Learning content

What is proactivity?

Being proactive is a personality trait that can be broken down into different behaviours. Acting proactively does not simply mean anticipating problems, but rather, being willing to initiate change, to develop a strategy, to solve professional challenges.

In the digital era, industry changes are rapid, and innovations appear every day, it this therefore important to be able to keep up with these changes. This is why working in the digital era requires a high degree of adaptability and motivation to continuously learn new things throughout one's career.

People who are proactive and take initiative are often the most motivated to learn, are more creative, competent, and have a clearer vision of their future. As a result, they are more able to meet the needs of their organisations.

There are 3 steps to initiate a proactive behaviour:

1. Anticipate: if you see a change is coming in your work, think about the different things you can do to prevent any problems
2. Plan: define objectives and detail the different tasks to accomplish your goal
3. Act: follow what you have planned according to your objectives and pay attention to feedbacks to improve yourself

Proactive and Reactive Behaviours

You will often hear about proactive versus reactive behaviours. To know where you stand and how to improve, it is first essential to understand the difference between these two types of behaviour. There are benefits to both types of behaviour. However, you should find a balance between the two. In the Industry 4.0 era, characterised by technological revolutions, the nature of business work demands a significant level of adaptability to change. Consequently, there is a growing need for individuals who are proactive in their approach.

See how you can distinguish between reactive and proactive behaviour:

• As a reactive person, you respond to a situation or a problem when it happens. For instance, you find a solution to a customer complaint, you execute the orders given by your manager, you follow training that you were asked to, etc.
• As a proactive person, you respond to the customer's complaint, but you analyse the situation to identify what should change to prevent it from happening again, you anticipate your workload, and you are curious to learn and develop continuously.

Benefits of proactive behaviour	Benefits of reactive behaviour
Building ability to solve future problems: plan to prevent future problems or to prevent minor issues to become larger	Finding an immediate solution: the issues are solved as they come up, which develops creativity and could lead to a long-term strategy
Optimising time: anticipating and planning allows for a more efficient work organisation and prevents work overload	Focus on progress: dealing with issues and projects as they come up means always moving forward with tasks and avoiding analytical paralysis
Increasing confidence in the future: setting objectives and guiding you towards the action to be carried out to achieve them

Showing a proactive attitude in the workplace

There are a lot of things you can do to be proactive in the workplace. Usually, there are 3 categories of proactive behaviour:

• Proactive work behaviour: in the workplace and within your team, there are many ways to take control of situations, while respecting work protocols. This may involve making suggestions, bringing new ideas to team meetings, or suggesting improvements to prevent a problem from recurring.
• Proactive strategic behaviour: observation is a form of proactivity. You can read the press, consult social media and the internet, and attend webinars ... By knowing what is going on inside and outside your organisation about your business area, you will improve your ability to anticipate problems or propose appropriate solutions.
• Proactive person-environment fit behaviour: motivation is essential to be proactive. To be motivated, it is important to train and maintain your skills.

You can demonstrate a proactive mindset at various levels, both within and beyond your organisation's external environment. For instance, you can take the initiative to prevent work-related problems from arising and directly affecting your tasks (e.g., if you know a coworker will be absent for weeks, you can plan accordingly to avoid delays in your project). Additionally, proactivity can extend to your team and supervisor (seeking feedback), your organisation and its surrounding environment (monitoring political, social, economic, technological, environmental, and legal changes that may impact your organisation).

Keep in mind that proactive individuals actively engage in driving change rather than merely criticising it. Active participation involves consistent involvement, such as seeking feedback from coworkers and supervisors, contributing new ideas during meetings, displaying interest in training programs and corporate culture, and so forth.

Boost proactivity through the workplace environment

Moving from a reactive work environment to a proactive work environment is not easy because it requires first identifying what to change and then, will maybe require changing habits, which may generate resistance from some team members. To foster a proactive work environment, here are several steps to implement:

If proactivity is a personality trait, there are several environmental elements that can help foster a proactive working culture:

• Enriching the activity of your team members: being in a workplace that often offers new challenges, and providing autonomy and learning opportunities are ways of enriching the activity,
• Decision-making latitude: while having clear working practices, offering room for initiative and idea development helps to promote proactivity,
• Transformational leadership: being a role model for team members and encouraging cooperation rather than competition,
• Maintaining a positive team atmosphere: having a positive and balanced work environment makes it easier for team members to come up with new ideas or to take initiative.

Avoid work overload

Foreseeing needs does not equate to assuming responsibility for the work of others. Experiencing a mental burden at work refers to constantly juggling numerous tasks without sufficient time to complete them, all while anticipating the needs of others. The inability to perform work to a high standard diminishes motivation. The mental burden at work is influenced by both the allocated time for task completion and the complexity of the tasks themselves.

A decline in performance is typically the first indication of an excessive mental burden. Planning and providing feedback are effective strategies to mitigate this burden, such as discussing the workload with your team to ensure a balanced distribution. Additionally, maintaining a healthy work-life balance is crucial in preventing mental strain.

• As a manager, there are several tips you can employ to support and prevent mental burdens within your team. These actions not only foster the well-being of your team but also sustain motivation and a proactive mindset in the long term:
• Be attentive: pay attention to your team and spot the first signs of a mental burden. Reduced motivation, a recurrent negative attitude, or isolation are warning signs. The first step is to engage in discussion with the co-worker.
• Balance the workload: give your employees latitude in their planning, allow them to delegate certain tasks without denying their expertise, and discuss the priorities when an urgent task occurs,
• Be realistic about the workload: consider the unexpected events that may occur in a project (malfunction, vacancies, ...) and integrate these dimensions to avoid problems recurring,
• Boost cooperation: include time for dialogue among your team, about the work itself (feedback, etc.), but also time for socialising to strengthen team spirit,
• Manage time: give your employees greater flexibility over their time, to better deal between peak and off-peak periods and improve work-life balance
• Promote proximity: be accessible to your team and set space and time to engage in dialogue with them, with the whole team but also in one-to-one,
• Acknowledge achievement: underline results and difficulties encountered during a project and acknowledge the efforts done by your team to challenge them.

Did you know?

Mental burden extends beyond the realm of work and encompasses personal life, particularly for women. It encompasses the unseen cognitive weight of organising various aspects of the household, such as chores, appointments, groceries, childcare, and more. Unfortunately, the majority of the mental burden tends to disproportionately affect women.

Define success to define SMART objectives

In an era defined by digital advancements and the constant emergence of innovative businesses, it becomes crucial to have a clear understanding of the purpose behind your actions and your personal definition of success. Studies have demonstrated that without a shared understanding of what success means in the business context, even highly motivated team members can face failure.

By establishing distinct goals, determining strategies to achieve them, and setting specific timelines for their accomplishment, you can effectively prioritize your projects and allocate the necessary human and technical resources. This approach ensures that you are on the right track and enables you to make informed decisions about resource management.

A good objective is one that is precise and relevant to your project. You can use the SMART principle to define these objectives

• Specific: what needs to be accomplished? Who’s responsible for it? What steps need to be taken to achieve it?
• Measurable: quantify your goal, and use KPIs to follow the performance
• Achievable: create a realistic goal, i.e. that your team has the mean and time to accomplish
• Relevant: why are you setting this goal? What link with the company’s overall goals?
• Time-bound: what is the time horizon? When does the project start and end?

Keep this in mind

Setting objectives is important to

• Keep up with rapid industry changes and innovations in the digital era
• Have a shared definition of success, as lack of consensus about it can lead to failure and demotivation
• Set the right priorities and appropriate human and technical resources

Follow objectives in the workplace

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are a set of quantitative measures used to assess how effective a project or company is at achieving its business objectives. They tell you what you want to achieve and when. KPIs should be defined before launching a project. Using KPIs allows us to follow meaningful goals, to spot changes in trends, and then to better anticipate the future. Also, delivering visual data about the performance of your business makes it more accessible to everyone, therefore enhancing communication and collaboration.

There are four elements to define a KPI

• Measure: the verbal expression, with words, of what you want to measure. Be precise! For example, you want to measure the number of new customers. A more precise formulation could be “the number of new customers over a year, for a specific product, …,
• Target: the value you want to achieve. The target depends on the measure: it could be expressed in raw numbers or percentage,
• Source: where your data are coming from,
• Frequency: how often do you report on the KPI. It could be monthly, quarterly, …

There are different types of Key Performance Indicators. It can be presented as follows:

When and how to change KPIs?

There is no universal KPI, they must be adapted to your project and your organisation's objectives. However, there are the same key steps in the KPI process

Note that KPIs are not fixed once and for all: if your business objectives and priorities change, your KPIs may no longer be appropriate. Ask yourself regularly if the indicator you are using makes sense in relation to the objective you are trying to achieve. If it does not, you can suggest changes to improve the KPI.

Be aware of changes and evolutions

There are two types of factors that can lead to revising your KPIs. The first one does not depend on the regular reporting of figures but on your ability to pay attention and anticipate changes. The environment in which you are measuring your KPIs is always evolving and changing. By understanding your working environment, the long-term strategies of your organisation, the capabilities of your team, and the expectations of your customers; you are better able to recognise that a KPI is gradually losing its meaning and that it could be changed to be more in line with changes.

The second depends on the results of your regular reports. You can decide on a time period (yearly, half-yearly, quarterly, etc.) where you look at the objectives and the adequacy of the KPIs with them to ask yourself if they still answer the following questions:

• Have the strategic objectives changed?
• Have our team objectives changed?
• Has the target of the measure been achieved?
• Is the measure still fit with our goal?
• Is the measure a relevant and real measure, or more a milestone or an activity monitoring?
• Does the measure lead to misbehaviour or unintended consequences on the organization’s objectives?

Depending on the answers to these questions, you may decide to review some of your KPIs. This does not always have to be a complete turnaround. In any case, the first step is to go back to the original meaning of the measure: what is it for? How do we measure our success?

Case study

Context: A focus on gender inequalities in relation to flexibility.

Description: Ruth is a team manager in a digital company with many employees. The company is committed to ensuring gender diversity and there is an equal number of men and women working in the company in the same departments and positions.

Ruth regularly learns about gender equality policies at work and sets up initiatives to improve the working environment for everyone.

One of the latest improvements she has made is to give her employees more flexibility in managing their own planning and working time. This includes remote working, but also greater flexibility in working hours (so that employees can pick up their children from school, go to a medical appointment more easily, etc.). This flexibility is supposed to promote a balanced workplace and therefore boost motivation and proactive behaviors, but Ruth wonders whether this is really the case.

By paying attention to this issue, she realises that women may be disadvantaged when it comes to this flexibility.

While flexibility benefits everyone, women still tend to be more responsible for family tasks than men. At work, this means that they are more frequently required to take time off for family reasons (childcare, sick children, etc.). While flexible working hours allow them to do this, it should not be forgotten that men are also more often in the workplace, have more opportunities to network, learn from their peers, etc. The return from longer absences, such as maternity leave, is also a sensitive time as a lot of women experience devaluation during this period.

As a manager, Ruth then decided to develop, in parallel with the flexible working hours, "meeting-free days" to allow everyone to concentrate on background tasks, but also to ensure that everyone is included in meetings and team dynamics.

She will also pay special attention to women returning from maternity leave, ensuring that they can work on new projects and challenges that reflect their competences

Lesson learnt: Facilitating the implementation of a proactive work environment should be done with attention to the outcomes, especially in terms of gender equality. Regarding flexibility, women regularly find themselves having to be twice as proactive to achieve their goals. This is a form of mental burden.

This does not mean that flexibility in the workplace should not be encouraged, but rather that attention should be paid to the effects, to anticipate negative effects and to put in place ways to avoid them.

Questions and answers

Q: What can I personally do to facilitate a proactive work environment?

A: There are a lot of things that can be done. On a more individual scale, you can act on motivation but also on good management of the workload. For example, you can propose to team members to collaborate on a new project, you can give feedback on their latest achievements or also leave them greater flexibility over their agenda. The key is to have frequent dialogue with your team to maintain this environment.

Q: “Our goal is to increase the use of our mobile app” - Is this a well-defined SMART goal?

A: This example defines a goal, but it could be improved. A SMART goal should include a measurable objective, a timeframe, the teams involved, the different steps, and the link with the overall strategy. Ex.: Our goal is to increase the number of subscriptions on the mobile app by 25% by the end of the year, by launching a media campaign and a sale on new subscriptions to the mobile app.

Q: Your organisation decides to change its mid-term strategy. Their objective is currently no longer to attract new customers but to consolidate the loyalty of existing customers. What are the implications of this change?

A: As objectives change, this means questioning the existing KPIs to see if they are still appropriate. They may not be. In this case, you can create new KPIs by following the stages of analysis: identifying relevant KPIs, creating appropriate measures, targets, sources, and frequencies, assessing whether they meet the new objectives, adapting strategies to improve performance based on the results, and, finally, continuing to question the relevance of your KPIs on a regular basis to see if they need to be adapted.

References

• Chaume, F., Gilibert, D., & Sauvezon, C. (2020). État des lieux des comportements proactifs en contexte professionnel. Pratiques Psychologiques, 26(1), 31‑53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.prps.2019.02.001
• Virtualstrategist. (2016). How to Develop Key Performance Indicators. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tuWjtc2Ifk
• Indeed. (2022). Reactive vs. Proactive Behavior: What’s the Difference?
• Jeanson, L. (2019). Charge mentale au travail : Comment la détecter et la combattre. The Conversation. Consulté 10 octobre 2022, à l’adresse http://theconversation.com/charge-mentale-au-travail-comment-la-detecter-et-la-combattre-89329
• Stedman, C. (s.d.). Definition. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). TechTarget.
• Boogaard, K. (2021). How to write SMART goals. Atlassian.
• Reliability and Maintainbility Center. (2021). Moving from a reactive to a proactive culture. The University of Tennessee-Knoxville.
• Barr, S. (2016). How to Decide When to Retire or Change a KPI.
• Perrier, M. (2019). Managers, voici 7 méthodes pour diminuer la charge mentale de vos équipes. Capital.fr.
• Castaño, C., & Webster, J. (2011). Understanding Women’s Presence in ICT: the Life Course Perspective. International Journal of Gender, Science and Technology, 3(2), pp. 365-386.

Additional resources

https://www.womeninresearch.org.au/being-assertive-and-proactive - a resource dedicated to women in their career management.

International Journal of Gender, Science and Technology – a scientific journal dedicated to Gender and IT issues.