This week is my first week back in the office for 2022, returning from leave which began on 22 December 2021. It was a nice break, full of lots of different adventures, including Christmas celebrations, time with family and friends, and an engagement. It was also a time to relax from work, to step back and think more broadly around ways of working and focus for 2022. Whilst it did meant that the mind was thinking about work, it was more on the overarching themes, rather than individual cases or projects. As such, there are a couple of new ways of working I’d like to implement on my return, along with a couple of older habits to continue to reinforce.
The Daily Morning List (To-Do Task)
This has been one of the most effective ways of working for me. Each morning, my To-Do list on the PC comes up with this task (attached are multiple sub tasks). It helps to focus my attention on what needs to happen immediately as I begin the work day and helps to set me up to plan out the rest of the day (which we’ll get to below). Apart from some very easy sub-tasks (check for software updates by opening software centre), it also helps me to focus on what I’m in a program for. As an example, whilst I will open up Outlook, I only quickly scan emails. Any emails that belong in a different HR department get forwarded through (although with an education reply – I have forwarded on your behalf, here is the email for future queries). Any general or update emails go to ‘reading.’ Then outlook is closed and we are on to other tasks, such as checking reports and Workday tasks. Finally, it’s time to go offline and plan out the work for the day.
Offline time in the morning to plan out the day and focus
Once the morning list is done, I do take time to plan out my day. This is before I start replying to any emails, getting sucked in to the red explanation point emails, etc. I look through what requires my response in email, CRM, and Workday, and then with my calendar open, plan out when I can do these tasks. This includes blocking out focus time to ensure I’m ready for any meetings, and setting aside project time too to make sure I can continue to work on any long term documents or projects. Once all of that is planned out, I’ll grab a coffee, read some of the articles in ‘reading’ to ease in to the day, and then away I go.
Introduce and practice MindSight
I’m current reading MindSight, and am really swayed by the various techniques and perspectives put forward. Areas to reinforce the linkages between the various parts of the brain, and to make sure that I am engaging both the left and right side of the brain – to notice if I am skewing too far to one side – and to make sure that I remain and not getting too close to the shoreline of either rigidity or chaos.
Other useful techniques mentioned so far in the book are on mindfulness training and activities, primarily to insert time once an event happens so we can notice and label our emotions (stating what they are, and not attaching a right or wrong way to feel emotion or label to it), and then taking more considered action. I need to observe, insert objectivity, and be open.
A novel piece of information was the concept of the mind as a ‘we,’ to be able to intimately connect with others thoughts and feelings. To link. If I move too far to the left side of the brain, I can loose much of the empathy and understanding that the right brain is responsible for. In a role such as HR where you are dealing with many different sides of a story and different versions of truth, being able to remain objective whilst connecting with others is important.
Six Page Narratives
I have briefly written about this before, but I want to expand upon this practice. To help make this a habit, I will block out focus time (reference above) to make sure I give myself uninterrupted time to prepare for these meetings and prepare the narrative briefs. I have found that this allows for greater focus and attention during meetings, and gives us more time for a free form discussion on the important matters.
Better integration between areas we work with
A major focus for this year to is make handover of work clear. This includes ensuring items are handover ready and needs no rework or clarification. That the relevant notes are captured. As we are a big HR division with different sub-areas, we are not involved in whole processes. Rather, we do our thing, and hand it over. Which can be very confusing to clients as to who is doing what and who they follow up with. Naturally, this defaults to us, with an expectation that we will find out where it is and report back. One way around this is to be very clear to the client as to who the next major owner is – e.g. we have reviewed the job description and profile, and approved it all in the system. As this is going to advert, recruitment now own the process and will work closely with you, and here is your new contact for any queries relating to this particular piece of work. Just as important is reinforcing if the client comes back to us with a different HR department query – we need to forward the query through and then gently reply to the client with the query reference number and email address and contact details for who will be helping them.
Updated user guides and manuals
Our user guides are basic, and I understand why. There was incredible time pressure for launch, so v1 was what we got. Perfectly fine. However, there was not really been a v2, or v3, and so forth. The guides have errors and are incomplete which frustrates our end users. Whilst we are quieter at the start of the year, we need to review and provide feedback through to the relevant team. This includes suggestions (and offer of time to help) that the guides are delivered through multiple mediums – e.g. video and text.
Making sure work is able to be picked up by others as needed
Most of my day to day work happens outside of my outlook inbox, which means it is in a shareable piece of software such as CRM or a HCMS. This means others can see my work. With the ongoing pandemic, I need to make sure my notes are very clear so that if I am suddenly off work, colleagues can easily continue what I am working on. I think this is a better approach than keeping a seperate handover document with notes. Rather, I want to have everything ‘handover’ ready through the notes and advice I capture in the live cases.
Utilise Office 365
I am still in the habit of sending a word document as an attachment and asking for comments. Rather, I need to share the document on the cloud, so everyone can edit the one document, to capture all of the notes. This will make it easier to consolidate, and will free up others time. If someone else notices the spelling mistake, everyone else can ignore, rather than taking the time on their individual documents to update.
Keep consistent with these new ways of working
The final item is to ensure I remain consistent with these ways of working, particularly when trying new ones. It feels weird at times to be doing things a different ways, like it’s not quite right. However, that doesn’t mean that what I was originally doing, or what we do, is necessarily the best way to go about tasks. A bit more complication or time upfront, if it’s clear and flows through well, will actually save time for everyone later – through either less rework, more information so others down the train can complete their tasks without clarification, and less followups as timeframes and ownership are clear. It will however mean that at first there will be more time to set and maintain these principles. It will be worth it. Or at least when I dream about the outcomes, I’m convinced at the moment it’s worthwhile trying and implementing and using the time to maintain and be consistent.
A final thought
These are the inputs that I want to pursue. I’ve stayed away in many ways from an output measurement. Part of this is due to how do I actually measure this success. Someone not reaching out to clarify is hard to measure. Rather, over time, I will notice more free time (and therefore space to focus on more important tasks and matter) if I am diligent and consistent in the inputs – doing the above items. Time will tell.
Let’s go on this journey.