Team Taskmaster

It’s the day before a three-day holiday weekend, and if you’re like me, you’re ready for a break from work.

Which explains why I’m leaving you with a couple of grins instead of a long and thoughtful post. I’m taking tomorrow off but will catch up with you again on Monday. Happy Independence Day!

(View more fabulous Demotivators posters at Despair, Inc.)

Back in the day, I worked as an office temp during my college summer breaks. It was a great gig for a student: answer some phones, do some filing, sit in air-conditioned comfort, and never work nights or weekends.

I earned some decent money, learned how to troubleshoot even the fussiest photocopiers, and mastered the art of the PBX system. What I didn’t do: build lasting relationships or get fully engaged in the culture of the workplace.

I knew it was a short-term assignment, and so did my coworkers. Why bother investing the time or effort, from either side? I’d be history in a month or two and we’d probably never cross paths again.

I can’t help thinking about that when people sing the praises of temporary executives. For example, Workforce Management just wrote about how temp execs are gaining favor in a troubled economy, and the Wall Street Journal identified a trend in which stay-at-home moms formed temporary teams of seasoned pros to handle crash projects.

The theme with articles like these seems to be, “What a brilliant idea!” You can tap mercenary experts to come into your business, take charge of projects, make big changes and business decisions — all without hiring them on a long-term basis or even paying benefits. When they’re done, they’re gone. Brilliant, right?

Well…I wonder. One of the things I write about frequently is employee engagement. And it’s really hard for a team to connect with a manager who they know will be out the door in a few months. How do workers build rapport and trust with someone who’s got no personal stake in the business — or in them?

This is one of those business decisions that might make short-term sense for the bottom line, but it doesn’t work in the long run. Especially with this precarious economy, you need all your employees engaged, productive, and pulling together. That’s tough to do if the executive suite has a revolving door.

Paul Hebert, writing on Fistful of Talent, agrees with me. He notes that temp execs can lead to temp employees:

“I don’t think a company benefits from hiring mercenary executives in the long run.  Sure, in the short run their laser focus and lack of emotional connection allow them to see opportunities that employed executives might not, and be able to act on them.  But the long-term damage to the entire employee base isn’t worth it.

In a time when most HR consultants are telling companies that employee engagement is key to future success - and most surveys show that engagement is at best holding it’s own — hiring temporary executives seems like the most backward play I can imagine.”

When I last touched on this topic, asking you if a temporary team leader is the right answer, fewer than 10 percent of you said yes. The rest were split almost evenly between “no” and “maybe.”

Have your thoughts changed now that the economy has worsened? Is there a place for temporary executives, or will they kill whatever morale remains in your team? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

Is too much touching in the workplace a bad thing?

The question’s on my mind because of a Wall Street Journal article by Elizabeth Bernstein about people who persist in touching colleagues at work. In it, she describes herself as a “touchee” — someone who, through no action of their own, seems to inspires unwanted touching from coworkers.

She writes,

I get bear hugs from men and unsolicited kisses on the cheek from women. Co-workers of both sexes grip my elbows, tap my knees and pat my back. An editor recently held my hand on deadline—literally. One work friend hugs me every time she sees me in the elevator, even if I’m furiously typing on my BlackBerry and juggling iced coffee and a salad.

I thought my colleagues were just being really friendly, until I turned a corner in the hallway one day and the cleaning woman flung her arms around me and stroked my hair. She told me she just wanted to say ‘Hi.’”

If Bernstein is a touchee, we’ve all known people who are inveterate touch-ers — those who can’t seem to interact with others without a pat, a hug, a high-five, a playful hair-tousle, or other physical contact.

Touching is, of course, a natural human response, and a thoughtful hug for a distraught coworker or a high-five following an achievement can be both appropriate and welcome. But there comes a time when too much office touching can be uncomfortable. (Not to mention a potential lawsuit, but I’m not going there in this post.)

I know that I like to keep a zone of personal space around myself. If someone enters that space uninvited with an air kiss or a pat on my shoulder, I feel invaded, annoyed, and off-kilter. Do it often enough, and I’m likely to either get angry or start avoiding you — either way, that makes for a tough office dynamic.

And when I was pregnant? Woo! Talk about uninvited contact. It’s as if pregnant bellies send off a message that reads, “No boundaries here! I’m not a person, I’m a freak show! Go ahead, pat me!”

But maybe I’m just hypersensitive. Today’s workplace is a lot more casual than it used to be. Maybe hugs and back rubs are just part of the new paradigm, like flip-flops and nose piercings. And I acknowledge that it’s a slippery slope. While practically no one will take offense at a handshake, where does a slap on the back rate? How about a fist bump? A hand on the knee? A kiss on the cheek?

Which is why I’m interested in what you think. So take my poll, and give me your feedback in the comments section.

 Loading ...

(image by lizasperling via Flickr, CC 2.0)

Feeling sluggish, unengaged, unhappy at work? It might just be a case of the Mondays blues. Then again,  maybe it’s you.

If you’re not motivated, could be you’re not satisfied or challenged with your job or your responsibilities. Sometimes, it might not be your fault; I wrote recently about a friend who’s bored at work simply because a massive layoff left him without much to do.

But the good news is, most of the time it’s within your own power to make a change for the positive. Ali Hale, writing for Dumb Little Man, offers several suggestions for feeling more motivated at work. One that really struck me as a great idea: Say “yes” to new opportunities.

As Hale writes:

Many people complain that their job is routine, boring and dull — but they never make an effort to step out of their usual role and take on something new. If your boss asks for volunteers for a new project, why not offer to have a go? Some opportunities might require courage: the first time I was asked to do a presentation to a group of clients, I was terrified! But you’ll find that the braver you are about seizing these chances, the more interesting your work will become. Be proactive, too: ask to work with a different department for a short time, or to be trained up in a new area.

In my own experience, there’s nothing like taking on a new challenge, especially one that’s outside your comfort zone, to get you revved up and excited. The first time I ever appeared on a television news program, after years behind the scenes as a print reporter, I was scared witless. But it certainly created a whole new dimension in my day-to-day work, especially when it became a regular gig.

So the next time someone asks you to step into a project, say yes. Or invite yourself on board. Chances are, your colleague will welcome the help — and your psyche will welcome the change.

For more of Hale’s suggestions to boost motivation, read her full post. And share your own ideas about taking on new challenges in the comments section.

(image by It’sGreg via Flickr, CC 2.0)

Hot on the heels of my post yesterday, in which I criticized a study that suggested remote working does more harm than good, comes some more information backing my argument.

Cisco’s Teleworker Survey, released today, estimates that the company saves $277 million each year thanks to the increased productivity of its remote workers.

So much for teleworking being bad for business, eh?

A couple of caveats:

• As Team Taskmaster reader Girsang pointed out in yesterday’s comments, telecommuting is such a case-by-case issue that it’s hard to give weight to any study that simply characterizes it as “good” or “bad” for business.
• The survey focused on 2,000 Cisco employees, and I supposed you could make the argument that this doesn’t represent a typical sample of remote workers. (Who knows, maybe all of Cisco’s workers are an incredibly motivated, team-oriented, self-starting bunch who work harder and better than the average American.)

But despite these points, my reaction to this survey was still a big “Ha! I knew it!” Here are some of the key findings:

• The average Cisco employee telecommutes 2 days a week.
• 60 percent of the time saved by telecommuting is spent working and 40 percent is spent on personal time.
• 40 percent of Cisco employees say they are not located in the same city as their manager.
• Approximately 69 percent of the employees surveyed cited higher productivity when working remote, and 75 percent of those surveyed said the timeliness of their work improved.
• 67 percent of survey respondents said their overall work quality improved when telecommuting.
• Telecommuting can also lead to a higher employee retention rate, as more than 91 percent of respondents say telecommuting is somewhat or very important to their overall satisfaction.

All these findings reflect what I’ve experienced in my life as a remote worker, or when working with a virtual team.

How about you?

(image by mccun934 via Flickr, CC 2.0)

If you read my posts regularly, you know I’m a huge, huge fan of telecommuting and flexible work arrangements. There are so many benefits — accommodating work/life balance, reducing your carbon footprint, saving time (no wasted commuting hours), saving money (less overhead), and so on.

But what if telecommuting is actually a productivity killer?

That’s the claim being made by VitalSmarts, a corporate-training organization that ran a study that found distance in the workplace does more harm than good.

According to the study (which surveyed 500 workers):

• 13 of 14 common workplace-relationship problems occur more frequently in virtual teams, whose members are in different locations, than with teams in the same building. (No specifics were given as to what, exactly, those common problems are.)
• Problems with remote colleagues are “significantly” more difficult to resolve, and last longer, than with on-site colleagues.
• When facing a challenge with a remote colleague, workers either use the silent treatment (screening calls, not responding to e-mails) or verbally attack them (criticizing them to others, gossiping or complaining).

The end result, say the study authors, is the effects of distance are destructive to working relationships and overall productivity.

And I say…pshaw.

I admit there are challenges working with someone you don’t see face-to-face on a regular basis. But let’s give workers some credit, shall we? Just because a colleague is on the other end of the phone doesn’t mean you’re less likely to get along with him.

I mean, look at the third point listed above. The alternatives for dealing with conflict are either the silent treatment or gossip? Who did they survey, a class of eighth-graders?

If you’re a reasonably mature adult, and you can practice proactive communications skills with at least a modicum of diplomacy and tact, I can’t imagine that working with a remote colleague is so much more challenging than working with someone in an adjoining cubicle.

In fact, I think you’re actually more apt to get annoyed by the people you rub shoulders with daily. Sally has that annoying laugh, Donald has horrible coffee breath, Keith is a shameless suck-up, and Daisy’s habit of dissecting each episode of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” is driving you mad.

What do you think?

 Loading ...

(image by blatch via Flickr, CC 2.0)

Is e-mail driving you mad? Much as we love the ease and effectiveness of electronic communications, your inbox can often be overwhelming.

As a Web worker, I’m especially prone to feeling buried by my e-mail. But I’ve come up with 9 ways to keep my inbox at bay. Try them and see if they work for you.

1. Don’t check (or answer) your e-mail first thing in the morning. Spend the first hour at your desk checking your to-do list, working on any urgent tasks, and mapping out your workday. Otherwise, you’ll get sucked into the e-mail quicksand and your productivity will suffer.
2. Batch your e-mail time. Instead of checking e-mail every few minutes throughout the day, set aside 15 minutes every hour to read and respond to e-mail. The first shift of the day should be for the code-red e-mails and could take 30 minutes. Thereafter, cut yourself off after 15 minutes and get back to actual work.
3. Triage your inbox. When you check your mail, flag the most important items, then tackle them one by one. Leave the other e-mail for your next check.
4. Turn off your alerts, both auditory and visual.
5. When you open an e-mail, act on it immediately: reply, file it, or delete it. If next steps are required, add them to your task list; don’t let the message linger in your inbox as a reminder.
6. Don’t move items from a folder back to your inbox (or just leave items sitting there) as a pseudo to-do list. Write the actions on your task list instead.
7. Use your rules. I automatically route my newsletters and alerts into their own folders, so they don’t clutter my inbox. I can read them at my leisure later, and they don’t contribute to visual overload.
8. Create a contingency plan. If you’re like me, it’s hard to ignore e-mail for 45 minutes (or more) at a time. What if something really urgent has come up? My solution is to let people know if they need an immediate response, they need to call me.
9. Try to end the day with an empty inbox.

Do you have any other tricks for mastering your inbox? Share them in the comments section.

Do you regularly work late, but still feel like you’re not getting enough done? If so, you might be able to benefit from a simple yet brilliant bit of advice I stumbled across the other day.

In an article about focusing your time more effectively by author Stuart Levine, this nugget caught my eye:

Get in early and get home on time.

I’ve never really been one to follow that rule. By nature I’m a night owl, more comfortable toiling into the wee hours than with waking up with the birds. As a result, I’ve always tended to start work around 10 a.m., knowing I’d doubtless still be at my computer around 7 (or later).

But Levine points out that this isn’t always the best strategy. Why? Well, in his words:

“Too many people get to work fifteen minutes late, thinking they’ll stay late to make up the lost time. They spend the first half hour getting coffee and catching up with colleagues on the hot new reality TV show. Once they sit down, they make a couple of personal phone calls, and if they’re lucky, they’ll get in an hour or so of ‘real work’ before lunch. Of course, lunch itself is split between planning an upcoming meeting at their desks and catching up on office gossip. With the rest of the day spent returning emails, they might get in two or three hours of real work. So they stay late, inevitably chatting with the other night owls for another half an hour. But it’s okay—after all, they’re ‘off the clock.’”

These workers leave the office later than they should and tend to feel burned out because they’ve been at work so long but still have so much to do. But the truth, says Levine, is that they’ve wasted hours of work time and and could have accomplished much more.

So I thought about those times when, for one reason or another, I’ve had to hit my desk early. And there are definitely some benefits:

• the phone is not ringing
• fewer people in the office = fewer opportunities for distracting chit-chat
• people don’t expect e-mail replies at the crack of dawn, so the inbox can wait
• I get a sense of accomplishment by getting things done before the workday gets into full swing
• I can finish work at a reasonable quitting time, which helps my work/life balance immeasurably

I’m not saying it’s an easy thing to change your “work clock.” But this approach makes so much sense to me that I’m going to start setting my alarm a couple of hours earlier and see what happens.

And while we’re on the subject…I’m curious about your work patterns. Share your M.O. with me in the poll below.

 Loading ...

(image by papalars via Flickr, CC 2.0)

Do you gnash your teeth and pull your hair when your Internet connection goes out? I suspect that most of us — at least those of us who rely on the Internet for work purposes — do. I’ve been known to leave my home office with my laptop, in desperate search for a wireless hotspot, rather than wait out any downtime.

But there’s a flip side to the enforced disconnect, as Celine Roque noted when she wrote about Internet-free zones in Web Worker Daily (and thanks to Lifehacker for linking to the post). Roque points out that you can actually use the unexpected “break” to improve your productivity — if you look at it as an opportunity for increased focus.

After all, if you’re not being distracted by the pinging of your e-mail, or the lure of Facebook or the latest movie reviews, chances are you’ll do a better job of prioritizing your to-do list and actually singletasking for a while.

In fact, Roque advocates creating no-Internet zones (for her, these include the dining table and her bedroom) to reduce the distractions surfing the Web provides. You can also create windows of time during your day or week where you voluntarily pull the plug on your Internet to pump up your productivity, or pay closer attention to the other things in your life that matter, like family and recreation.

For more insights, read Roque’s entire post. And share any experiences you’ve had with consciously disconnecting from the Internet in the comments section.

If you’re Googling “my job is –”, chances are you’re miserable. That’s what Alexander Kjerulf, the Chief Happiness Officer, discovered when he noticed the auto-suggestions provided. Turns out that the top six most-common search queries completing the phrase all revolved around misery in the workplace:

Are we really that dissatisfied with our work? Two of the most-popular queries cited boredom, which doesn’t surprise me that much; I actually wrote about motivating a bored employee earlier this week. But I’m sad to think so many of us are dealing with daily hell on the job.

If you’re in that boat, Alexander offers several suggestions on how to make a change:

• Top 10 bad excuses for staying in a crappy job
• How to know it’s time to quit
• Top 10 signs you’re not happy at work

And I’m interested in hearing if you count yourself as one of the working miserable. So…fill in the blank.

 Loading ...