Linked: Succession planning isn’t only about executives

Linked: Succession planning isn’t only about executives

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

The importance of succession planning isn’t just about how do we replace our top executives, it’s also about how do we keep doing what we do when the person doing it isn’t here?

There are a lot of businesses dealing with employees who have resigned, who also have to figure out how they did what they did and how to train the next person to do it when no one ever wrote it down.

Write it down. Make it easy to find. Keep it updated. Because people leave.

Linked: Employee burnout is a warning sign — about your organization
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Linked: Employee burnout is a warning sign — about your organization

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

If you are seeing more and more people in your organization, or on your team, talking about stress, burnout, or just leaving, the solution is not a Zoom yoga session, or newsletter tips about how employees can better handle stress.

The problem is coming from inside the house, as they say in the movies.

Linked: Three-quarters of employees’ careers impacted by mental health, report finds
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Linked: Three-quarters of employees’ careers impacted by mental health, report finds

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

I think a little anxiety and anger are appropriate now. Being distracted from your work should actually be a pretty normal reaction to what is going on in the world. Just replace your own national politics for the UK in that survey and can you really say that something hasn’t prevented you from being your best at work during the last couple of years? I’m in the US, I think it’s crazy that there are people going about their work as if nothing is happening, but I also know that is the corporate culture for many of us as well. For the hours you are “at” work, that’s our time. Spend your own time worrying about the world, grieving for lost loved ones, caring for your family, or your own needs, etc.

This is wrong on so many levels. Your people are not hours of labor on a spreadsheet, they are human beings, and human beings should absolutely be affected by what is going on in the world. Expecting them not to be during work hours tells me a lot more about the management team than it does about the workforce.

It surely doesn’t say anything good about the management team either.

Linked: Because Vulnerable People Need Section 230, The Copia Institute Filed This Amicus Brief At The Eleventh Circuit
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Linked: Because Vulnerable People Need Section 230, The Copia Institute Filed This Amicus Brief At The Eleventh Circuit

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

The reason I added anonymity above is that is the other suggestion I see often about how to “clean up” social media. The theory is that if everyone had to use their real name and prove who they are, they’d behave better.

If you’ve looked at Facebook or even LinkedIn lately, you might look at that suggestion with some skepticism. You’d be right to.

But, more importantly, as they say above, vulnerable people need not only the freedom to speak, but the freedom to do it anonymously.

Linked: The case for turning off your Zoom camera
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Linked: The case for turning off your Zoom camera

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

Stop considering people who aren’t on camera as less engaged. This is just your bias. Your smartest employees understand the additional stress being on camera causes and take every opportunity to limit that effect for themselves. Keep people who are that self-aware.

Recently, I was doing a training session with some new employees and started off by telling them to turn their cameras off. I am fairly sure it was their favorite meeting of their week.

Think about how easy that was. I was showing them how to use a cloud tool, I wanted them focused on the screen, what I was doing and what I was saying about what I was doing. They were. I didn’t need their cameras to tell me that.

Linked: 5 Simple Ways to Do More for Your Employees’ Mental Health This Week
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Linked: 5 Simple Ways to Do More for Your Employees’ Mental Health This Week

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

The reason I wanted to focus on this is that it can also be very easy to underestimate how much time people are spending on their work when the work is being done remotely, or in a hybrid situation. Even in the legal or consulting worlds where many of us are billing our time, or at least tracking time worked on projects, it’s not telling you the whole story. There is a lot of time spent on miscellaneous tasks that are getting lost in whatever tool you’re using to track the amount of time worked.

It’s the 15 minutes I logged in to check my schedule before accepting a handful of meeting requests before heading to bed. The time spent clearing out the inbox over my first cup of coffee, or answering questions for a newer coworker, it’s all very likely to not show up in the “official” time because it happens, and then we forget about it.

Do you know how much time your people work without considering it time worth tracking? Do you know how much those little interruptions add to the overall stress levels?