E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez

Want to Trust Your Employees? Give Them All Unlimited Vacation Days

As I am about to enjoy my last day on vacation, since tomorrow morning I will be heading over to Orlando, Florida, to embark on the regular yearly pilgrimage trip to attend IBM’s event of events around the world of Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing and the Social Enterprise (Of course, I’m talking about the one and only: Lotusphere 2012), I just couldn’t help putting together this blog post about an article that, when I first bumped into it, I found it incredibly innovative, rather refreshing and very re-energising, but after finishing it up I just thought… “Gosh, that’s a given! Why are we not doing it in today’s corporate world on a wider scale?” … “Give Your Employees Unlimited Vacation Days” may sound all to unrealistic and utopian at best, yet, to me, it’s the ultimate goal for any employer out there around Employee Engagement: Trust your employees to do the right thing!

Indeed, in a rather inspiring and incredibly thought-provoking article, Joe Reynolds (From Red Frog Events) shares the story of how over at his company (Red Frog) they celebrate vacation. They encourage it and they ensure that once work is done and you are covered you are happy to take as many holidays, as an employee, as you would want to. And interestingly enough he comments that this new system has never been abused so far. Surprise, surprise. Well, not really. Why should it?

I mean, last time I brought this subject up, perhaps not over here in this blog, (Although I think I may have hinted it earlier on over at “Reflections from 2011 – Is Employee Engagement Still a Myth?“) but certainly in multiple conversations all over the place, unless you are a rather special business, you have always got a tendency to hire the smartest of talent out there; truly hard working networked professionals who know exactly what’s expected of them and how to excel at their jobs. I know that most of you out there would get a good giggle out of this one, but last time I checked no-one out there is hiring jerks nowadays, and, if you are, you certainly have got a rather problematic issue with your own HR hiring process that needs fixing really soon, that has got nothing to do with social networking tools nor how people use them, by the way. It’s more of a fundamental, organisational issue altogether.

So considering that you have got a whole bunch of hard working networked knowledge workers, why wouldn’t you allow them to take as many holidays as they would want to? It’s not surprising, indeed, that the system won’t be abused, as Joe mentions on that article. On the contrary. If your knowledge workers are truly motivated, and rather passionate, appreciated, recognised and rewarded for their exceedingly good jobs, not only are they going to be willing to take their extended holidays, but there is also a great chance that they would come back to work sooner than expected! That’s what passion does for you. You can’t think any longer whether work is holiday, or whether holiday is work. It’s no longer about striking a good balance between work and life, but more moving things into the next frontier: work life integration.

Yes, that’s right! It’s all about finding that flexibility of doing your job in an effective manner, when you need to do work, and treasuring your personal life when you would need to do so as well. More than anything else because, as Joe mentions, the traditional concept of office work (From 9:00 am to 5:00 pm) is now a thing of the past! Things have moved on and we are at the stage where more and more employers are starting to lower down their own center of gravity, and the power of decision, and leave it down to employees to make the right decisions for the work they are doing. Main reason why? Well, as a starting point, they are beginning to trust their employees much more than whatever else in the past. And this is an important matter, because we are seeing, finally!, that social transformation where knowledge workers are no longer treated like sheep, as in sheeple (and, as such, they no longer behave like sheep either!), and, instead, they are treated as what they are: people with enough motivation and passion for their jobs to want to go the extra mile, if you offer to go the extra mile yourself. So why not offering that opportunity of unlimited vacation days then? It does make plenty of sense, right?

Of course, it does! If not, have a look into the main reasons that Joe mentions why this rather creative initiative is working out really well for them:

• “It treats employees like the adults they are
• It reduces costs by not having to track vacation time
• It shows appreciation
• It’s a great recruitment tool“

Plenty of common sense altogether, no doubt! But perhaps this quote from Joe’s article is much more accurate in describing why such innovative policies will be key, critical, and essential, to attract and retain top talent in a world where we are starting to see plenty of fierce competition on the subject:

“Through building a company on accountability, mutual respect, and teamwork, we’ve seen our unlimited vacation day policy have tremendous results for our employees’ personal development and for productivity“

Both of my good friends Beth Laking and Paul Gillin pretty much nailed it a few days back as well when they tweeted their thoughts about this very same article:

Trust your staff and they will reward you…Give Your Employees Unlimited Vacation Days bit.ly/wSbQN1 @IncMagazine

— Beth Laking (@bethlaking1) January 6, 2012

From Inc.: ‘Give Your Employees Unlimited Vacation Days. It’s true. Ppl take fewer days if you don’t limit them. ow.ly/8o8Rk

— Paul Gillin (@pgillin) January 10, 2012

The rather interesting and exciting thing though is that Red Frog is not the only company doing this. One of my favourite people, and really good friend, the always insightful and rather smart Maggie Fox, has been doing that at Social Media Group for a good couple of years now and has been having tremendous success with this initiative highlighting how it exactly works out for all of them. She wrote about it a while ago under “Why we decided to offer unlimited vacation at Social Media Group” and it’s even more surprising how the only negative reaction towards that initiative is that most people, specially, new hires, don’t believe that there could be such a thing! Goodness! If that’s all, perhaps we also need to start shifting gears ourselves, knowledge workers, thinking that it is also possible working for employers who truly respect and very much appreciate us, employees, to do what we do best, i.e. our jobs, and be rewarded with that much deserved extended holiday break.

After all, it’s thanks to that flexibility, passion, engagement and commitment to our jobs, in keeping excelling at what we are already pretty good at, that clearly demonstrate how not only do we love what we do, but also how we love our lives even more, like Elizabeth Lupfer talked about over at The Social Workplace just recently in a beautiful blog post, which I would highly recommend you go ahead and read through it all, to ponder further and digest on some golden nuggets like this one, which clearly sets the stage of how the corporate world is, finally, starting to come to terms with embracing that new concept of Social Transformation of Your Business – The Workplace of the Future:

“Organizations that create cultures that value balance, and assist employees to achieve life balance will be rewarded with highly engaged employees. Work-life balance does not mean  that employees are not loyal, nor committed to their organizations, it means that employees want to lead whole lives, not lives solely centered on work“

To me, replace “balance” with ”integration” and we are already there! Don’t think about striking a good balance between work and life, because you will never achieve it (Work will always eat that balance up any given time, before you even notice it!), but more a full integration of your personal life into work and work into your personal life. That’s the key, the sweet spot. That’s what really matters.

I just had one of the most amazing holidays I can remember; mostly disconnected, unwinding from everything online, re-charging my batteries fully, getting plenty more energy levels, full again of optimism and outrageousness, and yet, I can’t wait to get back to work tomorrow, on my way to Orlando, Florida, to attend Lotusphere, even if that happens over the weekend… Already looking forward to seeing over there lots of smart friends and customers wanting to Live Social. Do Business.

The Joy of Choice

As I am about to enter my last week of holidays, before I head back to work for the first time this year, I just couldn’t help thinking about a recent piece I read over at the NYTimes by the always witty and rather insightful Pico Iyer under the rather suggestive title of “The Joy of Quiet“, where he muses extensively about that almost forgotten, and sometimes forbidden (in today’s times, specially!), pleasures of treasuring the time to think, reflect, unwind, disconnect, see the world slowing down, charge your batteries, re-energise yourself with what really matters and perhaps come back for more. It’s a beautifully written article where he’s on a mission to help us all re-think the purpose of our online (inter)connectedness and to challenge, in a rather healthy, and very much needed, way, whether we do really need to be connected all the time. Or not. He calls it the “The Joy of Quiet” and I call it “The Joy of Choice“.

Indeed, for a good number of years there have been plenty of us, knowledge Web workers, who have been craving for having such an exciting, exuberant and abundant environment like the Social Web, as we know it nowadays. You know how it goes. We, news-junkies, can’t get enough about being constantly on the know of what’s happening around us and the rest of the world. We, news-junkies, can’t get enough of being exposed to a rampant learning curve that never ceases to stop more and more by the day, and get rather upset when technology falls short and continues to fail on delivering what we know we can get through it time and time again. We, in short, cannot longer live in isolation, it looks like, nor is a state that most of us could probably aspire to in the long run. But is it really so? And, most importantly, can we do anything about it at all? What do you think?

Pico puts it rather nicely, and very provocatively as well at the same time, in this short paragraph, when he states that we may not be able to do it because we haven’t been educated on how to make it through in the first place:

“The central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information revolution came without an instruction manual“

I can imagine that it may well be so for a good number of folks out there, but then again I can also see how there may well be plenty of other people who, over the course of time, have learned to tame, and educate themselves, not only on how they live their connectedness, but also how they may live along without it altogether and do just fine. That’s when something that we haven’t had for years on the Web to the extent we have got today, but that nowadays is just too critical to ignore, kicks in nicely to our rescue: Choice. Yes, indeed, now we do have a choice and that just basically means that we need to decide how we best plan for that joy of quiet without sounding like an hermit or some other kind of weirdo who doesn’t want to reach out and feel connected while everyone else is.

That’s why during the course of my holidays, and as I continue to reflect on the last few months, specially, after that frenetic and rather hectic year end with work related activities and whatever else, I self-discovered, through that thinking and reflection time, how something so wise as your own physical body learns to protect itself from everything that may try, or attempt to, harm its wellbeing. Even if that involves the brain itself. Now I know why for some periods of last year my brain was rather keen on being out there on the Social Web, reaching out, communicating, collaborating, sharing and learning from others, and yet, my body decided to switch priorities and dedicate itself to what it knows best: taking care of itself.

Yes, I guess that’s when your body starts sending some of those subtle and gentle signs telling you that you are about to max out and enter a very dangerous road of perhaps not an easy return. That’s probably why, just recently, you heard from plenty of your friends, colleagues, and other networks how they have started to take up sports once again, or to lose those extra few pounds, or to spend numerous, endless hours reading a good book while listening to their favourite music as one of their preferred evening activities, or perhaps to start some yoga and live healthier lives or maybe move out of the city into a rural, quieter place where things seem to have slowed down for a while and where conversations happen more face to face than virtually.

I bet within your own networks you may have bumped into such accidental discoveries and keep wondering why people keep doing it. Well, wonder no more. Their physical bodies have finally taken over and decided to take a stand as to helping the mind figure out how long and for what purpose should they remain interconnected online and when to find that appropriate time to disconnect for a while, think and reflect on things. On the things that matter. On those little things we all know are out there, but that we keep ignoring them for far too long and when we realise about it, it’s already too late.

Now, when looking back into retrospective from last year’s events and activities, I realise that was probably the reason why, back in July, I decided to become healthier again; that’s probably, while I am buzzing around during the course of the work week with plenty of business travelling, my weekends are sacred longing for extensive periods of disconnect where I basically just disappear. That’s maybe as well why I have now successfully built up the daily habit of doing my workout, where I just take with me my favourite music, hit the track for an hour and think about nothing else than just that beautiful Joy of Quiet. That’s probably why I now know how both my brain and my body are starting to be in sync when making the best choices as to when to go and slow down on the communication, collaboration and broadcasting fronts (And instead become more of a thinking force) and when to come back for more within one’s own social networks after those disconnecting periods.

That’s when one comes to realise it’s all about having a choice, but not just having it for the sake of it, because I know that in most cases we would be ignoring it and eventually keep doing what we are busy with on the Social Web front, but also acting upon it, which I guess is the point Pico makes quite nicely throughout the entire article and which I have learned to treasure myself during the second half of last year through starting to listen to those body signals that one knows have a second, or even third meaning, behind them.

Listening to them, knowing when and how to react and, most importantly, learning how to set the right expectations not only for you, but also for those around you, becomes a critical success factor of how we can learn to come to terms with the fact that yes, as wonderful and as brilliant and as energising as the Social Web is, we cannot ignore the choice of looking, and finding!, proper times to disconnect, to unwind, to ponder about things, to question, through critical thinking, what we are doing, where we are heading and what we would want to leave behind. Our legacies. Our purpose. That’s what we are here for. Being In Action. In constant action. Whether it’s out there on the Social Web, creating and consuming top quality content with our favourite social networks, or whether it’s happening in the offline world. Being In Action means what my good friend, and fellow IBMer, Laurie Friedman tweeted just a couple of days back as a beautiful quote from IBM’s recently appointed new CEO, Ginni Rometty:

Advice from IBM’s new CEO, Ginni Rometty, on her first day on the job? “Don’t ever stop reinventing yourself” #leadership

— lauriefriedman (@lauriefriedman) January 4, 2012

Call it Living Life as a Perpetual Beta, if you wish to as well, but I think Pico’s conclusion, although referring to our children, could surely blend in rather nicely with what would be, perhaps, our main challenge for 2012 and beyond:

“The child of tomorrow, I realized, may actually be ahead of us, in terms of sensing not what’s new, but what’s essential“

Indeed, figuring out what’s essential is about having a choice, i.e. when to stay connected, socially networked online, but also when to disconnect, when to look for those quiet times, helping those around you understand that as much as you appreciate the social interactions, there is still a time when you need it to reflect and think further what’s happening around you, so that they, too, can get exposed to the better you. So next time you see some of your networks have gone silent for a period of time, not to worry, they are not gone entirely, they haven’t abandoned you either, they are just taking their very much needed time off to reflect and ponder about things, they are taking their time off to figure out what really matters to them, before they come back in full force, once again. So we better start treasuring those silent periods, because something tells me we are going to have plenty of those coming along in the next few weeks / months and that’s a good thing!

The Social Web needs time as well to slow down a bit sometimes, reflect about both its impact and true legacy and keep moving further along once again… So just hang in there, the choice is ours, finally, after a long last. The important thing to remember though is to act upon it. After all “We create our own distractions and just need to learn to manage them“. And that will always remain our choice. Not theirs. So we better make good use of it and they better get used to it, too. They will need it …

Reflections from 2011 – Is Employee Engagement Still a Myth?

Continuing further along with another blog post from the series of articles on “Reflections from 2011“, I thought I would go ahead and spend a few minutes today musing about what I still think was one of the main key terms, within the Social Enterprise space, that most of us got exposed to, and talked extensively through a good number of rather interesting and enlightening articles and publications throughout last year and that I feel would continue to come along rather strongly during the course of 2012 as well. Probably, because we are not done with it yet, but, most possibly, because we need to shift gears with it. Why? Well, so far, we haven’t done good enough with it, despite the various claims we may have been exposed to over the course of time, and we are running out of time and pretty quick! Of course, I’m talking about Employee Engagement or, in other words, how do you keep your employees motivated to excel at what they already do, driven by their distinctive passions, purpose and meaning?

You may be wondering why I mentioned above that we are running out of time on this critical concept of Employee Engagement, right? Well, let’s see it with a couple of good examples. How about this recent, rather worrying, study on how “A Third Of Employees Are Ready To Quit” or how a good percentage of today’s workforce continues to feel more disengaged with what they do than ever before, as they no longer feel the passion for their work nor their job(s)? Or how another study finds out how “One Third of Employers Have Disciplined Employees Using Social Media“? Or take this other, even more interesting and intriguing, study, where it’s demonstrated how more and more employers are no longer trusting their employees to do their work. Or, another one where work inequalities are reaching alarming levels close to disengage them for good and with no point of return. Yes, the examples keep piling on and on and on and I am sure you folks have got your favourites out there as well.

The reality is that Employee Engagement still remains a critical success factor for most employers and large corporations, and small businesses, too!, and we are running out of time because we are not doing a very good job at it at all. Quite the opposite. Yes, I know, we have seen, or been exposed, to a good number of really good articles that talk extensively about how to keep your employees, i.e. your knowledge workers, motivated to do their best and keep growing further in their career aspirations, contributions, purpose, meaning, etc. etc. without losing track of the business revenues, which is what most corporations care about nowadays anyway (Always have, I am afraid!). Yet, we keep failing drastically, and rather miserably, in achieving that long term goal of keeping employees motivated and all of that due to a very simple reason that most organisations seem to keep ignoring or neglecting big time: we consistently don’t ask them what they really want!

Indeed, that simple! Employee Engagement has always been a concept driven top down by corporations and their executives, who keep wondering how do they keep their employees motivated to go the extra mile without asking for much in return. What can they do to entice their knowledge workers to keep thriving and shining at what they already do well, which eventually is going to provide more business revenue, better customer satisfaction by delighting their clients and, hopefully, happier employees, without having to spend perhaps too much cash on rewards, incentives or whatever else so that it doesn’t go out of proportion. See? That’s exactly the problem! That kind of mentality where we are inspiring our knowledge workforce to compete against each other for those rewards, for those incentives, as individuals, as treasure hunters, where you try to do your outmost just to stay on top, annihilating everyone else around you. It’s part of that legacy corporate culture we have inherited from the 20th century and which we don’t seem to be too keen on getting rid of it, probably because it perhaps keeps nurturing the main corporate system that feeds it rather nicely backwards as well: money, greed and power.

I mean, can you imagine an entire workforce earning just as much as the CEO and his / her corporate executives? Or having that same amount of power at the same time as a group, network, community, where traditional management is no longer the one ruling but instead a new kind of leadership would be required? Obviously, not! Which corporation could sustain that? The reality though is that mentality is what’s keeping us away from “Designing a beautiful business“, as my good friend, Esko Kilpi, put together on a superb blog post just recently that I strongly encourage you all to go ahead and read further on what it would entail to reach that mantra of a beautiful business that he envisions amazingly accurate, and very nicely done!, and not too far away from today’s corporate environment. At least, for some businesses out there.

Another interesting read to provoke that shift away from that industrial model of recognising your employees with that individual competitive environment of cash, and whatever other tangible incentives, and move into a much more accurate, relevant, pertinent, purposeful and perhaps very much needed networked, interconnected and community-driven approach would be the excellent article “The Philosophy of Motivation” put together by Greg Satell where you will be able to find precious little golden nuggets like this one very relevant to the whole conversation of how to approach it when wanting to keep your knowledge workers motivated:

“[...] treating people with dignity means treating them as ends in themselves, rather than as simply means. [...] motivation is much more about intrinsic rewards than extrinsic rewards. Motivated people join an organization in good faith and expect to find meaning in their work, instead they get an incentive program. No wonder they get discouraged“

Greg’s description of the shift from the industrial age to the passion economy is just brilliant, too!, with magical quotes like this one: “In the industrial age, value was created by harnessing energy. In the passion economy, value is created through superior design“. Like I said, a highly recommended read to help differentiate what’s at stake over here.

The challenge is out there for everyone though. As we move into another exciting and rather thrilling new year, it would be the perfect time to shift gears and start thinking about “Employee Engagement” not just from the top down in any and every organisation, but also from the bottom up! The good thing is that we are not alone! We don’t have to reinvent the wheel and wonder how we are going to get things started and make that shift happen. We are not starting from scratch and it would be silly to fool ourselves, if we believe it’s a whole lot harder than what it actually is. As a good starting point, we need to lower down the center of gravity and the decision power, starting by trusting more our very own employees, so that we get to find out what they really think; continuing further by discovering together different ways to keep rockstar employees happy, because whether we like it or not, they are the major driving force that gets everyone else excited wanting to jump into the bandwagon by following their true passion, which is the work they are already doing and excelling at!

I strongly believe that, at the end of the day, we would ALL be rather amazed and very pleasantly surprised to find out from those employees that, for them, it’s not all about the money, or the salary raises or whatever other cash, hard incentives. It’s a whole lot more than just that! We are talking about people in here, and as people do business with other people, there is a great chance that it will all be about fostering the right working environment where people are, AND feel, treated like people. Just what they are. An end in themselves, as Greg put it beautifully in an earlier article I mentioned above.

It’s all about finding ways to motivate your knowledge workforce to finally help you understand fully that this is all way beyond just thinking that money will do. Don’t take me wrong, money is good! It pays your bills and gives you an opportunity to enjoy a fulfilling life, but there is more to it. In fact, a whole lot more to it. And, like I said, we won’t need to start from scratch. In fact, there has been plenty of rather fascinating and thought-provoking research in this area, like Jack Wiley, executive director of the Kenexa High Performance Institute, recently wrote over at “Give employees what they really want” and where he talks about R.E.S.P.E.C.T., i.e. the main topics to cover, as an organisation, to keep your employees motivated and bring in Employee Engagement into the 21st century modus operandi of the new workplace, away from the industrial era:

• Recognition
• Exciting work
• Security of employment
• Pay
• Education and career growth
• Conditions
• Truth

Please do go ahead and read further on Jack’s insights for each and everyone of those items to see what lies ahead. Certainly, a good challenge for all of us, as I have mentioned above. It’s not going to be easy either, for sure. But no-one said it would be. It’s actually what’s at stake for all of us who would want to design those beautiful businesses that Esko mentioned over in his blog post. That’s what makes it the most exciting of challenges. It’s one we can all contribute and make it happen eventually. It’s our way out to define the workplace of the future and there is probably not a better way of doing it than reverting Employee Engagement into what really matters, as Esko concludes beautifully with this gem:

“The years with the Internet have proven that we are capable of working together competitively/cooperatively, building social communities that many would some time ago have dismissed as impossible dreams. Thus we don’t yet have a good idea of what cannot be done by connected people working together in new ways. Changes in existing organizations and the evolution of new ones will have characteristics in common. Just as natural systems like the human body are not vertical hierarchies with each part superior to another in ascending linear order, organizations of the future will not be structured that way. This is not to say that all present industrial organizations are doomed but our models to describe the world around us are. We need a new vocabulary beyond the models of industrial production and separatist, mechanistic concepts of a corporation“

Yes, indeed, we probably need a new vocabulary, but I suspect that along with that new vocabulary we would also need a new way of thinking, a new way of working where employees, through their trusted networks and social communities own the corporation, just as much as the latter owns them. That’s when engagement will take a new meaning. The one we have all been waiting and anticipating for all along. For all of us, not just for the few we already know who they are…

Are you ready to own your beautiful business? If the answer is “Yes!”, you better start working your magic to help make employee engagement no longer a myth, but today’s corporate reality. We very much need it. And fast!