zerocater presents: proficiency in the workplace

PROFICIENCY IN THE WORKPLACEBusiness landscapes are changing. It is vital for organizations tolearn how to identify gaps and evolve with trends.

ZeroCater Presents

PROFICIENCY IN THE WORKPLACE1

IT IS NO SECRET that companies like Google and Apple have mastered the

method of attracting and retaining some of the world’s top talent. Not only do

they know how to make employees happy, but they also understand how to

keep them operating at the highest level of proficiency in the workplace. Most

CEOs strive to model their companies after successful organizations, but it’s

not as easy as it seems. In this paper you will learn the following:

• What is workplace proficiency?

• What are some workplace trends?

• How to identify gaps in workplace productivity

• Five techniques to increase proficiency and productivity in

your o�ce.

WHAT IS PROFICIENCY IN THE WORKPLACE?

Proficiency is progress. To become proficient in anything requires an open

mind and dedication to mastering the skill you seek to learn. Companies that

choose not to dynamically advance will surely fall behind. Some areas that can

directly impact an organization’s bottom line are: failing to attract top talent,

gaining market share, and innovating at a rapid pace. Baby Boomers vs.

“Proficiency is progress. To become proficient in anything

requires an open mind and dedication to mastering the skill you seek to learn.”


Millennials, male vs. female, suits vs. jeans, etc, only scratch the surface of

progressive workplace topics. Continual investment in employees separates

top companies from the rest.

Companies that do not invest in their employees will ultimately pay the price

for it. Allen Schweyer, the author of The Economics of Engagement, noted

that “disengaged employees are estimated to cost the U.S. economy as much

as $350 billion per year in lost productivity, accidents, theft, and turnover” (1).

Employees work harder for companies that give them the resources to master

their skills. Your employees are the best or worst advocates in the world for your

business, thus making it necessary to equip them with the tools to promote

your organization in a positive light.

Once you invest in the people running your organization, you can then begin

to measure the e�ciency of your workplace. With all the trends and perks

being offered, how do you know which ones are right for your business? What

perks will increase employee retention and reduce downtime?

TRENDS IN THE WORKPLACE

Wellness programs, o�ce layouts, unlimited vacation, and other developing

trends are shaping the way employees look at their work landscape. Moving

from a traditional, often slow or stagnate work environment, to a progressive

one is steady overhaul that necessitates employee buy-in. Organizations need

to focus on a top down communication strategy to

employees in order to adopt new workplace norms.

WELLNESS PROGRAMS

One of the most popular trends in the workplace is an employee wellness

program. Companies that adopt the principle that happy employees make for

more productive workers have implemented wellness programs and have found

that these initiatives directly impact the bottom line.


The latest survey on wellness programs from Fidelity Investments and the

National Business Group on Health (NBGH) reveals that “employers will spend

an average of $693 per employee on wellness-based incentives in 2015, up

from $594 in 2014 and $430 five years ago” (2). As the spend cap climbs for

wellness programs, it’s clear this is a trend that won’t be fading anytime soon.

Companies of all industries and sizes are looking into ways to keep their

employees happy and healthy, while increasing workweek productivity.

When evaluating whether or not a wellness program assists an organization in

creating a progressive workplace, we examined the ROI of these types of

programs. Implementing a wellness program is not an easy task, and must be

done correctly to reap maximum benefits. According to a Harvard Business

Review study, “a study by Towers Watson and the National Business Group on

Health shows that organizations with highly e�ective wellness programs report

significantly lower voluntary attrition than do those whose programs have low

e�ectiveness (9% vs. 15%)” (3). Defining the mission of your wellness program,

and clearly communicating it to your employees, will dictate its e�ectiveness.

Harvard Business Review studied a large financial services company, Nelnet,

and discovered that the original rollout of its wellness program missed the

mark with employees. It was not clearly communicated to the sta�, causing

confusion, which reduced adoption rates. Once the team at Nelnet realized

the program was not presented clearly, they pivoted their strategy and the

company “now emphasizes early communication and clear explanations to give

employees time to ask questions and prepare for change. Today employees

embrace Nelnet’s wellness culture: 90% participate in health risk assessments

(HRAs); about three quarters of those engage in wellness activities” (3).

The success of wellness programs around the country proves that healthy and

happy employees are worth the investment. Of course, if a wellness program

cannot be supported within your organization, or is not an extension of the


company values, there are a number of ways to implement progress in the

workplace. Another trend we explored is the physical layout of the workspace

and how it impacts workplace proficiency.

PROGRESSIVE WORKSPACES

The dreaded cubicle has been replaced by standing desks, wide open spaces,

and treadmills. In an attempt to move toward an aesthetically appealing

workplace, but also one that facilitates the best work from employees, the

physical environment of an o�ce must align with the company culture and

values while providing the ideal space for laborate and innovate. Shive-Hattery,

an architecture and engineering consulting firm, broke down the di�erentiat-

ing factors between the traditional and progressive corporate workspaces:

It’s important to identify what type of workspace fits your company. Not all

companies need to make a jump from a completely traditional workspace to

progressive, but choosing a few functions to tweak can make a dramatic

http://www.shive-hattery.com/publications/ideas/workplace/files/assets/common/downloads/publication.pdf


impact. Many companies are moving from internalized spaces like cubicles

and private o�ces to open floor plans. Shive-Hattery worked with Stryker, one

of the largest medical device manufacturers, to transform their workspace,

“[they] wanted to design a workplace that promoted collaboration, and broke

down traditional hierarchies while providing great flexibility for continuous

change” (4). Breaking down traditional hierarchies can be as simple as moving

desks while maintaining a clear line of command. Open public spaces can

instill a sense of team and collaboration in the o�ce. Some of the best ideas

are generated in open floor plan o�ce layouts.

Not every workplace layout is for every type of organization. Harvard Business

Review explored workplace performance data by “deploying thousands of

badges in workplaces ranging from pharmaceuticals, finance, and software

companies to hospitals, [they began] to unlock the secrets of good o�ce

design in terms of density, proximity of people, and social nature” (5). One of

the findings from the study clearly illustrated that “managers might be

tempted to simply build big social spaces and expect great results, but it’s not

that simple. Companies must have an understanding of what they’re trying to

achieve (higher productivity? more creativity?) before changing a space” (5).

QUESTIONS TO ASK ABOUT YOUR ORGANIZATION

How might our organization function more effectively?

How do our employees want to work?

How much time do employees spend working outside of the office?

Do we need to address issues regarding available office real estate?

Are we willing to make corporate shifts and changes?

What organizational value(s) could be translated into the space?

Is organization leadership willing to lead change?

What roles does technology play in your work processes?

How is your business changing and how can the workplace support this change?

http://www.shive-hattery.com/publications/ideas/workplace/files/assets/common/downloads/publication.pdf


Developing the right workspace drives performance in the o�ce. Keeping up

with trends will help you retain and attract top talent, while encouraging your

employees to get the most out of daily work interactions. Wellness programs

and o�ce design impact health, happiness, and performance of employees.

The final trend that has recently surfaced is the oft-desired unlimited vacation

policy.

OPEN VACATION POLICIES

Unlimited vacation policies are used to incentivize employees. Although,

currently, the data to support its e�ectiveness is slow to surface. Many

management teams are conducting conversations the pros and cons of

such a perk. This type of perk comes down to one thing: the trust between

employees and management.

Jim Belosic, CEO of ShortStack, likens his reasoning for o�ering an unlimited

vacation policy to companies such as Virgin Airlines, Netflix, Groupon, and

Evernote. Belosic has “learned that when you treat employees like grown-ups,

they act like grown-ups. When employees know they are trusted to take

vacation when they need or want one, they’re more willing and excited to

produce good work when they’re in the o�ce” (6).

Internationally, Americans are known for pushing the threshold of the typical

workweek. It’s no secret that we do not capitalize on our vacation days unlike

other parts of the world. In 2014, Glassdoor and Harris Interactive reported

that, “one in four (25 percent) [employees] report taking 100 percent of their

eligible time o�. Two in five (40 percent) employees report taking 25 percent

or less of their eligible time o�” (7). When employees are not encouraged to

take paid time o�, it leads to poor morale, overworked, and burnt out workers.

Encouraging sta� to take the time they need to recharge empowers them to

come back to the o�ce and produce at maximum capacity.


Of course, there are pros and cons to implementing an unlimited vacation

policy. Based on our research, this is a scarcely o�ered program. These are the

top three pros and cons:

Workplace perks inspire happy and healthy employees—regardless of trend,

your people are the ones who keep the company’s engine running.

HOW TO MIND THE GAP IN THE WORKPLACE

Implementing change in the workplace starts with identifying the gaps.

Depending on the organization, there are several ways to understand if your

employees are engaged, if they are happy, and how they are performing.

Best Practices to Mind The Gaps:

1. Ask

Understanding where the issues lie does not have to be complex or

convoluted. Employees are typically eager to share insight as to where

things could be improved.

Employee surveys, suggestion boxes, one-on-one discussions, company

Q&A, and other methods are e�ective tools to gather feedback. These

methods often intimidate those whom do not commonly voice their

opinions, so it is also beneficial to utilize an anonymous option to

collect employee opinions.

Getting employees to voice their thoughts is not an easy task. B2B

International lists a few ways to get employees to participate:

PROSHappier people work harder

Trust becomes a part of company cultureRecruiting sell

CONSPolicy abuse

Employees take less vacationIll-equipped workplace infastructure


• CEO involvement and support, for example a personalized invitation to participate from the CEO

• A publicity campaign prior to the survey

• "Heads up" e-mail alerts and team briefings beforehand

• Strong and present management support for the survey

• Survey weeks–including support and open access areas for completion (if also used for sta� who do not have dedicated computer access)

• Strong internal distribution strategy

• Incentives at the personal level like prizes,= etc.

• Promise to share headline results shortly after the survey closes (bulleted points emerging from survey on topical issues)

https://www.b2binternational.com/publications/employee-satisfaction/

2. Observe

If your company has identified issues in the workplace, but has not yet

evaluated them, then observation might be a better avenue.

Washington State Human Resources outlines how to build an

observational analysis in the workplace:

For observation to be e�ective:

Know what to look and listen for; identify the questions you

need answered; note the phrases, behaviors, visuals that will

help answer those questions.

Talk with employees before the observation to communicate

why you are observing, and how you will use the information

to problem-solve.

Collect quantitative and qualitative (or hard and soft) data, and

note any standards or expectations you find in the workplace.

http://www.hr.wa.gov/WorkforceDataAndPlanning/WorkforceDataTrends/StateEmployeeSurvey/Pages/Observe.aspx

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It’s easy to forget what it feels like to sit in that cubicle, eat at your desk,

or work so many hours you lose sight of your personal life at the top of the

company totem pole. Through observation, employees will appreciate the

e�ort from upper management to spend time learning what’s happening in

the organization.

3. Experiment Experiment as follows:

As you experiment with filling the gaps in the workplace, it’s important to test

and quickly pivot to optimize from these learnings. Understanding the problem

is the most important component to testing. Once you understand the issue

and choose the initial experiment, you will need to identify how you will

measure its success.

5 WAYS TO INCREASE PROFICIENCY IN THE WORKPLACE

Prior to the 2008 recession, resolving workplace issues was a top priority for

companies. Today, personnel issues and technological advancements top the list.

There are five ways in which you can turn your organization into a highly

proficient workplace:

PURPOSE: PRIMARY QUESTION: KEY POINTS:

To test a solution and learn so that you can adjust your approachor apply the solutionmore broadly.

What will we try to counteract or solve theproblem?

Identify how you willknow if the solution is working.


1. Be Transparent Being transparent with employees about company goals and

encouraging a team mindset is vital to building a proficient work

place. Transparency relates to trust as an employee’s ability to trust

the company and the people they work for directly impacts their

happiness and loyalty.

Forbes released an article highlighting five ways to be more transparent

in the workplace:

Transparency starts from the top, but it should be encouraged across

the board. New generations seek communication and data sharing,

and the bar continues to rise as the world evolves. In order to be

proficient, you must be willing to put e�ort toward communicating with

your employees.


2. Invest in your employees

Your people are your company. If you want to drive a Ferrari, you need

to be willing to invest in the maintenance it requires. Understanding

what your employees want and need should be at the top of your

priority list. Many companies try to fix issues that arise with training,

and don’t realize that there are plenty of other options to show your

sta� that the organization is invested in them without spending

excessive training dollars and resources.

Earlier, we discussed trends that reward employees and fosters a happy

and healthy workplace. Investing in your employees is not always about

fixing a problem or teaching a skill, but rather respecting that your

employees are humans not robots. Sage, an HRMS company, published

a piece on the Return on Investment of Employee Investment stating

“each company has to find its own balance of mandatory and voluntary

benefits. It’s safe to say that the best employees will not stay long in a

job that is either significantly undercompensated or lacking in benefits”(10).

3. Encourage collaboration

Collaboration is independent of company size, industry, and location. It

is one of the easiest ways to build a proficient workforce and accelerate

your organization’s success.

Jacob Morgan, the author of The Collaborative Organization: A Strategic

Guide to Solving Your Internal Business Challenges Using Social and

Collaborative Tools, provides twelve core principles to create a

collaborative environment:


Listening to your employees is imperative in developing a proficient

workplace. Any new idea needs sta� to buy in. By obtaining feedback

from employees, you can create an environment that is not only quickly

adopted, but widely adopted as well.

Leading by example is an age-old principle that is often forgotten in

business. If upper management finds a way to collaborate and set the

trend, it will be more comfortable for employees to follow suit. Take it

upon yourself as a manager to lead by example.

Morgan says, “collaboration should never be seen as an additional task

or requirement for employees. Instead collaboration should fit naturally

into their flow of work” (11).

Some of the best ideas come from collaborating with others as opposed

to working independently. By encouraging this, your employees will have

the opportunity to advance their own skills by learning from one another.


4. Steps toward progressive over traditional As new generations join the workforce, there are di�erent expectations

of how the o�ce should feel and operate. Companies are not sacrificing

the importance of training or taking the job seriously, but they are

looking to what makes the new generation of workers excited.

Moving away from the traditional workplace is an e�ective way to make

an impact at your organization. Take Stryker, for example: they wanted

to create an environment in which their employees would naturally

interact and feel the energy of one another’s innovation. It was

important for them to create a space that their employees wanted to

show up to every day.

There is no one solution that will move you into a more progressive

workplace, but instead, there are a few ways in which you can design

your workspace to show flexibility, appreciation, and relevancy.

5. Challenge your employees Job security used to be the number one concern for employees.

In today’s landscape, job-hopping is one of the biggest issues seen in

our workforce generation gaps.

Studies are showing that times are, in fact, changing and so are the

workforce’s priorities. The Society for Human Resource Management

released a report in 2012 that stated, “opportunities to use skills and

abilities’ now holds the top spot on the list of job satisfaction drivers

(63 percent), placing job security (61 percent) in second place for the

first time since 2007, when compensation/pay topped the list” (12).

Employees want to be valued, engaged, and challenged. The Harvard

Business Review released a piece on how to make your employees

happier and listed ways you can tell your employees need to be

challenged:


Everything they manage has run smoothly for a significant

period of time.

When faced with problems, they jump quickly to solutions.

They spend time trying to fix other peoples’ and other

deparments’ problems.

They’ve become increasingly but inexplicably negative.

https://hbr.org/2014/11/an-easy-way-to-make-your-employees-happier

Management should be proactive with their teams to identify when these

trends are sneaking into the picture. Challenging your employees will lead to

workplace happiness and, ultimately more company-wide production.

ZEROCATER

As a concierge catering service, ZeroCater is in the business of accelerating

the transition into the new age of business.

Building a proficient workplace is not easy, and when employee buy-in is a

necessitation, it’s even more di�cult. Food has become an easy way to

reward, incentivize, and evolve the workplace.

Employees spend an average of sixty minutes a day on lunch. By providing

catered lunch, you save your entire team time. This reinforces that employee

investment ultimately reduces costs in the long run.

SUMMARY

Now that you know today’s workplace trends, and how to identify gaps and

ine�ciencies in your organization you can continue to evolve—all while

staying true to the company’s value proposition. Not every technique or

program will help your company achieve a proficient workplace, but if you

can e�ectively identify the gaps in your workplace, and build programs

around what your workforce wants and needs, you will be successful in

moving toward a more progressive workplace.

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WORKS CITED

1) Allan Schweyer, “The Economics of Engagement,” Human Capital Institute and Enterprise Engagement Alliance, June 2009, p.1. http://na.sage.com/~/media/site/Sage%20HRMS/pdf/white_papers/SageHRMS_ROEI.pdf

2) Online survey fielded from December 2014 through January 2015 among clients of National Business Group on Health and Fidelity Investments. http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150326005585/en/Companies-Spending-Corporate-Wellness-Programs-Employees-Leaving#.VR7i9TvF_3p4)

3) LEONARD L. BERRY, ANN M. MIRABITO, AND WILLIAM B. BAUM, “WHAT’S THE HARD RETURN ON EMPLOYEE WELLNESS PROGRAMS”, HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW, DECEM-BER 1, 2010 https://hbr.org/2010/12/whats-the-hard-return-on-employee-wellness-programs

4) http://www.shive-hattery.com/publications/ideas/workplace/-files/assets/common/downloads/publication.pdf

5) https://hbr.org/2014/10/workspaces-that-move-people

6) http://www.forbes.com/sites/dailymuse/2014/10/29/could-unlim-ited-vacation-time-work-for-your-company/

7) http://www.glassdoor.com/press/glassdoor-survey-reveals-aver-age-american-employee-takes-earned-vacationpaid-time-61-report-working-vacation

8) https://www.b2binternational.com/publications/employee-satisfaction/

9)http://www.hr.wa.gov/WorkforceDataAndPlanning/WorkforceDa-taTrends/StateEmployeeSurvey/Pages/Observe.aspx

10)http://na.sage.com/~/media/site/Sage%20HRMS/pdf/white_papers/SageHRMS_ROEI.pdf

11) http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2013/07/30/the-12-hab-its-of-highly-collaborative-organizations/2/]

12) http://www.shrm.org/hrdisciplines/employeerelations/articles/-pages/shrm-job-security-is-no-longer-top-driver-of-satisfaction.aspx

zerocater presents: proficiency in the workplace

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