Blog – Dutra Associates

The Retirement Plans That Few Consider

September 1, 2022 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

Most people spend more time planning their annual vacation than they spend planning for the non-financial components of their retirement. Now that increased longevity has extended the lifespan of the average North American, people can anticipate living 20 – 30 years beyond the typical retirement age of 62 or 65. Since this is becoming known as a “second adulthood”, it deserves your time and attention to ensure that this time in your life is filled with meaning and purpose, health and well-being, and social engagement in addition to financial stability. It’s never too early to begin giving consideration to how you’d like to craft this part of your life. Here are three key tips I’d like to share that can help set you on the path to an easeful retirement transition.

Create a plan well in advance

Benjamin Franklin is credited with saying, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” It is an abrupt change from working full-time to having the expanse of 24 hours a day at your fingertips. Once the glow of an extended vacation wears off, you may find yourself clamoring to find another job, if you haven’t decided in advance how you’d like to spend your time. While working in some capacity may be a part of that plan, let that be a conscious choice rather than a reaction to feeling at loose ends. What would the perfect day or week look like for you in retirement? Creating some level of structure goes a long way toward staying engaged. Spend less time thinking about what you’re retiring from and more time considering what you’re retiring to.

Think holistically

Financial security is a critical factor in retirement preparedness. Yet, it is far from the only thing to take into consideration. As you create your plan, look at all aspects of your life. What is important to you? What are the values and beliefs that provide meaning in your life? How will you sustain your mental and physical capabilities? Where will there be opportunities for connection to others? What hobbies might you want to pursue? How will you continue your personal development? How important is it to you to give back in some way?

Communicate

Be sure to include your spouse or partner in your retirement planning. Do they work as well? When do you both want to be retired? What do you each want out of retirement? How can you work collaboratively to create a shared vision? What activities will you do together and where will you explore your interests on your own? How will you divide home related chores? How often will you see your children and grandchildren? What expectations do family members have of one another? Having these conversations in advance and getting on the same page will relieve a potential stressor down the road.

Be proactive and make this significant transition a rewarding and fulfilling next chapter in your life.

About the Author: Sherry Dutra is a Talent Development, Career and Retirement Coach and Facilitator who works with corporate leaders in small to mid-size businesses, across the span of their careers. She helps them to accelerate business outcomes and team performance, navigate their own career path, and transition to retirement with ease using proven methodologies and strategies that get results. If you would like to uncover and address hidden challenges that may be sabotaging your success, leverage your strengths, and accelerate your progress toward the results you desire, contact Sherry for a complimentary consultation.

Strategic Planning in a Rapidly Changing World

August 1, 2022 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

Is your company getting the desired results from your strategic planning process? If not, it’s likely that your organization may be skipping or poorly executing on one or more of the three key elements to a sound strategic plan.

The costs associated with an incomplete planning process are significant. They include:

Losing your lead in the market
Inability to reach financial and operational goals
Sense of defeat amongst the team and a sense that strategic planning is a waste of time
Loss of credibility of the leadership team

A strategic planning process that is most likely to deliver the results you expect consists of three key elements.

Answer the most critical strategic planning questions.

- Who are our customers and how can we serve them better?
- Who are our competitors and how do we differentiate ourselves?
- What do we do best and how do we leverage those strengths?
- How can we prepare the organization to seize opportunities and shore itself against threats?
- What types of situations do we need to consider for the future and what must we do to prepare for them?

Too often, organizations spend a fortune on consulting firms to provide complex strategic plans that are either overly philosophical in nature or have outstanding ideas that don’t quite boil down to clear, executable initiatives.

Once you have the answers to the most critical strategic planning questions, you want to craft a few, clear, compelling strategic initiatives to strengthen the organization.

Set a few clear priorities. The most important outcome from step one of the strategic planning process is to identify the most important priorities of the organization. Working with a longer list of potential priorities, the organization can now discuss the relative value of each and arrive at no more than three to five key priorities.

A downfall at this step of the process is when an organization sticks with a long list of priorities. While this may serve a purpose of keeping the peace by including everyone’s thoughts, it makes it highly unlikely that the organization will get anything done completely.

Implement the strategy. We so often hear that strategy never seems to get executed. There are several reasons why this is the case.

- Not committing the necessary resources to accomplish the strategy such as appropriate capital, technology, training, and people.
- Neglecting to reprioritize the workload of busy employees and simply asking them to do more.
- Failing to stop old initiatives that are no longer relevant and even compete with the new.
- Lack of establishing clear role, responsibilities, accountability and reward systems.
- Giving up too soon.

A sound strategy focuses as much time and energy on implementation planning as it does on responding to the key planning questions and establishing priorities.

What part of the process does your organization need to shore up? While some organizations are exceptional at the ‘big picture” questions, they often fail to follow up. Some set too many priorities and are unable to accomplish them with limited resources. Others may excel at execution but struggle with establishing a compelling vision.

If this sounds like your organization, we can help with a proven 3-part strategic planning process that is simple for you to implement while achieving efficient results.

To learn more, please contact Dutra Associates at Sherry@DutraAssociates.com.

Adapted with permission by Center for Executive Coaching.

In Search of Whitespace

July 1, 2022 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

A number of years ago, I had the opportunity to be in attendance for a talk by Juliet Funt, who is the founder and owner of WhiteSpace® at Work. She was inspiring! Recently, as I was speaking with a client about the current challenges he is facing in the workplace, Juliet’s talk came back to mind. In a completely engaging and amusing way, she made the case for whitespace in our days. What exactly is whitespace? As described by Juliet, it is a purposeful, freedom experience for the mind; an opportunity for the mind to dance, play and end up at unexpected junctures that serve us. It is setting aside time and thought for which you have no specific plans.

Our typical workdays are comprised of “reactive busyness”. This brings to mind notions of fire-fighting and problem fixing that, while giving us the illusion of getting things done, are really lots of activity without necessarily true productivity. Juliet indicated that “we have no relationship with thoughtfulness as a key to success in the workplace”. What is missing, she indicated, is whitespace. Pointing to benefits such as, developing more game changing ideas; increasing productivity, creativity and engagement; being more calm and present; connecting interpersonally; she suggests that we must “redistribute effort and excellence” to allow whitespace in our days.

To redistribute effort, consider letting go of some things. We often hold on too hard for a variety of reasons. Ask yourself: What can I let go of in my life – both personal and professional?

What baby steps can you take to stop responding as if each email and text is urgent?
Do you really need to attend every meeting you’re invited to?
Can you truly get your work done if you are in back-to-back meetings all day?

To redistribute excellence, it’s time to curb your perfectionistic tendencies. Perfectionism is a real talent and we must make choices on where we will spend that talent. Ask yourself: Where could good enough, be good enough?

So, where to begin? Start small – manage your calendar to create whitespace; appreciate the forced whitespace that comes when stuck in a traffic jam. According to Juliet, if you’re aspiring to whitespace and give it value, you are ahead of 90% of others in the workplace. Be creative and design a little whitespace that works for you and watch your success grow!

Enjoy Your Vacation: How to Detach from Work and Return Refreshed

June 1, 2022 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

Summer is almost here and hopefully, vacation plans are in high gear! Yet, what is ideally a time to rest, renew and refresh can become a time filled with stress. Why? Because, though you may be physically away from the office, work may still be taking up precious space in your brain. Projects in progress, never-ending to-do lists, that upcoming difficult client meeting, emails piling up, all vie for your attention.

Here are a few tips to help you detach and truly refresh, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Plan

While it may seem obvious, take the time to identify the key people who need to be aware that you’ll be out. Ensure that each person has what they need to carry on while you’re away. Doing this at least a week prior to leaving allows time to iron out any questions that arise.

Review what is coming up during your first week back in the office. What steps can you take before you leave to prepare for those meetings and deadlines? Upon your return, a quick refresh will be all that’s needed.

Block at least the morning, if not the entire first day back in the office. Doing so, provides time for you to review what has transpired during your vacation and prioritize what truly requires your attention.

Enable Your ‘Out of Office’ Autoresponder

This simple practice goes a long way toward reducing stress during your vacation. In your ‘out of office’ message, advise people that you will be away and who to contact in your absence. If you work as a solopreneur, advise people of when you will get back to them. This sets a clear expectation that you will not be responding immediately. Most situations can truly wait a few days for your return.

Then, allow yourself to scan your emails, for no longer than 30 minutes, at the beginning or end of each day or so. While this may seem counter to what I’ve suggested above, it gives you the opportunity to scan for important issues and respond with a quick note, if absolutely needed. This is also the chance to delete spam and move emails to folders for review when you return. There is stress relief that comes from knowing that you won’t be returning to an inbox filled with hundreds of messages. The key here is to stick to no more than 30 minutes and then shut off the device.

Set an Intention

Create a vision of what you will be doing during vacation rather than what you won’t be doing. When you focus on the fact that you won’t be working during vacation, you are actually keeping ‘work’ at the forefront of your thought process. If, instead, you focus on what you will be doing, such as hiking, playing games with your family, seeing new places, experiencing exotic foods, sitting by a firepit toasting marshmallows, relaxing on a beach – whatever excites you about this vacation – your mind will be filled with these activities. Thoughts of work will be less likely to intrude.

Despite your best intentions, thoughts of work may still pop up. If that occurs, have a plan in place for how you will manage those thoughts. Pick up a book, work on a jigsaw puzzle, go for a walk. Select a strategy that works best for you to shift the intrusive thoughts to focus on the non-work-related activity.

Final Words

Taking time off is shown to significantly increase levels of happiness and overall quality of life while reducing stress. Additionally, research from Project: Time Off, 2016, shows that “if you take 11 or more of your vacation days, you are more than 30% more likely to receive a raise”¹. So, there go those ideas that working harder and taking less time off makes you more successful at work.

Bottom-line: When are you taking your next vacation? Mine is already planned. How about yours?

¹ Shawn Achor and Michelle Gielan. “The Data-Driven Case for Vacation.” HBR.org, 13 July 2016.

10 Keys to Success in Your New Role

May 4, 2022 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

Congratulations! You decided to make a move in your career. You networked, navigated the lengthy interview process, and were offered the job. The time for celebration is at hand! You might be thinking, “the hard work is over, right”? Well, the first stage of the hard work is over. Now you are faced with the first ninety days in your new role which are critical to your long-term success.

How do you hit the ground running? Not in the way you might imagine. Often, we have the urge to dive in and quickly make a big impact. Yet, slowing your pace a bit and getting the lay of the land before jumping into action yields the best results. A misstep at this point, can earn you a reputation that can take quite some time to turn around.

Keys to Success

Here are 10 key tips to set yourself up for success in a new role.

Be clear on expectations. There are both spoken and unspoken requirements of a role. Gain a clear understanding from your manager of not only the measurable performance expectations but also the intangible ones. What informal rules exist on how to accomplish your job?
Support your manager. What are your manager’s aspirations? How can you support them in a way that helps them achieve their goals? Get a sense of how they prefer to receive communication, i.e., face-to-face, via email, via text, etc. Understand how frequently they want updates from you. What are the things you need to avoid doing when interacting with this person? How can you make life easier for your manager?
Take time to observe and learn. New managers and executives sometimes make the mistake of equating success with making rapid changes. Determine how long you have to observe, learn, and then make well-informed decisions about planned changes. The length of time you have available for this will vary with the situation. The point is that you’ll likely have at least a couple of months to map out a plan forward. Resist the urge to jump in too quickly. Hasty decisions often do not end well.
Create your vision and strategy. If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never know if you’ve arrived. Identify the key people who should have a voice in establishing a vision for your area of responsibility. Develop a shared vision, determine the strategy to realize it, get buy-in, and communicate the vision and path to get there. Then, ensure you have clear measures of success and hold key players accountable for their contribution to the execution of the vision and strategy.
Evaluate your team. Take the time to get to know the people on your team. What are each person’s strengths, areas for development, aspirations, motivations, and results? Begin to set expectations with each person. Understand what support each individual needs from you and how you can add value to the team. Determine if you have the right mix of people. What adjustments might need to be made to ensure you have the right team to implement the vision and strategy?
Align with the culture. What is the culture like in this new organization? Which behaviors are expected, and which behaviors are not tolerated? What are the values of the organization and how are these lived, or not, in day-to-day operations? How does your style fit with the culture and values of the organization? Where do you already fit in well? Where might you need to modify your style (without compromising your own values)?
Build strategic relationships. There are formal and informal leaders in every organization. Who are the key players in yours? These leaders may be found amongst executives, high potentials, project leaders on key initiatives, and top performers. Which are the most impactful relationships for you to begin building? Building relationships in a strategic way will help to lay the foundation for success.
Understand the political landscape. Stepping into a new role may bring with it potential land mines. Asking questions that will reveal where to tread lightly will go a long way toward your success.
Create a personal development plan. Development never ends. With each new step comes a need to deepen one’s knowledge of the industry, the business, or to expand one’s leadership skills. Learning should be a life-long pursuit. Be sure to create a development plan for yourself within the first 90 days in your new role.
Small wins build momentum. Where are the places where you can begin to make progress without large scale changes? Find some small, impactful, early wins that get the ball rolling while you set the stage to excel in your new role.

Which of these key tips have you successfully used? What others would you like to share?

Adapted with permission by Center for Executive Coaching

How are Your Teams Feeling Right Now? Measure the Emotional Culture

April 1, 2022 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

A lot of different elements underlie organizational success. You’ve got to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right product and with the right people. But even with the best of these, a great workplace culture truly matters. Do you know the emotional culture in your organization?

Eventually competitors can come along and replicate your best practices, strategies, and processes. As Herb Kelleher, co-founder of Southwest Airlines, once famously said, “All airlines have airplanes.”

According to Kelleher, “We’ve never had layoffs. We could have made more money if we furloughed people. But we don’t do that. And we honor them constantly. Our people know that if they are sick, we will take care of them. If there are occasions of grief or joy, we will be there with them. They know that we value them as people, not just cogs in a machine.”

So consequently, culture matters.

Culture is defined many ways. One of the more commercial ways of thinking about it is this. Culture is the degree of alignment between strategy and the way employees think and behave.

In 2016, HBR ran an article titled Manage Your Emotional Culture. The article talks about and distinguishes between Cognitive Culture and Emotional Culture. It goes on to talk about the fact that emotional culture is rarely managed as deliberately as cognitive culture and that it’s often not managed at all. It gives some great examples of how much companies suffer as a result. Employees who should be showing compassion (in health care, for example,) become callous and indifferent. Teams that would benefit from joy and pride instead tolerate a culture of anger. People who lack a healthy amount of fear (say, in security firms or investment banks) act recklessly. The effects can be especially damaging during times of upheaval, such as organizational restructurings, financial downturns and, as we all have experienced, global pandemics.

WHERE TO START IN UNDERSTANDING EMOTIONAL CULTURE?

To discuss and understand the concept of emotional intelligence and emotional culture, first we need to look at the underlying science of emotions. Why do we react the way we do and how does others’ behavior impact us the way it does?

We all experience a wide range of pleasant and unpleasant feelings at work as we interact with colleagues, customers, suppliers, and others. These feelings influence our decisions, behavior, and performance.

Pleasant feelings have a ‘broaden and build’ effect causing us to think more broadly, engage more deeply, and perform better.

Unpleasant emotions tend to have a ‘narrow and limiting’ effect, causing us to be more closed-minded, less engaging, and poorer at performing. Collectively, these emotions impact the bottom-line for better or worse.

Let’s start with the positive/pleasant emotions. Think about your experiences in the workplace for a moment. When people feel relaxed at work, they tend to be solution focused. When they feel valued, they often promote the brand. When they feel cared for by the company, they go above and beyond in the level of discretionary effort they put towards the company. Finally, employees that are empowered are often the hardest working and innovative team members.

Conversely, let’s look at negative or unpleasant emotions. When people feel anxious, they are more likely to be reactive. When stressed, we can become aggressive. It’s human nature. When an employee feels fearful, they can sometimes blame others. Finally, when people feel disempowered, they can assume lack of responsibility and ownership for their work. We’ve all been there.

Research shows that people in high performing organizations experience more positive emotions and fewer negative emotions than those in low performing organizations. (Boedker et al. 2011)

So, why aren’t more organizations working to focus on understanding how their people are feeling and managing their EMOTIONAL CULTURE?

DO YOU KNOW HOW YOUR PEOPLE ARE FEELING RIGHT NOW?

Emotional culture surveys are the most direct and impactful way to measure emotional culture because they measure three distinct things to help identify whether or not emotions experienced need to shift. They measure:

Experienced emotions
Expected emotions
Ideal or desirable levels of emotions

When you understand how your people are feeling, how they’d ideally like to feel and where the gaps are – you can do something about it. It allows you to more easily understand where the differences are – so you can be informed in making decisions for your L&D, training and development of your teams, and workplace culture. You can continue to strive to be a great place to work.

We’d like to give you the opportunity to do so by experiencing The Emotional Culture Index from Genos International.

The Emotional Culture Index is designed to measure three dimensions of emotions at work.

Current state – How often your people experience certain feelings at work.
Expected state – How often your people think it’s fair and reasonable to experience these feelings at work given the nature and context of your workplace.
Ideal state – How often your people think they should ideally experience these feelings in your workplace to be effective.

It also allows participants to share confidential free text responses on key areas. You can customize the survey by department, team, region, or a particular demographic or group.

It takes only a few minutes to complete. You will receive a complimentary report with its findings and can discuss the results privately with me, a Genos Certified Emotional Intelligence Practitioner.

NEXT STEPS

As we enter the work of AI, automation and machine led learning, our ability to feel and be human is what makes us unique. We encourage you to take this opportunity to uncover your emotional culture. Please contact Sherry Dutra at sherry@dutraassociates.com to find out more about this limited time offer.

Article in collaboration with Genos International Europe.

There’s an Uptick in Retirements: Is Your Organization Ready?

March 3, 2022 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

The conventional wisdom has held that 10,000 baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) are expected to retire, on average, each day in the United States through 2030. This loss of expertise and knowledge was already having an adverse impact on many organizations. Now, the impact of COVID-19 has accelerated that trend. According to a Pew Research Center report, the pace of retirements amongst baby boomers in 2020 (3.2%) more than doubled the 2019 rate (1.5%).

On the one hand, this is excellent news for those getting ready to enter the next chapter of their lives and an opportunity for younger workers to step into new roles. On the other, how prepared is your organization for a more rapid brain drain?

Based on pre-pandemic research conducted by the authors of Critical Knowledge Transfer, one company reported that in the next anticipated wave of nearly 700 retirements, they would experience a loss of 27,000 years of experience. If that’s not enough to have you sit up and take notice, I’m not sure what will, especially as the trend ticks upward. That said, not every vacated position is created equal. Some will certainly be easier to fill than others. Perhaps the appropriate level of expertise and skill is readily available on the job market or you have done the work to ensure that someone within your organization is ready to take on the role. Unfortunately, this is the exception rather than the rule.

Taking a Proactive Stance – 5 Key Tips

Knowing the average age of your employee population is not enough. That still keeps the potential problem at hand difficult to define. Take a closer look at the specific roles held by long-term employees and seasoned managers who are within a few years of retirement age. Which positions require critical skills and experience that are not easy to find on the open market? Long term employees across and at all levels of the organization often hold critical, hands-on experience of how to get things done through their comprehensive knowledge of processes, company historical information, clients and customers. Without a proactive approach, your organization runs the risk of realizing, too late, that you have a critical skill shortage that is adversely impacting your business performance.
Consider implementing a mentoring program that effectively engages both older and younger workers in accelerating development and bridging the knowledge gap. Providing training for both mentors and mentees can help to ensure that a mutually beneficial mentoring relationship is created and both parties find the experience a valuable one.
Utilize knowledge capture methods to gather critical expertise and make it available across a wide range of people. There are many ways to store and manage institutional knowledge including online forums, podcasts, webinars, and videos, to name a few.
Pay attention to employee engagement. Younger members of the workforce have an average job stay of roughly four years. Ensure the right managers are in place who truly care about their employees’ success. Robin Reilly, a Senior Consultant at Gallup has written that such managers “seek to understand each person’s strengths and provide employees with every opportunity to use their strengths in their role. Great managers empower their employees, recognize and value their contributions, and actively seek their ideas and opinions.” Increasing employee engagement will assist in keeping younger workers from jumping ship.
Provide professional and leadership skill development to your employees to develop your associates and prepare those great managers. The on-going opportunity to build on strengths and expand one’s comfort zone through training and development programs advances the growth of your internal talent pool and demonstrates your commitment to their success.

It is a critical time to proactively address the seismic shift that is accelerating in terms of talent shortages in the workplace. These are just a few of the tips that can help you to mitigate your risk. Don’t wait another day to identify where your organization is most vulnerable and take the steps now to ensure a smoother transition.

The Connection Between Sleep and Leadership: It’s Time to Take a Snooze

February 4, 2022 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

Calling all leaders!

How did you sleep last night?
What amount of sleep did you get?
How refreshed did you feel when you woke up?

How Does Sleep Play Out in Your Life?

Personally, sleep has always been something that I’ve, mostly, prioritized. Of course, there have been times when certain projects have led me to work late into the evening. So, at times, sleep has gone on the back burner. No matter how old I was at the time, I always felt the ramifications of skimping on sleep. Lack of concentration, lower energy levels, and less ability to focus are a few of the symptoms I’ve experienced. What about you?

For most of my adult life, though, I have done my best to get at least 7 ½ hours of sleep each night. Honestly, I haven’t shared that with many people before. In a society that seems to thrive on 24/7 availability and activity, it might seem weak or unproductive to not work all hours of the day and night. Yet, it’s time to stand up for the importance of getting a solid night’s sleep. The evidence is in from numerous scientific sources that sleep is critical to our health and our ability to function. Without enough of it, we open ourselves up to an array of potential health risks and we diminish our brain’s ability to function properly. And, if our brains aren’t functioning properly, how does that impact our ability to lead?

What the Research Has to Say

In the book, Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker, PhD, shares research that shows how the pre-frontal cortex is adversely impacted by lack of sleep – anything less than 7 hours per night. What’s so important about the pre-frontal cortex? It is the area of the brain where executive functioning takes place. This includes an array of activities such as, decision-making, coordinating and adjusting complex behavior, ability to control emotional reactions, focusing attention, and predicting the consequences of actions. Needless to say, all of these activities play a role in leadership effectiveness.

Over the years, many of my clients in leadership roles have shared how little sleep they often get. They struggle with an expectation that they must immediately respond to emails and texts that come at all hours of the day and night. They have an enormous number of projects on their plates and have difficulty slowing down their active minds when they try to sleep. Stress, anxiety, and worry can make for a restless night’s sleep as well.

In Walker’s book he shares that during sleep, our brains go through an amazing process of washing out harmful proteins through the glymphatic system and glial cells. In this way, our brain heals during a restful and complete night’s sleep. This nightly cleanse has a profound impact on our overall health and our capacity to function effectively as leaders.

Some of you might be thinking, “that doesn’t apply to me. I can get by fine on 5 or 6 hours a night.” The research would beg to differ. In one study, conducted by David Dinges at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the groups studied obtained 6 hours of sleep per night – the amount that many of the people I’ve worked with tend to get. At the 10-day mark, they were as “impaired in performance as going without sleep for twenty-four hours straight” – that is, a 400 percent increase in microsleep, the inability to pay attention, where your brain loses its ability to perceive the outside world for a brief moment.

Call to Action

So, if you want to improve your health and set the stage to be the best leader you can be, target 7 – 9 hours of sleep per night. It’s not a nice to have but a MUST have. Productivity never comes from non-stop activity. Sufficient rest is key, for yourself, and for those on your team.

What can you do to help achieve that goal? Here are a few tips:

Shut down all devices at least one hour before you go to bed.
Set limits on how many hours you expect others (and yourself) to work each day.
Only send emails and texts during normal working hours.
When you and those on your team take vacations, commit to making them work-free.
Meditate before going to sleep to relax your body and calm your mind.
Exercise regularly, but not within 3 hours of going to sleep.
Minimize caffeine consumption later in the day, as it can stay in your system for up to 6 hours.
Spend a few minutes at the end of the workday, preparing for the next day’s top priorities. This helps to free up your mind and promotes relaxation.

What strategies have worked for you?

Losing Employees? – Try This Simple Leadership Approach to Engage and Retain Your Team

January 3, 2022 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

“The Great Resignation” is something that we are hearing and reading about on a regular basis. Now, more than ever, employees are leaving their roles at an amazing rate – in May of 2021 alone, 3.6 million Americans quit their jobs. According to Gallup, “48% of America’s working population is actively job searching or watching for opportunities”.

While the term ‘employee engagement’ can sound like just another buzzword, it’s anything but. For U.S. employers, the lack of employee engagement is estimated to result in $450 – 500 billion in lost productivity on an annual basis. For over 20 years, Gallup has been researching employee engagement and the percentage of engaged employees has barely budged in the United States during this timeframe. Based on 2021 research, Gallup has reported that 36% of U.S. workers are engaged, 49% are not engaged, and 15% are actively disengaged.

What is Employee Engagement?

What exactly is employee engagement? According to Gallup, an engaged employee is one who is “involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace”. Someone who is experiencing this type of engagement is most likely to be aligned with their team and organization’s goals and making key contributions to producing desired results. Organizations that do the best job of creating employee engagement achieve earnings-per-share growth greater than 4 times that of their competitors. Additionally, other business boosting results are enjoyed by those companies who exemplify employee engagement. These include higher customer engagement, increased productivity, lower attrition, and higher profitability.

A Simple Approach

There are a multitude of methods available for increasing employee engagement with varying ranges of complexity, time commitment and cost. Yet, the solution may be simpler than you think. When we talk about employee engagement, we often speak in generalities. It can sound as if there is a group called “employees” that we must direct something towards collectively. A one size fits all approach has less of an opportunity to positively drive your engagement levels than one simple opportunity that many leaders have, at every level, including the C-suite. This opportunity, the key to engaging employees, is to get specific about each person.

One Employee at a Time

Engaging employees happens one person at a time. The place to start is to get to know each person on your team uniquely. How much do you already know about each employee and what makes that person tick?

How many of these questions can you answer right now about each employee on your team?

What are their career aspirations?
What personal aspirations do they have?
What motivates them?
What are their most important values?
What key strengths do they bring to the team?
What type of behavioral style do they favor?
What professional development needs do they have?

Call to Action

As you begin the new year, if you can’t answer all of these questions for each employee, I invite you to make it a priority to schedule 1:1 meetings to discover those answers. Then, look for the opportunities to:

let them use their strengths each day,
take on assignments that build the skills for their future career path,
communicate with them in a way that matches their style.

Your employees want to work in jobs that allow them to do what they do best, to grow and develop professionally, and feel a sense of purpose in what they focus on each day. What drives engagement and motivation is unique to each individual. So, get started by getting to know your team. Look for ways to align what is important to each person with the work they are doing, and watch your results begin to shift.

If you would like support in increasing employee engagement in your organization, please contact me to have a conversation. We offer a simple yet powerful and practical methodology to support you in improving employee engagement.

Building Workforce Resilience

November 30, 2021 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

While people may love the work they do, many people today are suffering as they don’t know how to deal with the associated stress of a demanding job and environment. Add to that the personal and professional ramifications of a world-wide pandemic and the levels of stress and anxiety have only escalated over the past 20 months.

Never before has it been more important to focus on building the resilience of our workforce at every level. Resilience is defined as an individual’s ability to adapt to stress and adversity. Your level of resilience is defined as your capacity to bounce back from a negative experience to your normal state of functioning. Resilience is not an ability or trait you either have or don’t have, everyone is resilient and can improve their level of resilience. It is typically enhanced by engaging in activities or techniques that help facilitate good physical and mental health. Highly resilient people are able to effectively balance unpleasant and pleasant emotions and make effective responses to them.

Traditionally, organizations have placed more emphasis on physical health versus mental health or well-being in the workplace. As our work environments transform, employees and leaders now face the most demanding environments and roles, which is resulting in a significant increase in anxiety and work-related stress issues.

According to a pre-pandemic article in Harvard Business Review, burnout “costs the U.S. more than $300 billion a year in absenteeism, turnover, diminished productivity, and medical, legal and insurance costs.”¹ Those numbers are trending upward amidst the upheaval that COVID has introduced to our lives.

The studies have shown that no matter the type or level of job, anxiety and stress touches all industries and roles, every socioeconomic status, as well as every race and ethnicity.

Genos International, a leading provider of emotional intelligence assessments reacted to this by creating The Science of Well-Being Program. This program equips employees with the tools and techniques to help them build higher levels of resilience and well-being in the workplace.

The powerful 4 session virtual program (90 min – 2 hours each session) is designed to help employees at all levels improve their mental, physical, social and environmental well-being. The Science of Well-Being is built on the science of behavior change and healthy habit formation. Rolled out across your workforce, this program will result in lower levels of stress and stress-related leave claims, lower levels of absenteeism and higher levels of productivity and employee engagement.

Steps to becoming more resilient:

Look at ‘how you are seen to show up at work’ – a review of your emotional intelligence behaviors.

Every attendee completes a Genos Leadership Assessment. They complete a self-assessment of their EI behaviors, then they select individuals they’d like to receive feedback from. Instead of receiving a numerical or unactionable response like “You’re EI/EQ level is 52,” the Genos assessment is unique in that it measures how you are seen to show up at work and how important your raters deem these particular behaviors to be for your position. They gather input on six emotionally intelligent behaviors:

Self-Awareness
Awareness of Others
Authenticity
Emotional Reasoning
Self-Management
Positive Influence (non-leadership roles) or Inspiring Performance (leadership roles)

Each attendee receives a customized workbook for the program that includes their assessment results, along with a development tips workbook to help them develop key EI behaviors.

Take part in The Science of Well-Being Program facilitated by, Sherry Dutra, a Genos Certified Practitioner.

The course dives into the neuroscience of emotions along with the effects of pleasant and unpleasant emotions on us. Studying emotional intelligence helps participants understand and interpret their own EI Assessment results and how to hone in to key areas for development. The program then goes through techniques and strategies to develop higher levels of personal resilience.

Develop an action plan to boost resilience in multiple areas of your life

Attendees work through strategies for this in four areas: mental, physical, social, and environmental. Then they dive into powerful models for developing resilience in each of these areas.

Developing the levels of resilience for your workforce can be truly life changing for themselves and everyone around them. With the Genos facilitator, each person documents insights and builds an action plan to take back to their lives and workplace so they can start having a more positive impact immediately. It’s a comprehensive and enjoyable program to experience. Let me know if you’d like to learn more.

If you’re interested in hosting The Science of Well-Being Program in your organization, please contact Sherry@DutraAssociates.com.

Article in collaboration with Genos International Europe.

¹Peart, Natalia. “Making Work Less Stressful and More Engaging for Your Employees.” hbr.org, 5 Nov. 2019, hbr.org/2019/11/making-work-less-stressful-and-more-engaging-for-your-employees.com. Accessed 30 Nov. 2021.