CareerCurve™

Recently, I was discussing HR positions and the different duties that go with that title and it occurred to me how many areas of the business this department manages.  This led to the following train of thought and many questions.  I would love to know your thoughts on this topic and any feedback or answers you could provide in the comments.

I’m sure I’m missing some, but a list of objectives of human resources off the top of my head are benefits, recruiting, interviewing, hiring, employee concerns and complaints, downsizing, retention, talent management, on-boarding, policy, law, employee paperwork, and possibly payroll.  Then within some of these areas, whole departments can exist.  For example, within the benefits department there could be a need for an HR Generalist to manage health & wellness, 401k, disability, FMLA, workers compensation and a host of other areas.

How in the world does a business determine how many employees it needs in Human Resources?  It seems like it would make sense that a set ratio exists, kind of like when my kids started school and we were looking into student/teacher ratios.  But what would that ratio be and how is it determined when there are things like applicant tracking systems and human resource management software that would affect that number?  And then we all know the age-old argument about having a seat at the table and being strategic – how does that tie in?  Does all this depend on what role the owners, board or executives expect HR to play within the organization?

When someone decides to pursue a career in human resources, what does that mean?  Does everyone have their own definition?  Did you know what you wanted to specialize in when you started or did you end up in a certain area because of experience?  I posted previously about HR using a lot of buzzwords and the confusion that results, but the term human resources sure seems awfully broad.

As I was researching the different areas and seeking a flow chart that would explain all this (I didn’t find one), I came across this article about the responsibility of HR employees.  This made me think even more about the challenge of working in HR.  If you read this article, you can see an example of how the author, an HR Director, was held accountable for things she had little to no control over.  Doesn’t operating in this manner ultimately hurt the business?  

How does a company figure out not only that it has the right number of HR professionals, but that they are responsible for the things they should be?

Please share thoughts and experiences in the comments.

Who would have thought that commuting costs would figure into a person’s decision to stay or leave a company?  Unfortunately, this is a fact now.  In my area of the country, I’ve seen gas prices of $4.35/gallon.  Most of the country has hit $4.00 and prices are expected to go up higher still.    Workplace studies show that the average commute for an employee is about 30 miles. Depending on the car the employee owns, this will really add up for some of your employees.  It reminds me of the question stay at home moms consider when deciding whether or not to reenter the workforce – does the cost of child care outweigh the salary and benefits?  Is it worth it?  HR departments need to explore ways to assist employees with these costs in an effort to retain and attract top talent. 

If you have employees who travel a significant distance to come to work, you can bet they will be considering a position closer to home.  They almost have to.  However, there are things your company can do to try to help your employees.

Change the schedule.– One example of this would be to lengthen each day and take Fridays or Mondays off the schedule.  Many employees would jump at the chance to work four, 10 hour days and have a three day weekend.  This also removes a roundtrip, saving a whole day’s worth of gas. 

Coordinate car-pooling. – You can do this yourself internally with carpool boards or on your intranet, or you can recommend employees go to a site that will do it for them, such as erideshare.com.  Encouraging your employees to get involved shows you are aware that gas prices are affecting them.  If differing schedules are an issue, be open to considering assisting multiple employees to get on the same schedule in order to make it work.

Offer on-site lunches.– Explore ways to feed your staff and keep them at work during lunch.  You may be able to negotiate special pricing with restaurants and catering businesses to make it more cost effective for employees to remain on-site.  This is also a great engagement tool, especially if once a month or so the company springs for the lunch.  Your employees get to socialize with other people in the company.  As with many of the other suggestions, this doesn’t have to be an every day event.  Offering the ability o order and buy lunch once or twice a week still helps.

Consider telecommuting where possible.- How many of your employees could work from home?  If you don’t want to make it permanent, be non-committal about the timeframe and relay to them that this is a program you will try temporarily, in order to help them get through this.  It doesn’t have to be all or nothing either.  Maybe some employees could work from home 1 or 2 days a week and be in the office the others.

Look into subsidizing public transportation.-  Are you familiar with public transportation in your city?  Can you offer incentives for employees to use it?  Or can you offer to pay for it?  This may prove to be a minimal cost compared to the cost of turnover and hiring and on-boarding.  Many times there are incentives offered by the public transportation authorities themselves such as group discounts or pre-tax savings for those who purchase passes through your company.  If your company is large, your organization may actually be able to negotiate an incentive program with the public transportation authority.

Work these solutions into your “green” program, too. – Many employees, particularly Gen Y, are interested in working for companies who care for the environment.  Going green is where it’s at, so you can use some of these solutions to demonstrate how you not only want to help your employees, but do your part to improve the environment as well.  You could roll the programs out as something you want to try to help with gas prices and want to keep in an effort to cut down on pollution. 

My best recommendation on all of these suggestions would be to take a vote.  If you’re not sure which program might be effective, ASK.  This situation provides your company with the ability to be transparent, which builds trust.  You can let them know you’re not sure what will work but you’d like their input and will explain any reservations.   The simple act of asking your employees what would help them demonstrates that you are aware of the impact that gas prices may be having on them and shows them that you want to do what you can to ease the burden.  Proving to them that you care will do wonders for your employer brand, engaging your employees, increasing retention, and attracting top talent.  Happy employees are productive employees, so putting in the effort means a win for everyone.  

Is your company currently offering any programs to help your employees deal with rising gas prices?  Do you plan to?  Please share any other examples in the comments.

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?

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?

If you can look at your smartest employees and see that they are not performing as expected, it is time to ask some questions – of yourself and your organization.

Most smart employees who don’t perform do so because they don’t want to.  So why don’t they want to and what can you do about it?

Does your organization value their employees’ suggestions? 

Are new ideas or processes encouraged, supported and ultimately executed?  Is the company culture inspiring?  For smart employees this is very important.  If they don’t feel they work in an environment that genuinely values their input or if they don’t have the ability to demonstrate what they can bring to the table, why bother going above and beyond?  Maybe it’s time reassess the corporate values and reward employees accordingly.

Do your employees have good managers? 

I posted recently about how people quit managers, not companies.  Do the managers share the vision and values of the organization or are they worried about their own agenda (such as a fear of being overshadowed by their team?)  Do the managers take accountability for the performance of their teams?  Are the managers full of negative feedback, provide lower than expected performance reviews, and exclude their teams in decisions or processes?  All of these will play a role in how a smart employee performs.  Maybe it’s time to take a close look at your management team.

Do you count on the smart ones too much? 

Sometimes it is difficult to get away from but when you have a lot of faith in one employee, don’t you tend to go to them for everything?  How does this affect their ability to perform?  When does he/she just have too much work to do?  A huge workload can be very de-motivating if it becomes too difficult to manage.  Combine that with little feedback and no stated upward mobility path and you’ve got a deadly combination.  Be aware that there is a line between feeling valued and feeling taken advantage of.

Are they really underperforming? 

According to who?  Could it be that your expectations were too high because you recognize how smart they are and you subconsciously expect bigger things from them?  If so, you can focus on inspiring them and they will surpass even your expectations.

As always, the best thing to do is communicate.  Think these things through and before deciding you know what the problem is, make a point to sit down and ask.  It could be that none of the above is true and the employee is going through a rough time personally.  Maybe you can offer solutions that will help, like temporarily letting he/she work from home.  Investing time into the thought process and creating time to talk one on one will go a long way toward a better performance.  Maybe you can’t offer the solution, but exhibiting a concern toward trying can often be just as good.

I once spent a year (well, I really only made it 8 months) in a cubicle with a Judy-from-Time-Life headset on.  As I’ve mentioned before, I HATED this job.  I worked for a credit card company and my job was to provide exceptional customer service.  Now, I LOVE exceptional customer service.  I really like getting it, but what excites me even more, is giving it.  I’m a problem-solver by nature and I absolutely love a challenge – the harder the better – bring it on!  So why did I hate this job so much? 

It’s called Cognitive Dissonance.  This is a term used to describe that horrible, uncomfortable feeling you get when you are asked to accommodate ideas that conflict with your beliefs.  When I began this job, I was trained and lectured about how customer service was the foundation of our business model.  We were on a mission to provide the best service imaginable thereby gaining loyalty from customers and improved market share by branding ourselves as an organization that cared.  Perfect.  I know what good service is. 

But once we were placed in our cubes, those of us responsible for providing these fantastic customer experiences were paid garbage as a base salary and earned extra incentives (read, a lot of our salary) for how many calls we could take in an 8 hour day. 

Uh…okay.  What??? 

I’m supposed to be committed to solving our customer’s problems but I get paid more if I’m only on the phone for 70 seconds???  Needless to say, the transfer button became my best friend.  It only took me 10 seconds to move them along to another department thus improving my paycheck considerably, unless they took too long to state their question and oh, we had zero patience for that.  Do you think we felt good about the service we were providing?  Did we enjoy being placed in the us (paycheck) or them (customers) conundrum? 

And the effect of this in terms of productivity?  Do you think the customer’s experience was satisfying?  Do you think the customers loved my “How can I help you?” attitude? (Read sarcasm)  Did we successfully brand ourselves as a company that cared? 

Internally, I was one of the best Customer Service Reps in history (or at least one of the highest paid) but externally, I doubt my service was really much of a service to the customer.  

Beware!

Cognitive dissonance is prevalent in many organizations and the negative effects are huge.  Studies show that when confronted with these situations, the reasoning parts of the brain in charge of sound decision making actually turn off.  Emotions take over and the ability to think clearly and act with reason is impeded.   To cope, employees complain, procrastinate, and find ways to get paid back for the burdens they see as being unjustly placed on them.  In addition, dissonant messages snap any connection between the sender and the receiver.  The employees getting these messages become suspicious, lack passion, and don’t trust.   Cognitive dissonance will ultimately create cynical employees and a company full of cynics equals destruction in a company.  How can you possibly have an engaged workforce under these conditions?

Think about how you tell your employees you trust them but make them get three signatures from higher ups to make a purchase.  Think about working to convince them the company cares but when there’s a layoff, the company doesn’t provide any outplacement services.  Think about the message you send when you commend an employee for taking calls on a sick day but require 2 weeks notice and manager approval for a vacation day.

Is it time to focus on company values and use these to dictate the messages? 

What are some of your dissonant messages?  How can you align your organization’s values with the messages you send to your employees?

I’ve seen a lot of discussion about how to keep employees interested, engaged, and excited at work.  When I was first out of college, I worked for an organization that will remain nameless in the customer service department.  I hated this job.  Let me be clear.  I HATED this job.   However, one thing that was very interesting about this job was the mindset I had, even outside of work hours, considering that I was miserable.

This particular company had a program in place that rewarded ideas.  There were different tiers and monetary rewards based on these tiers.  Basically, anyone in the organization could submit an idea on how to do things more effectively, more inexpensively,  an idea that would create a better experience for our customers or improve communication between departments internally.   It could be anything.  If you submitted your idea and it was an original idea, you got a small bonus.  If you submitted an original idea and it was implemented, that was where the big bucks were. 

This was the neatest program for many reasons.  How often do you hear your employees wonder aloud, “Why don’t we do it like this?  Our process doesn’t make any sense!”  A program like this provides a platform for people to offer solutions instead of just complaining.   I watched  ideas from the people sitting around me get implemented along with a company wide announcement of how much money this idea saved the organization.  Each submission was reviewed by a committee and a personal reply was crafted that explained if the idea was being considered and why or why not.  As a result we learned a lot more about the operations of the company as a whole.  This education, in turn, created better and better ideas.   It became a challenge to come up with a solution rather than just complain.   Obviously, a little extra money as an incentive didn’t hurt either.  There was also a value in feeling like you had the ability to truly contribute to growing a company.

I have not heard of any company since that has a program like this and I wonder why not?  Why wouldn’t you want to have hundreds of people constantly thinking of ways to improve the company?  And we did think that way.  All the time.

There were days where I would literally hope I would get in a fender bender so I wouldn’t have to go to work, but at the same time I’m at a red light wishing this, I’m thinking about ways to improve the company.  It became a permanent mindset and I think it helped me do a better job.   All these years later, I’m kind of blown away by how much I hated going to work, but how my wheels were constantly spinning regardless of that fact.