Articles

TASA ID: 22108

Organizations need to incorporate constructive feedback from stakeholders to survive pandemic-related disruptions amid today’s turbulent economy. To meet the expectations of their stakeholders, leaders must ensure that they obtain regular feedback from them, since these people make decisions that determine the success of the organization.

Securing constructive feedback is critical in helping you find out which decisions are working and which ones are not. Yet, many organizations fail in engaging effectively their stakeholders due to reluctance to incorporate and act on feedback. This results in communication gaps between executives and their stakeholders.

To address these problems, leaders need to adopt best practices of getting constructive feedback from stakeholders. These practices are a product of insight obtained from both external research, and my interactions with senior organizational leaders.

TASA ID: 22108

Forward-looking organizations use hybrid and remote mentoring to solve one of the biggest challenges in hybrid and remote work: on-the-job training and integration of junior employees. Yet despite solving this major problem, such mentoring programs pairing recently-hired staff with senior employees are all-too-rare.

Instead of using this best practice methodology, many leaders simply complain about how hybrid and remote work undermines on-the-job training and employee integration, and try to force employees to return to the office. Senior leadership and management need to adopt the best practices for leading hybrid and remote teams for mentoring employees in the future of work.

TASA ID: 22108

The monumental battle over remote work is heating up this summer as more traditionalist business leaders are demanding that their employees come to the office much or all of the time. Google maps workers, asked to come back to the office full-time recently, fought back with a petition and threats of a strike, and won a reprieve of 90 days. Elon Musk demanded that all Tesla staff come to the office full-time despite insufficient spaces at Tesla offices, resulting in Tesla staff getting recruited by other companies. Apple employees are pushing back publicly against the leadership’s demand for three days in the office, with a recent letter saying “stop treating us like school kids who need to be told when to be where and what homework to do.”

The same struggles are happening at smaller US companies, as well as across the globe. Yet, what these traditionalist executives are failing to realize is that the drama, stress, and tensions caused by their demands won’t matter. Remote work will win this fall.

TASA ID: 22108

Imagine you are driving along the highway, and see an electric sign saying, “79 traffic deaths this year.” Would this make you less likely to crash your car shortly after seeing the sign? Perhaps you think it would have no effect.

Neither are true. According to a recent peer-reviewed study that just came out in Science, one of the world’s top academic journals, you would be more likely to crash, not less. Talk about unintended consequences!

The study examined seven years of data from 880 electric highway signs, which showed the number of deaths so far this year for one week each month as part of a safety campaign. The researchers found that the number of crashes increased by 1.52% within three miles of the signs on these safety campaign weeks compared to the other weeks of the month when the signs did not show fatality information.

That is about the same impact as raising the speed limit by four miles or decreasing the number of highway troopers by 10%. The scientists calculated that the social costs of such fatality messages amount to $377 million per year, with 2,600 additional crashes and 16 deaths.

TASA ID: 22108

The pandemic has led to an undeniable awareness of the need for a new C-suite leader, the CHO or the Chief Health Officer. This has been driven by the recognition of the importance of employee health for engagement, productivity, and risk management, along with lowering healthcare insurance costs. At the same time, more and more employees are reporting growing mental and physical health challenges in these troubled times.

In the race to keep employees safe while keeping productivity and morale up, organizations are realizing that simply offering yoga and other wellness programs through Employee Assistance Programs will not cut it. This awareness ushered in the need for a top executive whose sole focus is on optimizing employee health, physical and mental, for the sake of company bottom lines.

Thus, say hello to the Chief Health Officer, the new C-suite leader who is both captain and curator of an organization’s health policies. The CHO is in charge of dealing with the health of employees, both physical and mental.