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Productivity Insulation: How your business could save $27,000

Overlooking your biggest investment

One of the most overlooked parts of owning or managing a business is the need to safeguard your labour. In the vast majority of businesses, labour is the biggest portion of an organization’s operating expenses. Depending on the size and type of your business, it can be between 50-75% of your total overhead. Yet, most businesses and organizations do not put much focus on protecting and maintaining the productivity of their staff. If you look at it from a completely financial perspective, it is mind boggling! If a business has a piece of equipment that is a major expense, let’s say, 15% of your entire operating costs, it would be taken care of extremely well. Business owners and managers know that protecting and maintaining your important assets is how you ensure the best productivity and profitability from your business.

The Problem

This begs the question, why is it that people are quick to protect and maintain their equipment, but will not put the same focus on protecting and maintaining their labour?

Maybe, it is because equipment is seen as an investment, and labour is seen as an expense? Or maybe it is because equipment is a tangible, noticeable asset. Where labour is your staff, a bunch of people doing different things and different times. It’s less noticeable and more subtle.

Regardless, the why is puzzling, but not the most important thing to understand. What is important to understand is that, as with your equipment, if you do not invest time and effort into your staff, you are losing A LOT of money. This could damage the financial future of your business.

Labour Value Loss

The impact of not investing time and effort into your staff is called Labour Value Loss. It is the very scary consequence of neglecting to protect and maintain the productivity of your staff. It is the financial toll that common labour problems have on a business.

For example: According to the Center for American Progress it costs the equivalent of 20% of a person’s salary to replace them. The costs associated with replacing staff include, but are not limited to:

  • Paying overtime
  • Recruitment costs
  • Drop in productivity
  • Any associated customer loss

Labour Value Loss is a startling reality for most businesses. What makes it so concerning is that the money lost is slow and subtle, like a leaky faucet or a poorly insulated roof. This is happening everywhere, every day.

So, the real question is how do we fix it? Well, just like a drafty home, we fix it with insulation.

The Solution

To address Labour Value Loss, you need Productivity Insulation. This is the way you protect and maintain the productivity of your staff. The easiest way to think of Productivity Insulation is to look at it as robust HR policies and Employee Engagement. HR policies are important to make sure rules and procedures are clear and transparent, keeping businesses compliant and employees informed. However, the lion’s share of effective Productivity Insulation comes from Employee Engagement.

Employee Engagement is the efforts that organizations make to create a high level of motivation and enthusiasm in employees. For Employee Engagement to be effective, it doesn’t need to be complicated or costly, it just needs to be understood and consistent.

The return on your investment from Employee Engagement can be astonishing. The Labour Value Loss from Disengagement, when employees have a low level of motivation and enthusiasm, is 34% of their annual salary. This number alone makes Labour Value Loss expensive. Add other elements, like Turnover or Absenteeism, and you have a costly problem that you cannot ignore. The future of your business depends on it.

If you would like to learn more about Labour Value Loss, here is a short video. This video is part of a FREE, on-demand, 30-minute course we provide to businesses called: Rethinking Labour Costs: Increasing Profits and Productivity. Click here to check it out.

Oh, I almost forgot!

You are probably wondering where the $27,000 in the title of this article comes from. Well, that is the average Labour Value Loss that a business will experience from Disengagement each year. If you would like to know how it was calculated:

Here is where we got the numbers for our formula:

Here is our formula:

(# of Staff) x (Annual Salary)x (Percentage of Employees Disengaged)x (Cost of Disengagement)= Total Labour Value Loss due to Disengagement
4 Employees x $41,000   = $164,00050% of employees are disengaged     x 0.50disengaged employees cost 34%     x 0.34= $27,880

This is a conservative, yet well supported, number. However, it is only one aspect of Labour Value Loss.

To learn more about Labour Value Loss, and to calculate how much your business may be losing due to Disengagement, Turnover, Absenteeism, etc., take our FREE course.

Rethinking Labour Costs: Increasing Profits and Productivity.

Roman 3 is an advising and solutions firm that specializes in inspiring progressive action, creating a culture of innovation, and assisting organizations in implementing transformative change. We help you build capacity, collaborate, be progressive, and grow to your full potential. For more information on our services and support reach out to us at info@roman3.ca

Effective Management Employee Engagement Human Resources

Does Your Workplace Have a Culture of Complacency?

Don’t you just love order and predictability?

It is human nature to look for order and comfort. There is a sense of harmony in predictable environments that ultimately lead us to what we all strive for – Safety. Feeling safe is really the ultimate goal. It is the natural by-product that comes from meaningful relationships, financial security, and continuous employment.

As with anything, too much of a good thing can cause problems. Accordingly, the comfort that comes from a sense of safety has its dark side too. The inherent problem that comes from too much comfort and predictability is that we become acclimatized to it; we become dependent on it and will go to great lengths to keep it, even to our own detriment. As individuals, this dependence on comfort often manifests itself as complacency. We become complacent in our lives, stop pushing ourselves, and often abandon our ambitions in order to stay comfortable – don’t rock the boat. In addition to the individual dangers that come with complacency, there is a much greater threat – working in a culture of complacency.

From an organizational and business perspective, the dangers of a culture of complacency can erode the very foundation of an organization’s business plan, as well as ruin its employee base. In short, a culture of complacency can act as a cancer to an organization’s current and future success.

What does a Culture of Complacency look like?

There are many symptoms of complacency, and they can reveal themselves in many ways. In his book A Sense of Urgency, John Kotter (2008) explains three ways in which these symptoms can manifest themselves.

– Low overall performance standards, often in organizations that have fallen asleep with the same people in leadership positions for more than a decade with little turnover.

– A lack of sufficient performance feedback from external sources, such as not really listening to customer complaints to realize that the products do not meet the needs of the client.

– A kill-the-messenger-of-bad-news, low candor, low confrontation culture, often, found in family-owned businesses where influence does not go both ways.

A Forbes article titled: 10 Signs Your Employees Are Growing Complacent In Their Careers highlights some symptoms that look like:

– Employees stop asking questions

– People stop taking the initiative

– Everyone is playing it too safe

– No one is showing passion in their work

What is a Culture of Complacency?

The Elements of a Culture of Complacency can be summarized into 4 main components.

Comfortable and Traditional Methods

Phrases like: “This is how we have always done it” and “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” accurately summarize this element. People naturally default to the steps and processes that are familiar and routine because of the comfort that comes with them. There is also an unwillingness to break from tradition, an inherent fear of change, and a fear of failure that can cause an aggressive adherence to what is comfortable and familiar.

Rigid Thinking

In a Culture of Complacency there is often a lack of awareness of what is happening outside an individual’s normal environment, as well as a lack of outside perspective to the internal habits and practices of the organization. Naively looking at information, ideas, and opportunities as good or bad overlooks the inherent complexity of most situations. Rigidly looking at the extremes of things is a common symptom of a Culture of Complacency. If you only see things as black or white you miss the grey, which is where most of the world operates.

Finding the No

When approached with a new-found opportunity or new idea, many people’s first instinct is to find the quickest way to say no. This is one of the most prominent elements of a Culture of Complacency. When something outside the norm or comfortable flow is brought up there is a compulsion to find a way to delegitimize it or over complicate it, so that it fails. This is a problem-focused approach, where people put effort into finding problems and roadblocks to stop something that does not fit into their common practice. This is the opposite of a solution-focused approach, where individuals put effort into discovering solutions and adaptations in order to establish a way to make something work that is considered outside the common practice.

Unconfident and Low-Profile Leadership

Perhaps the most impactful element of a Culture of Complacency is unconfident and low-profile leadership that creates an expectation of mediocrity. In an environment where leadership is focused on a “don’t rock the boat” mentality it creates an environment where the other 3 elements of complacency are able to fester and grow. This type of leadership is most commonly a result of two major factors; apathy and inconsistency. When leaders do not inspire their teams and inspire in them a sense of confidence in their work, teams usually turn to safety in traditional and common practice. This is often the only way to survive. A leader’s job is to make their team feel safe; safe to ask questions, safe to bring new ideas, safe to take risks. Without this sense of safety (which we stated earlier is something we all strive for), a sense of complacency starts to grow in its place.

How to Identify a Culture of Complacency

The first thing for a person to consider when attempting to identify if they have a culture of complacency is to ask – do you spend your days trying to be busy, or do you spend you time trying to be better? Many people spend their entire career going into work every day, putting in a full day of work, and being very busy while they are at work. Nevertheless, they still live in a culture of complacency. Some of the questions for a person to ask in order to determine if they are in a Culture of Complacency include: Are you trying to be as busy as yesterday or better than yesterday? Is your goal to be in a predictable environment or a productive environment?

How to Combat a Culture of Complacency

When endeavoring to challenge a Culture of Complacency, it can be tackled on two fronts: Individual and Organizational. When attempting to challenge it on an individual level, people need to first embrace the paradox of finding comfort in being uncomfortable. Look for challenge and personal/professional growth as where comfort can be found. The excitement that comes with being better every day needs to be what sustains individuals rather than the predictability of the job itself. When attempting to challenge Culture of Complacency on an organizational level, the first step is to institute a cultural shift toward a Culture of Innovation. This needs to start with leadership and it needs to happen both top-down and bottom-up.

The Takeaway

A Culture of Complacency is a very complex and layered concept. Its impact extends beyond the productivity of an organization and affects workplace safety, customer satisfaction, employee turnover, governance, and more. The negative impact it has on virtually every aspect of the workplace can be the breaking point of any organization.

It is important to be reflective of both your situation and that of your organization and to understand the warning signs and effects that a Culture of Complacency has on your professional life. It is important to take the time to ask yourself “Are you looking to protect your predictability or protect your productivity?”. It is also important to recognize that discomfort, innovation, and a willingness to take risks are the beginnings of both evolution and progress.

Roman 3 is an advising and solutions firm that specializes in inspiring progressive action, creating a culture of innovation, and assisting organizations in implementing transformative change. We help you build capacity, collaborate, be progressive, and grow to your full potential. For more information on our services and support reach out to us at info@roman3.ca

Effective Management Employee Engagement Human Resources Skill Development

Quantum Thinkers Have Real Superpowers – Are You One of Them?

Quantum Thinking: What is it?

There is some confusion about what, exactly, quantum thinking means.  Some think it’s connecting your mind, body and spirit; some think it’s a tactic to better understand and embrace physics, and still others think it can be a magical way to live a happy and perfect life.

Now, I don’t know about any of that. I won’t tell you how to connect your mind, body and spirit, or help you understand physics or promise you a perfect life. I want to talk about quantum thinking from a cognitive, adult learning perspective. Quantum thinking is about a depth and speed of processing that could be a vital and game-changing skill when it comes to leadership, innovation, management and education. It involves using multi-dimensional thinking and thematic analysis to discern and synthesize complex information from seemingly random memory, in real time. In an overly simplified way, quantum thinking is about developing a seemingly limitless mental capacity. Who wouldn’t want that?

I first came across quantum thinking, or to be more to the point, “high capacity” quantum thinking, when I was a grad student doing research on cognition and transformative learning. I was reading a book by celebrated adult educator Jane Vella. She only touched on this concept in the book, but it peaked my interest and I dug further into it.  I discovered that different kinds of thinking can be expressed as an upside down hierarchy in terms of capacity and depth. In this model, linear thinking falls on the bottom, creative thinking (spreading your thinking outward) and critical thinking (reflecting and analyzing information) sit in the middle and high capacity quantum thinking has all of it and more.

So, again: What is it?

High capacity quantum thinking is the ability to simultaneously and systematically connect six different skills:

Creativity – explore alternate options and pathways, even unconventional ones.

Intuition— trusting the information, higher-order concepts, and ideas that come to your mind.

Unrelated storage – being able to learn and store information without immediate relevance and then recall and connect it once it becomes relevant.

Information integration – the ability to integrate information from all sources into actionable and practical concepts

Synthesis – creating foundational and practical knowledge from the information and concepts created and stored.

Accelerated Processing – being able to make connections, process and learn information, and master new tasks at an intensely quick rate.

How can I use this information?

The real question is, how can high capacity quantum thinking help you?  For the purposes of this article we’ll talk about how to look for signs of quantum thinking in your potential job applicants.

High capacity quantum thinkers are a gift to some industries and a curse to others. If you’re looking for employees to just tow the company line, be given tasks to repeat the same way everyday until they retire, maintain status quo, and think within the box, then you need to stay clear of high capacity quantum thinkers. They will drive you crazy, be unhappy, and most likely will not use their hyper accelerated thinking skills to make your life easier.

On the other hand, if you’re looking for more efficiency in your process, looking for new and meaningful connections, need answers to questions you haven’t even thought of yet, and want all of this yesterday—then you, my friend, need to be in the market for a high capacity quantum thinker.

So where do you find them?

That’s a tough one. Most high capacity quantum thinkers don’t even realize this is what they are. They tend to believe that having a mind that goes a mile a minute and sees all the angles is what everyone experiences. Interestingly enough, many high capacity quantum thinkers may have been misdiagnosed as having ADHD as kids. This might be because ADHD is marked with having a need to have your mind stimulated, and looking beyond the task you are currently engaged in to find that stimulation.  The undisciplined high capacity quantum thinker may appear to be scattered, unfocused or having poor follow through. This is because having information and inspiration constantly coming at you can be overwhelming and extremely distracting. Like most super powers, they’re a burden until you learn to harness and control them.

So, let’s reframe the question.

Where do you find DISCIPLINED High Capacity Quantum Thinkers?

It’s likely they’re already applying for positions in your company. High capacity quantum thinkers know what kind of work and projects interest them and they’re eager to seek them out. You will find them among the resumes and cover letters that speak about their potential, their achievements attained in a short period of time, will likely have had three or four jobs in a ten year span, which they’ve left to pursue more exciting prospects. They won’t have the twenty years of experience you’re looking for, they will be the ones who sound confident and engaged, but whom you thought were probably “too green” or inexperienced to consider as a serious candidate.

Overlooking high capacity quantum thinkers is understandable. Lots of people claim to be great and able to meet all of your needs. Hiring people is risky, so you play it safe and go with the most experienced candidates.  It makes logical linear sense. But if you’re going to choose people who have done the job before, you’ll likely get employees who will do things the way they’ve always been done. However, if you want to increase the capacity of your business, you need to invest in increasing the “High Capacity” of your employees. The best advice I can offer to help you spot them is to look for people who have been able to complete excellent work in surprisingly short time frames, people who routinely over-deliver in terms of quality and deadlines, and people who can find connections, unique perspectives, and transferable elements in seemingly random or limiting situations. If you can harness the power of a quantum thinker you can have your very own super hero at your disposal, and again…who wouldn’t want that!

 

Roman 3 is an advising and solutions firm that specializes in inspiring progressive action, creating a culture of innovation, and assisting organizations in implementing transformative change. We help you build capacity, collaborate, be progressive, and grow to your full potential. For more information on our services and support check us out at www.roman3.ca 

Employee Engagement Improve Your Career

Surviving a Challenging Workplace

What is your workplace like?

We have all had jobs we didn’t like and jobs we loved. Often the reason for the distinction is the people we work for and with. I can tell you I have had some jobs where my role was exhausting, dirty, and not overly lucrative, but the people I worked with were amazing, so this was a job I actually liked and was sad to have left. On the other hand, I have had easy, engaging, and well-paying jobs, but the people I worked with were really challenging, so this was a job I really disliked and was eager to leave. I am sure you have all had similar experiences. In a similar vein, sometime there are conditions that other people must deal with in their jobs that make it challenging for you to work with them, things outside their control that make their jobs harder for you to do yours.

It is funny how people and conditions can ruin experiences for us and sometime take the enthusiasm out of a great experience. That is why I wanted to write about this topic, so you can protect yourself from the challenges that might make you regret and opportunity that you likely work very hard to get.

Your workplace of often only as good as the people in it

One of the first things you need to do is really understand and identify the challenging personalities and habits that may exist in your co-workers. We often have people who, for one reason or another, are mentally and emotional exhausting to work with. There are a lot of similar qualities that create behaviours in our more challenging co-workers; things like rigidness, a self focus, and often, insecurity. These, and other types, of behaviours create common traits that can be identified and labeled if you know what to look for. I spent some time working with a HR team to identify, label, and recommend actions to properly limit the impact these people have on us. Have you ever dealt with Emotional Vampires, Hostile Drama Queens, or a Bliss Bandit? If any of these names sound like they might describe someone who you have worked with, check out my past article, called Do you have the Dirty Dozen in your life? Part I of II, for a list of 12 types of people and suggestions on how to limit their impact on you.

Uncertainty: a common way to poison the well

Beyond the types of people, another major challenge comes from people dealing with uncertainty. Sometimes people do not completely understand their roles, or how their roles align with yours. This level of uncertainly in how we see jobs, tasks, responsibilities, and hierarchy can make it really tough to work with people if the way that they are supposed to interact is unclear. A large part of working with people has to do with understanding how their job affects you and vice versa, so clarity is really important to good working relationships. This can often be gained by strong job descriptions, organizational charts, and a mapping of responsibilities. I have often advised or consulted for workplaces that are in rough shape and one of the best places to start is with an organizational role assessment and an inventory of HR policies and job descriptions.

Another major way that uncertainty creates major challenges in the workplace is with change. When a large change happens, it creates an extreme amount of uncertainty, maybe it is a change in leadership, or a change in strategic direction, or in mandate, or even just adding to an existing team, change can often bring out the worst in people because of the uncertainty. During a change people often get protective, or even possessive of what they do and the status quo because they become vulnerable and that makes people really uncomfortable. Managing change is an extremely important part of maintaining an efficient and hospitable workplace. I have written about managing change in detail in a past article titled: Unlocking Innovation (Part V of VI): Managing change, but the key is really about strong communication and getting everyone affected by change to buy in to its value.

Challenges beyond the people

It is important to understand the systemic conditions that greatly impact the environment of a workplace. One of the biggest conditions is unbalanced and out of date policies. Policies are the backbone of any workplace, whether is it s the HR policies, financial policies or conflict policies, just to name a few. If these are not strong and fair then the backbone of an organization will be as weak and skewed as the polices themselves. If an organization has gone to the lengths to hire the right people, focus on the right strategies, and crafted the right services or products to offer; but their policies and focus limit the impact or weaken the creative freedom of the staff, then they have bound the very hands hired to lift them. Part of the problem is the focus of many policies. There are often policies that focus on time spent at a desk rather than flexibility to get the best work done, or protecting the company from staff rather then empowering staff to do their best work, or are used to control the employees rather then develop them.

Another condition that creates a challenging workplace is how the employees are incentivize. Now there are a lot of opinions about how to get the most of out of employees. Some say money, some say promotions, some even say threats. But, however an organization decides to incentivize their employees the simple truth is, you get the best work out of happy and appreciated people. Happy and valued employees think more creatively, are bolder, put in longer hours, are more dependable, and miss less time. There is great work being done researching these claims in Positive Psychology, I would suggest starting with Shawn Achor, here is a great Ted Talk to get you started.

The Takeaway

The environment and people you work with are the largest factor to overall job satisfaction. As an employee the best thing you can do is to be open minded and assertive. That’s it. Those two things can make almost anything you deal with in the workplace manageable, from the annoying person next to you, to the stress of getting a new boss. Becoming open minded and assertive is a much more complex process, but understanding what you need to do is at least a place to start. As an employer the best things that you can do is to truly value your employees. Value them enough to have transparent communication with them, change your policies that were created to police them instead of empowering them, incentives them by letting them play to their strengthens and truly value the work that they do. That’s it. Value them and most importantly, show them they are valued. Empower them, support them, encourage them to support and empower each other. We shouldn’t all just look to survive our work day, we should look to thrive in our work day.

 

Roman 3 is an advising and solutions firm that specializes in inspiring progressive action, creating a culture of innovation, and assisting organizations in implementing transformative change. We help you build capacity, collaborate, be progressive, and grow to your full potential. For more information on our services and support check us out at www.roman3.ca 

 

Effective Management Employee Engagement Human Resources Teamwork

Is Your Understanding of Diversity All Wrong?

Do you know the true value of diversity?

Lately I have been consumed with recruiting. I recently hired staff positions at one of my organizations, where I’m also currently looking for new Board Members. I also just finished the process of recruiting committee members and advisors for my other organization. Lastly, I am consulting with a government group looking to recruit members for a very exciting youth council. So lately I have been living and breathing recruitment, which is par for the course when you specialize in talent development. To be honest, I actually kind of like recruiting, especially when it’s for the assortment of levels, positions, skill sets, and experience that I normally work with on a regular basis. But more than the recruiting, I really like maximizing the skills and potential that new people bring to their new roles. The unique viewpoints, backgrounds, strengths, and ideas really excite me. I am a true believer in a strengths based approach to teamwork, which means working with people with wide reaching skills and knowledge that have little overlap and letting the people work primarily within their strengths, while keeping them away from their areas of weakness. As an example, is I have an Economic Development Officer (EDO) who is an amazing relationship builder and an innovative problem solver, but lacks administrative organizational skills. So I let my EDO focus on his strengths and we share the more administrative tasks within his team to someone who has great skills and leadership with organizational tasks. Why hold them back from the things they do well? The other piece of maximizing skills and potential that I am a true believer in is discourse. Maybe it is the academic in me, but I adamantly believe that divergent views and lively debate are essential to true progress and innovation. Impactful discourse can only come from diversity… but this may not be the diversity most people think of.

Diversity of Perspective

Now, I don’t want to lose anyone by talking about diversity. I know there are strong opinions when the term is uttered. While some people get on their soapbox to shout their thoughts about political correctness, others feel that only people who are a part of underrepresented groups have the right to speak about diversity. These are just a few examples. But, I want to be very clear right at the start, the value of recruiting for diversity has nothing to do with political correctness. I’m not talking about, or even remotely supporting tokenism (the practice of doing something, such as hiring a person who belongs to a minority group, only to prevent criticism and give the appearance that people are being treated fairly.) In fact, I’m kind of disgusted by the lack of respect and the lack general decency that tokenism invokes. What I’m saying is that the true value in hiring for diversity is gaining the diversity of perspective.

As I mentioned earlier, two important elements of maximizing the skills and the potential of groups, organizations, or individuals are a strengths based approach and discourse. These elements can only exist in a team when there is a dynamic of diversity of perspective; new viewpoints to share, unique experiences to pull from, different struggles that have been conquered, and distinctive approaches to common issues, just to name a few. If this diversity of perspective does not exist then all efforts for development and innovation are doomed to fail or at best, be mildly impactful.

We don’t need Ambassadors

When most people think of diversity, they think of a group of people whose members represent different cultures, races, languages, sexual orientation, gender, class, and abilities. These are some of the different backgrounds that create the common understanding of diversity. The problem with thinking of diversity as a form of representation is that even the most well meaning efforts become tokenistic in their desire to have all backgrounds visibility represented.

The true value of diversity is the range of perspectives that it allows. The differences of culture, race, language, sexual orientation, gender, class, and ability inherently give people individual experiences that build the uniqueness of their perspectives. At the same time, each person is allowed be an individual and not an “ambassador” for their particular minority group. We want the whole person to be involved and engaged. Their background will form their perspective, not define it.

The Dull Grey of the Homogenous Perspective

Without the commitment to recruiting diversity of perspective we run the risk of putting a lot of work into something that is only valued by a particular segment of the population we are trying to inspire, sell to, develop, or whatever. We all like to surround ourselves with like minded people, but we need to be careful and consider why they are likeminded. Are they likeminded in goals and vision? Appreciation of progress and challenge? Or because we have the same background and perspectives?

Recruiting for diversity of perspective is simply the best way to be the best. I personally look for the strengths based approach and truly value discourse. Reaching the largest audience, finding innovative marketing segments, creating competitive advantage, and accelerating problem solving efforts, are just a few of the possible benefits.

The Takeaway

Value diversity because you truly want to be the best. Don’t value diversity because you want to have nice pictures of unique faces. Recruit people who will have many different viewpoints and insights. Don’t recruit people who look different and define their value by their differences. Perspectives are essential to business, problem solving, teamwork, ethics, training, personal growth, and maximizing potential. Put great efforts into gathering as many as you can.

 

Roman 3 is an advising and solutions firm that specializes in inspiring progressive action, creating a culture of innovation, and assisting organizations in implementing transformative change. We help you build capacity, collaborate, be progressive, and grow to your full potential. For more information on our services and support check us out at www.roman3.ca 

Effective Management Employee Engagement Human Resources Improve Your Career Skill Development

Investing in Psychological Capital- Maximizing Yourself and Your Talent Pool

– Written by W. Coby Milne – Director of Roman 3 Operations

I have an incredible investment opportunity for you. I’m asking you to consider investing in Psychological Capital, also known as PSYCAP.  PSYCAP is a form of capital that involves the personal resources people bring to their jobs.

Now, before you dismiss this as a type of investment scam, stop reading and close this article, hear me out.

An investment in your own Psychological Capital, and in the Psychological Capital of those who work under you, can create amazing personal, professional and financial return.

Hopefully, I kept your interest. Let’s see where this journey takes us.

A little about me

In my work history I used to teach Workforce Navigation and Psychological Capital development to unemployed and under-employed people in Nova Scotia’s rural Annapolis Valley. I now provide corporate training to industry, governments, and nonprofits. My students former were going through different levels of career transition and are all trying to be more competitive job candidates and stronger employees. My former students are probably the most diverse that you can imagine in terms of education, skill set, cultural background, disabilities, age, and career goals. So when I say this is a universal investment opportunity, I mean what I’m saying.

The focus on Psychological Capital in my work came from a shift in the culture from where I used to work. Our focus used to be to make people really good at finding jobs, but as we started to support more services for business, we realized that we were only making good job seekers, not good employees. This led to my team re-evaluating our approach and methods. We ended up throwing out everything we took as standard practice and completely starting over. This led to copious amounts of academic research and a wide range of business needs assessments. All of this investigation led us to a unanimous conclusion. We found that in order to increase the capacity and employability of employees, we needed to increase their value add (capital) in the job market.

This is the basis for the concept of Human Capital: the economic value of an employee’s skill set. So the new question was the simplest, yet most difficult: How? How can we increase people’s capacity and employability, in a meaningful and efficient way?

Investing in people

This is what led us to the concepts of Psychological Capital. Psychological Capital is simply understood as the positive union between the cognitive skills of Hope, Efficacy, Resilience and Optimism (easily remembered as HERO). The idea is if you can build and strengthen these skills in yourself or your business, you can significantly increase your competitive advantage in your marketplace (business or job), embody the concept of “Work Smarter, Not Harder” and considerably increase achievement capacity.

This new found information and direction was a real game changer for both our students’ efforts and our own careers. Our employment rate for students jumped from around 65% to a little over 80%, but most significantly, our employment retention (the ability to keep a job for at least the length of the probation period) jumped from 68% to 93%! This success was consistently reinforced with multiple iterations of our training program, delivered to almost 150 students over a two year period.

With a focus on Psychological Capital, the graduates of our program were more quickly promoted than in past programs, they reported much higher job satisfaction, and were able to recover from jobs that didn’t work out and find another job much faster.

How do you build these skills?

This is a much more complex question. In building our program, curriculum and research models, we were fortunate to have a diverse team. We had people with extensive HR backgrounds, expertise in business services and needs assessments and, my value add, cognitive skill development. The specific details are too much to include in this article, but feel free to contact me with any questions you have.

What I can share at this time are our guiding principles. These were the foundations for every step along the way.

Hope Theory – (Hope)

Create a culture that supports two basic, yet essential ideas.

  1. Pathways – There is more than one way to achieve a goal and success looks different to different people.
  2. Agency – You have the capacity to effect change. Your actions and efforts matter; in fact they are often all that does
Experiential Learning (combined with Flooding) – (Efficacy)

While I’ve covered this elsewhere (Three Essential Elements for Effective Training), it’s worth revisiting the three key approaches to adult learning:

  1. Rote learning– focuses on learning specific content, understanding steps and processes, for example, how to format a resume.
  2. Reflective Learning–working with information and ideas to get students really thinking about themselves, their pasts and their biases. This approach provides perspective and hopefully will encourage growth. A sample of reflective learning would be considering how negative thinking and biases hurt mental resilience.
  3. Experiential Learning–where students are immersed in the learning and experiencing the value of the tips, knowledge and understanding they’ve gained. One example of experiential learning would be mastering the steps for high level problem solving by making a survival plan after a theoretical plane crash.

Our program utilized the best learning approaches to meet the students’ needs in achieving our training outcomes. We wouldn’t use experiential learning just because it was fun, we would only use it if it had real value in helping learners learn. We combined experiential learning with a process used in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, called flooding. Flooding involves getting people to move out of their comfort zones by placing them in situations where they need to push themselves beyond their usual limits. An example might be building conflict resolution skills using specific scenarios and increasing the complexity of the scenes to go beyond the normal, typical situations they would commonly encounter. If they can handle the most challenging scenarios, then the everyday ones will seem easy by comparison. The principle is similar to practicing lifting weights that are heavier than you need to lift, so when you are lifting your targeted weight, it seems much easier.

Let Yourself Fail – (Resilience)

We did a lot of research around Growth Mindset and rewarding the making of an authentic effort over the achievement of results. Growth Mindset is a concept best described by researcher Carol Dweck, who said, “people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.” The theory goes that failure is a mindset, not an inevitable outcome. In a Growth Mindset, failing is not seen as the mistakes or the wrong choices we make.  A failure is framed as letting the mistake or the wrong choice define us.

Realistic Expectations – (Optimism)

We may have been told things in life like, “if you can dream it, you can do it” or “shoot for the moon and even if you miss, you will end up among the stars.” These motivational quotes sound nice, but can do more harm than good. We need to accept the reality of our situations and be realistic with our optimism. Our role as trainers and educators is to help our students recognize their strengths, assets and professional value, but also realistically see their baggage, limitations and weaknesses. Our students need to know and accept all of these aspects of themselves as the cards they’ve been dealt.  With this knowledge, they can start to play their best hand.

Improve your efforts moving forward

Throwing out our previous work and questioning the foundation and guiding principles of our industry was a huge risk and, to be honest, pretty scary. But even we couldn’t predict the positive impact it had on our students. Also, we’ve consulted with other organizations and businesses on their professional development efforts, and encouraged them to consider incorporating a PSYCAP focus. They’ve reported great successes and momentum building, plus a renewed structure for intentional training.

Teaching to build PSYCAP is all about maximizing the potential of the learners.  You don’t have to hire for talent if you can build it in house. Instead of being a hunter and gathering new talent, farm the talent you currently have and grow it to feed the success of your business and your efforts.

 

Roman 3 is an advising and solutions firm that specializes in inspiring progressive action, creating a culture of innovation, and assisting organizations in implementing transformative change. We help you build capacity, collaborate, be progressive, and grow to your full potential. For more information on our services and support check us out at www.roman3.ca