Abhijit Bhaduri’s Blog
I write about careers, skills and the world of work. The cartoons and sketches are mine.
Employee Experience Design: Making It Boundaryless
Do the employees trust the intent of the leaders? Without trust, even the best of EX designs will be looked at with suspicion. Is the leader fair? Does the leader have integrity? The biggest element for great EX is to co-create it. The company’s policies reflect the assumptions the employer has about the employees. When Netflix said they offered unlimited vacation, they said the employee could be trusted not to misuse it.
Time to change the work template
Most online classes are excruciatingly boring because they have the speaker continue for long stretches without involving participants. This can be done through polls, parallel chats, drawings, videos, quizzes, built in every few minutes. It is hard for the speaker to see the facial expressions of the learner. That is essential to build engagement.
Building a Culture of Continuous Learning
Encouraging the use of Informal Learning is the secret sauce of building a culture of continuous learning. Formal learning is the equivalent of taking a conducted tour while visiting at new city. Informal learning is all about exploring the city at your own pace. While formal learning is efficient, the effectiveness of informal learning is far higher.
Healing the Workplace with Trust
One thing is for sure. The world of work has changed. The psychologist Erik Erikson refers to building trust as the first stage of human development. Knowing that we are interdependent, and we trust each other is the reason to hope for a better tomorrow. War and natural disasters can be powerful forces that form bonds that last a lifetime. We can turn this pandemic to be a force for rejuvenation.
Uncertain Times Need Routines
Comfort-food is a stress reliever. We throw caution to the winds and indulge in a routine that brings back memories of happy times and nostalgia. Friends and loved ones renew our faith. For some turning to religion is reassuring. Routines build a sequence that we know and have done before. Routines are necessary for mental health during times of stress and uncertainty. 5 Ideas you can use
Before fixing bias in AI, let us fix our own
Something happens to us when we see ourselves as the majority. The people who are not like us become invisible. The majority writes the rule book to favor themselves in every way. Think of the challenge of left-handed people who wish to play the guitar or use a pair of scissors. The French word for right is “droit” and that is how adroit becomes a synonym for skilful in English. The left hand is called “gauche” in French which is how we describe something that is socially awkward.
Video Calling? Think Like a Vlogger
I asked a friend who creates video blogs and hence is a vlogger. Many of us now need to use video calling to stay connected to work. Here is what he said, "Who knows video calling better than a vlogger? They use their videos to capture the attention of millions of viewers. When you are video calling your colleagues, you are using the same medium of the video. It is the new medium you are using to share your ideas. It is your new medium to influence the world. So think like a vlogger."
Employee Experience - When Do Leaders Get It
The design of these experiences will often be different from designing the typical HR process. Processes in the organization reflect organizational silos. Experiences cut across many silos. For example, the onboarding experience may mean working with Facilities, Technology, HR and the Legal teams. Experiences are rarely limited to an organizational silo or function. Employee experiences are not what HR or any other function designs for them. It is always co-created.
My peer became my boss
I always believe that a transition is like the trapeze act you may have seen. When a performer releases the bar and is caught by another performer, the "catcher," who hangs by his or her knees on another trapeze. After the first performer leaves the trapeze bar and is held by the colleague, for a brief period of time the performer is in mid-air without any support. Transitions are like that in-between moment. They are scary but manageable.
Organizing a conference? Read this
This may be a good time to rethink the conference. Here are a few easy fixes:1. The audience approves the speakers: Get the speakers to do a short 1-minute video of the topic they wish to speak about. Share the names of the speakers and their topic on the conference website. Let the people vote for the topic and the speaker. Those who are paying have a right to decide which speaker is worth their time.
Learning ecosystems - how to build these
You probably use one or more of these open source learning systems: TED talks, General Assembly, EdX, Big Think ... and then you have many formats of content - videos, podcasts, blogs, websites, newsletters. I use a number of whitepapers and reports published by various organizations. Your employer probably has their own LMS to share content. Having great content does not ensure learning.
Your social media footprint is your new resume
Your social media presence can be used to create your personality profile. These reflect more stable traits like ability to learn, motivation and people skills. Personality is probably a better predictor of your success than what people put on their resume. There is inaccurate and sometimes fake information in people's resumes. That when combined with poor skills at predicting performance from candidate interviews, means most hiring is a hit or miss situation.
Freelancers - the hot trend in talent management
Every freelancer has to be their own C-Suite. If they do not understand the complexity of the taxes they have to pay, they can work with an accounting firm or a tax lawyer. In an organization, the Learning and Development team will assess the gaps in soft skills (along with the technical knowledge and domain knowledge) that are there for each employee and create a plan to bridge the gap. That option goes away for freelancers. They can’t assess their own skill gap in this area.
Toys, Trinkets and Trophies
The increasing importance of the workplace design as a strategic lever for shaping culture needs to become part of the CXO vocabulary. What kind of work settings enhance the feeling of engagement with colleagues and which work settings encourage individual contribution time need to be consciously designed. How we do our work has changed. The workplace design has to catch up.
What if there were no rewards at work?
In the workplace, there is a special team of people who manage “total rewards” that does everything with the belief that periodic rewards make the employee feel appreciated and a little more engaged. Could it be that our system of rewards is just what is making them disengaged? Could it be that rewarding high performance is precisely what is making people not collaborate with colleagues? Could it be that offering rewards for innovation is stopping the employees from taking on complex problems? What does the science say?
New Career Options in 2020
The highest growth will be in jobs that require tech skills and understanding of human emotions. They are called Hybrid Jobs. A Marketing manager with fluency in a database program, or a Data Scientist who knows data visualization or an Engineer who knows Sales qualifies as a Hybrid Job. These jobs will grow at twice the pace of any other job and are less likely to get automated. If you are a Techie, adding social or creative skills can make you a “purple squirrel” – a term recruiters use to describe people with these rare combinations.