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#Leadership : 3 Ways Managers Can Empower #TeamMembers With #MentalHealth Struggles… My views on #MentalHealth went Viral in a Tweet Last Summer – and Revealed just How Taboo the Topic is, Especially in the #Workplace .

May 2, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

The stigma of mental illness never made much sense to Ben Congleton, CEO of live-chat software maker Olark.

He’d grown up with kids whose lives improved after they received treatment for their illnesses. He knows one in five U.S. adults experiences mental illness in a given year. He’s always understood mental health is as important as physical health.

So he was shocked when his views on mental health went viral in a tweet last summer – and revealed just how taboo the topic is, especially in the workplace.

Last June, Olark staffer Madalyn Parker emailed her team to let them know she was “taking today and tomorrow to focus on my mental health.” Congleton replied to Parker privately, thanking her for not only taking the days but for being open about it: “You are an example to us all, and help cut through the stigma so we can all bring our whole selves to work.”

Parker tweeted the exchange with Congleton’s permission, and it garnered tens of thousands of retweets, likes, and responses.

“Madalyn and I received lots of notes of support, but what surprised and saddened me was how many people commented that this is rare,” Congleton says. “So many people told me they would fear judgment, or even that they would be fired. It was an eye-opener for me about this broad societal challenge that we all need to overcome.” Congleton published a brief note on Medium in response to the attention, encouraging employers to express gratitude to their teams and reflect on their organizations’ values.

Below, he shares with Glassdoor the three steps managers can take to engender a culture of openness, promote mental health, and support team members.

“I wish there were some magic words to say, but it doesn’t happen overnight,” Congleton says. “It’s about consciously and constantly creating an environment of trust, which takes work – but it’s worth it in so many ways.”

“Prioritizing trust, gratitude, and caring about a staffer’s whole self is not a one-and-done endeavor,” he says. “We’re talking about changing work culture and ingrained societal stigma. That progress happens only with more dialogue and more action.”

Olark’s structure is one that inherently requires trust and flexibility; managers can’t hover over desks because the team is fully remote, with staffers across three continents. So if staffers hit the gym for two hours in the middle of the day and get their work done in the evening, that’s just fine by Olark management.

Congleton understands that flex scheduling – or other Olark perks like unlimited vacation – may not be possible for every organization or every position, establishing values of underlying trust is what’s key. “You can focus on output and outcomes, measuring not the employee’s exact hours but their impact on the business,” he explains.

When your team feels that they’re being judged for their work and appreciated for a job well done, “incredible things happen,” Congleton says. “Once you have that strong cultural framework in place, people feel trusted and supported so they’re willing to be open.” That’s why Olark’s frank discussions about mental health challenges happened “without being super deliberate,” as Congleton puts it. As it has been revealed by our research company, it should be noted that Levitra does not have any effect on the quality of sperm, and therefore does not affect the fertilization of the egg. All this must be taken into account. It is especially so if you want to have children, and you do not get them. You should not have high hopes for Levitra, because its main task is to strengthen male strength, but not to affect the productivity of sperm. It is better to consult a doctor so that he prescribes the most effective medicines for it.

As an added bonus, Congleton finds the culture of trust breeds higher performance. “People are more willing to take risks and to stretch themselves, and we’ve found they perform even better for you. When people are happier, their lives are better and their work reflects it. It’s a win-win that just makes sense.”

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Model the openness you want to see in your staffers.

As a leader, you set the tone for acceptable and expected behavior — so if you want your team to feel free to share, open up a bit yourself. That doesn’t mean you need to dish about every detail of your personal life. A friend of Congleton’s, for example, “started every management meeting with a little game: ‘If you really knew me you would know…’ and he’d talk about something going on with him that was new, or something hanging over his head. Childcare got messed up, traffic was frustrating, whatever. And then they’d go around the room.”

The game inspired Congleton for two key reasons: “It normalizes that behavior of sharing what you’re bringing to the job in that moment, which is huge. And it’s done in a tactical way: You’re not putting someone on the spot, just allowing them to open up just a little bit in a manner that makes them feel comfortable.”

Modeling behavior extends to self-care, too. “Depending on the culture in an organization, people might be concerned that taking a few days off — even after a super-busy time – is implied weakness,” Congleton explains. “That’s a great opportunity to demonstrate it as a leader: ‘Hey, team, that last sprint took it all out of me. I’m going to take an extra day to reflect and recharge, and I recommend you do too.’ That speaks volumes.”

Proactively share resources, and seek expert help when needed.

Just like physical health, mental health is complex. Avail yourself of resources like Congleton’s favorite: Open Sourcing Mental Illness, which focuses on changing stigma within the tech community but offers guidelines and research that are applicable across sectors. If you find a great article extolling the benefits of taking a mental health day, fully unplugging while on vacation, etc., email it to your team with a quick note about why you think it’s important.

And if a staffer is going through mental health issues, tap internal resources like HR for assistance. “Serious mental health challenges are serious health challenges, period,” Congleton notes. “Your typical manager is not going to be an expert in mental health, and that’s OK.”

These three steps aren’t necessarily linear, and they can’t be treated like a simple checklist, Congleton explains.

“Prioritizing trust, gratitude, and caring about a staffer’s whole self is not a one-and-done endeavor,” he says. “We’re talking about changing work culture and ingrained societal stigma. That progress happens only with more dialogue and more action.”

GlassDoor.com | May 1, 2018 | Posted by Julianne Pepitone

#Leadership : My Mom With Alzheimer’s Needed Me. My Business Did, Too…Unexpected and Unasked-for Lessons in #Caregiving –In Work, Life, and Death.

May 1, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

When my mother was officially diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, in 2014, she was 86 and already at a late stage of her disease. I was hard at work running my brand marketing agency, and knew I’d need to scale things back in order to care for her. I trimmed my client list and planned for the company’s finances to tighten. But I could never have fully readied myself for the experience ahead.

Anyone who’s cared for a loved one with Alzheimer’s knows all too well the pain, frustration, and suffering experienced by both patient and caregiver. Many of us must also hold down a job or keep a business running while managing doctors, home health workers, finances, legal documents, prescriptions, food shopping, equipment rentals and, of course, just spending time with your ailing relative. Then there are the minor details of your own personal life, which can instantly fall to the bottom of your never-ending to-do list.

It was much later that I noticed there was something else–unexpected and unasked-for–to be gained from the devastating experience of watching my mother disappear into someone else: I’d learned several lessons in caregiving that have profoundly changed how I live and work ever since.

ALWAYS STOP TO ASK, “HOW IMPORTANT IS THIS?”

At the beginning of my mother’s decline, I tended to correct every erroneous statement she made:

“I didn’t have any lunch.”

“Yes you did, Mom. You ate 20 minutes ago.”

I would battle it out over and over, as she asserted and I counter-asserted. I finally learned to say nothing, or just “Okay, we’ll give you lunch in 15 minutes”–which she would promptly forget.

This experience was painful, but I think of it often these days, as a reminder to choose my battles. You can’t fight every available fight. It’s more important to save the heavy protesting for misguided thinking that can have a real negative impact. Just winning an argument doesn’t win you much.

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FLEXIBILITY IS THE BEST TIME-MANAGEMENT STRATEGY

The best-laid plans for completing long to-do lists often go awry, especially when there’s an emergency–whether it’s when a parent has an accident that requires a hospital visit, or a public-relations calamity with a client. I had a high-profile restaurant client who received the occasional bomb threat. Try prioritizing just three must-do tasks per day when you’re dealing with that. Everything I accomplished beyond that felt like a huge achievement, and I learned not to berate myself for failing to get to non-urgent tasks.

FORGIVE YOURSELF

If you make a mistake–and you absolutely will, in business or in caregiving–own up to it and move on. Toward the end of her life, I accidentally gave my mother an extra dose of morphine; she slept for 24 hours straight. Assuming it occurred despite your best intentions, self-forgiveness rather than self-condemnation is the way forward. Mistakes are just about inevitable when you’re emotionally drained and stretched thin. We’re all human, and we do better work when we’re feeling confident and good about ourselves in the face of challenges–rather than beating ourselves up over them.

TAKE TIME OFF

Pride in a relentless work schedule and no vacation is short-sighted and just plain stupid. Caring for my mother, I felt at first that time off was a luxury I just shouldn’t afford, but I soon realized I needed it in order to care for her. It’s a crucial lifeline for staying sane and recharging, which carries into your work life in the form of refreshed perspectives and space for new ideas and strategy tweaks.

That’s all the more true now that digital tools make it possible to be available virtually 24/7; time off should still always mean actually going offline. Whether it’s to do your best work and remind your boss that you’re essential or to endure the stresses of caregiving, you’ll need to unplug every now and then.

REMEMBER THAT IT WON’T ALWAYS BE THIS WAY

As a caregiver, there will be times when you simply want to give up, or cry, or throw something. When you just want to run away and make someone else do it. Likewise with difficult clients or projects. Tomorrow is a new day, and there will be other goals to meet, small victories, or moments of emotional connection or clarity you couldn’t have anticipated–with an Alzheimer’s patient or with a client.

But perhaps the biggest lesson I learned after saying goodbye to my mother and returning, steadily, to my business was this: This is your life, wherever you are, and it’s going by. So stop and step back for a moment. Take a breath. Then take one step forward. Life goes on.

Val Brown is the CEO of Val Brown Group, a brand strategy, marketing, and licensing consultancy working with retail, restaurant, music, entertainment, lifestyle, and nonprofit clients.

Fast Company.com | May 1, 2018 | BY VAL BROWN 3 MINUTE READ

Your #Career : To Help #WomenAdvance, Their Trailing Spouses Get #JobHunting Aid…More #Employers Ease #Relocation for #FemaleManagers by Offering to Help in Husbands’ Search for #Work .

March 10, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Behind many managerial women stands a trailing husband. He pulls up stakes and relocates when his partner gets a better role in a different locale.

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John Van Lonkhuyzen has moved three times since 1995 so histhen-fiancée and now wife, Nicola Morris, could move up in her career. The couple now lives in Yarmouth, Maine. PHOTO: YOON S. BYUN FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

John Van Lonkhuyzen has done this three times since 1995—the year after he and Nicola Morris got engaged. As his wife advanced in her career, the veteran lawyer moved to Washington, D.C., Westfield, N.J., and recently, Yarmouth, Maine. Their latest relocation was the first time Ms. Morris’s employer offered to help him job hunt.

More female executives are moving ahead in their careers through geographic moves. And, increasingly, their employers lend a hand so their husbands can find work.

On average, women accounted for a record 23% of moves by North American employers in 2016—up from 17% in 2009, according to surveys of employers by Atlas Van Lines Inc. About 62% of employers provided job-hunting aid for spouses or partners of transferred staffers in 2017, compared with 33% in 2007, Atlas data shows.

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“Companies consider such help a critical aspect of getting more women into leadership,” says Lauren Herring, chief executive of Impact Group, a career and leadership development firm with job-hunting services for relocated spouses and partners.

Ms. Morris left an executive role with Verizon Communications Inc. in New Jersey to become a senior vice president of WEX Inc. in South Portland, Maine. While recruiting Ms. Morris, Chief Executive Melissa Smith offered to introduce Mr. Van Lonkhuyzen to law firms near the corporate-payments-services company.

Ms. Smith says she wanted to show she cared about supporting “both partners in their careers when they make a move.”

Mr. Van Lonkhuyzen, a former lawyer for the U.S. Justice Department, didn’t need the proposed introductions. He landed a partnership with Verrill Dana LLP, a Portland law firm, at the same time his wife joined WEX in 2014.

American Express Co. has helped mates of relocated staffers look for work since 2012. With women now nearly half of its transferees, many men accompanying them use these career services, says a spokeswoman.

AmEx’s global program, expanded in 2016, now includes career coaches, job leads, résumé writing, office space and advice about negotiating job offers or starting a business. Most participating spouses and domestic partners find positions, the company says.

But international relocation can create challenges for trailing husbands. The most common reason for a rejected foreign assignment is a partner’s unwillingness to move due to his or her career. That is especially true for potential female transferees, concludes a new study by Ernst & Young LLP and NetExpat Inc., a coaching and training firm.

Six years ago, AmEx gave middle manager Corrina Davison a chance to leave her native Australia for a New York executive role. “It was our dream to work overseas,” she remembers.

Her husband, Duncan Davison, an Australian student-teacher supervisor, says he hoped to launch a U.S. version of his Sydney University pilot project that helped elite teen swimmers handle competitive setbacks.

The executive trainer at an acculturation workshop for AmEx accompanying partners introduced Mr. Davison to a possible investor for his athlete project, though Mr. Davison dropped the idea after the United Nations International School hired him to teach physical education part-time. He soon advanced to director of athletics. He says he would move again for his wife’s career because he believes he has become more employable globally.

Other men fear relocating for their wives will disrupt their career trajectories. Consider Joshua Kim, whose wife, Julie, is an oncologist and associate professor at Dartmouth’s medical school in Hanover, N.H.

He faced the difficult decision of quitting a job he loved in 2006—he helped launch and run Quinnipiac University’s online education unit—so she could take the Dartmouth post. He had followed her twice before.

“Why do I have to be a trailing spouse a third time?” he recalls asking his wife.

Dr. Kim consulted for two years before joining Dartmouth’s learning center and becoming head of digital learning initiatives there in 2014. “That kind of patience for a career move is a challenge,” he says. “As a trailing husband, you have to be more creative and inventive.”

Ms. Morris and Mr. Van Lonkhuyzen struggled with the same issue after her Verizon promotion brought them to New Jersey from Washington in 2007. He fruitlessly sought jobs in corporate legal departments and government before getting a temporary Justice Department gig in Newark. Mr. Van Lonkhuyzen obtained a permanent New York DOJ spot in 2009.

That relocation “was hard for us,” Ms. Morris says. But WEX “was a great fit for what I was looking for,” she says, especially since both she and her husband grew up in Maine.

Write to Joann S. Lublin at joann.lublin@wsj.com

Appeared in the March 8, 2018, print edition as ‘Women Get Career Help, for Husbands.’

WSJ.com | Joann S. Lublin at joann.lublin@wsj.com

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#Leadership : Take These Steps To Boost Morale After #Layoffs …The #Employees who Remain After a Round of Layoffs will Likely have High #Anxiety. Here’s How to Lessen the Impact & Get Everyone Back on Track.

February 21, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

You might think that employees who survive layoffs feel lucky or valued, but a study by outplacement provider RiseSmart finds that surviving team members have unique challenges that can hurt their productivity, and 43% of companies are not prepared for the impact.

“Most of the focus is on the employees who are leaving, and that’s understandable,” says Dan Davenport, president and general manager of RiseSmart. “Not enough attention is paid to the impact on the surviving employees by companies.”

Anxiety and a drop in morale are commonly felt, says Davenport. “Employees wonder what’s going to happen next,” he says. “They’re also worried about their former coworkers who are leaving the organization, wondering if they’ll land on their feet. This can lead to a loss of productivity.”

Companies need get in front of the potential impact by putting a plan in place, says Davenport. “You can’t eliminate the impact on productivity and morale when you have a layoff, but you can do a lot of things to minimize impact,” he says.

HAVE A GOOD COMMUNICATION PLAN

Start by sharing as much information about the layoff with the survivors as possible. Most managers aren’t adept at delivering this kind of information, so provide training when necessary, says Davenport. “They need to understand how to address the team,” he says. “Prepare them with messaging and notification training to make sure the process is a smooth one and doesn’t lead to legal liability.”

Be transparent about what is happening, how many people are affected, and how positions were selected, Davenport continues. “Reducing headcount is a business decision,” he says. “Explain how laid-off employees are being cared for, and be transparent about the future. Talk about what to expect when going through stages of transition and how work will be distributed, and discuss the possibility of future layoffs.”

Not delivering the right message or even ignoring it altogether can have a sizeable impact on business; 70% experience a negative impact on future talent acquisition efforts, and 81% report a negative impact on brand, according to the study.

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HELP EMPLOYEES DEVELOP RESILIENCY

Another tactic that can help surviving employees move forward is offering lessons in resiliency, suggests Davenport. Consider holding mindfulness training in the office, such as meditation or journaling classes. Learning how to “build in a pause” when reacting to situations will help employees learn how to process information and take out emotion before they react. Engaging in gratitude exercises, such as by journaling, can also increase positive emotions and reduce stress.

“It’s important to help employees keep their focus on the future,” says Davenport.

HOLD ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE MORALE

Finally, arrange events where employees can get together and share feelings, suggests Davenport. “Employees need to feel safe and comfortable in sharing,” he says. “It takes three months or longer for your surviving team to return to productivity. If you don’t do anything, it can take longer.”

Share your vision of the company’s future and connect each individual employee to the goals you have set, Davenport says. Offer career development, provide coaching, and encourage mentorship programs.

“Employers need to understand that employees who remain will experience the same stages of grief and loss as the employees who were let go,” says Davenport.

FastCompany.com | February 21, 2018 | BY STEPHANIE VOZZA 2 MINUTE READ

#Leadership : IKEA Introduces Trailblazing Parental Leave Policy in Retail Sector…Sad but True: The U.S. is Still One of only Four Nations in the World that Fails to Guarantee the Right to Paid Maternity Leave.

December 8, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Sweden, on the other hand, is unequivocally the sweetest country for working moms or dads, lavishing parents to a whopping 480 paid days off per child. Several top companies here in the U.S. are finally starting to catch up with the progressive Scandinavian nation, particularly in the tech sector.

Most recently, IKEA expanded its paid benefits to up to four months for new parents — a major breakthrough for a company in the retail industry. Last year, Netflix unveiled a trailblazing unlimited paid leave policy for new moms and dads, inviting them to take off “as much time as they want” in the year following the birth or adoption of a child. Software giant Microsoft also upped its parental leave offering. Adobe quickly followed suit, doubling the paid maternity leave it grants employees.

The message is clear and long overdue: American companies are finally grasping that workers with families require more flexibility than ever before. To get the best out of them — and to keep them from jumping ship — employers must step up and seriously support their charges, and not just in the workplace. On the homefront, too. It’s a smart business move, one that we hope goes viral, coast to coast.

Here are 14 leading U.S. companies offering exceptionally generous parental leave policies:

IKEA

Swedish furniture company IKEA has expanded paid benefits to up to four months for parents with a newborn in their lives. The policy applies to dads, moms and adoptive or foster parents, and to both salaried and hourly employees as well.

Extended paid leave like this is not as common in the retail sector as it is in industries such as technology and finance. For example, Wal-Mart offers 90 days paid maternity leave and 14 days paternity or adoption leave to salaried employees. Target doesn’t commit to any paid parental leave policies.

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Etsy

Image credit: Bloomberg | Getty Images

Started in April of this year, Etsy announced it will be giving parents up to six months of paid parental leave. Not only that, but the company has gone so far as to offer new adoption and surrogacy benefits as well coaching programs for new parents and their managers.

“It was the most important way I could have spent that time. Building a company is a team effort that includes the immense support we get from our families,” said Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson.

Spotify

Image credit: JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/Stringer | Getty Images

With its roots in Sweden, it’s no surprise the music streaming company offers an awesome parental leave policy. Spotify offers six months of paid leave to full-time moms and dads across the globe. Employees are also offered flexible work options such as the ability to work from home or a part-time schedule upon their return.

The policy is “born out of a Swedish culture that places an emphasis on a healthy work/family balance, gender equality and the ability for every parent to spend quality time with the people that matter most in their lives,” writes Spotify’s chief HR officer Katarina Berg.

Netflix

Image credit: Shutterstock

The 18-year-old Los Gatos, Calif.-based streaming media provider offers new parents unlimited paid leave for one year. The pioneering policy enables them to take off as much time as they want during the first 12 months following the birth or adoption of a child. They also have the choice to come back part-time, full-time or to “return and then go back out as needed.” Not bad on top of unlimited vacation time. The company went even further in early 2016 to include hourly workers in the policy as well.

Adobe

Image credit: Adobe | Facebook

Starting Nov. 1, the multimedia software juggernaut will provide 16 weeks of paid time off for primary caregivers, “allowing new parents more time to spend bonding with their children.” The generous policy, available to Adobe’s 6,000 U.S. workers, will be extended to mothers and fathers who become parents “through childbirth, surrogacy, adoption or foster care.” With combined medical and parental leave, birth mothers who work at the San Jose, Calif.-based company — which views its employees as its “most important assets” — will be eligible for a total of up to 26 weeks of paid leave.

Twitter

Image credit: Twitter | Facebook

Birth mothers receive a none-too-shabby 20 weeks of paid maternity leave at the eight-year-old company. Meanwhile, new fathers and adoptive parents at Twitter get 10 weeks paid time off. Further cementing its commitment to supporting families with children, the San Francisco, Calif.-based tech social media mammoth also hosts new parent and new parent-to-be roundtables on a quarterly basis. During the meetups, moms and dads ask questions about leave and swap war stories from the messy trenches of parenthood.

Related: Twitter: What Went Wrong

Google

Image credit: Google | Facebook

Google, which will soon morph into Alphabet, grants biological moms 18 weeks of fully paid and vested maternity leave. Mothers who experience complications during childbirth are given 22 weeks paid time off. Primary caregivers, regardless of gender, are eligible for up to 12 weeks of paid baby-bonding leave, adoptive and surrogate caregivers included. Non-primary caregivers can carve out up to 7 paid weeks off.

On the heels of its maternal leave expansion from 12 weeks to 18 weeks in 2007, Google reported an uptick employee retention. “It just felt like the right thing to do,” a company spokesperson told The Atlantic. Additional perks for parents include priority placement at Bright Horizon child care centers across the U.S. and $500 in “baby bonding bucks.”

Cool fact: Google’s first employee to go out on maternity leave is current YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki. She has taken a total of five parental leaves since joining Google in 1999.

Johnson & Johnson

Image credit: Johnson & Johnson | Facebook

Perhaps best known for its baby products, Johnson & Johnson sure knows how to take care of those who take care of babies. New parents, whether by birth or adoption, who work for the 129-year-old consumer products conglomerate are privy to grocery and laundry pick-up services. Mothers get all of up to 17 weeks of paid leave and fathers nine weeks. The Brunswick, N.J.-based legacy brand’s recently expanded parental leave policy extends to parental units of all stripes — maternal, paternal, same-sex or adoptive. Time off can be spread outover the first year following birth or adoption.

Facebook

Image credit: maxpro | Shutterstock

Facebook, and its hot photo-sharing subsidiary Instagram, furnishes all new mother and father employees with 17 weeks of paid leave. Additionally, the Menlo Park, Calif.-based social media behemoth provides a $4,000 “baby cash” stipend for each child adopted or born.

We’re curious as to how long founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg will head out on leave when he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, welcome their first child, a baby girl. Zuck can divvy it up over a year or use it all at once, that is unless the head honcho is an exception to the rule. Facebook also subsidizes adoption programs, child care, and, somewhat controversially, surrogate parenting, sperm donation and egg freezing initiatives.

Goldman Sachs

Image credit: Goldman Sachs | Official Website

Per its policy published on its official website, Goldman Sachs provides new moms with 16 weeks of paid leave. That includes four weeks of parenting leave at full pay for primary caregivers. Fathers and non-primary caregivers are eligible for four weeks of paid leave. Paid surrogacy and adoption leave is also offered for up to 16 weeks. Breastfeeding new mothers at the New York City-based global financial services firm enjoy around-the-clock access to lactation consultants and are privy to use on-site lactation rooms.

Image credit: Reddit | Facebook

Reddit, which has been struggling to clear a path following a string of controversial leadership decisions, offers new mothers and fathers 17 weeks of paid parenting leave. The San Francisco-based company allows for leave to be taken within the first year in two-week stretches at minimum. Like Zynga, HubSpot and Groupon, the troubled social-sharing platform also offers unlimited vacation time.

Bank of America

Image credit: Alexey Rotanov | Shutterstock

The global banking giant boasts a progressive family “life management” program, offering employees who have worked at the company for at least a year up to 12 weeks of paid maternity, paternity and adoption leave. If more time is needed, workers can take up to 14 weeks additional time off without pay.

When it comes to adoption, the Charlotte, N.C.-based banking giant goes above and beyond, reimbursing eligible employees up to $8,000 per legally adopted child. BofA also pays for up to 25 days of childcare center babysitting for kids ages six weeks to 12 years of age, should the primary caregiver be temporarily unavailable during work hours (as in out sick or on vacation). It also reimburses employees up to $240 a month per child for childcare costs incurred while working.

Microsoft

Image credit: Microsoft | Facebook

On Nov. 1, Microsoft will roll out its most expansive parental leave policy yet. Piggybacking the tech industry trend, the Redmond, Wash.-based global software colossus will lengthen its maternity and paternity leave to 12 weeks at full pay, with an additional eight weeks of paid leave for birth mothers. Leave can be taken all at once or in intervals. Birth mothers also have the option to go out on short-term disability during the two weeks leading up to their due dates.

Yahoo

Image credit: KAREN BLEIER | Getty Images

In 2013, after giving birth herself, CEO Marissa Mayer installed a parental leave policy letting mothers take 16 weeks paid leave and fathers eight weeks. The company also offers them an additional $500 to help with any expenses related to the newborn.

Entrepreneur.com | December 8, 2016 | Kim Lachance Shandrow

Your #Career : I’m A CEO—Here’s How I Decide Whether To Give You A Raise Or Lay You Off… This Exec Reveals the Arithmetic Companies Typically Use to Assess Employees’ Value.

October 12, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

When I express these opinions, however, I often get disgruntled rebuttals like, “Yeah, right. Corporations have no concept of loyalty”; “Layoffs are completely arbitrary—it doesn’t matter what you’re worth”; and, “The only way to get a raise is to change jobs!”

Since these complaints are made to me—the CEO of a company that clearly isn’t so callous—it’s obvious that these stereotypes cannot be universal. Putting aside this irony, though, even if every company in the world were as ruthless and coldblooded as some believe, value and compensation would still be inextricably connected. Let’s take a look at why this is the case and how you can increase your value as an employee to get paid what you deserve.

WHAT HAPPENS BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

Let’s be a fly on the wall in that dim, coffin-shaped room where lanky, black-suited business misers drum their spindly fingers together and cackle over that most evil of subjects: layoffs.

When they discuss the customer support floor, they decide they need to lay off one person, and gradually narrow the options down to two employees:

Option 1: “Bill” is an old-and-true company standby. He’s worked at the company for 20 years and has been completely faithful to his job expectations. He clocks in and out on time and delivers his customer support perfectly on script. As a result, he’s accumulated a number of raises over the years and now makes $20 an hour.

Option 2: “Shelly” has only worked in customer support for five years but has obtained advanced technical certifications, has an excellent interpersonal manner, and routinely turns upset customers into loyal patrons. Clients who get support from her are 30% more likely to purchase additional services and to refer friends.

She talks off script a fair amount but keeps track of what she says and how customers react. As a result, she has submitted many helpful modifications to the basic IT script, resulting in a 10% increase in customer satisfaction for the whole floor. Due to her high performance, Shelly also makes $20 per hour.

Which one gets the boot? It’s Bill without question.

The company is actually losing money on Bill. If they fired him, a new employee would work for only $12/hour and could read the script just as skillfully as Bill does within two weeks.

If Shelly were fired, however, the company would lose out on a major source of sales, referrals, customer satisfaction, and an internal system for improving the whole department—they can’t afford to lose her!

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VALUE IS NOT THE SAME THING AS YEARS ON THE JOB

But what about faithful old Bill? It would be so mean to fire him! Bill’s problem is that he hasn’t really done anything to justify his increased wages. Small raises have accumulated on his paycheck like moss on an old river rock, but his real value is still around $12 an hour.

However, since Bill has been working at the company for so many years, he probably “feels” like he’s worth $20 an hour. Never mind the fact that he couldn’t get paid $20 an hour at a different company, he’s “put in his time,” so he’s worth $20 an hour, right?

Now, I’m not trying to understate the value of experience and wisdom. Good employees learn and grow over time, so they provide more value for their employer. As a reward, they get raises. The problem is, those raises are often based on meeting minimum standards for specified periods of time—not the value an employee brings to the table. As a result, when push comes to shove and a company needs to actually evaluate the worth of an employee, “years on the job” means far less to the business than added value.

Related: How To Ask For A Raise

BUSINESSES PAY FOR VALUE, AND EMPLOYEES ARE THEIR ASSETS

Many employees are confused about what their salaries pay for. When people first enter the workforce as teenagers, they usually start with an hourly wage. The equation is simple: The more you work, the more money you get. Unfortunately, after a couple of years, many people begin to translate time into money and begin to think, “I’ve put in a lot of time at this job, so it stands to reason that I should be making a lot of money! I need a raise!”

Value isn’t a function of time . . . An employee is a company asset and compensation is an investment in that asset.

Allow me to burst that bubble. Value isn’t a function of time. There are 24 hours in a day whether a company pays for them or not—it’s what you do with those hours that counts. Even for hourly employees, businesses aren’t paying for time—they’re paying for value. To put it simply, an employee is a company asset, and compensation is an investment in that asset.

Let me explain what I mean: If I were to invest $5,000 in a new asset for my business—say an online marketing account—you might think that I would have to make $5,000 in sales to justify the expense. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work that way. I won’t get too deep into the math of contribution margin, but in short, since my business expenses aren’t just limited to what I spend on marketing, it turns out that the account would have to make me at least three times my investment ($15,000) just to break even.

If the asset started producing four or five times more money than I put into it, then it would really be profitable. In fact, I’d be willing to invest more if I knew my payoff would be that good.

The same goes for employees: If I’m going to invest in people, I need to know that having them around will make my company at least three times what I’m paying them. The more revenue an employee drives for my business, the greater their value and the more I’m happy to pay to have them as an asset. An employee who produces less value, however, loses me money and—unless they can become more productive—I can’t afford to keep them in the long run.

HOW TO INCREASE YOUR VALUE

Now, I think we’ve looked at things like a ruthless businessman for long enough to show why companies care about the value their employees bring to the table.

In most real businesses with real, warm-hearted people (like I try to be), the same principles are still at play, but the focus is more on encouraging employees to become more valuable than on eliminating dead weight. In general, this encouragement comes in the form of salary. The more value an employee brings to the table, the more they deserve to be paid. The question then becomes, how do employees increase their value?

There are three basic steps:

Ensure that you’re meeting the basic expectations of your job.
Identify areas where you can add more value.
Create and execute a plan to exceed expectations.

Step 1: Meet expectations. Before you start trying to expand your horizons, it’s a good idea to make sure that you’re at least fulfilling the minimum requirements of your role.

Of course, it can sometimes be hard to figure out what those requirements are. A recent Gallup poll revealed that up to half of employees don’t really understand what is expected of them at work. Many companies have very little in the way of formal job descriptions. Others have long lists of tasks and expectations around hiring time, but when you start the job you find that half the stuff on the list you never do and half the stuff you do isn’t on the list.

Ask how your position adds value to the company. This gives you a target for increasing your value later on.

So if you’re not sure what your job expectations really are, the easiest way to get that question answered is to talk to your manager. Havea discussion about what workplace success looks like. You might even ask how your position adds value to the company. This gives you a target for increasing your value later on.

If, in this discussion, you discover work expectations that you weren’t aware of or that you haven’t been meeting, your first priority should be to start meeting those expectations. You may also find that, as Gallup’s poll also suggests, somemanagers are just as confused about your role as you are. If this describes your supervisors, then a sit-down conversation is especially important. Defining together what your core responsibilities are will help them to know when you are exceeding expectations.

Step 2: Find areas in which to excel. As part of your conversation, you should also determine a list of projects that could add extra value to the company that fall within the scope of your job.

It’s important to choose these projects in conjunction with your manager because you need to be sure that when you go above and beyond, it’s in areas that your company finds important. What’s more, you want your extra efforts to be recognized for what they are.

It’s helpful at this stage to come up with a way to document your performance. Remember Shelly—how she increased customer satisfaction by 10% and got 30% more referrals than average? These numbers make her value pretty undeniable, but they wouldn’t exist if she or her managers weren’t keeping track of them.

If you work in an area like sales, it’s pretty easy to document your performance with hard figures, but for many other jobs performance is less easy to quantify. Documentation is still important in these cases, but it may look a little different. For example, this is a scorecard my marketing director and I use to measure his performance each month (shared with his permission):

The first column contains a list of his basic job expectations. If he meets all of these he’s producing enough value to justify his base salary. The other two columns contain things that he can do to go above and beyond his normal duties to provide added value to the company.

This is a very simple documentation system, but it’s surprisingly effective. When it comes time for me to hand out bonuses and raises, I don’t have to wonder whether he’s earned it or not—I just look at the scorecard. If he’s consistently performing above expectations, then he’s adding extra value and he deserves to be rewarded.

Step 3: Make a plan and execute it. Finally, you need to put everything you’ve learned into action. If your goal is to increase your compensation at work, you can start by deciding how much more you would like to be making.

Take your current job expectations and salary as the baseline for what you’re worth to the company. Then realize that for every dollar that you hope to get in increased pay, you need to bring in three to five dollars to the business for your raise to make sense. Pick from your “above and beyond” list some projects that would add this kind of value to the company. Make a plan to complete these goals in addition to your regular tasks and present the plan to your manager.

Trust me, this will go over a lot better than the old, “I’m getting married so I need a raise” conversation. Your manager may not agree with every detail of your plan, but you will definitely come off as a motivated employee who really gets it. And even if your managers don’t buy in right away, it will be a great opportunity to discuss their priorities again and work together to come up with a plan that accomplishes things that really matter.

Don’t skip this important conversation. I’d hate to get a comment on this article saying, “I wasted six months doing what you said only to find out that nobody cared about my contribution.”

If you haven’t figured out by now, communication with your superiors is going to be a critical part of this whole process. Unfortunately, business plans are rarely static and you may have to chase a moving target, but if you’re willing to be flexible, you should be able to keep moving forward toward your goals.

REACHING YOUR GOALS

Now, I know you’re probably thinking, “This all sounds great, Jacob, but it also sounds a little too idealistic. It would never work at my business.” Maybe not. I can’t predict every circumstance, and there’s a chance that yours is an exception. But isn’t it worth a try? The relationship between employee value and compensation holds just as true in “big ruthless corporations” as it does in more supportive ones.

Business plans are rarely static and you may have to chase a moving target, but if you’re willing to be flexible, you should be able to keep moving forward.

For example, one of my employees recently related to me his experience at a prior company. This was one of those more stingy jobs and had a high turnover rate for entry-level employees. However, he applied the principles I’ve described. He developed a number of specialized skills and got deeply involved in some really important projects.

The miserly company was happy to be getting more out of him for the same pay—until the day he started looking at taking his skills elsewhere. His value was so great by then that the company would be set back months or years if he left, so when he suggested that he would need a 40% pay increase to stay, they felt like it was a worthwhile investment.

Despite the money-grubbing attitude of this company, he was providing so much value that he had become an asset they couldn’t afford to lose. As a result, he was able to negotiate a much better situation for himself. The moral of the story? If you feel that you deserve a raise, don’t get drunk and holler about it every Friday night. Take inventory of your worth, talk with your managers, and start working to become a more valuable asset.

FastCompany.com | JACOB BAADSGAARD, GLASSDOOR | 10.11.16 5:00 AM

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Your #Career : 5 Hiring Trends To Watch In 2016… #3- Social media will be Increasingly Used to find Candidates. (i.e. your LinkedIn Profile)

February 19, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

As 2016 gets into full swing, we’re beginning to see several key hiring trends develop. Based on my insights as a former recruiter, I believe these themes bode well for job seekers looking to make the most of their career this year by finding a new job.

Here are five trends job seekers can leverage in finding their next great role:

1. Job offers will include more perks and benefits. According to Mercer, salary increases this year are projected to be 2.9%. So, if you’re planning on remaining in your current job, chances are your raise will not be significant (if you receive one at all).

As such, job seekers looking to increase their earning power by pursuing external opportunities should also focus on negotiating more bells and whistles in their offer. In light of the current talent shortage, employers are generally hungry for quality candidates. Seekers should leverage this not only in negotiating financial benefits like base compensation, a sign-on bonus and relocation allowance – which may be more difficult to attain in the current economic climate – but also for perks like flexible work schedules and additional time off. Candidates can expect to see offers that include ramped up benefits like unlimited personal time and extended maternity and personal leaves.

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2. Increased interest in boomerangs. The trend of employees considering returning to their former employers is on the rise. In a recent Monster poll, more than half of participants revealed that they’d consider returning to a former employer.

To that point, an additional 28% reported that they are already boomerangs. As more recruiters (and therefore employers) tap into this potential gold mine of rehires, they’re discovering the benefits of a former employee: boomerangs already know the company culture and infrastructure, which can help reduce their time to hire as well as their ramp up period.

We can expect to see more companies hosting in-person and virtual alumni events to network and re-establish rapport with their former employees, and, most importantly, build a pipeline of valuable potential rehires.

3. Social media will be increasingly used to find candidates. Back in the day, employers could only rely on resumes and cover letters to get a sense of a candidate’s qualifications. As we all know, the Internet and social media have made it much easier for them to find and research potential candidates – especially elusive talent that may not be actively looking for a job.

While resumes and cover letters are still staples of the process, expect recruiters to check out your online profiles in addition to what you have submitted – or even before you submit anything at all.

The really good news? Whether you’re looking for a job, applying or simply networking, having an active, polished online presence can make it easier for recruiters to find you and reach out about opportunities you may not have even known existed. Be reachable and, more importantly, be responsive to their emails, even if you’re not interested at the time.

4. More lucrative employee referral programs – and beyond. When I worked in corporate recruiting, all of my hiring managers shared one common hiring metric: the number one source of new hires was employee referrals.

In 2016, it’s likely employers will ramp up their referral programs for employees, as well as start extending referral bonuses externally, such as offering $100 to $500 to friends of the company and former employees. As the war for talent heats up, keep your eyes open for opportunities to refer friends and colleagues.

5. More offers will include flexibility. Until recently, it was common for candidates to be nervous about asking potential employers for flexible work arrangements.

Now more and more employers are offering flexibility as part of their employment package up front. And the options will continue to expand this year – from occasional telecommuting to staggering work hours and more. As the workplace continues to evolve, hiring practices will change along with them.

Vicki Salemi is a career expert for Monster, author, public speaker and columnist.

Forbes.com | February 18, 2016 | Vicki Salemi

#Leadership : The Surprising Ways Employee Benefits Will Change in 2016…Smart Companies are Helping their Employees Worry a Little Less about Life Transitions & the Exorbitant Cost of Education.

January 25, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

When it comes to employee benefits, it’s easy to feel like nothing changes. The calendar flips to January, and you often just retain the same benefits you did the year before. You wind up feeling grateful as long as the costs don’t rise.

But in a few important ways, the benefits you’ve come to laconically accept will be changing in 2016. Bruce Elliott, manager of compensation and benefits at the Society for Human Resource Management, says the main trends pertain to worker education and family-leave time.

Whether you similarly change your own array of offerings this year or not, it’s vital to stay up on what’s coming down the pike. Not only might it help you better attract and retain top talent, you might actually get wind of cost-savings you never knew about. With this in mind, the following is a look at the latest benefits trends poised to give you something to consider in the new year.

Education and Leave

More employers will follow the lead of PricewaterhouseCoopers, says Elliott. The giant accounting firm announced last year that it would pay up to $7,200 in student debt for employees–as much as $1,200 a year for six years. He also sees companies emulating partnerships like the one Starbucks has with Arizona State University, in which Starbucks will reimburse part- or full-time employees’ pursuit of a bachelor’s degree.

As for family leave, Elliott expects companies to go the route of private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company, which recently extended paid leave for new parents, and announced it would let employees take both their babies and their caregivers on business trips–on the company’s dime. The parent-friendly moves are part of a larger trend that began to make waves in 2015. Netflix, for example, now gives new parents unlimited maternity or paternity leave during the first year after the child’s birth or adoption. Amazon, Microsoft, and Adobe also extended their leave policies, though none went as far as Netflix.

Why is all of this happening now? Two reasons. First, notes Elliott, benefits like this help in recruiting and retaining female employees. Second, it’s election season. “The candidates on both sides of the aisle are talking about this more, and you can bet it’ll be a campaign issue later on,” he says.

Of course, large companies aren’t the only ones that need benefits to win recruiting battles. Often, it’s fast-growth, entrepreneurial companies that are on the cutting edge of new benefits offerings, since they are adding talent at a breakneck pace to keep up with the burgeoning demands for their services.

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Mobile Health

Lyft VP of people Ron Storn knows all about the pressures of adding staff quickly. At the end of 2014, the car-sharing startup had about 380 employees. Today, it has more than 700. What’s more, it’s a dispersed group of 700. Whereas the company was once based only out of its San Francisco headquarters, it’s now building offices in Nashville (customer service) and Seattle (engineering), not to mention 10 to 15 other regional offices.

When Storn thinks of benefits that will emerge in 2016, one of the first trends he thinks of is health care benefits that are mobile-friendly. For example, Lyft is partnering with a company called One Medical Group, a provider of technology-enabled primary care. The partnership gives Lyft employees 24/7 access via mobile app to a virtual care team, which can help them treat allergies and renew prescriptions without an office visit. One Medical also offers same-day appointments with doctors in more than 40 cities. A benefit like that is ideal for Lyft, Storn says, because there are so many employees who are either traveling or new to a particular city. “It’s great for our employees because of the convenience,” he says. “They can go to a new city and have fewer distractions, not worrying about what doctors to see.”

Mind and Body Fitness

Joris Luijke, VP of people at Grovo, is another human resources expert who knows all about recruiting and retaining in fast-growth environments. Grovo, which is based in New York City, creates employee-training videos for clients like Sotheby’s and SurveyMonkey. It has 190 employees, raised $15 million last year, and has raised more than $20 million overall. Mind you, Luijke has only been at Grovo for three months. But he was previously vice president of human resources at Squarespace, which has raised more than $80 million. Before that, he was vice president of talent at Atlassian, which had one of the strongest IPOs of 2015 ($460 million). So he knows what it’s like to compete for high-stakes talent.

Ask Luijke about benefits you’re likely to see more of in 2016, and the first thing he speaks about is a new, more specialized focus on employee fitness and emotional well being. For example, a standard fitness benefit might be something like reimbursement for a gym membership. But Luijke sees companies making a focal point of fitness–going out of their way to make sure a stressful, full-time job doesn’t come at the expense of exercise and eating right.

Grovo, for example, employs a full-time personal trainer. Employees can sign up for one-on-one advisory sessions with him, or simply take his classes at the in-office company gym. The company also has a dedicated nap room for relaxing, meditating, or actually napping. “There’s this real movement to making emotional and physical health more of an explicit part of the employee benefits,” he says. Luijke further makes the case that your company will see a lasting ROI if you make a large investment in the health of your employees.

Flexible Hours

When it comes to family leave, he also sees a trend in which employers do more than just provide paid time off. Like KKR, which pays for employees to take their babies and their caregivers on business trips, Luijke envisions a benefits scenario in which companies become more thoughtful about employee reintegration into the workplace, after an extended time away. One possible solution he foresees is simply allowing employees to work three or four days a week before returning to full-time schedules.

If, after reading all this, you find yourself wondering what steps to take to attract talent with novel twists on your benefits, both Luijke and Storn have some straightforward advice: Ask your employees. Survey them. Talk to them. Do it regularly. Lyft, for example, found out about One Medical because a handful of employees were using it on their own anyway. After learning about it from employee surveys, Storn became convinced that it was the right thing for the growing company to do.

PUBLISHED ON: JAN 25, 2016