistic? And if they’re not, what can I do to better align what I want for my life and my career with my reality?

Sean Fitzpatrick:

What about thinking about maybe from an individual to a team level? So I’m thinking about HR in particular as a group or department. As a group, sometimes you’ll hear them complain individually, oh, well, no one listens to HR or HR has power. 

Laurie Ruettimann:

Wait, HR people complain?

Sean Fitzpatrick:

I would really like to see HR become much more leadership-driven, thinking differently about the HR role, transforming their role really to a place where they can be a force in organizations.

I really do think that’s happening, in that people have so many options now, the value of human capital is so high and HR is really, or should be, in a really good position to have a big influence on the organization, but they still seem to struggle getting beyond the administrative, policy-driven side of the business and not really business advisors to the chief executive officer or chief administrator or whoever it is, and the leaders in the organization. And I don’t know, what advice would you give to leaders and managers in HR that want to transform, want to change, but they can’t or they’re struggling getting their department to where they want to move to?

Laurie Ruettimann:

So I have three things to say. First of all, the head of human resources at any organization is the CEO. The people responsible for delivering a great employee experience with great benefits and a wonderful work environment and challenging work and feedback and all of that are the leaders who report to the CEO. And then HR should be the talented group of individuals to make that happen. Oftentimes, we get the HR department that the CEO wants, which is the department to clean up people messes that they don’t want to deal with. And in that way for decades, for almost a century, HR is given a bad rep.

On one hand, CEOs are like you, Sean. They’re like, “Oh, we hate our HR department, they call me all the time.” And they’re like, “Oh, my HR leader is terrible.” Can you help me find a new one? And the answer is no because you don’t want an HR leader who’s truly focused on enabling your leaders and your managers to lead people in a 21st century economy. You just want someone to babysit. You want someone to blame when talented people won’t stay at your organization. 

Any HR issue is not really the fault of HR, it’s the fault of leaders and managers making decisions about how they choose to interact with their “human capital,” their best asset, the most important thing at the organization.

So I always take issue when people say that HR professionals, they’re wishy-washy or they don’t get things done because they’re not really given a mandate in most organizations to get anything done. They are given a confusing amount of messages internally. And from there, they try to eke out a people strategy, a technology strategy, a recruitment strategy, and it’s a mess, but it’s not a mess because of the individuals doing the work. It’s a mess because of the CEO and the leadership team.

If you work at a company like that, vote with your feet and get the heck out. Go find an organization that truly values you. You know, many HR leaders these days followed the advice that we were giving out in the early 2000s. They have their MBA. They’ve run their own family businesses or small businesses. They’re leading volunteer organizations. They are true business professionals, but the only job opportunities out there are these mealy-mouthed, old-school HR positions. So if that’s one you find yourself in, go find a job in operations, go find a job at a consulting firm, go find a job somewhere else, and force HR departments to change by making it difficult for your CEO to attract talented HR people. That’s what I say. What do you think about that, Sean?

Sean Fitzpatrick:

When I think about HR, HR’s job is not to improve. Because often when we work with our clients, they think, well, that’s HR, they should look after employee engagement or they should look after job [satisfaction]. And I’m like, well, no, it’s the leader’s role to engage their people. HR are there to facilitate, to maybe help the leader do a better job or help employees and help them with their direction and to provide the tools to be the grease in the process, but they’re not the core gears.

I really agree with that, but boy, it’s challenging in a lot of organizations. Even managers still think, well, that’s a HR initiative, that’s a HR job and it’s really getting that mindset changed over time that no, HR or people is the job of the leader. HR is just to help facilitate that and make it go as smooth as possible, but they’re not responsible for engaging. You are. So I really like the think with your feet or decide with your feet if you’re not liking it there and you don’t try to change something when you have a leadership team that’s not willing to take on the responsibility that they really should be taking on.

Laurie Ruettimann:

I think there’s an opportunity for technology here to really change the game and it is changing the game. When I worked in human resources, you had an HR generalist, you had a benefits specialist, you had a recruiter, and now the model is completely different. Thanks to BCG and McKinsey and all these consulting companies that came in, you now have outsourced HR service providers. You have technology that can provide a lot of self-service within the organization, and you are creating an HR business partner, a people business partner, who’s really focused on resourcing when needed, enabling, coaching and getting training into the organization. But it’s not your local HR lady’s job to plan the picnic anymore. That job doesn’t even exist anymore really anywhere in North America.

So I see a change happening, but I also, to your point, see a true distaste for dealing with human problems. And I’m sorry, but that’s the cost of doing business and having people employed for you. If you have workers, you’re going to have human problems. You’re going to have conflict, you’re going to have sickness, you’re going to have illness, you’re going to have caregiving issues. People are going to have babies. People are going to be sad. They’re going to bring their personal problems to work. And again, you write in all sorts of stuff into your budget to deal with the cost of doing business. You’re going to have to write in time for managers to deal with workers who are just always inherently human. Until we have an all-robot workforce, we’re going to have human problems and that’s not an HR job to deal with.

Sean Fitzpatrick:

I recently read a study that just got published in the last week or two. It’s people that are probably in their late twenties, early thirties in the workplace right now, and they’re asking, would you take on a manager role? And for the first time ever, less than half said yes. So most people said, no, they don’t want to take on, they want to just continue on being an individual contributor. And that’s a change because what they sort of fought about is like, “Oh, it’s too much work and not enough reward.”

We’ve seen this now for a couple of years: the level of engagement with executives. So the top leaders in an organization have full autonomy, they drive the business, they decide which direction, they tend to have fairly very high levels of engagement and then individual contributors, people doing the work day-to-day, they tend to be pretty good levels of engagement. And then you’ve got this middle layer of management and they are so disengaged, generally speaking.

And it’s unusual. If I go back way back in the data 15 years ago, we’ve been doing this for a long time, it used to be senior leaders had really high, mid-level managers pretty high, frontline, medium or so, but it’s flipped now. It’s senior levels, still very high. Middle managers are the lowest, and then individual contributors have higher levels of engagement than middle managers. So there’s a real challenge in this middle management level, but we need them. You’re not going to be able to run organizations without them, but certainly a lot less people want to be doing the job. And how do you create an environment where that level of management or that role or function actually works? And that’s broken right now in a lot of organizations.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Well, we do have a 21st century workforce working within 20th century parameters where people have to stay employed for a lot of reasons under this idea of full-time employment because in America, that’s how we get our benefits. Or in some countries you rise up the ranks and you get to a leadership role. And more and more younger workers want to be considered part of a collective. They like a brand, they like a mission, they like an idea, but they can manage themselves. They believe in self-leadership and they actually need less from managers. And so we’ve got this real disconnect between the way our systems are structured and what the 21st century worker actually wants.

And so if you hire someone as a full-time employee, you’re going to expect that they’re going to show up with all this kind of baggage like they did in the 20th century and expect their employers to solve it for them when I think we need to be having a more mature conversation, not only about job crafting and life crafting, but really work crafting. What does it mean to gain knowledge, skills and abilities, but manage yourself in the 21st century? What does it mean to be responsible for providing for your retirement, making sure you take care of your own health and well-being, but still getting some employer support? 

We need to be having more mature conversations but unfortunately, there are a lot of reasons why we don’t. Tax structures, union structures, works councils, all of it is an old way of thinking about the new world of work — and wait until we start to talk about AI and those robots who do come. It’s going to disrupt everything.

Sean Fitzpatrick:

Well, Laurie, I really appreciate your time. It was a fantastic discussion, learning about your way of thinking. I really like that idea of taking responsibility, taking self-leadership, and not only self-leadership about work, but this whole idea of self-leadership, about the holistic individual. How do I want to lead at home? How do I want to lead in the community and how do I want to contribute or lead in the workplace? That idea of life crafting concept, I just think that’s fantastic in terms of that self-responsibility.

And some of the tips you threw out there, like that idea of psychological safety and maybe that way didn’t work, but try another small bite of the apple or try a different way to think about things. That’s a real way that people can try to do different things in either their home or their workplace and do things differently to make a better environment for themselves. And then if I understand you right, if you start with yourself and make that change there, it’s going to affect your environment and the broader world out there. So thank you very much. I appreciate your time.

Laurie Ruettimann:

Thank you. It was great to be here and I wish everybody to stay well, be safe and be brave.

Sean Fitzpatrick:

Thanks for joining us today on Leading Through Listening. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or YouTube music so you don’t miss a future episode. We’ll see you again soon.

The post Self-Leadership and Betting on You with Laurie Ruettimann appeared first on TalentMap.

The post How Leaders Who Listen Can Transform Organizations With Paul Mastrangelo appeared first on TalentMap.

It’s that difference that paints the picture of engagement. An engaged employee is the one who busts a gut for you or their colleagues and other stakeholders. They put in the extra effort, take initiative. While we can recognize and applaud these behaviors, as organizations with the ability to influence behavior it’s imperative we understand those “over and above” behaviors are rooted deep within the individual. And nurtured by us Employees don’t do these things because they feel they “have to” or because they’re paid to. Why then? Engaged employees do so because they sincerely and genuinely “want” to. There’s emotional investment. People want to feel their employer cares about them as individuals. When they feel that’s the case, they care back. When they care back they put in that extra discretionary effort. And when there’s a critical mass of employees who are doing and feeling these things and exhibiting these behaviors, their organizations see positive results. Chief among them, increased employee productivity. How increases in employee engagement increase employee productivity (and profitability) has been quantified scores of times by scores of studies.  A 2015 report in Harvard Business Review refers to this outcome as a service-profit chain that links employee loyalty and productivity to customer loyalty and profitability. Profit and growth, the report explains, are stimulated primarily by customer loyalty. Loyalty is a direct result of customer satisfaction. Satisfaction is largely influenced by the value of services provided to customers. And value is created by engaged, loyal, and productive employees.

Best Buy, for example, had been tracking and monitoring its employee engagement and customer satisfaction levels, exploring how they related to one another. If higher employee engagement led to higher customer satisfaction, which in turn translated into more sales, then a case could be made to invest in more strategic employee engagement initiatives. The retailer found exactly that. For every 10th of a point it boosted employee engagement, it saw a $100,000 increase in operating income annually.

Campbell’s Soup is another case in point. Over a seven-year period this company shifted from an abysmal employee dis-engagement rate to a 23:1 engaged to disengaged employee ratio, and increased earnings by 4% year over year during the same timeframe.

Separating Productivity from Profitability

To say quantifying employee productivity outside of profitability measures is complex, is an understatement. High numbers of outbound sales calls may suggest one thing, successful closure rates, another. Long hours at the office could indicate productivity, or its polar opposite. And to complicate matters further, blog writer Claire Autruong raises a good point: not all tasks create the same amount of value for an organization. Does responding to an email create as much value as closing a sale? Most of us would say no, Autruong suggests. But what if that email builds a relationship with a contact who turns out to be a critical investor down the road? A compendium of factors influences increased employee productivity. Subtle, blatant, large and small. Take Dell Technologies as another for-instance.  Dell found sales teams led by an inspiring leader were 6% more productive than those with an average leader. That 6% by the way, translated into an extra $1 billion in annual revenue.

The point is, as organization’s we can influence employee productivity and discretionary effort through a host of measures. Employee engagement data bears this out. Focusing our efforts on engaging the hearts and minds of employees is by far the most productive of all.

The post Employee Engagement is Worth Caring About: The Increased Employee Productivity Factor appeared first on TalentMap.

Not all of them. Not all the time.

Yet we’ve all been there, done that.

It hurts just to think about the endless hours we spend in webinars or on conference calls or wriggling in uncomfortable boardroom chairs listening to voices drone on and on, seemingly just for the sake of being heard. It’s grandstanding at its worst. A summer 2017 employee feedback survey polled 2,000 working Americans to try to figure out what attendees do in meetings. With growing numbers of remote employees in the workforce and more virtual meetings taking place (where you’re essentially invisible) it’s not surprising, as HR Dive writer Valerie Bolden-Barrett reports, that 38 percent of the employees polled daydream during meetings, nearly one-third work on other projects, a quarter surf the web, 21 percent check social media and 18 percent think about vacations.

That’s serious employee disengagement.

When you consider the cost of assembling employees together for business meetings, the shear dollar value seated at the table or dialing in on conference lines can be startling if not staggering. According to the Australian-based software developer Atlassian, most employees attend 62 meetings per month and consider 31 of the hours spent in them wasted. One U.S. statistic reported by Bill Howatt in the Globe and Mail, shows the salary cost for unnecessary meetings is approximately $37-billion (U.S.) a year. Do a quick Google search and you’ll find all kinds of online calculators and formulas to help you estimate what you’re spending in largely pointless employee meetings.

How can meetings become more meaningful and engaging?

We could surmise endlessly. But if you really want to change things up, do what best practice organizations hell-bent on employee engagement do. Ask.

Quick, specific and targeted employee feedback surveys are a great tool when you need to drill down on a specific topic—like business meetings. Confidential online Pulse Surveys are easy to implement. They bring issues to the table for discussions and decisions. And remove excuses for not acting on daily considerations that impact employee engagement – like yawn-inducing meetings – when the evidence is loud and clear.

So, the next time you’re thinking of holding a meeting, hold off before asking yourself if there’s another way to tackle what you intend to discuss in a group. And give some serious thought to running organization-wide employee feedback surveys to find out the kinds of reasons, best times of day, frequency, and length of time that makes meetings a productive, engaging experience for your workforce and your bottom line.

The post Wrestling Unproductive Meetings to the Ground with Employee Feedback Surveys appeared first on TalentMap.

Why diversity and inclusion is important

The most advanced workplaces know that if you want employees to feel that they really belong to an organization, you’ve got to let them be themselves.  More importantly, they should be “valued” for being themselves. As Michael Bush Chief Executive Officer of a Great Place to Work shares in his Big Think video called Why diversity and inclusion aren’t about race but everyone thinks they are  “If you treat everyone the same, you are not going to get the best out of everyone.”

The result of treating everyone the same

If employees with a variety of differences are treated as though they are the same, it can be a recipe for disaster: Employees’ unique talents may wilt. Plus their special abilities won’t be seen or encouraged and that’s a sure way to slash job satisfaction and employee engagement.   

There’s a great quote by Albert Einstein, the theoretical physicist who developed the theory of relativity, where he states that, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”  

In other words, measuring all employees by the same yardstick is not only a mistake that will hinder employee morale – it won’t uncover the unique genius in each of your staff.  

Examples of our many differences

As pointed out in a Gallup.com article called, 3 Requirements for a Diverse and Inclusive Culture, written by Ella Washington and Camille Patrick, “Diversity represents the full spectrum of human demographic differences — race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, socio-economic status or physical disability. A lot of companies consider lifestyles, personality characteristics, perspectives, opinions, family composition, education level or tenure elements of diversity, too.”

Employees can display their diversity in a number of ways:

• age
• race
• life experience
• culture
• insights
• talents
• ethnicity
• gender
• sexual orientation
• religious beliefs
• political beliefs
• physical appearance
• educational backgrounds
• status
• physical abilities or challenges
• mental abilities or challenges
• introvert versus extrovert and more.

The gold mine of differences

Diversity is a good thing.  Imagine if all employees were exactly the same in their abilities and outlooks. Organizations would be stuck in a rut.  They could only offer a very limited product or service. But thanks to the many talents, perspectives and insights of different people, organizations can stretch and grow. They can offer a greater variety of expertise and services to their clients because of the diverse knowledge and skills of their workforce.

Most employees are excited to bring their individual talents to organizations. The best organizations know this and they work hard to treat everyone fairly and to appreciate and support diversity and inclusion. 

Where to start 

Organizations that want to move ahead of the competition would be wise to train management and other employees to understand diversity and inclusion and how it is applied to the everyday culture of a workplace. In a Globe and Mail article called, Diverse and inclusive corporate cultures make for better business decisions, Susan Uthayakumar writes, “…organizations considering hidden bias training should look to roll this out to all leaders and managers and enable them to role model the change that’s wanted internally.”

Plus, it’s being proven in many organizations that understanding, appreciating and cultivating the unique differences in all of us is a step in the right direction. Ultimately, it leads to a more inclusive workplace with happier and more productive employees. 

The post What Is Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace? appeared first on TalentMap.

Tips on adding new technologies

To get the best return on investment, and to ensure that current work cultures aren’t negatively affected by new technologies, organizations would be wise to do the following: 

• Only take on new technologies that truly benefit employees and their clients directly or indirectly
• Make sure the new technology is easy to learn and use 
• Have managers and leaders learn it first in order to better support others on their team
• Only add new technologies one at a time – not all at once
• Give employees incentives to learn new technologies

Address the effects on employees

New technologies that change business practices and expectations affect employees psychologically.  They put a lot of responsibility and pressure on employees to adapt – and quickly! The best workplace cultures offer employees the support they need to strengthen their flexibility.  As noted in a Gallup.com article called, What does agility mean for business leaders, written by Ghassan Khoury and Maria Semykoz, businesses “need to consider how their organizational culture, values and mindset encourage employees to act in ways that support agility.”  

Plus, in another article written by Ghassan Khoury and Marco Nink on Gallup.com called, What is the real future of work? They state that “Digital technology has fundamentally altered the tools employees use, where they work, how they collaborate and how they are organized.” Also, “Leaders need to know more about how employees will respond to the demands of emerging business realities — and how corporate strategies should adapt accordingly.”

Keep your organization human-centred, no matter what

While new technologies can push businesses into the future, they can never replace the value of an organization’s employees. So no matter what the advances, organizations will experience more success if they listen to and prioritize employees’ needs and support a workplace culture that puts workers at the centre, no matter what changes around them. 

As stated in a brief report on Deloitte.com written by Jennifer Buchanan, Beth Kelley and Alicia Hatch called, Digital workplace and culture How digital technologies are changing the workforce and how enterprises can adapt and evolve, “Organizations that will succeed in this new digital work environment are those that can be open to innovation and adopting new digital methods, while also curating those digital experiences for their employees, including creating distinct lines between work and non-work, and making the workplace overall more human-centered rather than technology-centered.”  

“It is the job of the organization to create and support a singular vision that everyone is working towards, whether that is in an office or online. A supportive digital culture allows team members to feel connected and included even if they are spread out across the globe.”

Technology is like a fast moving train that isn’t going to stop. But if employees feel secondary to technology, it’s up to organizations to ensure that they are not treated that way because as noted in an article called, Three Ways Technology Is Transforming Company Culture And Employee Engagement, written by Brent Gleeson on Forbes.com, “The human brain is the best computer. More importantly, the more complex machines become, the more often they break down. When they break down, only humans can fix them.”

The post How Is Work Culture Impacted By New Technologies? appeared first on TalentMap.