Career

Career

Linked – Remote workers are feeling pressure to prove their productivity
ByMike McBride September 26, 2022September 25, 2022 Reading Time: 1 minute

It’s all the remote equivalent of sitting at your desk later than your coworkers to show you are hard-working. That never told anyone who was getting the most work done, but it rarely stopped bosses from using it as a proxy and rewarding people for looking like they worked hard. It’s been an issue in the workplace for years, and remote work finally allowed us to get rid of it forever if we chose to.

Or we can just keep doing it and never make any improvements.

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Career

Linked – Want to keep top talent? Create clear paths to advancement
ByMike McBride September 23, 2022September 25, 2022 Reading Time: 2 minutes

I’ve seen this fail so many times I can’t even begin to count them all. Mostly where they fail is that the career path is designed by someone who got where they are by taking path “A”, and so they design the same path for everyone else to follow. This is short-sighted for two reasons:?1. Not everyone is you. Not everyone wants to do the same things you have done or do now. (Over time those things you did 10-15 years ago may not even be relevant.)?2. That path winds to your job, so unless you are leaving, it has a dead-end built into it. Dead-ends cause retention problems.

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Linked: Maybe You Don’t Have the Skills You Need to Manage Your Remote Workforce
ByMike McBride September 8, 2022September 7, 2022 Reading Time: 1 minute

Suppose you or your management forces staff back into the office because you need the face-time. Or because you don’t think your team can collaborate, you don’t know who is being productive, etc. Instead of forcing it and running the risk of losing your best performers, ask yourself if what you need to do is manage differently.

There’s no reason for promotions to be based on face time. With all of our technology, there is also no excuse for not collaborating or communicating effectively. Managing a remote team is not impossible. It’s just different. It requires that you change the way you manage.

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Linked: Remote Workers Waste 67 Minutes Of Their Day Being Digitally Present
ByMike McBride September 1, 2022September 1, 2022 Reading Time: 1 minute

It’s true. There are times when we need to meet virtually. With each other, or with a customer. A lot of our work, however, simply doesn’t require us to be in a meeting to get it done, and yes, that includes reporting on the status of projects. There’s no reason much of our work can’t be done asynchronously, and if people felt free to work that way, they would get more work done instead of showing up to meetings just to be marked present.

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Linked: Scientists Explain Why Our Brains Feel Tired After Thinking Really Hard
ByMike McBride August 22, 2022August 22, 2022 Reading Time: 1 minute

Think about how we organize our days. Is having someone sit in one place learning or working all day a recipe for mental fatigue? Of course, it is. That also means that the longer a person goes without taking some significant breaks, the less they are learning. Or, in the workplace, the more mental labor required to do your job, the more likely it is that you’ll start to make some bad decisions and mistakes after a certain point.

So those 12-hour days are probably not doing anyone any good. You’re simply doing lower-quality work instead of doing what your brain wants you to.

I think we should look at the research around sleep, mental fatigue, meeting fatigue, etc. We might just find a better way for everyone to be more successful.

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Linked: What is Toxic Positivity in the Workplace?
ByMike McBride August 9, 2022August 9, 2022 Reading Time: 2 minutes

When you aren’t allowed to question, you are probably also not allowed to have a bad day or express frustration. That limits how much of you can show up in the workplace.

That is not the way to get employee engagement and the best efforts of the people who work for you. In today’s job market, it is a good way to lose them.

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