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Good afternoon. My name is Shelly Thomas. I work in the Office of Employee
Services and in the new division of the Strategic Workforce Planning Group. Thank you for joining
us today for the Employee Services Policy Series Webcast entitled "Results-Oriented
Performance Culture."
This is the fourth of five webcasts that are intended to showcase key aspects of the revitalized
HCAAF, now known as the Human Capital Framework. Each of these webcasts have been designed
to introduce you to a system that is part of this new framework. Let's turn a couple
of slides here, and we'll show you that this is the new Human Capital Framework.
Over the last few weeks we've introduced the entire framework. We've emphasized strategic
alignment and planning and talent management. Today we're going to introduce the new results-oriented
performance culture system. On March 22nd we'll finish the policy series with a webinar
on the evaluation system.
This slide we've shown in a couple of our other webinars. This shows all of our systems
and by color-coding where the systems have some intersections. We've been referring to
some of these intersections over the last few weeks, and we'll continue to define and
explain them in the future presentations.
You'll see that performance culture has seven focus areas. Those focus areas are continuous
learning, performance management, diversity and inclusion, engaged employees, collaboration,
labor management partnership, and work-life and wellness programs.
Performance culture is defined as a system that develops and inspires a diverse innovative
and high performing workforce by creating implementing and maintaining effective performance
management strategies, practices and activities that support mission, a great big definition.
However, traditionally, the results oriented performance culture system has been defined
and explained entirely by reference to the performance management system. However, building
a performance culture goes far beyond the agency's performance management system.
The performance management system provides the framework for setting objectives, documenting
performance standards and assessing employee results. However, a performance culture refers
to the agencies holistic approach to performance. Ongoing, timely feedback, emphasis on continuous
learning, strong employee engagement, inclusion and appreciation of a diverse workforce and
accountability for results.
Timely feedback and continuous learning provide a mechanism for ongoing improvement in an
agency. A diverse workforce represents a public that the federal government serves and enhances
innovation. And work life and wellness programs show value for the whole person and give the
employee the flexibility to adapt their work environment to better fit their personal needs.
Today's presentation goes well beyond providing an explanation about performance management.
Today's presentation provides you with insight about what are the key actions that stakeholders,
managers, employees must take to ensure that an agency's mission is accomplished through
the use of its human capital.
Bruce Stewart from the Office of Diversity and Inclusion has a fascinating presentation
that looks at inclusion and collaboration from a change management perspective. Ingrid
Burford, Doctors Kimberly Wells and Alexis Allen-Shorter from the Office of Employee
Services will speak to you about achieving high-performing agencies with a flexible,
balanced work force. And in conclusion, all of our speakers will chat with you as a panel
to answer any questions that you may have.
So without further ado, let me turn the mic over to Bruce Stewart.
Bruce Stewart: Thank you very much, Shelly. Glad to be here and I'm not going to take
much time since they said I only have 10 minutes, which I can normally sing a song in less time
than that so here we go.
What I want to talk to you about today is what we call in the Office of Diversity and
Inclusion "a new IQ." And it talks about creating a performance based culture in kind of a new
way and we'll get to that.
What I have up here is I think most of you recognize this as the Titanic and actually
it's doing what the Titanic did, and that's sinking. One of the things that social scientists
did a few years back is that they actually found the actual iceberg that sank the Titanic.
As such, what they found out was that there was a 200 x 200 foot flat space on the iceberg,
that if the captain and the crew would have just, instead of putting the life rafts and
the ropes into the water, if they would have put the ladders instead on the iceberg they
could have saved most of the passengers on the Titanic. Instead, several hundred people
died as a result of the crash of the Titanic and most of them died of hypothermia.
One of the things that social scientists say about this is that they looked at the iceberg
in terms of being an obstacle and not something that could save the lives of the passengers.
And so that's what we also want you to do in terms of diversity and inclusion today.
As human capital experts, it's important for you to change how you view diversity and inclusion
and instead of looking at it as something that's kind of a burden to do, we need to
look at it as something that makes us better. And I hope to be able to convince you of that
in the next seven minutes.
So what makes an organization high-performing? So could it be talent? Strategy? Or metrics?
Well, the thing about it is all these make sense. But just like that screen is showing
you, most of the things that happen and make an organization productive comes from within
inside the head of the employees and the particular participants of a particular organization.
So what you'll see here is based on the research that we conducted and also research by a couple
of Harvard professors. What they found out was that perceptions, emotions, and motivations
have a significant impact on how productive and results-oriented a particular culture
will be. That's what you see on the screen before you, is the idea of perceptions.
In other words, making sense of the daily events that occur in a particular organization
impacts employees' emotions, and those emotions have an impact on motivation. Those taken
in sum determine how productive a workforce is going to be. So that's where the new IQ
comes in.
The new IQ is basically an idea and a concept that we came up with where we decided to say
that inclusive intelligence or inclusion quotient is the most important thing with regard to
a successful agency in becoming a results-oriented performance culture. So the old mindset with
regard to hiring and putting people into jobs, or whatever the case may be, is that you would
look for individual intelligence.
Instead, what the new IQ says is that it's the group intelligence that's the most important,
and that will give you more *** for your buck. So right there you'll see a definition
of inclusion. What we call inclusive intelligence. Basically the notion that if we're able to
make people smarter about how to be more inclusive, it will increase the productivity of a particular
agency.
So what you see here is a slide representing some research that was conducted by Deloitte
Consulting, and what they found out was diversity plus inclusion equals better outcomes and
significantly better outcomes. The problem or the challenge that we have facing us is
that we need to rebalance the effort. We provided a lot of energy into making our workforce
diverse, but we haven't thought much about how to create an inclusive atmosphere.
So what you'll see on this slide is that, in the research by Deloitte, what they found
is that when organizations or the people within those organizations feel that leadership supports
diversity as well as there's an inclusive environment there's an 80 percent lift or
increase in the employees' motivation with regard to productivity.
So this next slide is showing you some of the associated gains in the areas that an
inclusive work environment can provide. You'll see collaboration goes up, retention, recruitment.
All these by the research have shown to be important factors with regard to the new IQ.
Next slide?
So what we want to talk here is to show you what we call the new IQ logic, and that is
basically how we came up with this. Most of you are familiar with the Employee Viewpoint
Survey. It contains 87 questions. In working with the BA research lab our office did a
factor analysis and identified 20 questions that were related to an inclusive environment.
We did group those 20 questions into what we call Five Habits of Inclusiveness. Hence,
that's what we have when we call the new IQ. Next slide. So there you'll see the Five Habits
displayed. The first and the habit that's most paramount on the bottom of the pyramid.
Now those of you that have taken introductory psychology classes understand all about Maslow's
hierarchy of needs, and that's how we built this pyramid.
On the bottom you see fairness. What we found is that there's a strong correlation to an
inclusive, productive environment when people receive fairness. The second is open. Are
folks open-minded? Are they open to new ideas? The third is cooperation or cooperative. Are
people willing to work with each other through collaboration and communication?
The fourth is supportive, which is, does a person perceive there being supported in their
career development and other aspects of things that they have to do? Finally, at the top
of the pyramid, is empowerment, the idea that people have the ability to control their daily
lives, and have some say into how they execute and implement their task and responsibilities.
Also, we found that this is a key point where well-being and work-life have a significant
impact.
One of the things that we found, as I said before, is that people are really motivated
by the daily invents that occur in their day-to-day lives, especially with regard to work. One
of the things that we found is that folks have a good idea of the kind of things they
need to do to create an inclusive environment.
Unfortunately, they don't have a chance to execute or implement all the time, because
of all the multiple priorities and all the things that they have to get done. As part
of our training and a part of our approach, we conducted and referred to a lot of research
about positive habit formation. We believe that this is one of the things that can sustain
our performance culture.
Those of you that don't know this, we have also put together a diversity inclusion dashboard,
of which the new IQ is shown there under what we call the "Inclusion Index." I know you
can't really make that out. I just wanted to give you a picture of it.
There's my contact information. We have another individual that worked with me on this new
IQ concept. His name is Ray Par. His information is there also. We look forward to hearing
back from you. We think this is an exciting new development that can push federal workforce
forward.
Finally, I want to end up turning it over to well-being. To wrap this up, what we did
find, with regard to the importance of well-being, is that well-being signals to employees in
an organization that they take D and I, or Diversity and Inclusion, seriously. That's
why we think and we are very happy to be in partnership with the well-being office to
kind of move this forward. I'm going to introduce and turn it over to Ingrid, and she's going
to talk more about this.
Ingrid: Good afternoon! Thank you Bruce! Certainly, I echo your sentiments that this is definitely
very, very exciting. We definitely look forward to our partnership. We are very excited to
talk about work-life as a part of this human capital of framework. Before we get into that,
let's talk for a moment about work-life and what it is.
It's really important to understand its context to be able to understand its relationship
to the human capital of framework. Our government-wide work-life office, we offer a variety of programs
and policies that really are designed to allow all employees to enjoy a more flexible, responsive
work environment, that's supportive to all employees, commitment to the community, self,
home, and loved ones, so that they can be more focused and more productive at work.
One of the things that's important to really keep in mind here is that, as this diagram
shows, work is really the center of all these other dynamics of an employee's life. As you
know, the work-life program has been added to the HCF. How do work-life policies and
programs relate to the HCF? As you know, HCF has been a strategic planning and evaluation
tool, which is used by agencies to ensure that HR practices supports agency mission
and accomplishment.
Some parts of this framework needed to be updated. As of part of that recent revitalization
effort, work-life has been added to the Results and Oriented Performance Culture System as
a focus area for agency human resources practices. All agencies work towards human resources
excellence against the HCF standards, and also need to recognize work-life programs
and policies as a very integral part of this results oriented performance culture.
One thing that's really important to remember is that federal work-life programs are effective
when accomplished through well-planned and well-implemented programs, services, practices,
and policies that address specific needs. A key here is that work-life programs and
policies must be implemented to reflect the agencies strategy and mission and culture.
To demonstrate, let's take OPM's mission for instance. Part of OPM's mission is to respect
the work force. Therefore, as a strategic goal for OPM, it'll certainly include the
most important components that's necessary to ensure employee success. Components, such
as providing the training, benefits, and work-life balance that's needed for federal employees
to be able to succeed, prosper and advance in their federal careers.
We do offer a suite of flexible benefits. Promoting of healthy work-life balance across
the federal government also contributes to building an engaged workforce, employee well-being,
and retention. Programs and initiatives, such as alternate work schedules and telework and
employee assistance programs, are designed to help employees identify and resolve personal
and work-related issues that can really affect their productivity.
Investments in such training benefits and work-life balance initiatives benefit current
employees and help us continue to attract the best and the brightest workforce for our
federal service. We do know that agencies offer programs and policies that is specific
to their mission, however, there are some primary disciplines of work-life that are
shown here.
These particular disciplines include dependent care, work place flexibilities such as telework,
work site wellness, and employee assistance programs. [silence] There a number of levels
to look at. The strategic level, the operational level, and of course, from an individual employee
perspective.
On the strategic level we want to look at the change management tool that can be utilized
in creating an organizational culture that not only has the flexibility to support but
enable and support performance at all levels.
At the operational level we want to look at specific programs and policies that we just
discussed and a management tool to help employees reach their peak performance. Finally, we
know that employees have varying and diverse areas of responsibility in their lives such
as child care, elder care, and so on.
So certainly, looking at individual employee tools to help employees balance these varying
and diverse areas of responsibilities. The reason we want to do this is so that they
can actually focus on the work that they're doing.
One of the larger but core functions of our government work-life office is to be able
to help agencies build a business case for their work-life programs. Now in doing so,
we engage in research to clearly show the value and great benefits that's possible through
work-life programs.
So if you take a look at our model which is shown here, this model guides our work-life
research, and it actually also builds on prior studies that have demonstrated a linkage between
work-life program implementation and outcomes that have advantageous resources not only
to individual employees but also to the employing organization as well.
Here we highlight several things. One of the things we highlight are several outcomes that
can relate to individual well-being in some way, things such as reduced stress and improved
health. We also highlight workplace outcomes that relate to agency effectiveness. These
include things such as employee attraction and retention.
Now it's important to take note of the fact that work-life programs result in intended
individual and workplace outcomes and when they're used and implemented in workplaces
that demonstrate that there's a manager and supervisory support and a workplace culture
that upholds values that are supportive to work-life program use.
Our model also shows that characteristics of a person and situation can and in some
cases really do influence to the extent to which an individual the agency's outcomes
result is intended. Here is where we get what we refer to as unintended consequence which,
when planning agency programs, should also be taken into consideration.
Take our telework program, for instance. While telework should theoretically result in reduced
stress, some employees may experience unintended consequences such as work-at-home isolation
and thus possibly increasing their stress rather than reducing it.
Now effective work-life programs does play a very important role in achieving and supporting
performance culture. A question that we should ask ourselves is how are effective work-life
programs achieved? How do we go about this? Well, implementing successful work-life programs
is really about organizational change, and we employ that model here.
So take a look at our model. We highlight six phases for successful change management.
First, creating a vision for change. Being able to effectively articulate why does change
need to happen? Then clearly defining what we're trying to actually achieve. How will
it improve conditions or address needs?
Second, engaging support. We need to look at engaging support from varying perspectives.
First, top leadership support is certainly very critical and a very important first step
in successful change. Equally important is the support of key decision-makers, resource-holders,
and those who would be impacted by the change and really paying close attention to those
groups that are most impacted.
Next, continue to work towards successful change management. There is a critical need
to establish and communicate the need for change in goals. So really what you're doing
is defining in specific and measurable terms for the desired organizational outcomes. So
in talking about making the business case, we do that by specifically defining our goals.
Not only that but also showing results as well.
Fourth, really plan for change is certainly the next important component. Change can't
just happen without having a defined plan with roles assigned responsibilities that
are really laid out specific individuals for various tasks and outcomes. Here, one of the
things that's going to be key is accountability.
Five, growing capability. Now you do this by building organizational systems in people
competencies that are necessary for effecting the change. Finally, entrenching change. What
this means is institutionalizing it and making it a normal part of your routine that's embedded
in the way we do things.
In order to achieve effective work-life programs it's very important to acknowledge and address
some of the commonly occurring challenges and opportunities. While we'll discuss some
of these in a little bit more detail during our panel discussion, one thing that's relevant
to note here is that while there are still challenges to implementing work-life programs,
really taking advantage of valuable opportunities, such as growing a leadership acceptance, is
very, very important.
In summary, our work shows that effective work-life programs tend to share some common
characteristics that are listed here and in looking ahead incorporating continuous improvement
through effective evaluation efforts. That concludes my presentation. I would like to
direct you to some resources that we have available.
Our first resource is our OPM website, which has a segment for work-life on our website.
Also, telework.gov, which is jointly sponsored by OPM and General Services Administration.
If you have future questions, myself or our panelists Dr. Kim Wells and Dr. Alexis [inaudible
00:26:20] , from the work-life group are able to assist you with any questions that you
may have.
Just to further reiterate our resources and for additional information about the HCF we have a designated MAX site that will also
be used. During HCF events we host an online Q&A that's dedicated to this webcast and future
webcasts as well. After our session, we post the HCF and all relevant documents to the
MAX website, which is posted here.
As a follow-up to this session, just so you know, we have another planned on March 22nd,
2013, which is a follow-up which will talk a little bit more about the evaluation that
I alluded to.
Now that you've heard from Bruce, who highlighted the diversity and inclusion perspective, and
myself with the interceptive work-life component, I'm going to now ask you all to join me as
I engage in an interactive panel discussion that further ties the relationship among these
important components. Again, joining myself and Bruce would be Dr. Kimberly Wells and
Alexis [inaudible 00:27:50] , both from our work-life performance culture office.
[pause]
Dr. Alexis Adams: Good afternoon.
[laughter]
Ingrid: So my first question to our team. How does work-life and diversity and inclusion
relate to employee engagement and performance? I'll first ask Bruce Stewart from our diverse
inclusion office to interject.
Bruce: How did I know she was going to pick me? I just got done doing all the talking,
too. So I won't go into too much detail, but certainly what we found out in the research
is that diversity and inclusion actually promotes the outcome of our employee engagement.
The other thing that we found that was particularly interesting is that work-life programs, as
I said when I was up at the podium, signal to employees the significance that leadership
regards diversity and inclusion initiatives.
Ingrid: Dr. Adams, what about the work-life component?
Dr. Adams: Yeah, just to underscore a number of things that you presented, Ingrid, when
you were presenting your slides. We're very excited about the connection between work-life
programs and that all-important work-place outcome that we showed on our work-life model
of employee engagement. There really is a critical and important relationship between
the two.
Work-life programs are so critical in that they effectively help employees to shoulder
their home life and their work life responsibilities. When employees feel secure in doing so, that
is when they can show up to work and really effectively and efficiently take care of the
job responsibilities that are on their plates.
So when employees come to work and they feel healthy physically, when they feel that their
emotional stress is at a minimum, when they feel certain that their family lives and their
home lives are being managed effectively and being take care of, they can truly focus on
the work tasks that they are responsible for without having divided attention that is consumed
by stress or worry about what might be going on outside of work.
Work-life programs really help employees to achieve this through things such as wellness
programs, which contribute to employees' physical well-being and diminishing that stress level,
EAP resources, which may provide the emotional support that employees are sometimes in need
of, may supply that financial counseling to take some of the stress that may be rooted
back to financial concerns.
And just having an employer or an employing organization that communicates that they value
the employees' well-being. When employees know that their place of employment, their
employer, values them as a person and values not only their physical well-being, their
emotional well-being, they are going to be more motivated when they come into work.
They're going to be more likely to value their place of work, to feel respected. That translates
into things such as remaining loyal to the place of employment, being satisfied when
they show up to work every day, being more likely to recommend their place of work to
others. We see this through employee viewpoint survey results.
So it really is a win-win. It's a win for the employee, but it's also from the strategic
perspective a definite win for the organization at the end of the day.
Ingrid: Thank you. Dr. Wells, any thoughts?
Dr. Kimberly Wells: Just to add a little bit, and let's make sure you can hear me appropriately.
I'm not sure this microphone is working. Is that better? Yes, that's better. Sorry, technical
issues as usual, right? [laughs]
At any rate, just to add and just to draw your attention to some of the resources that
Ingrid pointed out earlier. We do also publish a Telework Report to Congress every year.
If you go to telework.gov, you can reference that, get a little more familiar with telework.
We do show the results of our research with the employee viewpoint survey, that shows
for example a significant and strong relationship between telework and job satisfaction. And
of course, the reason we care about job satisfaction is it relates to retention, which is of course
one of those big performance indicators for an agency.
Also, the intention to remain within an organization also shows a very strong relationship with
telework. I would just hope that you would go and have a look at those things. Also,
in some independent research, we've shown a strong relationship between telework and
employee engagement.
And just to add on to what Bruce said a couple of minutes ago. To the extent that you actually
have and offer work-life programs in your agencies, not only the people who actually
use the programs are going to feel more engaged, more willing to put in just a little more
effort for that agencies sake. Also those people who don't necessarily participate,
who may in the future; but also it just kind of gives a feel-good.
Basically, employees overall perceive their agency as being more supportive. And if you
remember back to the model that Ingrid showed, a really important component in making sure
that your employees are using and engaging in work-life programs and recognizing those
outcomes is to make sure that you have that support within the agency. So that's really
critical.
Ingrid: And while I have your attention, Dr. Wells, let me hear your thoughts. How do you
view work-life and also diversity inclusion? Bruce, I'll ask you to chime in as well. How
do you view that as benefitting the employee, operational, and strategic levels?
Dr. Wells: Ah, going to jump right into that, OK. [laughs]
You really have to remember that the biggest reason that we have work-life programs is,
again to allude to one of Bruce's slides, we're looking at changing conditions. At one
time, we could count on an employee having a support system at home. You had one employee
who went to work and then a spouse maybe who was at home to handle all of those extra little
life duties. Well guess what? We don't have that any more.
The latest census shows that only about seven percent of employees actually do live in a
traditional household. So you have to think about who's actually doing that. And of course
what you're seeing with employees is incredible levels of life, family and work-life...I'm
sorry, not family, work-life conflict. Over the years, it's been really shown to increase.
And work-life programs intervene in a way to reduce the stress, reduce that conflict
for the employee.
Also think about too, that the workplace has changed. Now we're asking employees to create
knowledge. We're all knowledge-workers now, right? But guess what? We're working in cube
land. Cube land's a little hard to concentrate in, because there's a lot going on in cube
land that can be disruptive. So somebody really needs a place where they can go, where they
can focus and do that head-down work they need to do to perform.
And so, of course you have the employee benefit of decreased stress. But you can also see
how something like...well, let me just back up for a second. Telework of course provides
lots of benefits to the employee by giving them an additional time. Because one of the
things that creates work-family conflict is this constant butting up against what are
your responsibilities.
You have a work report that's due, but you also want to go to your child's recital. Or
your mother needs to go to the hospital. Or you need to go work out, something like that.
So you're constantly in a state of conflict unless you have access to these work-family
kinds of programs, work-life programs that really do function to reduce that stress.
At the operational level, too. It's not just the employee that benefits. Lots of times
we think it's only the employee, but actually the manager stands to realize extensive benefits
here. Think about for wellness, for example. When an employee is well, healthy, then that
employee is actually going to be able to come to work on a reliable basis. You're going
to have fewer surprise absences.
Probably more importantly, and this has been mentioned a few times, the employee is able
to bring their full attention. They're fully present at work, so guess what? They perform
better. Also, think about other kinds of programs we offer, Child-care. Many of you with small
children will recognize that very often we might have a problem with child-care falling
through, especially if we don't have really high-quality child-care.
But through a child-care subsidy, the parent is able to access higher-quality child care
with fewer fall-throughs with the child care. And guess what? Then at the operational level,
the manager can depend more often on that employee being able to come to work.
And thinking again about telework too, I did a study a number of years ago with the University
of Minnesota and we looked at, they were facing some of the same crises that we have going
on right now in the federal government where we need to reduce costs.
Their reaction to that was to move their primary headquarters to a less expensive area, less
expensive rent area. But that also had the effect of moving them further away from their
customers and clients. The people I was working with were primarily social workers.
So what they did to create a solution was to implement a telework program where employees
were able to telework more or less on a full-time basis. Their homes were closer to where the
clients were. And so client satisfaction scores on surveys went way up, and also they were
retaining some of their better social workers.
You can also see that we've got definite benefits at the strategic level, too. Who doesn't want
to be the most valued place or the best place to work? And of course, we can see from results
from the employee viewpoint survey that that certainly is a big contributing factor, to
have work-life programs.
I don't think a week goes by that we don't get some kind of a question about what agency
really offers the best work-life programs or telework, because that's where I want to
go work. These things are a big attraction for some of the highest talent out there.
You think about some of the areas where...I know I'm going on for a while, but one more.
You see for example, we need to be able to hire a lot more cyber security employees.
That's a big issue for the federal government right now.
But it's a lot harder to compete on the salary some times. So one of the things that we do
have to offer is our flexibilities; things like telework, things like our work-life programs
all over our work life. Does that answer your question?
Ingrid: Good, thank you. I'll ask Bruce for his thoughts, and I'll repeat the question.
Bruce: Yeah, repeat that question for me.
Ingrid: [laughs] How do you see diversity inclusion benefiting the employee, operational
and strategic levels?
Bruce: Well, we have looked at this quite extensively. Just a couple of things. I don't
know if you all watch "60 Minutes", but I watch it every Sunday. A few months back,
they had the CEO of IDEO, which is a design company that helped Apple design the iPad,
helped Microsoft design Windows, and all that kind of stuff. They asked the CEO what was
the secret to his company's success.
The first thing he said was diversity. When asked to explain that, he said he gets a problem
from one of the clients. What he does is, he has a chemist, a plumber, you know engineer,
all sit down around and brainstorm a solution to this problem. Because, he said, the difference
in perspectives and viewpoints is the type of thing that was critical to their success.
And I think it's that kind of attitude and that kind of logic that we need to incorporate,
and that we're trying to incorporate into the federal government.
That being said, a couple of other things with regards to a strategic link. A professor
from Michigan, Dr. Scott Page, has wrote a book called "The Difference", published it
about three or four years ago. In that book he makes the mathematical, the scientific
case that a diverse group of people will always outperform a group of smart people in solving
complex problems.
And I think there's one thing that most of us can agree upon here, is that the easy things
that we used to do have either been eliminated, automated, or Internet-ed. And the only things
that we have left are complex, hard problems to solve, that have a tendency to lend themselves
to unintended consequences and that type of thing. And so in the effort to solve those
types of problems you need as many diverse viewpoints as you can.
Now to make that work, that's where inclusion or what we call "The New IQ" comes into play.
And that is the ability to increase people's inclusive intelligence so they know the habits
to execute to be able to get people to work better together. And again, that's why we
say in the 20th century, it was important for individuals to be smart. In the 21st century,
it's important for groups to be smart.
And to wrap this up, on a strategic level, and even in some of the other areas with regard
to this Human Capital Framework, what we see is that companies that have a diverse board.
In other words companies that have a good mix of women, young people, and other demographic
groups on boards or in positions of leadership, have a tendency to outperform other companies
that don't.
Because of that diversity, they're able to see and more accurately predict the future.
Because they have more signals out into different places that most homogenous groups wouldn't
have a tendency to have. So there's several things I think going on but I'll stop there.
Ingrid: Great points. Dr. Adams, do you have any thoughts?
[laughter]
Bruce: Of course, she looked at me like that, like I was just going on and on.
Ingrid: My next question to our panelists. What are the main obstacles to advancing work-life
programs and diversity inclusion, and how do we overcome them? Dr. Adams?
Dr. Adams: When we're talking about work-life programs, there are a number of challenges
or potential obstacles that we generally get feedback on from the agencies that we support.
In our particular office, Work-Life and Performance Culture here at OPM, we support federal agencies
government-wide. A lot of times it's when agencies are having difficulties with their
work-life programs that we hear from them.
The types of things that we hear about are things such as sustaining a successful work-life
program or work-life effort in the face of stressed economic times. A challenge of making
sure that middle management is completely on-board because, as I'll expand on in just
a second, our managers really are key and critical to this process.
Influencing the culture. It's one thing to think about introducing certain work-life
initiatives, but if the culture is not conducive to embracing those initiatives, that's something
that really has to be planned for and considered.
Effective marketing. You can have really strong and effective work-life programs, but if nobody
knows about them it doesn't serve the purpose. And that really is the case unfortunately
in a large number of organizations.
And also, we work with work-life coordinators who are responsible for getting these work-life
programs off the ground in their agencies and often these individuals wear multiple
hats. It's sometimes difficult for them to make effective business cases for these programs
because they don't always have the access to upper-level leadership, or the ongoing
communication that they need with key stakeholders in their organizations.
So these are some of the challenges that we hear a lot about, and I'll just expand on
a couple of them in the essence of times. One of them is, what do we do in the face
of stressed economic times? Traditionally, I think people think "OK, you want us to get
work-life programs off the ground, that's going to mean money." And often times it does.
When you think about child-care subsidy programs, for example, those programs do come at cost.
And a lot of organizations right now are faced with the very difficult decision of do we
cancel our child-care subsidy programs? Do we increase the capacity of our child-care
subsidy programs when our budgets are really being stressed?
Some other efforts that come in cost include hiring contractors to get wellness programs
off the ground; or to expand EAP, Employee Assistance Program, resources or supports
off the ground.
What might have to happen in the face of this challenge is that agencies have to say "We're
still committed." We're still committed to the importance of work-life programs and the
well-being of our employees. But now we just have to be a little creative, and consider
low-cost and possibly even no-cost solutions that can be introduced and can still be very
effective.
For example, here at OPM, we're very, very blessed with a director who's very committed
to the importance of work-life. He truly has set the tone, Director Berry, and has definitely
changed the culture here at OPM since he has been in a leadership position. But we do a
lot of things that come at cost, but we also do a lot of things that are no-cost or low-cost.
For example, a simple thing that we try to do here is encourage people to take the stairs
instead of taking the elevator up to the fifth, sixth, or seventh floor. And when you do hit
the stairwell, you'll notice a number of posters in the stairwell that are just homemade-looking
posters. They're not flashy, they're not glossy, but they catch your attention.
And they remind you of things such as eating health at lunchtime, or getting out and taking
that15-minute walk on your break. Or taking a moment to check on a coworker who might
have a special needs child, for example, who may need your support. That's a low-cost example
of something that you can do to remind people that it's important to take care of all aspects
of their life.
Another challenge that we hear a little bit about is the middle management. And I would
really not like to focus on this so much as a challenge, unless we look at it as a challenge
in a positive way, I'm challenging you to go even further.
Because middle management, managers really do play such a critical role. As I said here
at OPM, Director Berry has set the tone. So upper-level leadership can set that positive
tone for work-life initiatives, but it's the managers that really play the part of implementing
them and making sure they get off the ground.
So it really, really hinges on management believing in the importance of these initiatives,
role-modeling it themselves by becoming active themselves in telework and wellness. And also
educating themselves so that when they see that an employee, a staff member is struggling
in a certain area, they know enough about the program themselves that they can reach
out to the employee, explain how they might be able to take advantage of some of these
benefits. And be their guide, lead them toward the resources that they need.
It is an extra responsibility that we're talking about for managers. But, if managers step
up to the plate and take that extra responsibility seriously, it will come back to them a hundredfold
in that their staff members will be more focused, be more effective, and be more efficient at
work. So it really is a win-win situation.
And the last challenge that I'll expand on, and then I'll hand it over, is marketing.
We talked about the fact that a number of organizations have work-life initiatives in
place, but employees don't always know what they are, how they can take advantage of them,
where they are.
We hear a lot about that within Employee Assistance Programs. Folks often think that EAP is just
counseling. They don't realize that there's a whole host of supports that are available
through their EAP such as financial counseling, legal assistance and other supports they can
take advantage of.
So it really behooves organizations, agencies, to put some investment into thinking about
how their marketing efforts can be most effective. What resonates within their culture? What's
going to make sense to their employees? And consistently communicating that positive message
about why this is so important.
And again, here managers play an important role just by simply communicating and consistently
communicating the importance of these initiatives. So that's just a few to give an example.
Ingrid: Thanks. Bruce, I'll give you a brief moment to give some thoughts.
Bruce: She cut into my time. Just to go over just a couple of challenges that we face with
regard to D and I. The primary one is that we're human. As humans, we have a tendency
to surround ourselves with people like ourselves, what we call the "like me" biases.
It's primarily unconscious and based on that, we create cliques and clans even if we have
the best of intentions. We look throughout our cities, most cities are segregated along
demographic groups. It's that kind of thing that's brought inside the organization. But
not only limited to race, but also with regard to function, proximity and other things like
that. What we're trying to do is get people to become more aware of it.
The second type of challenge that we have with regard to biases is what we call confirmation
bias. And that's the notion that we have a tendency to be able to come to a conclusion
about a certain event, we call this a spotlight effect. We can be around a situation or a
person, and then we find the facts that justify that initial belief system. And so we see
this quite a bit.
A couple other things that we found that are a challenge for us with regards to people
just being human. And I'm just going to be totally honest, and I know you guys will probably
take the mic, so this will probably wrap it up for me.
There's several myths that kind of limit our possibilities for innovation. And innovation
is our biggest thing when we talk about how Diversity Inclusion impacts strategy and operational
things within an organization. And that is, for instance, we have this myth about race.
And if you don't know better, you think that race is biological. But in essence, it's more
of a sociological construction.
If I were to ask people how many oceans there are, some people would say five, some would
say seven. But there's really one. Water around the earth is all continuous. We just, as human
beings, decided to divvy it up and call it oceans. We did the same kind of thing with
race.
So sometimes no matter how much training or how much stuff we do, if people hold those
false constructions it makes our situation challenging. Then finally to wrap it up, as
Alexis talked about, managers and supervisors are very important in what we're trying to
do. MIT, I can't remember the professor's name, but he did some interesting work.
Basically what he came to, and I think most people would agree to this, is that most of
us are creatures of habit. As creatures of habit we have a tendency to go to work the
same way. We go to lunch with the same people. We leave at the same time. So when we look
at this from a graphical standpoint, we just don't bump into people who are different from
us very much.
So one of the things that Steven Jobs did as the CEO of Apple is that he found the same
kind of dynamic going on within Apple. That people would click themselves and create these
clans and tribes in different corners of the work placed.
What he decided to do was rule common areas towards the center of this warehouse where
Apple initially started. Well, that help a little, but people weren't interacting that
he wanted them to do. So he went a final step. As you all well could understand this final
step was severe. He moved the restrooms to the middle of the building.
Low and behold everybody started interacting, and accounts talked to the chemist, and chemist
talked to engineers and before you know it they created the iPod, the iPad, the Nano
and things like that. The challenges for us is that people are human and we all have these
biases and what we're trying to do is make people aware of it.
Ingrid: Excellent! One thing I do want to hear your thoughts on and briefly. Dr. Wells,
let me hear in about a minute or so. How do you see or what do you see as the primary
role of Work Life and you can contribute a little bit to this also Bruce, Work Life and
Diversity Inclusion in contributing to a Performance Culture.
Dr. Wells: So you're trying to limit me Ingrid? [laughs] At any rate, Yes! Really, I hope
at this point that as many times we've mentioned it, you really have gotten a key point for
us in Work Life, which is to the extent that the Organizational Culture incorporates norms
and values that express support of the employee as a whole person.
This is generally emphasis through and symbolize our Work Life programs. Employees in turn
are more engaged and also able to bring the full force of their talents, which is why
you hired them to the job when they're actually at work. This is really the critical ingredient,
we feel, in really supporting and developing a strong performance culture.
Just to make sure that the work-life actually contributes fully to the performance culture,
you do need to emphasize as the HCF model does all of those different levels. You need
to bring to the table, as Alexis talked about, the strategic...First of all, the strategic
level is where the vision is formed, right? If you need to set the tone, as she described
our director Barry, we have a monthly town hall meeting.
Not a town hall meeting goes by that he does not take the opportunity to in some way or
fashion promote work-life, whether it's our wellness programs, our telework programs,
or any one of the many that we offer. Now the operational level, of course, as Alexis
also emphasized is really where the rubber hits the road, right? To the extent that employees
are able to involve themselves in work-life programs really depends on the manager and
the manager support.
Also as she mentioned that I really want to emphasize, it's so critical for the manager
to model these behaviors. If you're not healthy and taking advantage of some of the health-creating
opportunities in your workplace, how do you think your employees are going to do that?
Then you've got a bunch of sick, unhealthy, workaholic employees on your hands, and that's
not good for anybody in performance.
Same thing with telework. Model telework. Take a day. You need some heads down, too.
If anybody does, it's our managers. When the strategic and operational levels are united
in their support of work life, then that's when employees get fully engaged. That's when
you see the really strong input from work-life into the creation of this performance culture.
That's all I have to say.
Ingrid: Great points. Thank you. It looks like we may have a question from our audience.
Judith: [inaudible 00:57:02] today we have several questions. One I think [inaudible
00:57:05] you talked about and the question is can you share [inaudible 00:57:14] questions
that make up the new inclusion quotient, the new IQ? So I think that...
Bruce: Yes.
Judith: Would you repeat the question?
Bruce: The question was can we share the 20 questions that make up the new IQ? The answer
is yes. I know that's a shock that I didn't go on, but...
[laughter]
Judith: It's not all the [inaudible 00:57:41] . The other question has to do with why is
wellness and work life [inaudible 00:57:50] performance culture to the [inaudible 00:57:52]
management? I think the question came in before the panel started their session. As a way
of being able to respond to that, I think it's important to recognize that the Human
Capital Framework is really integrated across [inaudible 00:58:09] independent or siloed
in one aspect of and certainly impacts [inaudible 00:58:19] the additional comments on that
as well?
Dr. Adams: I don't know if the folks on the webinar were able to hear you, Judith. But
I think you were emphasizing the fact that the various aspects of the HCF were not intended
to be siloed. They were intended to work together as a complete system, and hopefully the information
that we've shared on the panel also brings enlightenment to the person that asked that
question.
Judith: The last question has to do with the organization at OPM, and the listener asked
if there's a Director for Performance Culture.
Dr. Adams: The question was, is there a Director for Performance Culture?
Audience Member: [laughs]
Judith: Actually, I think that responsibility is shared for today. We know that they're
talking about [inaudible 00:59:21] and also a director [inaudible 00:59:24] .
Dr. Adams: OK, so there is a director for diversity and inclusion, there is a director
for work life and performance culture also. So there is not one person. However, as Ingrid
mentioned in the beginning of her presentation. We are really excited about increasing communication
among our groups and that's something that we are aiming to do.
We kind of see this as the start of a new partnership so we are excited next to each
other today and have plans to continue working together with all different leaders and seeing
how we can all contribute to the HCF.
Ingrid: Do we have any more questions? Great!
Audience Member: [inaudible 01:00:24]
Ingrid: Is there one more?
Audience Member: Yep.
Dr. Adams: Do we have time?
Ingrid: Do we have time for one more question?
Shelly: Yes, you can take one more question.
Ingrid: Great! We can take one more question.
Audience Member: [inaudible 01:00:39]
Dr. Adams: That's OK I'll repeat it for you.
Audience Member: [inaudible 01:00:42] .
Dr. Adams: So the question is emphasizing current events. I'm sure most of you have
heard about Yahoo and the decision to pull back Telework. To the question, basically,
wondered what we would say to her supporters that maybe this isn't such a bad idea. That
would be one way to create culture change and to really make sure that you're got a
strong culture going, which seems to be her desire and also to increase productivity from
what I remember reading.
So many levels you can answer this. It depends on what you mean by productivity, if we are
talking about productivity just in terms of getting more work done. I think that that's
a very narrow perspective, as I hope you would understood from what we are saying here today.
You need to be thinking about this programs as there alignment with strategy and retention
and attraction of your best talent. I would suspect that a lot of people went to work
for Yahoo, because they did have flexibilities there. What happens now? Their work family
and their work life obligations don't end.
How are they going to handle those? That would be one of my questions. Do all these people
immediately start walking out of the door and looking for new jobs? I suspect they are
talented, they will be able to find them. There are questions, my own research and virtual
teams.
You do want to bring people in face-to-face at some key points as you are creating a new
culture and also for knowledge collaboration. But it's not an either-or. It doesn't have
to be either no Telework or all Telework. There's also varying degrees of Telework or
varying degrees of virtuality if you will.
Where you could have people, maybe for a time period, be completely virtual, but then bring
them back in for a seminar or special sort of a planned event to make sure you really
are consolidating that culture and that change that you're trying to create.
Shelly: Well, this has been a fascinating presentation and it's the first time we've
gone over it tonight. But there's been a lot of interest in this particular topic. So I
want to thank the panel so much. Thank you very much.
I don't think this is going to be the last time you see these individuals discussing
some of these topics. Certainly these have been very timely, some of these issues that
we've discussed.
I'd like to take some time to thank Judith Rupkin who will be leaving the Office of Personnel
Management, retiring. Who's been my supervisor. Who's sitting out there in the audience. Have
a great retirement after OPM. Thank you Bill for your assistance today.
That wraps up our presentation. We'll see you on March 22nd where we'll look at the
Evaluation System, the last system of the Human Capital Framework. Thank you.