Even if you haven’t come across the term ‘dry promotion’, it’s likely you have received one.

A ‘dry promotion’ is essentially when an employee is given extra duties and responsibilities without a raise – hence making it a ‘dry’ promotion as there is no compensation being offered to grease their wheels. This phenomenon is quite a popular one; one survey found that 78% of employees had experienced a dry promotion.

There are many reasons why employees are dry promoted, but the most common ones tend to be that someone is absorbing the responsibilities of an employee that has just left, or they are being given the chance to see if they would be capable of a promotion and this ‘dry promotion’ is a trial run. The problem is, in both of these scenarios it is rarely communicated how long – if ever – this change will be reflected in their compensation.

Dry promotions can be frustrating for employees, and can lead to lower engagement levels, higher levels of dissatisfaction, and increase the likelihood of staff falling into a ‘grumpy staying’ mindset.

From an employer perspective, a dry promotion can be tempting to offer; if you want to potentially promote someone but want to see how they will fare in this position, then offering this interim, unpaid position can seem like a legitimate solution. If you are going to take this course of action, then clear communication is key – ensure that the employee knows exactly how long their interim position is for and at what point the decision will be made to further their promotion or not. At least in this case, the employee has all the information they need to make an informed decision about whether they want to accept this promotional trial.

In cases of delegating responsibilities from a departed employee, the idea is that these additional responsibilities will only be absorbed until a replacement is found. Whilst an entire compensation change may not be a viable option, this doesn’t mean that employers can’t reward these employees in other ways, whether that be through a bonus or through more creative means (for instance, offering them some additional paid leave).

If you have to offer a dry promotion, it can’t be bone dry, otherwise an employer will find itself with employees looking to quench their thirst in other places. Promoting someone can be daunting for an employer, as it is a risky investment, and whilst dry promotions may seem like an insurance tactic, they may end up doing more harm than good.

Instead of dry promoting, there is no harm in breaking down the promotion process so that the employee is still being recognized and rewarded and the employer can ease them in to get a feel if they are ready for the role.

If you would like to discuss how we can help bolster your people strategies and optimize your promotion process, please get in touch with us.

When we hear the word ‘bullying’, we tend to associate this with our school days. However, the sad truth is that more than one in ten people are bullied in their workplace.

Bullying behavior can be extremely damaging, whether this be through mental damage done to the employee suffering, or the knock-on effects this behavior has on the wider business (a toxic culture, lack of cohesion, drop in engagement levels).

However, how leader and HR professionals respond to bullying is so important in managing these ripple effects. Therefore, knowing the signs of this behavior is vital to mitigating the effects that it will have.

But firstly, what is bullying at work? The Workplace Bullying Institute defines bullying as “repeated, health-harming mistreatment of one or more persons (the targets) by one or more perpetrators that takes one or more of the following forms: verbal abuse, offensive conduct/behaviors (including nonverbal) which are threatening, humiliating, or intimidating; or work interference – sabotage – which prevents work from getting done.”

There are two things to note from this; the first is knowing the difference between someone who is generally not nice and someone who is a bully. Bullying is targeted (so towards the same person, or same group of people i.e. women, a certain ethnic group) and repeated, whereas if a manager is found to be mean to anyone and everyone and it isn’t targeted, then this is simply seen as a manager having an attitude problem. The second thing to note is that bullying can look different depending on the context it is happening in, which is why it’s important for leaders to know all the signs and different forms that bullying can take in order to intervene quickly and efficiently.

So, what are the signs?

Overt signs of bullying will look like a person being aggressive through yelling, shouting, or hitting objects. It can be punishing a specific employee undeservingly, belittling or embarrassing someone, or even threatening them with unwarranted punishment and/or termination. Additionally, actively blocking someone’s learning and development opportunities and campaigning against them to remove them from the organization all constitute as openly bullying an employee.

There are also more subtle, covert signs of bullying that leaders have to be aware of too. This can take the shape of shaming/guilting someone, pitting employees against each other, isolating/excluding someone on purpose, ignoring them, and deceiving them to get one’s way.

There is a tendency for bullying to come from managers and higher-ups to their direct reports. I have previously worked with a leader who was consistently angry and frequently yelled, and would lie to HR about the performance of a member of staff to get action taken to remove them from the company. HR, upon investigating, discovered that the leader was purposefully gatekeeping information from the employee that they needed to perform their job, which was yielding these subpar results, as well as scheduling meetings surreptitiously so that the individual would miss out on key exchanges.

In a case like this, or any instance of workplace bullying, HR must handle it as if handling any other employee relations issue – by conducting a thorough internal investigation and taking direct action upon the conclusion of this investigation, whether that be coaching, punishment, or even termination.

But employers can also go one step further, and instead of being reactive to bullying, they can be proactive in preventing it in the first place. This can be done through:

• Developing a training program for middle managers and leadership on appropriate conduct and inclusivity.
• Building processes into the fabric of the business on an organizational design level which interrupt biases and make the recruiting process more inclusive.
• Ensuring that the yearly harassment training is incorporating specific training around how to recognise, respond to and mitigate bullying in the workplace in all its forms.
• Having a thorough investigative process for investigating toxic leaders and/or employees.

Employers who are working towards creating a harmonious and inclusive workplace are the ones that are going to get the best out of their people – after all, happy employees are productive employees!

If you would like to discuss the anti-bullying training and workshops we offer, please get in touch with me at Brittany@orgshakers.com

This month, we have got our hands on a copy of Stephen Frost’s latest book, The Key to Inclusion. With input from authors who are experts in their field of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), Stephen has put together and edited this practical guide with strong strategies, examples, and case studies demonstrating how to cultivate and embed an inclusive culture in your workplace.

The book is divided up into four parts which address the key topics surrounding DEI, as well as identifying and examining the drivers of inclusion:

Part One: Unlocking You

In the first part of his book, Stephen takes the reader through the concept of ‘cognitive load’ – which is the amount of information the working memory can hold at one time – and identifies this as a barrier to inclusion. For DEI to succeed in a workplace, leaders must recognize and adapt to their employees’ cognitive load and find ways of reducing it.

He then goes on to outline the formation of a ‘growth mindset’ and highlights how this is a key ingredient of an inclusive company, as well as how leaders can begin to develop cultural intelligence to foster an inclusive working environment.

Part Two: Unlocking Your Team

In the second part, Stephen zooms in on the ideal management practices that leaders can adopt to foster an inclusive environment, and he does this by looking at two key areas: the structure that leaders adopt for their teams and how the fourth industrial revolution – the introduction and assimilation of artificial intelligence and new technologies – influences these structures.

Part Three: Unlocking Your Organization

In the penultimate part, the focus is centred around rethinking strategy so that inclusion can be repositioned into the strategic fabric of the organization. This process is broken down into phases:

• Diversity 101 (foundations) – incorporating the minimum legislative approach to diversity.
• Diversity 2.0 (appearance) – ‘Taking a stand’, which is manifested in corporate messaging.
• Inclusion 3.0 (interior structures) – Practicing diversity throughout all behaviors and layers of the organization.
• Inclusion 4.0 – Overhauling the entire system and not simply incorporating an inclusion element.

The chapter then goes on to examine the key drivers of inclusion and how to interact with each of them, and these are data and measurement, governance, leadership, and system and processes, in addition to strategy from the previous part.

Part Four: Unlocking the Future

In the final part of Stephen’s book, he advises employers how they can look ahead to embed inclusion at the centre of technological, leadership, and problem-solving skills. This begins with finding the best way to measure your inclusion impact, and harnessing this data to create a roadmap for your inclusion initiatives.

He then goes on to contextualize this by industry, including tech, TV and film, and financial services.

The book takes the reader on a journey of inclusion, from understanding it at its foundations to making it a staple part of the foundations of an entire company. By doing so, employers can begin to unlock its power – and this book is the first step to finding that key.

If you would like to purchase a copy of Stephen’s book head over here for the UK and over here for the US.

If you would like to discuss how we can help implement a DEI and inclusion strategy, please get in touch with us.

Stories of ghosts, ghouls, spirits, and paranormal activity are not hard to come by in the modern world. The media is inundated with gothic movies, tv shows, and literature, and for many people a good ghost story gets their spine tingling.

However, while the idea of ghosts may be entertainment for some, for others, the concept of apparitions, hauntings, and possessions are very real. According to a 2019 IPSOS poll, 46% of Americans believe in ghosts (a percentage that has increased by 14% since 2005). That’s almost half of the entire country.

So I pose you this scenario: what do you do, as an HR professional, if someone in the company believes the workplace is haunted?

Belief is a very powerful force; whether you believe in ghosts or not, for someone that does believe in them, you have to accept that as their reality. This means that while their fear may be intangible, the psychological effects that their fear will have on them are very real.

And there are many instances of hauntings causing chaos in the workplace to prove this. In Orlando, a Japanese restaurateur backed out of his lease because they heard that the premises were allegedly haunted by ghosts and apparitions. The landlord even offered to exorcise the building, but they still refused, and this resulted in a messy court case.

In another occurrence at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington D.C., many workers reported instances of seeing a woman’s face in a third-floor window. They would also hear a female voice call out their name, followed by footsteps running down the hall – on one occasion they even found a co-workers visiting child talking to an invisible woman in the third-floor conference room. One worker had to quit his job because of this alleged supernatural torment, as he kept finding the photos from his office walls neatly arranged on the floor every morning.

There was even one case of a law firm’s office building being haunted, which lead them to move to a newer building where the unexplained phenomena (keyboards typing by themselves, files shuffling in cabinets in empty rooms) finally ceased.

Whether these hauntings were truly paranormal or not, the effects of them are undeniably real: legal issues, lowered engagement and productivity, loss of staff, and the costs of relocation. These are all big red flags in the corporate world, and so regardless of what has caused them, HR is responsible for managing them accordingly.

What we’re trying to get at here is that whether they believe it or not, an employer has to take these things seriously in order to manager the very real effects that these beliefs have. In countries that are less westernized, the belief of ghosts and spirits is much more prevalent, and so having to deal with a haunted workplace may be much more commonplace somewhere like China, where they still celebrate their Hungry Ghost Festival to avoid the wrath of ghosts. Similarly in Mexico, they celebrate el Dia de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead), where families will welcome back the souls of their deceased relatives.

Belief and superstition can run deep – ever find yourself knocking on wood or crossing your fingers? – and so it is important that these instances are taken seriously and handled expertly so to avoid any of the disruptions that were listed above.

And if that means having to be a Ghostbuster, then grab your overalls.

Networking is more than just a practice, it’s a skill. A skill that many employers tend to foster and encourage in their employees, as it can lead to better cohesion, higher productivity, and more expansion opportunities.

Pre-pandemic, internal networking (which is networking amongst your team members) was a seamless practice, as employees were brushing shoulders, poking heads in doors, and having exchanges by the water-cooler. The focus tended to be around external networking (which is networking outside of the organization).

However, with the mass adoption of remote and hybrid working styles, this has affected the basis of networking as a whole. Employees who were once always around each other in an office are now working from home, and as new employees are onboarded, internal networking has become something that requires a lot more conscious effort. This is particularly noticeable amongst Gen Z workers, with only 23% of them saying that remote work was important to them because they felt that they were missing out on important networking and career development opportunities.

For employers, placing emphasis on how to network in the new age can actually be the deciding factor between attracting a potential new candidate. Ensuring that internal and external networking opportunities are available can make a company a more attractive place to work, but this requires employees to understand what this new networking world looks like and how they can operate in it successfully.

Here’s some new ways of networking that employers can promote to their staff:

• Virtual Coffees – whether you want staff to reach out beyond your immediate network or get to know the wider team, scheduling a virtual coffee catch-up can be a great way of networking in a remote working world. It can be a short, 15-minute discussion with the sole intention of chatting, catching up, and seeing what opportunities are up for grabs. This offers opportunities for direct mentorship, learning, and development.
• Attend Online Talks/Events – as the working world continues to digitalize, it is now easier then ever to sign up for free webinars, talks, and events that are held entirely remotely. These can be a great way of expanding one’s network and discovering new ideas or potential new business partnerships.
• LinkedIn is Your Best Friend – encouraging team members to have a LinkedIn presence not only boosts their personal brand, but it boosts the company’s brand too. Ensure that staff are interacting with social media posts and posting updates of their own in order to appeal to the wider LinkedIn network.

And in terms of how employers can create internal networking opportunities, this is where team building days can be a great tool. If you are a company that operates in a hybrid or remote fashion, making that conscious effort to bring the team together outside of the workplace setting can be a great way to breaking down barriers and encouraging inter-networking.

If you would like to discuss how you create networking opportunities as an attraction and expansion strategy, please get in touch with us.

After the discovery and diagnosis and the treatment and recovery, the day finally came: remission. I partook in my last batch of radiotherapy after recovering from my operations, and then finally came the day that I was declared cancer-free.

Oftentimes this might be misconstrued as being back to the version of me I was before the cancer, but I don’t think that’s the case. Remission is what any cancer patient hopes to hear – it’s a sign that you can press play on your personal and professional life again. But it’s important to remember, especially for employers, that as someone begins to recalibrate back into their normal routine, ‘normalcy’ won’t be instantaneous. In fact, they may never be exactly how they were before, but it’s about offering those adjustments to help them transition back as smoothly as possible.

It will take some time for an employee to get their groove back; a great way of reintroducing someone back into work might be by starting them off on a part-time basis. Staggering their return can help get their body get used to the physical and mental stimulation that working requires. It also helps to set the pace; they are not expected to come back and dive right into the deep end.

And for those that do find themselves wanting to get stuck in, there is no harm in reintroducing responsibility bit by bit, just so that they can also see how they fare. The cancer may be gone, but its after-effects are stubborn and can linger. The returning employee may not be sure how much they are ready to take back on in one go, so in this case just being flexible to that can be a great way of ensuring that their return is as productive as possible for both the employee and the employer.

In addition to this, I have found that being able to talk to people who have gone through a similar experience – whether this be having cancer or having cared for someone with cancer – is always a really helpful way of adapting to life post-cancer. The little nuances of remission become things to bond over, and so employers who are able to signpost staff who have had cancer to support groups – or to other members of staff who have had similar experiences – will be helping them assimilate back into working life.

The OrgShakers team have been on this journey with me from beginning to end, and I have been so fortunate to feel that I was able to be honest and open about my entire cancer journey with them. This firsthand support, paired with their own experiences, has made our team experts when it comes to coaching executives and managers on how to properly and efficiently support team members with cancer at every step of their journey.

Every person’s experience with cancer is going to be unique, so when designing support policies around cancer in the workplace, use these as a guidance that can be flexibly applied on a case-by-case basis. This ensures that the individual’s needs are being met, and that they will be able to return as their best self when the time comes.

If you are an employer who is looking to craft or update their policies on cancer in the workplace, or looking for specialized training and workshops around this topic, then please feel free to reach out to me at therese@orgshakers.com

After discovering, being diagnosed, and then disclosing my cancer to my workplace, then came the big leagues – the start of my treatment. Once I received my results, I was set up with a treatment plan.

For me, I found a clear plan comforting. I liked that I could see the journey ahead, that I knew exactly where I had to be and what I had to be doing at each step of the way. As someone with a corporate background, it felt shockingly similar to having a mission statement and planning out the roadmap of achieving that mission.

Treatment looks different for everybody, depending on the type of cancer you have been diagnosed with and the stage of progression of that cancer. For me, I was going in for lymph node clearances, and then eventually my mastectomy surgery, followed by reconstructive surgery. This had me bedbound in hospital for 10 days, followed by weeks of recovery at home.

As I mentioned in the first part of this piece, communication with your employee is key during this process. Employers should do their best to be in the loop of surgery dates, wellbeing updates, and just general support and attentiveness during this particular stage of the journey. This is the most taxing part; not just physically from the treatments, but it can be mentally exhausting to be unwell. Especially for someone who enjoys busying themselves and was spurred on by the idea of working – such as myself! Being forced to simply sit and heal can be tricky for someone itching to get back to their normal routine of work and life.

In this sense, having that accessible line of communication open will help to keep the employee feeling involved as they undergo this treatment. If they are like me, they will still want to know what’s going on and feel up to date on working matters; however, if the employee feels they just need to shut off from that until their recovery is complete, then this should also be respected.

It’s all about finding the perfect balance, and the only way of finding that is by asking what they need. Whether they want to jump back in the moment they are in recovery mode or whether they would like to be back to full health again before they begin their re-assimilation back into working life.

And another thing that employers need to be considerate of is being flexible to those caring for cancer patients who are in recovery. In the immediate weeks after the operations, I found that I needed help doing the most basic of things – hanging up washing, cooking, taking a shower. During this period, the person caring for you is going to need to be afforded the same flexibility and understanding as the person in recovery, and so as an employer it is key to ensure that these reasonable adjustments can be made for all involved.

In the final part of this series, I am going to be exploring the remission and return to work stage, and what employers should be doing to make this process as smooth and as effective as possible.

In the meantime, if you would like to discuss the coaching and workshops we offer around cancer support in the workplace, please get in touch with me at therese@orgshakers.com

In one way or another, we’re all deeply familiar with cancer. There was an estimated 18.1 million cases worldwide in 2020, and so oftentimes if you ask someone if they have a ‘cancer story’, the answer will be yes.

Back in January of this year, I was over in New York meeting colleagues and networking (pictured below), and I suddenly got a stabbing pain around my heart. Immediately, I assumed the worst, and took myself to a walk-in clinic. When I was being seen to, I was taken off-guard by the doctor asking when my last mammogram was, to which I told him it was August 2022, and he quickly dismissed the pain being anything to do with my breasts.

A few weeks after my return to the UK, I felt the same pain again. I went to get myself checked, and when I did I asked specifically if I could have a mammogram done. Despite the doctor believing that this wasn’t necessary, she agreed. After my mammogram, I was then invited to do an ultrasound, and then a biopsy all in the same day. Weeks later, I was given my diagnosis of breast cancer.

This was when the reality of my situation really hit me, and what I’ve seen throughout my journey with cancer is that every person’s experience with it is entirely unique. For me, being told what was wrong just immediately put me into action-mode. I wanted to create an action plan of how to get rid of it, I wasn’t really letting the weight of the word be felt. It was only when you have to navigate telling loved ones, friends, and colleagues that it became harder.

A cancer diagnosis is undoubtedly going to affect your working life. It is also going to affect your personal life in a number of ways depending on the context of your situation, and this will no doubt have trickle down effects into your professional life as well. In a situation like this, when someone receives a diagnosis of a long-term illness, the line between professional and personal is forced to blur, and how an employer responds to and supports someone through this is a very key part of their journey.

Whilst I was fortunate enough to have a great support network around me, including family, friends, and colleagues, for others this situation can be very different. For those who have a smaller network, or for those who live alone, something like work can play a huge role in their life and act as an important factor to getting them out of bed in the morning. With a diagnosis comes treatment, and this inevitably means having to go through months of recovery, and this can result in a lot of loneliness and feeling like you lack purpose.

In the same breath, a cancer diagnosis can be straining on relationships. Some find that their romantic relationships break down during this time, and this is going to have a great effect on someone as they embark on their journey.

What I am trying to highlight is that the context of cancer is always going to be different, and so for an employer, the best thing they can do in this situation is communicate with their staff member. Ask them what support they need, what they feel will best help them, and take it upon themselves to become familiar with what it looks like to support someone with their specific diagnosis – as each cancer is entirely different.

In addition to this, regular one-to-ones and check-ins just as a standard practice are a great way of ensuring that managers remain up to date and consistent. I could not believe how many people felt embarrassed or ashamed of having to tell their employers about their diagnosis, to the point where they wouldn’t even disclose it until their surgery date had been set. Having these regular check-ins as standard practice is much more likely to result in employees feeling they can be honest and open about something like this.

In the next part of this series, I am going to be discussing what role the employer can play in supporting a staff member who is going through the treatment and recovery process of their cancer journey. In the final part, we will explore the remission and return to work, and the best ways for employers to make this re-assimilation as smooth as possible.

In the meantime, if you would like to discuss the coaching services and workshops we offer around cancer in the workplace, please get in touch with me at therese@orgshakers.com

Having a diverse workforce is a great thing for business; diversity in life experiences and perspectives open up new doors for healthy debate and potential innovation that will expand the economic horizons of an organization, resulting in higher performance and greater shareholder value.

However, having a diverse workforce can sometimes lead to inevitable conflict and be a wasted resource if not leveraged properly. People are unique, have grown up doing and believing different things, and managing this hodgepodge of workers with varying worldviews can sometimes feel like tiptoeing through a minefield – especially as an HR professional.

For employers, tapping into the power that a diverse workforce holds requires adept skills. Hiring an array of different people is a great first step, but if a company doesn’t know how to create an environment where everyone feels included and like they belong, then they will not gain access to the many benefits that a diverse team offers.

A key step to creating this environment is to promote a culture where everyone recognizes that all individuals bring value. Not everyone is going to agree with one another, and beliefs around politics, religion, and morality are going to differ, but by reminding staff that each individual brings value in some way, this helps create an environment that is more open to listening and learning rather than outright dismissing.

Encourage the concept of exploring differences as a strength or asset in the hopes of finding commonalities. Statistically, an employee isn’t going to be best friends with every single one of their co-workers, but employers have a responsibility of ensuring that they are creating a working environment that fosters respect and harmony.

Of course, there may be times where someone’s view on something may be harmful or perpetuate hate. In these instances, reporting this to your direct report is the best course of action so that HR can follow up and respond accordingly. But if someone’s worldview doesn’t create harm or an adverse impact for employees at work – but still some don’t see eye to eye – this is one of those times where ‘agreeing to disagree’ may be the best way forward.

People are becoming increasingly complex, and many employees are finally feeling more comfortable bringing their entire selves to work. But with this comes a new microcosm to navigate that employers must ensure they are on top of to avoid interactions spiralling into a much bigger issue than it might need to be.

What is important is placing a focus on these inclusive skills and harnessing them to create a cohesive and harmonious workplace. Managers who can coach the empathetic view of realizing that someone’s belief is true to them – even if it isn’t true to you – is a great way of helping employees understand and value differences of opinions.

And, at the end of it, the one thing every member of staff should have in common is their united goal to achieve the mission of the company they work for – so ensuring these goals are clear, concise, and communicated to each member of staff is a great tool for promoting unity.

If you would like to discuss how OrgShakers can help coach managers to create an environment that is not just diverse, but also inclusive to all, please get in touch with me at marty@orgshakers.com

The taboos around health and wellbeing in the workplace are slowly beginning to shed their stigma; menopause policies are being discussed, mental health is being prioritized, and employers continue to look for innovate ways of boosting productivity through creating happier employees.

However, there are still some topics that are failing to be considered by a majority of employers – and one of these is a miscarriage leave policy.

Around 10-20% of known pregnancies end in miscarriages, and this loss can have detrimental effects on the parents’ physical (if birthing) and mental health. Currently, in the US, there is no federal law that entitles parents to paid leave following the miscarriage of their unborn child; there is also no federal law which entitles parents, or workers in general, to paid bereavement leave. The only entitlement to leave that the mother or birthing person may have is Family and Medical Leave – which is only granted if there were medical complications during the miscarriage. This leave is also unpaid, the employee has to have been with their company for a year, and it does not extend to smaller employers (those with under 50 employees).

In the UK, if a child is stillborn after 24 weeks of pregnancy the birth mother is entitled to up to 52 weeks of statutory maternity leave or pay, and the birth father, partner of the birth mother, or adopter can have up to 2 weeks. If a miscarriage occurs in the first 24 weeks, there is no legal entitlement to statutory maternity, paternity, or parental bereavement leave.

Despite this, some companies are beginning to create specific policies surrounding miscarriage leave. In the US, mom-founded baby formula company Bobbie offer 3 weeks of paid leave to those who experience the loss of a child. Similarly in the UK, tech retailer Curry’s have introduced a 2-week paid leave policy for employees affected by pregnancy loss. Both employers extend this to both parents, and to same sex couples who have experienced a miscarriage through surrogacy.

These policies are something that employers on a global scale should be considering. Not only does it highlight your philosophy as an organization, but it demonstrates how much you value the physical and mental wellbeing of your employees. This alone is a great way of making your business a very attractive one to work for – especially in an age where many employees will choose where they work based on if their values are reflected there.

When it comes to formulating this policy, this is where OrgShakers can really help. A miscarriage policy may seem cut and paste, but there are many factors that need to be considered when constructing your own policy. For example, is someone entitled to more leave or less leave depending on how far into the pregnancy they were? Does the policy apply equally to mother and father? Does it account for same sex couples where neither is birthing? Will it be a subcategory of your existing bereavement or parental policy?

There is a lot to consider, but it is important to note that every miscarriage situation will be different and effect the people involved differently. Having a policy that offers a guideline around this can be extremely helpful, but it also needs to incorporate an element of flexibility based on individual circumstances to ensure that employees are getting the support they need.

If you would like to discuss how we can help design a miscarriage leave policy for your organization, please get in touch with me at Brittany@orgshakers.com

To understand the next step in the evolution of the workplace, we have to start in a place with apparently little or no connection to modern working practices – the middle of the last Ice Age.

Cro-Magnons – the first modern humans – arrived in Europe around 35,000 years ago. Nomadic hunter-gatherers who lived in groups consisting of several families, they were sophisticated toolmakers using spears and flint knives. And, most importantly for our story of workplace evolution, they had sewing needles which they used to fashion clothes from animal skins which kept the ravages of the freezing Ice Age weather at bay.

So, imagine that one dark winter’s night one of our Cro-Magnons hit upon an idea to while away the hours sat round the campfire. They would produce a tapestry on an animal skin – about a yard in width – depicting that year’s key events.

From that point, of course, the yard-a-year tapestry would quickly become an annual tradition with the result that today our 35,000-year-old tapestry would be a few yards short of twenty miles long. So, what would this twenty-mile tapestry show us?

Well, by the time humans even came close to creating the concept of formal work, the tapestry would already be about twelve miles long (which equates to 60% of the history of modern humans). In other words, for the majority of modern human history ‘work’ was simply hunting and gathering – ah, the simple days.

However, after this point, we would begin to see a subtle change in the story on the tapestry. Although hunting and gathering remains the primary means of food production, we begin to see the first indications of animal domestication. This process builds and builds and triggers the Neolithic evolution – which sees the mass shift to agricultural practices and the liberation of the old ways of existence through the creation of trading. Trade, arguably, was the single biggest idea in the history of humankind, as it suddenly allowed for horizons to expand like never before, and people could begin to specialize and innovate in all the ways we now see today.

So, for most of this twenty-mile tapestry, the evolution of the workplace was a very gradual shift over many generations. However, at around the nineteen and three-quatre mile point things began to change and accelerate at a much more rapid pace – the Industrial revolution.

Kickstarted by Jethro Tull’s mechanized seed drill, humans began to invent technology that would enable them to venture away from agriculture and to other new emerging forms of employment. With the need for manual labor in agriculture having been dramatically reduced, workers were given the liberty to pursue a career in something beyond production.

This revolution took the working world by storm – at the dawn of the eighteenth century 76% of the population of England worked in agriculture, but by the mid-twentieth century it was down to just 4%.

And as we began to work in varying jobs, and the labor market expanded and contracted as new innovations and technologies were introduced, that takes us all the way up to today – where technology now plays such a vital role in the mass majority of jobs.

But one thing that we have noticed with the adoption and implementation of mechanization (from conveyor belts to sewing machines to computers) is also this idea that workers are ‘cogs in the mechanism’, and that an ‘optimized’ worker is one who acts like a machine – productive, consistent, and quick. But what happened in those years of technological advancements was that many employers were trying to make people work like machines (sometimes literally, as Ford’s production line proves), when in reality they should’ve been tapping into the key traits that are fundamentally human.

Yet if you look at what is happening now – with the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) on a mass scale into the workplace – what we are actually seeing is that we’ve come full circle. We are now trying to make the technology human, and I think that AI is going to be the harbinger for this next step of the evolution of the workplace – the step towards the optimization of our humanity.

The overarching purpose of technological advancements in the workplace has always been to free-up time from repetitive, monotonous tasks so that employees can spend more time doing work that creates greater value for both them and their employer. In essence, the entire reason why we have continued to advance is so that we can get to a point where we have the luxury of time to focus on human capital and unlocking its full capabilities.

And we’re already starting to gradually see this shift on our tapestry; the pandemic had a massive impact on the working world, and sparked a re-evaluation of how we work and why we work. We saw a mindset shift amongst the workforce – a carpe diem effect. Suddenly we were all faced with our own mortality, and this made many realise that if they were going to spend a majority of their life working, they wanted to be doing something they cared about, something that gave them a good work life balance, something that supported them, and something fun.

For employers, this means focusing on workplace strategies that will enable better work-life balance (which improves engagement and reduces burnout), opportunities for job crafting (which creates opportunities for innovation), and support for physical and mental health. These areas are going to become key focal points as the workplace continues to evolve to become people-centric, so for those employers who are already beginning to optimize these, they are going to be ahead of the curve and become some of the most attractive organizations to work for in the market.

Steps are already starting to be taken, but they are baby steps. If you look at our recent poll which sought to discover the most effective way of supporting mental health in the workplace, over half of respondents (55%) cited flexible working, while 23% said mental health days, and 16% chose Employee Assistance Programs.

However, while these are great things, they can almost seem tokenistic. Having an allowance of leave for mental health is good, but is this really support? Same as with flexible working; employees can optimize their time better, but now that they are not physically around their team leaders, it’s harder for managers to be more attentive to someone they only see conditionally through a screen.

So, just as we had maintenance teams that would be on-call to fix any machines that malfunctioned, why should employers not consider the same concept for their people? Having an in-house psychotherapist whose sole responsibility is to support employees and feedback to managers with the appropriate reasonable adjustments will help employers create a real roadmap for support and optimization in the face of mental illness. We are already seeing schools begin to hire full-time counsellors and therapists for this very reason, so why should employers not consider doing the same?

As we continue to weave this tapestry of human history year by year, we can see that the last half mile has seen the most accelerated change. Now, as we begin to adapt the ideology of working smart in a technological and AI-advanced world, employers need to be preparing for the next step in the evolution of the workplace by placing their focus on their people power. That is the key to becoming an organization of tomorrow.

If you would like to discuss all things people strategy, our dedicated team of specialized HR professionals can assist you in all aspects – get in touch with us here.

This month’s book choice was inspired by the fact that today is World Dyslexia Awareness Day – which closes off Dyslexia Awareness Week. In the spirit of this, we got our hands on a copy of Kate Grigg’s This is Dyslexia.

Kate, who is dyslexic herself, is the founder and CEO of the charity Made By Dyslexia, acting as a leading voice in the charge to disrupt the world’s thinking around dyslexia and highlight how it can be a superpower in the workplace and the wider world.

Kate’s book, This is Dyslexia, expertly builds on this notion of dyslexia being a ‘superpower’, as she debunks all the common misconceptions around the topic and helps the reader to better understand how dyslexic people think. What’s great is that the entire book is written on cream coloured paper with pictures, charts, diagrams, and changeable text to help dyslexic people read through it and better retain the information. This way, it is an accessible read for all.

Along with varying mediums of information, the book also includes QR codes throughout that can be scanned and will take the reader to video interviews of famous people with dyslexia. There are also resources available at the back of the book for children, parents, teachers, and employers that can prove to be a very useful first step in understanding dyslexia on a deeper level.

Throughout the book, Kate highlights the importance of harnessing dyslexia as a skill rather than a drawback – along with all other forms of neurodivergent thinking – and goes on to demonstrate the many ways that this unique way of processing can be extremely beneficial for the workplace (such as problem-solving, creativity, and innovative thinking!).

With 10% of the population being dyslexic, and around 20% of people believed to be neurodivergent, the importance of employers educating themselves around these topics is vital for the bottom line, as an inclusive workplace environment can play to the strengths of these unique ways of thinking.

Kate’s book is a great start at getting to understand dyslexic thinking on a deeper, empathetic level, and will help leaders better grasp how to support and optimize those staff with dyslexia.

You can purchase your copy of This is Dyslexia in the UK here and in the US here.

And if you would like to discuss how OrgShakers can support you in creating a neurodivergent-friendly working environment, please get in touch with us!