Posted May 18th, 2022

Leaders might assume that because their employees aren’t complaining, they must be content. They may actually be struggling or want to suggest something but are too afraid to speak up. 

Why are employees keeping quiet? Fear of job loss, reputational damage, and organizational ineffectualness are just some explanations.

This post discusses issues employees keep mum on, from taking mental health days to voicing new ideas. We also include recent data points on what’s concerning employees and why they don’t verbalize them.   

1. Taking time off for mental health.

Sixty-two percent of employees worry their boss will judge them for taking mental health days, according to Forbes. The pandemic shined a spotlight on nurturing mental health, both in and out of the workplace. Yet:

• Over half of survey respondents felt that their employer would think they were unable to perform their job if they requested time off for mental health.
•  Seven in 10 said they’d rather take a whole day off than just a few hours to avoid telling their supervisor why they’re taking the time.
• Sixty percent worried about their privacy while seeking mental health care virtually.

Multiple organizations are gradually instituting time-off periods for mental health—from Cisco to Starbucks to Google. As a whole, though, there’s still a long way to go for companies to provide relevant resources and adequate time off for employees to take care of themselves.

2. Their identity.

Four in ten LGBTQ employees say they aren’t fully out at work, says CBS News and Glassdoor. The fact that more than 50 percent of LGBTQ workers say that they’ve experienced or witnessed anti-LGBTQ comments from coworkers is likely a huge driving factor.

Half of those surveyed said their fears about expressing their identity were:  

• Hurting their career prospects
• Being passed over for a promotion
• Losing their jobs entirely.

However, if employers let their employees bring their full selves to work, employees would be much happier and more engaged. 

“Employers want to fuel their businesses for financial success, and you need quality talent to do that. If they don’t show the LGBTQ community support, their companies are missing out on great talent.”

Scott Dobrowski, Senior Director of Corporate Communications at Glassdoor

3. Unhappiness with their manager.

In 2022, more than 75 percent of employees report they’re frustrated with their manager, says a new study from Real Estate Witch. The biggest manager-related aggravations were:

• Unclear communication
• Micromanagement
• Favoritism of other employees

Additionally, one in five workers (20%) say their managers negatively affect their confidence and self-esteem during performance reviews. 

One strategy to improve your happiness with your manager is to bring up one constructive suggestion and solution at a time, de-personalizing it as much as possible. For example, if they’re reluctant to let you work from home or use a hybrid style, speak with them about how much more productive you are without a daily commute. Suggest a trial period and demonstrate your effectiveness during that time.

4. Workplace bullying and harassment.

Think more open discussions about mental health and discrimination have mitigated workplace bullying? Not exactly. Remote work may have made it easier for colleagues to harass their comments. 

“Harassment and hostility have moved from physical and in-person actions to online and technology-based forms. They range from public bullying attacks on group video calls to berating employees over email to racist and sexist link-sharing in chat and more.”

Ellen Pao, CEO of Project Interlude, to FastCompany

Now that remote and hybrid work is omnipresent, organizations need to develop policies and plans specifically for curtailing virtual bullying and harassment.  

5. New ideas.

While companies claim they encourage innovation, employees don’t feel like they can voice new ideas. Why? According to the UNC Social Research Lab: 

• 56 percent of employees withhold ideas out of concern they won’t get credit.
• 40 percent say they don’t feel confident enough to share ideas. 
• 50 percent say they won’t be taken seriously. 

Cognitive diversity is what will propel organizations. Everyone  That starts with creating a culture of feedback that encourages employees to bring new ideas to the table. 

Of course, it’s easy to tell employees to suggest new ideas and not as easy to make sure they’re set into motion. Devise a system or strategy to nurture ideas and make them actionable. Anonomyizing suggestions will assuage fears about confidentiality and make employees feel comfortable submitting new ideas.

Weave feedback into your company’s DNA

Your employees are the heartbeat of your organization. If they’re afraid or discouraged to speak up about their concerns, they’ll find another organization where they can. Organizations need to find ways to encourage employee feedback and engagement and use it to advance the organization.

Use technology to help you. The importance of collecting anonymous employee feedback is what drove us to create Incogneato, a secure, anonymous online suggestion box. 

Want more details? Reach out to one of us here.

Posted September 28th, 2021

Working remotely isn’t new. The Basecamp folks wrote a book about it in 2013, but even before that many were already working away from a central office. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies were moving to a workforce that was distributed across the country or even the world. Some of the reasons include access to additional talent, reducing labor costs, and providing freedom for employees to work where they choose. 

Why might you want to embrace a distributed workforce? Matt Mullenweg of Automatic (WordPress) lays out out a few reasons in this short video:

So yes, distributed work is here to stay whether or not your company embraces it or struggles with it. At Incogneato we have decades of experience working on remote teams and during that time, we’ve collected some tips and tricks to share with you. There are many ways to embrace a remote workforce but we think these five will be the most impactful. 

1. Foster a culture of trust.

Many companies are going to an unlimited (or more accurately non-tracked) vacation policy. Rather than limiting how much time employees can take off, they trust employees to take however much time they want while considering their tasks and responsibilities. This sort of policy eliminates the need for time-consuming tracking and accrual practices and sets the stage for a relationship built upon trust. 

Likewise, remote work policies should be trust-based. Trust-building starts in the recruiting and hiring stage and continues indefinitely. Interviewers and hiring managers should stress what will be expected of new hires and candidates should be selected based upon self-direction and maturity. 

Managers should be hesitant to micromanage employees, and trust that they will accomplish what was jointly agreed to. Communication should be honest and transparent and you should make time to get to know each other.

4. Make Time Together

Making time to be together: If possible you should establish “together hours” where 50+% of the team is expected to be online and working together. According to Harvard Business Review “teams had on average 7+ hours in the workday during which more than half the team was consistently online. Those hours are also when you should schedule business processes that benefit from having greater team overlap—as well as making and communicating decisions that affect the entire group.”

But regular check-ins between managers and direct reports, standing meetings with cross-functional project teams, and time for social interactions with subjects that fall outside of work topics and duties should be prioritized. 

Even if your workforce is mostly remote, it can be extremely valuable to also occasionally come together physically. Planning one or two annual meetings where everyone travels to a single location to accomplish business and social objectives will be important for effective distributed teams. 

3. Provide the tools your remote team needs. 

Don’t skimp here. The productivity of your remote employees (and thus your company) depends upon having the right tools in place. These tools consist of both software and hardware and can often be facilitated by listing preferred solutions and required applications and by providing a stipend for your  remote workforce to use to get set up with them.

Monitor – Your existing monitor is likely fine, however if you are spending more time at home, upgrading what you are looking at for hours each day can be a welcome improvement. Start by determining the size monitor you want/need. Focus in on LED monitors as those generally represent the best blend of price and features today. For work, you’ll want to look at 4k monitors which tend to come with refresh rates of 60 Hz. Then look for IPS displays with either FreeSync or G-Sync. Lastly, you can determine if you want features like a USB hub built in (which helps manage all those cables) and what types of adjustments you need for height—or if you want to mount it on a a onitor arm, look for one with VESA compatibility. This ProArt Display from ASUS would be a good choice or form something a bit larger check out this 32” Dell monitor for a bit more space.

Camera – These can be pretty simple (and inexpensive). You don’t need 4k. 1080p will do just fine. In fact, many monitors and laptops already have a camera built in. Your employees may want to utilize a camera (or accessory) that can be closed physically to ensure it isn’t on when they don’t expect it to be. In most cases, this is your camera.

Microphone/Speaker – If you don’t want to spend a lot on a standalone microphone, you can avoid the dreaded echo effect by making sure your microphone and speaker are handled by a single device. You can use the mic and speakers that are equipped on your laptop, but for an upgraded experience you could try something like this or this. 

Software

As for software, this will relate closely to the software your team already uses and is familiar with and will tend to fall into one of the following categories: Chat, File Sharing, Project Management, Video Conferencing. Sometimes, many of these can be accommodated by one solution. For example, Google Workspace (formerly gSuite) or Microsoft 365 both provide file sharing, email, calendaring, docs and spreadsheets, chat, and video conferencing solutions. 

Some of the individual tools that are garnering the most attention (and usage) in these categories are:

Chat: Slack 

File Sharing: Dropbox

Project Management: Monday

Video Conferencing: No surprise here, Zoom

4. Explicitly define communication habits and expectations

With all these tools however comes greater opportunity to disrupt the normal flow of your workday. Now everyone will have many ways to reach out to someone. Email, Chat, Video Conferencing, and maybe even phone calls we guess.

Each is used for a different purpose, and you should orient your staff on what patterns and practices are desired in your organization. Here’s a framework you might decide to use from the authors of Remote, the Basecamp team with some minor edits, mostly for emphasis:

Chat: Quick questions and messages. We use Slack and chat throughout the day. Slack allows for setup of group channels around a particular topic. We find the old axiom, “If you have a question, someone else probably has the same question,” to be true, so for general clarification, we always have people default to the group channel so everyone benefits from the answer. 

Email: Non-urgent communication and project delivery. Email is appropriate for longer-term communication around a particular topic. We tell our team to err on the side of brevity with email. Since so many people use their phone for email, we want to send them quick messages that they will easily be able to digest and respond to on the go. 

Phone: We make phone calls from inside Slack and use a VoIP phone system. Phone calls are used for clarification when chat won’t do, and brainstorming or troubleshooting a particular project or issue. 

Regular (Video) Meetings: Each of our teams has a weekly meeting and each individual has a weekly one-on-one with their manager. Having these standing meetings helps us cut down on the clutter and one-off questions, since the team knows they will get a chance to address any issues during their weekly chat. It also gives everyone regular human interaction, and a chance to come up for air, joke around, present ideas and celebrate wins together.

Matt Mullenweg of Automatic also suggests that as much communication as possible be online—where it is documented so that everyone can understand the why of decisions that were made. The conversations and messages that led to a decision are all there for future review. 

5. Don’t forget to seek feedback on how it is all working

Last year we wrote about the importance of collecting feedback from remote workers. That still holds true, maybe even more so today. And although we admit to bias, we still think that collecting anonymous feedback offers advantages to other methods. You can set up a free demo of an Incogeato suggestion box in under 10 seconds.

Posted March 24th, 2020

The world is now several months into the COVID-19 pandemic and many local, state, and national governments are requiring companies to shut their doors and allow employees to work from home. Remote work can be a challenge for some, but it does offer one key benefit: a quiet time away from colleagues to reflect upon work life.

We are biologically attuned to the emotions of those around us. Removing our coworkers from the situation opens up our ability to convey our thoughts honestly without considering how others will immediately react. In other words, employees working from home are in a safe place now, removed from ordinary work-life and it is much easier to take a step back and approach their feedback holistically.

Make the most of “extra time”

Many remote employees have more time on their hands. With the average American commute consuming almost an hour each day and a likely dip in workload, some employees have several idle hours each day to reflect upon their work or craft new ideas. Forward-thinking organizations should encourage them to submit new ideas or spend some time developing out previous ideas they had been forced to back-burner.

Retain your best workers

Inevitably, some employees will use their downtime to begin searching for a new job. This underscores the need for anonymous feedback as a retention strategy. Research shows that employees are more candid when their personal anonymity is guaranteed. Giving employees a safe, anonymous tool to address their grievances can ultimately keep them around.

Collecting anonymous feedback is easy

Incogneato is a safe, anonymous employee feedback tool that is also significantly less expensive than other options. We believe that all organizations should be able to collect anonymous feedback without having to pay hefty monthly fees. This especially rings true now as organizations are trying to cut costs to survive. Incogneato is free for the first 30 days and no credit card is required until you subscribe to a plan.

The months ahead will be trying times for many organizations. We hope your business weathers the storm and comes out stronger and that your employees stay safe during this challenging period.

For additional reading, we recommend the following:

• A comprehensive guide to remote work
• The benefits of anonymous feedback
• Best practices for creating an employee suggestion box
• The research behind anonymous employee feedback