Wednesday 10 February 2016

Fight or flight – it’s not a thing of the past!


Over the millions of years of evolution, one thing hasn’t changed that much...our biological response to stress, known as ‘fight’ or ‘flight’. What has changed is society’s idea of how it is acceptable to react, especially in your workplace. Managers and HR definitely don’t want to see fights in the post room or staff fleeing their desks when it all gets too much. So the question turns to how do we manage this? How can HR support staff to deal with these biological reactions?

As we all know with the joy of working with people comes the different personalities and the understanding that Tom won’t react in the same way that Joyce does. Stress is based on the notion of how we perceive a given situation and the tools we have to cope. Everybody has different ‘trip wires’ for example to one person standing and speaking to a large crowd is no problem to another it’s the most terrifying experience they could encounter.

By acknowledging the trip wires of your staff you can support them to overcome the stressful reaction. For some people the reactions become almost unmanageable and can lead to mental illness. For an employer this is far from ideal, the cost of sick pay, a loss of a valuable team member and a drop in productivity (which is a big cost for a small employer). You can ensure your support is given by doing the following things;

 

  • An open communication channel.  Prep an employee if a big project is coming up, ask them how they feel, can they handle the responsibility? Have they done public speaking before?
  • In house training. New IT systems may be easy for you to get your head around but for some employees this can really throw their work off kilter, leaving them with a panicky feeling when invoicing comes up. 
  • Back to work interviews, no you’re not just being nosey! This is a great way to establish patterns of behaviours and find out if there is something deeper going on.
  • Don’t micro manage, this can be a bug bear for some people anyway but given the bigger picture this also allows for employees to become comfortable in the knowledge that everything will be taken care of for them. We all need a little bit of stress to get the job done and if you’re away for annual leave or taken sick who will pick up the pieces? The amount of panic and stress that will spread across the office can have a knock on effect on their quality of work. Allowing others to think for themselves from time to time will also make them more resilient because they’ve taken knock backs before.

 

We will be talking more about resilient mindsets, ‘trip wires’ and supporting your staff in our workshop on March 10th Don’t miss your chance to attend, all places are free. We will be hosting at the Corsham Community Campus with two additional guest speakers Heather Girling from LifeCraft and Michael Gardner from ACAS. To book your place visit: Work Wiltshire Events Page.

Thursday 7 January 2016

Cross Generation – The Modern Workplace

The modern workplace consists of a range of employees.  Some may consist of an aging workforce who are looking to stay in employment longer due to financial restraints and receiving their pensions later in life, right through to young employees who are joining employers straight out of school on apprenticeships or full time work due to Raising the Participation Age (RPA).
Each generation brings with them a different set of skills, learning styles and expectations of reward from their employer. We must consider these differences between generations in HR when interacting and communicating with employees. The below table from the CIPD shows the current statistics for each age group currently in the workforce.
Group
Age
% in the workforce
Veterans
Over 60
11%
Baby Boomers
45 – 60
30%
Generation X
30 – 44
32%
Generation Y
16 – 29
27%









There are a number of areas which should be considered when employing a cross section of generations;
Management:  mis-communication may occur when line managing somebody from a different age group due to differing priorities and past experiences. Generation Y may need more of a ‘hand holding’ approach having recently left education and therefore not aware of how a work environment operates. Whilst an employee from Baby Boomers would be more self sufficient.
Retention: it is understandable that Veterans would have been through a lot of change during their careers, ‘jobs for life’ rarely exist anymore and technology has come on leaps and bounds, it is reported that this means a Veteran is more likely to stay within the company. Whilst Generation Y would be more inclined to leave an organisation if their colleagues are made redundant, this is because they have more of a social network and rely on this heavily.
Reward: interestingly only baby boomers feel pay should be based on their length of service whilst other generations feel pay should be based on performance. This is important to consider when designing your rewards and benefits packages. Having something to suit everybody may not always be possible but a review of your employees demographic can help shape this.   
Other interesting facts about each generation which you may recognise from your companies include...
Veterans want to feel personally valued within the organisation and look for others to recognise their loyalty and experience they bring to the role. Baby boomers show a strong desire for work/life balance. They are also keen to engage in corporate social responsibility as much as possible and class this as an important part of their work/organisation.
Generation X are very engaged and believes in a strong sense of team and socialising. They are very loyal to people within their organisation. Generation Y are the generation most likely to recommend peers to their employers over other generations and are the most engaged when access to continual professional development (CPD) is strong. Generally they are also more optimistic this is probably because they have had less uncertainty during their working life.
To summarise these are some points to consider when attempting to blend various generations in one company;
-       Be flexible with your management skills, one style won’t fit all!
-       Ensure knowledge sharing is prevalent between generations to break down barriers and open the channels of communication.
-       Use coaching/mentoring to help guide cross working across the generations.