Eye on the Workforce

You might not feel comfortable getting all touchy-feely at work with some fluffy HR programs, but you should definitely be open to proven performance benefits from activities that make your workers happy. More about those shortly.

First, make sure you know the basics about what makes people happy. Consider the following statement. Is it true or false?

If your workers work hard, they will be successful. If they are more successful they will be happier.

Would you be surprised to learn that there is plenty of scientific study on this topic? Would you be surprised that there was a popular Happiness class at Harvard? Well, it’s true. And as far as I am concerned, this is important foundational knowledge for successful managers and leaders.

The answer to the question is that the statement is false. It is, in fact, the exact opposite of reality. To perform well and be successful, workers must be happy. The happier, the better.

Recently reported in the popular press, one workplace group completed Happiness training (really!) and attained positive results in performance. And the Harvard Professor who taught the Happiness class has written a book where he makes the latest research easy to understand. He uses research findings to develop and describe techniques anyone can use. Check out this quotation:

 “Cultivating positive brains makes us more motivated, efficient, resilient, creative and productive, which drive performance upward. “

That’s what managers want!

As a project manager, you have to lead a workforce often without having direct hierarchical authority. You have to use your influence. Sure, monitoring and control are tasks you complete, but how do you use your influence to make workers happier so that they perform better?

Try these research-based ideas to get started keeping people happy in your project.

• Remember that people are happy when they are “making progress on their way to attaining their potential.” Help them do that.
• First, find out what they want to do. Take a training class? Get experience in a new role? Take the lead of a workgroup where they have experience?
• Next, make it possible for them to achieve those goals. Get them in classes they want. Put them in new roles or in charge of the teams they want. It is easier to do this if you know what people want to do before project planning ends.
• Pay special attention to making people happy when they lead other people. Happiness has been shown to cascade down the organizational chart.
• Find ways to help people help others reach their potential. Imagine the leverage you can get by finding and empowering those who want to increase their own happiness by helping others. Wow!

Bonus Tip:  Do workers need help with project management techniques? Why not get them involved with ProjectManagement?

In a recent pair of articles of mine the case was made that organizational governance representatives should be involved more often and earlier in the SDLC. The article did not fully address how to organize your project workforce to make the necessary changes to incorporate representatives from legal, compliance, information security, risk management and similar groups, however. So here are some tips to be successful in this stakeholder management activity.

• Include the stakeholders in your RACI and get their new “early” roles described correctly in that matrix. Double check your description.
• During workforce training for your project, display the RACI to make early involvement of governance roles clear. Explain what is to happen and why.
• Help team leads think through the implications of involving governance stakeholders earlier in the project. Try to allay concerns over delays by describing benefits of fewer issues later in the project. Refer to the articles for more details on benefits.
• Add governance representatives to distribution lists for earlier project communications. When the representatives have questions, the workforce will be prepared to respond.

Prepare your teams to interact effectively with governance stakeholders earlier in the project by helping them know what to expect by phase. You might have to ask the stakeholders themselves what makes sense in the way of early involvement, then transfer that information to your team.

• At requirements gathering, governance stakeholders may want to participate in JAD sessions or other discussions. Or they may prefer to review draft requirements documentation. They may even request to be formal approvers of the business requirements document. Find out and tell the business analyst and other project workers involved.
• Once new business processes are drafted, where applicable, governance stakeholders may want to review them. This will allow them to anticipate better what new compliance steps are needed or what type of governance changes must occur. They may even have specific revisions to the business processes that affect design.
• During design activities, governance stakeholders may want to see wireframes, draft web pages, descriptions of how Personally Identifiable Information will be used, or other artifacts where there are customer impacts. From information like this, governance stakeholders can intervene early to ensure your project remains safe from serious problems later.

Let’s acknowledge that it is going to take plenty of preparation to properly incorporate governance stakeholders earlier in your projects. Keep telling yourself that, as you improve your ability to do this, you improve your performance as a project manager in a way that is meaningful in today’s regulation-sensitive environment. Tell yourself that you are distinguishing yourself as a project manager who is adapting to the needs of the marketplace.

You probably already realize the importance of pay and development to worker engagement. But if you make a special effort to focus on these factors, you may be leaving out a group of workers that will make up half the workforce by 2020.

Who are they? Generation Y, the newest workers on the block. They value several factors over financial rewards:

• Workplace flexibility
• Work/life balance
• Opportunity for oversees assignments

This is good news. Heck, any motivators other than financial rewards are good news.

And there’s more good news. Workers in Generation  Y, also known as Millennials, also stay in jobs more often if they feel

• Supported and appreciated
• Part of cohesive team
• Flexibility in where and how much they work

As a project manager, you have some control over these people management factors. You have the ability to help make these happen. For example,

• When selecting candidates for a new role, explain to Gen Y candidates about where your workplace is flexible. Explain that they will be working on a close-knit team.
• Need a worker to shift oversees? Look to a Gen Y employee.
• To motivate a Gen Y worker, talk less about further development opportunities and more about how specifically you appreciate their recent efforts to do x.  Ask what they need to continue to complete work they are working on now.
• Avoid asking them to work longer hours to be rewarded with some vague future benefit. Instead, provide them the desired results and let them have more control over what they do to complete that work.

These kinds of practices are fairly easy and will net you workers who stay longer and work harder. And that is a benefit to a project manager in any generation.

The report in PDF format can be found here.

It’s a wonder we can complete any project.

Consider:  Have you ever lived through a day where you begin with a list of action items that are a priority, only to get to the end and find that, despite your concentration and work, you have little completed on that list? That you completed a lot of other work for other reasons? Does this happen very often? It does?

Do you think you are different than everyone else? No? Then multiply that problem by everyone in your project.

It’s a wonder we can complete any project. 

Delving into this phenomenon in more detail, Harvard Business School Associate Professor Francesca Gino has written Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan . She is a behavioral scientist who has defined several categories – categories mind you – of forces that cause distraction. Her three categories result from

• The outside world, where distractions come from irrelevant information, the structure of our environment, even how questions are  framed
• Our relationships with others, where distractions arise from our bias based on superficial similarities to others, our inability to empathize, and comparing ourselves to others
• Within ourselves, such as our beliefs about our own competence and abilities and our overly narrow focus when evaluating information and making decisions

Just think about the breadth of the factors that can distract you, the siren call all around you on any day drawing you away from what you plan to do. Does this make you feel helpless as a project manager? All is not lost. Perhaps if you just bring awareness of the extent of this problem to your workers, they will be able to self-manage to improve their own performance.

Consider:

• You can send messages to the project workforce to describe how distractions can be a big problem
• You can speak in team meetings about “the distraction of the week”
• You can have workers tell their funny but frustrating stories of being diverted from priorities by certain work events or people. This may bring agreement and consensus to find a solution right away.
• You can ask workers in corporate social media to discuss their biggest distracting force at work and how they surmount it. Maintain awareness by keeping the conversation going.

Seriously, though, it’s a wonder we can complete any project.

What’s your experience? What ideas do you have to help workers avoid getting distracted?

According to a survey by Cornerstone OnDemand and research firm Kelton, about half of employees do not have plans to make a long-term career at their employer. Some are planning to leave soon, others in the mid-term.

The Bad News:  When a worker leaves, replacement is costly and time consuming and you have  a potential resource gap in your project. That increases your stress level.

The Good News:  It turns out that you as a project manager have control over factors that will keep workers in place.

The Bad News:  You are not sure of what these factors are.

The Good News:  The aforesaid survey can help.

Rank these four items that responding workers say  motivates them from most to least. (That means put the biggest motivator at the top.)

1. Receiving regular performance feedback to help succeed in role
2. Opportunity to develop skills
3. Promotion or new title
4. A good manager

Now don't look for an answer right away, follow your gut and rank the items first.

These motivational factors are actually ranked in reverse order. Aside from compensation and benefits, then, you can most strongly motivate employees to stay in their current position by simply being a good manager.

By implication, you should be able to state the key behaviors you need to exhibit to be a good manager right now. Go.

Can't do it? Then you have a little research to do. To make this easier, we humbly offer this blog with information from the latest studies and surveys, ideas proven to work in your workforce.

Case in point:  Here are the highest motivators (to keep workers engaged and in their position) found in the survey.

• A good manager who I enjoy working for (48%)
• Feeling appreciated by my supervisor or employer  (46%)
• The opportunity to advance my career  (39%)
• A promotion or new title  (38%)
• Liking and respecting my co-workers  (36%)
• Recognition for my accomplishments, such as my supervisor or co-workers expressing congratulations  (35%)

Look at the top two motivators. You have so much control over these factors that it should be clear just from this survey that you have significant leverage to increase worker satisfaction.

If you are not doing so already, then start showing your appreciation for the specific things your workers are doing to drive your project ahead. Be more likable by listening better, showing empathy for worker's situations and giving individuals specific feedback that will help them succeed in their role.

You may not be able to promote a worker or give a new title (except perhaps something temporary for your project such as Grand Poobah of Technical Design), but you can certainly provide recognition for accomplishments and collaboration. And you can make time for your project workers to provide recognition to each other. Remember this in your project meetings.

With these simple steps, you as a project manager can improve worker job satisfaction and reduce expensive turnover and, finally, keep your best workers cranking away in your project.

More on this survey and the importance of performance reviews in my next post.

Here's a bonus heat map so that you can see how your state stands up as far as recognition. Stay equal or better than employers competing for the same workers in your state.