I like alone time. A lot. Especially at work. Unfortunately, there are negative consequences from too much alone time (lack of connectedness and alignment with the organisation for example). But equally, there are downsides by being too social (reduced productivity and focus for example). A recent article by Hilary Jane Grosskopf in Fast Company (read it here) speaks to the need to get the balance right.
Grosskopf advocates the advantages of alone time at work as being vital for leaders in order to “foster a point of view, focus and reenergize.” Leaders need opportunities for reflection in order to assess whether or not the direction they are moving in is the right one. Examples of how this can happen at work include taking a walk, sitting in a quiet room or just simply going out for a coffee break.
On the other side of the equation, social time is necessary for progress, especially in the form of group team meetings whereby direction can be clarified and collective vision confirmed. These can be done through video calls, live meetings and conversations.
It is important to find your balance, firstly by working out if you have too much social or solo time, and then making some adjustments as necessary. There are a few tips in the article, and well worth the read.
Dr Warrick long, Postgraduate Leadership Studies Coordinator, Avondale Business School
The Australian Government’s Productivity Commission completed its new draft report on mental health recently, and it provides a noteworthy picture of mental health in Australia. Included within the report was a section outlining mentally healthy workplaces.
While it is far from ideal to view mental ill-health through the lens of the financial cost to the Australian economy, it does provide an ideal of the extent of the issue. The report identifies that the cost to the Australian economy each year relating to mental ill-health and suicide is conservatively in the order of $43 to $51 billion. Lower economic participation and lost productivity makes up approximately $10-$18 billion of that. Additionally, an approximately $130 billion cost is associated with diminished health and reduced life expectancy for those living with mental ill-health.
The Australian Human Resource Institute summarised the key findings, and some recommendations for Australian workplaces as follows:
The report contains five recommendations in this section.
The productivity commission is seeking comment and additional information at this time, and written submissions are requested by January 23 2020. More information is available on their website.
Dr Peter Williams, Senior Lecturer, Avondale Business School
2019 has been a year of change for Avondale Business School (ABS)! Some of our highlights include attendance at conferences by Peter Williams and Lisa Barnes to present on current research being undertaken at ABS (in the USA, Melbourne and Brisbane). Conferences included Accounting & Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand (AFFANZ) with 2 papers already accepted to the February 2020 Sydney International Business Research Conference hosted by AABL.
This year also saw a restructure of our Bachelor of Business Program to be rolled out in 2020. This restructure has reduced the units in both the Human Resource Management Major and the Marketing Major, allowing students to complete 2 Majors within the 3 years, instead of 3 ½ years. Feedback from current students has been very positive!
2020 will also see a new unit being offered as a core unit to students. This unit is BBUS15050 Information Technology Systems in Business, it was designed by our own Dr Homa Freeman and will be delivered by her in Semester 1, 2020.
Semester 2 saw the ABS staff compete against students in the unit BBUS37400 Strategic Responses in Business. It was a huge learning curve for both staff and students in understanding how to run a business in all its capacity including operations, Human resources, financial performance and business decisions. Students once again performed really well in the online business simulation, with ABS staff coming together weekly to make strategic decisions in a competitive environment (and yes we did outperform our students, but it would have been embarrassing if we didn’t!).
2020 saw our new status as a University College, a huge complement to our quality assurance program here at Avondale, and a big congratulations to all staff involved in the transition. You will see an updated ABS logo in 2020, encompassing the new University College Status.
2019 also saw Dr Peter Williams promoted to Senior Lecturer level, and Dr Warrick Long stepping into the role as Post Graduate Course Convenor. Warrick also has plans to review the current Master of Leadership & Management program in 2020 for its offering in 2021, so we will keep you posted! Warrick as also been very busy this year in his role as a Board member on several external Boards and internal Avondale Committees. He has also been guest speaker at many conferences and professional development days for our Industry Partners, and delivered his LEAD program to staff here at Avondale.
All staff here at the ABS have continued to put students first, whilst balancing family and even study commitments. Diane Smith is currently undertaking a Bachelor of Business Degree and Lisa Barnes is currently completing a Graduate Diploma in Counselling. Warrick is continuing in his preferred role of Grandfather, whilst Peter prepares to send his second child (and first son) to “big school” next year. This year saw the graduation of Lisa Barnes daughter from Central Coast Adventist School, and Diane’s son receiving a special end of year academic award from his school.
We have just completed our final strategic planning day for 2019 where we review all our units we have taught and assess for any changes in delivery, content and assessment. The only thing left on our agenda this year is graduation. Collectively our favourite day of the year! We have students graduating from both our Bachelor of Business undergraduate degree as well as our Masters of Leadership & Management post graduate degree.
On behalf of ABS, we wish you all a safe and merry Christmas, we hope you get to spend time with the people you love and have some time to reflect on the year that is past and the coming year ahead.
Associate Professor Lisa Barnes, Head, Avondale Business School
“Ethics is easy – just be transparent, accountable and do the right thing!”. Hmm. When speculating from the sidelines, this approach does sound reasonable and appropriate. But what about when you are actually in the thick of the game? Let’s say Some inappropriate material has been found on a senior employee’s computer, which breeches the organisations code of conduct and warrants instant dismissal. How open and accountable will you be? To quell any rumours, are you “transparent” and tell staff why the employee was terminated? If so, do you consider the potential impact on the employees’ partner and children? Is that the “right” thing to do? You are dammed if you do and doomed if you don’t.
Ethical issues like these are very commonplace in business today. I teach business ethics, and there is never any shortage of cases for my students to review. The hard part is to decide which ones from never-ending supply in the media. There are a number of tools and techniques that are taught in relation to ethical dilemmas, my favourite one being – “would you be happy it your mum knew what you did?” Other include the “front page test” which means would you be comfortable with the result of your choice being the front page of tomorrows newspapers?
Thee are very simplistic approaches, and ethical dilemma are often of the magnitude that the choice is between a bad option or another bad option. To help with the decision=making process in these cases, the Australian Institute of Company Directors and The Ethics Centre have teamed up to produce an excellent booklet entitled “Ethics in the Boardroom” (download it here). It is very simple to follow with excellent examples. The decision framework is five simple steps and very practical. It is a good resource for any CEO, Director or aspiring leader to review and ensure you have a process for making ethical decisions.
Dr Warrick Long, Leadership Postgraduate Studies Coordinator
What does it take to BE a leader? This is a very different question to what does a leader do. In a follow-up book to ‘Leadership Matters’, David Pich teams up with Ann Messenger to outline the 7 attributes of very successful leaders.
The authors surveyed 1000 Australian leaders to find out what they determined the top 7 attributes of leadership are. The result is this book, which provides an excellent resource for leaders to understand what inspirational leadership involves.
Rather than just relying on their own interpretation, the authors also engaged experts in the 7 attributes to give an authoritative perspective that adds real depth to the issues.
This is an excellent book for leaders at every stage of their journey, from aspirational to experienced. There is something for everyone. I highly recommend this as a great book that is easy to read yet full of much wisdom. Do yourself a favour…
Pich, D., & Messenger, A. (2019). Leading Well: 7 Attributes of Very Successful Leaders. Victoria, Australia: Major Street Publishing.
Reviewed by Dr Warrick Long, Leadership Graduate Studies Coordinator, Avondale Business School
Due to a current restructure of the Avondale Business School, it is with a heavy heart that we must say farewell to our lecturer David Wilson. David has been with us here at Avondale for 5 years and is currently undertaking his PhD at Charles Sturt University. David is also the Accountant for College Church and has been involved as Course Convenor and as a board member of Academic Board. We wish David well in his future endeavours.
The end of the year is fast approaching, and you may be finding your employees beginning to run out of puff. November-itis may well be in full effect in your workplace, the result of looking back on (almost) an entire year of work, deadlines, meetings, and customer and client interactions. Looking forwards, employees see their holiday plans, Christmas, down time and the highlights of summer. Yet here we are, too close to the former and too far from the latter.
How can you best support your staff finishing these final weeks of the year and ensure a successful and productive finish to the working year? One of the following three approaches may provide some help.
1. Encourage your staff to have a laugh
A familiar article written by Alison Beard for the Harvard Business Review notes that “Laughter relieves stress and boredom, boosts engagement and well-being, and spurs not only creativity and collaboration but also analytic precision and productivity”. The Mayo Clinic’s website says laughter “doesn’t just lighten your load mentally, it actually induces physical changes in your body” by stimulating your organs by increasing your oxygen intake, allowing your brain to release more endorphins, and stimulating both circulation, helping muscles to relax, and heart rate, increasing and then decreasing it which can lead to a relaxing feeling.
Encouraging a workplace culture where people can be themselves can present one way to inspire the right kind of good humour.
2. Trial a summer schedule
During the summer, some organisations will slightly tweak their hours to give staff some extra time off. Employers may pick one day, often a Friday for the extra benefit of extending the weekend, and encourage staff to finish their working week a few hours early. Minds tend to wander at this time of year, and if you do decide to shorten the working week, be sure to communicate that employees are expected to still complete their set work tasks.
Done right, you can potentially receive the same level of output from staff, but receive the added benefit of increased engagement/loyalty that staff experience when they feel their employer is giving them some type of workplace perk.
In an article for Inc., small business advisor Marla Tabaka, suggests a few ways a summer schedule could look in your workplace:
Everyone leaves early on a Friday afternoon (if your business can manage this), otherwise…
Any of these approaches are good alternatives for employers who are not able to offer financial bonuses/raises and will make a difference to your employees
3. Communicate your 2020 goals
While you don’t want to hammer staff with too many new processes or projects towards the end of the year given they are more likely to balk at large scale changes when they’re running near empty, you may be better off communicating your plans for the following year.
A US survey from the Society for Human Resources in America found that 77% of staff surveyed in an annual satisfaction and engagement survey felt that having a clear indication of their employer’s future vision and missions was important to their job satisfaction.
In an article for Forbes, Elena Bajic, CEO of Ivy Exec, says that when team members have a clear idea of how their individual work contributes to the bigger picture, in her experience, they’re more likely to work harmoniously to achieve those goals.
To share these visions effectively, Bajic offers the following advice:
There you have it – three ways to stave off November-itis. Best of luck making it through the next few weeks. And take comfort in the fact that Christmas is just around the corner.
By Dr Peter Williams, Senior Lecturer, Avondale Business School
You have probably heard of Parkinson’s Law – work expands to fill the time available for its completion. It is often quoted in the context of procrastinating until the deadline looms large. But who was Cyril Parkinson, and how did he come to write this particular law?
A really interesting article by Tiffanie Wen (read it here) gives some really interesting background d to Parkinson, and many of his other observations. He was a British naval historian and author, and his famous law first appeared in the Economist in 1955. His law was written in the context of observing that between 1914 and 1928 the British navy reduced its number of ships by two thirds, and personnel by one third, yet the number of bureaucrats has continued to increase by almost 6% a year!
Parkinson went on to make further observations about bureaucratisation, like that if your administrative body grows at 6% ore more, then sooner or later your company will die. He also developed the law of subordinates, and noted that bureaucrats create work for other bureaucrats.
The article by Wen looks at these observations by Parkinson and brings them into the modern age and tests them against current research, which, sadly, tends to validate these laws, even today. The article is well worth reading to challenge your thinking about how efficient you and your organisation really is.
ABS Students are once again world beaters in the unit Strategic Responses in Business. Every year final year students run a company in a computer simulated context for the semester. At the end of the semester the students can compare themselves to other universities across the globe, and this year the team achieved number 4 in the world on one of the success measures, and within the top 70 for two others. Quite an achievement!
The culmination of the subject is the last class of the semester when the students run an Annual General Meeting for shareholders based on the results of their company. They produce an annual report, which is shared to the “shareholders” and the students must report and then face questions. The shareholders this year comprised over 20 staff and students who came along. The team did a great job of handling the questions, including a few tricky ones.
Student feedback consistently rates this unit as one of the best experiences at College, as it simulates real-life experience and puts the students into situations where they have to process complex information and make decisions that affects the survival of their company. Unit coordinator, Dr Warrick Long, notes that students really grow during this subject, especially in the areas of decision-making, self-awareness and professionalism. As of 2020 every BBus student will undertake this unit in their final year of study. The photos show the students in action at their AGM. Well done Team Andrews!
Will Avondale University College be a spectator, commentator or contributor to the workforce in 2030? So asked Dr Warrick Long from Avondale Business School in an Avondale Researchers: Here For Good colloquium yesterday. To become a contributor, Avondale must exploit its competitive advantages, he said. How? By prioritising relationships with students. By encouraging staff to maintain their status as doers and thinkers. By creating stronger connections with the Seventh-day Adventist Church and its “ready-made partner” entities such as the Adventist Development and Relief Agency and Sanitarium Health Food Company. And by modelling values based on our understanding of Jesus Christ and our Adventist identity that provide an ethical and moral framework. Let’s “reimagine innovative ways to build on our heritage, leverage our size and values and consolidate ourselves as a premier higher education provider known not only for preparing young people for the workforce of the future but as being an employer of choice.”
