"Yawn": Lack of Sleep and the Benefit of a Power Nap

Like alot of other people in the United States, the Spring change to Daylight Saving Time made me groggier than usual. Plus an early wake up call today, the late onset of daylight and exercise all contributed to me feeling like a nap was necessary. A study just released by the National Sleep Foundation entitled Longer Work Days Leave Americans Nodding Off On the Job: Sleepy Americans Doze Off At Work, In the Car and On Their Spouses, showed that "Prolonged work days that often extend late into the night may cause Americans to fall asleep or feel sleepy at work, drive drowsy and lose interest in sex, according to a new Sleep in America poll released today by the National Sleep Foundation (NSF). Spending an average of nearly 4.5 hours each week doing additional work from home on top of a 9.5 hour average workday, Americans are working more and are trying to cope with the resulting daytime sleepiness. In fact, 63 percent state they are very likely to just accept their sleepiness and keep going, while 32 percent are very likely to use caffeinated beverages when they are sleepy during the day and more than half (54%) are at least somewhat likely to use their weekends to try to catch up on sleep." (Click on the title to read the entire study.)

I know alot of people who fall into this catagory. And obviously Starbucks, Caribou and others all count on this in their strategic plans. The only good thing I can see in the statistics stated above is with people losing interest in sex maybe sexual harassment complaints will go down. (Said tongue-in-cheek.)

As a result of airplane travel I have become a big believer in the 20 minute power nap. (That is about the time you get to close your eyes between waiting for take off and the drink cart coming around.) Stress management expert Elizabeth Scott, states that "Studies show that 20 minutes of sleep in the afternoon provides more rest than 20 minutes more sleep in the morning (though the last two hours of morning sleep have special benefits of their own). The body seems to be designed for this, as most people’s bodies naturally become more tired in the afternoon, about 8 hours after we wake up."

Scott points out that there are major problems with sleep deficits, "...a ‘sleep deficit’, ... impairs the following:

• Reaction time
• Judgment
• Vision
• Information processing
• Short-term memory
• Performance
• Motivation
• Vigilance
• Patience

Fatigued people also experience more moodiness, aggressive behaviors, burnout and more stress."

An issue of Men's Journal stressed the benefits of the power nap and said that high performers such as Lance Armstrong and Around the World pilot Steve Fossett are regular power nappers. Not only does it make you more alert and productive but also "..Napping in general benefits heart functioning, hormonal maintenance, and cell repair..."

I have read of several companies that encourage naps. What a great employee relations and productivity tool.

So do yourself a favor and go take a nap. But don't make it too long because then you will just be having to take more work home and staying up later. A "Catch-22" situation. (Some of you may have to Google that.)

Ok, time for my snooze....

Discrimination in the Workplace: Double Digit Increases

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) published a News Release on March 5th detailing the bias claims from 2007 compared to 2006. With one exception, bias claims in all areas saw double digit increases. Here are some of the highlights:

• Race continues to be the largest number of claims, with 30,510 claims, an increase of 12%;
• Retaliation claims had the largest increase, up 18% to 26,663;
• Age discrimination has the second largest percentage increase, up 15%;
• Sex/Gender claims were the only area with a single digit increase of just 7%, however, during FY 2007, pregnancy charges surged to a record high level of 5,587, up 14% from the prior fiscal year’s record of 4,901. Sexual harassment filings increased for the first time since FY 2000, numbering 12,510 – up 4% from the prior fiscal year’s total of 12,025. Additionally, a record 16% of sexual harassment charges were filed by men, up from 9% in the early 1990s.
• Disability claims reached the highest level in 10 years.
• The EEOC recovered $345 million in monetary relief for the charging parties.

So why this increase in activity? Here is my take on some of them:

1. More sexual harassment charges by men- More women bosses?
2. Retaliation charges- Lack of training in companies to reinforce that retaliation is as illegal as the harassment and lack of follow up by HR to insure it is not occurring.
3. Slow down of sex/gender claims- better balance of male/female ratio in the workplace.
4. Disability claims- a greater willingness of the disabled to enter the labor force and a result of an aging workforce as baby boomers age;
5. Age claims- well.... I think everyone probably knows the answer to that one.

What is your take on this? You have any alternative explanations?

Cornucopia of HR Topics: The Wall Street Journal

The Tuesday, March 4, 2008 issue of The Wall Street Journal has a plethora of topics dealing with HR issues. In the MarketPlace section you will find the following:

• The New Workplace Rules: No Video-Watching: This article talks about companies clamping down on employees watching videos online during work hours. The primary reason is the amount of bandwidth the videos take, negatively affecting the performance of the company's entire network. YouTube and Yahoo are the main culprits. Missing in this article was the comment that employees must be taking a tremendous amount of productive time to do this as well. Yes, some of this may be productive, but my guess is that much of it is not.
• How to Hunt for Jobs As Time Out of Work Drags On and On: This article points out that some people are having a hard time finding work and it is taking longer and longer. The article does point out that alot of this is due to poorly presented skills requiring rewriting resumes. One point made was that many people spend way too much time using the Internet for their job hunt.
• Smaller Firms Offer More Responsibility, Credit: This article bascially points out that not everyone has to work for a big company, not even the "high powered." People find that small companies may not offer as much money, but they may "... provide alluring tradeoffs, such as shorter workweeks, less travel, and work-life balance incentives including telecommuting arrangements and flexible schedules." It is nice to see the "big" world discovering what many of the rest of us know.

In the book review section of the Personal Journal section you will find a review of Critical, a book written by Senator Tom Daschle. It provides a glimpse of what the next "solution" to the healthcare crisis may become. Another crisis in the making in my opinion and not much of a solution. But read the review and form your own opinion.

The Importance of Environmental Scanning: A Dose of Daily Drucker

I read alot. I get alot of newsletters. I read several blogs on a daily basis. I get alerts from the Feds, SHRM, and several other organizations. I think it is important to know what is going on in the world. It helps me make informed decisions in my daily business as well as in my daily life. SHRM calls that "environmental scanning" and in the material it puts out for PHR and SPHR education it stresses that this is a skill that is important for the strategic HR leader. I agree and in the classes I teach I try to stress how important it is. Many times I skeptical looks and under-the-breath comments about "not having the time."

Today's entry from "The Daily Drucker" lends some credence to my emphasis and personal actions. According to Drucker, "The technologies that are likely to have the greatest impact on a company and an industry are technologies outside its own field." It goes further by saying "Many changes that have transformed enterprises have originated outside the specific industry of that enterprise." He gives several examples, such as the zipper, which had a major impact on the clothing industry was originally for closing bales of heavy goods. No one ever thought it would replace buttons.

By extension we can apply this principle to human resources. The changes that will have major effects on how we deal with people will come from outside the field of HR. It will be social trends, legal trends, technology trends, economic trends, political trends, educational trends, etc. If you are not monitoring these on a regular basis you will have no opportunity to prepare to deal with changes. As usual you will be left to be reactive (the bane of HR) and executive management in your company will continue to see you as the "file cabinet."

So invest some time each workweek to read outside of HR. Review newsletters, blogs (see my list of favorites), magazines, technology items and social happenings to be alert. Take a look at The Futurist, Wired, The Economist, Freakonomics, and more.

Do You Want Happy Employees?

"Everyone wants happy employees, right? Happy employees are productive, inventive, and supportive of all you do."

I saw this stated in an article and it got me to thinking. Do I really want happy employees? Or do I want satisfied employees? Or do I want motivated employees? It all depends I guess on how you define those terms. The article talked about happy employees being well paid, but not paid too much. One could argue that a happy employee would be one who is paid to do whatever they wanted to do. Pay me to surf the Internet all day and I will be happy. But that doesn't do much for the company and soon everyone will be unhappy. No company, no paycheck.

The same thing could be said about the definition of safisfaction. Some may be satisfied to do as little as possible and still get paid for it.

No, I think I want motivated employees. But that needs definition too. I want employees motivated to produce high quality work and contribute to the success of the organization. I motivate them through the use of rewards of compensation, learning, challenge, structure, affiliation, involvement and achievement. If this makes them happy and satisfied all the much better. But I am not willing to just settle for happy or satisfied.

What about you?

Clocking Out: Shutting Off The Brain

"The proliferation of phones and PDAs also brings with it wage and hour liability, Weitz says. As HR managers well know, the federal Fair Labor Standards Act requires employers to pay nonexempt employees for all hours worked. Therefore, if nonexempt employees make employment-related cell phone calls from home during off-duty hours, that time is probably "hours worked" according to the FLSA. And that's true even if they say, "Oh, I don't mind making a few calls."

This quote from the HRAdvisor of BLR to me to thinking. Our laws almost require us to forget about non-exempt employees once they walk out the door. Because if you contact them by phone or email then you have to pay for the time and track the time as well. If you don't you get penalized by the Department of Labor, under a violation of the FLSA. And forget about having them think about work and doing something about it. In fact you have to discourage that. Certainly not a very good model for employee engagement. You work at getting people excited about their jobs and then you have to have them "shut it off" when they walk out the door.

Maybe in the days where most people worked on "things" and engaged in manual work that was easy to do. But in today's economy where many employees work with intellectual "things" it seems to me to be harder to shut off. How do you get a non-exempt employee to shut off their brain when they get home? Well, I guess you have them watch American Idol...

What do you think?

Performance Appraisal: "Your Performance is Going to be Terrible"

Imagine taking an employee aside and saying "All signs point to the fact that you are probably going to falter in your performance. You are going to be flat and it may take sometime for you to recover." Then you publish it in his email everyday and you let everyone else in the company know what kind of expectation you have for that employee. What would you expect that employee to do? FAIL! And then you would say, see I knew he was a poor employee.

Well that is what is happening to the economy today. Everyday we hear how bad it is GOING to be. So what happens? Everyone starts acting like that is what is happening. And then the prognosticators say "See we told you so."

Isn't that called Self-fulfilling prophecy? I don't know about you, but it angers me. And it certainly does not do alot for the confidence of your employees.

Performance Management: George Washington Style

With the celebration of President's Day in the U.S. having been this week I was reading some words of wisdom from George Washington. I thought his words would be, should be as applicable today.

"Be strict in your discipline; that is, to require nothing unreasonable of your officers and men, but see that whatever is required be punctually complied with. Reward and punish every man according to his merit, without partiality or prejudice; hear his complaints; if well founded, redress them; if otherwise, discourage them, in order to prevent frivolous ones. Impress upon the mind of every man, from first to the lowest, the importance of the cause, and what it is they are contending for."

Wouldn't all our organizations be better off if all our managers and leaders operated by these words. Performance management might not be such a big issue.

Just food for thought.

Mandated Paid Sick Time: A New Angle

An article in the Kiplinger Online Newsletter asked the question "Is Paid Sick Leave Coming to Your State?" The opening paragraph states the traditional arguments for and against mandated paid sick leave. "Efforts are growing across the country to require employers to provide paid sick leave for their workers. Advocates say it is both unfair to employees and a public health hazard to make them decide between staying at home without pay or going to work ill. The business community says such a mandate could put many companies out of business or that workers will see pay and/or other benefits shrink."

The article further states that 10 state legislatures are considering legislation that will require employers to provide paid sick time to employees. And they see this as being a growing trend. (And depending on the outcome of the Presidential election it may be seen on a national basis as well.)

It was an ending paragraph that really caught my eye about this article. "Growing interest in paid sick leave does not just reflect concern over workers, but the threat to coworkers and the public. "In fact, the industries with the most employees who lack paid sick days are those with the greatest exposure to the public: hotels and food services, home health care and child care," Stateline.org quotes one advocate as saying." So mandated paid sick leave for the good of the PUBLIC and other employees.

This is an interesting take and certainly one that requires some consideration. As our businesses require more and more "intellectual capital" and hence our economy requires more and more reliance on "intellectual capital" does it make sense to protect that capital by not exposing it to diseases that come from people to people contact? HR articles are already calling for companies to encourage sick employees to stay home and not infect other employees. How much of a step is it to mandate that we protect our resources (the human kind) from exposure to productivity reducing illnesses. I am not necessarily talking about the common cold here, but major strains of flu can have a very detrimental effect. I know of one team that worked closely together ending up with almost everyone on the team being very sick at the same time. What would have happened if that had been a life-threatening illness, such as avian flu? An entire functioning unit wiped out?

Now I am not a big advocate of mandated sick time, or mandated anything, but changes in today's world politically, in the nature of disease, and in the nature of human contact may force us to rethink how we handle situations in the workplace such as paid sick time.

Tell me what you think.

Dealing With Job Seekers: YOUR Employees Looking for Work

Penelope Trunk, of the Brazen Careerist, offered job hunting advice to her readers. The title of her blog is How to Job Hunt From Your Current Job. In her blog she lists the following tips:

1. Don't Feel Guilty
2. Schedule Interviews at the beginning or end of the day (or lunch)
3. Don't dress up for interviews if you can help it
4. Don't do phone interviews from your cube

Her justification for point 1 is that everyone does it. You just can't do it during the day from home. Plus, everyone knows that the person that works is the more desirable candidate. The Internet makes it easy to do, so why not. She does say, "Get your work done well at your current job no matter what. You owe that to your employer. Beyond that, your time is yours and job hunt if you want."

She recommends "personal" time for the interviews and not raising suspicions with your current employer by not dressing for the interview and not doing any phone interviews while at work. One other piece of advice she gives is "So you don’t need to be sneaky beyond what is ethically comfortable, but you don’t need to beg the question either." (My emphasis)

Having been a corporate HR manager and recruiter I have conflicting feelings about her advice. And I wonder if other HR managers do as well. I don't really want my employees to spend their time at work looking for a different job. I want them doing my work. And they are using my equipment to do their job search. Yet at the same time I may contact people during the day who are candidates for positions with my company. And I want them to come interview with me during the working day, because I don't want to work at night to interview. (Though I have done both phone interviews and face-to-face at night.)

If I find someone is looking for work, because they have Internet searches that show up, or emails that indicate they are interviewing, do I speed their job search up by letting them go? Or do I start a "recovery effort" by trying to convince them to stay. Do I put blocks on my system of all the major job sites? Do I investigate an employee whose productivity has fallen? Do I look for patterns in Internet activity of certain company searches? But, at the same time, accept resumes and inquiries from people during work hours knowing full well they are "cheating" their current employer?

Leave some comments and tell me how you handle this situation? Is it a conflict for you as well?

By they way is "sneaky beyond what is ethically comfortable" an oxymoron?