This week, I thought I would look at how to employ healthy competition at work.

First of all, what not to do.  Assigning multiple people with the same task to see who finishes first or does it the best is a way to create unhealthy competition. It might work the first time or two, but it will swiftly decline into every man for himself at any cost.  Consequently, your employees will begin to view each other as enemies and treat each other accordingly whether there is a contest or not.  When you reach this stage, you have created a cancer that will eat your your company from the inside out.   Only amputation or a serious external threat will have any hope of refocusing your employees on the big picture.

So how do you create healthy competition?

1. Have a good cause (vision or purpose) that people want to be a part of.
2. Believe in abundance.  In business, winning doesn’t always mean others have to lose.  Especially if winning causes others to innovate and find other ways to win.
3. Appreciate mistakes.  They are the best way to learn what not to do, and if done well, should prevent future similar mistakes.  They also might lead you to something remarkable.
4. If Winning is it’s own reward, you don’t need to reward it.  Instead, reward and recognize the positive, constructive ways in which the win was achieved.  E.g., In hockey, assists count.  Make sure in your business, the assists count as well.
5. If you need to reward, consider rewarding overall results, so those who achieve the most have incentives to help others achieve as well.  This works particularly well with sales people who have exclusive territories (i.e, aren’t competing over the same customers).
6. Be clear about the “rules” of the competition.  Don’t let anyone get away with behaviour that negatively affects the big picture.  As @techprose_ca put it, “Healthy competition is that which results in a clear, profitable ‘Win’, both for the market, and for the consumer/client.”  People seriously breaking rules (whether laws, ethics or simple handshake agreements) might easily win the battle but lose the “war”.
7. Value progress and improvement.  Those “team players” who help create success but never actually score the big client or come up with the great idea are the ones hoisting the star players on their shoulders.  You need utility people to allow the stars to shine.

Competition is a great way to engage and energize people towards a cause, but only healthy competition lasts.  Any further ways to create healthy competition?

The trick with competition is that it must be healthy for the company to use it for any sustained period of time.

Most of us can recognize unhealthy competition from personal experience.  It is when the drive to win overtakes the importance of the overall organization and includes:

• Fighting over scarce resources,
• Hoarding resources to prevent others access,
• Climbing over each other (and kicking them while you are at it), and
• Taking the opportunity to hurt competitors.

The brouhaha in the early games of the Stanley Cup playoffs was an example of competition gone bad with NHL players taking cheap shots. Yes, they were just trying to win the game which is the goal of any serious sports team, but in deliberately hurting other players, they lost sight of the big picture. The NHL suffers when great players are knocked out. The skill level go down and people stop watching, i.e., revenues go down.  That’s not good for hockey players no matter how “competitive” they are.

Healthy competition is about:

• Respect. Respecting the other competitors and wanting them to be at their best, because when you beat them fair and square, you know you deserve it.
• Learning. Learning from other greats in your field, catching up, and building upon what you learned from them and also learning from losing or failing because those experiences help you find out what not to do in your quest to win.
• Drive. The motivation needed to become the best and the reason you persist when the going gets tough.
• Achievement. Improving until you can reach your potential, or even master your craft (whether your craft is business, sports, music, science, etc.).
• Love. The love of your Craft. Because if you truly love the craft, you will never do anything to damage it.  To do so would be a sacrilege.

A message to those few hockey players who have lost sight of their craft.  If you truly loved the game, you’d mourn the injury to a great player who made you better rather than cheer the absence of an obstacle on your march to the Cup.

What does this all have to do with business?  Check back next week when we’ll talk about how to encourage healthy competition at work.

As anyone who has ever tried to recruit foreign workers to fill positions knows, the labour market opinion hurdle can be time consuming and confusing.  In fact, there are plenty of lawyers who make it their life’s work to help employers navigate the way through that obstacle course.

This accelerated program is supposed to help employers struggling to find skilled workers by cutting through the red tape.  In fact, the new program commits to issuing a Labour Market Opinion (necessary to obtain a work visa) within 10 business days, i.e., no more 10 week waits!

What you need to know about this new initiative is:

• It applies to employers hiring temporary foreign workers (the hurdles to keeping these workers permanently are still in place).
• It is only available for highly skilled positions such as management, professional, and skilled technical occupations.
• It isn’t available for agricultural workers or the film & entertainment sector.
• It still requires a valid job offer with a fair wage.
• It still requires you to prove local candidates are not available.
• It isn’t available for Quebec based employers.

Perhaps most important criteria to be aware of are that you can only take advantage of this new initiative if:

• Your organization has already received at least 1 positive Labour Market Opinion in the last 2 years AND
• Your organization has a clean record with the Program.

If this initiative sounds like it would work for your organization and you want to learn more, check out the information rich factsheet provided by the Canadian government on the Accelerated Labour Market Opinion Program.  Good luck!

• Approximately 1 in 3 people have experienced bullying at work
• Approximately 15% of us have witnessed bullying at work first hand (Did we do anything? Did we know what to do?)
• 68% of bullying occurs towards the same gender, i.e., women tend to bully other women
• The victims are usually very competent
• The bullying is usually the bully’s response to feeling threatened

The reality is despite knowing better, bullying exists at work.  Next week, we’ll chat about how to get rid of bullying in your workplace.

1. Is your company considered a “safety sensitive” or hazardous workplace? If yes, drug testing may be for you. If not, rethink.
2. Is drug testing necessary for a legitimate work related purpose (e.g., safety)? if yes, proceed.
3. Are you in Alberta?  If yes, you may even be able to do pre-employment drug testing, something typically not supported in the rest of the country.  If not, pre-employment testing is much much more difficult.
4. Are there alternatives to drug testing that you can use? If no, be ready to prove it and proceed.
5. Will you only do drug testing when necessary?  If yes, proceed.
6. What are you going to do if the results come back positive?  i.e., Are you prepared to accommodate an employee who is addicted to drugs to the point of undue hardship?  (A drug addiction is considered a medical disability meaning that human rights laws across the country will require you to accommodate an addicted employee.  Accommodations may include time off for treatment and rehabilitation, rehabilitation plans, transfers to different crews, flexible schedules, etc.)  Interestingly, “recreational use” isn’t protected by Human Rights legislation and you have no duty to accommodate in this situation so be clear about and be sure to define what recreational vs. addicted looks like in your policy.
7. Have you chosen a reliable test that provides proof of current impairment (or proves past impairment only if acceptable for your circumstances)? If yes, proceed.
8. What are you going to do if the drug test comes back with more information than you want, e.g., it identifies a pregnancy, a kidney disease, or the presence of medications which are sending your benefits costs through the roof?  It is important to note that use of this type of information is generally prohibited by Human Rights legislation.  Since the mere perception that you acted due to learning this type of information is grounds for a human rights claim, there is significant risk involved to learning this information. Are you sure you want to proceed?
9. How are you going to balance the privacy rights of the individuals when conducting a drug test?  E.g., are you collecting the “personal information” in the least invasive method possible to get accurate results, how are you going to use it, store it, and destroy it once its use has expired?

All of this being said, implement drug testing at your own risk.  Get good advice on your circumstances and build your policy and practices around drug testing very, very carefully.

Here are some of my worries about drug tests:

• Drug tests of the peeing a cup sort are invasive if properly administered.  A friendly doctor recently told me a story of an employee handing in a sample of soapy water in a cup, because his employer didn’t follow him into the stall and ensure it was truly his urine sample.  Many employers don’t really want to be in the stall.  Doctors don’t want to either, but someone has to be to ensure the urine sample is correct.
• Drug tests are not usually covered by health plans, and certainly aren’t if it is the employer who wants them, so there is a cost involved and it can be confusing regarding who pays.  This may be easily resolvable, but as an employer I want to pay for things that are good quality, i.e., reliable.  That brings me to my next point.
• Drug test results can be skewed by various foods.  Remember Elaine from Seinfeld who failed a drug test because of her passion for poppy seed muffins?  If we can’t be sure the positive drug test is accurate, we open up another whole can of worms.
• Although drug tests may be accurate at identifying whether or not someone has imbibed, few drug tests are reliable at identifying how much someone consumed or whether someone is currently under the influence.  Ross Rebagliati was affected by this drug testing reliability issue when he was temporarily stripped of his gold medal for testing positive for THC (marijuana) which he maintains was inhaled secondhand at a party.  Realistically, many employers don’t care what the person does on their own time, but don’t want their people stoned at work. Sounds reasonable but if the drug test can’t accurately demonstrate current doping, what is the point?
• While drug tests are permitted, case law generally isn’t in favour of automatically firing or refusing to hire people on the basis of a positive drug test unless you can prove it is a legitimate job requirement to be completely free of drugs (e.g., hazardous work environment) and you are willing to accommodate the disability (i.e., with rehab, time off, less dangerous work, etc.).  This means that there are huge limitations on what you can do with a positive test result anyway.  That is a whole lot of pain for yourself and your employees when your ability to take action is so limited.

As you can see, there is a lot of grey area surrounding this issue and even with a good case, there is no guarantee that you are going to win if you get in front of a judge.  However, one employer I know says that when it comes to drug testing, it is better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission.  I guess so, if your pocket book can take it.

Bottom line for Canadian employers is that drug testing is not as simple as peeing in a cup.

However, if you are considering random drug testing or pre-employment drug testing, you may be surprised to find that while there are a lot of rules and case law around it, there is actually no Canadian law that says you cannot do drug testing.  In fact, some industries (e.g., Mining) and some provinces (e.g., Alberta) seem to allow and even encourage drug testing for hazardous workplaces.  Before you pick up and move to Alberta, remember that no matter where you are in the country you will have a fairly solid case for drug testing if your reason is one of these:

• To prevent serious workplace accidents by minimizing druggies at work,  or
• To uncover impairment as a contributing factor to an accident or serious near miss, or
• To minimize drug use in an environment where it is a serious problem with significant negative repercussions.

The key is to ensure you build your policy for the right reasons and very carefully.  More on that in a future blog.

It depends because the most important qualities depend on the company, industry, culture, and what the leader or manager is responsible for.  A company that wants to maintain the status quo doesn’t need a visionary at the helm and you definitely don’t want finance leaders to be too creative. Just ask Enron.

That all being said, my top picks for qualities that I look for in current or future leaders include:

• Creativity & innovation
• Drive
• Global/ Big picture perspective
• Business acumen
• Intelligence
• Flexibility& adaptability
• Resourcefulness
• Sense of humour
• Self awareness
• Excellent communication skills
• Strong character & moral compass
• Heart (as in care & compassion and persistence & resilience)

Now the question is, can you develop these skills or are they innate? Eternal optimist that I am, I believe that you can develop these qualities if you have the desire and the opportunity to do so.

Consider professional athletes. Some are extremely talented and some simply took basic talent, and worked at it harder than anyone else to get there. Of course, the best are the ones who have talent and work at it, but these gems are rare finds. Rather than wait for a rare find, organizations can and should polish their own.

What qualities are being polished at your company?

Focus

Laser focus on your priority until it is completed.  All that talk about “I get more done if I multi-task” is wishful thinking. If something is truly important enough and urgent enough to need to get done right away and time is of the essence, getting focused is the only way you will ship in time. If focus is what you need, the question then becomes “how do you do it?” because everyone has trained themselves to focus differently.

• Some people swear by background noise (fan, music, tv, barrista making coffees), and
• Others wear headphones to block out the tiniest sound.

• Some will turn off the lights except for a spotlight on their work, and
• Others prefer to be outside and away from the many distractions a home or office offers.

How do you focus?

Under my control.

Important.

Urgent.

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