Building a Workplace Culture That Embraces Diversity

I’ve spoken and written about the benefits of diversity for years and on six continents. However, as the adage goes, “we teach what we need to learn” and I’m definitely still learning. This year I’ve had the privilege of co-leading a research team to learn from internationally-trained professionals themselves about the challenges in the foreign credential recognition process in Canada. Their stories, without exception, illustrated how very far we still need to go to create Canadian workplaces that embrace diversity. I’ve also been facilitating employer training as part of two initiatives – the MAPLE 2.0 program and Welcoming  Communities. In both cases, I’ve listened to internationally trained skilled workers and professionals describe how they can’t get relevant work in their fields until they have “Canadian experience” – clearly a circular problem as they can’t get that experience without work in their fields!

I’ve also witnessed examples of individuals, though, who do get hired into positions closely related to their pre-immigration careers only to find themselves isolated, unappreciated, and clearly unwelcome by their colleagues and immediate supervisors. To build a diverse workforce, it’s not enough to have buy-in from the executive team and HR professionals within the organization – the average employee also needs to understand the value that diversity can bring. Too often orientation is focussed exclusively on the newcomers; however, to create a welcoming workplace it may be necessary to orient and train incumbent employees, building their cultural competencies and highlighting the synergies that result with working with colleagues who bring diverse perspectives, talents, and prior experiences to the project.

The SEED toolkit that we created for S.U.C.C.E.S.S. a few years ago has recently been updated. If you’re trying to build a workplace that embraces diversity, it’s a good place to start with links to virtual resources for recruitment, orientation, and inclusion of diverse workers, as well as a diversity champion’s guide, a topical backgrounder, and a diversity yearbook filled with activities and resources to shift your workplace culture so that diverse workers know they’re valued and are inspired to fully contribute.

Diversity Within the Workplace

It’s always interesting to me how work clusters within Life Strategies – we seem to go through seasons of topical presentations, typically driven by external requests not intentional marketing. The theme of our current season is “diversity within the workplace.” Earlier this year we conducted research for S.U.C.C.E.S.S. and its government funders on challenges associated with foreign credential recognition for immigrant professionals. One of the key challenges was securing Canadian experience – perhaps a sign that workplaces may not be walking their talk in terms of embracing diversity? In March, I presented at the Career Development Conference in BC on a related theme – I called it “Where in the World? Helping Employers Understand the World Immigrants Come From.”  I’ve facilitated workshops for employers associated with the MAPLES program at ISS and, within the next couple of weeks have five more workshops on similar themes.

In an unrelated research project, career development practitioners acknowledged the importance of working with diversity but, when self-rating their competencies, recognized a significant disconnect – many didn’t believe they had the skills, knowledge, or experience to competently support their diverse clients. Many employers feel the same – they understand the importance of embracing diversity but, at a very practical level, simply don’t know how to attract, hire, retain, and fully engage workers who are in some identifiable way different from their incumbent employees.

The Supporting Employers Embracing Diversity (SEED) toolkit that we developed a few years ago in another project for S.U.C.C.E.S.S. has recently been revised. Within the toolkit, two starting places for learning how to effectively welcome and engage diverse workers are the Diversity Champion’s Backgrounder and Guide and the Cultural Diversity Yearbook.

One of Stephen Covey’s famous principles is to “Begin with the end in mind.” If you’re interested in building a more diverse workplace, start by asking yourself, “Why?” What are you trying to achieve through diversity? What challenges might you face in pursuing your goal? What supports will you need to ensure diverse workers are able to fully contribute within your organization ?

Exploring Career Engagement

Career engagement is defined as the emotional and cognitive connection to one’s career; it is a state where one is focused, energized, and able to derive pleasure from life’s activities. Career engagement focuses on the dynamic interaction between challenge (i.e., level of difficulty; stimulating, fascinating, and invigorating activities) and capacity (i.e., skills, resources, relationships, conflicts). Too much challenge for the available capacity and individuals move out of the zone of engagement towards overwhelmed. Conversely, too little challenge moves individuals towards underutilized. Without these two dimensions being in re-balanced individuals can become completely disengaged.

Within the career engagement model, the use of career, as opposed to work, employee, or even life engagement is intentional. The goal is to encourage you to consider your level of engagement across the broad meaning of career (i.e., “the interaction of work roles and other life roles over a person’s lifespan including both paid and unpaid work”; European Lifelong Guidance Partnership Network, 2012).

In my recent explorations into career engagement, work was having the biggest impact on whether or not individuals were able to be engaged. Take time to reflect on your work role. Do you feel engaged? Overwhelmed? Underutilized? Using the career engagement model, you can explore your level of engagement from the challenge component by reflecting on whether your current role is too difficult, or too easy; also consider whether you have opportunities to be stimulated and fascinated by the work you are doing.

In exploring your level of career engagement from the capacity component, reflect on whether you have the resources necessary to meet the challenges your job presents. Consider skills, knowledge/education, access to equipment, sufficient budget, supportive colleagues and supervisors, as well as supportive friends and family. Remember to look at your whole life, even when focusing on your work role – sometimes your energy is being consumed by challenges at home making work seem more difficult when, in reality, it is personal challenges that are reducing your overall capacity.

Your goal should be to balance challenge and capacity in order to stay within the zone of engagement. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, strive to either increase your level of capacity or reduce the level of challenge. If you’re feeling underutilized, look for opportunities to increase your level of challenge . . . reducing level of capacity is also an option but likely much harder to do; after all, you can’t suddenly become less-skilled at your job.

If you are interested, I’m currently collecting data for my doctoral dissertation where the career engagement model is a focus of my research. Click here to review the official invitation to participate in the research study and access the link to the survey.

Consider Your Career Engagement When Feeling Stressed

In our recent survey on stress management, nearly 61% of respondents reported they were at least somewhat stressed; however, 81% reported they managed their stress either effectively or somewhat effectively. Respondents shared several tips that we compiled into our latest tip sheet – 10 Strategies for Managing Your Stress.   

Any research into stress management is likely to surface similar strategies in addition to ones we didn’t mention in our tip sheet. There is an abundance of literature on reducing and/or minimizing the chance of stressful events as well as coping with and/or surviving through stressful times that are likely to surface, despite our best efforts. If our survey results are any indication, we can all likely do a better job of reducing some of the stress in our lives.

Work, or rather dissatisfaction with work, can be a key stressor for many people. There are many reasons why work can increase the level of stress we experience: from a poor career “fit” (i.e., a job that doesn’t make effective use of our skills and talents / doesn't fit with our personality and/or values) or uncertainty around whether work will exist in the future, to a toxic workplace or difficulty integrating work and family/life responsibilities.

If work is causing you stress, perhaps reflect on your level of Career Engagement. In this model, developed by Life Strategies’ own Roberta Neault and Deirdre Pickerell, lack of engagement with your career can be the result of too much challenge for the level of capacity, which puts you in the overwhelmed category. In opposition, too little challenge puts you in the underutilized category. Although it may seem like underutilized may be a relaxing place to be, both areas can cause stress as work becomes a daily grind – something to suffer through rather than get excited about.

As you reflect on whether you’re more likely to feel overwhelmed or underutilized, ask yourself if this is a temporary situation and, therefore, something you can tolerate for now, or if this is permanent which may result in a need for you to rethink your career – either in terms of the specific role or position or the organization you’re working for. Remember – managing your career, and therefore your career engagement, is like managing your health, finances, or vehicle. It needs time and attention, the occasional check-up and tune-up.

Clues to Work Satisfaction . . . and Dissatisfaction

If you find yourself visiting with colleagues, searching the web, posting to Facebook, or planning your next vacation while at work, you may be dissatisfied in your current role. In a recent study by Salary.com (check out study results via this very cool Infographic), the top time-wasting activities were using the Internet (48%), socializing with co-workers (33%), and handling personal business (30%). Not surprisingly, the top excuse for time wasters was lack of satisfaction at work (46%) with feeling underpaid (34%) coming a close second.

Take a moment to reflect on your work; ask yourself what’s working and what’s not with your day-to-day tasks, team members, supervisors/managers, compensation, and work-life balance. Strive, each day, to do what you can to maximize or take advantage of what’s working. Reflect on what’s not working – what can you do to facilitate change or make improvements?

Another strategy is to explore your Career Engagement or the emotional and cognitive connection you feel to your career (or specific role or set of tasks); full engagement is possible when capacity and challenge are in balance. However, if these are out of balance, disengagement will occur either through becoming overwhelmed (i.e., too much challenge for the available capacity) or underutilized (i.e., insufficient challenge for the available capacity). If you’re wasting time at work reflect on whether lack of career engagement is the cause.

Remember . . .

Whatever you do, do it well. Do it so well that when people see you do it they will want to come back and see you do it again and they will want to bring others and show them how well you do what you do. ~Walt Disney

Appreciation in the Workplace

It’s almost Thanksgiving, so we conducted a brief survey about appreciation in the workplace. We appreciate all the thoughtful responses we got – clearly appreciation is alive and well which was encouraging to hear!

The good news was that a third of our respondents had been appreciated within the past 24 hours and an additional fifth of them had been appreciated within the past week or so (i.e., 55% had received appreciative recognition quite recently). Sadly, a few (about 10%) had to reach back a year or more to identify appreciation in the workplace – sometimes this was linked to a pay raise, performance review, or award ceremony but in other cases this reflected workplaces that simply weren’t recognizing the contributions of employees. One person said “Everyone is looking out for themselves right now, sadly.” Another listed 2006 (5 years ago) as the last time appreciation was expressed; still another wrote, “Can’t honestly remember when the last time was.”

When asked about the most common way to show appreciation, not surprisingly a simple “thank you” came out on top – 50% of the respondents selected this item compared to the next highest choice of letting management know (10%). However, the qualitative answers revealed a variety of approaches (so thank yous don’t become routine) – and many people emphasized the importance of individualizing appreciative feedback, both from the perspective of the sender (it needs to be specific and authentic) and the receiver (it needs to be personally meaningful).

Some people highlighted the personal touch (e.g., in person feedback or a hand written note rather than an email; customized gifts rather than generic gift cards; hugs; home-made food) – but responses were varied. Spa gift certificates were a common theme, as were lunches out, gift certificates for dinner ($100 seemed to be the most common amount for this item), chocolate, flowers, team events, and celebrations. The gift of time was always appreciated – whether time off for birthdays or after a busy project, covering for someone else to give that person a day off (one casual employee does this without compensation to give others a break!), or taking the team out for a special treat.

When asked about creative appreciation strategies, some unique ideas were shared. One organization has a “Cup of Awesomeness” (a golden cup on a beaded cord) that staff members pass to each other to show appreciation for a job well done. Another organization has a Treasure Chest, stocked with cards and small gifts that any employee can use to show appreciation to colleagues or suppliers. And, in one case, an employee’s parents were flown out for a surprise recognition dinner!

However, responses clearly indicated that what works for some doesn’t work for others – one person wrote, “Don’t offer food!! Some cultures keep offering food and you have to eat even if you are not interested not to upset them!!! – I truly hate that!” The consensus definitely was to individualize your approach – take time to learn how the person you appreciate would like to be acknowledged.

Aside from it just being a nice thing to do, respondents identified that appreciation contributes to increasing employee engagement (78%) and productivity (68%), reducing conflict (58%), and facilitating retention (55%). Showing appreciation also models a culture of respect. Some respondents cautioned, however, that appreciation can be a double-edged sword if it contributes to competition or some employees recognized that they aren’t been acknowledged as often or publicly as others.

Appreciation is a core element in both our Let’s CHAT! coaching / communication model and our Employee Engagement model . Don’t hesitate to connect if you’d like to learn more about either of these workplace tools.

Fun in the Workplace

Did you know there are more than 2 million results when you Google “fun in the workplace”?

Clearly I’m not the only one who believes work should be fun! Some of the sites highlight the importance of laughter (e.g., Did you know that preschoolers laugh 400+ times per day compared to 15 times per day for adults? That’s, of course, unless you have preschoolers in your life – our grandchildren definitely make me laugh!) From a practical perspective, laughter releases endorphins (the happy gasses) that do you as much good as strenuous exercise. If you’re struggling to find something to laugh about, there are some pretty funny YouTube videos (try the “office stress” tag).

Other authors link fun and laughter to productivity . Employees who enjoy coming to work are energized and engaged. That energy will fuel their ability to get their work done – even when it means slogging through some unpleasant or tedious tasks. Facilitate resilience by building in fun.

Surprises can bring fun to the workplace. After a particularly challenging project, I once took our staff to the local mall for lunch. I then gave them each a mall gift card and told them they couldn’t come back to the office until it was spent. THAT was FUN!

Sharing funny stories or unusual perspectives can be fun, too. We often laugh over “Freudian” typos (e.g., just yesterday I was reading someone’s description of her siblings as “bothers” rather than “brothers”). Our team also delights in taking what I say out of context, threatening to publicly quote something that sounds completely outrageous.

Fun is good for business. Think about where you shop or seek out services. Are you drawn to the places where people are laughing and seem to enjoy themselves? So am I . . . so I know it’s good business to support a workplace with lots of laughter and unexpected treats.

Employee Engagement Indicator

A popular concept for many of today’s organizations is employee engagement. There is a plethora of information available on the topic; a Google search resulted in over 3.5 million hits. In researching employee engagement as part of my doctoral program, I was somewhat surprised to learn that a wide-variety of definitions exist. Each individual, from consultants to scholars, has his/her own definition – while quite similar when talking employee engagement there is no guarantee everyone is speaking about exactly the same thing. A colleague of mine presented it as everyone talking about apples but some are focussed on Gala and Fugi while others are talking Granny Smith and Red Delicious. The differences may be slight but can still cause confusion and misunderstanding. In our work helping organizations increase engagement, often through career development initiatives, we first recommend establishing or adopting a definition which resonates with the team.  At Life Strategies we’ve adopted a four-factor model of engagement:

Alignment – fit between individual and organizational values

Commitment – loyalty and intent to stay with the organization

Contribution – level of discretionary effort employees are willing to make (i.e., going above and beyond). 

Appreciation –awareness employees are valued and their effort to support the organization’s goals is appreciated

In seeking to measure engagement along these four factors, we developed the Employee Engagement Indicator (EEi). The EEi is a 40 question survey with 10 questions per factor. The total score is intended to indicate an overall level of employee engagement on a continuum from full disengagement to full engagement.  Sub-factor results can also be analyzed (e.g., level of contribution).

While we are still researching the psychometric properties of the EE-i, preliminary results have been interesting and have demonstrated how a low score on one of the factors can drastically impact overall engagement results. Interested in using the EE-i with your own team? Contact us at info@lifestrategies.ca for more information.

The Synergy of Teams

People are constantly asking me how I do all that I do – my response invariably is that “I have a great team!”

At its simplest, synergy is defined as “two or more things functioning together to produce a result not independently obtainable.” Research has demonstrated that synergistic teams can out-produce even the most talented member – and we’ve seen that over and over within the Life Strategies teams.

There is strength in diversity – at Life Strategies, we deliberately build teams that comprise individuals with different competencies and styles. This, of course, means that we all have to embrace and appreciate diversity. Sometimes it’s easier to work with people who approach tasks the same way or share a very similar perspective. However, by choosing to surround ourselves with people who see the world differently and bring unique skills and talents we minimize our blind spots and maximize our productivity.

Do you really know the strengths and talents on your team? Do you let people do what they do best . . . and try to accommodate their weaknesses? Or, are you trying to do too much independently – spending hours at tasks that others could do better in a fraction of the time?

Tools like Personality Dimensions® can help you better understand the teams you work with – whether at work, in athletics, or on community boards. Most members of the Life Strategies team are Personality Dimensions facilitators or Master Trainers . . . aside from facilitating workshops, though, we all walk our talk – celebrating the diversity on our team and providing opportunities for each other to do what they do best. Contact us at info@lifestrategies.ca if you’d like to introduce your own team to this amazing tool.

To Grow is to Change . . .

"To grow is to change, and to have changed often is to have grown much." - Cardinal Newman

This is one of my favourite quotes . . . I have it in my e-mail signature line and framed on my bookshelf. I love change, I’ve changed often, and I continue to grow much (in more dimensions than I’d prefer, at times!). That said, change can be exhausting!

Did you know that there’s a cumulative effect from change? Psychiatrists Holmes and Rahe developed the Stress Scale, a tool that ranks life changes according to the amount of stress they are believed to bring. Although stressors don’t impact everyone in exactly the same way, this scale can be a useful starting point to see if your stress levels are creeping into the danger zone (I don’t think mine have ever been out of the danger zone since I entered adulthood – so other important things to measure are coping resources and resiliency; luckily, I’m blessed with high scores for both of them, too!).

Continuous, relentless stress, though, can lead to burnout. If, like me, your work and life bring constant changes, ensure that you’re adding in extra de-stressing moments to compensate. Gerry and I are about to leave on my 12th trip in the past 6 months. We’ve actually gone through more toothpaste in our travel bag this year than in our bathroom at home! We both love travel . . . but there’s no denying that it’s stressful. Therefore, we try to add on a few days to each trip that are just for us – to visit friends or family, tour the local area, or simply have time with no agenda other than to recover from jet lag, get adjusted to the climate, and find our way around the local neighbourhood.

Psychologist Nancy Schlossberg developed a 4S model to explain individual differences in coping with transitions (the process that accompanies life changes). She found that one’s Situation, Self, Support, and Strategies together impact how people respond to exactly the same event (or non-event – an anticipated event that doesn’t happen, such as a missed promotion or a broken relationship prior to a marriage). For example, as I contemplate re-packing the suitcase that I just unpacked a few days ago, although I’m definitely tired of travel right now (and looking forward to a summer in my own garden), I recognize that my Situation is very privileged in that I get to choose whether or not to travel and have incredible flexibility in deciding how long to be away. In terms of my “Self” – I’m healthy, very comfortable travelling, fascinated with different cultures, insatiably curious, and able to quickly convert a hotel room into a temporary home. Because Gerry travels with me, I have the same Support as when I’m home; I’m also blessed with an amazing team at Life Strategies who have become quite used to working with me through MSN chat and e-mail. In terms of Strategies, we’ve booked our flights so that we arrive a few days before the conference, and then spend a few days on vacation before returning home.

As you reflect on your own change, growth, transitions, and related stress, consider how to minimize the negative impacts of change and strengthen your resiliency and coping resources – both strategies can be effective.

Immigrant or Expatriate? There's a Difference

Some people think that anybody working in Canada who’s “from away” is an immigrant – but that’s not always the case. However, we rarely think of Canadians working abroad as having emigrated (i.e., left Canada permanently). Instead we consider them expatriates. This is an interesting shift in perspective, with all sorts of career/life implications.

Expatriates, international workers, or global careerists typically live a somewhat privileged lifestyle compared to locals; immigrants, on the other hand, typically struggle to get their careers back on track. Ironically, so do some people repatriating to Canada – although their careers may have blossomed abroad, similar to many immigrants they have a hard time convincing local employers that their international experience is of value.

Within Canada and many developed countries, when someone new to the country requests career services, there is often a focus on language training, skills upgrading, and, in some cases, complete re-careering. It’s not unusual to find an immigrant with a PhD driving taxi or serving in a restaurant. I once had a medical doctor from Afghanistan tell me that, upon arrival in Canada, he’d been told that he would have to work as a dishwasher here!

It astounds me that anyone would be surprised when a foreign-trained worker leaves Canada for better opportunities somewhere else. If I was to emigrate from Canada (i.e., immigrate to another country which was to be my permanent home), then it would be worth my time to learn the language and customs, upgrade my education, gain local job search skills, and take a survival job as I settled in. On the other hand, if I were to go to a foreign country where I'd heard that they needed people with my existing professional skills (e.g., teaching counselling in a university; corporate training for a multinational corporation), if I couldn't get that type of work within a very short period of time after arrival, there'd be no point in staying. I'd move to another country that could use my skills.

International/global careerists change countries in a similar way as people in a large city take on new jobs throughout the region. Within the Vancouver area, for example, someone might accept a job offer in Burnaby even if he or she lives downtown. The individual may commute rather than move to Burnaby. Even if a decision is made to move to Burnaby, once the contract is finished it’s quite likely that he or she will move again for the next job. So too, international workers go where the work is. They may leave family behind or families may relocate temporarily; children may attend local or international schools. Leisure time may be spent with other expatriates, groups from “home,” locals, or a combination.

Unfortunately, in Canada, we tend to view all people with foreign accents as "immigrants." However, the needs and expectations of immigrants are significantly different from the needs and expectations of people with international careers (or expats). Interested in learning more? Life Strategies offers relevant courses for career practitioners on The Immigrant Experience and International/Global Careers. Contact studentadvisor@lifestrategies.ca for more information.

Workplace Conflict

Conflict can be distressing in the workplace. A quick Google search for “workplace conflict 2011” revealed almost 59 million hits, including recent research from the UK, courses in Canada and Australia, blogs, headlines about workplace violence, and articles targeted to diverse industries and organizational structures. Workplace conflict is a hot topic!

In many cases the conflict is amongst co-workers or between employees and their managers and someone from the Human Resource department may be called in to intervene. Left to simmer too long, minor workplace conflicts can boil over, resulting in toxic workplaces, bullying, mobbing, or, in extreme cases, a violent counter-attack as in the Calgary story from just last month, where an employee, frustrated over a disagreement about expenses, rammed a semi-trailer into his employer’s truck. Witnesses reported, “He was distraught . . . he could have done anything!”

In other cases, however, conflict initiates with dissatisfied customers or disempowered clients. Regardless of the issue or who the players may be, de-escalating conflict is an important skill to have. We’ve recently uploaded 10 Tips for De-Escalating Conflict and it’s a key component of our customized workshop for case managers on “Dealing With Challenging Clients.” Tips focus primarily on managing yourself – the only person in the conflict that you really have any control over!

Join us online for our new online certificate program for Case Managers, beginning February 16th!

Leadership Lessons

The most recent edition of the Life Strategies News highlighted 10 Leadership Lessons for Transformational Times. Each of the lessons was adapted from our recent workbook of the same name and outlines such things as Ignite Employee Engagement, Make Time for Transformation, Embrace Diversity, and Show Appreciation.

During transformational times, organizations are likely to be shifting priorities, adjusting goals, and struggling to be responsive. The tendency, during these periods of uncertainty, might be for leaders to communicate less. After all, what can be said about a vision for the future when the future is uncertain? It is in these times, however, that open communication is most important.

Through a study conducted in 2004, the Hay Group found that “Trust and confidence in top leadership was the single most reliable predictor of employee satisfaction in an organization" (Source: www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadcon.html). The report went on to note that effective communication regarding the company’s vision, and how each employee contributes to organizational success, are key components of earning the trust of employees. Going silent or waiting until there is something to announce should be avoided at all costs. Great leaders don’t shy away from difficult conversations; instead they communicate organizational challenges and what they feel the future might be.

John Kenneth Galbraith once said, “All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.”

It could be said that British Columbia’s career development sector (particularly the portion of the sector offering services via government funded programs) is currently going through a “major anxiety.” Now more than ever, organizational leaders must instil trust in their workforce by communicating plans, exploring other opportunities, and preparing employees for life beyond business transformation.