You’re Smarter Than You Were an Hour Ago

Posted on by Stuart Murray
Rear-view mirror of Zion Mountains, by daveynin
Rear-view mirror of Zion Mountains, by daveynin.

One of the greatest adventures in uncovering new information is the clash between our new ways of thinking and the opinions we had moments prior.  Our brains play tricks on us, through cognitive fallacies, when dealing with disruptive evidence.

One such fallacy is called “hindsight bias,” a kind of knew-it-all-along effect.  I have given complex and novel findings to clients who quickly proclaim that the information is basic and obvious in some way.  Sometimes it is basic and obvious, but quite often they had opposite views minutes earlier.  Learning and research can be thankless because it is so common for smart people to quickly absorb new information.  They don’t recall being ignorant.  If they do remember being ignorant, they’re not tempted to draw attention to it.

Those who neglect to pursue new knowledge and feed their curiosity become less savvy over time.  The times change, people change, and evidence shifts.  People who figured out the ways of the world many years ago start to lose their grip.  They have dubious clothing, haircuts, and social views.  They overlook emerging evidence.

Real smarts are not really about having a vault of information; it is the act of striving to explore.  I watch new data make its way through the organization, with little or no attribution to me or the original source.  Things quickly become known.  The culture becomes smarter.  It is quietly satisfying.

Stop Looking Busy (it Doesn’t Work)

Posted on by Stuart Murray
how-it-works-my-brain-by-frankieleon
How it Works: My Brain.  Courtesy of frankieleon.

Employees are overwhelmed.  They are being flooded by too much information, being obliged to look busy at all hours, and experiencing fatigue and poor performance as a result.  Deloitte University Press has some great tips for employers about the importance of reigning-in excess information flow, shrinking meetings, and giving employees some spare time to relax a little and then get their actual work done.  Enterprise software is being obliged to produce one-click solutions to complex questions.  Increasingly, HR is being asked to help solve this problem.

Good Information, Not for Snacking

Posted on by Stuart Murray

The Pringles Effect is when someone asks for one piece of workforce data.  Then they come back and ask for two more things.  Then they ask for four.  Before too long, they are taking advantage of every opportunity for more information.  It is largely identical to the behavior when you have one Pringles chip, and before long your hand is stuck in the canister.  In general the phenomenon is “information addiction” which feeds the reward centre of your brain with dopamine.  Unlike other addictions, information addiction does not appear to have a major downside, aside from hours lost, and resources spent on research which has no outcome (this time).  On average, curiosity and the desire to advance society’s knowledge is laudable.  But the superficial behavior, particularly in the early stages, resembles compulsive snacking.

New-Hire Enthusiasm Makes Liars of Us All

Posted on by Stuart Murray
game-time-by-michael-neel-v3
Game Time, courtesy of Michael Neel.

This interesting blog post by Mike West from One Model describes a data anomaly in “Best Employer” awards.  Many of these awards are based on employee engagement surveys, which are consistent and scientific, but susceptible to a subtle sampling bias.

The issue is that engagement is highest for new employees.  I have seen this phenomenon in other surveys, and I have pondered why this would be true.  It will make sense when you consider your personal experience.  When you are first employed, you have recently chosen to work for that employer, you have just been chosen by the manager, and you get the greatest concentration of training and personal attention.

By contrast, years later you might wish you could work elsewhere, even if you have not made an effort to move.  You may have changed managers, breaking the personal sense of loyalty and trust.  Even under a favorable scenario you will be deemed “fully-performing” …and be neglected as a result.  Negative career events occur over the years, and with greater length of service you will have more opportunity for annoyances, defeats, and betrayals.  You might leave, and lo and behold the cycle starts all over again!

Mike West notes that growing companies hire more staff into brand new positions.  This means a larger fraction of their workforce have less than one year of job tenure, which means a larger fraction of the survey sample will have high engagement.  Yes, it is nice to work for a growing company, but growth itself is not what makes people happy.

If you were the only new hire in a company that is stable in size and has low turnover, you might be just as excited as a peer who joined a growing company.  But the growing company would get a better score.  The article references the constantly-growing Google, often rated the very best employer.  Google tends to lose the top spot when they hire fewer people.

So, how do you game the awards?  Make email addresses for new staff more readily available.  How to correct this anomaly?  Companies conducting surveys should report the data on a stratified basis, adjusting for length of service.  Or, run a multivariate model which isolates employee culture and adjusts for the length-of-service effect.

But hey, it’s math.  It’s all fun and games until someone loses an award.

Mercer’s 2015 Survey, “Inside Employees Minds”

Posted on by Stuart Murray
brains-by-annabellaphoto
“Brains.”  Attributed to Annabellaphoto.

In September 2015, Graham Dodd from the Canadian offices of Mercer released the results of a large survey of employees across Canada.  Amongst their findings, was that plenty of employees with high job satisfaction are still considering leaving their current employer.  It makes sense; those who are driven and talented will be both engaged and also looking for their next adventure.  Why would we presume that employees who strive are those that are easily satisfied?

Millennial Turnover Similar to Prior Generations

Posted on by Stuart Murray
hipster-attributed-to-rodger-evans
Hipster.  Attributed to Rodger Evans.

It is my pleasure to draw your attention to a great paper produced by three students at the University of British Columbia.  Grace Hsu, Geoff Roeder, and Andrew Lee produced a paper for their Statistics 450 course with Dr. Gabriela Cohen Freue which was put in for a student research contest.  The paper, Analysis of Factors Affecting Resignations of University Employees won an honourable mention for the contest.

The paper identifies that “Millennials do not exhibit a practically significant different length of employment compared to other generational groups.”  That is, that although those born after 1975 have a high quit rate right now, they are passing through a high-turnover age group.  Prior generations that passed through the 25-34 year old age group in years past, themselves had high quit rates.

Getting more to the point… “This finding disrupts stereotyped representations of generational factors in the workforce and suggests that younger employees resigning sooner can be better explained as a feature of their age rather than their generational group.” My guess is that age 25-34 is when people figure out their career, partners, and housing, with some things changing a few times before getting stable.

Working with twenty years of data covering 7000 staff who quit, their data model chose “years of service” as the variable that would be explained by other data points.  If we could predict the number of years a new hire would stay, this might be something an employer could improve.  That is, assuming it was not illegal to pre-judge.  Thankfully, their findings suggest we should not pre-judge.

Years of service prior to quitting averaged 1.2 to 1.9 years for 25-to-34 year olds, and 4.3 to 5.5 years amongst 35-to-44 year olds.  There were small differences between generations, but not in a manner that strengthened a stereotype.  For example Generation X quit more quickly when they were younger, but stuck around for longer once they were 35-44.  Baby Boomers were not always big on job loyalty, being the quickest to quit in the 35-to-44 age bracket.

One more thing… men and women do not have a big difference in their length of service.  When sizing-up job candidates for staying power, it is not just unfair and illegal to favour men; it is wrong on the facts.  Keep that in your back pocket next time you help with hiring.