Pay your employees to sleep?

Came across an quick little Human Capital article worth sharing:

Aetna, a US health insurance company has implemented a novel sleep program where they provide Fitbit fitness trackers to help promote healthy sleep patterns for their employees.

If they can prove they get 20 nights of sleep for seven hours or more in a row, we will give them $25 [$33 AUD] a night, up to $500 [$661AUD] a year

They have statistics to prove they're on the right track as well. Atena's CEO claims that employees improved their productivity by 69 minutes each month as a direct result of participation in the program.

I did a little research and it appears Atena has around 5,700 employees. It would be interesting to know if this is being rolled out across the whole organisation or just departments - do staff bring their own FitBits? There may be some privacy implications as well...

Overall however, I think this is a fantastic idea.  One of my first reservations was how this might fairly integrate with employees who have career duties such as flexible working parents. Turns out they thought of that too as the 7 hours are not continuous and can include naps.

It reminds me of a short story a senior manager once told me that stuck. Essentially it was a tale about two woodcutters who were working away when one notices the other is quickly outpacing his productivity and even finishing early. Turns out the productive woodcutter sharpens his axe at the end of each day.

A nice story stressing the importance of tackling presenteeism and taking time to develop your skills / having rest to boost genuine productivity. It's important as HR professionals we drive a culture that encourages people to sharpen their axe rather than just swing harder with a blunt instrument.

Culture and Engagement

I have rewritten this post a few times because the more I read and discuss with experts, the more I realise how many differing views there are on the subject on culture and engagement! Given this, below is a top level collection of thoughts on the subject and some models I found interesting.

Engagement

Generally I have found alignment in my research on the concept of engagement.

Sometimes referred to as an individual construct, engagement can also be referenced in relation to a group or team. Engagement focuses on how motivated and energised staff are in relation to their work and goals. Employees are more likely to be engaged when their values and behaviours are in alignment with their organisations. 

A common way to test engagement is though the 'Say, Stay and Strive' concept. Aon Hewitt uses this model. Effectively it looks at employee actions that are indicators of engagement. Aon Hewitt's model as you can see looks beyond this to identify the drivers which generate those behaviours.

Culture

Culture is where there seems to be a much greater divergence in opinion and models. Currently, my take on the matter is aligned with some work from Denison noting that that culture is an organisational construct. In other words, an emergent property that is created from the from all the individuals in a group working together.

An example of some of the differing concepts on culture is below:

Ryder Group sees culture as the intersection of how people think (rational), feel (emotional) and act (behaviour) in an organisation. The former two elements creating a 'climate' that drives behaviour. 

As a similar but alternative view Aon Hewitt defines culture as an intersection of beliefs about strategy and business models, behaviours and personal interactions, and finally how decisions are made.

One of the more interesting distinctions i've found is that some models strive to achieve a high performance culture that aligns with certain characteristics (Human Synergystics) while others don't prefer any specific culture over another but rather see them as functional or dysfunctional depending on their alignment with company strategy and employees (Aon Hewitt / Culture Amp). Personally at this stage i'm drawn towards the latter however I wouldn't be surprised if my thoughts continue to change as I work more on the subject. 

Gardening Leave

There was a great write up by Ashurst recently on Gardening leave.

Focusing on the case of Actrol Parts Pty Ltd v Coppi (No 2) [2015] VSC 694, this explores a case which I imagine would be common across many organisations. Here a Sales Manager leaves for a competitor and is placed on gardening leave during his notice period. The employer attempts to enforce their contractual provisions when the Sales Manager begins employment with the competitor within the notice period.

Here i'll point out a few items of Ashurst's analysis I found particularly interesting.

Impact of the employer asking the employee to return their material benefits

Justice Bell J accepted the employee's argument that by removing the company car, iPhone and iPod the employer had repudiated the contract by unilaterally reducing the employee's remuneration. It's important to remember that employees are still entitled to all of the benefits of their employment contracts while on gardening leave and this may mean access to tools and perks normally associated with performing their roles.

Businesses need to also be aware that there is a "quid pro quo" in gardening leave. For the business to receive the person's loyalty and fidelity, the employee must remain "on the books" as an employee and, critically, must continue to receive all contractual entitlements, such as a company car or technology. 

The right to place employees on gardening leave

The Fair Work Act 2009 is silent on the issue of gardening leave, or more specifically the ability for an employer to direct an employee not to perform work. Given this an employee's contract needs to be worded appropriately to provide these options. If a contract doesn't allow for such an action an employee could also argue that the employer has repudiated the contract.

Dealing with confidential information 

Again, this case acts as a clear example demonstrating the importance of contacts filling in gaps of law. While generally there are protections for employers dealing with misuse of confidential information, these protections probably stop short of the prescription most employers would like.

In the Actrol case, the employer had no redress against the employee in relation to the emails because the employee had not breached any contractual term or any policy by sending information outside the employer's IT system to his personal email address. The fact that he had a legitimate business purpose for doing so, and had not otherwise used or misused the emails was sufficient. It did not matter that it was not management's preference that documents be transferred as the employee transferred them.