#EPISODE 8: Trending HR Techniques

"Friday [their designated day off] is a quieter day and I tend to have my most creative ideas on Fridays."

UK studies show a 4-day workweek benefits workers with lower stress levels and fewer sick days.

Organizations report no significant drops in productivity and a 22% rise in job applications, with 92% continuing the 4-day week.

“We didn't do a pilot like many organizations did, but we did spend 10 months getting prepared for the change. It's so important that you do lots of consultation and talk to people about what's on their minds and what can help them. It also provided time for people to get into the right psychological space, realign processes, and think about what they could do differently and better”

“We did a meeting audit and massively reduced the number of meetings across the company. And we introduced meeting guidelines to ensure that we were being efficient with who was being invited to meetings”

“People have to think ahead and take more ownership because we still need to push forward and make decisions quickly. We don't want to delay execution so people have to get creative sometimes”

🔽 Full Results Summary of UK 4-Day Week Plot

🔽 Cambridge social scientists 4-Day Week research

"5 minutes on the internet, as measured by my timer, would pass in what seemed to me about 35 seconds. A timed hour of research would seem to take between three and four hours. My timer was a crisp metal yardstick laid down in the fog of my temporal intuitions."

Try the Pomodoro Technique if you...

# Find little distractions often derail the whole workday

# Consistently work past the point of optimal productivity

# Have lots of open-ended work that could take unlimited amounts of time (e.g., studying for an exam, researching a blog post, etc.)

# Are overly optimistic when it comes to how much you can get done in a day (aren't we all 🙃)

# Enjoy gamified goal-setting

# Really like tomatoes

🍅 Plan out your pomodoros in advance

Take 15 minutes at the beginning of your workday (or at the end if you're planning for the next day) to plan out your pomodoros. Take your to-do list for the day and note how many pomodoros each task will take.

🍅 Build overflow pomodoros into your day

While an 8-hour workday technically leaves room for 16 pomodoros, it's best to build in a buffer of 2-4 "overflow" pomodoros, just in case. Use your overflow pomodoros for tasks that take longer than you planned or for unexpected tasks that come up during the day.

🍅 Experiment with the length of your pomodoros

For some types of work that require extended periods in a creative "flow" state — think coding, writing, composing, etc. — 25 minutes may be too short. Try extended work sessions with longer breaks.

A DeskTime study found that a 52-minute focus and 17-minute break is the perfect balance. Others prefer 90 full minutes with a 20-30-minute break, based on Ultradian rhythms.

🍅 Use an app to enforce your pomodoros

No matter how motivated you are at the start of the day, it's really hard to actually stick to your pomodoros. Hold yourself accountable with a break reminder app.

Management by Objectives (MBOs) and Objective and Key Results (OKRs) are two popular goal-setting systems for high performance teams.

They are also similar because OKRs evolved from MBOs.

OKR vs. MBO in Human Resources (HR)

HR MBO example

✍🏼 Establish a more inclusive workplace

HR OKR example

✍🏼 Objective: Establish a more inclusive workplace

✍🏼 Key result 1: Create a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) plan

✍🏼 Key result 2: Hold one training session on diversity, equity, and inclusion with an attendance rate of 100%

✍🏼 Key result 3: Hire 2 diverse employees in 3 departments

How to Implement OKRs for HR? [more examples]

Compensation Example 💰

Objective: Significantly improve our benefit program while staying within budget

Key result 1: Evaluate benefit programs of 5 similar local companies, select and finalize contract with new vendor with best fit

Key result 2: Ensure >85% participation in benefit program

Key result 3: Maintain benefits budget below $500 per team member per year

Performance Example 🏆

Objective: Drastically increase team performance

Key result 1: Increase the OKR completion rate for team members from 60% to 70%

Key result 2: Increase the participation on the weekly check-ins from 75% to 90%

Key result 3: Increase the product teams velocity from 112 to 150

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