What it means to be a Human leader

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by James Ashton

There are many types of CEOs. But in a post-pandemic world, those who connect with their staff on a personal level will thrive.

Talk to some CEOs, and it becomes clear that lockdowns imposed by COVID-19 tore down barriers between them and their workforce. One leader I know was taken aback by the response he got for a casual reference to “all 8,000 of us” in an all-hands Zoom call. Isolated staff clung to what they saw as a significant moment of togetherness, and emailed him their heartfelt thanks.

Other CEOs acknowledge the fresh divides that were erected and still need to be navigated. In an interview, Amanda Blanc, CEO of London-based insurance and savings group Aviva, highlighted the challenge of remote leadership, including presenting over “video walls.” “If you were an introvert, it would be a very difficult thing to do,” she told the Sunday Times of London.

The ambition to preserve the status quo, though, drove some CEOs to behave as normal, including Yves Perrier of French asset manager Amundi, who went to his Paris office every day of lockdown. I suspect it was just as comforting for him as it was intended to be for his staff. But others took this idea to extreme lengths, such as a CEO who filmed his Christmas message last year standing at a lectern in an empty lecture hall.

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A new role for business leaders: Moral integrator

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by Liz Sweigart

With stakeholders and shareholders vying for attention, CEOs need to develop a new kind of ethical leadership to build trust in society and deliver results.

Claire was looking forward to the long holiday weekend. After two brutal weeks of late nights and early mornings getting ready for a new product launch, dealing with supplier disruptions in China, and managing a sudden labor shortage in Germany, the Fortune 500 CEO was ready to catch her breath and spend some quality time with her family. The plan was to leave first thing Saturday morning to beat the traffic headed to the shore. Instead of the alarm, though, Claire awoke to her cellphone buzzing. It was her company’s general counsel. The night before, one of the company’s top executives had been recorded drunkenly berating a waiter in racist and homophobic terms. Posted to TikTok within minutes, the video had already amassed more than 2.5 million views and was spreading like wildfire across Twitter and Facebook. Social media commentators were demanding action, institutional investors were calling, and requests for comment were flooding in from major news outlets. “Claire, how do you want to handle this?” asked the lawyer on the other end of the line.

Although it sounds like a nightmare, this scenario, a composite of actual events, has become all too real for many CEOs.

In the past, few executives might have considered addressing social issues as part of their job description. Now, in an era when a single tweet can obliterate US$4 billion of a company’s value, it’s become even more important for leaders to understand how to negotiate this sensitive territory: in fact, it’s a business imperative. Executives need to know how to make sense of and engage with these issues so they can simultaneously deliver business results that satisfy shareholders, build trust with their employees, and meet the expectation many have that organizations are responsible for driving more equitable outcomes for society.

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How to ensure the job offer you make is truly equitable

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By Arthur H. Woods and Susanna Tharakan

The greatest single source of long-term pay inequity is the job offer. If we are committed to addressing pay inequity in our organizations, we have to start there.

Let’s say you have three candidates of mostly equal qualifications pursuing three identical positions at your organization: Jordan, Prisha, and Bari. You prepare three equal job offers with a starting salary of $100,000 each.

But just before you go to make your offers, someone on your team notes that Jordan is the only candidate who went to an ivy league school—and besides, he is the breadwinner in his family. Afraid that Jordan might not accept, the team agrees to add another $10k to his offer—and his alone.

You extend your offers, and Jordan negotiates. After a few exchanges, you agree to increase his offer by another $10,000. Prisha doesn’t negotiate at all. Bari does not negotiate, and then has a baby shortly after joining your company. She asks to take a one-year leave of absence on top of her paid maternity leave, and you offer to extend the same original offer when she returns.

Fast forward twenty years. Even assuming that promotions and raises were given out equitably,  Jordan has now made $400k more than Prisha and $500k more than Bari. Let’s consider the role your organization played. Seemingly small early decisions—one informed by bias and another that was merely reactive to an aggressive candidate—led to a sizable pay equity gap.

The job offer process is rife with potential bias, intentional and otherwise. And if your job offers are inequitable, your entire organization will end up inequitable, with disparities compounding year upon year. Syndio, an HR analytics company focused on pay equity, has found that the initial job offer is the single most significant factor in long-term pay equity. Get that wrong, and the hopes of maintaining equitable pay across your organization are all but lost.

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How to manage workers for the transition back to the workplace

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By: David Palmieri

Keep these 3 themes—and your workforce management tools—in mind while putting together return-to-work plans.

Managing a workforce during any period of transition can be a difficult process, even during the best circumstances. Over the past 15 months, businesses have faced constant transition, adjusting operations to address the pandemic’s continuously evolving implications on the workplace. Although workforce management–the process of scheduling workers and tracking their time, attendance and absences–has always been a critical business function, its role is now more critical than ever as employers navigate the new world of work.

As businesses reopen and introduce employees back into the physical workplace, workforce management solutions have broader applications. We’re seeing workforce management processes and technologies evolve in innovative ways to meet these new, pressing needs of businesses. Organizations must adjust their approach to tasks such as employee scheduling, skills management, timekeeping, attendance tracking and labor forecasting to bring employees back in a manner that provides all workers with the conditions they need to feel comfortable and protected.

These considerations must be made across industries, as all businesses navigate the unique impact of the pandemic, from worker shortages in service industries to new hybrid schedules in traditional corporate settings. The pandemic has also encouraged many workers to demand more flexibility, from variable working hours to remote work from any location. This trend is pushing employers to re imagine their workplace practices to attract new talent and retain current employees. Continue reading →

3 Questions That Will Change Your Mindset From Busy to Strategic

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by Jessica Foutty

With these simple shifts in perception, you can leave ‘frantic’ behind and make real progress on goals.

Just about every time I ask someone how they are doing, they reply with something akin to, “Busy, but good.” There’s so much that demands our attention, from ads to scrolling through social media to work calls to family activities. While I realize everyone is fractionally or wholly overcommitted, with me being no exception, at some point I began noticing that at the end of some days, I would sum up with, “I have no idea where the day went” or “I didn’t get anything on my list done” or “I feel like I made no progress.” This trend got me wondering about ways to better define progress. Even if it’s small, such progress, I thought, has to be focused, and of a sort that actually pushes me — not just a series of ticks on an ever-growing list. To produce this new mindset, I asked myself three questions, and the result has been a huge difference in how I spend time and what I’m able to accomplish. Now, instead of hearing myself ask, “Where did the time go?” I get asked “Where do you find the time for everything you do?”

1. Does a task affect my future or my “right now”?

So many items that filled up my list, I found, simply didn’t affect the future. They might be tasks that pushed paper back and forth, or were a step in a larger process only. They didn’t achieve much and would likely have to be redone anyway, but I was letting them take up a majority of my time. So, I began asking, “Does the time I spend on this task move me into the future and help me get where I’m going, or does it keep me in the same place I am presently?” If it’s something that keeps me in the same place, it’s in one of two buckets: it has to be done or doesn’t have to be done. If the former, maybe as a part of my job or because it’s something my boss is asking for, I get it done quickly and effectively and move on. If it’s something that doesn’t really have to be done, I delete it. Perhaps it’s a meeting that was optional; I’ll then ask whether I will be adding value or getting value? If neither, I don’t attend — protecting that time for projects that help me create the future I’m working on. Continue reading →