Managers, be a coach

Image: Representative image from internet

There are only fours dimensions which keeps employees with the organization and those are 

• Relationship with Managers,
• Culture of the organization, 
• Career opportunities available,
• Fair compensation and benefits,

You go to any organization, any country, every employee engagement survey revolves around these four dimensions. 

First dimension is more crucial as a manager is the person who contributes in the culture of the organization, developing an employee and influencing the management to have better compensation and benefits practices in the organization and explaining the logic behind merit increase every year. The priorities may change as per the age and experience demographics of the organization. Most of the managers except few top leaders, either are not empowered or trained to coach and mentor the team properly. Managers may not have all answers but they can help to reflect and get the answers. This is possible when managers start acting as coaches. As a coach managers can contribute to developing all above four dimensions. Research shows that coaching culture creates better employee engagement, higher productivity and better customer experience. 

Managers become leaders when they start coaching their employees. Coaching styles may be different as per the leadership and personality styles, but it definitely helps. Employees expect that their managers give them the feedback on how they are doing, what their development areas are and how they can do better in their day to day jobs. There are simple coaching tools managers can learn. Coaching is no longer a specialty. In the modern, super technical and competitive business world, forming a high performing team is necessary to be successful in the business. Essential imperative of creating a high performing team is a leader who is an excellent manager and a caring coach. 

If you are a manager, find some time to learn those skills; if you are the corporate leader, invest in managers to develop them as a coach. 

(Opinions are purely personal & does not represent my organizations, current or past) 

Author's book are available on Amazon, Flipkart, Pothi and BookGanga. You can buy the print copy of Vitality in Human Resources on amazon. Click >> Vitality in Human Resource: Adding human dimensions in HR processes    

Remote and Hybrid Workplace – Behaviours and Skills

We have started living with the corona and its different variants now. You can see the large crowd outside on the roads, market, offices etc. Though few companies are still operating work from home, most of the companies will not go fully for remote work. It also depends upon the jobs and roles. However, companies are encouraging flexible or hybrid workplace models asking employees to work 2-3 days from the office and rest from home or anywhere. Time flexibility is already given by few progressive organizations even before the pandemic. 

Image: Google

There are different personalities and mindsets at the workplace. Few people emotionally get attached to the workplace and they customize the workplace with family pics and some mementos on the table. This gives them a sense of belonging and attachment to the organization. Few people like to create charisma by walking around. Few people want to understand everything about the organization, few take interest in gossiping and few need to interact with people which gives them energy and so on… workplace is the need of those people to interact, be creative, be communicative to demonstrate the impact. This may not be possible during remote models and hence hybrid models are more relevant considering the different personalities and their mindset towards the work. 

Here the discussion is not about work from office, home, anywhere or hybrid; organizations have decided this based on their priorities. We need to come up with some characteristics and skills required in those environments. 

Chris Dyer & Kim Shepherd in their book “Remote Work” mention a few things which are necessary skills people should have for remote work. But I think those skills are necessary during even hybrid or work from anywhere models. When you have the flexibility to operate as an ease of performing, then accountability and taking ownership of your own actions is very important. 

Further following are few behaviours and skills which are imperatives to make the model successful. 

Strong critical thinking skills: Critical thinking is the analysis of an issue or situation and the facts, data or evidence related to something. Every employee should prioritize learning these skills now. This includes observation, analysis, inferences, interpretation, relevance, curiosity and so on.   

Collaboration: Because collaboration is harder in a remote or hybrid model, those who are thoughtful and deliberate collaborators will stand out.

Professional drive, or the motivation to build one’s talents, both horizontally and vertically. 

A results orientation and sense of urgency are also important, and a remote model will reveal those who lack these traits faster than a sticks-and-bricks model will.

Communication is another skill which we need to focus on. In the normal course 7% communication happens through only verbal communication, voice 38% and 55% by body language. It also means that nonverbal communication is around 93%. Now the question is how to bring this 93% communication through virtual calls while communicating with the teams. It is not just communication but using the voice, tune, modulations, presentation tools effectively. 

One of the characteristics we should not ignore is work ethics and values. You must have read a lot of news where employees are moonlighting and doing multiple jobs with different companies. Organizations need to create a strong ecosystem where people are trained and educated on ethical standards, track and take appropriate actions. 

Remote work, work from anywhere or hybrid working is beneficial for employer and employees, but organizations need to come with strong standards and rules where employees are clear what is expected from them on a professional level. Further there should be clear guidelines on it means a breach of contract as per the rule books.    

(Opinions are purely personal & does not represent my organizations, current or past) 

Author's book are available on Amazon, Flipkart, Pothi and BookGanga. You can buy the print copy of Vitality in Human Resources on amazon. Click >> Vitality in Human Resource: Adding human dimensions in HR processes    

Royalty from books is used for social cause. 

Vaccination

Everybody speaks about vaccination unlike earlier days. Thanks to Covid19. However during my childhood vaccination drives were painful events. Mostly such drives used to happen in schools and innocent kids were the victims. My school was not different. Every year, government medical officers and their staff from the district place used to come for the drive in our school for different vaccinations.

Parents were not aware about the necessity of timely vaccinations. The government was playing this role. When those doctors were coming for vaccination drives, it was a different atmosphere around. Few students were tense, few were happy; Tense because of the fear of injection and happy because of breaks to classes.  From then on, we understood the meaning of the phrase, "Tears of joy in one eye and tears of sorrow in the other." however both eyes used to fill up with tears. Afterall we were primary students. Some of the children would cry loudly just sensing the next action of doctors. Few would demonstrate the courage to say, “What am I afraid of?” However the whole atmosphere used to be serious overall. Glass syringes and needles would start boiling in water. I am sure there will be no difference between the state of mind of the goats who were dragged by the killer.

Reference Image from the internet

The doctor used to rub the spirit on the arms with a smiling face, sometimes with a serious face. And a needle would be inserted inside. In the first, the children would scream in pain, some would just shed tears, while some strong children would pretend to be brave. It was like a war-like situation where small kids were fighting against their common enemy which were doctors, nurses and assistants. I was also among them. 

Once during such a vaccination drive, my father was passing by near the school. Out of curiosity, he peeked into the school to see what was going on inside. When I saw him, I started crying. I had held the tears, but after seeing him my eyes were tearful. Seeing that, he came straight inside, picked me up, wiped away my tears. My father's reassuring touch and words made me run away from my fears.

Parents do not want to see their child's tears. I remember, despite my wife being a doctor, she had tears when my son was pierced for blood for the tests. We may not realize the importance of our parents and their caring for their children. We realize that when we become parents and we start missing our parents. Take care of them when they are with you today. 

(Opinions are purely personal & does not represent my organizations, current or past) 

Author's book are available on Amazon, Flipkart, Pothi and BookGanga. You can buy the print copy of Vitality in Human Resources on amazon. Click >> Vitality in Human Resource: Adding human dimensions in HR processes    

Royalty from books is used for social cause.