Blog

Managing Remotely: The Latest Data

POPULAR? While some workers have wanted to work remotely for years, leaders cited many objections: they could not trust people to work independently, clients or customers wanted 24/7 access, and face-to-face meetings helped fuel creativity and build teams. Yet in the last few months, leaders have learned that change is possible and that things could have been transformed years ago. In a recent survey by the New York Times and Morning Consult, in a poll of 1,123 people from a wide range of jobs, demographics and incomes, who have been working from home since the start of the pandemic lockdown, 86% said they were satisfied with remote work. These workers were happy despite health fears, Zoom fatigue, and unexpected home school needs.

WHO’S LEFT OUT? Of course, most of those now working from home are white-collar and have higher incomes, and these surveys leave out the six in ten workers who cannot work remotely: some teachers, health care workers, restaurant staff and so on.

THE FUTURE? This winter, however, after workers have been stuck at home for months or are tired of supervising home school, the trend may turn. People may long for a return to the office for the company of adults, and a more predictable routine. As I have written in previous Monday Memos, some companies that have tried remote work before the pandemic ordered everyone back to the office after a variety of problems. Is Working from Home Working? A Mixed Bag

What Should You Do?

Manage the Work, Not Your People: Regardless of what the future holds, many leaders need to manage differently right now. A key strategy is to manage the work, not your people. Make sure that you set expectations for what needs to be done, by whom and by when, rather than judging people by whether their green Slack light is on or the time they log in. Managing remotely can make you a better manager by making sure that you quantify performance results, not face time.

Eliminate Needless Meetings: Your people will suffer from reduced efficiency if you stack up endless Zoom calls just to make sure that your people are engaged. Allow certain periods for focused individual work and let people speak on the phone with their cameras off if they wish.

Cut Your Staff Some Slack: For working parents, taking care of kids, work, school and their health have created a perfect storm. Let them Zoom in with the baby on their lap or take a break to grade a math test. Arranging unexpected childcare with daycare centers and schools closed has been a Herculean task. If they have been effective workers in the past, help them find creative ways to satisfy your needs to get work done.

Don’t Forget Recording Hours: While it’s important to let exempt workers choose when to complete their work if they satisfy your deadlines, you still need to make sure that non-exempt staff records their work hours accurately. Make sure that they understand that they cannot choose to work more hours without authorization and that meal and other breaks still apply.

What Do You Think?

What expectations do you have around conflict? Call or write: 303-216-1020 or Lynne@workplacesthatwork.com

Should You Test? The Dangers of Job Testing

THE HISTORY OF JOB TESTING: For a brilliant and entertaining peek into the history of various kinds of intelligence testing, listing to the Radiolab podcast, “Radiolab Presents: G“.

The podcast chronicles the controversial history of general intelligence – especially IQ – testing, and the racial and cultural biases of those tests. One of the more disturbing pieces of intelligence test history, is the way that the eugenics movement helped create such tests, and that the Nazis were so taken with the American tests that they modeled some of their exclusionary policies after them, as a part of their appalling efforts to create a more perfect race.

LEGAL JOB TESTING PROBLEMS: While most organizations today don’t use general IQ tests as a part of their interview process, many still use other kinds of intelligence and personality tests – most of which have not been validated. From a legal point of view, it is discriminatory to use tests unless you can show they have a real relationship to resulting job performance. In my experience, many organizations have not thought through the consequences of using some tests.

MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES: Most modern cognition researchers have agreed with the concept of multiple intelligences. Someone may, for example, have an innate ability to solve math problems yet need an incredible amount of training and coaching to give an effective speech in front of a live audience. Conversely, I tend toward high verbal intelligence, yet flounder when I need spatial intelligence. Visualizing what a house would look like from a blueprint, for example, or remembering directions to some place I have been many times before, remain challenging tasks for me. I am eternally grateful to the technology wizards for creating MapQuest and other directional tools so that I don’t spend all my time driving in circles!

And now we have emotional intelligence, social intelligence and even relational intelligence. Many experts agree that these kinds of strengths may predict someone’s success much more accurately than sheer IQ.

What Should You Do?

MAKE SURE THAT ANY TESTS YOU USE ARE VALIDATED AND JOB RELATED: If you require any kind of tests as a part of the interview, promotion or other job advancement processes, make sure that you can prove or “validate” that such skills or abilities lead to job success.

QUESTION BIASES AND PREJUDICES: I once consulted with an oil company, for example, who was integrating women into the group of workers who drove their fuel tanker trucks. Previously, the positions had all been held by men. Many of the men grumbled that the organization was “lowering” its standards by accepting women, especially because the organization was considering a change in the requirement that job applicants be able to lift a certain number of pounds. The reason they wanted to know that applicants would be able to lift 75 pounds, the company argued, was that they wanted assurance that employees would be able to lift the heavy hoses used to fill the tanks on the trucks. Yet when someone bothered to weigh the hoses, none of them weighed more than forty pounds. Many children that the women had been hauling around for years weighed more than that.

CONSIDER SCENARIOS OR BEHAVIOR-BASED INTERVIEWS INSTEAD: Tech companies, some airlines and others now use real life scenarios to test how applicants would handle challenges on the job.

“Tell me about a time when”, for example, “you handled an angry customer. What did you do?”

Some tech companies who need to hire developers or coders give them real life problems they are trying to solve to see how applicants rise to the challenge. These kinds of job or promotion assessments are more likely to survive legal challenges, as well as leading to more successful hires.

For other suggestions about how to hire more successfully, read:
Do You Know What Hiring Technique Really Works? 

Do You Know Why You Should Hire Optimists? What the Research Shows

What Do You Think?

What expectations do you have around conflict? Call or write: 303-216-1020 or Lynne@workplacesthatwork.com

What’s Reasonable for a Leader to Expect Around Conflict? 

 THE CONFLICT CHALLENGE: I was coaching an executive recently who moved from a high conflict organization to one where most leaders avoided conflict. Both drove him equally batty. I had to agree that neither organization presented a skillful approach. If you treat every situation as one where you must draw out your knives, or the opposite, if you avoid issues that do need to be addressed, you will not lead your people to productive conflict management. Life is full of conflicts – large and small – and a reasonable approach is to make sure that you and your staff prepare for conflict as you would any other organizational challenge.

WHAT IS CONFLICT? I like to define conflict as “a negotiation that we don’t know we’re having.” Many people have good negotiation skills and most organizations would agree that leaders need to be able to negotiate well, but for some reason, assume that conflict is a different animal. If you have a difference with a group or individual that has an impact on you or your team’s productivity, that’s a conflict. Unfortunately, we tend to assume that differences that lead to conflicts are a sign of dysfunction, rather than assuming that a skillful approach should be a part of a leader’s essential toolkit.

What Should You Do?

PREPARE FOR CONFLICT: Inspire your team to take a matter-of-fact approach to conflict management, honing your resolution and negotiation skills before you need them.

FOLLOW YOUR VALUES: It’s easy to lose your way in the heat of battle. In order to avoid this fate, pause the action and come back to your values as leaders, teams and organizations. Make sure that these values are created, discussed and inculcated, not just slogans you paste on the walls and forget about. If you can remember why you are fighting and what would be a solution consistent with your values, making your way though the thickets of conflicts will be easier.

ASSUME LEADERSHIP DURING CONFLICT: Don’t assume that other leaders or organizations know what they are doing during conflict. Don’t wait for someone else to suggest a skillful approach to resolution, instead take the lead in a respectful and skillful way to help create a framework and process to resolve the dispute.

For more suggestions about skillful conflict resolution, read:

Three Steps to Resolve Conflict Quickly!

Want to Resolve a Conflict Fast? Here is How to Settle a Dispute Like Herb Kelleher

Do You Know What Conflict Style You Are? Knowing the Answer Can Make or Break Creativity, Productivity and Innovation

What Do You Think?

What expectations do you have around conflict? Call or write: 303-216-1020 or Lynne@workplacesthatwork.com

Should You Test? The Dangers of Job Testing

THE HISTORY OF JOB TESTING: For a brilliant and entertaining peek into the history of various kinds of intelligence testing, listing to the Radiolab podcast, “Radiolab Presents: G“.

The podcast chronicles the controversial history of general intelligence – especially IQ – testing, and the racial and cultural biases of those tests. One of the more disturbing pieces of intelligence test history, is the way that the eugenics movement helped create such tests, and that the Nazis were so taken with the American tests that they modeled some of their exclusionary policies after them, as a part of their appalling efforts to create a more perfect race.

LEGAL JOB TESTING PROBLEMS: While most organizations today don’t use general IQ tests as a part of their interview process, many still use other kinds of intelligence and personality tests – most of which have not been validated. From a legal point of view, it is discriminatory to use tests unless you can show they have a real relationship to resulting job performance. In my experience, many organizations have not thought through the consequences of using some tests.

MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES: Most modern cognition researchers have agreed with the concept of multiple intelligences. Someone may, for example, have an innate ability to solve math problems yet need an incredible amount of training and coaching to give an effective speech in front of a live audience. Conversely, I tend toward high verbal intelligence, yet flounder when I need spatial intelligence. Visualizing what a house would look like from a blueprint, for example, or remembering directions to some place I have been many times before, remain challenging tasks for me. I am eternally grateful to the technology wizards for creating MapQuest and other directional tools so that I don’t spend all my time driving in circles!

And now we have emotional intelligence, social intelligence and even relational intelligence. Many experts agree that these kinds of strengths may predict someone’s success much more accurately than sheer IQ.

What Should You Do?

MAKE SURE THAT ANY TESTS YOU USE ARE VALIDATED AND JOB RELATED: If you require any kind of tests as a part of the interview, promotion or other job advancement processes, make sure that you can prove or “validate” that such skills or abilities lead to job success.

QUESTION BIASES AND PREJUDICES: I once consulted with an oil company, for example, who was integrating women into the group of workers who drove their fuel tanker trucks. Previously, the positions had all been held by men. Many of the men grumbled that the organization was “lowering” its standards by accepting women, especially because the organization was considering a change in the requirement that job applicants be able to lift a certain number of pounds. The reason they wanted to know that applicants would be able to lift 75 pounds, the company argued, was that they wanted assurance that employees would be able to lift the heavy hoses used to fill the tanks on the trucks. Yet when someone bothered to weigh the hoses, none of them weighed more than forty pounds. Many children that the women had been hauling around for years weighed more than that.

CONSIDER SCENARIOS OR BEHAVIOR-BASED INTERVIEWS INSTEAD: Tech companies, some airlines and others now use real life scenarios to test how applicants would handle challenges on the job.

“Tell me about a time when”, for example, “you handled an angry customer. What did you do?”

Some tech companies who need to hire developers or coders give them real life problems they are trying to solve to see how applicants rise to the challenge. These kinds of job or promotion assessments are more likely to survive legal challenges, as well as leading to more successful hires.

For other suggestions about how to hire more successfully, read:

Do You Know What Hiring Technique Really Works? 

Do You Know Why You Should Hire Optimists? What the Research Shows

What Do You Think?

What do you think? What is your theory about the current anger in our culture? Call or write us at: 303-216-1020 or Lynne@workplacesthatwork.com

How to Lead Like John Lewis

The Challenge:  If you were lucky enough to see or hear any of John Lewis’ services last week, it was hard not to be moved by the eulogies for the iconic civil rights leader and congressman. Born to sharecropper parents in Floyd, Alabama, the third of ten children, Lewis went on to earn bachelor’s degrees from the Baptist Theological Seminary and Fisk University, as well as joining Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement as one of the “Big Six” leaders who organized the march on Washington.

He held various political offices, culminating in serving seventeen terms in Congress, earning over 50 honorary degrees and many other honors, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Engaging in “Good Trouble, Necessary Trouble”: During numerous civil rights marches in the 60s, Lewis risked his life by suffering beatings from police, state troopers and angry mobs, as well as arrests and incarceration, the most famous of which occurred on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. He never hesitated to live his values, no matter the cost. Famously, he advocated a life of engaging in “good trouble, necessary trouble.” Lewis described his work as a spiritual practice, calling it “love in action.”

Famous Perseverance: While others in the movement would bring him challenges at the end of a trying day — perhaps even suggesting that they should abandon their plans — Lewis would listen attentively and then respond: “Tomorrow we march.” No matter what the problem, he never gave up or gave in. In Congress, he exhibited similar strengths, pressing endlessly for causes he believed in, including civil rights, gun control and other issues of peace and justice — even if the results were discouraging. Just before his death, he published an Op-Ed in the New York Times affirming that “we can redeem the soul of our nation.”

Civility and Respect: In Congress — throughout a polarized age — Lewis maintained friendships across the political spectrum, treating friend and foe with civility and respect. No matter how much they disagreed with his stance, the other members of the House and Senate were universal in their assessment that he served his country with the utmost conscience and dedication, always treating every one of them with his legendary listening skills and dignity. From a young age, he maintained his own moral compass, no matter the odds.

What Should You Do?

Use the Power of Models: In my book, The Power of a Good Fight, I write about how challenged we can be when sorting out conflict. What helps, I have learned, is looking for models, those who have lived lives we admire through all kinds of battles, while maintaining their own values and using outstanding conflict management skills. John Lewis’ legacy would certainly be one I would recommend. When our own situation seems hopelessly mired in unproductive conflict, we can visualize Lewis marching across challenging divides, through eighty years of challenges, with skill and grit.

Dignity No Matter What: Throughout his leadership, activism and work, Lewis modeled dignity, no matter what those who opposed, argued or even physically attacked him were doing or saying. Respect and civility will always serve you, even in the thick of conflict.

Train Hard: Make sure that you and your staff train hard to prepare for conflict and other challenges. In my work, I frequently point out how little we expect conflict, even though it is likely in our personal and professional lives. Read about managing conflict: Three Steps to Resolve Conflict Quickly!  What’s the Surprising and Most Effective Way to Resolve Conflict at Work?

I knew that Martin Luther King and his followers had trained in non-violent techniques before their marches and sit-ins, but I had no idea of the depth and detail of that training until Lewis died. In addition to understanding the history of non-violent movements by studying Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and other leaders, they studied the world’s great spiritual traditions on non-violence, practiced role-plays of likely scenarios and non-violent communication. These were not one-day events but weeks long and continual training through the movement’s history. For an excellent interview with Lewis on this training, go to the On Being podcast entitled “Love in Action“. The marchers did not go into their protests unprepared.

March On: Whatever our challenge, we can always use Lewis’ model of reminding ourselves and our associates: “Tomorrow we march.” Persistence pays in working through conflict and many other challenges.

What Do You Think?

What do you think? What is your theory about the current anger in our culture? Call or write us at: 303-216-1020 or Lynne@workplacesthatwork.com

Think You Have Problems Motivating and Engaging Your Team? Surprising Ideas From a Manager of 100 Teenagers in an Amusement Park

An Engagement Challenge! I have coached and presented workshops to managers in many challenging environments – from factories to Playboy — but never in an amusement park. I would think that managing 100 teens who are working for the summer in the games area of the park might be one of the thorniest management tests. They are usually untrained, unfocused and working in hot, dusty places, trying to sell to park patrons who have no interest in paying $5.00 to try to win a stuffed animal. Yet the host of This American Life, Ira Glass, profiles a super-successful young boss, Cole Lindbergh, who manages to turn raw talent into sales success in a segment entitled “Amusement Park”. And even more amazing, Cole’s staff loves working for him and returns summer after summer. (The story originally ran, of course, in 2011, when we could still have summer fun in places like amusement parks!)

WHAT Cole Does Different: Unlike most managers, Cole seems to love working at the park and motivating his team so much that his enthusiasm is infectious. Far from following any corporate employee engagement blueprint, Cole invents his own weird and wonderful training videos, music videos featuring his staff, and wacky new contests and competitions to increase sales. In one contest, for example, the winning team gets to throw Cole into a slimy pond. He then posts the video on YouTube.

How Cole’s Staff Responds: In response to all this lunacy, both Cole’s sales numbers and his staff retention rates soar. His staff comes in early, stays late, skips breaks and voluntarily works double shifts. They also engage their own creativity to make costumes, generate their own contests, invent creative ways to encourage customers and enthusiastically sell, sell, sell

What Should You Do?

Beg, Borrow or Steal: Don’t assume that you can do nothing about your employees’ motivation and engagement. Look at examples of other leaders who may be very different from you and work in different industries yet have great ideas about keeping your staff engaged. Don’t dismiss other programs as inapplicable to your situation.

Be Creative: Now more than ever, we all need to reimagine our work and our lives. Draw inspiration from funny movies, rap songs, art, your kids or pets. Brainstorm with other leaders and don’t dismiss their ideas as too far out. Try something new. Even if your idea fails, at least you’ll know what doesn’t work and what might work next time.

Rules? Of course, you DO have to follow your organization’s policies if they conflict with your plans but, if you’re not doing anything illegal, immoral or fattening, you’re probably okay running an experiment.

For more ideas about employee engagement in challenging times, go to:

New Rules for Employee Engagement: What Works Now
Want More Employee Engagement Now? Try Corporate Social Responsibility
Do You Know One of the Best Ways to Build Up Employee Engagement and Loyalty Right Now?

What Do You Think?

What do you think? What is your theory about the current anger in our culture? Call or write us at: 303-216-1020 or Lynne@workplacesthatwork.com

Why is Everyone So Angry? How to Respond to Bias Rage 

Understanding the Current Protests: As I have written before, we all need to realize the unconscious roots of our own and others’ biases, be they racial, gender, sexual orientation or any other stereotype based on protected characteristics. Yet many are left wondering: why have the current issues erupted into fury?

Latinxs Protests Join the Mix: In addition to the recent Black Lives Matter protests, the killing of Army Specialist Vanessa Guillen has led to many Latinx and their allies forming their own protests.

Understanding the Current Anger: A well-meaning and sincere white male friend asked me this week: “I don’t want to sound racist, but why do all these protestors have to be so angry?”

Of course, I don’t pretend to know the reason behind everyone’s individual rage, but as we have worked on diversity, inclusion and bias issues for many years, we always emphasize the concept of cumulative impact. Anyone who experiences racial bias or discrimination has most likely been the target of racist actions or attitudes many times before. They have probably also seen their families and friends of similar racial or ethnic backgrounds experience the same problems. At some point, everyone has their limits where they say: “enough is enough.”

Old Wounds: The current events are triggering old wounds for many members of the affected groups. As my friend said after I explained cumulative impact: “Oh, you mean the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Indeed, whatever outburst you see from someone most likely falls into poking an old wound. Understandably, they may erupt in a way that seems — to unaffected observers – to be an overreaction.

What Should You Do?

Educate Yourself and Your Staff: Make sure that you educate yourself and your staff about the roots and affects of bias and discrimination in the workplace.

Seek First to Understand: If someone who is normally quiet and calm in your workplace starts to erupt over events in the news or what you believe are small slights in your workplace, try to ask them in an open-ended and respectful way about their experience and needs. Don’t assume that you know what is going on but provide appropriate opportunities for them to clarify how they feel. Realize that their experience may be very different from your own: don’t judge their reactions by your standards or expectations.

Provide a Complaint Friendly Environment: If you are a leader, make sure that your processes and procedures encourage your staff to come forward with all their challenges, but especially those they believe relate to bias and discrimination. Unless you are an expert in these areas, be neutral if someone comes to you and seek advice from your own HR experts or attorneys before you respond.

What Do You Think?

What do you think? What is your theory about the current anger in our culture? Call or write us at: 303-216-1020 or Lynne@workplacesthatwork.com

Do You Know One of the Best Ways to Build Up Employee Engagement and Loyalty Right Now?

Follow the Money: Many of us found ourselves addicted to new steaming series during the lockdown and beyond. My own guilty pleasure was Money Heist, a Spanish caper series on Netflix. This cult show follows a diverse group of robbers who take on a heist of the Spanish Mint. The show is somewhat like Ocean’s Eleven, only even better. You can use the show to practice your Spanish or view it with subtitles and/or dubbing. Usually, dubbing drives me nuts, but the English-speaking actors on this series are so good, and the show so engrossing, I forgot that’s what was happening.

After they take on the mint, they scatter around the world to avoid various international police groups and live out their fantasies. However, they return to crime in order to rescue one of their own who was nabbed by the cops. The second heist is even more elaborate and outrageous: they decide to rob the gold from the bank of Spain – the equivalent to our Fort Knox!

What I found striking was that they returned because of their captured colleague, not at the behest of their brilliant leader or because they needed the money.

Cohesive Teams Are Engaged Teams: Both soldiers in foxholes and successful sports teams work harder for their cohorts than for their leaders. If you can build up gang loyalty – even during this painful time – you will create more engagement and productivity.

What the Research Reveals: Of course, effective leadership is important, as are skillful direct supervisors. The saying that employees leave supervisors, not organizations, still holds true, but peers have even more impact.

For even more research and case studies on employee engagement and loyalty, go to https://www.workplacesthatwork.com/

What Should You Do?

Don’t Count on Desperation: Yes, of course, many of your workers are now desperate to hold on to their jobs, if they are lucky enough to have one. The question is — are they truly engaged or simply frozen in shock like deer-in-the-headlights mode? You want people who are involved in their work, not just going through the motions. Simply having bodies in place will NOT give you what you need to make things work in this challenging time.

Remove Problem Children: Even if everyone is working remotely, your problem children can still create mischief and worse: online harassment, rude emails and lack of cooperation can sink the best teams. Don’t let things slide if you are aware that someone is a slacker, hacker or harasser. Do your best to coach, warn, place them on a performance improvement plan, or even terminate them if you need to do that. As a wise sage said: It’s not the people you fire who cause you the most problems, it’s the people you don’t fire!”

Don’t Neglect Team-Rebuilding: After the disasters of the last few months, most teams have lost members, their confidence, and good cheer, and perhaps even loved ones. I am generally not a fan of team building events because my experience is that building team loyalty is best accomplished at work — through work. DO pay attention to group cohesion, especially if you are managing remotely. It’s easy to focus on your communications with individuals and their individual results. When you do, you miss the more subtle signs you could have observed with face-to-face interactions that they are not a functioning group. Allow time and space for your workers to speak with you privately and gently probe how well they believe the group is working together.

What Do You Think?

Do people in your organization really know how to listen well? What skills do they use? Call or write us at: 303-216-1020 or Lynne@workplacesthatwork.com

Are You Listening to Me? If Not, You’re Probably Limiting Your Advancement

Good Communication is Rare: And everyone thinks they do it well! Whether you are a leader or an associate, one of the fastest ways to improve your skills is to really learn how to communicate.

Start with Listening: Even if you think you don’t know how to talk to a group, an executive or an important customer, you can always gain points by listening well. Asking open-ended questions and then really listening to the answers is so rare that people at every level will appreciate your effort.

Listening Has Three Parts: We like to think that listening is simple but it’s a complex skill. One of the reasons people don’t feel heard is if we don’t understand what part of listening, we may be missing.

What Should You Do?

Make sure that you understand and practice all three parts of listening:

1)     First, there is the question of whether the sound has made it into your ears. Do you have decent hearing? Was the room too noisy? Were you distracted by your phone? Some people have poor listening skills because they have auditory processing problems, which can be an actual learning disability. If you are one of those people, you may need to ask the speaker to repeat what they said or request a visual explanation.

2)     Second, did you have the bandwidth and storage capacity for the information you just heard? If you have too much on your mind, you devalue the person speaking, or you were busy formulating your response, the sounds probably went “in one ear and out the other”.

3)     Third, did you clarify what the speaker wanted from you and did you agree with any request that the speaker made? It took me many years to learn when my former husband said “OL”, he simply meant that he heard me, not that he was agreeing to deal with my overwhelm about the kids, walk the dog that night, or whatever. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the listener who always wants to fix your perceived problem, even if you never requested unsolicited advice or problem solving. For a hilarious take on stereotypical gender issues on this defect, watch the short video “It’s Not About the Nail”.

Of course, both men and women can be “fixers” and/or poor listeners. I tend to fall into the category of those who try to solve problems immediately, while one of the members of my team, Effley Brooks, with whom I frequently co-facilitate, tends to build relationships through developing rapport first. I have had to learn to listen well and clarify what the speaker wants before I jump into action.

What Do You Think?

Do people in your organization really know how to listen well? What skills do they use? Call or write us at: 303-216-1020 or Lynne@workplacesthatwork.com

Want More Employee Engagement Now? Try Corporate Social Responsibility

Employee Engagement in Challenging Times: As I wrote in a recent Monday Memo, there are at least eight factors that contribute to employee engagement in challenging times. One of those is the vital issue of creating meaning and community for your associates.

Corporate Social Responsibility: Economists have found that one of the most effective ways to create meaning and community is to engage in Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR. In fact, more than 90% of the G250 (the world’s 250 largest companies) publish social responsibility reports. They do so, of course, for many reasons including improving their reputation with the public, tax advantages, and so on. Yet economists tell us that CSR also helps you attract better and more productive employees. For a good overview of this topic go to Freakonomics Radio podcast: Does Doing Good Give You License to Be Bad?

Yes, There’s Also a Downside: As Freakonomics Radio put it:

“Corporate Social Responsibility programs can attract better job applicants who’ll work for less money. But they also encourage employees to misbehave. Don’t laugh – you too probably engage in “moral licensing,” even if you don’t know it.”

Surprisingly, behavioral economists tell us, that those who feel they are engaged in an enterprise that’s doing good may feel a license to do something (usually a small thing) bad! This so-called “moral licensing”, is part of the reason that employees steal billions of dollars from their employers every year, pilfering more money than bank robbers.

What Should You Do?

Do Good Anyway: The bottom line is that the increase in better employees and productivity is worth the risk. In one study profiled by Freakonomics, the employer attracted 33% more applicants by emphasizing their CSR and the increase in productivity was approximately the same as an increase in wages from $11/hour to $15/hour. In addition, of course, it is always important to do good whenever you can for many reasons.

Monitor Employee Theft: Make sure you have effective controls to monitor employee theft, shrinkage and other malfeasance. When I conduct investigations into these issues, I am always surprised by how easily the alleged wrongdoer was able to conduct their scheme. Trust, but verify.

Involve Employees: Providing opportunities for employees to contribute to the cause with their own time, talent and treasure has been shown to create dividends. If you can also allow them to help with devising the CSR, you will create even more involvement, community, and meaning for your people. All of this leads to increased loyalty and engagement.

What Do You Think?

What CSR measures have you seen pay off in terms of employee engagement? Call or write us at: 303-216-1020 or Lynne@workplacesthatwork.com