Mental Health Support in the Workplace

Between a global pandemic, political strife, social unrest, school from home, our workforce is understandably stressed. The uncertainty all around us can lead to stress and anxiety. It may not be consistent, but it could be. It may come in rolling waves, or devastating tsunamis.

Leaders who operate small businesses a year ago may not have thought that workplace mental health would be a top priority. In 2021, these same leaders are seeking resources for their workforce. I’m fielding questions, can we provide mental health counselors to our workforce after a crisis? Or, what professional development workshops should we bring to our workforce to counteract external stress? These questions, or similar, are coming up weekly and have created an urgency to write this blog article. 

Setting a steady foundation for your workplace by using these five methods below can help empower, engage, and stabilize your workforce.   

Five things small businesses can do to support the mental health of their workforce:

1. Provide and promote your Employee Assistance Program (EAP). If an EAP is not part of your benefits package, add this benefit immediately. An EAP allows employees to call a 1-800 number or website to get assistance in various areas from mental health, finances, seeking legal help, etc. If you have an Employee Assistance Program be sure that the number is easily available to your workforce (and their family members). Promote your EAP regularly in newsletters, on your intranet, benefit handouts, etc. If your employee is in the midst of a personal or family crisis, make it seamless for them to find this information.  

2. Utilize an outside mental health professional to facilitate Well-Being Training for your workforce. Many times this can be coordinated through the Employee Assistance Program. Depending on the needs of your particular group, this could include tips and strategies to manage stress, disconnection, loneliness, or even anxiety. Hosting a training like this tells your workforce that their well-being is important and right now many people can benefit from that message and practical application.

3. Ensure that your managers have regular 1:1 meetings with each of their direct reports. These meetings are critical for workplace productivity, employee engagement and can even help with well-being if managers are skilled at providing space to employees. If you’re unsure how to facilitate 1:1 meetings here is a useful episode from Michael Hyatt’s Lead to Win podcast, episode #98 How to do one-on-one’s.

4. Give your workforce a break. Lay off just a little on production goals and focus on what’s going right for your individuals, team, and workplace. 

5. Provide appreciation to your team members for the work that they are doing. A study of over 100,000 employees found that 47% of people report that Words of Appreciation is their primary way they like to be appreciated, followed by Quality Time, Acts of Service, and Gifts (Emerald Publishing, 2017). Speak to your employees in their own language of appreciation to get the biggest return on your investment. Note: Want to learn more about the language of appreciation? See training opportunities here; Appreciation at Work, What motivates your team members? 

How can small businesses support their employees’ mental health?

What tactics are you utilizing to support mental health in the workplace this year? Please share in the comments below.

Dearest Clients, Readers, and those just passing by,

The last few months in small business HR have been fast-paced in terms of changing workplace dynamics and a huge, HUGE, growth mindset around racial equality.  Collectively we have a tremendous amount to learn. As a consultant, entrepreneur, and mom I am learning just as fast as I can. 

If you're like most of my small business clients you believe in and support the Black Lives Matter movement and seek to find racial equality in your workplace but feel paralyzed about how you and your small business can or should support, react, be an ally to, and advocate. I've navigated these conversations with several clients and one thing that is abundantly clear is that doing nothing, being a late adopter is not an option. I think that the sky's the limit in terms of growth and that this is not a one-time, trendy fix. Having a growth mindset is imperative for small businesses. Here are five steps small businesses can do to support racial equality in the workplace.

1. Communicate to your team members and perhaps even your clients your stance on racial equality in the workplace. Here are examples from Barre3, Ben and Jerry’s, and Chipotle.

2. Adopt a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policy that will create cultural shifts to ensure equality for all in your workplace. Evaluate your workplace policies and practices and critique your unconscious bias. Specifically look for opportunities to improve in the areas of recruitment, training, professional development, employee relations, performance management. Perhaps develop a committee of teammates to help provide insights and reduce unconscious bias during your evaluation. MacArthur Foundation has a stellar example of their DEI policy and work.  

3. Invest in training for your workplace. Franklin Covey has a solid resource offered on-demand on Unconscious Bias. Note; I have no affiliation with Franklin Covey, I simply admire their work and this program. 

4. Seek feedback from your workplace. Allowing your workforce to provide feedback to you anonymously will help you understand opportunities for improvement and allows for the individual teammates to feel protected. Resources that may be helpful include; ThoughtExchange, Officevibe, TinyPulse (again, no affiliation).

5. Don’t be silent. Most likely your workforce is waiting to hear your response to the unveiling of racial inequality in the United States. Your silence speaks volumes. Take a proactive, thoughtful approach by communicating the value that each of your team members brings to the workplace (past, present, and future) regardless of their race, gender, LGBTQ+ status. Communicating your stance is crucial to creating equality, and a sense of belonging, for all people in your workplace.

We all have work to do in the areas of bias and workplace equality whether you’re a beginner or you have been studying this for years EVERY ONE OF US IS LEARNING. Coming at this with a growth mindset, even a beginner growth mindset, is fantastic. This article from Lattice gives examples of how bias exists in recruiting, promotion, and even simply listening to ideas: How to Reduce Unconscious Bias at Work. You may also want to watch this TedTalk that has a great exercise at the beginning that highlights some of our biases. Both of these free resources would be appropriate to share with your leadership team and even your workforce as you begin to approach educating and unraveling unconscious bias in your small business.

What obstacles have you encountered in your workplace? I feel strongly that the obstacles are our greatest opportunities. Change is happening at lightning speed and it’s the best time in my career for our work cultures to grow.

Also, what ideas have you implemented, or has your workplace implemented that feel like a step in the right direction?

I look forward to hearing from you about your thoughts, comments, or questions.

Humbly learning with each of you.

Amy McGeachy

Early last year, a client came to me with difficulty retaining talent, a high turnover rate, and overall a feeling of employee disengagement. They were not using tools to measure or collect data about engagement. Based on both intuition, turnover numbers, and an HR Audit (including interviews with employees) we had enough touchpoints to develop a strong understanding that the workforce was disengaged. Anytime a workforce is disengaged business leaders should be worried about employee retention and its opposite, employee turnover.

The cost of turnover

It might be important to note that turnover has enormous ripple effects on a business. It takes time to recruit new team members, train new hires, and get them to their most productive state. A business that has high turnover is almost never fully effective because they have too many team members who are not working at complete capacity. The toll turnover takes on existing staff can be suffocating in terms of the workload. 

You can quickly understand this if you imagine a restaurant; consider the plight of a micro restaurant that has a server, cook, and a dishwasher. What if their turnover rate is 33% and their dishwasher has quit. That leaves the cook and server to manage the entire restaurant until a new dishwasher can be hired and properly onboarded to full productivity. The cook and server might be able to manage this for a short time period however, it will take a toll, cause them to work more during their shift, not be as focused on their customers and they might even drop the ball more often. This results in long wait times, orders that are inaccurate, unhappy customers, and exhausted, overworked employees. This example translates to other businesses too but the chaos may not be as obvious to leaders or clients.

The national average for turnover in 2019 according to Salary.com was 19.3% across all industries. That means that 80.7% of the workforce remains in place over the period of time that is measured; a month, a quarter, a year. The opposite of turnover is retention, ideally, a business would have a retention rate of 80.7% or better (some turnover is healthy). If it’s lower than 80.7% it can cause issues with productivity and overall well-being of the workforce. Also, understand that turnover can vary by industry and it might be helpful to understand the turnover rate in your particular industry. 

Why is it important to measure turnover and retention?

If your small business is experiencing heavy workloads, unsatisfied employees, perhaps a lack of engagement, a good place to start is to examine your turnover and retention rates. Conversely, if things are going really well at your business it might be that your workforce is fully productive and your retention rate is excellent. A positive retention rate is an attractive number to share with potential new hires, investors, and business collaborators. This will give you the data to help understand the dynamics of your workforce as opposed to going off of intuition or a hunch. A good best practice for small businesses is to track this quarterly and annually. 

Taking action to overcome problems with your small business employee turnover

Last year my client implemented an employee engagement tool that measured both eNPS (employee net promoter score) and employee engagement. Having new knowledge of live data (it was a weekly tool) helped this business understand their areas of opportunity and slowly, over the next 12 months, they were able to deliberately make decisions, implement new tools, policies, and a mindset of employee value and development, that has changed their workforce. Employee retention is up by 34.3%, employee engagement has consistently shown improvement and is currently up by 10%, and the eNPS has improved by 46 points all in a 12 month period.  

“Employee retention improved by 34.3%, employee engagement improved by 10%, and the eNPS improved by 46 points. Employee engagement tools are a great resource to help impact employee retention for small businesses.”

The eNPS score has been the last target we have tried to impact and largely this is just getting started. However, by changing many of the other behaviors and tools it has had an impact on eNPS.

These improvements are not by accident or good fortune. Using tools to understand your workforce can help provide information and data so that you know exactly where to invest. In this situation, a combination of an HR Audit, utilizing an employee engagement tool*, and effective leadership had a profound change on the retention rate and overall employee engagement.

If retention and workforce uncertainty keep you up at night, let’s fix that. Contact Amy.

* Examples include; TinyPulse, Officevibe, 15Five, CultureAmp to give you a few examples. McGeachy Consulting has no affiliation with any of these companies.

Amy McGeachy, PHR, SHRM-CP

HR Consultant to small and medium sized businesses in Oregon and Washington.

Amy McGeachy is an HR Consultant and the Founder of The Exceptional Workplace, a newsletter to help small business leaders stay focus on proactive HR and People Practices. Never miss an issue - join HERE.

Dear Small Business Clients,

I am here for you!

These are complex times to be an employer. Making decisions about furloughs, layoffs, or business viability are emotionally taxing. Having helped some of you with these decisions, I’ve been in the trenches and feel some of that burden. The effects of COVID-19 not only impact your business but your workforce, individual team members, and their families. I’ve also been helping small business clients develop and roll out a new Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) policy to guide them through these various leave situations. There are a lot of scenarios to consider between federal and state leave laws.

You, my clients, have largely focused on a balance between business viability with what's in the best interest of your workforce. What amazing humans you are to consider the whole during these stressful circumstances. I am encouraged by this level of leadership despite your heavy burden.

Federal FFCRA Paid Sick and Family Leave Policies effective April 1st.

The federal government legislated new leave policies that go into effect April 1st (tomorrow as of this post). This gives small businesses very little time to understand, prepare, and communicate about the new leave to their employees. I get that you are under a significant time crunch. 

The Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) for which I am a member and certified professional developed a comprehensive policy for employers. I’ve customized this policy for clients, and I’m happy to jump in and help you too. The important thing is that you read the law, understand what it is asking of you as an employer, and communicate it to your workforce ASAP. Like all employment policies, you will need to follow the policy once you roll it out. Employers are accountable to this new legislation beginning April 1st. 

To do: 

• Develop a Families First Coronavirus Response Act policy. Contact me if you need help or a template to get you started.

• Develop a pay code to track time for Emergency Paid Sick Time and ideally a separate one for Paid Family Leave. These codes will help you recoup the time in the form of a tax credit.

• Post the Employee Rights poster in your workplace (break room/copy room) when you return to your office. In the meantime, digitally share (email is acceptable) this poster to your workforce along with your updated policy.

• Review your states' COVID-19 Scenarios and Benefits Available poster. Washington (updated 3/26/2020) and Oregon (updated 3/23/2020). 

Additional Resources:

• Department of Labor FFCRA Q&A  

• Department of Labor FFCRA Employee Paid Leave Rights 

• Department of Labor FFCRA Employer Paid Leave Requirements

• Department of Labor COVID-19 and the American Workforce website 

Please reach out via email or phone if you have questions or need clarity, email or direct at 360-991-5727.

Stay healthy and safe!

Amy McGeachy, PHR, SHRM-CP

HR Consultant to Small and Medium-sized Businesses

Does your jurisdiction have a salary history ban?
A number of states and several municipalities have passed laws banning employers from asking candidates about their past compensation. When I first heard this ban was coming I was puzzled by how employers would attract top talent fairly without this knowledge. I have spent a considerable part of my career conducting senior and executive level searches for clients. Compensation is one of the most common ways to lure a candidate away from their current opportunity. Without that knowledge, it feels a little bit like shooting at a dartboard in the dark hoping you have the right compensation range to attract A+ talent to your organization.

Check your state or local municipality here.

Why the change?
Pay equity. If you flip the issue upside down, states have determined that employers are unknowingly perpetuating the issue of pay equity by asking a candidate's salary, learning that it’s perhaps low and then offering them just enough to attract the candidate to make a career move. In this situation, you have an employee that’s being paid lower than the salary range and lower than their peers in the same job. Research tells us that this typically happens to women and the result is the gender pay gap.

Recruiter Stacey Moore says, “Overall I like the change and see the benefit for creating pay equity.” It has not been an easy change for people involved in recruiting and selecting talent and Stacey recommends that employers continue to educate their hiring managers, recruiters, and anyone involved in the recruitment process.

What’s the remedy?  
The best practice that we recommend to clients is to explain the pay range to candidates during the phone interview, such as disclosing that a position pays in a range between $70,000 and $85,000. You might also ask if that range would meet the candidate's salary expectations.

What to do if an employee volunteers their compensation?
If you write it down, make note that the information was volunteered by the candidate without prompting. Remind the candidate that you can’t consider past compensation as part of the process (or specifically educate them about the Salary History Ban if it applies in your jurisdiction).

Is it awkward?
At first, yes! Will we someday look back at the past decades where we asked for salary history and think that it contributed to the overall wage gap? I believe we will.

What are your thoughts? How is this working in your business? Please add your comment below.

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Amy McGeachy is an HR Consultant and the Founder of The Exceptional Workplace, a newsletter to help small business leaders stay focus on proactive HR and People Practices. Never miss an issue - join HERE.

Should small business owners care about the wellness or the well-being of their employees?

Yes.

In 2019, wellness and well-being are as much a part of the workplace as healthcare benefits and paid time off. Employers range from caring about wellness all the way to implementing a full wellness program. The range of options is huge.

Employers have learned that by caring about wellness they get a positive ROI in terms of productivity and engagement. It looks and feels different in each business from a small change to a full wellness program.

Adding a wellness program to your small business culture can literally save money. In a survey by SFM they found that “60% of employers said their workplace wellness programs reduced their organization's healthcare costs”.

Workplace wellness can really pay off

20 ways to add wellness to your small business

20 Ways to add Employee Wellness to your Small Business

1. Ensure that employees take breaks. This one sounds simpler than it really is but give employees a good reason to take a break from work.

2. Take a walking 1:1.

3. Sign up for a team 5K event.

4. Add a fruit bowl to your employee breakroom.

5. Encourage your team, or even set up a policy, to not send emails 24 hours a day. Check out this policy by Vynamic (healthcare industry management consultants) about zzzMail.

6. Add fresh water infused with cucumber, mint or strawberry to your employee breakroom.

7. Host an office ‘step challenge’.

8. Offer flexible schedules.

9. Add standing desks to the office.

10. Create a treadmill desk workstation that anyone can use.

11. Volunteer at a local running event (with your families).

12. Add a mindfulness activity to the start of your team meetings. As silly as this sounds, you will thank me for this as it changes the mindset and pace of your meeting.

13. Invite a yoga instructor to conduct a lunch time yoga class for your team.

14. Implement a ‘bring your well-behaved dog to work’ policy.

15. Invite a massage therapist to offer 15-minute chair massages for your team.

16. Add an Employee Assistance Program to your benefits.

17. Take a hike with your team for your next off-site or team builder.

18. Encourage your team to take mid-day exercise classes (together!)

19. Offer to pay for employees’ gym membership as part of their employee perks or (up to a certain dollar amount).

20. Lead by example. If the leader has a healthy work-life that translates to the workplace culture. Empower leaders to model a healthy balance.

How has adding a wellness focus or program to your small business made an impact? Please share via the comments section below.

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Are you looking for ways to retain the great employees you already have? Check out our post on what you need to know about your employees if you want to keep them around.

Are you looking to retain the great employees you already have?

According to the research conducted by Gary Chapman and Paul White the authors of The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace, people feel appreciated in 5 different categories: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Acts of Service, Tangible Gifts and Physical Touch (that last one is not appropriate for the workplace!). Given our workplace climate, we will focus on the first four. As you think about your workplace, showing your appreciation in a variety of forms will be the best way to reach your diverse team.

Employee Appreciation Day Formula --->

food + gift, act of service, or event + handwritten note of appreciation = employees who feel appreciated

Food:

• Lattes

• Specialty donuts

• Locally sourced bagels

• Healthy, delicious, catered lunch

Gift, Act of Service, or Event:

• Schedule a chair massage therapist to come to your office

• Car wash (or car wash gift card)

• Magazine subscription (how about Fast Company, Entrepreneur, Inc.?)

• A special book

• Bottle of wine

• Use chalk on the sidewalk outside your office to draw your appreciation: 'Our team ROCKS!' If your team is large, have a few of your leaders meet you early in the morning to help cover the sidewalk with appreciation of everyone on your team. You could even use alliteration to match the first letter of their first name with an adjective such as: Can-do Carly or Sales Slugger Sam.

Handwritten Note of Appreciation:

Write handwritten notes of appreciation for each person on your team.

Finally, it’s not about how significant your appreciation day events or gifts are, it’s how much love goes into the act of appreciating your team members. Something simple with buckets-full of appreciation can be magnificent.

Note: This post was originally shared in 2017. With a few covid modifications and creativity it can be used for this years planning. Enjoy!

Employer branding can help your business succeed with hiring qualified candidates. But, what is employer branding, exactly?

With unemployment currently at 3.9%, it's a tough market for hiring managers at the moment. As a result, you'll have to make your company as attractive as possible to find the best employees.

That's where branding comes in.

You've probably heard of branding as it relates to marketing. But what is employer branding and how can it help your business flourish?

Here's everything you'll need to know to establish your company as the perfect place to work.

What Is Employer Branding, Anyway?

If you ask 10 different companies to define employment branding, you're likely going to get 10 very different answers. For the sake of this post, however, we'll be using our own.

Employer branding is an umbrella term referring to a cluster of efforts by your company to establish and affirm an image of your workplace. Often, companies use marketing methods similar to those they'd use in an ad campaign.

For the time being, think of employment branding as any actions you take to highlight your business and showcase it to outside talent.

Examples of Employer Branding

Now, let's look at how a few major companies use branding to establish an identity.

Google

Google is an absolute master of branding. In fact, reading the brand's name likely conjured up images of the company's colorful logo.

Suffice to say, they're quite good at what they do, and that extends to their recruitment process.

Google's strategy is one so powerful, they subtly turned an entire film, The Internship, into one great big promotion highlighting their workforce.

Their strategy often relies on appearing down to earth, making them the fun place to work. From ping pong tables in the break room to gourmet food at the cafeteria, Google took the start-up approach to branding and made it mainstream.

Starbucks

From one monolith to the next, Starbucks also excels as branding. Though it doesn't have the backing of a movie starring Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, Starbucks' approach focuses on the employees.

In fact, Starbucks has one of the most competitive employee benefits packages out there.

The baristas who make your delicious beverage each day have access to health care, free online college, yearly raises, and even company stock. It's no wonder why the green siren's song is so alluring to talent!

Taco Bell

Though Taco Bell's internal branding strategy isn't as widespread or powerful as the two aforementioned companies, it's still quite impressive in its own right.

Taco Bell's main focus is employee retention, as highlighted in its 'Start with us stay with us' campaign, which sheds light on Yum! Brands' love of hiring from within.

It's a smart strategy, especially in an industry where turnover is notoriously high.

Why Does Company Branding Matter?

Now we know a bit more about employment branding. But does it matter as much as we're implying?

Absolutely, it does.

Let's say you're out of work and looking for a new job. As you begin your search you find yourself awash in a sea of companies that, frankly, all sound similar.

Then you come across an employer that stands above the rest. Their listing is fun, they talk about company culture, and they offer a competitive signing bonus and benefits package. In the span of a few moments, you've forgotten about every other application you sent out.

On the flip side, let's say you're an HR manager looking to make some changes to your company's hiring policies. Branding can benefit you, as well.

Better branding can decrease the amount of time you spend on the entire hiring process. And at the end of the day, you'll have the best hire, too.

Using Branding to Your Benefit

It's clear that branding should be a huge part of any company's strategy. But finding ways to create and implement that great image can be difficult unless you know how to effectively use your time, money, and efforts.

Here are a few of the most effective branding methods to try.

Employee Testimonials

You can try and convince talent that your company is great until you're blue in the face, but don't expect it to work. They'd much rather hear it from those who work for you.

Employee testimonials give an inside look at your business, showing would-be hires what your company stands for and what they can expect.

Start by asking employees what they love about your company and what it means to them. You can even use these testimonials as content. For instance, around Thanksgiving, you can publish an employee-driven post about what your team is most thankful for.

Highlight Office Culture

Office culture can make or break a company. If your workplace is drab and dreary, you can't expect much productivity or new hires.

Instead, show off how fun and vibrant your office and its staff are. Take some photos or videos of your office throughout the workday. You may also want to highlight the quiet, human moments between coworkers and the fun, bombastic atmosphere of an employee celebration.

Whatever the case, show off your office. As the saying goes, a picture is worth 1,000 words.

Offer a Competitive Benefits Package

As important as outside perception of your workplace is, you'll need more than that. Make sure you're prepared to offer a sufficient benefits package to your employees.

Go the extra mile for your employees, and they'll go the extra mile for you.

Include vision and dental, a 401k, and discounts at local retailers or a health club membership. Think about the types of fun, practical benefits you'd want. Chances are your employees would like them, too.

Master the Art of Storytelling

Finally, make your listings as compelling as possible. Tell a story about who you are as a brand and why new hires should take an interest in your company.

Use vivid, descriptive language. Highlight how exciting and important the position is. Be sure to mention any additional benefits or perks that come with the job.

Last Thoughts On The Significance Of Employer Branding

So, to wrap things up, what is employer branding?

It's a way to stand out from your competition. It's a way to attract the best talent around and encourage them to be successful within your company. Best of all, it's a way to grow your business while showing off the heart of your team.

We work with businesses like yours each day to help them find the tools they need to succeed in today's market.

If you're interested in learning more about how you can streamline common HR processes for your business, be sure to get in touch and ask about our services.

Earlier this summer I picked up the book Make Your Bed to read with my kids. It was a book I purchased on a whim at Target (hoping to inspire my kids!) written by Admiral (Navy Seal) William McRaven. It has a significant amount of leadership, personal fortitude, and integrity lessons throughout that are relevant to the workplace. The author told numerous stories that will stick with me. Most of the stories started with a lesson about himself as a Navy Seal trainee and then turned into a story about how someone else lived out the lesson. His style was humble even given his status as an Admiral.

We started reading it aloud chapter by chapter and it found its way on several road trips (a softball tournament, San Juans, the beach, Sunriver). With each chapter we had to stop and google information that was referenced including ‘hospital corners’ and what it means to a Navy Seal when they become a ‘sugar cookie’. We researched fascinating leaders, world history, and the rigors of becoming a Navy Seal — all while learning important life and leadership lessons.

It’s surely not your typical business book but the lessons and content are certainly relevant to people and workplaces.