Tag: blog 5/29/2020

Happy Friday. Today’s email focuses on a theme that came up repeatedly this week: WELL-BEING AT WORK. 

Sherry Bahrambeygui, CEO of PriceSmart spoke about well-being in Wharton’s “Leadership in the Wake of COVID-19: What Enterprise Leaders Will Need to Survive and Prosper in the Years Ahead” webinar. And Jennifer Fisher, Chief Well-Being Officer at Deloitte & Touche (where I used to work and let me tell you this role not only did not exist then, but the whole topic of well-being was taboo in 1995!) touched on her framework for well-being during a 60-minute webinar this week. 

Key takeaways for you:

1. ASK YOUR EMPLOYEES & CO-WORKERS HOW THEY ARE DOING: Sherry challenged listeners by asking “How have you kept track of your staff’s well-being?” She has the head of HR present at their daily employee meetings to share resources and keep a pulse on people’s well-being. Sherry also explicitly invites her direct reports to talk about their well-being. 

   • Bijal’s organizational psychologist take: HR sharing resources during a group zoom call is great as a “push” communication, and Sherry inviting people to open up is a start, but it is CRITICAL to have regular 1:1 calls with each person that is reporting to you to find out how they are really doing. It’s up to you to guide the conversation. A team zoom call does not cut it. People may not feel psychologically safe enough in a group setting to really share how they are doing, no matter how tight you think the group is.

   • AND… there’s a fine line between checking in and caring about your employees/co-workers and becoming their therapist or coach. Invite the conversation, and continue to check in…but if it becomes an ongoing vent session, gently point out that he seems stuck, you don’t have the background to help, and here are other resources that can help, like your organization’s EAP, a coach, therapist, article, or other relevant resource. 

1. BE A ROLE MODEL: Sherry made a decision to be vulnerable and share her own personal struggles with well-being with her team. She shared that for years, especially as a female, she felt this sense of having to be 100% in control of everything. And how she debated whether to tell her team that her father had a major health issue and the impact the situation had on her. In the end, she decided to be a role model and opened up about her struggles with well-being around both events.

   • Bijal’s take: 👍

1. LAND ON A WELL-BEING FRAMEWORK: Deloitte’s framework for well-being is body, mind, purpose, and financial health.

   • Bijal’s take: If you don’t know where you are aiming, how will you know if you have achieved it? Whether for yourself or for your team or organization, put a stake in the ground and decide what the key components of well-being are for you. Then when you have those 1:1 conversations with your direct reports or co-workers, you can weave in each component into the conversation. Because well-being is so subjective, I would suggest a couple of additional components to Deloitte’s framework: life/work satisfaction and feelings (higher positive feelings and lower negative feelings.) If you need help figuring out a framework that works for you, please reach out. I LOVE helping clients develop customized systems and frameworks that work for them!

   • AND…if your Human Resources department is still primarily focused on the compliance side of HR, tell them to wake up and smell the coffee. The head of HR needs to be thinking about employees from a “whole-human” perspective. Deloitte’s well-being model includes body, mind, purpose, and financial health. What do you and your employees need to thrive? I would love to hear about your model for well-being.

Today’s highlight is from Wharton’s “Leadership in the Wake of COVID-19: What Enterprise Leaders Will Need to Survive and Prosper in the Years Ahead”. Sherry Bahrambeygui, CEO of PriceSmart spoke about ADAPTATION.  

As a reminder, the intent of these posts and insights are to help you plan the path forward for yourself, your teams, and your organization. If I can be of assistance to you in a coaching or consulting capacity, drop me a note.

Highlights on adaption from Sherry:

• #1: Demolish expectation of face time equating to doing work: Sherry believes this will change permanently. It was already an expectation with the next generation. We thought the process was going to take a while, but here we are! And Sherry urges you as leaders to shift from face time to accountability. The onus to do this is on the supervisor. 

  • Bijal’s org psychologist take: I had predicted this shift of unofficial power down the ranks to the supervisor level when companies started working from home on a mass scale. There’s simply no way for a Director, Partner, VP to stay connected with and on top of a large distributed group of people, so the direct supervisor is key. You may have heard about HSBC’s decision to cut reporting levels from seven to four. Be prepared and expect more “delayering”.

  • Side note: the skills that promoted someone to a supervisor role are NOT the skills needed to succeed as a team leader. I wrote about this last 2 weeks ago, but feel free to reach out if you want more details.

• #2: Individualize policies: Sherry spoke about the need to customize processes to meet employees where they are. At PriceSmart, anyone who has school children can continue to stay home unless there’s a business necessity to come to the office. 

  • Bijal’s take: Bravo! Just like personalized medicine, I do believe this is the future of work for white collar jobs. Progressive companies will focus on the output and value the employee provides, not details like where the work is getting done or at what time. Adding this win to my list of thin silver linings during this pandemic. J

I’ll end with a quote from Churchill: “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Take time to process, reflect, and enact changes in your personal life and work. If not now, then when? If you want a safe space to explore, make changes, and plan, I’m here in your corner.