7 Ways YOU can Stop Office Overwhelm and Increase Productivity
Right now, if you work in an MNC especially in Banking & Finance your people are overwhelmed and you most probably are too.
Changing this situation needs a top-down approach. So what can YOU do to reduce overwhelm both with your staff and yourself?
Deloitte’s published a report devoted to Employee Overwhelm in 2014 and if you are a leader, you really should read it. They found companies using innovative practices that you can adopt today and make a difference. There is a link to the Deloitte report at the bottom of this article
I have highlighted 7 approaches below and I also offer you my own experiences of deep overwhelm and the effects they have on self & family at the end of this article. I hope they help. The change starts with you.
1. Get input: Assess employees’ current workloads and what issues trouble them most. Rather than ask high-level engagement questions, survey them on their most “frustrating” work practices or systems.
Look at ways to outsource or insource repetitive, non-core tasks to free up employee time and energy. Pfizer developed a program called PfizerWorks that allows employees to off-load technical and administrative non-core tasks, such as statistical analysis, writing, and publishing. Scientists claim it saves months of time per year, allowing them to dedicate more time to strategic work and their scientific skills
2. Email free times. More and more companies are experimenting with “email free” times. Short times per day when you can actually concentrate on the task at hand without interruption.
3. Ask yourself, does everyone need to be online all day and night? Some executives now deliberately avoid sending emails at night or on weekends, sending a signal to the team that it is OK to disconnect and unwind.
I worked with a demanding highly senior HR person that would send you an email late at night with a question. When you replied she would follow it with another 2 questions. This would go on until the early hours. What is your practice?
As an aside, 99% of people I know have their emails set on auto-deliver. It is usually impossible to concentrate on your task when you see a little envelope at the bottom of your screen. It provokes your threat response. You need to open it and find out that everything is ok. This is your survival mechanism kicking in, only, you’re not wandering the savannah dodging lions anymore, you’re in a much more threatening environment. Your brain releases the same chemicals during workplace stress as it would if you were faced with physical threat. It doesn’t know the difference. Set your email to deliver every 30 mins – 1 hour and let me know how much more productive you are with less distraction.
4. Enforce guidelines on sending emails, holding meetings, and traveling—and educating staff in these areas. Meetings should be limited to 30 minutes, while the use of “cc” and “reply all” in emails should really be curtailed. How many times are your team distracted by emails that don’t practically concern them?
5. Delegate decision-making: Is it clear who makes decisions in your workgroup? Can people make their own decisions without involving many others or asking others for help? Push decisions down, and people’s lives can become easier.
One reason employees are so busy is they may be afraid to delegate tasks, while more and more employees view “being busy” as a badge of honor. How can you help this situation?
6. Be agile: Historically, managing time and information was viewed as an employee’s personal concern. If employees were overwhelmed, the thinking went, they were expected to fix it themselves—by taking a course in time management, for instance. Now, some employers are treating overload as a shared problem requiring a company response.
One strategy companies are following to help employees become more productive with their time is creating smaller, more agile teams. Under this system, teams are broken up into small groups that regularly hold short, face-to-face meetings.
Each day, these teams have daily “scrums” and “stand up meetings.” These events last no longer than 15 minutes, forcing people to rapidly discuss issues, resolve problems, and get back to work.
7. Lead through example: Change is often most powerful when it comes from the top. Leaders should have, and should grant themselves—permission to take these steps, setting an example to help their employees deal with being overwhelmed.
Don’t just take it from me; this is the summary of the Deloitte report:
“Companies need to recognize that the overwhelmed, hyper-connected employee is a business concern. As employees become more connected and messages and information proliferate, it is increasingly important for employers to develop standards, principles, and technologies that simplify work. The opportunity for business and HR leaders is to find ways to make information easier to find, simplify processes and systems, keep teams small, and make sure leaders provide focus. The result will likely be improved employee satisfaction, teamwork, and productivity.”
My own experience with overwhelm.
I spent years in banks through the crisis and beyond, working in a complete state of overwhelm with hundreds of colleagues also in a state of overwhelm. To admit being overwhelmed was a clear signal to management that you were weak and as I heard many times “everyone is replaceable”. Everyone was. Within 14 months 3 different people held the Global CEO role.
At one bank I was hiring nearly 60 senior roles for 45 different leaders and was refused any recruiter support due to headcount restrictions. I was reading over 250 CVs per day, receiving over 300 emails per day incl CCs, Reply to Alls and FYIs and requests for up to 10 meetings a day. This is the extreme end of overwhelm.
9 months later, working 15-hour days to satisfy over 60 different stakeholders I finally broke. Walking along a busy Hong Kong Street, lost in thought, my chest suddenly tightened, muscles spasmed, I couldn’t get my breath. This definitely was a new sensation and I fell to my knees. It wasn’t a good day to die; I’d a meeting with the Head of Legal in 15 minutes! I thought it was a heart attack but luckily found it was just a massive anxiety attack. But what a signal!
My health was in decline, I looked like Jabba the Hut’s little brother and I had missed the first 12 months of my first child’s life. What a terrible father I’d become!
This is an extreme case but I didn’t learn. I walked straight into another overwhelming role and missed the first 12-months of my second child’s life.
I’m fortunate to have turned this around, but I know hundreds of people in the same position I was then. They proudly wear the statement “I’m Busy” as a badge of pride. Truth be known they are deeply unhappy people and this is a situation that’s getting worse, not better.
I’m writing this in the hope that you can see that there’s no shame in admitting you are overwhelmed. All your colleagues will likely be too. It’s time to change, but it starts with you.
The original Deloitte article written by Tom Hodson, Jeff Schwartz, Ardie van Berkel & Ian Winstrom Otten can be found here: http://dupress.com/articles/hc-trends-2014-overwhelmed-employee/
Denis Miles-Vinall is an Executive Coach and interpersonal skills trainer and CEO of The Buckingham Academy, based in Hong Kong. He specializes in Professional Presence, Leadership and Sales. He’s also a devoted family man with a penchant for extreme sports, barefoot waterskiing, freediving and skydiving. He’s a Typhoon Yolanda survivor, which left him with a wholly different lens on the world.