Month: February 2026

In my current role, I supervise a group within our Specialty Services team. This team supports a unique patient demographic that requires a more “white glove” experience. These calls are often longer, more complex, and involve additional follow-through compared to standard scheduling calls. The team is expected to provide a higher-touch experience, manage more detailed coordination, and handle sensitive patient needs with extra care.

However, because the call volume for Specialty Services alone is relatively low, these team members also continue to handle high-volume state calls. In practice, this means they carry the workload of their regular team while also taking on more complex Specialty responsibilities. Despite the increased expectations and responsibilities, they are not classified as a separate team and do not receive additional compensation.

Compensation has clearly become a motivating factor in their behavior. While they continue to perform well and have not reduced their effort, morale has noticeably declined. They frequently ask when compensation adjustments might occur. More concerning, I have started to see some of them quietly explore other employment opportunities.

What seems to be driving this shift is not simply the desire for more money. It is the perception that their added value and increased workload are not being recognized in a tangible way. Compensation signals organizational value. When employees take on more responsibility without differentiation in pay, it can create frustration and feelings of inequity.

This situation has reinforced for me how closely compensation is tied to engagement and retention. Even when employees are dedicated and mission-driven, sustained extra effort without meaningful reward can gradually erode morale. Compensation, in this case, represents acknowledgment, fairness, and recognition, not just a paycheck.

One thing I’ve learned from onboarding experiences is that watching someone else do the job is not the same as actually doing it yourself. I’ve gone through trainings where I spent a lot of time observing experienced employees complete tasks and walk through systems. While that helped me understand the general flow of the role, I didn’t truly feel confident until I was given the opportunity to try it on my own.

The article Your New Hires Won’t Succeed Unless You Onboard Them Properly emphasizes that onboarding is more than just delivering information. Ellis et al. (2017) explains that effective onboarding requires support, check-ins, and social integration. Simply exposing new hires to information is not enough to ensure success. The research cited in the article shows that feeling supported by supervisors and socially connected in the workplace significantly impacts role clarity, job satisfaction, and long-term success.

From my experience, shadowing without hands-on practice feels similar to reading policies without applying them. It builds awareness, but not mastery. What has been most beneficial is when managers provide opportunities to practice tasks independently while still offering support and feedback. The article highlights that managers play a critical role in this process, and that proactive engagement from both the employee and supervisor improves outcomes.

Overall, onboarding is most effective when it combines guidance with real application. Watching can introduce the task, but doing it with support is what truly builds confidence and competence.

References

Ellis, A. M., Nifadkar, S. S., Bauer, T. N., & Erdogan, B. (2017, June 20). Your new hires won’t succeed unless you onboard them properly. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2017/06/your-new-hires-wont-succeed-unless-you-onboard-them-properly

As part of this week’s assignments, I took the Implicit Association Test (IAT), and my results showed that I was moderately faster at associating Black people with negative words and White people with positive words than the opposite pairing. Seeing this result was uncomfortable, but also really eye-opening. It reinforced the idea that implicit bias isn’t something people consciously choose. Instead, it’s shaped over time by culture, media, and social experiences, often without us realizing it.

When it comes to hiring, implicit bias can impact both the reliability and validity of selection decisions. Reliability is about consistency, while validity is about whether decisions are actually based on job-related qualifications. If a hiring manager unconsciously views certain candidates more favorably because of race, names, or background, then candidates with similar skills may be evaluated differently. That makes the process less consistent and weakens how accurately it measures what really matters for the job.

Implicit bias is especially likely to show up in more subjective parts of the hiring process, like resume reviews or unstructured interviews. Even with good intentions, people often rely on “gut feelings,” and research shows those instincts can be influenced by unconscious bias (Scientific American, n.d.). Over time, these small judgments can add up and lead to patterns that disadvantage certain groups, even when an organization believes it is being fair.

One way to help reduce the impact of implicit bias is to use more structured and standardized hiring practices. This includes asking all candidates the same interview questions, using clear scoring criteria, and focusing on specific skills rather than general impressions. These steps don’t eliminate bias completely, but they do help limit its influence and make hiring decisions more consistent, fair, and job-related.

References

Scientific American. (n.d.). How to think about implicit bias. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-think-about-implicit-bias/

Better Homes & Gardens Real Estate. (n.d.). Understanding implicit bias. https://bhgrecareer.com/bebetterblog/implicit-bias/

Most of the interviews I’ve participated in have either been one on one or panel interviews. And over the last few years, many of the roles I’ve applied for have been internal, since I’ve been moving and switching positions within the same company. Because of that, previous interviews often focused less on whether I could do the job and more on my experience, why I wanted to make the change, and how my current role prepared me for the next one. For more horizontal moves, the questions were usually straightforward and centered around my background and motivations.

My most recent interview for a supervisor position felt very different. It was more intense and clearly focused on evaluating me as a people leader. The questions were about my temperament, how I stay organized, how I would handle escalations, how I work with different personalities, and how I would approach harder conversations like giving feedback or addressing performance issues. Those questions felt much more valid because they directly reflected the real responsibilities of a leadership role, rather than just technical skills.

This experience aligns with what Chamorro-Premuzic and Steinmetz describe in “The Perfect Hire“, where they argue that unstructured interviews often lack predictive validity, while structured, behavior based questions are more effective at predicting future performance. Interviews that focus on real situations and judgment provide more useful information for employers and a better assessment of leadership potential overall.

I’ve also always found it helpful to ask for feedback after interviews where I didn’t get the position. In one case, I was told that I didn’t ask enough questions about the role itself or what the day to day work looked like, which made it seem like I wasn’t very interested. Since then, I’ve made it a point to ask more thoughtful, role specific questions in every interview. Overall, most of my interviews have been effective, especially as learning experiences. Each one has helped me better highlight my strengths, understand employer expectations, and grow more confident in future interviews.

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References

Chamorro-Premuzic, T., & Steinmetz, C. (2013). The perfect hire. Scientific American Mind, 24(3), 42–47.

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