People Strategy Archives | Page 13 of 18

Global Prebiotics Week is an important reminder that what we eat and drink play a huge part in both our physical and mental wellbeing.

There is a wealth of information available to us today to inform how our bodies and minds work best, and what we can do to keep ourselves healthy. Admittedly some of the information is conflicting, and some downright wrong, but there is scientific consensus around many areas and yet we do not capitalise enough on this knowledge.

Feuerbach said, ‘we are what we eat’, and we now know this to be very true. So how does this knowledge apply to the world of work?

Well, although the health and wellbeing of employees has increasingly become a priority for employers, the Health and Safety Executive found that in the year 2021 to 2022 the UK was still losing over 17-million working days to work-related stress, depression and anxiety.

Although progressive organizations are implementing initiatives to address workplace factors which are harmful to employees’ mental health, few are focused how we might increase our resilience to these factors. And here there are some basic human needs we can, and should, pay attention to, including sleep, hydration, exercise, rest, and nutrition.

Ignoring these basic needs comes at a high cost to our health – today and in the future – which means that to optimize their wellbeing strategies, organizations should increasingly be promoting the importance of maintaining and improving physical and mental health.

While maintaining of the brain, hydrating of the body, and looking after the health of one’s gut may all sound like knowledge reserved for medical professionals, all these things can have noticeable effects on an employee’s productivity, engagement, and emotional state. And all are inextricably interlinked.

Mental and physical health can no longer be looked at in isolation from each other. For example, your gut health can play a very big role in the health and optimization of the brain – which has a direct effect on your mental health.

This is because all of us have a ‘gut-brain axis’. The two are connected both biochemically (the gut provides around 95% of the body’s serotonin, which controls feelings of happiness and wellbeing), and physically by the vagus nerve which connects more than 100 million nerve cells in the gut lining directly to the brain stem.

Because of this link, scientists have suggested that mental wellbeing is impacted by the health of the gut microbiome – a complex community of trillions of bacteria which and can vary enormously from person to person. And as the health of an individual’s gut biome is directly related to the food and drink we consume, a balanced diet can help maintain mental as well as physical wellbeing.

Just like the gut, the brain needs to be nourished and cared for. If this is done correctly, then this has been proven to help improve energy levels, sharpen focus, reduce brain fog, strengthen memory and keep one’s mood balanced.

One of simplest and most effective ways of supporting our brains each day is through drinking sufficient water. Studies have found that as little as 1-2% body water loss directly affects the brain and can lead to cognitive impairment. Not making time to drink some water when working can quickly start to reduce mental focus and create muddled thinking.

So, what can employers do? Making sure you have fresh water readily available at workplaces is one thing, but we are working in a hybrid world now, so we need to support our employees’ wellness wherever they work.

Whilst it may seem counterintuitive in our ‘always on’, ‘always busy’, ‘do more work with less people’ working lives, employers should be encouraging (or in some organisations they are trying mandating) employees to take adequate breaks to rehydrate, eat and take some rest.

This should be seen as the gold standard if we want a healthy, engaged, energized, and productive workforce. Better for employees, customers, the organization, and society.

If employers seek to understand how to properly support the mind and body health of their employees, then they will be rewarded by employees working at their optimum.

This might start with encouraging ‘nudges’ such as free water bottles, but fundamentally we need to address what we know about basic human needs when designing work.

With Gallup’s State of the Global Workforce report finding only 21% of workers are engaged with their work, or feel cared about by their employers, this would be a great time to consider all the benefits that a proactive approach to employee wellness has to offer.

If you would like to speak about this topic in more detail and discuss potential wellbeing strategies, please get in touch with us here!

The skills shortage is becoming an increasing concern amongst many organizations. Recent data from McKinsey has found that 87% of companies either have or expect to have a skill gap in the next few years.

One way of tackling (or preventing) this issue is by looking at onboarding those younger workers who are active in college or university – and a great way of doing this is through offering internships.

As Gen Z enter into the workforce during one of its most unstable periods in history, recent data is showing that this is already starting to have an effect on them: Gen Z workers are the most stressed group in the workplace as they are concerned they lack the skills (78%) and education (71%) required to advance their careers.

In the same way apprenticeships develop talent and engender employer loyalty, internships and work experience are also an innovative way of attracting a generation who, in the current employment market, have so much more choice. So, offering them the opportunity to learn and develop business skills/experience in the professional field they are targeting is a great way of attracting a hands-on generation.

As they graduate from an education system obsessed with performance league tables, many students are leaving with an inconsistent variety of qualifications as their subject choices would have been orientated around driving higher grade attainment. In the same vein, Generation Z is also exhibiting signs of a more divergent “multitasking” approach to their career paths(s), and so employers who embody this mindset place themselves in a much stronger position in the labour market by offering a regular “turnover” of “learning opportunities”.

Using internships as a talent development vehicle is now more important than ever. The Early Careers Survey 2022 found that the main blocker to students finding an internship was the lack of opportunity (35%), as many had been cancelled due to the long-lasting effects of the pandemic. This resulted in only 12% of work experience being conducted through internships, which leaves a huge gap for employers to fill.

As we navigate the post pandemic and Brexit skill shortages, it’s more important than ever that employers open their doors and create internship opportunities, as they offer a golden opportunity for talent attraction:

Internships provide a boost to your labour force, releasing core team members to focus on key priorities, and whilst only short term, the day-to-day tasks an intern discharges are those essential to building their own business acumen and skills.
Internships are a great tool for attracting new talent and retaining it. For years Blue Chip organisations such as Google, Meta, PwC and Deloitte have used internships, with their workforces being made up of around 80% of those who took part in one.
They allow for a company to get a real feel for potential new hires, as well as to build and sustain a constructive working relationship, fostering a sense of loyalty through investment.
From an environmental, social and governance perspective, offering an internship program is a great way of furthering your social agenda, as internships are a solid form of outreach in the local community to offer young people alternative options to further education.
Purposefully onboarding young people through internships is a great way to get diversified perspectives on your company’s strategy, plans and policies. It will also allow you to get a sense of what young people actually want and this can be used to expand your market accordingly.
They offer young people a means to successfully build skills in sectors that can often feel inaccessible, especially to those from lower-income and underprivileged backgrounds.
Internships are a cost-effective option for an employer vs. hiring full-time staff, and whilst based around academic holidays, a successful internship can see a candidate working repeatedly throughout the annual cycle of study period. This permits employers to measure the success of candidates based on their attitude whilst they work towards gaining their qualifications.

However, I offer a word of advice: historically many organisations have opted to offer unpaid internships, and whilst tempting in these frugal times, this approach tends not to foster a performance-orientated mindset or encourage longevity between the two parties. In fact, the aforementioned Early Careers Survey found that career prospects were significantly improved for those who undertook a paid internship (42%) compared to those who were unpaid (30%).

If you would like to discuss more on early careers talent attraction and retention or even setting up an internship programme, don’t hesitate to reach out to me at gavin.jones@orgshakers.com

Eating disorders can be a very taboo topic that have a lot of incorrect connotations, and because of this, many employers may not consider them to be a cause for concern in the workplace.

But the reality of eating disorders is that they affect around 1.25 million people in the UK, and almost 30 million in the US. Most assume they are something that are exclusive to teenage girls, but surprisingly they are known to affect adults more than younger people, with 25% of sufferers being men. Therefore, it is very likely that some employees may be suffering silently, and this can lead to a sudden increase in absences and a dip in productivity.

However, it can be hard to identify those who are at risk, as most people with an eating disorder are not visibly underweight. This is because we tend to associate ‘eating disorders’ with anorexia, but there are many other easily-concealed ones, such as bulimia, binge eating and ‘other specified feeding or eating disorder (OSFED)’.

So, what are the signs and what should employers be doing?

There are a range of symptoms that an employee may be exhibiting which can indicate that they are struggling with an eating disorder:

Feeling anxiety/stress around food – this can take the form of not wanting to eat with others, obsessively calorie counting/exercising, constantly eating, or avoiding having to see their own image (wanting to have their camera off during meetings).
Withdrawing from social situations – usually these situations revolve a lot around food and drink, so avoiding them allows a person to have more control over their diet.
Routine and stability at work – people with eating disorders tend to be perfectionists and may struggle to cope with sudden change as this could not be predicted and planned for.
Increased absence – those who suffer from any of these disorders are likely to have poorer health as they can have a compromising effect on the immune system.

If a member of staff or a manager begins to notice any of these signs, paired with a change in productivity and engagement, then the best approach would be for the suspected person’s line manager to set up a one-to-one meeting with them.

Ensure that the conversation is centred around their affected performance, and then ask them why this might be. If a manager goes in trying to diagnose someone with an eating disorder, this can either make the person feel like they are being accused of something, or there may be an entirely different reason for their sudden change in behavior. Let them lead the conversation and the issue will organically come to light.

If they do discover that the person is indeed struggling with an eating disorder, be sure to reassure them as an employer that you want to support them, not judge them. The manager can then signpost them to a GP or an external source of support, such as Beat (UK based) or National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA, US based).

If you would like to discuss how we can help boost productivity through the implementation of policies around mental wellbeing in your workplace, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

By Brittany Burton and Victoria Sprenger

Once upon a time, three young women found themselves struggling at work. Tired, isolated, and cold, the three were in need of support from their employers during these trying times:

“Burnout Beauty”

The first of our tales follows a young professional named Aurora. In wake of her company’s compensation review, their team had let some members go, and she now found herself working out-of-hours in order to ensure she was deemed a reliable employee.

But not too long passed before Aurora noticed she was starting to burnout. And she wasn’t alone – the effects of this ‘always-on’ culture have led to 43% of global workers also experiencing burnout.

She found herself feeling exhausted, fighting off the need for a workday nap, but didn’t want to admit to this in case it made her look incapable.

How can Aurora’s employer help her?

Firstly, they may consider the implementation of policies that will remove outside hours correspondence to help to set boundaries around constant contact. This attitude then needs to be embedded into the culture of her workplace, so that it becomes more than just a policy, but also a commonly held mindset.

As well as this, her line-manager should be setting up regular one-to-one’s which are solely dedicated to hearing what she has to say. Having this time to discuss her individual needs and concerns will help her employer to understand what support they can offer her, as well as highlighting that they value her wellbeing.

“Beauty and the Bricks”

Our next tale is about Belle, a fresh-out-of-university employee who has just started her first job, which is full-time remote working.

At first, she loves it. The freedom, the flexibility; she felt like her organization truly trusted her, and she didn’t disappoint them. But after a few months, she began to notice a sense of detachment – Belle was lonely.

81% of younger workers also expressed genuine concerns about loneliness over the prospect of working fully remotely. It was difficult to make connections, and sometimes, Belle even found herself talking to the clocks and the candles.

So, what can Belle’s employer do to support her?

When a company is fully remote, it is important that they plan regular in-person gatherings. These could be on a quarterly basis, and can be purpose-driven or simply for team building. Either way, having these events will help foster a sense of connection amongst employees, and can act as a better ice breaker than a Zoom call.

It is also important with remote work to try and recreate those ‘water-cooler’ moments as much as possible. With the only interaction being pre-set meetings with a pre-set agenda, it is difficult and awkward to find time to just simply chat, catch-up and leave room for natural ideas to form. Promote the idea of setting up meetings with no particular goal in mind to recreate that space for creative idea exchanges, as well as chances for people to get to know their colleagues that little bit better.

As well as this, employers should encourage their team to not be afraid to get creative with where they decide to work remotely from!

“No More Glass Slippers”

Lastly, we have Ella. With the inflation rates soaring to 11.1% and perpetuating the cost-of-living crisis, she finds herself struggling to stretch her paycheck far enough to pay bills, eat, and keep the heating on to stave off the winter. Not to mention the pets.

Ella hasn’t had much experience supporting herself financially, and so her spending habits have been sporadic at times. She even resorted to selling her favorite glass slippers on Poshmark for the extra cash.

How can Ella’s employer help her through these trying times?

In a time of economic uncertainty, many companies are also struggling to find the means of offering their staff more money. But there are a range of different things companies can do to help shave off costs for their employees here and there.

For example, employers could consider moving to more remote work to help people like Ella save money on commuting. If this isn’t possible, then offering a loan for a yearly travel pass that the employee pays back monthly can make travel a lot more affordable – and it also means that they are saving money with their energy bills by being out of their house.

Promoting the use of apps that help younger workers like Ella to track spending habits and expenses can also make a big difference – knowing how to use your money effectively is a skill that needs nurturing, and apps like Mint can be very effective at teaching this.

Right now, leaders are having to deal with new issues emerging from all corners of their company. And so, to ensure that employees like Aurora, Belle and Ella get their happily ever after’s, don’t hesitate to get in contact with us about any HR-related concerns you might be having, as we would love to share our magic.

Napping at work is not a new phenomenon. 42.7% of US employees have admitted that they regularly nap at work, and a separate study found that the average remote-working Briton was taking three lunchtime naps per week.

This aligns well with results from our own poll, which found that 66% of respondents were either already doing it or open to the idea of it.

It is no surprise that with the significant rise of remote working, employees have started to feel more comfortable taking a nap. Your bed is quite literally a room away. But instead of this midday snooze being a surreptitious endeavour, should employers actually be encouraging their staff to do so?

In many cultures, napping in the middle of the day is already embedded. Most notably in Japan, where this practice is known as ‘inemuri’. Employers see it as a positive thing when staff are napping during the workday, as it highlights that they have been working hard.

In Spain and Italy, a ‘siesta’ or ‘riposo’ is woven into their workdays, at which point office workers, shops and restaurants will close down for a couple of hours in the middle of the day. However, while the word siesta translates to nap, this is actually a very common misconception, as most workers don’t have enough time to commute back home to sleep and then return.

Unless, like Japan, they were given space to sleep comfortably from the office itself. The Japanese have chairs that actually fold out into makeshift beds. And if this sounds surreal, it may be a shock to discover that huge companies have already installed designated areas for staff to catnap. Google make use of their ‘Shhh Zones’, while Amazon are using nap pods.

This encouragement of napping can reap a lot of business benefits – there is evidence to show that napping is great for brain health, as it can improve your mood, engagement levels and productivity, all the while reducing anxiety and physical/mental tension.

One study has even found that 55% of nappers were in managerial roles, compared with 41% of non-nappers. On top of this, over half of nappers (53%) had received promotions in the last year, whereas only 35% of non-nappers had.

This is because naps actually fit neatly into our body’s natural circadian rhythm. Psychologist and author of Take a Nap! Change Your Life, Sara Mednick, explains that people get a dip in the middle of the day where body temperature decreases and cognitive processes are not as strong. Typically, people would have a coffee around this time, but biologically this is your body telling you to take a rest. This stems from the fact that, historically, humans were biphasic (we slept twice a day) but we have now become monophasic (we sleep once, at night).

To clarify, this does not mean that an employee should be worked so hard that they feel physically exhausted. But our bodies are built to benefit from napping, and so it may be time to start challenging the stigma surrounding sleep at work, and examining whether encouraging napping could be a part of your wellbeing strategies to ward off burnout and boost productivity.

Time and time again, the hours in the day can prove to be elusive. Many of us may find ourselves asking, where did the time go? when we look up from our desk and suddenly see that the sky has darkened.

What’s interesting about this is, a lot of employees are now much more aware of how and where they spend their time. After years of a pandemic and lockdown, the value of our time and its finiteness has become a reality for many, and the importance of finding a work-life balance has increased tenfold. A recent Glassdoor survey proves this, as it found that 87% of employees expect their employers to support them in balancing work and personal needs.

But the biggest obstacle in the way of achieving this balance is the fact that there seems to be a complete lack of language around how to approach the topic of time. It’s a tentative subject, and for some reason it feels almost wrong to ask for certain considerations to be made for one’s personal life.

But why is that? There’s an undeniable awkwardness that permeates the subject, potentially even a feeling of guilt around asking for a better balance.

What’s interesting, however, is the fact that while employees may struggle to find the best words to start the conversation, the emergence of quiet quitting is an example of staff skipping the conversation altogether and taking immediate action. It’s no surprise that quiet quitting is a trend that has been noted far more amongst younger workers; they have entered the world of work as it’s going through monumental structural changes, and so from their perspective, setting boundaries around their work and their personal life is a normal expectation. Whereas for the rest of us who have been working for over a decade, all we have really known is this ‘always-on’ mindset being a requirement of a dependable team player. And a dependable team player regularly and willingly sacrifices personal needs.

Employers could therefore greatly benefit from taking responsibility for kickstarting this conversation with their teams. Learning to talk about time and to have an appreciation for their staff’s commitment to their business will demonstrate how much they value them.

And from a business perspective, starting this discussion around boundaries will help to mitigate the risk of burnout and exhaustion. According to a YouGov survey, 73% of Britons aged between 18-49 said that their tiredness had a great impact on their work. This is coupled with research from the Society for Human Resources Management which found that almost half (48%) of American employees reported being mentally and physically exhausted at the end of their workday.

Creating the space where team members feel safe talking about their personal needs can be key to the prevention of this exhaustion. This ensures that team members are remaining fully engaged and energized both physically and mentally, as well as being a deposit into the “sense of belonging” employee bank account.

To discuss how you can begin to approach this conversation with your team, don’t hesitate to reach out to me at marty@orgshakers.com

Dissociation is a way the mind copes with stress – and it is a way more common problem than most employers think, with up with to 75% of people experiencing a dissociative episode at some point.

In fact, even if you have never heard of dissociation, you will almost certainly have seen its impact on colleagues, and maybe even experienced it yourself!

There are a number of ways dissociation can manifest itself, and all of them have a negative impact on an individual’s performance and productivity:

Depersonalisation – the feeling of being outside yourself, watching actions, thoughts, and feelings from a distance.
Derealisation – the people and things around you may seem “lifeless” or “foggy”.
Amnesia – not being able to remember information, past events, or even a learned talent or skill.

The stress and trauma caused by the pandemic triggered an increase in the levels of dissociation across the population creating a mental health legacy which is now being felt in the workplace. And the problem with this is that many misinterpret a dip in productivity as someone doing less – when they may actually need support.

So how can employers prevent dissociative episodes from impacting productivity?

The best place to start is awareness. By educating leaders and line-managers about dissociation and how to recognise it in themselves and their direct reports, you can begin to understand the issue and how it might be affecting your organization.

You can also share some simple methods for coping with dissociative episodes, for example, breathing exercises, stimulation toys, or music. There are many different grounding methods for bringing someone out of an episode and back into reality, but what works for each individual will be unique to them.

Having these conversations openly will help those who may not know how to cope with their dissociative symptoms, as well as contribute to eradicating the wider stigma around mental health. It will see productivity and engagement levels rise again, all the while strengthening the relationships between leaders and their teams.

If you would like to discuss training around dissociation and preventing it from affecting employee productivity, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

Recently, I was out with a friend, and she mentioned how she hadn’t been into work that day. I asked her why she didn’t go, and she told me, “I just wasn’t having a good mental health day, so I called in sick.”

When I asked if she’d told them the truth about her mental health, she said she’d claimed a physical illness because she was embarrassed.

And this got me thinking. With almost 8 out of 10 organizations (79%) reporting that mental health is a major driver of workplace absence, how can employers take steps to tackle the issue if employees are lying about feeling mentally fit to work?

I started looking into whether other people were doing this, and the answers echoed that of my friend’s.

Slater and Gordon discovered that 55% of employees who took mental health days claimed to be physically unwell for fear of being judged, demoted, or sacked.

According to a global report published by Aetna International, more than half of employees (52%) diagnosed with mental health issues admitted to lying to their employer about taking a sick day. It also found that those with an undiagnosed mental health condition were more likely to lie about being sick due to stress (45%) and ‘feeling down’ (42%).

The pandemic brought the mental health crisis – and the real effects it had on business – to the forefront. With nearly 80% of workers saying that having access to mental health services would make them more productive, as well as 64% adding that they would be more attracted to a company that offered these, businesses have responded.

In the US, nearly 23% of workers say their employer has introduced new mental health support, and in the UK, YouGov found that 59% of large employers were offering mental health services.

All of which means that the challenge is now one of trust. Mental health can be a tricky discussion – but when employees are lying about it, there is no ‘discussion’ to be had.

So, if you are a business who would like to find out how the introduction of mental health support can drive employee performance and productivity, or how you can open up the conversation about mental health at work, you can get in touch with us here.

At the beginning of January, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) proposed a new law that would ban the use of non-compete clauses, as well as rescind any previously signed agreements.

This may seem like a drastic change – especially with nearly a third (31.8%) of employers making all their employees sign a non-compete – but the banning of these clauses will very likely have a positive effect overall.

For one thing, non-compete agreements are notoriously US-centric. If you look at companies in Europe – as well as states such as California, who have not enforced these since 1872 – it is clear that the absence of these binding agreements has not hindered profitability.

And this is because there are many ways that are more effective than non-compete agreements to protect yourself as a business. The reality of a non-compete is that they are like threatening someone with a blunt hammer; they’re very difficult and very costly to argue in court, so usually won’t have much effect. But they hold weighty connotations that are enough to deter people from attempting to break them.

Instead, employers can hold employees to their duty of loyalty, which means that while they are working with them, they will not do anything that is inconsistent with the organization’s interests.

As well as this, the FTC’s new rules still allow for the recovery of reasonable costs of training, as well as the implementation of a non-solicitation clause so that a reasonable degree of confidentiality is still intact after an employee terminates their contract. So from a legal standpoint, you are still covered in the areas that you need to be, while also making room for an acceleration of innovation to take place in the market.

It will also set into motion the recalibration of retention strategies. For lack of a better word, a non-compete agreement is a lazy tool, and so with its revoking, this paves the way for businesses to focus on using more positive, people-centric strategies to promote retention. These will emphasize how a company values its team members, and with leaders demonstrating the trust they have in their staff, they will foster a healthy sense of loyalty without the need for it in writing.

What employers need to take from this proposition is that job mobility does not mean the free flow of confidential information. It simply means that the labor market becomes more flexible and competitive, and is an opportunity for businesses to gain access to top talent. But the companies that are examining their attraction and retention strategies and taking into account the changing needs of the workforce will be the ones who get ahead in this raging war for talent.

OrgShakers can help with this. With a vast amount of experience and knowledge on these subjects, we can ensure that the rescinding of non-competes is smooth and successful, all the while aiding in strengthening your retention strategies and boosting employee loyalty. If you would like to discuss how we can do this, get in touch with me at: elizabeth.huldin@orgshakers.com

Let me ask you something – if you are a member of the LGBTQ+ community, how many times have you had to ‘come out of the closet’?

The answer will always – always – be more than once. But why is that?

It might be a common misconception that once a person ‘comes out’ it’s a one-and-done and everyone is just suddenly in the know. The reality is that now, everywhere you go, every new job, you have to do a loop-the-loop back through those revolving doors and come out all over again.

But the problem with this is that research published by Vodafone and Out Now found that 41% of young people who were open about their sexuality before starting their first job went ‘back in the closet’ and stayed there.

And there are many reasons why this could have happened – one study found that US employers were more likely to view resumes from visibly gay or lesbian applicants unfavourably. Another survey reported that 53% of LGBTQ+ workers would hear jokes about lesbian or gay people, and Stonewall discovered that almost a third of non-binary people (31%) and one in five trans people didn’t feel able to wear work attire representing their gender expression.

The thread that binds all these findings together is a company’s culture. The truth is, when you identify as queer, you can immediately sense whether the environment you are in makes you feel safe to express who you are. The culture of an organization is an indication of overall attitudes, and so it is so important for businesses to ensure that they are creating a safe space where all feel comfortable.

So where to start?

Go right to the root – when you think about the metaphorical ‘closet’, it is spoken about as if people are born inside of it. The reality is, you are put inside, and then forced to come out of it over and over again for the benefit of everyone else. Understanding the homophobic, biphobic and transphobic microaggressions that are embedded even in such commonplace phrases is a great first step to knowing how to identify and eradicate them in your workplace.

It them comes down to management and leadership to set the precedent. Providing regular LGBTQ+ inclusion training, updating your policies and procedures, all the way down to using inclusive language (if straight co-workers also began referring to their husbands/wives as ‘partners’, this small but monumental change can make those in queer relationships feel comfortable sharing details of their own personal lives).

It is no secret that having a diverse workforce brings a wave of new business opportunities, and so if you would like guidance in seizing these opportunities and making your workplace the best it can be, get in touch with us here.

Black History Month aims to recognize the achievements of Black people and their contributions made to history, and this year in the UK, the celebrations are centred around the contributions of black women, as well as coinciding with the 75th anniversary of the arrival of the Empire Windrush.

First celebrated in the UK in 1987, Black History Month has become a huge cultural and political event – especially in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests that were sparked from the racially-motivated killings of George Floyd and Belly Mujinga.

Even as British society becomes more actively conscious of the value that Black Britons have brought and continue to bring to the UK, we can see that they are still faced with severe disparity – especially in the workplace.

Black workers only make up 1.8% of senior leadership positions in the UK, despite comprising of 3.2% of the working population, according to research from the Chartered Management Institute. In addition to this, less than half (47%) of respondents said their organization was taking active steps to increase the proportion of employees from diverse ethnic groups through its recruitment practices, and 67% said their company was not taking any action in relation to ethnicity pay gay reporting and action plans.

And this picture doesn’t get any better the further we zoom out – in the US, the first Black CEO of a Fortune 500 company was not promoted to this role until 1987. Now, if we fast forward to the 2021 research gathered by SHRM, there were only four new Black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, two Black men and two Black women. This equates to 0.8% of Black people in a CEO position, compared with 86% of White men.

This is a stark realisation that in a month where we celebrate the value and contributions of Black people, they are still heavily undervalued in the corporate world.

That’s why I find it so important to remind people why we still celebrate Black History Month. Because we are still on the journey to equality and the eradication of prejudices. Therefore, it is crucial that employers are using this month to reflect on their diversity, equity and inclusion policies, as well as listening to the voices of their employees of colour, so that they can show they are continuously committed to changing for the better.

Racism is deeply, deeply rooted, and it is still very much present in many of our society’s systems and structures. The first thing most organizations can and should do is admit that, to some degree, there are biases and inequalities still present in their workplace culture. As these prejudices are systemic and subconscious, they can be easily overlooked due to being less overt. However, talking about disparity, shining a light on the fact that the experiences and opportunities for Black people are different and scarcer than their White counterparts, is a step all employers need to be taking to work towards achieving true equality.

Cultivating an inclusive environment at work that leverages differences is a continuous journey – it requires consistent work and dedication, but it produces real, beneficial results for your team and your company. Black History Month demonstrates all the incredible things that have been achieved by Black trailblazers over the course of history, and employers who are educating themselves and their people around this will better understand that the best innovations come from diversified perspectives.

To continue this discussion and look at how you can take advantage of all the opportunities that being inclusive has to offer, get in touch with me at marty@orgshakers.com

Zoom Fatigue refers to feelings of tiredness, worry or burnout due to the overuse of video calling platforms.

To help those who fall victim to this, we first need to understand what’s driving it.

It has become a norm for employers to ask their team to have their cameras turned on during a meeting.

Whether this is to mimic the feel of an office, to monitor whether people are actually paying attention, or to simply demonstrate an air of professionalism, the fact is that this is quite a common request being made in the remote and hybrid working world.

If we think about the practicalities of being on Zoom, it is essentially like being in a meeting with a mirror propped up in front of your face. Now, you have to speak to a whole room of people while also having to watch yourself!

This can be particularly difficult for those of us who suffer from public self-consciousness, which is the tendency to fixate on how others are perceiving you.

Research published by Social Cognition builds on this idea, as it found that when people see their own faces on screen, they spend more time looking at themselves and thinking about how they appear than they do focusing on the conversation being had.

Interestingly, numerous studies have suggested that women are more likely to self-focus and feel anxiety when they are in the presence of a mirror. It wasn’t surprising, therefore, to see that a recent study from Stanford found that 1 in 7 women feel very fatigued after Zoom calls compared to 1 in 20 men. And the reason for women being disproportionately affected was because of the increase in ‘self-focused attention’, which is the heightened awareness of how one comes across or appears in a conversation.

The research also found that introverts suffered from Zoom Fatigue much more, as well as younger individuals and people of color. Looking at it from this perspective, enforcing the ‘cameras on’ rule in the workplace may be doing more harm than good, and could also be deemed as a problem of inclusion, considering different types of people are affected differently.

Looking at our own research, which found that over a quarter of respondents (28%) preferred to have their camera’s off during meetings, it may be time for companies to begin taking this into consideration if they haven’t already done so.

So, what are the ways an employer can combat Zoom Fatigue?

Firstly, making people aware of the ‘hide self-view’ option available on Zoom could be a simple and extremely helpful solution. This means that the person’s camera will still be on and they will be seen by everyone apart from themselves, and this can help with growing feelings of self-scrutiny. However, this may not work for all, as the idea of knowing people can still see you but you now cannot see yourself can induce anxiety in and of itself.

The second thing it comes down to is trust. If an employer trusts their staff, then they will be flexible towards having cameras on and off during a meeting, as they should trust that even if they cannot see someone it doesn’t mean they are not paying attention.

And finally, companies could also look at ways of trying to reduce video calls. Make use of simple voice calls and the chat box feature when you can, and move away from this virtual presenteeism mindset.

If you would like to discuss how to approach this topic in greater detail, you get in touch with us here.