Eye on the Workforce

You have team management routines already established in your project or agile effort. Use these to make sure you are properly managing the mental health of your team. Meetings can be a useful way to identify potential mental health problems and start to deal with them.

Periodic Team Meetings

Where you work mental health may not be a common topic. With the preparation you make as described in Part 1, though, it can be an unsurprising topic in your team meetings. Here's how to include mental health topics in these meetings.

• Proactively remind team members to take time for self-care. This helps them with building the habit of taking necessary breaks and using resources that your organization provides.
• Provide other helpful reminders or tips based on your research described in Part 1.
• Ask mental health related questions. Use informal terms and phrases such as "We are coming up to a stressful point in our execution" or "Well that was a surprising turn of events. What do you think about that extra work involved?".
• Follow-up on the initial responses to your questions and get input from everyone who is willing to share in the meeting. Look for anyone who is struggling and consider a separate follow-up meeting to investigate further. See below for more.
• If your questions uncover significant stress or anxiety in the team as a whole, ask the team what the best way to respond is. They do not have to know immediately. Also bring up any relevant information or resources your organization provides. If your organization does not provide relevant resources, communicate your researched expert resources.

Individual Meetings

You may have a routine individual meeting with team members. Do not hesitate to use these sessions to identify and address mental health problems. Without the whole team listening, an individual may be more forthcoming.

• Keep the meeting agenda but look for discussion points that enable you identify potential difficulties.
• Ask how the teammate is feeling in such a way that circumvents knee jerk responses like "I'm fine" or "doing good". To do this, ask about a specific experience. For example, "How did it go with the review?" Or "What did you have to do to meet the deadline?" These will bring about more useful responses so you can determine what the individual's experience has been and how they are reacting to it.
• If you do uncover situations where a team member admits to overwork, anxiety, potential burnout, conflicts in work/life balance or similar mental health struggles, be supportive. Use empathetic language that you have prepared previously. Create phrasing for your supportive and empathetic comments beforehand so that they sound like they come from you naturally.
• Refer the team member to the best resources.

 Ad Hoc Incidences

Ad hoc meetings where you speak with someone specifically about immediate mental health challenges they are having at home or work are a good place for an intervention if you are prepared as described in Part 1.

• If, for example, your organization has a phone number to call for those who are struggling, then your effective intervention will likely be to empathize with the team member and then advise them to call the number right away.
• Determine if you can make other immediate adjustments to allow the individual to get past this difficulty. For example, you may be able to increase flexibility for to complete work, provide a day off to deal with a family situation, and so on.

 Again, you are not a therapist. Leave diagnosing and treatment to the experts. Your role only involves the early identification and advice to follow existing resources provided for this purpose. Don’t go too far, yet be confident in your role by building your expertise and preparing your phrasing. See this work as an advanced extension of your leadership skills, because it most certainly is.

But, if you create a working environment where mental health and stressors are regularly discussed, identified, and dealt with, the team will be happier and more productive in a sustainable way. Even if it is rare to identify a team or individual mental health difficulty, the fact that you have created an environment that makes the discussions routine will set you apart as an effective leader and improve the long-term performance of your team.

This is the third post in a series related to Robotic Process Automation*, begun in association with PMI's Information Systems and Technology Symposium, June 14, 2017, where I presented Becoming an RPA-Ready Project Manager. You can filter posts in this blog to find all related to "Robotic Process Automation". You can also watch that presentation for PDU credit.

Communicating the vision and the schedule were the two organizational change management success factors covered in previous posts. They are very important pieces in the change puzzle. But let's get a little more practical. Successful change management also requires having the right project resources with the necessary skills in time for project start, does it not?

Here are two scenarios that you could encounter in an RPA situation. One is what might be experienced in a group new to RPA projects. The other is what might be experienced in an RPA shop that is a little more mature. Each illustrates the importance of managing project resources to the success of the organizational change as a whole.

In an organization just starting out with RPA, preparing for the first project, few or none of the resources may be familiar with agile methodology or the general process for short RPA projects. The resources are not fully prepared for their roles. Training and preparation activities delay the start of the initial project and likely the end of the project. Leaders, expecting fast financial results as per the business case for RPA, are suddenly questioning the RPA group's ability to execute. Non-supporters in the general organization's workforce suddenly see a reason to become more vocal against the RPA-based organizational changes in general. The new RPA is team is frustrated that they are off to a bad start and will not find it as easy to drive forward in an environment of skepticism as they would have had if they had better managed resources.

Avoid this scenario with more precise planning. You must avoid underestimating how fast you can produce a ready team.

• Use "left to right" schedule planning for this. Include all activities, especially because you may need to justify a long period before the first project can begin. Think you can produce a full task list? Be sure to add these: expertise gap analysis, create job description for brand new specialist role, recruit needed specialists, interviewing, hiring, wait for background checks, wait for other HR activities you're not sure about but always cause delays, orientation, special new RPA training, team formation. Remember that RPA teams are small. Every unfilled role is a critical problem.
• Make a conservative estimate as to the time it will take to obtain and prepare the specialized resources you need. Don't even think of scheduling your first project start until all activities are completed.
• Create a contingency plan for not being able to find the expertise you need. For example, you may have to identify and poach expertise from other organizations. You may have to wait for someone newly trained to get up to speed. Either way, alternatives will take a little extra time and attention than using the standard recruiting group.
• Consider delaying certain communications about project start if you are not sure of being able to execute on your resource plan. Treat as a high impact risk.

The second scenario is when you are in a more mature RPA shop (as in the Establishing Phase as described in the presentation), you cannot hire new resources with the necessary agile or RPA expertise causing a set of projects to be delayed before they really get going. Organizational leaders, made more hungry by your initial success, desire the same cost-saving benefits coming at a faster rate. They are frustrated by your lack of ability to scale operations.

The point when you start to scale up your RPA operation is significantly different from when you have one or two teams.  (Refer to presentation for details if you like.) The problems with resource management are multiplied.

• Include in your scaling up plan a tightly-bound recruiting function. Use the corporate recruiting function if you have one. Spend time training these recruiters on what skills you need and why. Describe the needs of your small teams and their short intense agile projects.
• If you have to use outside recruiters, do the same but also remember to meet often to provide feedback on quality of candidates. You need to get what you ask for. The timing is also important so provide feedback on how fast they are finding experts. Use their info to set expectations on the rate of scaling your team. If you can't fill a role, the whole team has to wait. Your schedule must be set accordingly.
• Don't suggest to leaders that you can move faster than you can clearly prove through action. We are in a time of high growth for RPA work. That can easily lead to a shortage of talent when you need it. Set expectations accordingly - with everyone involved.

Making sure you have the resources you need when you need them to complete projects is always important for successful organizational change management. With RPA, a new, fast-growing specialty, resource availability presents a significant risk. Don't it be your weakness.

Note:  There will be resources that are not involved in specific project work that will need to be covered by an organizational change plan. These will be covered in other Change Management posts.

* Robotic Process Automation:  For our purposes, configuring a software robot, using one of the relatively new tools available, to complete a certain part of a work process formerly completed by FTEs. RPA is not Artificial Intelligence, but simply a way of automating the execution of well-defined business rules. Projects are short and bring quick benefits to the organization.

How much does worker drama affect your projects? Is it a significant factor? Is it the common topic of conversations? Would you rather be focusing on something else, such as project tasks and priorities?

If you are experiencing drama from worker's immature behavior, you are not alone. Careerbuilder recently conducted a survey that is a bit depressing. A key finding: Seventy-seven percent of employees have witnessed some type of childish behavior among colleagues in the workplace. If nothing else, it can inspire you to take measures to reduce the amount of drama that may occur in your project.

CareerBuilder had their team survey 2,532 hiring and human resource managers and 3,039 employees for this report. All respondents were employed full-time and not self-employed.

The following behaviors were reported by more than 30% of respondents:

• Whining(55%!) and pouting
• Tattling
• Starting rumors about co-workers
• Playing pranks on co-workers
• Forming cliques
• Making faces behind a co-worker's back

Sounds like first grade. Of course, a small amount of pranks and fun can be healthy, but the results of this survey indicate that many workplaces have a culture that allows too much immature behavior. Looking through the list should make it clear that such behavior can be corrosive to teams, workforce morale and performance. Understand that this kind of culture does not occur immediately, but evolves over time as some improper behavior is allowed to happen, enabling others to do the same.

If your project work environment does not suffer from this situation, then give thanks and go to another post on this blog. But if you are cursed with such a work culture, then it would be best to take some kind of action rather than let your project be affected by such unconstructive acts.

First, stay positive and constructive. Your message theme should be related to everyone succeeding in the project so the project itself succeeds. Here are some example to get you started.

• Early on, convey the message that constructive behavior is necessary for everyone to work together respectfully on teams. It enables everyone to trust each other. This is expected, of course, in your project.
• Be specific as to what is expected, trying not to focus too much on what is not desired. Allow team members to add behaviors that help teams be successful.
• Be careful when you say "professional" behavior is required. This is essentially an undefined term, so you should elaborate with examples and details when you use the term.
• Correct those who exhibit improper behavior quickly and privately, contrasting their reaction to  the constructive alternatives discussed previously. Be sure the individual sees the disadvantage of the unconstructive behavior and the advantage of behaving more constructively.

Finally, you can counter with data from the survey. For example, the following indicators are used by significant numbers of employers (sometime significant majorities) that workers are not ready for promotion:

• negative or pessimistic attitude
• use of vulgar language
• participation in office gossip

There are other tactics that apply to different types of work cultures. What might work in your experience? Do you work in an environment where there is drama or immature behavior? What is it like?

Our theme this month is emerging trends and I wrote an article based on economic and demographic trends. It was about retaining employees - avoiding "job switching" to other employers or other projects in the face of more opportunities in the improving economy.

But there is more to tell on how to adapt to these current economic changes. Namely, what do you do if, despite your efforts to retain workers, you have to replace a worker? Job switching is more of an issue now and will increase in the future. Recruiters are using LinkedIn and other sophisticated methods to find those who are unsatisfied with their current positions. Replacement is time consuming and expensive, so you want to do whatever you can to reduce these adverse impacts.

These ideas should help get you started.

Position your position and culture as desirable . . . Workers in all demographic groups want  flexibility, manageable deadlines and management who cares. To the extent your project and organization can meet these needs, promote that in your job opening descriptions to differentiate your position from competitors.

For positions or temporary assignments that need less experience, perhaps those desirable to Millennial generation candidates, promote what you do to focus on their developmental needs. Describe how you enable growth and development while on the job.

Help your own recruiters sell you position in a sophisticated manner. Your recruiters may not know how appealing your project is, but you do. Give them the information they need to sell it.

Understand the recruiting process early . . . Meet with your recruiters to see what the process entails. Review it to determine what you will have to do to move quickly if necessary. What are the lead times? Is there anything for which you need clarification before you have to actually follow the process?

Prepare in advance for worst case scenario . . . Reduce risk by identifying the key resources - the ones that will cause issues immediately if they  leave. Have a contingency plan ready. It may be that you just immediately look for a quick replacement and, if there is not one, then you communicate a project issue related to the activity. You may have to put the activity on pause until a replacement found. This is the kind of thing you need to know in advance.

Get your other workers involved .. . Others in your project and workplace know people who may make great candidates. Use them. You may already have some kind of recruitment program where your own employees can be rewarded for finding successful candidates. If so, promote this program when a resource gap opens. If you have no such program, then ask your team for help. They have connections and will want to get the right person in place.

Don't be caught short as job switching increases. Do some basic planning so that you are ready to act quickly to replace resources who are lost. It's an important way to ensure your project is delivered successfully.

Do you exhibit the most desired executive trait? If you do, it certainly makes your work easier and even benefited your career.

So see if you can pick the “most desired executive trait” as determined in the  IIC Partners survey of leaders from this list of desired traits:

• Strong Communication Skills
• Decisiveness
• Vision
• Performs Well
• Ability to Motivate

This should be a pretty easy choice. Executives around the world chose this 3:1 over the next most desired trait which is "Performs well."

I've got to admit, I might not have guessed it although I know of its importance. I might not have guessed because we are talking about executives ranking their own most desired trait. I may have been led astray by my experience or Dilbert. Anyway, the trait they chose overwhelmingly is Ability to Motivate.

Do you see why I would have selected something different? Is it your experience that executives are great motivators?

If you are a project manager and you have the ability to motivate, you can better get project teams to meet deadlines with expected quality. You can get stakeholders to participate more often. You can get decision-makers to make decisions. You can get your project core team to focus on the correct tasks and follow the best project management process. And that is good for everyone.

And, if you are thinking about moving up in the organization, there is even more reason to build your motivation skills. It's what executives are looking for in other executives they are hiring. The good news is that you can build and show off your motivation skills as a project manager!

There are many posts in Eye on the Workforce on motivation (filter the posts on Leadership or Performance Improvement to start) not to mention the rest of the site. You can find plenty of other resources on this topic.