Managing, Motivating & Retaining Your HiPo’s

No, that’s not a typo about saving endangered large river dwelling creatures in Africa.

Just a short post to share this article that appears in the latest HRDecisions magazine. I was interviewed for it and quoted extensively. Thought you’d like to see these ideas for managing, motivating and retaining your high potential (HiPo) employees.

Key concepts include:

  • how managers can most effectively use their most limited resource, time.
  • no-cost ways to motivate your HiPo’s
  • the importance of constructive feedback and effective performance management of your HiPo’s

Just click on the article title, “How to Keep your HiPos Engaged, Productive and On Board” on the front cover.

As always, I’d love to hear your feedback.

Wishing you all a wonderful Thanksgiving surrounded by family, friends and gratitude!
Only the best,
Ron

One Brave Police Officer

I suppose it’s possible that the New York Police Department had never heard of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. I mean it’s been 37 years since it was passed and I acknowledge that they’ve had  lot on their minds since then. But when Officer Akema Thompson asked months in advance of the infrequently given sergeant’s exam to take a  make-up exam as the date of the exam was the same day as her due date, she was denied. Repeated requests from the officer and her union representative were also denied.  The final denial came three days before her due date as she lay in a hospital having contractions only hours before her son was born. You can read the full story here.

Officer Thompson didn’t give up the fight. She took the powerful NYPD, which allows other officers to take make-up exams for other reasons (religion, injury, military service), to court and won. She’s currently studying for the make-up exam which, it is acknowledged, can “alter the trajectory of her career.”

Standing up to your boss or organization in the face of blatant discrimination is hard. To do so when the organization is one with such a strong culture of obedience and following orders take enormous reserves of courage and resilience, characteristics critical to the success of any manager. That Officer Thompson is a woman fighting for her rights in an organization with overwhelming masculine traditions only made her fight harder and her victory that much more gratifying.

nypd-sgtI think Officer Thompson will make an outstanding leader. The NYPD needs people like her. She is one brave police officer. I hope she passes.

Warren Bennis, a tower of leadership

Warren Bennis, one of the premier thinkers on leadership passed away this month. I remember reading, “On Becoming a Leader” almost 25 years ago and his words still resonate today. Bennis said, “The leader wonders about everything, wants to learn as much as he can, is willing to take risks, experiment, try new things. He does not worry about failure but embraces errors, knowing he will learn from them.”

Bennis was talking about managers and leaders having courage, a willingness to fail as a  steppingstone to improvement. He believed in leadership, and he believed in the future leaders of our world and our economy. He counseled presidents, CEO’s and students.  He was an optimist who saw improvement as the goal and was unwilling to accept mediocrity. He had faith in the next generation of leaders and he will be missed.

 

Managerial Courage

Lately I’ve been thinking about courage. Not the kind soldiers or single mothers have. Managerial courage. The courage to do the right thing even when you’re not sure how it will turn out or how your actions will be perceived. The courage to tell an underperforming employee that he needs to do better. The courage to tell someone that she needs to start showing up on time or not to talk back to irritating customers. I know, it’s common sense. People ought to know that they should do their jobs, show up when scheduled and don’t give lip to customers. And if they did, a manager’s job would be a lot easier. Sadly that’s not the case. And that’s where courage comes in.

No one likes to inherit deadwood. Think of a time when you took over a new team or department. What did you find? Some excellent workers doing exactly as you would hope and expect. And then the deadwood. A few people whom you can’t understand how they still have their jobs. How did the last manager let them get away with this level of performance?

Courage. The last manager lacked courage. For whatever reason, and I’ve probably heard them all, he did nothing and left this mess for you to clean up.

Do you want to be “that guy?” The one who leaves the deadwood behind. Is that the reputation you want?  Jobs are fluid nowadays, but reputations are fragile. Maybe the last manager didn’t handle the under-performer because he figured he’d be working somewhere else soon enough so why bother? The reputation he leaves behind though will follow him throughout his career.

Don’t be “That Guy.” Have courage. The rest of your staff are watching you. If you fail to manage your lesser performers, you will lose the ability, and possibly the right, to manage anyone.

I’ve got a few more thoughts on this so look for more example and thoughts on courage. And of course I welcome your examples. Let’s hear ’em!

“We’re All Temps Now”

Have you ever worked with someone who just doesn’t get it?

I was recently part of a team that was contracted by a company to handle a RIF (reduction in force). I met with one guy and he started the conversation saying, “So you’re the hired gun?” Trying to keep it non-confrontational and to appear empathetic I answered, “Well, in a way, aren’t we all?”

“No,” he replied, “some of us work for a company and are trying to build something.”

Now this was an internet-based company, not one involved in manufacturing. Their product was information, access and advice. So I thought for a second about what he might be referring to. A career? A track record?  A long term employment relationship with one company? Not entirely sure what he meant and wanting to keep the process moving, I started explaining his benefits, options and severance. He had little interest in discussion, took his package and left.

Now let me explain something. This was not some 60-ish grizzled veteran of a different time. He was in his 30’s, had grown up in and always worked in technology firms, and this wasn’t the first layoff he’d witnessed. It was the first one that affected him this way. It was his first time on “the other side of the desk.”

Maybe he thought he would always land on his feet. Maybe he thought it couldn’t happen to him. He was totally unprepared for that day even though he knew that people would be losing their jobs.

Later I thought back on a time 20 years ago when I was working for a major financial that had just merged with a competitor. I’d been assigned to a merger project team and was talking with a friend in human resources about the position.

“This is just a temporary assignment. I won’t be joining their group.” She cut me off with a wave of her hand.

“Ron,” she said, “we’re all temps now.”

Prophetic words. Ones that resonate today. Ones this guy hadn’t yet grasped. In this economy, there are no more gold watches. It may not be the Free Agent Nation that Daniel Pink prophesied about in Fast Company magazine in 1998, but we’re moving in the direction of a more mobile, temporary, project-based workforce. An economy based on skills you possess right now and results you can deliver in the near future.

Keep your skills current. Keep your resume up-to-date. Don’t put too many plants and tchotchkes in your cube and never go to work unprepared that you may be asked to leave before the day is over.

We’re all temps now. And that might not be an entirely bad thing.

“Choose your career carefully…”

“…you may be doing it the rest of your life.” This was the advice my mother gave me when I graduated from college. Understand that this was in the mid-seventies when people still entertained the idea that they might work for the same company working in nominally the same function for most of their lives. Over the last 40 years we’ve seen how much the idea of a “career” has changed. Millennials enter the workforce expecting to have anywhere from five to seven careers. Not jobs, but careers. Often they overlap. But 1976 was a simpler time. “Choose your career carefully,” she said.  What I realized later was she really meant, “Choose your career carefully, I’m going to have to watch you doing it the rest of my life.” My mom thought a lot about the value and the practice of work.

HIgh School Graduation

About ten years earlier, in 1964, my mom “went back to work.” In the sixties that meant getting a job outside the home. Her choices were limited. Women professionals then could pretty much be a teacher, a nurse, or a secretary. Mom only had a high school diploma and couldn’t stand the sight of blood, so she learned to be a secretary. She worked for almost 30 years in a New York City public school and became one of the pillars on which that elementary school rested. She didn’t have much of a choice in what she could do, but she did her job the absolute best that she could. She wanted me to be a teacher because “you get the summers off.” But she didn’t take the summers off, she got temp jobs working as a secretary in local offices. She loved seeing how corporate offices functioned, and being the temp, she didn’t shoulder the kind of responsibility she had the rest of the year. She loved being a secretary.

School Secretary

My mom was one of my role models when it came to work. She was dedicated. If she called in sick it meant she was in the hospital. She put off an elective procedure until summer so as not to affect her job. Following in her footsteps, I once went five years without calling in sick, and then only when I needed surgery.

I’m on my fourth career right now, having traveled a winding path to get where I am. But I always remember my mother’s advice to choose carefully. Her voice was silenced earlier this month, but her words, and her legacy remain.

Thanks mom.

Employee Engagement: the Ultimate Retention Tool

I was recently interviewed for an article in HR Hero, a BLR E-Zine.

Thought you might like to read my and some other people’s ideas about actually engaging employees and how your company can do it. By the way, in the paragraph where I’m talking about workforce demographics, I believe when I was interviewed I actually said, “people with school-age children,” not “women with school-age children.”

Here’s the URL for those who don’t like to click on links!

http://www.hrhero.com/hl/articles/2013/12/13/filling-the-engagement-gap-how-employers-can-fight-employee-flight/

The Dumbing Down of Performance Reviews

I’m sick and tired of people who talk about doing away with performance appraisals. It seems like every time you turn around there’s another article in the NY Times (Invasion of the Annual Reviews) or Forbes (Time to Scrap Performance Appraisals?) making the argument to do away with them. The usual reasons are that managers hate doing them, don’t do them in a timely manner, and that they have little, if any, connection to the actual work being done.
In an ideal world, managers would manage performance throughout the year, offer timely and consistent feedback (both positive and constructive), and ensure that both goals and feedback were aligned with and supported organizational goals. I think we can all agree that if this were done throughout an organization it would have a very positive impact on employee engagement, morale, productivity and the bottom line. You may also think this is about as likely to happen as an ostrich winning the Kentucky Derby or the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series.

So it seems the go-to solution is to shelve performance management and evaluations completely. But since when do we stop doing something that we know can be good for business just because it’s hard and our managers don’t like doing it?

This is what I call the dumbing down of performance management.

“It’s hard,” the manager whines. “I’m no good at it and it doesn’t do any good anyway. Make it go away.”

Excuse me?

How about instead of complaining about performance management practices and how poorly they are executed we start doing them right? How about training our managers to do their jobs better because managing the people with whom they work is the most important part of a manager’s job! Let’s start holding managers accountable for properly completing their responsibilities. If we make performance management a significant element of the manager’s performance appraisal you know they’d make sure they did this better instead of just complaining about it.

If an organization is serious about improving the performance of its workforce then it needs to send a clear message that it’s serious about performance management. Getting serious about performance management means taking the following steps:

  • Have a visible champion among senior management. Someone who has the respect of his or her peers and a reputation for getting the most out of the staff.
  • Implement a rigorous year-round performance management process that clearly outlines the steps a manager is expected to effectively complete at every step of the process. No “phoning it in” or “check the box” forms.
  • Train managers on how to follow and implement the process. The best tool is useless, even dangerous, if people don’t know how to use it.
  • Monitor both managers’ and employees’ compliance and support of the process.
  • Measure the performance of the departments and their productivity as an indicator of the success with which the manager has implemented the process. Departmental performance is a more accurate indicator of a manager’s performance than the performance of any one individual. It also creates better teawork within the department.

If a process like this is in place and adhered to we’ll see a marked improvement in the performance of an organization.

So instead of complaining that performance appraisals don’t work and are a waste of time, put that same energy into developing a plan of action that actually improves performance appraisals. Let’s start doing them right.

Unplanned Absences

It’s been a couple of months since I shared anything here. Feels like longer. Careers, health (I’m fine, thank you) and well, life, sometimes intrudes in ways that throw us off track. As the old saying goes, “If you want to make God laugh, make plans,”

 

And this all got me thinking about unplanned absences at work. I remember back when the FMLA was new and completely misunderstood. Lots of employees thought the FMLA was like a “Get out of jail FREE” card that prevented their employers from ever writing them up for poor attendance again, as if FMLA stood for Forget My Last Absence. The company I was working with planned a massive education initiative, but we wanted it to be more.

We knew, everybody knew, that lots of employees used their sick days when they weren’t really sick. Doctor’s visits, sick kids, taking a spouse or aging parent to a treatment. And it drove managers nuts when their employees sprang these absences, ones they actually knew about in advance, on them at the last minute so that the manager found herself scrambling for coverage.

We decided to create two classifications of absences in an effort to enhance communication between managers and staff. This was kind of a predecessor of a PTO (Paid Time Off) bank. If the employee knew they needed a day, or a half a day, for a doctor visit, theirs or a family member’s, if they gave the manager 48 hours notice then the time would be deducted from their sick days, but the absence would not count toward any kind of disciplinary action. The goal was to reduce the gamesmanship between managers and employees and improve both trust and productivity in the workplace.

We sold the managers on this by pointing out that if they had enough notice, they could prepare and lessen the impact of the absence. And we found that the employees loved not having to play the game or worry about being caught in the traps some managers set for them upon their return. No more coughing like Mimi in the last act of “La Boheme” when you came in the next day.

Open communication and trust can be wonderful things when used to motivate the behaviors you desire.

Goethe once said, “The way you see people is the way you treat them. And the way you treat them is what they become.” We took a gamble on seeing and treating employees like honest, responsible adults and that’s exactly how they behaved. Remarkable.

“Show Them the Money!”

I saw this post on the Harvard Business Review blog recently. It seems there have been a couple of studies done that prove what we all know.

The longer you’re out of work the harder it is to get a job.

Dr. Capelli rightly states that it’s time for that trend to reverse. Companies need to stop ignoring the enormous pool of talented people who through no fault of their own have found themselves without regular employment for an extended period of time.

I’ve been saying the same thing for years and spoke at an ERE Expo last year on this same topic. I appreciate Dr. Capelli’s research and insight but I fear he’s coming at this from the wrong perspective. He makes an objective and academic argument for hiring the long term unemployed and clearly makes the case of why it’s okay to hire them and wrong to discriminate against them. But the only thing that will change the way organizations behave is to “show them the money.” At the end of his piece he talks briefly about the benefits to the company. This is the most pressing argument .

We all know that people who have been out of work for over six months are being discriminated against. Unfortunately companies seem to need academic, allegedly objective studies to prove what we all know anecdotally to be true. We need to do our damnedest to make companies see the benefit of reaching out and hiring people from this group of applicants because of the reasons he cites near the end of the piece. This should be the lead if we really want to change organizations’ behavior.

Finally, and this is one more change we ALL need to remember. People who have been out of work for over a month, six months, a year, are still people. We need to use “people first” language or else we risk a very subliminal form of discrimination. When we refer to this group as “the long-term unemployed” we are defining them by what they are not, employed, instead of who they are, people who are viable candidates who can fill our open positions and help our companies succeed. We need to be very careful not to lump or stereotype them as this creates one more obstacle to their rejoining the workforce and being productive long-term employed people.

Thanks for listening and please pardon the somewhat “rant” tone of this post. This is a topic I’m very passionate about.
Only the best,
Ron