Corporate America has arguably navigated more change and disruption in the past year and a half than it had in the previous decade–and the need for radical adaptation isn’t going away. As Harvard Business Review reported recently, increasing volatility, complexity and rapid change is becoming the expected state of things. That means companies need new ways to lead, mobilize their employee base, make decisions, and create solutions. The stakes are high and adoption can’t happen fast enough at a time when workers are quitting their jobs in droves.

Even though the pace of change has stepped up, there are solid strategies to prepare workplaces for the long term. Leaders can help employees be ready to adapt, even if they don’t know exactly what’s ahead. And workers can thrive in uncertainty, as opposed to simply surviving it. To understand how, From Day One spoke with Sarah Sheehan, co-founder and president of the coaching company Bravely; Homa Bahrami, an expert on organizational flexibility and senior lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business; and Sabina Nawaz, a CEO coach and former Microsoft HR leader. Their advice:

Train Managers to Be Vulnerable

“At the beginning of the pandemic, I can’t tell you how many conversations I had about this inability to separate the personal from the professional,” said Sheehan. As the months moved forward, Bravely saw a 700% increase on coaching sessions about stress and burnout.

Given what employees have been through, the experts all agreed that leadership must be vulnerable, honest, and empathetic–as opposed to stand-offish, strict, or all-knowing. Said Sheehan: “Companies should be leaning into training their managers with vulnerability, making sure they’re not just focused on productivity.” Bahrami warned against management trying to calm workers with wishful platitudes. “I see some leaders try to pretend that everything will be fine and things will go back to normal, but that isn’t the truth,” she said. “You can say, ‘I don’t know,’ or ‘We’re exploring this.’”

Provide Frequent Updates and Communication

While leaders need to be honest and admit they don’t know what the future holds, they can step up by providing regular updates along the way. “You can say, ‘I don’t know how the future may unfold, but we’ll have a live town hall during the last Friday of every month and will give you regular updates,’” suggested Bahrami. Memos will be less effective than live spaces where employees can ask questions, express concerns, and engage with leadership on what the company knows and what it doesn’t.

Tap Into the Collective Intelligence

Every employee has faced distinct challenges and gained insights from navigating the pandemic. The key is to tap into those personalized insights to help inform company decisions–a bottom-up approach. Bahrami suggested tapping into employees’ sentiments and collective experiences by asking what worked, and what didn’t, as they’ve navigated their own personal transitions.

Bravely, for example, utilizes individual coaching to tap into employees’ unique experiences and goals within their companies; that feedback gives leadership a more nuanced understanding of their employee base. “While data is never attached to you, it’ll be aggregated with other data to start to identify themes and trends that are happening within the organization,” Sheehan said.

Nawaz recommended the adaptive leadership style developed by Harvard’s Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky. “One of the ways to move to adaptive thinking is to move away from an expert-based model,” she said. “In organizations it’s natural to look to people in positions of authority to provide us with protection, order and direction, but we cannot provide that in times of uncertainty, so we should look to answers within the collective.”

Offer Coaching for All

Coaching has traditionally been reserved for executive leadership teams. But it’s an effective tool to help employees navigate change once coaching becomes an equitable, individualized resource across the company, said Sheehan. “Resources like training or mentorship are usually prescriptive, but what about those times an employee is suffering from imposter syndrome or feels nervous about going into a meeting with their boss and asking for what they need to be successful?” All-access coaching provides a more flexible resource that’s driven by the needs of the employee. “Employees feel like they have an action plan, they feel positive about their situation, they’re more likely to go forward and address their needs,” Sheehan said.

Atomize Employee Workload

Companies have long relied on long-term business forecasts and annual performance reviews to help shape the future. “That’s just old thinking,” said Nawaz. “In a crisis, we are doing things day by day.” She suggests that companies atomize work, planning, budgeting, forecasting–just about everything–to help employees digest their responsibilities in smaller chunks. Companies can place a premium on short-term learning to inform the next step, which Nawaz characterizes as a “more experimental mindset.” Experiments in small steps, in the short term, reduce the risk of making larger errors and having to undo entrenched thinking.

Create Space for Change

Change is exhausting. And when unpredictability keeps popping up in employee’s schedules, it can leave a workforce that feels like it’s perpetually behind. In that vein, Nawaz recommends that companies encourage all employees, from leadership down, “to create and save buffer space for change,” she said. Leaders can work with team members to understand how much of their workday is interrupted by the unexpected. From those learnings, employees can set aside blocks of time–maybe one free hour, a few days a week–as a container to hold that unexpected work.

Embark on ‘Discovery Missions’

Many employees are trained to identify the problem, the solution, and then move forward. Times of upheaval offer opportunity for what Nawaz called “discovery missions.” She defines this as taking time to broaden your perspective of the issue, investigate the perceived problem, and discuss potential paths forward. “Again, we’re dealing with uncertainty–we don’t know what the answer is and we’re wasting a lot of time when we quickly determine what the issue is.”

Bahrami stressed the importance of offering employees options as they navigate the future: “Let the employees participate in selecting the option that suits them, and make sure managers are fair, equitable, and consistent as they develop the options.”

Frame Change as an Opportunity

“Change can be perceived either as a benefit or as a threat, a positive or a negative,” as Bahrami put it. “During transformational times, people can look at the glass half full, not half empty.” She recalled the abrupt switch to online teaching during the lockdown, which offered an opportunity for educators to learn about new ways of teaching and engaging with students online, and develop new capabilities in the process.

If change is framed as an opportunity, and employees are empowered to succeed and be honest about their needs, it’s the beginning of a strong framework to navigate the unknowable.

Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner who sponsored this story, Bravely. You can read more here about the company's philosophy of coaching.

Emily Nonko is a Brooklyn, NY-based reporter who writes about real estate, architecture, urbanism and design. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, Curbed and other publications.

Measuring What's Really Happening in the Workplace in 2024

In today’s increasingly digital and often remote working environment, software can help organizations get a better handle on how their teams are tackling challenges and discover ways to fill in the gaps. The highest performing teams are 2.6 times more likely to be investing in performance management software, according to Lattice’s State of People Strategy Report. But of those not using such software, 27% are unsure of how to begin and 22% are even concerned about the cultural implications of doing so.But what does an average day of digital work look like? Does worker behavior vary during a typical workweek–or throughout the year? Workforce analytics company ActivTrak drew on three years of data, from more than 135,000 employees across 1,000 companies to provide an examination of workplace behaviors in its annual State of the Workplace Report.Among the findings: workdays are shorter and productivity remains steady. But at the same time, disengagement is growing, which may lead to problems of underutilization but also presents opportunities to make better use of untapped workforce capacity.In a From Day One webinar webinar, leaders from ActivTrak spoke about their critical findings related to productivity, burnout, technology, and AI usage trends. They discussed industry-specific best practices and benchmarks so you can take action and boost productivity across your organization.The State of the Workplace The goal of the report was “to reveal the current state of work and how organizations can better anticipate and plan for the future,” said Sarah Altemus, manager at ActivTrak’s Productivity Lab. “Notably, we found that workdays are shorter and productivity remains steady. Burnout is in decline, which should boost positive engagement and utilization. However, we did see that disengagement is growing, possibly due to previously burned-out employees who are increasingly checking out,” said Altemus.The study, which covered 2021 through 2023, found that employees were about eight minutes per day more productive in the first half of 2023 vs. the second half. This means that if an organization with 1,000 employees was able to maintain those earlier productivity levels throughout the whole year, it would gain an additional workload capacity of 18 full-time employees, worth approximately $1.1 million, assuming each employee has a $60,000 salary.Employees are also finishing their tasks in less time. The workday got a full 15% shorter from Q1 2021 to Q4 2023, dropping from nine hours and 52 minutes to nine hours and five minutes. Time spent on collaborative activities such as chat and messaging increased slightly. Meanwhile, total digital activity, productive time, and focus time stayed consistent.Sarah Altemus, ActivTrak’s Productivity Lab Manager, led the webinar (company photo)Efficiency, measured in productive time in relation to total time, remained steady. This, Altemus says, is a good thing. “We were creeping into almost 10 hours of ‘on’ connected time a day in 2021. I think a lot of that was really performative productivity, people wanting to be constantly online. And so it's encouraging to see that shift to a more sustainable period of time.”How can employers make the most of this trend? The ActivTrak Productivity Lab suggests utilizing workplace analytics software to boost performance management, enhance employee productivity, and maximize workforce investments. Leaders should continuously analyze current and long-term data to pinpoint gaps and obstacles, and identify employees who may benefit from additional training.A disengaged employee as one who spends greater than 75% of their year in an underutilized state. Distressingly, they found that 20% of employees were disengaged due to underutilization, up 67% since 2021. Meanwhile, 7% of employees risked burnout due to overutilization. 4% of employees in 2023 worked on weekends, down one percentage point from 2022. Often, a small, overworked group of employees is taking on too much.Megan Moller, productivity enthusiast at ActivTrak, says multi-tasking and context-switching is often the culprit. “That can be exhausting,” Moller said. “And so when you are doing that every single day for a period of time, you can get burned out.” Leaders need to assess and track employee utilization to help right the balance.If you don’t find the right balance, the results can be costly. 27% of employees risk attrition due to burnout or disengagement. Employees who are burned out are more likely to leave. And ActivTrak calculated that for an organization with 1,000 employees, a workload imbalance that leads to attrition equals a potential loss of 70 employees, valued at $2.1 million, based on 20% annual voluntary turnover and replacement costs equal to half of a $60,000 annual salary.To combat this, Altemus suggests gathering context through team meetings and one-on-one discussions to identify issues and offer targeted support to employees who are overburdened or underutilized. And leaders should encourage employee development by demonstrating how their daily work contributes to the organizations’ broader strategic goals.AI AdoptionArtificial intelligence is being adopted in the workplace – and fast. 22% of employees used AI tools in 2023, an increase of 50% from Q1 to Q4. While AI usage increased, however, ActivTrak found there was no apparent impact on productivity when comparing employees who used AI tools to those who did not. So that freed up time was not necessarily put to good use.Factors such as industry, company size, and workplace environment influenced AI tool adoption, but generally about one in 10 employees used AI tools. Remote workers were 5% more likely to use AI. 115 unique tools were used, with the free-to-use ChatGPT being the most popular.While the true role of AI in the workplace is not necessarily crystal clear, it’s obvious that AI is not going away. Altemus suggests striking a balance: train employees on effective AI use without solely relying on it. Promote a culture of experimentation and learning by encouraging employees to try new approaches and share what they learn. Offer guidance to ensure AI usage aligns with your organizational goals, and always be mindful of protecting sensitive or proprietary information.A Productive FutureIn terms of productivity, Altemus advises transferring best practices from earlier months to boost output and yield significant gains in the latter half of the year, when productivity tends to decline. To combat burnout and disengagement among employees feeling an unbalance in workload, try redirecting resources to support targeted training and growth opportunities. And with AI use on the rise, there is a need for clearly defined policies around appropriate use to maximize the benefits.Leaders can better understand the current state of their specific workforce using analytics tools, and add context with employee sentiment data gained through pulse surveys. They should always communicate their findings and take action when it’s relevant.Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner, ActivTrak, for sponsoring this webinar. Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, and CBS New York.

What a Five-Generation Workforce Means for You: The Myths and Realities

Nick, a senior manager in a global tech company based in Seattle, has worked with people of many different ages, both older and younger than him. His experience is increasingly typical in a workforce that spans five generations, a growing diversity of experience that provides the benefit of workers sharing wisdom across the ages, but also gives rise to problems like ageism–the bias against others based merely on their calendar age. Nick recently learned that one of his direct reports is notably older than Nick assumed. “At that moment, I realized that I had been thinking of him as less serious and more in need of guidance. I knew I had to examine my prejudices about age.”This is the first time in history that such a rich mixture of people from their teens to their 80s are at work. But the implications for business are still being sorted out. In 2020, a Deloitte white paper reported that 70% of executives surveyed believed a multigenerational workforce was important for their organizations, but only 10% felt ready to lead one and understood how it might affect operations.The widespread assumption has been that the generations are distinct enough in their affinities that they should be treated differently. In the Deloitte survey, more than half the respondents said they consider differences between the generations in designing operations and benefits But are these differences more perceived than real? Deloitte’s report cites the new concept of a “perennial” employee, or someone who transcends generational stereotypes.As the Deloitte survey explains: “Why is generation becoming less relevant as a way to understand the workforce? The starting point is that careers have become more dynamic and complex, loosening the historic correlation between age and career progression. Rapid technological and organizational change means that workers must now reinvent themselves multiple times throughout their working lives; at the same time, the broader business culture has shifted to make it acceptable, sometimes even desirable, to promote younger individuals into leadership positions. The upshot is that 65-year-old interns can today be found working side by side with 25-year-old managers, calling into question the assumption that age is a reasonable proxy for understanding people’s workplace challenges and needs.”A 2012 analysis of more than 20 studies supports this view, finding few generational differences in work-related variables like attitudes towards work or technology. Where they do exist, the differences can likely be attributed to variables other than age, like education level.Yet ageism persists. In this story, the first in a three-part series, we'll be looking at how employers can confront this challenge by adopting more age-inclusive practices. There’s good reason to do so, since lack of trust between generations can create unnecessary competition and resentment, to the detriment of working relationships. One experiment found that negative beliefs about older people and how they adapt to new technology led to poorer training of those people. Another survey found that hiring managers view younger workers as having more relevant education and experience and being a better cultural fit with organizations. On the other side is a view that goes as far back as Socrates: young people are flighty, have a poor work ethic, or require constant praise from above. Stephane P. Francioli, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher at the Wharton School of Management, has made a study of “youngism” and found that when asked about age-related abuse or discrimination, younger workers report higher rates than bias related to sexual orientation, race, religion, or gender, he says. Could this be because they see the workplace as wholly unfair? No, he says. If that were true, younger workers would also complain about issues of racism, sexism, or anti-LGBTQIA+ actions at higher levels than other age groups. They don’t. Heather Tinsley-Fix is a Senior Advisor at AARP where she helps employers support a multigenerational workforce (company photo)Pigeon-holing different groups can impair how teams work together, says Heather Tinsley-Fix, a senior advisor at AARP, whether it’s saying that older people are not flexible with new tech or younger people have no loyalty. “If someone was young and not tech savvy, they wouldn’t mention it, but if they are older, it gets attributed to age,” she said. “It's often just a knee-jerk reaction.”Abuse and discrimination can take many forms. Younger workers may be asked to run personal errands outside of their job description, or handle on-call hours at night because they don’t have children to take care of. They may be denied flexible work arrangements that parents of young children are given because a manager doesn’t think young, childless employees will work as hard at home without supervision, says Francioli.The problems that affect younger workers are often not addressed because they are not recognized legally, at least at the federal level. In the U.S., the Age Discrimination in Employment Act covers age discrimination in workers over 40, but can disregard other workers. Employers need to be careful not to encourage and reemphasize generational differences by organizing training according to age groups, like courses on how to manage millennials, helping older workers navigate technology, or how your Gen Z staff is different. “There is no scientific basis for any of this, it creates an us vs. them atmosphere, and encourages an in-group/out-group mentality,” Francioli said.One other consideration is how people can project age-related perceptions onto others. An older worker, for example, may believe coworkers think he is slow to adapt to new work methodologies, when they may not feel that way at all. In fact, one study found that what people believed about other generations was usually positive. The outlier was what people thought of younger generations, though young people believed others’ perceptions of them were far more negative than the reality.While putting stereotypes aside, there are still some age-related realities that employers should take into account. For example, companies can consider ergonomic factors when it comes to older workers, as well as developing support programs for staff members going through menopause. But assuming attitudinal characteristics of specific age groups and training workers based on those assumptions is often counterproductive.At the same time, the world is changing fast, so generations are experiencing factors like media and economic conditions in different ways, which shouldn’t be overlooked, says Corey Seemiller, Ph.D., a professor at Ohio’s Wright State University, and author of several books about Gen Z. Understanding those differences can be key to engaging with team members and the future success of your organization. She points to Gen Z, the social media generation, and their comfort with video as a form of communication. “Do you offer the opportunity for them to provide a video resume? Not all of them will, but some might prefer it,” she said.Many in Gen Z are uninterested in public accolades for their work; some actively dislike it, Seemiller says. Similarly, those from Gen X, often called the Latch-Key Generation, experienced a lot of freedom during their childhood and are often averse to micromanagement.Knowing what might discourage different generations and meeting them where they are doesn’t make you ageist. But if, for example, you note that older people who worked in an analog culture for most of their careers are having trouble adapting to a new tech platform and subsequently require special training for all people over 50, Seemiller says, that is when it becomes discriminatory. The best way to support the different needs of employees is to talk to them and treat them as individuals, advises Seemiller. Employers should find out what they want, what they need, and where there is room for improvement. Regular surveys are a good way to do this. All of this can be highly nuanced, but for employers, it will be worth the effort. We are experiencing a great age shift in the workforce. The UN estimates more than a third of the population will be over 65 by 2050. In the U.S., one-fifth of the population will be over 65 by 2030. Better health, and better healthcare, as well as economic circumstances, have led to people working longer. At the same time, the birth rate is declining.Is your organization prepared for fewer younger workers and more older workers? How can you create a culture where ageism and prejudice against anyone, young or old, doesn’t gain a foothold? How can you harness the power of a multigenerational workforce? In part two of this series, we’ll provide actionable ideas and examples of programs that have helped other organizations successfully navigate changing demographics.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, AARP, for sponsoring this story, the first in a series on how employers can foster age inclusion in the workplace. Interested in assessing how you are doing with age inclusion–and learning more? Try AARP’s new tool, Age Inclusion 101. Just send an email to employerpledge@aarp.org, with the subject line betatest.Lisa Jaffe is a freelance writer who lives in Seattle with her son and a very needy rescue dog named Ellie Bee. She enjoys reading, long walks on the beach, and trying to get better at ceramics.

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