By Alex Yohn
Jan 26, 2018
We’ve all been there: you have an argument or tense conversation with someone. When you let your mind wander over the happenings of the day hours later, you think of the perfect comeback.
Man! If only you had that nugget in the moment you would have been so proud of yourself.
Wait. Why didn’t you have it in the moment? It’s because that part of your brain – the part that’s responsible for creativity and daydreaming – wasn’t activated.
Your brain has two big modes that it uses: the executive attention network and the default mode.
At work, we do all we can to keep employees in the executive attention network which is where we get focus, determination and attention from. We want employees to keep their eyes on the prize and produce their best work.
Daydreaming or just ‘being’ is seen as slacking off, and we can’t have that. We pay them for the hours they’re with us – that time is ours. You’ve heard this once or twice before, right?
The issue is we as employers also wonder why creativity is so often lacking in our workplaces. Why are the freelancers we pull in for special projects able to so easily shake things up and come up with incredible ideas on the fly?
Likely, it’s because they allow themselves to daydream a little more, throwing their brains into default mode and unleashing more creativity than we could ever imagine while sitting in a cubicle actively staring down at a deadline.
Default mode is when the brain is allowed to drift off or you ‘space out.’ We’re not focused on anything specific. We’re not trying to complete a task or hit a deadline on time. Our brain also isn’t ‘turned off’ during this time either, contrary to popular belief. In fact, studies show that during default mode our brains are still using roughly 95% of the energy they use when they’re tapped into the executive attention network.
Jonathan Smallwood is a neuroscientist who has studied mind-wandering for 20+ years, though the phenomenon is still relatively new to the discipline. He says that the brain is often studied by looking at how it responds to external stimuli: what pieces of it light up when someone speaks, or when movement happens, or when emotions take over.
Studying a brain in default mode doesn’t fit into those boxes, so it makes it a bit more complex to learn about.
“Scientifically, daydreaming is an interesting phenomenon because it speaks to the capacity that people have to create thought in a pure way rather than thought happening when it’s a response to events in the outside word,” Smallwood said during an interview with Manoush Zomorodi, author of Bored and Brilliant and host of WNYC’s podcast Note To Self.
In other words, there’s a whole other area of our brain responsible for pure creativity and ideas that we rarely are allowed to tap into at work since we are so overly stimulated there.
It’s potentially proactive instead of reactive. And isn’t that exactly what we want our employees to be?
In the workplace, there has been such a movement to allow people to bring their ‘full-self’ to work, whether that means greater work/life balance or the ability to be unapologetically themselves. Imagine if we allowed our employees to unleash their full brain power, including giving them some time to space out on the clock so they could come up with better ideas that produce stronger results.
You should, of course, proceed with caution when tackling this idea. For example, you can’t put the stress of a calendar event that is titled ‘Space Out For Good Ideas’ every day at noon in order to get more output. The brain can only truly reach default mode when it has time to get there and isn’t directly asked to do it. Being stimulated by a calendar invite reminding you of the task to get there is quite opposite of how it works.
Perhaps instead, you can make one day a week a ‘no meeting zone’ that allows folks to focus on their work and complete it, versus constantly being interrupted and prolonging to-do lists due to meetings. That way, tasks get completed more consistently which opens up the opportunity for a little free time on the clock to relax and space out.
Another thought around this is the idea of brainstorming sessions. With what we know now, is the modern brainstorming session broken?
The idea of placing people into a room to come up with the next great thing together is at its very foundation a task that clearly seems to be completed within the executive attention network of the brain. But if our best and most creative ideas are often hidden within default mode, how is this exercise bringing them out?
I often think back to the many times I’ve been spaced out in my car listening to music, or standing idly at the gate about to board my flight when my best ideas have hit me like a freight train. How do we work together to capture those ideas as a company when they hit an employee, without putting stress on the employee during those times to produce. How do we change the behavior of brainstorming and creativity in the workplace to not be one of active tasks and checklists, but more of relaxation, daydreaming and playing – even with billability hanging above our heads?
When we find the way to make that shift, it’s a solid bet that that’s when our companies will unleash the most impactful and world-changing ideas yet.
By Alex Yohn
Jan 8, 2018
We have a problem, folks. Teams are not using their paid time off and it’s hurting both employers and employees. It may seem too good to be true for employers: a benefit that employees say attract them to companies in the first place is going unused. That gives employers more time with top-notch employees in the office, constantly producing.
Turns out, it’s just the opposite
Let’s get to the cold, hard facts. According to Project Time Off, Americans didn’t take 662 million paid days off that were given to them in 2016. Of that, 206 million days were forfeited, meaning they didn’t carry over nor were they cashed out. That equals more than $66.4 billion in lost benefits in one year alone.
Lost money talks, of course. But let’s talk about what refusing to take time off does to an employee’s psyche. To understand the impact it has you have to know what the top reasons folks say they aren’t taking time off in the first place. Here are the results from a 2017 study by GfK, which includes nearly 7,400 responses from American workers who are 18 or older, working 35 hours a week or more:
- 43% never left the office for fear of the amount of work they’d return to.
- 34% felt they couldn’t leave the office because no one else could do their job.
- 33% felt their managers discouraged time away.
- 32% couldn’t afford a vacation.
- 26% wanted to show complete and total dedication to their job and felt as though taking the time given to them would negate that perception.
- 21% felt they would be less likely to be considered for a raise or bonus if they weren’t seen in the office.
Keep these statistics in mind as we tell you the following: The same study showed those who didn’t take time off were 79-84% less likely to report receiving a raise or bonus in the last three years. They were also no more likely to receive a promotion than those who did use all of their time off.
Work martyrdom is getting us nowhere other than leading directly to burnout, lack of efficiency, lack of productivity and a decreased rate in employee happiness, engagement and overall well-being.
Now for the brighter side of things. This is where keeping your resolution comes into play. The benefits to taking time off are plentiful for both employers who encourage it and employees who use it. For example, companies that encourage their employees to take time off report higher productivity and performance and increased retention rates. Employees who use their time off report better relationships and increased happiness with their spouses, children and work. They also report an overall increase in mood, physical well-being and mental health.
So how do you begin to adopt taking all of the PTO allotted at your work place? The biggest key is to plan ahead. More than half of those who planned ahead took all of their paid time off by the end of the policy period compared to roughly 39% who didn’t plan. Planning ahead also increases other important factors in an employees’ life. Just have a look at the chart below from The State of American Workers study:
Ready to plan your vacation time this year? Log into your Kin account to get started.
By Alex Yohn
Dec 20, 2017
If you’re anything like us, you’re wondering where 2017 went. Between the ups and downs and in-betweens, this year flew by. At any rate, it’s time to get ready to crush 2018.
We’ve created a quick guide to ensure you’re getting the most out of your Kin account starting Jan. 1, 2018. Of course, every Kin account is different since every company is different. If you have any questions about below, or are wondering if you’re using Kin to the fullest for your organization, feel free to reach out to us anytime by emailing theteam@10.20.21.87.
One other thing to note before we dive in: you need at least HR Manager level access to get to a majority of the information below. If you have questions about your Kin account but do not have that level of permission within the system, reach out to the folks who manage Kin for your company first.
Alrighty, let’s get started.
Do a quick headcount.
Perhaps you’ve added a few folks over the last year or maybe you lost some. Do a quick headcount in Kin by logging in and clicking the Team tab. You can see a visual grid of your company there. If you’d rather a black and white list, you could also see a report of folks within Kin account by going to Manage Account -> Export Data -> Employee Data.
You can also check to ensure that all folks are active. If they are still pending in your system, that means they haven’t accepted their e-mail invitation yet. You can resend the invite by clicking the Resend Invitation link on the top left when you click into their individual profile.
Check that your employees are using their time off.
If you have paid time off policies set up to renew at the beginning of the new year, you can take a look now to see if folks are actually utilizing all of their time off. This is extremely important. Companies who encourage employees to take all of the time off allotted to them see growth rates of 2x or more than those who do not.
If that’s not compelling enough, turnover in these companies is dramatically lower than those who have employees that consistently leave time off on the table each year. Employees who use their time off also report feeling more engaged with their work and are more likely to be advocates of the brand/organization.
You can see how much time is being left on the table at your organization by going to the Company tab, then click Reporting. Choose the Time Off Balances option then choose the policies you’d like to take a look at. You can set a timeframe on the right-hand side.
The report will show the following columns: Available, Taken, Approved and Requested. Here’s a quick reference guide as to what those headers mean:
- Available: This is time that has not yet been requested, approved or taken. It is time that employees haven’t scheduled out and still remains on the table. This is what you’re keeping an eye on to see how much time is left this year.
- Taken: This is time an employee has taken within the policy. The dates are completed and the employee is likely back from vacation already.
- Approved: This is time that an employee has requested and has been approved by their manager, but they have not yet taken. Likely, the requested time is in the future. Once they take the time, it will move over to the Taken column.
- Requested: This is time that is in a pending state. The employee has submitted a request, but the manager has yet to approve or deny it.
If you want to thrive as a company in 2018, becoming a culture where employees feel they can take the time off they need to renew themselves is key. Chat with your managers now to explain the benefits of being more vocal about encouraging time off. Make sure you set a standard that PTO requests are promptly responded to as a follow up as well.
Review your PTO policies to ensure they aren’t having a negative effect on your team.
If you’re noticing a lot of time left on the table for smaller policies (10 or less days per year), the policy itself may be causing a scarcity mindset. Employees may be scared to take time off throughout the year in case something comes up later on when it’s more urgent to leave work. Kin recommends allowing at least 15 days off per year for full-time workers. This eases that fear of not having time when needed and allows employees to take time off when they need it, whether it’s an emergency or just to refresh themselves.
On the other hand, ff you have extremely generous plans and notice that employees aren’t taking time off through those either, your generosity could be having the opposite effect.
Employees who have unlimited plans, or plans that allow for more than 30 days off per year see the time as always available. Therefore, they get so wrapped up in work they don’t worry about running out of time and likely think, “it’ll always be there, why take it now?”
You can help negate this by creating a minimum amount of time each employee must take off per year. Typically, employers want to see at least three weeks when it comes to minimum time taken per year.
This allows for a few things:
- It gives the employee the time they need to rest and recharge so they can come back at their most productive selves.
- It allows employees to feel comfortable delegating their tasks – when you’re required to take time off, you can’t hoard information, projects or responsibilities. It’s a team effort and everyone should be responsible for success.
- It allows managers to see when they’re overloading employees. If an employee leaves and the rest of the team is left wondering ‘holy cow, how did s/he ever get this amount of work done?!’ then it’s time to recalibrate.
Having the ‘always there’ worker seems great in theory, but it’s a surefire way to get burned-out, actively disengaged employees.
If you feel your policies are good to go then they’ll automatically renew either on the first of the year, on a custom date or on the employee’s anniversary of hire date. You can see what your company has the renewal date set to by going to the Company tab, clicking on the time off policy in question then seeing what is selected on the set-up page. You have the ability to adjust this at any time. When you click save, the changes will automatically update for any employee assigned to that policy.
Fill out and assign Company Tools so employees have quick access to daily login links.
Did you know you can keep all of your login links in one place in Kin? Employers who take advantage of this have less emails asking how to access daily tools employees need to get their jobs done.
You can store login links to anything, including tools, payroll or benefit portals, internal messaging apps and more. It’s as simple as putting in the tool name, uploading the logo of it, and then adding the login link.
To set it up, go to the Company tab, then click Tools. Click Add New Tool in the upper-right hand corner and it’ll guide you through setting it up. To add them to the employee’s profile, go to the Team tab, then click on the employee’s profile. Click the Onboarding Set-Up navigation option, then scroll down and check the tools that are applicable to that employee. Different employees can have different tools show up when they login to Kin.
If you’re setting up a new employee, the same process applies. It’ll show up on their Welcome page the first time they log into Kin. For existing employees, it’ll show up when they click over to the Getting Started portion of their profile upon login.
Add Custom Fields to capture employee data specific to your company’s needs.
Custom Fields is is a great way to capture employee data that is unique to your business, employment laws or specific country.
When you create a new custom field, Kin adds a new category with any number of sub-items to your employees’ profile pages. Similar to how Emergency Contacts and Bank Information are currently displayed in your system, Custom Fields allows you to create and track any type of information you need.
To set it up, go to the Company Tab, then click Custom Fields. Then, click Add New Category in the upper-right hand. Complete as many new categories as your company needs.
When you’ve saved your new categories, they will automatically show up in the employee’s profile for you to complete. Please note: unless they have been filled out with data in the employee’s profile, they will not show up to the employee when they log in.
Receive a discount by paying annually
When you pay annually with Kin versus monthly, you receive 10% off. Save some cash now by paying for Kin up front.
Paying for Kin annually instead of monthly not only scores you the discount, it also allows your payment to be as flexible as your business needs are. Annual payments act like a credit on your Kin account. As you add folks to Kin, you’ll go through the credit quicker. If you restructure and end up with a smaller team, the credit will take longer to burn through. Credits don’t expire until you use them fully. To set up annual payments, simply reach out to theteam@10.20.21.87.
By Alex Yohn
Oct 30, 2017
I love start-up life. Before I even knew what a start-up was, I was creating them. For example at age eight, I fell in love with the concept of Three Dogs Bakery. I immediately found dog treat recipes, baked them, and sold them door-to-door. I lived in a rural area so as you could imagine, door-to-door meant about four homes with a dog per mile. The sales weren’t high, but my conversion rate was 100%. Not too shabby for an eight-year-old using an oven for the first time.
The passion to do what I loved and make money while doing it followed me into adulthood. Every job I ever took on became my own. I’d mold the position into one that would have much greater impact on the company. I loved having my hands in several pots and seeing my team’s hard work affect the bottom line.
I began working at a ‘real’ start-up in 2011. It was an HR tech company geared toward helping restaurants find and retain a more stable workforce. We had a long and winding road to success, eventually being named the preferred tool for some of the largest restaurant groups in the world. I moved on to a social media marketing agency, then to KinHR’s parent company We Are Mammoth. Now, I lead KinHR.
As I progressed in my career, I picked up a few insights I wish I had learned sooner. So, I’ve decided to share them here in hopes they’ll get into the hands of folks just starting out (or heck, perhaps help a few long-timers, too).
Be present and make yourself known in the industry.
No, this isn’t networking. Networking is the awful act of going somewhere with the sole intention of having a better chance to sell something after you leave. When you go to a networking event with people only focused on networking, you leave feeling unfulfilled. Why? No real connections were made in a room of hundreds of humans all trying to get a leg up. It’s not natural.
Being present means attending large and small events, speaking out about topics in your industry that you have a (well-informed) opinion on and mentoring those around you to become as passionate as you are about solving challenges your customers face. It’s attending relevant Twitter chats or responding to LinkedIn discussions in a way that doesn’t just further a sale. It’s about asking questions to those who have been in the game much longer (and also much shorter) than you to gain perspective and understanding. It’s about soaking in all you can from the people in the industry, whether or not it leads to a sale. It’s also about giving back that knowledge and your own ideas in a constructive way to those looking to learn more.
Choose wisely where you show up and when. Make sure it counts. When you work for a start-up you are already typically stuffing 2-3 weeks of work into one week. Start making real connections a priority when you venture out and you’ll see the effect on your psyche and your company almost immediately.
Know your priorities and their ‘why’s.’
The worst thing that could happen to a start-up is not knowing/sticking to its mission, its values and its priorities. There’s a very large graveyard full of companies who let outsiders dictate their product or service direction all the way to a place where it was no longer recognizable to its internal team.
Are your priorities truly laddering back to your mission? Mindless priorities that don’t help you achieve the overall goal should be scrapped ASAP. Priority setting, reimagining, scrapping and resetting should be done on a continual basis to make sure your eyes are set on the prize at all times.
Another tough lesson: a customer not being a right fit isn’t the end of the world. It stings to leave money on the table. It stings even worse to know you can’t help someone who has similar issues to what you’re trying to solve. But what makes it better is knowing you’ve stayed true to your product and to your mission and didn’t stray because you saw a few dollar signs elsewhere. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but if your vision is well-informed and has a validated place in the market, you’re going to be just fine.
Take the time to just think.
We live in a society that is so pressured to constantly produce – whether or not the output is great. We’re so immune to it that we even have silly internet memes and videos about fake spreadsheets and documents up on our screen being typed away on as a boss walks by.
But what we often forget is the thought behind what we produce is so much more meaningful to the final product. It’s not the clicking of the keyboard or the multiple meetings that kick things off and keep them going down the right path. It’s how we think and develop our ideas truly create change and impact.
Thinking is work, too.
Craig Bryant, the founder of KinHR, is big on this. He takes time to think through things. That doesn’t mean being chained to a computer and writing down every thought. It’s having the freedom to walk away and allow your brain to engage and turn on in different environments. It’s similar to when you talk with someone, then hours later have the perfect one-liner for that conversation that is already over. You’re somewhere else now. The environment is different. So are your reactions. Imagine how creative our work could be if we allowed ourselves the liberty to not only think outside of the box, but get outside of it now and then, too.
Just think.
When you are able to remove yourself from a constantly-producing, stressful environment, you’ll be amazed at what your brain comes up with.
Never be the smartest person in the room.
The worst thing you could possibly do is hire people who don’t leave you in a bit of awe occasionally. If you’re constantly correcting your team’s output and are worried that you have to oversee every detail then you aren’t running a start-up, you’re running a daycare.
When you put in the effort to curate a team that challenges you, you’re doing it right. Your team should not only be left to their own devices in the disciplines you hired them into, they should downright own it.
And you, as a leader, need to let them.
There’s a Steve Jobs quote I’m always reminded when asked for team engagement advice:
“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”
Understand there’s a picture much bigger than your product/service.
If you only look at your product or service as a tool, you’re missing the bigger picture (and more customers, more revenue, quicker returns…the list goes on and on). Your product is part of a movement. It’s your job to figure out what that movement is.
For KinHR, it’s a movement to make life better for employees at small businesses around the world. Our tool is a portion of that movement, but there’s so much more to it. There’s learning about the industry and tracking its evolution, talking to people to find out their pain points and exploring what could solve them (using technology or not). There’s putting out blogs like this one to share what we’ve learned so far, or writing about the ways our customers are reimagining our futures and how their story has inspired us (and hopefully will inspire you). All of these things add up to what KinHR stands for.
Find your movement, and let your tool be fluid enough to help your customers now and in the future.
By Alex Yohn
Oct 25, 2017
Over the years of building our companies, I’ve learned to group hires into two necessary camps: those working for the company, and those for whom the company is working. Lisa Arnold belongs to the latter, and I’m happy to welcome her to her latest role as Kin’s CEO.
A little over a year ago, we welcomed Lisa to the We Are Mammoth team as our first Director of Marketing. Lisa made quick work of everything the role expected of her, from Kin’s communication strategy to We Are Mammoth’s own business development outreach. As she expanded her responsibilities in marketing to help out with strategic operations it was clear we had more than a director of marketing on our hands. Sure enough, by early 2017, Lisa became We Are Mammoth’s first COO. Now, as Kin digs into its fourth year of business, Lisa is stepping into a role where she can spread her wings even more.
Lisa’s a great fit for Kin. She cut her teeth in HR tech early in her career and she’s a tried and true advocate for any company trying to improve its workplace, just as she was for We Are Mammoth. I’m excited to see where Kin goes under Lisa’s direction. There’s a lot of work to do, and she’s up to the task.
As for who Lisa is when she’s not at the helm, she hails from upstate New York but found her home (and heart!) in Nashville with her husband and two young girls. She’s got a knack for old furniture, furry canines, and old home restoration, and has been known to hawk succulents at local markets around town. If there’s one word to describe working with Lisa, it’d be inspiring. Personally, working with Lisa over the past year has forced me to up my game and everyone in her orbit does the same. It’s for that reason Lisa’s energy will be put to great work at Kin as it continues helping companies build efficient, more inspiring workplaces. Onward!
By Alex Yohn
May 9, 2017
Push the send button. Click publish on a blog post. Close the sale. Archive the support ticket.
All of these moments give us a gratifying sense of accomplishment. No one can deny completing something on a to-do list is one of life’s small pleasures. But, are those small dopamine hits every time you accomplish something ruining the overall effectiveness of your work?
Every human has two sets of tasks they need to achieve: immediate tasks quickly accomplished and large projects that could take weeks, months or even years to finish.
Our brains are trained to release a small amount of dopamine every time we complete something, which leads to the quick tasks being accomplished in record speed. On top of that pleasant feeling, completing smaller tasks could also mean freeing up the time and resources to tackle those larger projects, too.
Where do your priorities lie? That’s where the problem could come in. At many offices, you’re rewarded for your output. What you achieve, what milestone you hit, what you’ve completed – all of these provide a positive feedback loop that releases the ever-happy dopamine. And since dopamine improves attention span, memory and motivation in humans, we become wired to do the tasks that allow us to tap back into it as soon as possible.
The term ‘completion bias’ comes into play here. Completion bias is when your brain specifically seeks the pleasure completing a task can bring. It can come from anywhere – be it finishing up a day of errands you’ve been putting off, to reordering that printer ink and checking it off your to-do list, to completing a book.
When it all feels the same, our brains naturally gravitate toward the way to get it quickest. It leaves us humans in a pickle, really. We get a good sense accomplishment by completing quick tasks that don’t necessarily move the needle forward in a big way. It fogs our minds into thinking we’ve had a successful day’s work, when if we were go to back and analyze our accomplishments, we would see that little was done to achieve a big goal. Meanwhile, those big guys wait to be tackled longer than they should because they won’t provide us the sense of accomplishment quick enough. It’s how procrastination on big tasks comes about, yet we can accomplish 100 small things with ease. How do we overcome it?
Know your big priorities and ruthlessly map back to them.
GE came up with a great approach to personal productivity that helps overcome the need to check off random tasks quickly. It’s geared around identifying priorities and company initiatives, not necessarily everyday tasks. First, identify the top three to five priorities for the company at the time. From there, whenever you are completing something, you must map it back to the identified priorities or initiatives. Not able to? Park it somewhere else for later.
Give tangent distractions a minute or two of your time, but not a second more.
The idea to park ideas that come up while doing tasks that help you truly achieve a goal comes from design sprints. In a week long workshop, teams come together to identify a problem and create a solution in record time. There’s no room for slack or fat. It’s lean and it’s mean. The results? Mind-blowing solutions ready for user testing in five days or less.
In order to do that, you have to let go of a lot of smaller ideas and thoughts that could provide quick satisfaction that day. Just because you’re not doing them today, doesn’t mean they aren’t great ideas for later. Therefore, you create a ‘parking lot’ on a wall, where good ideas go on Post-It Notes and are stuck there for later review. Those ideas could become priorities all their own the next go around, just not today when you’re focused on achieving something else.
There’s a small sense of accomplishment knowing you came up with an idea that could evolve into something big. Writing it down is great, and even letting it simmer a bit before you act on it could evolve it into something even better.
Create easily achievable milestones each day that ladder up to the big goal.
You’ve heard about taking a big idea and breaking it down into small, actionable steps as a surefire way to get there. There’s power behind that, and it all comes back to completion bias. This allows your brain to get the sense of completion toward the bigger goal by finishing those quick tasks to get there, and it will keep you motivated to continue pressing on.
The milestones shouldn’t be so far apart that you lose steam or become burned out trying to achieve them. In fact, having at least one win a day, no matter how small, should keep you right on track.
Give yourself time to celebrate those smaller milestones.
Those that really succumb to their completion bias seem to overlook all they’ve accomplished during the day since it didn’t complete the ultimate project. By doing this, you’re setting the goal farther and farther from your current state, and you’ll never get a sense of gratification to work off of – or at least not as often as you should to keep your motivation high.
Make sure to take at least five minutes at the end of every day to map your progress on a specific priority or goal. By seeing how far you’ve come, you’ll get that same dopamine hit as you would by crossing off five meaningless tasks that didn’t move you any further in your career than they did the day before.
It’s like paying off debt – it won’t all happen at once, and at times it feels like a snail’s pace. However, if you look back at where you were more than a year ago, you’ll be so proud of how far you’ve come.
