Trust and loyalty in the workplace are inextricably linked. Essentially, trust is the belief that drives the practice of loyalty. When trust is present in an organisation, people feel closer, more united and more willing to depend on each other. In its absence fragmentation, conflict and suspicion quickly fester. Colleagues become disconnected from a shared sense of purpose and often from each other. Loyalty inevitably suffers.

So, what if the erosion of loyalty in the workplace is actually a breakdown in trust? There is some compelling evidence in support of this idea, in the shape of a 2016 global study by EY into the topic.

Surveying over 9,800 full-time workers in eight countries, EY found that fewer than half of respondents had ‘a great deal of trust’ in their current employer, boss or team/colleagues. At the other end of the scale, nearly one in six had ‘very little’ or ‘no trust at all’ in their current employer.

These were the headline findings trumpeted by the report, but for us, there was a particularly alarming statistic buried on page 12:

A third (34%) of global respondents have “very little” to “no trust” in their current employer that if they “work hard” and “meet performance goals” they will be rewarded with “increased pay or a promotion.”

For some reason, these respondents no longer believe in the link between performance and reward in their organisation. Startlingly, they have lost faith in the employment contract.

This should sound alarm bells for employers everywhere, particularly when considering the four biggest consequences of lack of trust quoted in the EY report. Low-trust employees are most likely to:

1. Look for another job
2. Work only the minimum number of hours required
3. Be less engaged/productive
4. Make less of an effort to produce quality work

If one in six of your employees has this low-productivity, low-morale mindset, your organisation is in serious trouble. Not least because productivity and morale are only two factors affected by workplace trust. Creativity and ingenuity are two more, according to Jacqueline Oliveira in her illuminating TEDxCesena talk The behaviour of trust in the workplace.

So what can organisations do to safeguard trust and stop employees going on what leadership consultant Dennis Jaffe calls ‘an internal strike’? Fortunately, his excellent Forbes article on the topic of trust lists six building blocks of trust, which individuals or organisations can assess for in their relationships:

1. Reliability and dependability – Are individuals, particularly leaders, true to their word? Do they fulfil their commitments?
2. Transparency – Do managers and leaders keep their teams in the loop or do they meet in secret and withhold important information?
3. Competency – Do employees believe that leaders, managers and colleagues are capable of doing what they are supposed to do?
4. Sincerity, authenticity and congruency – Do employees believe that leaders say what they believe and believe what they are saying?
5. Fairness – Is respect, recognition and energy evenly dispersed through your workplace, or are some areas noticed and listened to more than others?
6. Openness and vulnerability – Are leaders and managers capable of apologising, admitting mistakes or being disagreed with?

Jaffe believes organisations that are able to assess the presence or absence of each of these six qualities are best equipped to build or restore trust. With prizes such as greater productivity, creativity, ingenuity and morale at stake, it’s well worth trying.

Those in the know, share. If you think your network would find inspiration in this post, we’ve made it really easy for you to tell them using the LinkedIn Share button below.

The post This is Why Workplaces Don’t Work Without Trust appeared first on EWS.

It’s an important practical question in a discussion with such huge workforce implications. Ever the pragmatists, it’s the question we’ve found ourselves pondering recently. Here’s where those ponderings have led us.

To start, some background. The TUC’s proposal is based on its belief that the benefits of technology (specifically automation, AI and robotics) should be shared evenly among the workforce. In support, the BBC cites an estimated £200bn UK economic boost from these technologies in the next decade.

Distributing these benefits would effectively mean paying typical nine-to-fivers a full weekly wage for a day’s less work. It would be to reset the clock: four days (28 hours) a week is the new full-time.

The idea is widely supported by workers. In the study underpinning the TUC proposal, 81% of respondents favoured reducing the working week to four days or less. Perhaps more surprisingly, this enthusiasm extends to bosses. A survey by Crown Workplace Relocations found 40% of leaders saying they would consider introducing a shorter work week. 60% agreed cutting hours could boost productivity.

Improving productivity is core to the four-day-week argument. There is tentative evidence that people really can do at least the same amount in less time. CNBC’s pointing to a 5% productivity increase during the 1974 Three-Day Week may be stretching exceptional circumstances. However, many of the businesses experimenting with reduced work hours are reporting at worst no reduction in output. As one advocate, Chase Clemons of Basecamp, bluntly puts it:

“[A shorter working week] forces us to prioritize what we work on.”

Crucially, anecdotal productivity gains must be weighed against the other critical factor in the four-day week argument. The evidence for improved employee wellbeing is substantial. Longer hours are linked to stress, depression, anxiety and irritability, while early adopters of lower hours say their people are “happier” (Toyota), “sharper” (Basecamp), “more relaxed” (Radioactive PR) and “stimulated, committed and empowered” (Perpetual Guardian).

Together, these two factors make a compelling case. People can achieve at least as much in a 4-day week, and enjoy a better work-life balance in the process. Doesn’t that make our adherence to a 5-day week presenteeism of the worst kind? In the words of a comprehensive Equal Times article on the topic:

“The traditional 40-hour-a-week could only be a convention made valid by tradition [rather] than its efficiency.”

Which leads us to our original question. If a shorter work week can be effectively implemented and provides sound benefits to companies and workers alike, what’s holding it back?

Traditionally, we might expect employers to be the opposition. Impetus for lower working hours in the past has come from what Gregor Gall in The Guardian terms “the twin forces of compulsion (through legislative underpinning) and pressure on the shopfloor (through workplace union organisation)”.

But if the prize of a 4-day week is improved employee wellbeing with no drop-off in productivity, why should employers resist? Of course, there will be some companies that can’t rely on technology to fill the efficiency gap. But for those that can, maybe caution is all that’s holding them back.

What’s clear is that change doesn’t take place without commitment, as neatly illustrated in two contrasting quotes from senior figures in two companies which have tested out a shorter working week.

In New Zealand, where estate planning firm Perpetual Guardian successfully trialled a 4-day week, founder Andrew Barnes states:

“The right attitude is a requirement to make it work – everyone has to be committed and take it seriously for us to create a viable long-term model for our business.”

Meanwhile in Sweden, this from Erik Gatenholm of 3D bio-printing company Cellink:

“When we read about the six-hour work day in the news, we all chuckled at the idea. I was not convinced it was a viable option but I was willing to give it a shot to test the waters. So, we tried it out with our production staff. In the end, we realised it wasn’t for us.”

Maybe it really wasn’t viable for Cellink. Then again, perhaps those initial chuckles were all it took for the trial to fail. Our hunch is that, if the future of work is set to be more flexible, contingent and tech-assisted, this may be the time to seriously review our pre-conceived notions of the ‘normal’ working week.

Those in the know, share. If you think your network would find inspiration in this post, we’ve made it really easy for you to tell them using the LinkedIn Share button below.

The post Who’s Actually Pushing For a 4-Day Week? appeared first on EWS.

If we come across a way to help busy recruiters – and anyone else for that matter – to get more out of their working day, we’re only too happy to share it. So when we started reading up on an all-time great time management technique recently, we knew we’d found our latest blog topic.

If you often find your workdays swamped by a relentless squabble of competing tasks, this is the post for you.

Time management is a problem everywhere

First, the reassuring news. It isn’t just you. Time management issues are a massive deal across the world of work, said to cost £80bn a year in the UK alone. Employees at all levels in every job function are struggling to allocate their work time – hardly surprising given the potential for disruption and distraction in the modern workplace.

Ever get the feeling you’ve lost entire days bouncing between emails, meetings, firefighting, phone calls, interruptions and needless web browsing? You are by no means alone… but neither are you trapped. If you want to reclaim control of your time, you can start by reclaiming control of your priorities using Covey’s time management matrix.

This is a tried and trusted workload prioritisation tool based on the so-called Eisenhower Principle that:

Urgency vs. importance

The universal truth of this principle is that seemingly urgent tasks have a nasty habit of jumping the queue ahead of the truly important ones, meaning your time all too easily gets spent on the wrong things. Your challenge, and where Covey’s time management matrix helps, is in disentangling the quiet vitality of important tasks from the noisy clamour of urgent ones.

Here’s how the matrix looks:

Every item on your to-do list fits into these four quadrants.

Quadrant 1 activities require immediate attention – they’re typically deadline-driven, time-sensitive or unexpected, with negative consequences if they aren’t carried out (the workplace equivalent of a crying baby or a kitchen fire).

Quadrant 2 contains long-term strategizing and development matters that easily get deprioritised but end up defining a successful organisation or career (e.g. relationship building, strategic planning, preparation, personal development).

Quadrant 3 items often call loudest for attention but rarely merit it – emails, phone calls, interruptions, needless meetings etc.

Quadrant 4 is for tasks that are neither important nor urgent – the wasted time, trivia and procrastination that litters a misspent workday. Hopefully you’re not spending much time here.

According to Covey’s model, the secret to effective time management is to spend as much time as possible in quadrant 2, since these are the tasks that map out future success and lead us to our goals. These planning, preparing and preventative activities don’t produce instant results, meaning they can feel difficult to account for and prioritise. And yet they are tasks that make good things happen in the long term. (The Asian Efficiency blog goes so far as to call quadrant 2 ‘The Quadrant of Extraordinary Productivity’.)

Prioritising isn’t easy

The problem with the average workday – maybe your workdays – is that too much time gets taken up in quadrants 1 and 3. The urgency of these tasks means they come with a flashing red light and blaring siren, demanding your time whether they’re worthy of it or not. (Even worse, they have a tendency to be in pursuit of someone else’s goal, not yours.)

By contrast, quadrant 2 items – the things you do that make best use of your time and ultimately add value to your organisation – require reflection, contemplation and foresight. You can’t resolve them in an afternoon and there are no immediate consequences if you don’t. Ironically, the tasks we as individuals need to prioritise are not the ones our Temple of Busy work culture does.

There’s an even bigger irony at work here. When you can find the time to plan ahead, you can avoid many future surprises, crises and time pressures before they arise. In other words, the more time you spend in quadrant 2, the fewer quadrant 1 activities will subsequently arise. So if you can develop the discipline and learn to say no to urgent-but-not-important quadrant 3 activities, and instead prioritise quadrant 2, those previously unswervable quadrant 1 activities will start to take care of themselves.

How to apply Covey’s matrix

Moving on to the most important matter of this post, how do you put the matrix into action in your own work? There are two main ways you can try. First, take your current to-do list and sort all of your activities into quadrants to clearly identify your priorities and get to work on them.

The second approach is to review your output in a weekly assessment. Make six blank copies of the matrix, and use five to list your tasks and activities for each workday, along with the time you spent on them. At the end of the week, you’ll summarise your week’s work by quadrant on the sixth sheet – giving you a clear picture of how well you’re using your time in pursuit of what really matters in your work.

Those in the know, share. If you think your network would find inspiration in this post, we’ve made it really easy for you to tell them using the LinkedIn Share button below.

The post If You Struggle to Manage Your Time at Work, it’s Because You’re Not Doing This appeared first on EWS.

There’s one effortlessly ingenious way to make your calls and meetings more focused and productive. It comes to us courtesy of Ella Banks on theartofcharm.com, via Business Insider UK. And it confirms our long-standing belief that a well-written preliminary email is worth its weight in gold.

The problem is pervasive: When you meet or call someone for the first time, the occasion is invariably clogged by preamble – introductions, agenda setting, establishing credibility etc.

The solution? Get all of that preamble out of the way beforehand by sending a brief but beautifully crafted pre-meeting email.

Why send a pre-meeting email?

There are 5 key benefits, corresponding to the 5 core paragraphs your email should contain:

1. Confirm the meeting is going ahead as arranged
2. Set out your intentions and relevant credentials in the neat, professional manner that can be awkward in person
3. Convey your enthusiasm to the person you most want to share it
4. Help your correspondent see why this meeting is so important and timely
5. Ultimately, free up time to focus on the matter at hand when you do get together

What should it say?

Below is the Art of Charm template, tweaked slightly for the more executive tone we aim for at EWS:

Of course, you don’t have to stick rigidly to this template if, say, you find the wording too prescriptive. The framework is the important thing. As long as you communicate the 5 key benefits listed above, you’ll set a positive and focused tone every time.

Those in the know, share. If you think your network would find inspiration in this post, we’ve made it really easy for you to tell them using the LinkedIn Share button below.

The post The One Email You Need In Your Work Life appeared first on EWS.