Learnings From 2022; Sunita Rath On Differentiating Between Urgent And Important At Work
In last 3 years, the pandemic affect evolved the business workplace in a multifold and substantial manner. Also, the human resource (HR) function of every organisations is steadily moving its positioning from being a cost-center to becoming a profit-center.
Given the flexibility ingrained in the business over the past few years as well as the prevalence of COVID-19, much of the modern task force has moved to work from home (WFH) or perform work in a hybrid manner. Like most things in life, it’s how you deal with change, and 2023 is certainly the year HR will have to ride the transformation waves that rippled across the past three years. Talking about past learnings and emphasizing on new differentiating factors, Sunita Rath, CPO, Aegon Lifehas shared a deeper insight with BW People journalist.
Urgent items are always focused on the present moment: they need attention right now, and if they are not dealt with, the consequences are mostly faced in the near future. They require your immediate attention, and their consequences can be swift. Typically, you can't avoid urgent tasks. We occasionally notice a pattern in the types of urgent tasks, and this should be addressed systemically to avoid recurrence of similar issues.
Important items, on the other hand, pertain to medium/long-term pursuits and items of strategic value. Important tasks are tasks that contribute to your long-term values, mission, and goals. Sometimes an important task can also be urgent, but this is unusual. Most such tasks have less time pressure and permit detailed analysis and planning. When you're focusing on an important task, you can work in a responsive mode, which can help you stay rational, calm, and open to new opportunities. No one else can define a task's importance for you.
So, it is about the choice given to each individual to define for oneself what is urgent and what is important. By giving the employees the context of what is critical and non-critical, as well as what is important and urgent from an organizational point of view, leaders can facilitate this decision for them, but ownership remains with the employees. One step that we, at Aegon Life, have taken to help employees decide between urgent and important is that, as an organisation, we have developed OKRs and Functional KRs and have aligned the goals of employees with these KRs. The OKRs are reviewed on a monthly basis and tweaked/changed as necessary. The employees are required to do monthly check-ins and have periodic feedback sessions with their respective managers/stakeholders, as appropriate. This process has helped align the workforce with organisational KRs and functional KRs.
This dilemma of urgent Vs Important is not going anywhere, and each individual is responsible and accountable for making the right choice and finding the right prioritization at a given moment.
2. It is equally the responsibility of both leadership and employees to balance critical and non-critical meetings in order to maintain a sense of belonging to the organization. To help employees strike an optimal work-life balance, as an organization, did you take any initiative or how did you manage the situation as HR head?
Indeed, both leadership and employees are equally responsible for balancing critical and non-critical meetings. At Aegon Life, we have adopted this general principle that not more than 60% of working hours are for meetings and interactions. In addition, we have the Golden Guidelines, a mechanism for ensuring that employees are able to maintain their work-life balance and are able to distinguish between critical and non-critical meetings. It includes “no meeting hours” (which is before 9:30 am, after 6:00 pm, and between 12:30 – 2 pm) and “no meeting day” (full day on the second Wednesday of the month). It also provides for not feeling pressured to check/ respond to late evening emails unless they are flagged as urgent.
To ensure that we have effective meetings across the organization and that there is a clear distinction between critical and non-critical meetings, we have formulated some guidelines. Before sending the meeting invites for any task, one should consider, “Can it be done effectively without a meeting?” and if the meeting is still needed then, review “if all participants are required,” considering their role and specific contribution expected in the meeting. The invites are to be shared at least a week in advance, and preferably at least 2 weeks in advance for meetings longer than 1 hour. Meetings scheduled for more than 30 minutes may be accompanied by a pre-read and details on the purpose of meeting the participants. Meeting requests should be responded to immediately by “Accept/ Reject” to enable meeting organizers to figure out alternatives at the earliest, if required.
For example - We conduct OKR Review meetings on a regular basis where expectations are clear on the accountability of a particular KR in terms of primary responsibility, and the rest are invited as optional invitees, who have the choice to decide which meeting/KR review to attend based on what they feel is critical from their perspective.
To help understand this better, we have advised employees to try MS MyAnalytics to analyse/ comprehend their work pattern and make informed decisions.
We, as an organization, focus on listening; it's continuous listening and changing that help us align with employee feedback.
To ensure that employees are heard, apart from the periodic 1surveys, we also have regular 1:1 connects with HR, who draw themes and key areas of concern (if any) from these discussions and take measures to proactively address any concerns and enhance employee-bonding within the organisation.
3. Many important tasks involve tolerating thinking about things that could go wrong, which is anxiety-provoking. What approach would you suggest to manage such feelings?
While it is natural for employees to focus on completing all important tasks, they also need to have the understanding that not everything can go right every time. There would be situations where things could go wrong, giving rise to anxious moments. As an organization, we encourage a few practices that equip the employees to handle these situations effectively and enable the organization to support them at such times.
We provide a safe space for employee to try new ideas, fail fast and learn from it and move quickly. We encourage transparency and openness as a practice, and employees are not judged if they have an opinion which may be opposite to the popular opinion. There is no judgement or adverse implication if an employee chooses to attend or not attend a meeting where s/he was either optional attendee or was not the main stakeholder. We continuously do sessions on employee wellbeing and have created platforms for employees to freely share their opinions and thoughts; these platforms range from the organizational level to 1:1 connects with CEO and CXOs. Our leadership team is open to critical analysis of our successes and failures and encourages employees to critique or make suggestions to improve the effectiveness of our strategies and action plans.
We also have few guidelines for employees which they can practice to have lesser stress such as exercise well, sleep adequately, eat healthy, avoid bad work posture, social media, multiple devices and other such distractions, during work hours, If they are unable to manage meetings and interactions within 60% of working hours, they can connect with and seek help from their manager, function head, HRBP or a counselor available on the Visit App to all employees
4. Managing the balance between expectations of flexibility and a need for accountability will be a key challenge that employers and managers will face in the coming 12 months. Do you think the optimum balance between understanding the difference between "urgent" and "important" will help employee and employer to manage it?
This is a classic dilemma every organization goes through: balancing between flexibility given to the employee and accountability showcased by the employee.
The only way to overcome it is to ensure that every employee is evaluated based on pre-determined, well-narrated outcomes, and that clear metrics are defined for such evaluations.
For an employee to be outcome-oriented, s/he needs to have a clear understanding of what is urgent and what is important and be able to prioritize/ deliver accordingly. Being present in KR reviews (business reviews), by participating in various communication platforms across the company, the employee can have a clear idea and understanding as to what is “urgent” Vs “Important” from the organization perspective, develop a sense of ownership and accountability for the outcomes accordingly. It also helps in aligning the employee with the Organizational goals and functional goals.
To enable our employee to do a regular reflection of this outcome-orientation, we have a monthly check-in process, where an employee does a monthly self-assessment of what s/he has delivered and periodic manager reviews, which ensures that the employee and the manager are aligned on expected outcomes and the extent of flexibility permitted vs the degree of accountability needed.
We also enable our employees through a dedicated training module called “Prioritizing Effectively which teaches them the prioritization matrix with quick tips on Prioritizing. It helps the employees understand that prioritization presupposes the identification of urgent and important tasks and exercising flexibility with an eye on the accountability needed for achieving the outcomes.
5. What's at stake if we fail to distinguish between urgent and important tasks?
Failure to perform as per expectations, not able to deliver as per timelines, a state of constant confusion/chaos leading to anxiety and stress could be the outcomes if we fail to distinguish between urgent and important tasks.
Mental wellbeing gets impacted when an employee is continuously torn between the dilemma of urgent vs important tasks. Slowly, the stress causes burnout and leads to poor performance. The important task on your list today might be urgent tomorrow, and it is an inevitable evolving cycle.
It may lead to a situation where, in spite of working hard, the employee and the organisation will fall short on key performance parameters, unable to meet the desired/defined outcomes. It will also lead to low morale /motivation and alienation of employees, leading to higher attrition owing to low employee satisfaction. At an organizational level, it is a sure-shot recipe for failure.
6. At a time when several companies are shifted into Work from Office model, Why Aegon Life has decided to make its employees comfortable by allowing them to work from Anywhere and what was the leadership style and challenges faced in its initial stage?
Aegon Life has been at the forefront of digitization in Insurance. On April 1st, 2021, we implemented the "Work from Anywhere" (WFA) policy to further enhance our Digital DNA and to provide choice, convenience, as well as empowerment to our employees. This new workplace flexibility is our investment toward employee well-being and productivity.
The pandemic forced companies to be flexible and adopt newer working methods. As part of essential services, we swiftly adapted and continued business as usual. At Aegon Life, we have always prioritized the health and safety of our employees. We have adopted appropriate tools and practices to maintain business as usual by prioritizing employee safety as well as productivity while implementing the WFA approach.
WFA gave our employees the flexibility and choice to work from their space of comfort and deliver on the expectations. They saved travel time and devoted the same to their well-being, family time, or work - each to their own!
The benefit for Aegon Life is that, as a digital life insurer, the kind of talent we seek is spread across the country. With the WFA policy in place, we now have access to pan-India talent since we are also able to “hire from anywhere”. More and more, such flexibility is going to be a key differentiator that top talent will seek, from their employers.
When we started, the key challenge was virtual people management, which included onboarding, measuring performance, engagement, sense of belongingness, and work-life balance and given that we embraced digitization well before the pandemic, we had a first mover advantage in some areas, which enabled us to adapt to WFA far more quickly.
For our manager, this was a new way of managing employees. There were initial challenges, particularly in inducting and coaching new employees, something that was much more easily accomplished in a face-to-face working environment. However, over a period of time, with continuous listening and feedback mechanisms, we have seen our leaders, managers, and employees embrace the new way of working. With positive intent and a willingness to adapt, I am happy to share that all of us have coped well, learnt, and delivered together.
Trust has been the foundation of our WFA success. We have no monitoring of attendance; we are focused on delivering Outcome. The focus has changed from monitoring attendance to continuously assessing intended outcomes.
7. There are several challenges like communication gap, limited engagement that come to mind when it comes to remote working. As Aegon Life fully works from Anywhere, how are you managing to overcome these challenges/obstacles along with evaluating the performance of the remote workforce?
Our WFA (Work from Anywhere) policy was a natural progression in our digital journey that reinforced our belief that work can happen remotely; organizational productivity can be maximized without continuous monitoring. The key pillars of our culture are “Trust” and “Appreciation”, which we believe should be a way of life for each employee in our organisation. Therefore, we do all that we can to support our employees’ best efforts to contribute, stay productive, and find happiness and fulfilment in their jobs. We try to ensure that all our employees always feel connected to each other, and any good work or right behavior is promptly recognized.
We have always been conscious of the importance of achieving a successful work-life balance. Sometimes, remote working can blur the boundaries between work-life and personal life. This can have an impact on an individual’s mental well-being, especially in the backdrop of the current environment. So, we took special care to introduce measures within our WFA framework that support employees in achieving an optimal work-life balance.
When we started Work from Anywhere (WFA), we got a huge response from employees on the "NOT TO BE APOLOGETIC" thought process. As an organization, we believe that during work from anywhere, it is expected that someone at home will pass by you or someone in the family wants to ask you something, and it's OK. One should not feel apologetic about it because you're working from home and both worlds have kind of amalgamated.
Some of our WFA-inspired policies include:
• Core working hours: Keeping in mind that we would like to strike an optimal work-life balance, the concept of core working hours has definitely helped our employees. Managers and teams plan out their e-meetings and con-calls only during specific hours of the day to ensure that hours outside of these timeslots can be used to balance their family and work commitments.
• No Meetings Day: The second Wednesday of every month has been designated as ‘No Meetings Day’. On this day there are no prescheduled calls or meetings. Since employees have “time off” from meetings and calls, now they have time for themselves to focus on certain tasks or activities that may need their undivided attention.
• Support to enable WFA / Home Office: A one-time reimbursement for setting up one’s home office was rolled out, and we had a significant number of employees that have availed of this benefit. Also, we continue to make investments in technology andtools to provide a seamless and secure working environment to all employees for ease of WFA.
Communication Opportunities – a multi-pronged communication framework that allows all employees to have a voice, share their opinions freely, and also receive all critical and important updates from the leadership team. Under this framework, we have initiatives like Culture conversation focused around our culture pillars and life purpose behaviors, engagement and recognition platforms which are done digitally, and a 5-stage learning framework that encourages employees at every stage to learn and grow. We also have a well-defined Employee Value Proposition (EVP) which talks about making the employee “win from anywhere” and propelling growth by aiding with right kind of support pillars.
