Mindful Monday’s

In this Mindful Monday, we discussed employee engagement from a different viewpoint; from the perspective of feeling connected to our team, manager and workplace culture.

Speakers:

• Michelle Precourt, Mindful HR Services Inc.

• Shari Angle, Loft Consulting

• Ahmed Rammay, Marketing by Rammay

Transcript

Michelle

Welcome to Mindful Mondays episode nine. My name is Michelle Precourt, it's a pleasure to be here with all of you today. Before we get started, I'd like to take a moment to recognize and appreciate our Indigenous friends and the Indigenous communities from where we're broadcasting from. It's important to note that there were people here before us who were and continue to cultivate community the way that we are today. I'm broadcasting live today from Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation), also known as Squamish, British Columbia. I'd also like to tell you a little bit for folks who might be joining us for the first time today what Mindful Mondays is all about. So, point one I already said cultivating community. Point two is about learning and growing from each other and sharing collective wisdom. At the heart of all of this, which is really important to me is about creating healthier humans and healthier human beings and healthier workplace cultures. And how we do that is through sharing of knowledge. So we've talked about this in episode nine, as I said, in previous episodes, we've talked about things like career-related stress, recruitment challenges, workplace wellness, we've talked about mental health in the workplace. And today, we're talking about employee engagement and workplace culture. So with that, Ahmed, I'll pass it over to you and introduce our guest.

Ahmed 

Thank you so much, Michelle. And I'm excited to be here again, for another one of our sessions that we have with us today, Shari Angle. So Shari is a highly qualified HR consultant who has more than 20 years of Human Resources experience, including a decade in executive-level roles. As a consultant, Shari serves clients in a variety of sectors and company sizes. Shari is the owner and lead consultant at Loft Consulting, and a managing director at first 30 onboarding solutions. And of course, Michelle cannot forget you. She is our HR consultant and the founder of Mindful HR Services and the brains behind Mindful Mondays. And we have myself here for anyone who's joining for the first time, I'm a marketing and brand strategist. However, today, I'm here is your host, and moderator. And I'm excited for the upcoming conversation today. So I'm going to go into a little bit more on what Michelle spoke of earlier, but what we're hoping to get into for today. And so this is all about making meaningful connections at work. And that is a broad-stroke term, but it can mean so many different things. I think, you know, we're really going to connect on engaging employees and what that means for, you know, taking a bit of a different viewpoint, maybe from the perspective of feeling connected to our team, manager or workplace culture. So let's jump into it. Michelle, I'm gonna put you on the hot seat first today. How does this broadcast and discussion make meaningful connections at work fit into your Mindful Monday theme?

Michelle

So as I said, Ahmed Mindful Mondays is about creating healthier humans and healthier workplace cultures. And so when I think about making meaningful connections, to me, it's about team cohesion, that creates connections, connections build relationships. And as humans, we need this right? Even though many of us are working in environments like this, I'm working from home. Shari, I know you work from home, but you can still do this in a way that creates meaning. And this vision of healthier humans who feel more balanced at work and at home, ultimately, and there are studies to show this ultimately, we're just going to do more, right, and employers love that. So that's where I see this connection.

Ahmed 

Yeah, I think that you hit the nail on the head there about this whole piece or connections doesn't matter where we are, you know, we, through the pandemic, we've been talking a lot about how do we maintain connections working from home, especially from a perspective of being closed off or you know, not having that boardroom or the walk by watercooler type chats and those kinds of things, but we can still do a lot of that. And it's hugely important that we continue doing that as well for our employees. And so, you know, making those meaningful connections is really a great point. Shari, before I jump into my next question that really highlights you, just wondering, do you have anything to add to the meaningful connections piece as it relates to your business or what you're seeing?

Shari 

Yeah, it's interesting because I started my company just prior to the pandemic, actually, and so several of my clients and several of my key connections like Michelle, as an example, I've never met in person, but I feel very connected to them. And so, you know, I think we can really make very strong connections even remotely. And it goes, to me, it goes deeper, it goes to the level of human care. And, you know, actually caring about individuals as much as we do, if we're speaking in the employer terms as much as we do about the outcomes. So I've been very fortunate to make very meaningful connections even remotely. And I feel that some of them are as strong as some of the connections that I make with people in person. So it's really quite nice. Actually, what as you're saying that Michelle, I was thinking, you know, it's interesting, we've never met in person, but I feel very connected to you.

Michelle

So yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I agree. If there's a positive thought side, from a world pandemic, it's taught us that we can build relationships remotely. I was reflecting on this, not that long ago about how, as a young girl, I had a pen pal in Japan, and writing letters, you know, that sort of thing. And I feel like social media is a little bit like that. I'm using tools like StreamYard. I'm using tools like Zoom to help us connect with folks. It works, it really does work. For sure. 

Ahmed 

And I think this is probably a really great lead Shari into the question, I want to ask you because you talked about outcomes and making those connections with people, you know, whether it's in person or remotely or what have you. So as an HR consultant, what are you seeing in terms of engagement at work? What strategies are working well, for employers and employees together?

Shari 

So this is a really difficult question because I think there are different drivers through different organizations and different individuals who require different drivers to help them feel engaged and motivated at work. One thing that I have found is very helpful is when employers can connect what the individual does with the purpose of an organization. So going deeper than, you know, what service are we offering, but why? Why are we offering and, you know, Simon Sinek has that three, target graphic that I think is extremely powerful and extremely meaningful to individuals, when you understand what is that connection to the purpose? So that's one that I think is really, it, it goes a very long way. And, Michelle, I know you do some work around this as well. Don't know if you wanted to add?

Michelle

Yeah, well, what comes to mind for me is values. So it's a very, very common practice in the career development work that I do is to talk about values, what are your personal values? And then how does that link to the company values? So you can look at this from different perspectives you can look at it from I'm in search of a job, what are my values? And yes, you're being interviewed by the employer, but you are also or should be interviewing them. And values are really important. And then once you're in-house, a regular check-in on values is going to be helpful for you to connect, right? I understand that senior leaders do the strategic planning, but by being embedded, you're embedding yourself into that process, even in your own way to understand how am I contributing to this. Because sometimes you're right, Shari, it's really hard to make that connection. And so if you're going to be connected at work, that's one of the things, values 100%. And then there's a relationship side of it, right? If I know that I can count on my peers, whether it's on a project or something personal that is going to it's always the hardest part about leaving a job right? Sure you've left a job I've always the hardest part about leaving a job is those relationships. And then the other part that I think about and then I'll pass it back to you Ahmed is the for me anyway, as an independent. This is where it's probably the most challenging aside from you know, the business development side of it, all that stuff. Of all of the things that we have to do as entrepreneurs, it's the connections. So I come in, I do a thing, and then I leave. I'm not, I'm not always there for the long term. And so it's those connections aren't as strong. As they are like you and I, Shari, we've built a strong connection, even though you're in Ontario, and I'm in BC, we built a strong relationship and this strong bond, because we stay in touch, we stay connected. We are doing things like this? Right? Yeah. So that's where that connection piece is really important.

Shari 

Can I add something to that what you just sparked for me is one thing that I find the consultant is like you said, you come in, you do something and you leave. We're not necessarily connected or seeing what we do through to the ultimate outcome that it has. And I think that that is what helps to drive engagement with employees is understanding what is this thing that I'm doing? How is this, you know, whatever it is that I'm achieving, going to ultimately end up helping the organization? And can I follow it through to the impact that it has? And so that's, you know, I think there's some discipline required from an organizational perspective to really help communicate and articulate that connection for individuals who might not be able to make the connection themselves. Because I do believe that everybody is able to impact that ultimate outcome. Actually, I'll just tell, I'll just tell a quick story. There was this story about when JFK went to NASA when they were sending somebody, a man to the moon. And the goal and the purpose and everything was around sending the man to the moon. And he, he stopped and he engaged with one of the window, the men washing the windows, he said, What are you doing, and the window washer said, I'm sending a man to the moon. And that's how connected to the process and and to the outcome. Every single person that worked at NASA was they had one mission.

Michelle

That’s amazing, thanks for sharing that. That's a great, great analogy. That's perfect.

Ahmed 

That's a really strong, you know, and meaningful, we talk about that connectedness. So it's not just, you know, connecting people from a relationship perspective, but ensuring that we're connecting people back to the objectives, the goals of the organization, how are we moving things forward? What is it that we're doing, and ultimately, this all relates back to business objectives, and ensuring that our people are feeling empowered to act on those business objectives and contribute their parts? To that whole thing?

Shari 

Absolutely.

Ahmed 

Shari, from your perspective, you know, again, in your line of work, you talked about kind of the sort of fly-in-fly-out connecting and coming out, you know, from your perspective as a consultant, how are you working with those companies to perhaps further engagement? Is there maybe additional tactics around feedback loops or anything like that, that you're doing that help bring some of those connections forward from a, I don't know if it'd be a strategic or tactical perspective, but something more that's happening in that that you're seeing from your lens? Yeah. And actually,

Shari 

I think it's both strategic and tactical. From a feedback loop perspective. So a couple of the strategies that I think are really, really important and, and this is where I feel like sometimes we have to make what is seemingly organic or natural feedback, we almost have to systematize it in a way that we remember, because people get busy, right? People get busy. And so there's not enough time. But also with a lot of organizations having a remote workforce, there isn't that organic discussion by the watercooler or whatever it might have been previously. And so we have to systematize and so, you know, some of the things would be having frequent one-on-one discussions with team members and really booking them and honouring them. And, you know, this is the last thing that can't get cancelled from my calendar. And maybe it's templated. So that it's just, you know, what's the highlight? What's a win? And what's a challenge, like very simple, and how are you remember to ask, how are you? And so there's that and then just figuring out opportunities for individuals to engage perhaps outside of their direct, you know, chain of command or whatever you might want to call it however you call it. Perhaps there's an opportunity to foster connections with other individuals within other departments through social either social or strategically picking teams for projects. You know, it really is about taking more time and consideration than you might think, to foster the connections and provide the feedback. I actually, it's interesting because a sort of a new trend in HR is a way with performance appraisals. And I think some people are thinking that that means, unfortunately, away with feedback. And that's actually not what it means. The way with the performance appraisals, in my opinion, is away with once-a-year raving and evaluating and whatnot. But it means we have to replace those feedback channels with more frequent, more authentic, more meaningful discussions. And sometimes we have to provide individuals with tools to help guide those discussions.

Ahmed 

Yeah, something that I heard before from a previous engagement, is that pattern of feedback is a gift. And it truly is. You know, I loved what you said about doing away with the one year because that is when your touch point, is not what's going to drive engagement with your employee. I mean, sure, it will, because it's tied to certain objectives and what have you. But yeah, I think the the crux of it all is we as people, we as employees, we as humans need that more constant, considerate feedback that we can learn and grow from. So you know, the positive reinforcement and the, you know, as HR always likes to say that, continue doing this and stop doing this type of phrasing and but it's really helpful. It's those things that help move those conversations and help move the needle, not just towards company objectives, but growth. And so it's ensuring that we are maintaining that personal growth for people as much as we are maintaining the growth objectives for the organization in whatever facet that looks like. That's kind of sort of what what came to my mind there when I was hearing you talk. Did you have any thoughts there?

Michelle

Yeah, I want to go back to the values conversation that we had, because I think that that's also where you can see people making a connection. I said that earlier. But when what you were talking about is this idea of performance appraisals going away. But it might be going away and coming back as something different.

Shari 

Exactly. Right.

Michelle

And so is it this thing that I did? Or is it the behaviours that we want to see in the workplace, you know, kindness goes a really far way, versus, you know, you didn't meet this objective or that objective. And those are, you know, there's a balance there. Of course, there's always a balance there. And you said that as well. Ahmed, that there are deliverables. We're accountable to our clients and our customers and our internal and external stakeholders. But people always buy from people that they know, and they like. And so again, that, at least for me, anyways, ties back to how are you interacting with me? And can I count on you? I'm seeing more of that around the greater awareness towards I'm going to call it soft skills, but emotional intelligence, or in my world mindfulness, and behaviours that were expecting, and I'll put in bunny ears "measuring" that, I think that's where we might be seeing some of these performance conversations shifting and changing a bit.

Shari 

You've touched on something that I think is really important to Michelle, which is, you know, values. Sometimes these values are broad words, and they're broad terms. And, you know, I will use an example that we had at an organization, I worked with integrity, integrity was a value. And, of course, you know, on the surface integrity of Sure, that's a great value to have within an organization. But the challenge is when we don't define the behaviours underneath integrity, and what integrity means at this company, it becomes very hard to communicate around integrity, because nobody wants to be told they don't have integrity, and nobody wants to tell somebody, they don't have integrity, right. But when you have specific, this is what it means here. And these are just high desired behaviours and actions that fall under this term. Now, everybody knows, this is how I show up. And this is what I can expect from other people. And so to me, that's where some of those connections become a little bit more aligned. Because we can all I think on the surface, we can all say Yes, I believe in integrity. Yes, I believe in honesty. Yes, I believe in whatever the big concepts are, but having a little bit more granular and articulated what that means at your organization. That's where the power comes.

Michelle

Yeah. And I think it goes back to that old expression. You know, walk the talk. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing that I want to tie into this conversation, because I think it's really important is well-being at work. And frankly, if we are not, well, we're not going to perform, right? And it's more than, you know, having a cold or a flu. It's this emotional well-being, and if I am at capacity, yes, and I am being given more. Yeah. And it's a culture where you can't say no, you're going to lose people. So it's important to have conversations around capacity, like those check-in conversations that you're having. So how are you? How's your workload? How are you doing? How are you feeling? How often do you hear this Shari and Ahmed how are you? I'm busy, busy isn't a feeling. So drilling down and saying, Well, you know, busy can be good, right? Because if we're, there's this balance between and Ahmed we had this conversation with Dave, remember, Dave Redekopp around career career related stress. And he talked about this sort of balance between boredom and the opposite of boredom, which is, you know, spinning out of control, there's somewhere in there, that is the sweet spot. And it doesn't mean there are no peaks and valleys. 100%. But if you're always at a peak, I'm staring at one right now it's out of my window, all these beautiful mountains. But if you're always at that peak, that's going to be a challenge, you're going to run out of speed. And, you're going to end up with burnout, and high costs associated with benefits and, you know, sick time. Having those conversations around well-being is really important.

Shari 

Yeah, and it's so interesting that, okay, first of all, I personally need to work on that balance between overwhelm and boredom, because I find I'm either sitting on either end, and I'm not very often in between. So any tips, I will take them. But when I was thinking about preparing for this discussion, it really did become apparent to me that, you know, taking on more doing more, you know, relying on people for more, that is not engagement, those are not the same thing. And so even if somebody is prepared to take on more and put up their hand to do more, you know, yes, they might be engaged, or they might be afraid, like, really, we do have an obligation as an employer, and as an employee, as a human being to say, Whoa, I can't do anymore. And for me to do my best work, I need to ease up a bit like, let me be my best self. Within reason, obviously, because, like we said, there are those two extremes. I really liked that you brought up this point, Michelle, because I think it's very, very important to remind everybody, and I do think burnout is a very real I have lived it, I have experienced it. And was I an engaged employee, highly engaged employee, but it didn't mean that I could continue at the pace that I was going up.

Michelle

Yeah, the other thing that I'll just say and is also, as leaders, please watch for the signs. So Shari, I know you work hard, you take a lot, and you don't say no. So we have to watch for those other signs of someone might say, oh, yeah, I can do that. Oh, yeah, I can do that. And yes, there's personal responsibility. 100% were responsible for taking care of herself, and learning to flex and saying, you know, but if there are other signs, like emotional outbursts at work, like showing up late, like looking dishevelled, these are some really general statements, please, as leaders watch out for these types of signs because your high performers aren't always going to say no, and then frankly, as Canadians I see, one of my colleagues is online here. Eli, Hello. We talk about this culture of Canadians being so polite, and not saying no. So we might not say no, outwardly, but we weren't really struggling inside. So that's just another point that I'm quite passionate about.

Shari 

And I think as leaders, you know, just like we talked about being very aware, and very intentional in the feedback, being aware, and being very intentional about how we distribute work and projects, is also really important. It's important for the people who can't say no and are over it already overloaded. It's also important for those people who might be borderline disengaged, to say, Wait a second, I'm not feeling connected. I'm not feeling connected to the team, I'm not feeling connected to the purpose, I'm, I'm not feeling overly engaged right now. How do you bring them pull them back in, maybe it's through a special project that, yeah, they might have, they might have a little bit more catch-up time to do than this person who's, you know, your superstar, but he's already doing everything. You know, being aware of the distribution of not just tasks, but opportunities, because a lot of these projects and these, these, you know, special things are opportunities.

Ahmed 

I'm going to pause us here. I love where this discussion is going. But we still have a few more questions to kind of get to. And we have just a few minutes left in our time today. So I'm going to move us along here. So Michelle, you know, we talked about this in our last Mindful Monday, but how the pendulum has swung from the workplace, being very employer-centric, prior to unionism employment standards and other such regulations to what, you know, some may suggest is now employee-centric environment. Do you think that this idea of engagement at work is too idealistic? Dare I say, you know, our employees asking too much, or our employees giving too much, or sorry employers giving too much, you know, what are your thoughts here?

Michelle

Yeah, so you talked about employment standards. So start there. I think that ESA sets the baseline, these are the minimum requirements that employers need to set and it's necessary. It's needed to protect people. It's also you know, unionism came in because people were dying, right, they were dying on the job. And so I'm being dramatic, but, you know, I think about mining, and the railroads and this sort of thing. So unionism came in. So there was, you know, that big employer, sorry at that time, it was this balance between employees are saying, no, hey, we need someone to protect us. So we rebalance from there. But I do think that there's this recognition, we need to recognize that as human beings, we're all very unique. And we have unique needs. And so this is where these conversations around values, my values are going to be different from the two of yours here. And I expect from our callers as well. And then there's also demographics, young people, younger than me, are in search of an experience. So they might be in for a short time. And they're like, this is what I'm looking for, this is what I want. There are going to be those other folks who, when we talk about being employee-centric. So there are the young people in search of an experience, or perhaps new Canadians are in search of a bit of a different experience. So they're jumping from employer to employer, or folks that will go around the street to go around the corner to another employer, because they're in search of a bigger paycheck. And they're trying to build their career that way. I also think that where this pendulum shift is coming in, which I love is that we're creating a kinder world, a kinder workplace environment where there's more hands going up saying, we're talking about things like microaggressions, right? I don't feel safe. I don't feel secure. I don't feel welcome. So some of these things that were just kind of pushed to the side going, Oh, you're too sensitive, or that's just that's just Joe no big deal or Mary's bark is louder than her bite, you know, this sort of thing. We're creating a kinder workplace culture and workplace environments, because employees are asking for more. Those are my thoughts.

Ahmed 

I love that. That's a really great perspective there, Michelle, and, you know, hitting on that kinder, I think in today's world in general, just looking at, you know, everything around us and how things are going that this idea of being kinder, just simply Kinder is so, so hugely important. Sherry, we have a variety of viewers, from HR professionals and managers to individual contributors. What is one closing thought that you'd like to leave in support of creating greater connections in the workplace?

Shari 

I think my best piece of advice is to be intentional about it. And to keep it front of mind, we are all humans. And we all want that connection. I do believe that. So leading with kindness, that's a very important one. And leading with the human in mind, I think is really, really important. You know, starting the conversation, even though you're very busy. How are you? How was your day? In fact, the three of us when we got on right before this, Michelle, how was your weekend? How are you? You know, there's something really important about that, even though you might feel up against time, that time is very well spent.

Ahmed 

Absolutely. I love that. I think that's, you know, the intentional part of this is, so it just resonates so well. And it's something that we all need to be, you know, for lack of better terms, mindful of this brings us to kind of a close. Before I do that, Michelle, I'm gonna hand it over to you, maybe you have a closing thought here as well that you'd like to share. But then we can also wrap as we are at the bottom of the half.

Michelle

Thanks, Ahmed. It's a fantastic conversation. I knew Shari, we would just talk through these 30 minutes with no problem at all. Thank you so much for being here today and for sharing your thoughts. I'll talk quickly about our next Mindful Monday. It's about money. It's about total compensation. And we're going to be talking with Jen Ferron at Comp Savvy, who knows a thing or two about compensation strategies for employers for organizations, we're going to be talking about why these are important, not only from a transparency perspective but from an engagement perspective and retention perspective. So that's happening in June, and really looking forward to that. But once again, Shari, thank you so much for your time today for connecting and sharing your thoughts today.

Shari 

Thank you.

Michelle 

Thanks so much. I enjoyed it. So quick shout out to all the folks on online here are a few familiar names. So thank you to all of you who showed up. And thank you to Ahmed for guiding the conversation along today.

Ahmed 

Absolutely. My pleasure. Thanks, everyone.

Michelle Precourt 

All right. Until next time, be well everyone