CareerCurve™

Many times HR is placed in a position to deliver a message, sometimes to a particular employee, sometimes to the masses. Obviously I’m a big proponent of telling the truth even though it can be difficult – I’ve written about the importance of being truthful in creating and maintaining a transparent culture, how being truthful leads to trust and why trust is so important, and how telling the truth engages, motivates, and inspires your workforce.

Idealistically, making the commitment to be truthful to your employees results in many positive outcomes. Realistically however, there are hidden challenges in the way your employees think that could impact how accurately your message is perceived.  In many cases, there isn’t much you can do about it either – they are simply thought processes that exist within the employee receiving your message. But knowledge is power and knowing these challenges are out there can be helpful in how you move forward.

• Everyone has a comfort zone and it can be difficult to get your employees to consider ideas or make decisions outside of it. If the truth you try to deliver doesn’t fall within a place of security for them, you may be challenged by their desire to distort what they’ve heard.

• Selective hearing is another challenge. Employees subconsciously hear what they want to hear, and tend to support the things that match or support their own beliefs while discounting those that don’t. This can make it difficult to know the information was relayed  accurately, particularly since you may not be intimately familiar with their value and belief systems.

• The way your employees view you, the company and themselves also comes into play. If your employees don’t like you or the company or agree with how either operate, they are not likely to believe you or give credence to the message you are trying to deliver. Likewise, they will tend to view themselves as having better judgment and higher morals than you. All of this means that your message will be disregarded more easily. If they like you and the organization, odds are they will be more accepting of what you are trying to say, regardless of what it is.

• Employees often believe that their successes are based on talent and ability, while yours are most likely luck. Their personal failures are attributed to external factors and bad luck, but yours are due to your own mistakes. This presents a challenge for you in terms of credibility. And if your employees think you are less credible than they are, doesn’t this impact the way they hear your message?

• Employees often conform to their group’s mindset. This could mean their team or department and the level of unconscious conformity may depend on how tightly knit their group is. And they are probably unaware that this desire to conform exists. For you, this means that their response to a message may not be their own and they may not even know that.

All of these examples are difficult to recognize – they are, after all,  subconscious thought processes. Knowing that the possibility exists that one (or more) of them are affecting what is heard can help you craft and deliver a more effective message.

Many years ago, job hopping was viewed as the first red flag on a resume.  Those resumes that showed multiple jobs over the previous 5-10 years were instantly moved to the “not interested right now” pile.  If no solid candidates were in the rest of the pile the resume might get a second look, but for the most part that resume was considered out of the running. 

But with the current economy, has this changed?  It seems as though it should.   There is even information out there that suggests that hiring a job hopper could be good for the employer .

There are many reasons why job hopping does not necessarily mean the candidate is a risk.  Here are a few to consider:

• Many companies are moving to more contract and temporary employees in order to save money, particularly on benefits.  Contracts may not have been renewed or the employee was brought in on a short term basis for project work from the start.

• Many candidates were laid off in the last couple years but unlike years past, this does not necessarily mean it was due to poor performance.  When corporations are laying off hundreds, it is not realistic to believe that all those affected were poor performers.

• With the economy shifting so dramatically in the past few years many companies restructured significantly.  Candidates may have been affected by these changes in strategy a everyone tried to tighten up.

• With all the other changes in organization and acquisitions, a lot of bosses were afraid of losing their jobs.  They may have sold a complete turnaround to their bosses as an attempt to retain their own employment.  The result could be that the job itself changed considerably and the employee was no longer a fit for the organization.

• Candidates affected by organizational changes may have taken other jobs just to pay their bills.  The news about unemployment was not good and the mindset for a few years seemed to be that you better take any job just to have one, since there were so few out there.  The luxury of looking for the perfect fit was pushed aside for quite a while and candidates have been in survival mode. 

If the job hopping was due to some of the reasons above and was essentially out of the employee’s control,  isn’t it possible a job hopper would make the perfect employee?  Doesn’t it stand to reason that some of these candidates are seeking loyalty, security, and stability?

I came across an interesting quote the other day from David Fairhurst, chief people officer at McDonald’s.  He said, “The more you give your people transferable skills, the less they want to transfer.”

Have you ever approached Career Training and Development in this way?  Now these things are more important than ever.  Many organizations have had to reallocate job responsibilities due to cutbacks so providing training is crucial just to get the job done productively.  But beyond that, this is a great engagement tool!  This is more important than ever as one of the biggest HR concerns is losing top talent.

In this day and age, there is as definite lack of loyalty both on the part of employers as well as employees.  It is incredibly rare to find employees who believe they will work for an organization for decades or have found their home, but ironically, offering employees options to move on tends to increase the likelihood that they will stay.  Why?

Career development and training keep employees focuses on internal opportunities.  It also makes them feel heard and valued as an individual with needs, one of the top job motivators.  It develops trust that there are growth opportunities and their potential to advance is recognized.  Investing in employees’ futures can remove the mindset that an employee would prefer to get a new job rather than deal with issues or concerns in their present role.  In short, it builds a sense of loyalty – if you do for them, they want to do for you.  It also increases their interest in going to work each day.  Being excited about the job equals engagement and engaged people want to stay.  They are also far more productive and will be a genuine benefit to your organization.

Think about this quote by Walter Chrysler.  ““I feel sorry for the person who can’t get genuinely excited about his work. Not only will he never be satisfied, but he will never achieve anything worthwhile.”  Don’t you want your employees achieving worthwhile things for your business?

How do approach training and career development?  Do you have the mindset that you need your employees to learn things just to help the company or do you approach it as a way to view your top talent as people with needs?  Do these things fall under the category of retention tools in your organization?

Is it the amount of money the company spends?  Is it the quality of the food?  Is it how much booze you provide?  Is it how ritzy the venue is?  Is it timing – too early and no one feels festive and too late and everyone is too rushed?    Your holiday party is now nothing more than an item on an already overloaded checklist of things to do?

I believe a successful holiday party can happen anywhere at any time and it’s all about the planning.   I can safely say that because I just attended mine and none of those things mattered, at least not to me.  Don’t get me wrong  -  the venue was beautiful, the food was great, drinks were served.  I’m not yet horribly pressed for time and holiday obligations.  I’m also not in denial where I think Halloween just happened a few days ago.  The most important thing I noticed was the mindset in the planning.

I know there are risks to putting on a party for your employees but this may actually interfere with the whole point of it.  I’ve read so many do’s and don’ts like this one, and while I see the reason for concern to a degree, I just don’t know if you can have a great party if you try to plan for each eventuality.  Being too caught up in potential liability seems to change the tone and really sends some messages to your employees that you may not be aware of.

So why do I think ours was a successful holiday party? And what kind of messages did we employees get from it?  Here are some things I noticed that made it a great night that sent great messages.

No pressure – I don’t think I would’ve been committing career suicide if I couldn’t make it.  The message here was it was truly meant for enjoyment.

Menu choices – Again, it wasn’t about the food, but it sure was nice that the company recognized that we are individuals. We may not all like the same thing to eat. 

The short public thank you before dinner –  this was not  a state of the union address and all about the company, but personal thank yous with real-life examples of how each group is integral to our success.  And it was incredibly genuine.  I felt appreciated.

The effort not to discuss work – all conversation starters were either a thank you for my contribution or questions about holiday plans and family.  The message I received was that this was a night out, not a meeting.

We were trusted -  to have cocktails and it was assumed we would be responsible.  There weren’t drink tickets or time limits for the bar to be open as if we were college kids at a frat party who couldn’t behave unless we were monitored.    It was assumed everyone was mature enough to handle the presence of alcohol, and we did.

What is your experience with holiday parties?  Are you so obsessed with the risks your forget it’s supposed to be fun?  What kind of messages do you unconsciously send your employees when your planning is focused on instituting rules and policies to avoid liability?

I posted a while ago about letting your employees teach you how to re-recruit them.  Then I read a really great blog post by a fellow blogger, Terry Seamon in October, about listening.  I’ve suggested in the past that listening is a great retention tool and and he is offering that it is an act of leadership.  Dwane Lay, another fellow HR blogger, explains in November how listening to your team will also develop trust.  I brought up a number of questions to ask and Terry developed a strategy for how to listen and then what to do with the answers.   Dwane suggests numerous reasons why listening to your people means you are listening to the right people and how this will ultimately assist you in making sound business decisions. 

Retaining top talent is one of the largest concerns HR has right now and that is not going to change anytime soon.   Because there are multiple reasons for this problem, there are multiple solutions as well.  But a common denominator to the success of these solutions comes from listening.  

What does listening cost the company?  Nothing.

Yes, I and others strongly recommend that once you hear, you take action.  But even if you can’t make sweeping change to your organization right now, the benefits of sincerely listening will still be felt.  Employees want to feel validated and work in an environment where their opinions and ideas matter.  If you don’t listen sincerely, trust that your employees will know it and you’ll end up with the attitude I discuss here.

Changing the organization’s style will pay off in increased trust, higher engagement, better retention, and ultimately greater production.  As these things occur, you can then invest more and more into implementing changes your employees recommend.  Start small and start with developing your listening skills.

Think about it this way.  How much time do you spend pretending to listen to comments and concerns in order to show employees you care?   What does that cost you?  Are you actually just letting them vent or are you honestly considering what they have to say?  Have you ever tried to make listening to your employees a top business priority?

The most effective teamwork is produced when all the individuals involved harmonize their contributions and work towards a common goal.  How can you accomplish this in your organization? 

A good place to start is to understand the difference between employees working in groups or working in teams.  Once you know what to look for, you can evaluate whether your organization is focusing on the most effective approach to projects.

Here are some suggestions followed by an explanation of some subtle differences that mean a lot.

Have the members establish the goals.

In group projects, members tend to focus more on their personal role since they were not involved in the creation of the goals.  Team members, on the other hand, tend to take ownership of the goal because they were a part of creating it.

Encourage collaboration.

Groups run in a way that typically assigns a task to a member and doesn’t encourage suggestions outside of his or her area of expertise.  Teams, because they are aligned with the overall goal, are focused on taking advantage of the talent and experience of all members.

Have the members work interdependently, not independently.

Group members tend to work independently on their task to the detriment of the overall desired goal.  Many times they are unable to see the desired goal beyond their own role.  This means they cannot support other group members because they don’t understand how it fits into the big picture.  Team members understand that while they have personal goals, the end result will be met by mutual support.

Be extremely clear when defining objectives to instill trust.

Group members are given a task but tend to be very cautious in communication simply because they don’t fully understand what is going on within the group.  They don’t trust that their suggestions are relevant or that anyone in the group will want to hear them.  Conversely, teams operate in a way where feedback, questions, and varying opinions are encouraged.  In addition, if group members don’t understand the ultimate objectives, they may suspect the motives of the members.  On teams, objectives are clear and there is not a question of motive because the members understand each other’s roles.

Assign a leader, but reiterate that this is a team effort.

Groups tend to value conformity more than positive results.  This is due to all the factors listed above.  In groups, the members participate less and assume that the leader will make all final decisions, whereas teams value results.  Team members understand that if consensus is not reached, the leader will hold the final vote, but that an improved solution will occur because of the exchange of ideas and that each member is important to the process.

Does your organization work in groups or teams?  In your opinion, is one more effective than the other?

It’s no secret that turnover in your organization costs a lot of money.  Estimates on what those costs are vary widely from 50% of the employee’s salary to 400%, depending on the nature of the job.

The projection is that a turnover storm is on the horizon due to layoffs, cutbacks and stress during the economic downturn.  Have you spent time preparing for this?  Do you know what to expect? 

The impact of turnover has another result that you may not have considered carefully enough.  It is very difficult on the remaining employees – the ones you NEED to keep.  Many times these employees are the ones who have to take on the burdens left behind when a colleague quits.  They have to deal with staffing shortfalls and absorb more responsibilities.  They have to communicate with dissatisfied customers due to quality concerns, slower production, and reduced customer service. They have to manage the stress that comes with watching co-workers leave the company and questioning whether sticking with the organization is the right move for them.

These things can quickly lead to a mass exodus. This will leave you with a weak employer brand which means you not only lose many good employees, but you are unable to attract quality replacements.  The cost for this damaging scenario is impossible to calculate. 

How do you prepare for market conditions suggesting you are primed for this? What can you do to reduce the amount of employees who leave and to support the employees who stay?  What steps will minimize the damage?

Become more human. 

If you recognize that your employees have aspirations, concerns, needs, and wants you can direct your interaction accordingly.  You can become more appreciative, more communicative and ultimately be more connected to your workforce.  You will be amazed at the loyalty that can be generated just by approaching your employees as human beings.  In addition, as you try to replace those that have moved on, you can be responsive, respectful of candidates’ time and need for feedback, and just generally kind.  This will do wonders for your employer brand.

It is easy to forget during tough times that not everything boils down to dollars and cents.  You can get so caught up in the daily numbers needed to survive that you ignore the big picture.  Yes, your employees are either assets or liabilities, but they are also human beings.  If you would like to generate loyalty, have some consideration for the fact that they are much more than machines that simply produce or don’t produce and interact in a way that makes them feel valued.

One of the top priorities of Human Resource Departments everywhere is creating and maintaining an engaged workforce.  This means employees are excited (or dare I say inspired) to be there, they are happy and they are productive.

There are numerous articles, resources, and studies out there explaining different ways to achieve this utopian state.  I’ve written many of them myself on how important trust is, being transparent, empowering your employees, and managing with values instead of rules.  But how can you tell if you’re there yet?  Rather than focusing on the negative – behaviors that show a lack of engagement – what are some signs that your workforce IS engaged?

Do you have employees who come in early or leave late?  A good sign of engagement is that your people don’t clock watch.  It’s more about getting the job done than getting off on time.

Do your employees look happy?  I spent 3 1/2 hours last week at a company with highly engaged employees.  How did I know this?  Well, when you take a step back and really look around, if it’s there, you can’t miss it.

Are your employees proactive with solutions?  Research shows that engaged workers think creatively and will approach their managers with solutions.  They feel comfortable enough not only to think outside the box, but to proactively discuss their solutions with their colleagues.

Do your employees take ownership of their projects?  If you have a workforce who has a high level of accountability, chances are they are highly engaged as well.

Do your employees continually ask for more responsibility and embrace challenges?  Research indicates that the most highly engaged employees want the chance to learn and are not shy about asking for it.

When you hear work-related conversations between employees do they use the words we and us?  If your employees are engaged with your organization they tend to speak as if they are a member of a team.  You will not hear references to they or them when referring to the company.

What other signs can you share in the comments that show your workforce is engaged?

I have a family member who recently received an invite by his employer to a corporate function on a Saturday night. He is excited to attend and that got me thinking about how many times these things backfire. When my current company plans activities, I also look forward to them and do not feel that it will affect my career if I am unable to attend. But this was not always the case.

In my previous life, I worked for various organizations that planned golf trips (I LOVE golf but trust me, many of my co-workers didn’t), “fun” days involving obstacle courses and relay races (ugh – should’ve called them “Unfun” days), and Whirly-Ball and Paintball outings that we had to pay for ourselves. Each of these, although usually on Saturdays and not necessarily free, certainly felt mandatory. To summarize, my take on corporate social functions was this: If you’re going to make me spend my day off with people from work I would love to define what I consider to be fun. Why should I have to participate and pay for something I have no interest in doing? And I was not the minority.

Was HR aware of this? Did they care? It felt like they probably knew that this is what we thought but that their job was to plan these things, not worry about whether anyone actually got anything out of it.

For HR, two of the challenges with planning corporate events have to be what to do and how to get people to do it. What to do should be relatively simple to decide if you communicate with your employees. Put together well-constructed surveys and vary the types of activities based on the feedback you receive. But how do you avoid the “it’s not mandatory but if you don’t show your face its career suicide” impression?

Is this a product of the culture? I wrote last week about transparency. Transparency breeds trust. Could it really be as simple as that? If you have that trust and you extend an invite that is just that – an invite that employees can respond to in any way they choose – does the feeling that they better at least make an appearance go away because they trust that you say what you mean and mean what you say? If you say it isn’t mandatory, the employees trust that it isn’t?

Is it the delivery? Does it make a difference if the invitation feels like an invitation and not a corporate mandate? Have you ever considered the wording and how it impacts the perception?

Do you know what your employees really think about the social functions your company plans? Are they considered mandatory even though you say they’re not? Is this perception by the employees related to your culture? Do you, in fact, want them to feel they are mandatory? Why? Please share any feedback in the comments.

I was fortunate enough to attend a presentation recently given by a CEO about the strategic role HR has played in the success of his organization.  And he has a very successful company.  Although his HR department has always gotten his full support, I realized while he spoke that there must be things HR can do to earn that support, even if you don’t necessarily have it now. 

One of the things that struck me most was the value he placed on the trends he was informed of by HR regarding his employees.  He counts on HR to be aware of who is doing a poor job of managing, what the employees are frustrated about in the resources they are provided, how the employees feel about where the company is going, how the employees perceive their individual career development – really everything that the employees had to say.  Is it possible that you have this information but never thought to put it together in a cohesive way, present it to the owners or executives, and recommend solutions? 

Another area where he values HR’s is their creativity in coming up with ideas that make employees happy.  These things range from a diner within the building because traffic is hellatious and there is nowhere within walking distance to eat, to the implementation of a “quiet room” for those on break who just need a few moments to decompress in solitude, to an employee recognition program where employees can publicly give kudos to each other via the intranet.  These are just a small number of the programs this company has in place that he credits directly to HR.  Is it possible that you know the different things that would make your employees happier but haven’t made these recommendations under the assumption that nothing would come of it?  Can you show in dollars and cents the impact small changes may make in terms of production?  Or maybe how production is impacted when morale is down?

A third example he mentioned involves HR recommending a different hiring process that aligns with the company values.  HR realized that their most productive employees shared the mindset that fit into the culture of the organization.  The technical skills matter of course, but they suggested that the core qualities that align with the mission statement ultimately end up being more important.  HR recommended 16 personality traits that must be present regardless of skill set because they accumulated examples where the top talent had a derogatory effect on the team and ultimately the company.  Because of the data HR had, they were able to change the hiring process to focus more on these traits than on skills and show why this would ultimately mean more production in the long run.  And it has.  Do you have this information regarding who ends up being a good employee and who doesn’t?  Have you considered recommending a new hiring process based on what you see?

Many seem to think that without the CEO supporting the value of HR, Human Resources can never be a strategic partner in an organization.  But have you ever tried to earn that support?  This particular CEO explained that he has no time for whiners and what he values most is not only a description of a problem but a recommendation on how to fix it.  If you take the approach that you have information that is helpful to the company, support it with data, and then suggest a solution, will you then find yourself with a “seat at the table”?

Maybe it’s time to stop focusing on the lack of support for HR and instead take the initiative to make HR invaluable.  I would love to hear examples of anyone who has tried and what response you received.