Are you familiar with “toxic handlers”? These are people who have the ability to “absorb” the stress triggered by crises and limit the impact of it on their colleagues. These empathetic qualities will prove essential in the transition out of lock-down, enabling these people to: – quickly identify colleagues in difficulty – listen and soothe with compassion and respect – take action around finding effective solutions How do you

Do you know what anticipatory anxiety is? In psychology it is the pervasive fear of an event to come. At the moment, many employees are apprehensive about coming out of isolation and returning to work because of the risks of contamination. Avoidance behaviours will appear such as refusal to shake hands, refusal to take the elevator together, self-isolation in open spaces etc. These are all essential subjects to raise

Together with his team, the “sensemaker” manager will intentionally try to make sense of the exceptional situation. To transform the crisis into an opportunity for growth, he differentiates 3 dimensions of sense. These are: – A feeling: what did we feel? – A meaning: what does it mean for us? – A direction: where do we go from here? In the “sensemaker managers” workshops that I lead, we learn

Three types of managers will emerge at the end of lockdown: – The aggressive type: he’ll discredit the difficulties experienced by everyone by demanding a focus on performance alone: “no more twiddling your thumbs, I want everyone 100% on sales.” He will come out looking brutal and will be despised by his team. – The avoidant type: he’ll pretend that nothing happened for fear of delving into the real

Attempting to manage a team through an exceptional situation using conventional management methods will lead to great disappointment. Sensemaking invites us to uncover symbols within each person’s experience to bring collective meaning to this event. Don’t: say things like “the past is the past; now it’s time to focus on the numbers so we can catch up.” This deprives the team of an opportunity to create a stronger sense

Do you know the term “sensemaking”? In psychology it is one of the most effective techniques for restoring well-being and performance after an exceptional crisis. It is based on a particular form of management used to facilitate a healthy return to work. Let’s begin with phase 1: recognize that what happened was an ordeal for all members of your team. Don’t: joke around, such as by saying: “how was

There is no greater loneliness than the loneliness we feel in the presence of others, especially when those others are our loved ones. Almost everyone has experienced this feeling of strangeness in a familiar universe and it is frightening. It’s actually a sign of a temporary anxiety that psychologists call depersonalization or derealization. Don’t panic if it happens to you. We are living in an exceptional period of uncertainty,

Remote management is complicated, especially when it comes to detecting an employee in difficulty. Here is a simple technique to identify employees who are in trouble – the “3i” rule: – Isolation: when employees are less present at meetings and check-ins with their managers, or don’t speak as much as usual. – Irritability: when they quickly become tense and show increased sensitivity as manifested by anger, crying or annoyance.

Psychology distinguishes four types of justice at work. The one that creates the most altruistic and performance-enhancing behaviour is procedural justice: I understand and am involved in decisions that have an impact on my daily life. How do you bring this about? By actively participating in decision-making rather than participating in decisions that have already been made! Putting an end to purely ‘formal’ consultations requires a little effort but

What recognition can you offer your employees who are working remotely when the results are not as good as usual? Psychology invites us to dissociate recognition both from the results themselves and from the time of their achievement. A manager who says, “I know it’s difficult for you right now with your children at home. Thank you for your effort, it’s precious to me and is a real credit

Did you know that referring to ‘engagement’ at work is pretty limited? In psychology there are in fact three distinct forms of engagement: The emotional engagement that all companies favour: I stay because I love my company/ job/mission. This works miracles when everything is going well but is disastrous at any other time. The normative: I stay because I am loyal. This is the expression of a “corporate” mentality.

Two months after the May 2020 announcement by MAXIS Global Benefits Network (MAXIS GBN) of the appointment of Mattieu Rouot as its new CEO, he officially takes over the reins of the multinational employee benefits network following the retirement of Mauro Dugulin. As CEO of MAXIS GBN, Mattieu Rouot oversees relationships with more than 500 multinational companies in over 120 countries around the world. He joined MAXIS in May

In the middle of working on my next conference “How to pass on a difficult message with respect and kindness?”, I’m interested in testing out your knowledge on the different forms of “pathy”: empathy, sympathy, antipathy and apathy. If a friend says to me: “Adrien, I’m afraid that the lockdown will last for a long time” and I answer: “you have no reason to worry, it will end one

U.S. direct health insurer Oscar in June 2020 raised another USD 225 million in a late-stage round of funding. Led by co-founder and CEO Mario Schlosser, Oscar now is active in 15 U.S. states and has more than 420,000 members in individual, Medicare Advantage and small group products. Certainly helped by the coronavirus crisis, most U.S. healthcare providers today offer virtual consultations and ever more patients make use of

To start the week on a positive note, here’s a psychology technique for giving someone a compliment or positive feedback: the SIISI method. Good feedback is : Sincere: what I say is true to me and I am honest when I say it. Immediate: my message comes right after the other person’s behaviour. Involved: I involve myself by using “I”. Specific: it concerns a specific fact and not a

Right now we are all learning new ways of operating. But novelty consumes a lot of energy, and our attentional resources are limited. If our cognitive faculties are being used for adapting to the situation, they are no longer available to perform at their peak when teleworking, doing domestic tasks or interacting with our children. So I urge you not to feel guilty if you don’t feel perfect right

Are you ending the weeks tired, with brain overload? The mental load resulting from telework is the consequence of multiple tasks not completed or lacking their usual quality. How can you minimise this effect, enjoy your weekend and be back on form Monday morning? I invite you to declare Friday afternoon a protected zone. No meetings, no conference calls, no emails… only time dedicated to baseline tasks with a

Social support is the first line of defence against psychological distress at work. In these times of teleworking, a manager’s primary role is not to monitor performance but to maintain the quality of connection. It is by taking care of what unites us today (despite the distance) that we may re-discover the path to performance tomorrow.

Teleworking has brought about an opportunity to manage differently. Psychology teaches us that management based on trust increases productivity, engagement, and quality of life. How do we do it? By setting objectives to be achieved rather than by controlling the amount of time employees are online. It means allowing everyone to be autonomous, to allow colleagues to get to know each other well enough to organise themselves optimally. Those

Right now we all need support—and would also like to give it to those who are far away from us. However, we are not all created equal when it comes to the kinds of support we offer. Men are more oriented towards task-oriented support (I’ll do it for you); but at a distance during lockdown it becomes more complicated. This is where we can activate esteem support. It’s about

Are you familiar with the Dunning-Kruger effect, also known as the “overconfidence bias”? It explains how those who are less qualified on a subject tend to overestimate their skills. Indeed, to know that they are incompetent, they must know at least a little bit about the task, even if they underestimate its difficulty. If you have a colleague without children who tells you that “it’s not that difficult to

“I’ve been feeling a lot of negative emotions since the beginning of the lockdown”. As an organizational psychologist, this is what I’ve heard the most over the past 10 days. The good news is that there are no negative emotions–there are only unpleasant emotions. If we have gone through millennia of evolution with our emotions intact, it is because even the most unpleasant of them have a use and

In these times of forced cohabitation, it’s important to be aware of how psychology explains aggression. There is no such thing as “gratuitous violence”. Violence is only gratuitous in the eyes of the spectator. The perpetrator always has a motivation, even if it escapes or repulses us. The source of aggression is almost always frustration, being deprived of what we feel we are legitimately entitled to: respect, freedom to

In a reversal of strategy, AIG in mid-June 2020 announced it had decided to wind down its AIG Global Benefits Network (AIG GBN) multinational pooling network. According to the company, “AIG has realigned its strategy with regard to AIG’s Global Benefits Network business and as a consequence, [it] has decided to wind down its activities.” All existing pools will be cancelled effective December 31, 2020. AIG pooling clients now

There are excellent opportunities to improve the financing of insurable Employee Benefits (EB) globally and tangible initiatives to support local subsidiaries and their employees with the execution of a global EB strategy. In this article you will find an updated comparative analysis of the most common global EB solutions (traditional EB Pooling, alternative risk financing with EB Captive solutions and the innovative concept of Global Underwriting (GUW) for EB insurance), a more detailed view on GUW and EB Captive as well as two case studies to show how global EB solutions can support the execution of global EB strategies in practice. This article assumes some familiarity with financing EB globally and therefore does not focus on traditional EB Pooling but is concentrating on the more advanced solutions EB Captive and GUW instead.

Living in close confines with others is complicated. For this reason, today I would like to cover the three stages of a conflict: If I forget to wash my cup and leave it on the table, my wife might say: “It annoys me when you leave your dirty dishes lying around”. I understand her legitimate thinking, I apologize, and we move on. It’s a conflict centred on behaviour. You

With vast technological advances over the last few years, and now the dramatic changes brought on by COVID-19, it has never been so clear that digital transformation is essential to organisational success.