The Institute for Experiential Learning recently sat down with ERC's Director of Research & Women's Leadership Institute, Kathleen Buse, to get her take on women in the workplace. In this article, also published below, Kathleen discusses what females and organizations can do to overcome unconscious bias, increase gender diversity, and improve overall company performance.

Gender diversity is a driver for success, reports Turban, Wu and Zhang in Harvard Business Review.  If this is true, why are women under-represented in some STEM professions?  To answer this question, we consulted with Kathleen Buse, PhD, Director, Women’s Leadership Institute at ERC.  Kathleen has made it her business to research how organizations can recruit, retain, and advance women, especially in STEM professions.  As an engineer and leader, she uses her own experience to inform her research and practice.

Kathleen reports that, despite progress in many professions, women remain severely under-represented in leadership (e.g. women comprise 5% of S&P CEO’s) and in critical professions (e.g. women comprise 12% of professional engineers) and industries (e.g. women comprise 33% of the manufacturing workforce).

Businesses pay for this in both overall business results and increased recruiting costs. Under Kathleen’s direction, the Women’s Leadership Institute at ERC advocates for, and empowers women to achieve in these capacities, ones that have been described as difficult.

Leveraging the latest research, the ERC provides professional and leadership development to help women understand the bias and barriers they face and what they can do to eliminate them. They also help leaders in organizations understand why they are falling short and how they can take action to increase gender diversity across roles.

One key action is to develop a critical mass of women (greater than 30% of an organization or more than 3 people in a small group) so that their opinions are not minimized or their experiences undervalued.

Kathleen believes it is important to translate well-documented academic research into practical strategies that women use to overcome the barriers and to achieve their goals. For example, her research revealed how unconscious bias in organizational practices inadvertently lead to the promotion of male candidates over equally qualified or even better qualified female candidates.

The ERC Women’s Leadership Institute program demonstrates that once women understand how the bias manifests in organizational practices, they are self-motivated to change these practices.  In addition, women who understand the bias and barriers help both men and women recognize and overcome bias in decision-making.

One of the outstanding characteristics of the women who participate in the leadership development programs at the Women’s Leadership Institute at ERC is that they are life-long learners. They increase their self-awareness and expand the choices they view as possible.  For instance, over 40% of the women who attended one leadership development program initiated promotions for themselves within one year.

Learning is essential to empower women to achieve in leadership positions and in non-traditional roles. Kathleen’s work shows that individual and organizations willing to learn are those that are mostly like to recruit, retain, and advance women—and to be more successful in the marketplace.

Listen to the interview with Kathleen Buse as she tells about her history, research, her learning style preferences, and ways she continues to learn.

ERC is excited to have been a resource for this Wall Street Journal article, alongside LinkedIn, Indeed, Gartner, Korn Ferry, and the Wharton School! Thank you to WSJ editor Gerard Yates for inviting us.

Get Recognized as a Great Northeast Ohio Workplace for Top Talent

ERC is excited to announce the launch of our 21st annual NorthCoast 99 award! The 2019 application is open now through April 26.

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The Value of Applying

• Find out what drives your organization's top performers
• Be branded as a great Northeast Ohio workplace for top talent
• Benchmark your company's performance with other top local workplaces

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Thank You, Sponsors!
The 2019 NorthCoast 99 event is made possible with the generous support of our sponsors.

As HR leaders and professionals continue to fight for (and maintain) their seat at the table, it’s important to move beyond just being an expert into a role of being a trusted advisor to the organization.

Do you currently have an employee who has one foot out the door? There are endless reasons for voluntary turnover, and data from ERC's 2018 NorthCoast 99 Top Performer Survey specifically identifies four of the most commonly cited sources of disengagement.

Employees are likely to chase after new advancement opportunities and more competitive compensation, while fleeing from a lack of flexibility and a lack of organizational support.

Once employees become disengaged, it can be a struggle to change their minds in a way that makes them want to stay.

Consider the following 4 ideas to re-engage those employees who could be on their way out.

1. Keep Lines of Communication Open

If regular employee-manager conversations don’t occur, you might find yourself quite surprised when you hear a top performer express intentions of leaving the company. Listen to all concerns intently and take them seriously. Consider preventive measures such as conducting regular “stay” interviews or employee engagement pulse surveys. Keeping your employees engaged requires continuous communication.

By maintaining an awareness of how your people are doing and how they feel about their work and roles in the organization, there will be more time and opportunity to engage your talent base.

It could be easier to remedy employee issues as they come to surface, rather than continuously cycling through the talent attraction and hiring process as a result of turnover.

2. Get Them “Un-stuck”

Give disengaged employees somewhere to go within the company. When you give them the opportunity to re-engage they feel less inclined to take their talent and knowledge elsewhere. Advancement opportunities allow top performers to feel continuously challenged and in charge of their learning, which not only serves to fulfill their needs for growth, but also benefits an organization’s competitive advantage.

Take note of the knowledge, skills, and unique attributes your organizational talent pool consists of, and figure out how you can better utilize your employees’ capabilities.

When they feel ready to move on to an external opportunity, offer to move these individuals into a new set of responsibilities in which they can flourish. And when you add new work to their plate, make sure their compensation is adjusted accordingly.  Having a talent-management system in place can facilitate this process. (Ultimate Software is an ERC Preferred Partner offering succession planning and talent development services.)

3. Recognize and Reward

A number of employees could be on their way out because they feel unappreciated for their efforts, and are no longer motivated to work for an organization that doesn’t recognize their contributions.

While no employee is likely to turn down a bonus for a job-well-done, money alone is not an effective long-term motivator. 

Showing appreciation can take on many forms, such as giving public recognition during staff meetings or interoffice email, awarding extra paid time off, or giving employees the chance to work on challenging projects that provide more work autonomy.

4. Support Work-Life Balance

If organizational policy is rigid and forces individuals to choose between work and family, employees will likely recognize that they have options that will better suit their needs (that don’t include their current employer).

Granting employees more robust benefits such as flexible work schedules, generous parental leave, telecommuting opportunities, and unlimited bereavement leave, is a way to communicate to employees that you recognize they are holistic humans and not productivity machines.

Don’t lose your best people to the competition by hanging on to traditional workplace practices that hold them back from living an enjoyable life.

In the end, if you feel unwilling to put in the effort required to re-engage departing employees, consider whether you can truly afford to lose this talent and adjust accordingly.

Culture is the character and personality of your organization. It's what makes your business unique and is the sum of its values, traditions, beliefs, interactions, behaviors, and attitudes.

Whether you work for a Fortune 500 company or a small mom-and-pop machine shop, chances are performance reviews aren’t very high up on the list of your employee’s favorite things to do at work. Whatever the shortfalls, perceived or real, of the performance management process at your organization, the angst around reviews is only magnified when working through the process with employees who receive less than stellar ratings.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to manage ourselves and our relationships effectively. Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is also an important indicator when it comes to performance prediction. EQ is responsible for 58% of your performance (Travis Bradberry).

One week into a new year and you are probably already sick and tired of hearing about the latest diet trend or exercise regimen that is “guaranteed” to make your New Year’s resolution to “get healthy” stick this time around.

Most medical professionals will tell you that (unfortunately) there is no silver bullet to a “healthier you”, and as it turns out, a good old fashioned healthy diet and consistent exercise routine tends to be just what the doctor ordered.

So what does all this talk about New Year’s resolutions have to do with HR and building great workplaces here in Northeast Ohio?

Well according to ERC’s 2015 Wellness Practices Survey, at three-quarters of local organizations, the connection is their formal wellness program. Take the analogy one step further, and you’ll quickly discover that wellness programs often suffer from the same plight as New Year’s resolutions—the best of intentions, but lacking in follow-through when it comes time for implementation. Despite becoming an almost standard benefit at many employers over the last several years, some wellness programs and individual wellness focused activities are now suffering from a lack of participation and interest on the part of the employees.

In fact participants in both the 2013 and 2015 ERC Wellness Surveys cited “effectively educating and incentivizing employees to participate in wellness programs” as the most common barrier to creating a successful wellness program at their organization.

To help both employers and employees make the most of what can be and should be an important piece of overall employee wellbeing, participating organizations in ERC’s Wellness Surveys offered the following advice on creating (or reinvigorating) a successful wellness program.

1. Offer wellness activities/programs that employees find useful.

This particular struggle is most easily addressed if met head-on at the program’s inception and can be as simple as a survey of employee’s interests in a list of potential activities under consideration. Understanding the basic demographics of your workforce can also help inform what types of programs make the cut. Gender, age, shift work (who will actually be around if you are offering programs on-site during the day), etc. are all useful statistics to consider, but don’t get too overzealous and start trying to dig into specific health related needs—HIPPA can get messy quickly.

By starting out with wellness activities that employees want to take part in, you are already ahead of the curve.

But don’t worry if you already have a program in place, it’s not too late to start taking your employee’s interests into account. In fact, a quick survey of your employees every couple of years to make sure the programming is still relevant isn’t a bad idea either.

2. Make the programming accessible—both geographically and intellectually.

If your organization is on the larger side or draws employees from a diverse geographic footprint, make sure the activities are easily accessible to as many individual employees as possible. Your employees are probably juggling a family life, the stress of work, and any number of other time intensive activities.

In short, their time is valuable, so partnering with a gym with only one location far on one side of town may not see the best results. Instead, consider offering reimbursement for a gym of the employee’s choosing or make the investment in an on-site gym or fitness classes.

Online programming can be an easy option, but make sure it is providing useful information that isn’t too overwhelming or too basic. One the one hand if the online articles, tracking mechanism, or lectures are overly technical and scientific employees might be turned off, but by the same token presenting overly simplistic information won’t do your employees any good either.

3. Use the resources you already have.

Many health insurance packages include an array of free resources that you the employer can pass along to your employees. All you have to do as the employer is promote them. But that is sometimes easier said than done—now someone has to be tasked with sending out the email reminders or monthly newsletters to help get employees on board. If financial resources are not available to create a new position (e.g. Wellness Coordinator) delegation or committee work can be helpful in prevent overloading a single individual with wellness related administrative tasks. Of course if all else fails, and you are determined to create a robust, successful wellness program, just ask for help. You may find that you have a multi-talented staff that is more than willing to share their kick-boxing expertise or vegan baking skills with their co-workers.

4. Get full buy-in on all levels.

As with most new initiatives, it is critical to get the full support of the top management team. Buy-in from the top can definitely be helpful when budget season rolls around, but when it comes to wellness programs, a more visible buy-in can be hugely helpful as well. Having the CEO out there trying to get to his or her 10,000 steps during lunch can be a great motivator and even a fun way for employees to interact casually with other employees that they may not typically encounter on a day-to-day basis. And of course keep in mind that the importance of buy-in goes beyond these specific activities to the bigger picture of what you are trying to achieve with your wellness program. If your end goal is to fully indoctrinate your organization with a culture of wellness, engaging employees at all levels is particularly important.

5. Incentivize, when you can.

Even with all the struggles and barriers to participation discussed above, many organizations are running very successful wellness programs. If better health isn’t enough of a motivator, money is bound to do the trick. Keep in mind that there are specific limitations as to how much and how the monies are distributed for each individual and for different types of activities. Cost can also be a strong disincentive against certain behaviors, most notably tobacco usage. The Affordable Care Act provides a detailed breakdown of allowable incentives and disincentives should you choose to go down the path of incentivizing your wellness program. If you aren’t quite ready for the monetary commitment, remember that food or other small non-monetary incentives can help improve the effectiveness of your programming by bolstering attendance at lectures or participation in fitness challenges.

Much like the New Year’s resolution you made a week ago, setting your organization’s wellness program up for success can seem overwhelming. But with the help of the advice above and a little extra hard work and perseverance in 2016, you too can get to the gym 4 days a week and get your employees to show up for the nutritionist you’ve booked for that lunch-n-learn next month.

A new year brings New Year's Resolutions. The most common personal resolutions are to be more health conscious, work out more, and spend more time with friends and family. But what about your professional life?