ELI Blog | ELI Inc.

I spoke with a distinguished executive who has a key role in leading fair employment initiatives for a major federal agency. She told me her organization is dealing with a range of disturbing leadership and workplace issues affecting morale and productivity. Generally, they involve supervisors who scream, yell, slam books, ignore and demean others, and are impolite, rude, and dismissive. Employees come to her wanting to know if this treatment somehow amounts to civil rights violations.

Every company today is fighting to attract and retain talent. But there’s another, overlooked, talent war that could yield greater benefits if won, and greater harm if lost.  It’s the war for the attention of your talent. All of our great new forms of communication are eroding our ability to maximize our own talents.

They pop in your mailbox. You get more of them a day than you can absorb and remember. They don’t communicate much of value or interest – but they are there and impact your effectiveness. Like it or not, you have to read and respond to them or consciously ignore them. You’ve probably stored thousands of them, wasting server space and money. They steal time, focus, and attention. Each day they bleed off a few minutes of your productivity. Over time, you take the disruptions and annoyance they spawn for granted, assuming it’s just part of your world of work.

From the subject line, you might expect I’d be writing about how fear drives employees to remain silent even as they see hazards and potential catastrophes grow like poisonous weeds around them. Yes, the fear of retribution is alive in many organizations and the harm it causes is already well recognized. That’s why we have an expanding maze of laws and regulations intended to protect complainants and penalize individuals and organizations who would stifle or ignore their concerns.

A common complaint mentioned on engagement surveys is that managers don’t welcome, listen, and respond to concerns, which means problems fester and good ideas to go unheard.
I wrote about this recently in the context of trust as a foundational issue that needs to be built into our workplaces.

I spoke recently with a senior executive at a major company whose innovative products and services are known around the globe.  Since she is responsible for talent management, we were discussing the issues of diversity and inclusion. She asked me something I hear all the time. 

I listened to our instructor explaining how our new software package will work. I’m excited to learn and use this tool – it will ease communication and improve how we do business. There’s a lot to absorb, but I’m confident that eventually it will become routine, even for me.

A few weeks ago, the EEOC released its annual charge filing and resolution statistics. The report tracks case trends from 1997 through 2011. Last year, charges rose to the highest level seen in this time period. Yet the percentage of reasonable cause findings of discrimination stayed relatively flat, at 3.8%. The other 96.2% of the cases were settled with benefits, withdrawn or dismissed. What’s causing people to lodge an increasing number of cases even as the administrative findings of liability remain relatively constant?

I’m writing this blog as I sit in a cavernous auditorium with 14 other Georgia attorneys. The lawyer in front of me is doing a crossword puzzle; the lawyer to his left is scanning her Kindle Fire. Several are sending emails; one’s reading a crime novel, another, a newspaper. One is soundly asleep.

Within the week, I read two headlines whose pairing is striking. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the construction of the first two U.S. nuclear power plants in 30 years. Second, Roger Boisjoly’s death was announced.