Imposter Syndrome and Bullying in the workplace

Welcome to Risky Business Commercial Insurance with Butler Byers. This is Paul Martin, your host and business commentator on CKOM Radio. Joining me as always, Colin Rooke, the Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers.

Colin, today we’re going to talk people matters. It’s interesting, the state latest stats that we’ve been looking at, Saskatchewan continues to have, the employers here have the hardest time filling jobs. We have as a percentage, the highest job vacancy rate in the country. You’re seeing it decline in other parts of Canada as the economy slows down, particularly in Ontario. But out here where the economy’s still chugging along pretty good. We still have one in 20 jobs that is, there’s just nobody to fill them. So employers are dealing with HR issues every day, all day. It’s really hard because you’ve got orders, you don’t have the people to fill them. And sometimes we might just do that old mirror test, right?

Are they breathing? Can they fog a mirror? We’ll hire them. And that can lead to all kinds of problems from a business management perspective. But interestingly, this also has implications for the insurance industry and for your coverage and the way that you as a commercial insurance broker come to the client and say, here’s my perspective on it. So let’s talk about that. And when you are talking HR issues with a business owner, A, how do you approach it? And B, what are the topics that are coming up these days? What are they raising with you and what are the employees saying, for example?

Yeah, that’s a really good point. You talk about job vacancy, high turnover, what does that have to do with insurance? Is Ryan Warner joining us to talk about the benefits plans and no, that’s not it. But when we’re thinking of property casualty insurance program and high turnover, I mean, if you think about it, the more turnover you have, the less experience you’re going to have in the organization, whether it’s at all levels. And then you take, for example, a large auto fleet and you’ve got regular turnover. And so you are forced to put inexperienced people behind the wheel. And maybe they, again, due to turnover or some of the two topics we’re going to talk about today, they haven’t had a great go with the company. They’re may be afraid to ask questions. And again, not experienced, not feeling comfortable, but they want to perform the work and they want to keep this job.

And so what matters to the insurance company is are your people being properly trained? The policies and procedures that we are sharing with the insurance market as a result of our risk reduction work, are they truly being adhered to? Because if people are leaving as quickly as they can learn it, and the focus of the organization is to replace those positions, are they really spending the time making sure policies and procedures are being implemented and followed? And that’s a really good question, and I would argue, no, they probably aren’t. And even if they are following those policies and procedures, again with a relatively new staff with an organization that’s high turnover, how experienced are these people really?

So we’re going to talk about two topics. One is imposter syndrome, which is it’s really turned into a buzzword lately. It’s not a new term, but it’s something that people are talking about pretty regularly. And we want to talk about what is it, how do you identify it, what are the costs and what can you do to turn things around? And then very similarly, workplace bullying. So what is it? I think that’s pretty selfexplanatory, but what are my costs of ignoring this? How is it going to impact the company at the end of the day? And it does lead to things like turnover, which ultimately is going to impact the performance of the company from an insurer’s perspective. It’s certainly going to increase the likelihood of claims among other things.

Well, isn’t that interesting that I think for the most part, when business owners who are generally their head is full of a lot of stuff, that when the word insurance comes up, they think about covering my buildings or maybe business interruption. And that’s kind of the end of the creativity of the thought process. And I think the point of the show and why we do this is to broaden that horizon a little bit. And I’m reasonably confident that most business owners would not see losing a junior employee as something that an insurance company would care about.

Yeah, and if it’s one, they probably don’t really nothing to report here. If it’s a lot, they do. And if you don’t think that they’re taking that into consideration, turnover, average tenure with the company, average age of the workforce, you’re wrong. Underwriting is just not that simple. There’s a lot of factors that go in, especially as the company grows or the size of the account grows. Once you get into the mid-market, and we’re talking sizeable insurance premiums, everything is under the microscope, especially when there’s claims. There could be listeners today that are saying, I’ve never really had that problem. And if you are someone that’s subject to luck and there’s been no claims where someone’s really looked into turnover and looked into absenteeism and productivity and you haven’t been questioned, then maybe consider yourself lucky. But when you see frequency and severity of claims increase, they start asking these questions and they need to know that you have answers and that you’ve planned for this and that you are internally addressing it or insurance coverage. One, well, the cost is going to increase exponentially, but it might not be there at all.

Well, let’s start to dig into these. Let’s talk about that first one you flagged, which is imposter syndrome. And it’s a cool sounding term, but in the research I’ve done on this says about half of senior executives in America would put their hand up if they were asked, have you ever suffered from imposter syndrome? I mean, that’s an astronomical number for people in positions of authority. So maybe jump in and just talk about what it is. What is imposter syndrome and why does it affect people? What difference does it make to them? How does it impair their performance?

Yeah, certainly at a high level, really it’s applicable to those people inside the organization that have had usually fairly good success, but they are constantly fearing or doubting their abilities and they think they’re going to be ultimately exposed as fraud. And the long-term result of that is reduced productivity and overall career growth, and then growth of the organization. So again, you’ve got someone that maybe they’re high performing to you, but on the inside there’s a ton of self-doubt, and that really turns into a cultural issue. And the result of not paying attention to those that are potentially suffering from imposter syndrome and as you mentioned, could be up to 50% of executives, it is going to turn into employee turnover, higher rates of absenteeism, lower engagement, and it is going to impact the bottom line. So for those that aren’t really familiar or haven’t given this much thought, everybody has, people like this at work and the stats say that women are slightly more likely to have imposter syndrome than men.

But it’s the perfectionist at work. It’s the expert, the one the know-it-all that is actually concerned. They don’t know it all. It’s the soloist, the one that feels pressure to handle things alone and not work as a team and as a result is underperforming. It’s the natural genius. So the person that if they can’t get it right on the first try, they just, they’re crushed on the inside. And everyone has this, the superhuman, the person that says yes to everything, takes on all the projects, works day and night, but ultimately really doesn’t. The jack of all trades, master of none person inside the office need to watch for these people. And it’s important to have an understanding of how they are feeling on the inside, or at least suffering from self-doubt as a result of their perfectionism, which ultimately leads to procrastination, decreased productivity, and so on and so forth. Psychological safety is a concern.

Really quite remarkable. And we’ve got to take a little break, but I want to come back and explore this because just think about this during the break, is that if you’ve got people in positions of authority, the last thing you want them suffering from is insecurity because they have to make decisions and you don’t want them insecure about doing that. Alright, we’ll come back and talk about that in a moment. You’re listening to Risky Business Commercial Insurance with Butler Byers. We’ll be back after this break.

Welcome back to Risky Business Commercial Insurance with Butler Byers, Paul Martin here, and joining me, Colin Rooke, Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers. Colin, before the break, we were talking about imposter syndrome and how debilitating it can be, and sometimes it’s not particularly visible. In fact, those who might suffer from it are really good at pasting on an impression or a facade of confidence and success. But really underlying this, some insecurity. And I just raised the notion of whether or not that might impede their ability to make decisions, for example.

Yeah, it does. And I said before the break, it really does come down to the corporate culture, and we say all the time, language drives culture. And so as impactful as imposter syndrome can be with a few changes to behavior, it’s really easy to right the wrongs and minimize the impact or reduce the frequency and severity of the impacts of impostor syndrome. And there’s just simple tools like mentorship program. So encouraging support systems really focus on providing learning and development opportunities inside the organization that will lead to employee growth. And if you think about that as an example, if inside your culture you are expected to know everything, that’s where imposter syndrome sort of lives. I’m supposed to know everything I don’t feel like I do, and now I’m feeling paralyzed. So provide learning opportunities as often as possible.

And check-ins, 1-on-1’s, how are you doing, Paul? Is there anything? What’s going well? What’s not going well? Really easy to do. Few do it work on having a culture of recognition, celebrate the wins. And then lastly, focus on failure as a learning opportunity. So if you have a culture of we don’t make mistakes, everything goes right a hundred percent of the time, it does lead to imposter syndrome. So talk about the failures and what people can learn from those failures. Very easy to address. An engagement survey can help you with this, but really worth noting and paying attention to.

Most interesting. Now, the other topic we wanted to touch on is bullying in the workplace. And that I guess historically has kind of been the thing you talked about on the schoolyard rather than in a work environment. But lately we have been talking about this a lot and I’m gathering it’s caught the attention of the insurance industry too.

Yeah, it’s really part and parcel with imposter syndrome and it’s particularly prevalent. So the research shows that 37% of Canadian workers have been bullied or felt bullied in the workplace, and that’s across multiple jobs as well. And it’s not specific to any one industry. And so I think we all know what bullying is, but it’s causing physical or emotional damage or harm to a person, or in this case an employee. And ignoring this problem or not having an idea of people are being mistreated or targeted by jokes or mocking or even things like unrealistic expectations or employees talking negatively about other employees and up to and including cyber bullying. It is all sort of caught under that workplace bullying headline. And so I think it’s pretty self explanatory, but if people aren’t feeling great about work, productivity is going to decrease. You are going to see those calling in sick more often.

So increased absenteeism, which is something that we cover in our risk reduction workshops, high turnover as we discussed earlier on in the show. And again, very similar to imposter syndrome and bullying as well. And then I think what a lot of workplaces don’t think about is reputational damage. So they may not tell you they’re being bullied, but they’ll certainly tell other people in their household, in friends, family, and when they leave you, they’ll tell other workplaces how awful it was. And if you don’t realize the ramifications of that negative press being out there, you don’t want to be known as a terrible place to work. I don’t think anyone does. But if you’re not working to raise awareness about bullying, determining the prevalence of the bullying inside the organization, talking about it, coming up with procedures and training, talking about a zero tolerance plan internally, and then ultimately leading by example, right from the top, if you’re okay with bullying, it’s never going to go anywhere. And so it’s really important to work to identify is this an issue? And I touched on it before the break, but employee engagement surveys are an excellent way to determine whether this might be happening in the workplace. People will tell you if written correctly, what they think about work and how work flows, and it’ll come up, I really dislike my supervisor or this and this has been happening to me. The training isn’t good, et cetera, et cetera. I’m subject to teasing. And so start there.

And having an employee or an engaged workforce or employee group, I guess the insurance industry looks at that favorably too, because your company should perform better and it attracts better talent. Well, I remember in a previous show we talked about it, something as sort of mundane as this kind of a reading that the engaged employee is the one who’s going to walk by the coffee shop and notice that the burner’s still on and the pot’s on it on a Friday afternoon and turn it off, rather than saying, that’s not my job, and just move on and you end up with a fire on the weekend or something. It’s a very simple metaphor or descriptor, but it drives home the point of why insurance underwriters are actually interested or care about engaged workforce. I mean, obviously business owners should be simply for productivity, but this has ramifications that ripple out well beyond just the fact of productivity and output.

It’s a really simple metric, but you can look around the office and you can tell without the engagement survey people, are people engaged when it’s icy out? Did someone already grab the salt or scrape the snow before anyone got there? Or is it still just being walked on when you arrive? Again, the unplugging of the coffee pot racing back in to turn on the light, double checking that the alarm is on, every organization can pick out those little gems that will say, you know what? I think we’re doing okay, or at least some of the time, but it’s really important to have an idea. And we’ve talked about quiet quitting on this show, and those employees are living in the realm of disengaged and they’re not doing anyone any favors because they aren’t leaving. But then we’ll do just the bare minimum to remain employed, which I would argue is not the goal of most, at least listening to this show.

Colin is always very insightful and you always broaden the horizons on this show about the nature of things that business people should be thinking about when they’re discussing or just contemplating the notion of their insurance coverage. You’ve been listening to Colin Rooke, the Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers. I’m Paul Martin, this is Risky Business. Thanks for joining us. We’ll talk to you next time.