UPDATE: Ellen Galinsky on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams

By ksakai | Published: January 19, 2012

Update: The segment on 24-7 child care has been postponed. Check back here for updates on an air date.

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Sloan Workplace Flexibility Award: Top 10 Reasons to Apply

By ksakai | Published: January 9, 2012

Sloan Workplace Flexibility Award: Top 10 Reasons to Apply

via Sloan Workplace Flexibility Award: Top 10 Reasons to Apply.

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Motivating the Elephant: Making Difficult Change Happen to Solve Work-Life Conundrums

By Kerstin Aumann | Published: November 16, 2011

The second day of 2011 Work-Life Focus Conference presented by FWI and SHRM was all about making change happen. The day began with an inspiring keynote delivered by Dan Heath, co-author of “Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.” Using the image of a person riding an elephant as a metaphor for change, Dan argued that trying to lead a big or difficult change is much like trying to direct an elephant onto your desired path. Simply put, the small human on the giant elephant’s back would be completely powerless without the elephant’s full cooperation. So, how do you get the elephant—or difficult work-life change initiatives—to move in the right direction?

The answer, according to the Heath brothers, is to follow a deceptively simple three-part framework. First, before you embark on any change effort, be sure to provide clear direction to the rider. In other words, be clear about your goals and objectives—where exactly do you want the rider to steer the elephant? Second, you need to motivate the elephant by making your goals appealing to him on an emotional level. In essence, gain cooperation by making him “want” to go where you want, even if the path is difficult. Third, you shape the path toward successful change by removing roadblocks and making it a little easier for the rider and elephant to navigate.

As an organizational psychologist and an animal lover, the second step, the question “how do you do you motivate the elephant?” fascinated me the most. You might try offering him some peanuts, but ultimately extrinsic rewards will take you only so far… what will the elephant do when you take the peanuts away? Will he keep moving in the direction you want, or will he stop, turn around or go wherever he wants? Without peanuts, you probably won’t be able to reach your goals.

Fortunately, psychologists have shown us many different approaches to motivation. For example, if you can motivate your elephant to go where you want not for the peanuts (extrinsic motivation), but because he really wants to go there, too (intrinsic motivation). How do you get your elephant’s goal aligned with yours? Dan argues that you have to show him the goal in a compelling way that appeals to his emotions. Make him feel good about going there. Simply explaining the reasons for your goal will not be enough to motivate your elephant. When it comes to motivating change, emotion beats reason every time.

Ok, enough with the elephant. The more pressing question for 2011 Work-Life Focus conference participants is how do you motivate individuals, an organization or an entire culture to change? How do you get business leaders to embrace workplace flexibility as a strategic tool that can add to the organization’s competitive advantage by attracting and retaining the best talent? After all, in today’s knowledge economy, human capital is what makes or breaks an organization’s success.

The learning lab session following Dan’s keynote provided us with an opportunity to apply the Heath brothers’ three-step framework to these questions. The session’s facilitators, Kathie Lingle of AWLP and Peter Linkow of WFD Consulting, presented interesting data from a global study on gender and differences in work-life effectiveness. They noted a “leadership conundrum,” which is that business leaders do understand the value of workplace flexibility for recruiting and retention, job satisfaction and productivity. According to their data, 80% of managers in the US and EU believe that flexibility options are good for business, yet three out of four US/EU executives also still believe the “ideal” employee is someone who is available 24/7, someone who has no family commitments.

Although employers do seem to know and understand the business case for increasing workplace flexibility, many researchers and practitioners have noted a sizeable implementation gap—which supports the Heaths’ argument that knowledge is not enough to motivate change.

We’ve also seen conundrums in our own data from our National Study of the Changing Workforce (NSCW). Our findings in “The New Male Mystique” show that men are feeling a great deal of tension between work and family life to the point where their levels of work-family conflict have increased dramatically over the past three decades, surpassing those of women. The conundrum is why are men, and especially fathers, holding on so strongly to the traditional stereotype of the male breadwinner, working long hours when they would rather spend more time with their family? In fact, we find that fathers work more hours per week on average than childless men of the same age, in contrast to the finding that most fathers are either family- or dual-centric (i.e., prioritize family over work, or both equally) and want to be, and actually are, much more involved in their children’s lives today than fathers were a generation ago.

How do you solve these work-life conundrums? How do you motivate employers to get over their assumption that no work will get done if you allow your employees to work flexibly? How do you change organizational cultures that discourage the use of flexibility options? For example, our NSCW data show that two in five employees are concerned about jeopardizing their chances for advancement if they take advantage of available flexibility options. Finally, how do you get men to let go of the “breadwinner mystique” that contributes to their high levels of work-family conflict?

In Kathie and Peter’s learning lab, we focused on four strategies:

  • Breaking the norm of the “ideal worker,” i.e., the company man who is available 24/7 and has no life outside of work
  • Changing old-fashioned views about work, i.e., if you’re not there, you’re not working
  • Bringing work-life solutions more effectively to life in organizations, i.e., addressing the implementation gap
  • Developing convincing measures to assess the impact of work-life solutions on business outcomes, i.e., clearly show reluctant leaders how flexibility options contribute to employee performance

In our discussion, inspired by Dan’s keynote and the data we had just seen, several interesting themes emerged:

  • Start small, don’t try to change everything at once—“shrink the elephant” to make directing him on a new path more manageable
  • Pilot new ideas, try them out for a limited time to see if they work
  • Set specific, measureable and attainable goals
  • Identify groups of employees who are most likely to succeed with flexible work arrangements to collect success stories
  • Identify role models (at the individual- or organizational level) and stories that appeal to people’s emotions
  • Focus on behavior change, which will lead to attitude change and, ultimately, culture change
  • Celebrate successes, make positive behavior visible to help it catch on
  • Develop a clear definition of the “new ideal employee,” but consider the definition a work-in-progress as the workforce and the workplace continue to change
  • Be patient with your elephant—cultural values and views about work and the ideal worker will be slow to change

In sum, the 2011 Work-Life Focus conference made me hopeful that we can make change happen and solve the conundrums of work-life. As a parting thought and a compelling example of harnessing the power of emotion to motivate change, please consider a question I recently heard at an FWI event: “What will your kids say about you at your 80th birthday party? Will they even throw you one??”

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Guest Post: Today’s Managers Must Be Connectors

By FWIGuest | Published: November 4, 2011

Written by Kyra Cavanaugh, president of Life Meets Work in Park Ridge, Illinois. Kyra will be leading a Learning Lab titled “Top 10 Manager Objections to Flex and How to Overcome Them” at the joint FWI and SHRM work-life conference.

Kyra Cavanaugh, President, Life Meets WorkManagers have a lot of concerns when it comes to leading flexible work groups. Among them is keeping up a strong sense of team. In any workplace, managers are responsible for making sure employees have what they need to succeed.  And in a virtual work environment, one of the most important things they need is effective communication.

Above all, today’s new manager must be a connector.  If Sally in San Francisco doesn’t really know Bob in Boise, she won’t pick up the phone and call him. Suddenly the manager becomes the conduit through which all questions get answered and work grinds to a halt through this inevitable bottleneck.

Figuring out how to build a team when employees don’t see each other every day (or ever) is perhaps the most important nut for any manager to crack. A well connected team will overcome a lot of challenges — unwieldy technology, loose expectations, conflict avoidance — that would knock other virtual teams flat on their faces.

Admittedly, though, we lose a lot of the bottom-line advantages that come with virtual work if we have to spend every fourth Friday on a ropes course or a horseback riding “team experience.”  Some face-to-face time is ideal, but the trick is to foster collaboration without maxing out the travel budget.

A lucky few among us are natural connectors and inherently know how to get Sally and Bob chatting like old friends. The rest of us have to be more deliberate about fostering collaboration.

A few quick tips:

  • Make time for small talk. Meetings are long enough as it is without burning through the first 15 minutes on personal chit-chat, right?  Not in a virtual environment. Spending time on personal conversation will be the new cost-of-business for dispersed teams.
  • Adapt every-day celebrations. No, Sally in San Francisco can’t join you for lunch. But you can send her a gift card to Starbucks or put her on speaker phone for a short group call before everyone starts eating. Remember to include your remote team members with a call or a thank-you gift whenever the rest of the team is celebrating a “We did it!” moment.
  • Model social media. Facebook didn’t rope in one in every 13 people worldwide by offering Farmville. Facebook became a sensation because it provided an easy way for remote friends and family to stay up-to-date on each other’s lives. You can do the same through the corporate intranet, project management software, a private team blog, or a purpose-built tool such as Yammer.

The days of “managing by walking around” are nearly gone. In the new workplace, it’s not so much about getting the boss to talk to employees as it is about getting the employees to talk to each other.

For more ideas about how to overcome manager concerns, come see my presentation “Top 10 Manager Objections to Flex and How to Overcome Them” on Nov. 9 at the Families and Work Institute-Society for Human Resource Management Work-Life Focus: 2012 and Beyond conference. And if you’re interested in testing out ways to help managers in your organization, consider participating in our research study.

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What’s Good for the Gander is Good for the Goose

By Kaitlyn Dowling | Published: October 12, 2011

By Ken Matos, FWI Senior Research Associate

I participated in a conversation with several professional women about the importance of workplace flexibility. During this conversation one of the women said that it was important to have gender neutral programs that included both men and women. She was quickly but politely rebuffed by another of the women who shrugged off the idea of investing in flexibility and parenting support programs for men. She said that at her company, men didn’t use such programs so it was a waste of resources to offer them. She also stated that flexibility programs were about helping women advance and so flexibility was really a women’s issue. While the other women scrunched up their faces at this no one disputed her argument. Being very low in the hierarchy of people in this discussion I too kept my opinions to myself. In a few moments the conversation had moved on though I had not.

This idea of flexibility being a women’s issue is not new. It’s one of the banes of the work life movement, this idea that only women have lives outside of work. What was surprising for me was to hear a woman not only saying the same thing but with such conviction. She seemed proud that she had claimed some piece of workplace territory exclusively for women and kept it from being needlessly diluted by the presence of men. I felt clear that her motives were the purest commitment to the support and advancement of women, not at the expense of men, but simply regardless of men. Yet, despite her probably pure motives, her facts and rationale had some pretty big holes.

First, while I have not seen her company’s data, and so cannot argue the issue of short term return on investment for her particular firm, I do know that nationally men are using flexibility about as much as are women. According to Families and Work Institute’s 2008 National Study of the Changing Workforce there’s no significant difference between the percentages of men and women who use traditional flex place options, choose starting/quitting times to meet their needs or take leave/make schedule changes for elder care responsibilities. In fact, men are more likely than women to have compressed work week schedules (50% versus 41%) and make short notice schedule changes once a month or more (35% versus 27%). Women were more likely than men to take time off after the birth/adoption of a child (93% versus 83%), though the difference isn’t nearly as large as one would expect.

Even if I didn’t have access to data that proved a major piece of her argument wrong, I would still believe that her perspective is shortsighted. There are a number of reasons why including men in flexibility programs is essential to the future of the work-life movement and the long-term benefit of women.

First, excluding men from the flexibility discussion, costs the movement allies who could put their resources and influence behind improved work life fit for all. Let’s face it, true, unadulterated altruism is a rare thing in this world; few people, men or women, will put their efforts behind a movement that explicitly excludes them. The most effective social movements emphasize the convergence of issues and goals among all stakeholders. Win-Win situations are the most effective scenarios for convincing someone to make a change, especially, when by all common wisdom, that someone is already winning. Men who are told that flexibility is not for them are not going to spend any discretionary effort on supporting such programs, even if they otherwise agree with the programs’ founding principles.

My experience during this conversation is a great example of how this plays out. I was the only man present during this conversation, which I took as a result of history: to date flexibility and work life fit has been advanced primarily by women, even if it is not just a women’s issue. Being in the minority didn’t strike me as bad but rather as an opportunity to be an early adopter among men and help enhance life for everyone. That feeling of common purpose cracked when I heard a respected professional woman say, without any substantive resistance from her female peers, that flexibility efforts for men are a waste of resources and flexibility really is a women’s issue. Suddenly I went from being in a room of allies to being in a room of women whose issues were not worth my attention if my experience was not worth their consideration. Admittedly, assuming all women agreed with this argument because no one forcefully disagreed with it is a gross generalization, but it was still my gut reaction. While I have the information and the relationships to defuse that identity politics bomb, I doubt that can be said for a majority of men who will tune out the discussion once they hear that is excludes them.

Second, one of the coping strategies for not getting what you want is to convince yourself that you never really wanted it. The television you can’t afford really doesn’t have that great a picture and those out of stock pants wouldn’t have fit anyway. Men who apply this perspective to the ‘women’s issue’ of flexibility will likely devalue its benefits and seek some self-affirming explanation for why they don’t really need it. In a situation where they are denied something because they are not women, the easiest male positive explanation is to increase the value placed in ‘masculine’ ideals like stoicism and endurance, positive reasons why men could or should go without flexibility. The natural next step in this line of thinking is that those who have flexibility lack these positive qualities, putting logical, if untrue, weight behind the idea that women are weak and need flexibility. These men will then either deny flexibility to others because they see it as a crutch for the weak or doubt the capabilities and tenacity of those given flexibility. So not only can framing flexibility as a women’s issue cost potential allies but it can also create enemies.

Some people would argue that focusing on men’s needs for flexibility is a distraction from attending to the needs of women. This zero-sum approach to flexibility is deeply flawed because most men and women will pair up to form collective ventures called families. The way in which the workplace treats men or women will inevitably rebound to impact the other sex. A third drawback to calling flexibility a women’s issue is that less workplace flexibility for men means less home-life flexibility and a correspondingly greater need for workplace flexibility among women.

Simply put, if men are tied down at work and unable to convince their supervisors and colleagues to give them the flexibility to go pick up their kid from daycare, then the responsibility falls back on the mother or another caregiver. If it is easier for the mother to get flexibility from work, then she will begin to accumulate more and more home and work responsibilities… after all she’s got the flexibility to do both. Restricting flexibility to women is a slippery slope that traps women in an increasingly stressful position of managing two domains full time. As a result, flexibility ceases being a benefit that makes life better for women and transforms into a necessity for just getting by. The zero-sum approach to flexibility efforts is a no win situation since the sex with a majority of the flexibility is only going to reap the majority of the work.

Some say that even were men fully encouraged and supported to invest in home, elder and childcare they would still refrain from doing the work involved in these tasks because men don’t really want to be so involved at home, and just say they do for positive press. My response is simple; if men never get the flexibility to make more involvement at home possible they can never prove their detractors wrong.

Finally, the entire question of whether flexibility is a women’s or a men’s issue is meaningless. It is based on assumptions about how men and women should spend their lives that our society has and continues to spend a great deal of time and energy trying to escape. Maintaining a gender binary in this issue only sets us up for more pointless debates in the future. For example, who gets flexibility when the woman makes more money and the man is primary caregiver?i Who gets flexibility when the woman wants to access the developmental opportunities from an extended business trip and no amount of flexibility will get her home in time to pick up her child from daycare? Who gets flexibility in a gay male couple with children, a question underscored by the recent passing of same-sex marriage in New York State just hours before that city’s Pride celebration weekend? Let’s get out of this childish fight over who needs flexibility more. It’s a divisive and ultimately pointless argument. Flexibility for anyone who needs it is good for everyone.

i An ever more likely possibility as men fall behind on the education curve and women earn the majority of post secondary degrees. According to the U.S. Department of Education (http://nces.ed.gov/quicktables/), women have been earning more bachelor’s degrees than men since 1982, more master’s degrees since 1981, and more doctorate degrees as of 2006. By 2016, women are projected to earn the majority of bachelor’s (57%), master’s (60%) and doctorate and professional degrees (54%).

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The Mystique of “Doing It All:” Adjusting to Changing Responsibilities at Work and at Home

By Kaitlyn Dowling | Published: October 5, 2011

By Kerstin Aumann, FWI Senior Research Associate

You cannot step into the same river twice; for other waters are continually flowing on to you. — Heraclitus

When I returned to my job five-and-a-half months after giving birth to my first child, I believed that I would be able to pick up exactly where I left off. I expected to be doing the same work just as effectively as before my pregnancy—the only difference would be my new part-time schedule. It turns out, the math of adjusting to my new working mother role was not as simple as cutting my work hours by 50%. It became clear rather quickly that I couldn’t step into the same river twice: Families and Work Institute had changed—there were new faces, new projects and changed roles—and I had changed, too. I had family responsibilities and babysitting schedules to consider, a train to catch to my new home in suburbia and a lot less sleep than I needed to think clearly.

It’s not that I expected my transition to back to work to be easy, but given that I work for an organization that practically wrote the book on family-friendly workplaces, I felt I should be ahead of the curve when it comes to achieving work life fit as a new working mother. Having work life fit means being able to successfully manage your work and your family or personal life in a way that works for both you and your employer. Our research shows that workplace flexibility (e.g., flex time, flex place) and supportive colleagues and supervisors help increase work life fit. As a part-time researcher at FWI, I have all these things and then some. Yet, I still struggled to adjust to my new role as a part-time employee and full-time mother. Which begs the question, why?

A flexible, family-friendly workplace represents only one side of the work life fit equation. The individual’s personal values, attitudes and needs represent the other, equally important side of work life fit. For example, I learned that some of my pre-pregnancy assumptions and expectations about work simply didn’t work for me any more. I soon realized that working on a part-time schedule was different than I expected. Research is not a linear process, but on a part-time schedule, there is simply less time for recovering from a dead end or writer’s block. Time management and focus are now even more critical, especially since I no longer have the luxury of staying late at work because I just “got on a roll” with my writing.

In essence, my definition of successfully managing my work still revolved around a full-time schedule without major family responsibilities. Changing my schedule was one thing, but changing my mindset was another. In my mind, the “ideal” career still meant forging full-steam ahead on a linear path, full time and with few or no interruptions or setbacks. Taking several months’ leave and returning part time did not quite fit with this notion. Although my choice have very much helped me adjust to my new responsibilities at home, they have also left me feeling less secure and confident in my professional identity. During the first six months back in my job, I have been working on developing a more flexible mindset about my career and my work to support my current family responsibilities. There are things I would like to achieve in my career that simply are not realistic for me at this point in my life. That does not mean my work is no longer important to me, or that I have given my on my career aspirations—but I realize that “doing it all to have it all” at work and at home would likely put me on the road to a nervous breakdown. And that wouldn’t be good for anyone!

My first major project after my leave involved researching the issue of rising work-family conflict among men. Fathers in dual-earner families are especially affected by this trend—work-family conflict of men with children under 18 and a spouse who is also employed increased from 35% in 1977 to 60% in 2008. Among our key findings, we show that fathers work significantly more hours than men without children. Yet, our data also show fathers also spend significantly more time with their children and taking care of things at home than fathers did thirty years ago. We conclude in our report “The New Male Mystique” that for the “ideal” man today, success means being a good financial provider and an involved father, husband/partner and son. In other words, men are trying to “do it all to have it all.”

The findings from “The Male Mystique” ring true in my family. My husband and I both have high expectations of ourselves personally and professionally. Having a baby has heightened some of these issues. Going back to work part time not only serves my own professional aspirations, but also to provide income and security for our family. For the past six months, I’ve gotten a taste of what it’s like to try to “do it all” as a part-time employee and a full-time parent. I can only imagine what it feels like for my husband who has been a full-time employee and a full-time parent for the past year. Psychologically, he is a full-time parent even if long hours at work keep him physically away from our home. My family’s recent experiences have given me a perspective on the issues I research at work—work-family conflict and work life fit—that I did not have prior to becoming a mother in a dual-earner family. If there is a “new male mystique,” as we argue in our report, there may also be a new version Betty Friedan’s “feminine mystique” (1963) that takes into account how women today are expected to excel both at home and beyond. Gender roles and expectations have clearly changed over the past three decades (as we document in “Times Are Changing: Gender and Generation at Work and at Home”) and there seem to be new mystiques for both genders with a common theme of “trying to do it all.”

As much as my new family responsibilities may present challenges to my career that take some getting used to, they also contribute to my work in ways I had not imagined. Thus, while it is true that returning to work was not at all like stepping into the same river, I have come to appreciate the process of adjusting to new work and family responsibilities as a learning experience that at times can be challenging and overwhelming. The waters will no doubt keep changing with new responsibilities, setbacks and opportunities. Most importantly, I have learned (I hope!) to be flexible not only in the way I do my work as a researcher and as a mother, wife and daughter, but also in the way I think about these role and how they fit together in my life.

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Inbox Overload: Productivity Tricks for Regaining Command of Your Day

By Kaitlyn Dowling | Published: September 27, 2011

This post by Kathy O’Reilly originally appeared on Monster Thinking.

The modern workplace is a frenetic environment. Whether it’s the endless interruptions and distractions, the expectation of immediate response times, or the constant flow of new information to process and manage, many of us struggle to stay in command of our workday.

Of course, according to time management expert Paul Burton, the main “distract-er factor” may surprise you: one of the biggest technology touch points impeding workplace production isn’t social media; it’s email.

MonsterThinking recently caught up with Burton to discuss ways executives and professionals can successfully stay on top of all that comes at them every day, work more efficiently through increased productivity, and overcome the myriad distractions in the modern workplace:

MonsterThinking: Technology has literally transformed the workplace and while we can’t imagine conducting business without a telephone or email, information overload has really impacted our ability to focus. Can technology, specifically email actually be making us more unproductive?

Paul Burton: Definitely.  I often tell audiences that e-mail is the boon and the bane of the modern working environment.  Though we couldn’t effectively conduct much of our work without it, we have also become Pavlovian in our response to it.  People rush to their in-boxes at every opportunity to check their e-mail, fearing that they have missed something of vital importance in the last three minutes they’ve been away!

Worse yet is the new message alerts that constantly sound throughout the day.  Whether it’s a computer pinging and flashing a new e-mail preview or a mobile device vibrating, our attention is yanked away from whatever else we’re doing so we can check it.

This self-imposed distraction – conducted in the name of “responsiveness” - is riddling our ability to focus.  And it is time spent focused that produces actual results – measurable forward progress on our tasks and projects - so these interruptions are definitely hindering our productivity.

One of my most recurring recommendations to audiences and clients alike is to turn their new message alerts off and to simply regularly check their in-boxes.  By making this small change we begin commanding the tool instead of being enslaved to it.  This suggestion is often followed by the question:  How often should I check my inbox?

The answer is simple:  You should check your inbox as regularly as necessarily to effectively triage the most recent batch of e-mails and interleave any new work into the existing work.

MT: How does the confusion between activity and productivity negatively impact individuals and organizations?

PB:  We are wired to believe that if we’re moving, we’re producing.  This simply isn’t true.  In fact, many times the less we’re moving the more we are actually doing.

The average corporate employee gets 100 e-mails a day. So, with the new e-mail alert turned on, that’s 400 seconds of lost time.  We work about 240 days a year on average.  The aggregate effect is 24 hours of activity with no productivity. That’s three working days.  Imagine what it would feel like to have three days of work off your desk right now!

MT: You describe email can either help us become better leaders or prevent us from achieving our goals. How can leaders adapt their behaviors to meet today’s time management challenges?

PB: Leadership is about setting, communicating and effecting direction.  E-mail is a communication tool, but it is only a tool and it is only one of many tools that leaders must employ to be successful.  It is not the panacea of communication that many people seem to believe it is and it does not alleviate the need for good communication skills.

My recommendations surrounding the use of e-mail are simple:

1. Use e-mail when disseminating information rather than creating ideas.  If it’s the latter you need, schedule a real-time event.  It won’t just be more efficient, it’ll be more effective because real-time dialog happens at 150 words per minute and allows for partial thoughts to be expounded upon by many where e-mail is unilateral, asynchronous and only occurs at 40 words per minute at best.

2. Craft e-mails in “memo” form, using a good template that provides a summary at the beginning and the details in the body.

3. Remember that e-mail is a black and white communication tool that delivers very little emotion and very, very few of us are the next Hemmingway.  Thus, write succinctly, directly and without attempting nuance.

MT: How can we regain control of email as a productivity tool and become better leaders?

PB: There’s no silver bullet; the key to using e-mail effectively and efficiently is remembering that it’s a tool, not a solution.  Solutions are what people produce by using tools. I believe e-mail has been one of the tools that facilitated the rapid expansion of the current global playing field.

If we step back from the sense of immediacy that surrounds e-mail and look at the forest for the trees, we’ll realize quickly that the notion that we must twitch every time an e-mail comes into our inbox is not sustainable in a 24×7 global world.  It’s up to each of us to determine when to leverage the value that this particular tool delivers.

Because, after all, it’s a far better thing to ride the horse than be drug along behind it.

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Should Leaders Embrace Social Media?

By ksakai | Published: September 19, 2011

This post by China Gorman originally appeared on Monster Thinking.

As business leaders, we’ve always known our customers talk about their experience with us.  Sometimes it’s good…sometimes, well, not so much.

Ten years ago, heck, five years ago, if we really cared about what our customers were saying to their families and friends about their experiences with us, we sent surveys to find out what they were thinking, feeling and saying.

Today?  Well, we’ve got the social web to provide a ready and steady stream of information about what our customers, employees, competitors, stockholders, investors, vendors, suppliers, analysts, employment candidates, neighbors and random strangers are thinking, feeling and saying about our organizations.

In fact, there’s so much information flowing that new departments within the customer service, public relations, sales, marketing, human resources, legal and investor relations divisions (and sometimes in all of them simultaneously) are being created to monitor what’s being said by whom and to figure out what to do about it.

With all the noise, with all the new tools (it’s not just Twitter and YouTube anymore), with all the organization attention being paid, why should an executive enter into the world of social media – beyond their personal LinkedIn account and FaceBook page?

Embracing Social Media: One Executive’s Story

When I was leading SHRM (the Society for Human Resource Management, with more than 250,000 members in over 140 countries) as its Chief Operating Officer, I became aware of a pretty large group of very smart, very active and leading edge HR professionals who were quite vocal about their disdain for the organization.

They were talking with each other through various social and new media tools and had accidentally (I think) created a community that I thought of as the “anti-SHRM gang.”

But here was the thing:  they were terrific HR leaders and consultants.  They were experts in the field.

Many were certified by the Human Resource Certification Institute.  They were active in learning and sharing their knowledge as mentors and coaches – formally and informally.  They were great!

Many of them are future Fortune 500 Chief Human Resource Officers.  And except for their anti-SHRM sentiments, they were just like SHRM members…with one major exception:  they were experimenting with and diving head long into the world of social media.

It was very clear to me that these were just the folks SHRM needed as members at the national level and leaders at the local level.  They included all the age demographics – this wasn’t just a GenX thing.

And they were writing blogs, hosting and participating in internet radio shows, innovating ways to use Twitter – all in an effort to create a community of like-minded professionals.

They were also innovating ways to use social media applications to make their practice of HR more effective and efficient.  And I couldn’t get them out of my head:  I wanted them involved in moving SHRM forward.

So I took up the challenge and created a Twitter account.  Because I wanted to be transparent about who I was, I chose the handle @SHRMCOO.  I wanted to let them know I was lurking.

I would ask questions from time to time and I re-tweeted comments I found interesting.  And I began to comment on blog posts that I thought were controversial.  But mostly, I monitored the conversation and responded with lightning speed if anyone asked me a question.

In short, I listened.  I didn’t try to “tell” anyone anything.  I didn’t try to recruit new members.  I didn’t try to sell conference registrations.  I simply engaged in order to learn what was on the mind of these future members.  And I learned a lot!

The bottom line is that I made myself available in a transparent way to engage with our customers and potential customers.  And although I was just one executive at the world’s largest HR association, the symbolism to the full HR community – members and nonmembers alike – was powerful for our organization.

This community began to see SHRM in a new light.  “If a SHRM executive was engaged with social media, maybe this isn’t my father’s/mother’s HR association after all.”  And several of them joined and began to get involved.

That was good, and I’m glad for that, but what was most important was to hear their voices, understand their issues, and engage them in conversation.  We enlarged our community not by being willing to embrace the uncharted new world of social media but by taking advantage of a new source of business intelligence that informed us about what was on the minds of our audience.

And so we grew in relevance.  A good thing that created lots of benefits for the organization.

Does social media pose organizational risks?  Absolutely!  But to ignore those in-the-moment opportunities to engage a new or current customer, save a former customer, support an employee or just see a new way of thinking about your products or service puts your organization at a competitive disadvantage.

So go ahead and put together your LinkedIn profile and begin to populate a BeKnown network onFacebook.  But be open to the richness of data available throughout the social web – and don’t just rely on your PR and marketing teams to report their findings to you.

It means so much more when you engage yourself!

China will be speaking at TalentNet Live (#TNL)on July 29 in San Antonio, TX.  Her track, Is Engagement the Antidote for Turnover?…Well, Maybe promises to be a lively session in which she’ll listen a lot!

Monster supports TalentNet Live’s mission of turning thought leadership into action and continuing the conversation about the trends and ideas shaping the evolving world of work on MonsterThinking.com.

For more on TalentNet Live, check out: http://wordpress.talentnetlive.com/

Can’t make it to San Antonio?  Check out this post by Trish McFarlane for tips and tricks on joining the #TNL conversation online and making an impact on the TalentNet community, no matter where you are.

About the Author: China Gorman (Twitter: @chinagorman) has over 30 years of HR experience, having started her career at the publisher of The Christian Science Monitor and then spent 20  years in the HR consulting world specializing in the career transition, executive coaching, and leadership development arena as a business leader at the local, regional, national, and global levels.

Most recently China was the Chief Operating Officer for SHRM (The Society for Human Resource Management, the world’s largest professional association for human resource professionals with over 250,000 members in more than 140 countries).


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Commemorating 9/11 – Tips for Parents

By Ellen Galinsky | Published: September 9, 2011

As the 10th anniversary approaches, we hope that these tips developed for parents for our 9/11 As History project will be a helpful resource for all who work with children. We honor all who fell by supporting our children on the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

TIPS FOR PARENTS
Prepared by Maureen Underwood, MSW, LCSW and
Ellen Galinsky, President, Families and Work Institute

1. Think about your own reactions to the events of 9/11 before you approach your children.

As adults, we can’t help children deal with their feelings and reactions unless we’ve dealt with ours first. Children will be looking to grown-ups to help them understand the meaning of the 9/11 10th anniversary. We owe it to them- and to ourselves- to reflect upon what happened that day and how we have used and can use those events to inform our lives.

2. Start planning early.

There is going to be an extraordinary amount of national print and broadcast media focus on the events of 9/11 for the 10th anniversary so it would be wise to initiate a conversation with your children before 9/11 to prepare them for what they will see and read.

3. Explain to your children why we are remembering the 10th anniversary of September 11th.

To most children, anniversaries are celebrations of good things and it may seem strange to be making a big deal out of remembering a day when so many terrible things happened.

Pointing out to your children that anniversaries are ways to remember important events that have affected our lives. This definition can help children begin to expand their understanding of ‘anniversary’ to include tragic events as well as good ones. It will also be particularly important to remind children that the marking of an anniversary should include reflection about the lessons to be learned from the events that transpired that day. For example, you can say,

”An anniversary is a time when we look back and think about the important things that happened on a particular day. We can also use an anniversary as the time to think about the lessons we have learned because of what happened. Ten years ago some very terrible things happened on September 11th that we will never forget. That’s why, this year on September 11th, our country will remember the 10th anniversary, and we will all have an opportunity to think about the good lessons we learned from what happened that day.”

4. Remember the importance of talking and listening when initiating a discussion about the anniversary of 9/11.

Since talking about the events of 9/11 may be an emotional topic, reviewing effective communication techniques is a good place to start. Remember, good communication consists not just in talking, but in listening as well. Ask your children what they think about what happened on September 11th; ask open-ended questions with follow-up.

“Tell me what you remember about what happened on September 11th. What have you talked about in school? How do you feel about the way our county responded?”

Validate your child’s answers and correct misinformation.

“I know you think that a lot of airplanes flew into buildings that day, but there really were only three airplanes. What you saw happening on television was the same thing, over and over again. It’s like when we look at pictures of your birthday party last year. It only happened one time, even though we can look at the pictures of it again and again.”

Timing is also a critical part of effective communication. It usually helps to have a stimulus for starting a conversation–a news story or a television report, for example, would be a good introduction to a discussion about 9/11 and its 10th anniversary. Talking during the day is better than at night. Most children, like their parents, run out of steam at the end of the day and have little energy for significant interactions. Conversations about upsetting things are never good right before bedtime.

5. Recognize that children may need help putting their feelings and observations into words.

Children may have very unsophisticated language to express feelings and may need help to give definition to their emotions about that day.

“What I think I hear you saying is that you are still very confused about what happened that day. Usually when we’re confused we’re feeling more than one thing at the same time. Let’s see if we can figure out what some of those feelings are for you.”

6. If the opportunity arises, engage your child’s friends in conversation to learn more about what they and your own child are thinking.
Sometimes children talk more openly in the presence of friends than they do when they are alone with adults. If the timing is not forced, you may want to bring up the subject with your child’s friends. Ask them what they think about a particular aspect of the 9/11 aftermath. For example:

“I’ve heard people talking about superheroes like Batman being replaced by new heroes like police or firefighters who responded on 9/11. What do you think about that?”

7. Understand that younger children will feel that the events of 9/11 happened a long time ago and as they didn’t experience them, feel very distant from them.

Because young children will not have experienced the events of 9/11 and because of the way they perceive time (the past seems very distant to them), when asked to discuss 9/11, they may be reluctant or dismissive and respond with genuine lack of interest or even annoyance. For example, they may say:

“Why do you want to talk about that? I already told you I don’t know anything about it.”

These responses are normal. Examine your own responses and reactions and tell your kids what you’re thinking. Even if they don’t respond, you’ve planted a seed of thought that may be referred to in the future. For example:

“Well, I’ve been thinking about how our county really pulled together after 9/11 and I’ve noticed I’m feeling more patriotic. I’ve been thinking about what our family might do on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 that reflects these feelings.”

8. Reassure children about their personal safety.

With children who express fears about personal safety, reiterate that the 9/11 targets were public buildings that were symbols of America, not schools or homes. Also remind them of the steps the government has taken to try to keep us safe. And, although our country continues to be concerned about terrorist activities, these events remain very, very rare.

9. Recognize that all children will not have reactions to 9/11.

Lack of concern by younger children who were very geographically and emotionally distant from the events of 9/11 (that is, they live far away and didn’t know anyone who was personally affected) is healthy and appropriate. As you know, most children see the world from their own personal experience and can be indifferent to life events outside their very personal frame of reference. If this happens, focus on the historical context of the events, rather than on their personal responses or reflections.

10. Consider having a family remembrance.

Having your family join together to mark the events of the day is a way you can focus on the day’s personal meaning and lessons. It may be a moment of silence, a shared recitation of what each family member remains grateful for in his/her life, prayers for peace–something that reflects the personalized spirit of your family. The key components of remembrance rituals include joining together in community to reflect upon the special meaning of the event or person we are honoring. Remember, rituals do not have to be dramatic or grand. Simply lighting a candle at the dinner table and having a few minutes of silent prayer could be very meaningful to your family.

11. Monitor television viewing.

Many networks are planning retrospective broadcasts that may include footage of the 9/11 events that could be traumatizing for both children and adults. Even if you choose to avoid these shows, there will undoubtedly be advertisements for them sprinkled throughout regular television coverage and you and your family might be inadvertently exposed to a replay of the 9/11 events. If this happens, remind younger children what they are seeing on television happened ten years ago and that it is not happening all over again. If you decide to watch televised memorial coverage, try to focus on media coverage that addresses respectful remembrances of the lives lost and the critical challenge of going on with life.

12. Inform yourself about what your child’s school is planning to do to mark the 10th anniversary of September 11th.

Ask questions about the school’s plans and make sure there will be alternative activities available if children don’t feel comfortable participating in the general school commemoration. Discuss the school’s plans with your child to both assess his/her level of comfort and to prepare him/her to participate fully in the events.

13. Focus on and remember the positives in life.

The challenge for us all is to move beyond the events of 9/11, contain our worries about future destruction, and live in the moment and celebrate each day. Preparing for the 10th anniversary of 9/11 gives us the opportunity to reflect on the meaning of our lives outside the shadows of these terrible events.

The 9/11 As History project of Families and Work Institute was funded in part by a generous contribution from the Bank One Foundation in 2002.

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A Year of “Firsts”

By Samantha Mamelok | Published: September 2, 2011

Samantha Mamelok is a summer intern at Families and Work Institute. She is a rising sophomore at Pennsylvania State University, studying Public Relations. Her interests include event planning as well as hopefully one day working with underprivileged youth.

As I begin to write my first (ever) blog post, I am trying to think of one word to sum up my summer internship experience at Families and Work Institute (FWI). Although I only worked 3 days a week for 9 weeks, I can safely say that I learned more at this organization than I have at any other job, lecture, or class I have been to in the past. There is no way to teach working experience; the only way to learn it- is to experience it yourself.

After just completing my freshman year at Pennsylvania State University, I was faced with the similar challenges as many other students who are beginning a new chapter of their lives. It was a year of “firsts”. Living with friends, attending college classes and navigating my way around a campus the size of a small town, taught me to be independent and take responsibility for my own decisions. At the time I didn’t realize that all of these experiences helped prepare me for the next “first” that I was about to encounter.

Working in a business environment can be a new and somewhat intimidating experience. Expectations are high and there is pressure not to disappoint those that are relying on you to perform at a proficient level. This uneasy feeling of insecurity quickly disappeared as soon as I met the staff at FWI, and worked on projects that were both challenging and rewarding. I mostly consider myself a shy individual, meaning that I am not usually one to ask questions or express concern when I don’t understand a task. However, almost every member of FWI helped me at some point during my internship, solely because of how welcoming and friendly everyone is. After only a week of working (and being the youngest intern) it had already felt like a year, due to the staff treating me just like every other employee, with respect and trust.

My initial project involved writing the “run of show” for the Work Life Legacy Awards. Organizing a time-line for all of the activities of the evening was a great way to experience first—hand, all of the steps and input needed to create a successful outcome and event. As I am currently majoring in public relations, this has allowed me to connect some of my classroom studies to real–life situations, thus reinforcing my decision to focus on this area of communications. In addition, I was taught how to use an online database that I never knew existed in the vast world of technology. With the help of a FWI staff member, I quickly learned what it takes to keep an organization running smoothly; which is something that I will definitely use again at future jobs.

Growth: The act or process, or a manner of growing; development; gradual increase.

As I am drawing a close to my first blog post, I have realized that the one word that sums up my summer internship, as well as my freshman year at college, is “growth”. As I take on many more “firsts” in my life, I am confident that my experience at FWI will help me to be better prepared for the future.

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