By The Kin Team
Nov 23, 2020
This post is the first of two pieces that will explore the importance of vacation time and how small companies can manage it. There are two sides to that coin: How do employers manage vacation time, and how do employees themselves use that time to create a healthier work-life balance? We will start with the latter, from the employee’s perspective.
A piece of research made headlines in early 2015 when it revealed that the number of vacation days Americans take has been steadily declining for the last 20 years. In 2013, the average employee in the US took 16 days of vacation total, researchers at Oxford Economics found. By contrast, between 1976 and 2000 that average was just above 20 days, which means the average employee has lost nearly a week of vacation time this millennium.
There seem to be several reasons for this trend, all of which could be defined as cultural — both in terms of a shared sense of American culture and in terms of work cultures at the company level.
“One oft-cited reason is facing too much of a mess upon return to work,” reporter Colleen Kane wrote in Fortune in May 2015. Kane spoke to a couple of journalists, for example, who told her their news cycles don’t leave room for time away.
“You just don’t know how far behind it puts you,” one reporter told her.
Then, the ubiquity of technology that allows some people to work from anywhere can also invite people to work at any time. Brad Tuttle at CNN Money reported in July that more than a third of Millennials spend some time working every single day of their vacations.
Project: Time Off, an organization that promotes time off as essential for all members of the workforce, argues that at the national level Americans have developed a “work martyr” complex. This complex leads many people to feel as though
- their work schedules are too demanding to step away for vacation,
- their workloads upon return would be too daunting, and
- they are either irreplaceable or do not want to be exposed as replaceable.
Baptist pastor Brian Croft has an interesting take on replaceability and work martyrdom in his own profession: “Using all your vacation time given to you forces others to step up in your absence, shows them they can make it without you for a time, and reminds the pastor most of all that God is not utterly dependent on him for this church to function.”
Project: Time Off suggests that a work martyr complex at the cultural level is “reinforced by company culture, chiefly poor communication around time off. Even though senior business leaders overwhelmingly recognize the importance of using time off, two-thirds of American employees say their company says nothing, sends mixed messages about, or discourages using their time off.”
When vacation policies are unclear, or when a workaholic culture is pervasive in a workplace, individuals tend to feel more comfortable defaulting to that work martyr position. That itself is a big conversation, which we will address in the followup post.
First, it is important to understand why employees need to feel empowered to take advantage of their vacation time, and how they can optimize that time to alleviate any fears of being away from work.
We All Need Vacation Time
Time away from work is as essential to people as breathing, eating and sleeping are. Sure, you can cut down in most of those things, but your mental, physical and emotional health will suffer as a result.
Tanveer Naseer points out that there is another key benefit to vacation time beyond it being simply practical. Vacation and leisure time fuel our creativity. “When we’re on vacation, we’re in a mental frame of mind where we’re open to trying out new experiences, to taste new foods, and to explore new environments,” he writes.
“Through each of these activities, we’re helping our brain to create new cognitive pathways because we’re going off our well-worn paths, employing a mechanism neuroscientists refer to as ‘global processing.’ It’s this process which often precedes those ‘A-ha!’ moments where patterns suddenly take shape because we’ve helped our brain to find a new way to understand and connect the ideas and experiences swirling in our mind.”
Empowering Employees to Take Their Vacations
Most companies both large and small understand the importance of vacation time and try to establish paid-time-off policies that balance employees’ needs for leisure with the company’s own needs.
Ironically, as work martyrdom tendencies have become further entrenched over the last generation, unlimited-time-off policies have become more popular. Richard Branson is on record as a fan of unlimited time off:
“Treat people as human beings, give them that flexibility, and I don’t think they’ll abuse it,” he told CNN. “They’ll get the job done.”
Companies such as Netflix and Zynga have adopted the policy.
Kin tried it, too, though we found it didn’t actually encourage people to get out of the office.
“Companies may offer discretionary time off thinking that if employees are given the option to vacation whenever they want they will inevitably not take advantage of the perk, period,” HR professional Kristen Shingleton Deutsch wrote in July for AccelaWork. “There is only so much time within a year to take off that there is really no ‘good time’ to do so, causing employees to not take time off at all.”
Instead, Kin has found, as have other companies, that providing generous paid time off and then transparently reinforcing that this vacation time is part of an employee’s compensation helps foster a culture in which team members feel empowered to take time away from work, guilt-free.
How to Make the Most of Your Vacation Time
As with any aspect of company culture, though, there is only so much that can be done from the employer’s side. It’s up to each individual employee to maximize her available vacation time. Below are a three tips for doing just that.
1. Take At Least One Whole Week Off
Various pieces of scientific and anecdotal evidence suggest that we need a full week to recharge. Inc.com’s Jessica Stillman reported in August on one study out of Finland that suggests Day 8 of a vacation is when our happiness peaks.
Don’t get too hung up on the idea of diminishing returns on vacation enjoyment once you get to Day 9, though. Financial advisor Tim Maurer wrote a piece for LifeHacker in 2013 in which he argued that 10 days is the magic number for his vacation time. With 10 days, Maurer said he was able to get into the unique rhythm of his own vacation while leaving room for his longing for home to arrive.
“The idea of sleeping in your own bed has increasing appeal, eating out has started to weigh you down, spending money like the Greek parliament has begun to feel self-indulgent, and you’re almost anxious to get back to the daily rhythms of work and rest,” he wrote.
2. Invite the Right Mindset for Real Relaxation
Getting into that specific vacation rhythm Maurer wrote about is difficult if you can’t get work off your mind, though. Entrepreneur and VC Brad Feld wrote in July about his own anxiety over vacation days.
“I used to struggle mightily with three-day weekend and holiday weeks,” Feld wrote. “While the rest of the world slowed down, I felt like the pressures on me were speeding up. I wanted everyone to get off their butts, stop relaxing, and respond to my emails. I was impatient and didn’t want to wait until Monday to try to address whatever issues were in front of me.”
Feld said he found that turning off all the stimuli that provoke this anxiety — the phones and tablets that keep Millennials working through their vacations, for example — freed his mind and body to work at their own pace.
“Blow off the 4th of July party that you don’t really want to go to and just stay home and watch TV in the middle of day. Let your energy go wherever it takes you. And recognize that all the emails, all the stress, all the anxiety, and all the people will be there on Monday ready to go again.”
Salesforce’s Heike Young agrees with Feld about blowing off social obligations, or not even making them in the first place, while on vacation. Instead, she suggested that you just get lost in some reading.
“Read a work-unrelated book about someone with very different problems from you,” Young wrote at Medium. “Immerse yourself in the world of science fiction, historical fiction, or even historical non-fiction. The point is to focus on someone different from you and get lost in their world, not a business or industry book.”
3. Set Yourself Up For a Smooth Return
Finally, be strategic about how your return to work. The Oxford Economics study revealed this to be a big sticking point among people who left vacation days on the table, so it might help to prepare for your return in advance so it doesn’t loom over your vacation.
“Create a list of items that must get done on your first day back,” Kaitlyn Russell writes at The Muse. “When you’re struggling to focus and don’t know where to even start, this is a great way to stay on track and accomplish the bare minimum. If you can push back tasks to later in the week, do it.”
Also, workplace consultant Dana Bilsky Asher, PhD, tells Self.com that Sunday return trips set employees up for a bad Monday. Instead, Asher, a senior vice president at workplace consultancy The Energy Project, says she plans her return trips for that Saturday.
And she doesn’t commit to any meetings for that first day back. “I don’t even promise when I’ll reply on my out-of-office message,” she says.
images by:
Quincy Alivio, Steven Van Loy, Todd Quackenbush
By Lisa Arnold
Oct 28, 2020
The fourth quarter brings a wrap up to the year, and with that comes the annual review. We’ve discussed a few times why annual reviews aren’t the most effective way to provide feedback and motivation to employees, but if you’re working on transitioning out of them, you may still need to effectively have one in the coming weeks.
What’s most interesting is that Gallup studies show that managers spend, on average, 17 hours preparing for annual reviews. That’s nearly half an average work week! The worst part? Only 20% of employees report that their review motivates them to do well next year.
There’s a massive disconnect. But there are some tweaks to help bridge the gap.
Set a timeline for when reviews should be completed
If you’re in a company that’s large enough, you likely have multiple managers performing annual reviews. The issue is that some managers may be on top of it, while others have a lot on their plate, pushing annual reviews back a few weeks.
This doesn’t create cohesiveness across the team and splits employee experience across the organization. Some feel well-tuned after their annual review, others are still wondering when their review will ever be scheduled. Luckily it’s an easy fix.
When you set up your reviews in a system like Kin, you can set a timeline for which you’d like reviews to be completed within. Just choose the open and close date of review periods when preparing your annual review (which is easy, since we have templates available!). This will give guidelines to your managers on when the reviews should be completed.
The nice thing with a transparent tool that’s tracking reviews is you’ll also be able to quickly log in and see who has completed them or not, and send quick reminders to those getting close to – or past – the deadline.
Document, document, document
You likely can’t remember what you had for lunch three Fridays ago, so the chances of remembering everything an employee did over the course of the year is slim.
This makes documenting conversations and quick feedback sessions so vital to a successful annual review. At Kin, we use notes within our system to keep track of conversations we’ve had throughout the year, and smaller feedback sessions among the team.
We also utilize our objectives feature to keep track of the progress of goals we set to accomplish over a specific period of time.
All of this helps us keep track of what’s going on in real-time, and provides a rock-solid record of the past without us having to frantically go through our inboxes, text messages and other forms of communication to recall performance.
With only 29% of employees strongly agreeing that the performance reviews they receive are fair, and only 26% strongly agreeing that they are accurate, we have a lot of room for improvement. Documentation is absolutely essential.
Ask employees to review themselves
There’s often a disconnect in annual reviews, and the numbers tell a story about it. According to Gallup, only 14% of employees strongly agree the performance reviews they receive inspire them to improve, and 20% of employees strongly agree that their performance is managed in a way that motivates them to do outstanding work. Ouch.
Oftentimes, this is because it’s approached in the tradition of a one-way street. The manager provides feedback, the employee listens. This isn’t productive, and often shuts down any chance of a great experience that builds trust and helps employees unlock potential.
It’s vital to understand how an employee views their work and their role in the organization in order to provide any type of sound feedback or criticism. By creating a space for them to review themselves, you’ll get a glimpse into how their performance is going by their own standards, and then meet them where they’re at.
This allows you to see their priorities, goals and objectives, and if they line up with what your expectations were for them. If they don’t? There’s a communication breakdown. An annual review is the perfect time to address that.
It’s so important to have both sides of the story before you truly are able to critique and inspire an employee for the following year. By setting this foundation prior to the review, you’re able to read the response and tailor yours to what will make it most efficient and productive for both of you.
Ask employees to review the company
Your experience in a company is so much more than what you do day-in and day-out. It’s about the culture of the organization, the people that you work with, the goals that the company has that you’re expected to help achieve, and more.
At what point do you allow for feedback on those topics in an annual review to take place?
When we ask for feedback from employees about the company as a whole, we often receive some of the best tips to grow the organization. They often have insight from a different perspective that we do. All we need to do is ask.
At Kin, we have built this into our review functionality. There, employees are automatically asked to provide feedback on the company allowing you to see their written response once the review is completed.
Don’t discuss salary expectations or merit increases during the initial review period
Money can mean a lot to an employee, and it’s often hard to concentrate on anything else when you know that a potential merit increase is on its way.
To avoid this and create a space where employees can actually register a manager’s performance feedback, schedule two conversations. Truthfully, they both deserve their own time on the floor, undistracted.
Employees’ livelihoods are vital to their success and engagement. With Kin’s Employee Performance Review Builder, you can create follow up questions to ask after the initial feedback is given. This allows space for feedback on their performance to be the main focus during the review, with a follow up to discuss salary expectations after the feedback is discussed.
Follow up with a game plan within a week’s time
Annual reviews are the first step, not the finish line. This should be the beginning of a brand new plan. From here, you’ll create objectives and goals for the following year, hopefully broken down into bite-sized chunks that are either monthly or quarterly.
Feedback begins with clear expectations. A recent Gallup study showed that only 14% of managers felt confident in their ability to give feedback. By creating a plan up front with items that the employee must accomplish, you’re setting up these expectations well, which will allow you to provide easy feedback in the future that is tailored to their set goals and objectives.
Why does this matter? Managers account for at least 70% of variance in employee engagement scores, Gallup estimates. This variation is in turn responsible for severely low worldwide employee engagement. By taking the time to have a two-way conversation during your annual review, and build a plan for success at the end of it, you’re setting them up for another successful 12 months.
By Craig Bryant
Oct 22, 2020
We’re happy to announce Kin’s Files and Documents feature just got a big upgrade to how you manage your workplace’s documents. If you’ve ever dreaded the experience of deleting or moving files one at a time you’ll be happy to know that you can now multi-select files and use Kin’s action tray (which we endearingly call the “Blue Boy”) to re-assign, re-categorize, or delete them in one fell swoop. Ba-da-bing!
While it’s a little late for spring cleaning, we hope these new tools will help make quicker work of organizing, sharing, and signing your employee files. Sign in to Kin now and give the Blue Boy a spin!
By Lisa Arnold
Oct 12, 2020
I remember the day I learned what keyboard shortcuts were all about. The entire world opened up to me and I felt I could now go through my workload at record pace. It’s always exciting to come across changes in technology that help you continue to be the office superhero you are.
We’re constantly improving here at People by Wagepoint and sometimes it’s hard to keep up with. With that being said, here are three different features in People by Wagepoint that could save you time and energy.
Tools
Company Tools are bookmarks or quick links to your company’s commonly used online tools and portals. Think login links to project management tools, benefits portals, payroll logins and more – all in one place and easy for new and existing employees to find. Tools are an element of the onboarding feature in People by Wagepoint and once created, you’re able to assign them to new hire’s on their onboarding setup page.
Go to Company, then Tools and click on the Add New Tool button. Then add a title, image, description and login URL. Then click save.
Now, head over to the Team tab and go a new employee’s profile. You can add tools to their onboarding setup page by clicking Onboarding Set-Up in the navigation there. You’ll see all of the tools you have created within your system and choose the ones used by that individual employee. You can also do this for existing employees, too! Add as many as you’d like.
Here’s what it’ll look like for employees once it’s set up on their Onboarding/Getting Started page:
Custom Fields
A lot of companies need to store employee data which is unique to their business, employment laws, or specific country. Custom Fields is the perfect way to do that.
When you create a new custom field, People by Wagepoint 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 being handled, Custom Fields allows you to create and track any type of information you need.
To set up a new custom field, click the Company Tab then go to Custom Fields. First, create a new category. Next fill in the items related to that category. With each item, you’ll be able to store additional specifics later under the employee profile pages. Hit “Save,” and you’re ready to go. Here’s a just a few Custom Fields we’ve created below as an example. You can have unlimited Custom Fields to track any and all data you need per employee. We’ve even see folks track team member dog names!
Next, visit any employee’s profile page and toward the bottom you’ll see the new category appear, ready for you to start tracking specific information and details. Custom fields are global. They show up for every employee. However, they’re completely optional, so you don’t need to complete them for every employee if they don’t apply. When there’s no information added to a custom field category, the employee doesn’t see that section. Employees only see custom fields when there’s info to display.
Common Holidays Set-Up
Setting up company holidays to coincide with your paid time off policies is a snap in People by Wagepoint, no matter where you live. You can add custom holidays that are for your organization at any time by going to the Company tab, then scrolling under the time-off policies then clicking Add Custom Holidays.
If you want to add a bunch of common holidays specific your country, you can in one fell swoop versus adding them all individually. Simply click the Add Common Holidays link and choose the country you reside in (or the country that the policy will be set for) and then choose the year. People by Wagepoint will bring up all national holidays and you’ll be able to choose the ones your company’s take as holidays. When you click Add Holidays, all chosen holidays will be added automatically and then you can choose which policies they should affect. Once the holidays are in, you can also adjust the amount of days your team gets off for each one.
Do you have any tips or tricks that you’ve found while using People by Wagepoint to help save time? Share them with us below!
By Lisa Arnold
Oct 5, 2020
Who’s feeling a little stressed these days? If you’re nodding your head yes, you’re not alone. We’re facing some challenging times that can really throw our stress levels for a loop. It’s important that we understand what stress levels can do and how we can make stress work for us.
Stress can affect every single system in our body. Chronic stress can even lead to serious problems, such as diabetes, mental disorders and high blood pressure. How do you know when you’ve hit that marker of “too much” stress? And is there a state where we don’t have enough stress to function? Turns out, there is a big connection between our level of stress and performance.
Understanding the Yerkes-Dodson Law
The Yerkes-Dodson law shows us what level of stress people must have in order to have peak performance. This isn’t an amount of stress that would hurt an individual, but instead creates a mental state where the person is focused and driven to complete a task.
To better understand the Yerkes-Dodson Law, we have to understand what stress does to our brain. The part that it affects the most is the prefrontal cortex, which is the area responsible for executive functioning and high-level thinking. When you’re bored your brain releases just a tiny bit of dopamine. It’s not enough to make you motivated to get the work done, but it’s enough to keep you awake. When you’re stressed, on the other hand, your brain produces even more dopamine and this can motivate you to stay alert and complete a task. It’s a natural incentive and “high” to get the work done.
What happens when we’re too stressed?
So, how much stress is too much? The answer really varies person to person. The one thing that remains clear is that we need some level of stress to adequately perform at work. The pressure that causes stress can be helpful because it allows us to focus and gives us the stamina we need to overcome the challenge ahead.
It’s really easy to stress yourself out to the point where you’ve gone past peak performance, and now you’re in a state of potential harm. You’ll know that you’ve hit this point when it’s hard to concentrate and you may even have physical reactions to stress levels such as sweating, increased heart rate, inability to focus and an overall sense of unease.
When you’ve hit this point, it’s not worth trying to get the work done. Your brain needs a way to get rid of some of the stress to bring you back down to peak performance territory. Luckily, science has been able to prove many different ways that you can reduce stress. From ample sleep, to eating well, to exercising regularly, to meditating, you can effectively bring your level of stress down to a point where it is effective again.
What happens when we’re not stressed enough?
On the flip side, not being stressed enough can hurt you, too. Perhaps your job isn’t as interesting to you as it was when you began, or all of your home improvement projects are done and walking into those four walls everyday feels a little ho-hum.
At this point, your brain is no longer sending a signal that you need to focus and complete a task. You may feel a little distant, bored, disengaged or even burnt out. These are tell-tale signs that you might need a little motivation in your life to get back to what you enjoy. And stress is just how to get there. Bet you never thought you’d read that line.
Remember, stress is important for our performance as human beings and gets a bad reputation. Overstressing ourselves can be hurtful as we discussed with the many health implications it can cause. Under-stressing ourselves can be just as bad and lead to us not meeting our full potential or finding things that we truly enjoy in life.
By Craig Bryant
Oct 5, 2020
Employee performance reviews get a bad rap. Often they’re too infrequent, managers ask the wrong questions, or they’re the only tool an employer uses to communicate with employees.
In our latest release, Kin’s performance review builder and templates, we put the power of improving employee feedback in your workplace back into your hands.
We’ve designed a better review page itself; a review template builder; and a variety of templates from which you can get started.
As for making performance reviews more effective in your organization, Kin’s review management tools (calendaring, scheduling meetings, deploying to the entire company with just a few clicks) are there to help you get the most out of your team in time for 2021.
All of these great new tools come bundled in Kin’s Growth plan, and are ready for you to start using today.
A beautiful, better-focused employee review
Kin’s new employee review page is beautiful – but that’s not the mission of the new design. We redesigned the page to focus on feedback and workflow.
With threaded comments and better presentation of employee profile information, the review experience becomes a more informative one.
Mix and match question types, follow up and feedback
In our latest release, you can add most any type of question to your reviews – from multiple choice to long form to scalar. This added flexibility ensures you’re collecting the quantitative data you need to back up the qualitative feedback you’re giving and getting.
A particularly cool update we’re proud of is the ability to create follow up questions. Follow up questions are a great way to get additional feedback from employees and managers about how the review experience itself went and what next steps will be.
Create your own employee review templates, or use ours
Amongst the biggest requests with performance evaluation tools is the lack of flexibility in what reviewers can ask. With our latest release, you can create your own templates, clone existing ones, or choose from pre-built templates we’ve built in for you to use. The ultimate goal with our template builder is to enable workplaces to customize reviews for THEIR workforce, rather than jamming a one-size-fits-all questionnaire into their employee experience.
Slice and dice based on employee group
Another great feature of Kin’s review tools is you can slice and dice which reviews go to which employees. A performance review for your technology team should probably be different than the one you use for your sales people, right? Kin makes that easy: Create a base template, customize it for each team, and use Kin’s incredibly easy deployment tools to ship those reviews out. Then grab a coffee :)
Examples of how to use Kin performance reviews
Now that you can customize Kin’s employee reviews, here are a few ideas for how to put them to work for your employees:
Monthly check-ins
Feedback should never wait, and one of the biggest problems with annual reviews is just that: by the end of the year, it’s too hard to remember all the good, bad, and uglies that happened the prior 365 days.
Quarterly reviews
Quarterly reviews are used to get a pulse on progress and objectives – what are the short term missions you put employees on each quarter, and how are things going?
Once a year compensation review
Ahh, the annual review but in a good way! We recommend a once-yearly review cycle to take a look back and a look forward. Reflect on objectives met, and what needs work in the new year. Also, it’s a good time to have a candid talk about compensation and any potential opportunity for promotions.
Leadership and company review
If feedback isn’t flowing up, the feedback flowing down probably won’t be effective. That’s because leadership may not have established the proper channel to collect feedback for the leadership and company mission.
At least once a year, we recommend soliciting hard feedback about how leadership, management, and company are doing through the eyes of employees – after all, your people are your most valuable asset. As such their feedback is critical to ensuring you’re doing what’s needed to keep them rowing ahead.
Where are my old reviews?
If you’re wondering what happens to your existing reviews, the answer is simple: nothing. They’re still there, and any in-flight reviews will continue to work as you’d expect them to. In addition, the old format of Kin’s employee reviews will live on as a review template so you can always choose to continue using it if it suits your team well.
Keep on communicating
As we dig into the final few months of a (let’s be honest) very unique year, keep in mind your team members could use a little extra communication and feedback. We’re happy to get these great new tools in your hands in time to do just that – round out the year giving your team what it needs to launch into a strong 2021. If you have questions about Kin’s employee performance reviews or the review builder and templates, please reach out to us, we’ll be happy to help. Happy communicating!