Mike McBride Online

Career | Links

Linked: The case for turning off your Zoom camera
ByMike McBride June 29, 2022June 29, 2022 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.

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Links | Mental Health

Linked: 5 Simple Ways to Do More for Your Employees’ Mental Health This Week
ByMike McBride June 28, 2022June 28, 2022 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?

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

Quick Thought – The Dangers of a “Passion” Job in Politics
ByMike McBride June 22, 2022June 21, 2022 Reading Time: 2 minutes

I don’t particularly know why, but I came across an article out of Australia last week that caught my eye and got me thinking about working at our “passion” jobs. The reason I headed in that direction mentally was the description of what life is like for these various politicians after they lose an election….

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Career | Links | Security

Linked: Bad news: The cybersecurity skills crisis is about to get even worse
ByMike McBride June 20, 2022June 20, 2022 Reading Time: 1 minute

Now, the shortage of people leading to overworked stressed, and burned-out workers is the headline, but if you look at the reasons given in the article below, it’s not “just” that. It’s where that situation leads. When you’re short-staffed and constantly putting out fires, you don’t really take the time to think about showing appreciation, helping employees grow their skills and careers, or creating a diverse workplace.

Yet those are the exact things that employees are looking for elsewhere.

Appreciating and growing your employees is not something that is “nice to have” anymore. It’s a requirement.

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Career | Links | Training

Linked: Employee Retention Strategies to Future-Proof Your Org
ByMike McBride June 16, 2022June 16, 2022 Reading Time: 2 minutes

So often, I see people sitting and doing the same job, the same way, year after year. Some people are OK with that, and it becomes difficult to help them grow because they are resistant to change. Most people, however, do not want that to be their career, and so they leave to find a place that allows them to grow. If you aren’t the place that supports their growth, you are at risk of losing them to a place that will. It’s really that simple.

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Links | Mental Health

Linked: Employers Grapple with Surge in Mental Health Issues
ByMike McBride June 14, 2022June 14, 2022 Reading Time: 1 minute

Having HR professionals understand this is important. Having them try to influence the business leaders might help too. At the end of the day, though, this only gets better if the entire culture buys into it. Any individual manager who isn’t capable of making reasonable accommodations because they haven’t been trained or because the actual business practices create a roadblock for them only proves that this is all just talk.

People who’ve struggled for years to continue working at the risk of their mental health deserve a lot more than talk.

Read More Linked: Employers Grapple with Surge in Mental Health Issues