Gratitude For Best Friends at Work

The Gallup workforce engagement survey has taken a lot of heat over the years for the question “I have a best friend at work.”  Gallup explains that this question correlates closely with highly productive workplaces.

Many survey respondents balked at the question. Perhaps they had friends at work, but they were uncomfortable with the word “best.”

The problem seemed most acute with senior leaders. Leaders are used to remaining aloof, not to making friends at work.

So Gallup tinkered with the question, trying “close” friend or “good” friend. And the correlation between a positive response on the question and productivity vanished. Apparently, the most productive employees are willing to characterize at least one of the people they work with as a “best” friend – these relationships are part of belonging to a great work group.

Moreover, the “best” friend question also correlated with other aspects of a high-performing workplace:  profitability, safety, inventory control, and – most notably –the emotional connection and loyalty of customers to the organization serving them.

Do you have a “best” friend at work? If so, have you told your colleague how much he or she means to you? Take a moment during this Thanksgiving week to express your gratitude to the people you work with.

Difficulties of Reasonable Accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act

I recently attended a webinar on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), sponsored by the American Bar Association.  The primary points made during the webinar were

1. The amendments to the ADA passed in 2008 were designed to relax the definition of “disability.” Cases brought under the ADA should now focus more on whether the employer discriminated against the employee, and less on whether the employee is disabled.
2. Employers should be able to justify their attempts to accommodate the employee.  An employer should “stop; think; justify” any actions vis-à-vis a disabled employee.  This applies both to determining the essential functions of the job and to the discussion of reasonable accommodations to permit the employee to perform the essential functions.

One of the speakers during the webinar was Chai R. Feldblum, Esq., a commissioner with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).  Commissioner Feldblum stressed that the EEOC does not want to preclude employers from getting their work done, nor reduce business productivity.  If an employer has its job descriptions in place that list the essential functions, and if the employer engages in an interactive dialogue with the disabled employee, then determining whether a reasonable accommodation is possible should be straight-forward.

My experience has been that the reasonable accommodation process is not as easy as Commissioner Feldblum makes it sound. Ideally, a reasonable accommodation can be found quickly, but often, the process is inexact and time-consuming.

Here are some of the problems encountered in finding reasonable accommodations:

First, there is the problem of keeping job descriptions up to date. In today’s workplace, jobs change quickly.  In a large company, it can be a full-time job for several employees to keep job descriptions updated.  And writing job descriptions is probably not the most efficient use of employees’ time – companies that seek to be nimble may not want to slow down to create job descriptions that will be out of date by the time they’re written.  Requiring that job description be written is one of the reasons lawyers and HR professionals get a bad name among managers, even when they point to the ADA as the reason for the requirement.

Second, while it is easy for an employer to say that a job function is “essential,” there are always other ways to get the work done. Since one possible reasonable accommodation is to “restructure” a job, an employer is always subject to being second-guessed on whether a particular job function is “essential” and need not be eliminated, or whether it is non-essential and the employer will have to find another way to get the function done, or do without the function.

Third, while the employer can set both qualitative and quantitative standards for acceptable performance, these standards are also subject to debate during the reasonable accommodation process.  If a leave of absence or a reduced schedule is a reasonable accommodation, then a production standard may need to be reduced along with the employee’s schedule.  How then will the employer get enough production out to satisfy its customers?

Fourth, the necessary accommodations of a disabled employee sometimes evolve over time, or require a good deal of experimenting to see what works and what doesn’t.  The attempts at accommodation may even be unsuccessful in the end, resulting in frustration for the disabled individual, as well as for his or her managers and co-workers. Sometimes the employee isn’t ready to stop working, even after many accommodations have been unable to get the employee back to a productive state.

These problems don’t even get to the issues that arise when the employee’s request for an accommodation is less than clear, when the employee doesn’t know what accommodation they think might work, or when other employees become upset at having their jobs changed because the employer is accommodating someone else.  For more information about the ADA, see the EEOC's website on disability discrimination.

The purpose behind the ADA is laudable.  The practice is often messy.  Even employers operating in good faith can find themselves in expensive litigation.  Who is to say what is “reasonable”? Even years of attempted accommodations may not be enough to satisfy the EEOC or a judge or jury.

What have your experiences with the ADA been? 

The Progress Principle: What Can Managers Do to Make Employees Engaged and Productive?

I recently participated in an American Management Association webinar entitled The Progress Principle: Sparking Employee Engagement and Performance. The presenters were Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, co-authors of a book entitled The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work.


1. Inner Work Life Drives Performance

Amabile and Kramer conducted a “diary study” of employees in seven different industries, asking them to describe daily their activities and feelings of engagement.  They coupled this diary information with numerical performance data. 
This study found that employees’ inner work life drives performance.  Inner work life consists of employees’ perceptions, emotions and motivations. 

Employees’ inner work life determines whether they are engaged and productive in the workplace. More specifically, positive perceptions, pleasant emotions and intrinsic motivation increases creativity, productivity, commitment and collegiality.

2.  The Progress Principle:  Progress on Meaningful Work

Amabile and Kramer found that the most important determinant of whether employees have positive feelings about their work is whether they made progress that day on meaningful work – what Amabile and Kramer call “The Progress Principle.”

In the diary study, 76% of employees described making progress on their projects on their best days, when they felt most engaged.  By contrast, over 70% of employees described work-related setbacks on their worst days at work.

3.  The Power of Small Wins

A further finding of the study was that small daily wins in the workplace translate into a big positive impact on people’s inner work life.  Similarly, setbacks on projects in the workplace translate into negative impacts. 

Therefore, it is important for managers to help employees achieve regular forward progress on their work.  Managers should break big projects up into smaller segments with regular milestones, so that employees can feel forward momentum frequently.

4.  What Managers Can Do

Amabile and Kramer found that managers need to provide two types of support to employees to increase the chances of them feeling that they were making progress on meaningful work – project support and people support.

            a.  Project Support (Catalysts)

According to Amabile and Kramer, the catalysts that managers can use to support employees’ progress include:

• Clear meaningful goals
• Autonomy
• Sufficient information and resources
• Help with their work
• Learning from problems and successes
• Open flow of ideas
• Sufficient time for the work (but not so much as to remove all time pressure)

          b.  People Support (Nourishment)

In addition, managers can support their employees through

• Respect and recognition
• Encouragement
• Emotional support
• Affiliation and camaraderie

Co-workers are important elements in the workplace, but managers are the most critical link.

5. Daily Journaling

As a writer and journal-keeper myself, it intrigued me that Amabile and Kramer recommended that managers keep a daily progress review detailing what happened in the workplace that day to support and detract from progress.  They suggest that managers ask themselves each day “What one thing can I do tomorrow to foster progress in my employees?”

Employees own their own inner work life, but managers can and must support them.  Direct supervisors are the most important link between an employee and their engagement and productivity at work.

What can you do tomorrow to foster engagement among your employees?