Ed Koch’s “I can explain it to you, but I can’t comprehend it for you.”

Your Corporate Strategy:  It Just Doesn’t Matter?      Final Part 29

In summary, this is not the whole story, but it’s a beginning and surprisingly simple.  The hard part isn’t actually doing it.  The hardest part, and the first step, is key people recognizing the problem exists in the first place.  Or, as the late New York City’s Mayor, Ed Koch, famously said, “I can explain it to you, but I can’t comprehend it for you.”

 

If it was easy and obvious we wouldn’t have this national problem.  The next hardest step, the giant step for the employer and people, is committing to and dedicating the entire organization to fixing it.  The third step is having the leadership and key people on board who represent, cultivate and carry this vision throughout the organization.  This may require some leadership additions or changes.   If you never start, you will never finish. 

 

Cultivating this awareness and commitment to becoming an “Employer of Choice” or “Best Employer to Work For” requires the sustainable effort, employee champion management  along with programs and policies your employees can and will recognize. The distinction of being an “Employer of Choice” or “Best Employer to Work For” is a popularity contest voted on by your own people.  Whether you want to become an employer of choice or the best that YOU can be, it will not happen with idle lip service, misdirected programs and/or wishful thinking, but internal and external advertising, marketing, recognition efforts and delivery of real quantifiable products and results to your people.  

Good Luck, Have fun and Happy Culturing!!! 

You can read my take on the $$$ aspect of good employment practices in previous blogs.

http://johnspeoplethoughts.blogspot.com/2011/10/light-at-end-of-black-hole-part-2.html

Do You REALLY Want an “Employer of Choice Plan ?” Part B

Your Corporate Strategy:  It Just Doesn’t Matter?      Part 28b

The next time you recognize the constant external and internal customer (employee) recruiting hiring and training as “churn and a tremendous training cost”, know and understand your buying customer, new hire or employee satisfaction is low because of Black Hole alienation or a poisonous culture.  Recognize it as an opportunity to begin changing your workforce environment.  Instead of looking at your product(s), plan expensive solutions or blame your people and customers, realize it is an opportunity to begin changing the company’s employment practices and culture.

The initial solutions could and should be just as simple (and cheap) as listening and communicating with your employees and customers while showing them acts of recognition, kindness and value.  This is part of the culture change necessary to begin changing your employment strategy while you’re planning a more comprehensive long term strategy.  It is part of the larger cultural change your company can implement for little if any cost.  Employees will see it, relate to it, engage and stay with you for it.

Most employees are looking for a whole package.   Rewards, benefits, training and development are unique to every company, even within the same industry, and may not cost as much as you think.  This is especially true as you begin ending the tremendous expense of “churn and training” and free up money to fund other programs and benefits. It all works together.

People want a path ahead.   People want communication(s).  People want to feel valued and recognized for contributing to, and being a valued part of, their organization.  People are looking for the “whole package”.  People want to work with people they like.  People want to be treated with respect, caring and kindness, but mostly people want to BE valued for their contribution and communicated with, not to.

Next: Ed Koch’s “I can explain it to you, but I can’t comprehend it for you.”

Do You REALLY Want An “Employer of Choice Plan”? Part A

Your Corporate Strategy:  It Just Doesn’t Matter?      Part 28a

“In a great company culture, your best and talented employees do not require top dollar to remain engaged and retained.  Companies with poor, poisonous or dysfunctionally inbred cultures cannot engage and retain their best people no matter what they pay!  Part of their dysfunction is they don’t and/or can’t recognize or value a best candidate, their best people or their best/better leadership because those traits aren't recognized, valued and rewarded within the culture they have created.” – John Hagen

The People/Talent (HR) Department occupies a most unusual place within an organization and performs very unique functions for its many types of customers.  It is the company culture representative and first company contact for customers wanting to be potential employees.  (This is true whether an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is used or not or whether Recruiting or Talent Acquisition.)  It is also the first formal company representative and company introduction to the newly hired.

It is the ongoing intra-company representative and contact for all employees within the company.  It acts as the link between upper management and company through communication, policies and procedures.  It acts as a window to your employee's views of the company, culture, problems and liability.  It may act as the union grievance (or discrimination) investigator and negotiator.….It also acts as the company manpower strategist and forecaster, change agent, skills developer and trainer, benefits manager and communicator as well as the employee needs, complaint and suggestion department.  Some have defined it as the company’s trust department where the company’s and the employee’s expectations meet.

Next: Do You REALLY Want an “Employer of Choice Plan ?” Part B

How to Misdirect a People Strategy! Part C

Your Corporate Strategy:  It Just Doesn’t Matter?     Part 27c

CFO financial and accountant skills can provide a great benefit in helping People leaders quantify their sales, profit and savings benefits through their accounting systems and setting up measurable data points and corroborating statistics.  It’s just that people’s sensitivities, personal and professional problems, challenges and their solutions are not well suited to a typical financial education, training, personality or strengths.

 

Always remember: People are not numbers.  Numbers don’t feel, can't be motivated to excel, have no heightened sense of company, friendship, team work, accomplishment or loyalty.  That's what a great culture and HR brings to the table.  A vast majority of an individual’s decisions are guided by their feelings, perceptions, gut and instinct.  Numbers don’t spread rumors, complain, send tweets, chat or post their everyday experiences on Facebook or similar.  Numbers don’t quit, can’t be fired, can’t be counseled and, above all, are not your customers.  Addressing these people centered issues are what a great culture and great HR leadership brings to the table.

Today’s social media means younger people are equally guided by their friends’ and acquaintances’ feelings, experiences, perceptions, gut and instincts.  If there was ever a more perfect time for the saying, “bad news travels like wild fire”, we have arrived with Snapchat, Tweets, texting/instant messaging, Facebook, Glass Door, etc.

Having already covered the costs to sales in part 18, “When the Black Hole application process tick customers off so much they will never again buy your product or services it reduces sales…”, the negativity of the Black Hole application and hiring process spreads from every applicant’s negative experience to virtually every one of their connections or friends - other potential applicants – like wildfire…..How does one calculate the costs of re-attracting a potential customer to you website or store vs. keeping the ones you already have????  Ask your marketing/sales department.

 As the great poet, Maya Angelou, said "I have learned people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

HR/People/Talent leadership is best matched to the CEO/President/COO, depending on structure.  Most importantly, People Leadership in partnership with all C-level leadership, including financial, is required for organization-wide success.

What is being said about your company???

Next: Do You REALLY Want An “Employer of Choice Plan”?  Part A

How to Misdirect a People Strategy! Part B

Your Corporate Strategy:  It Just Doesn’t Matter?      Part 27b

This section is especially directed to the HR organization led by the typical financial type…….. The typical CFO type usually believes they are right and ONLY their financial results are relevant and count and have the data to prove it.   The major obstacle to financial education is it can only educate and train accounting principles and quantifiable knowns.   However, as stated numerous times, being unaware and neither knowing of the problems nor what to look for and measure means the problem doesn't exist and therefore a solution never contemplated let alone found. 

How often we hear praise regarding a leader who worked their way to the top.  Why are these same values not required of or sought for the leaders at the very top…especially the CEO, COO or CFO?  How unfortunate for all concerned!

The recent example of GM ignition fiasco illustrates how an extreme focus on $.90 in costs can wreck havoc on a reputation.  As Stephen Pascoff, Esq., writes for ELI, “Is My Life Worth a Buck”, “…it appears that GM looked at costs primarily from the perspective of direct out-of-pocket expenditures. For organizations committed to quality ……this is a myopic, dangerous business view. But cost control as a primary business driver makes sense [only] as long as the full range of critical metrics is considered.  The true cost of …….aberrant workplace cultures is the resulting damage caused to brand reputation and trust when the public or an organization’s own team members suffer injury.” 

http://www.eliinc.com/blog/bid/196250/is-my-life-worth-a-bucksource=Blog_Email_[Is%20My%20Life%20Worth%20a%20B

At this point, the cost is 13 lives and many injuries.  Any guess what the financial impact will be in the future?  How will this effect customer loyalty and trust ?  Mega-dollar-settlements will soon be forthcoming.  All this for saving an estimated $.90 on the price of a car????? As of this writing it ate up all $1.2Billion 1^st quarter 2014 profits for GM.  Fixing the recalled cars hasn’t yet started and the more time the dirty laundry is aired the more it will cost.

Steven is addressing the aberrant workplace culture fostered by a financial only focus.  There are sizeable unknown costs, soft and hard, when people policies fail to recognize the value of the company’s own employees or public consumer, your customer.  If you don’t understand what a financial focus does to a people culture, talk to your people…. They are already talking to each other via any means at their disposal when you don’t ask, don’t listen and/or don’t do anything about it.

Next: How to Misdirect a People Strategy! Part C

How to Misdirect a People Strategy! Part A

Your Corporate Strategy:  It Just Doesn’t Matter?      Part 27a

A high level of awareness, insight, wisdom and commitment has to be cultivated, rewarded and achieved in order to successfully develop and implement a positive employment culture or change. Chances are it will not succeed from the bottom or middle up.  It will not succeed if it is only the mission of People Services and Talent Development.   It must be committed to and take place organization wide, from the very top down to everyone and everywhere within the organization.

While developing a positive employment culture a significant financial pay back is gained by knowing where you are, what you can change and changes to track.  As you begin to end the endless churn of employee turnover and training, you will be able to free internal funds while positively adding to your top line sales/revenues and, most importantly, your bottom line profits.

 

Warning!!!  Culture change for financial gain alone will result in a misdirected strategy; people will recognize this and the strategy will fail!  

Does anyone grade the employee’s reception and/or feeling regarding the constant tightening of production requirements, whether manufacturing or in office environment, of LEAN, SAP, Continuous Improvement and other metrics???  Or…is it,  Meet the Expectation or Else???

Many call centers, insurance help lines, billing departments, sales departments, claims departments, warranty departments and outsourced versions of the preceding
have become the modern day equivalent to a sweat shop….paying bottom dollar for ever increasing expectations and requirements to remain employed. This is just another example of “My way or the highway” management.

In a great recent article from the Guardian, Eric Lowitt , managing director of Nexus Global Advisors and author of The Collaboration Economy wrote on the nine tips for success…

http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/tips-success-collaboration-economy

In another LinkedIn post, “Frustrated By A Lack Of Collaboration? Fire Your CEO”. 

He also posted a video interview on LinkedIn with Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO:

https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140410171335-14841229-frustrated-by-a-lack-of-collaboration-fire-your-ceo?trk=tod-home-art-list-large_0

Unfortunately, I’m just not certain how that translates to any but Boards of Directors.   How about you??? J

Next: How to Misdirect a People Strategy! Part B

Why Do Top Leaders Need A Real HR Leadership Partner?

Your Corporate Strategy:  It Just Doesn’t Matter?     Part 26

The following are again from Jon Bell, former CEO Kraft, and others:

1. HR’s most important role is to influence the CEO on the corporate culture. This is especially important in “revolving door” environments….

2. An adept HR executive is the CEO’s window. HR can be an excellent radar screen for “reading the tea leaves” amongst the work force with regard to organizational health. The individual should be on top of changes to business plans and how they are being accepted. Key to success is the HR executive’s ability to instill trust at all levels. The “window” begins to close when HR becomes a bunch of cops. CEOs must watch for that.  They must be the early warning system within the organization.  Therefore they must also provide a “safe and neutral” for internal employment communication and problem solving. Without this perceived neutrality problems will go elsewhere and communication will stop.  This is the HR business environment employees deal with today and it elicits distrust vs. trust in the company.

3. HR ensures an effective system to pinpoint high-potential talent and probable successors. This brings me back to culture and this is why Procter & Gamble and Walmart are very good succession planners. By the time an executive rises to the top, he/she will have spent several years within the organization. The CEO [and all other key leaders and management] must be a “believer” in the culture that makes their company great.

4. On a personal level, a strategic HR team can be instrumental in helping the CEO realize a leader’s greatest sense of gratification—that gratification is encouraging, nurturing and allowing human beings to reach their full potential personally, professionally and economically.

Look at the perennially successful companies. Often, they have a “way”—a distinctive culture that works for them. The custodian of the “way” is the CEO and the CHRO. It is time to use the HR group strategically and bring their leader into the board room….. the only person who can do this is the CEO.”

Where does culture come from? It usually comes from the founders of the group. For whatever reason, they value certain things and behave in ways that seem to help the group succeed. Success is key, so it seeps into the group’s DNA.”

Creating a great employment culture and communicating it is all about the message, how it’s relayed, role modeled and its expectations.  This is not a tweet moment!   Far more time and effort must be spent on how that message is worded and received than on the message itself!  It takes far more damage control and effort to undue a poorly communicated plan or change than to do it right the first time. 

Great People Department Leaders must have exceptional people, sympathy, empathy, intuition, business, negotiation, employment and labor legal, organizational, management and management influential, financial and statistical, big picture HRIS/HRMS/ATS software integration, education and training, motivational, possibly Union Labor Relations, verbal and written communications skills and qualities plus patience.   These are hard and soft skills as unique to Talent and People Leadership as those required for CFOs, COOs, Legal and possibly CEOs, and most likely the only position having this unique blend of attributes and qualities in the organization.

Again, per part 24, "organizations with a Chief Human Resource Officer were 105% more profitable than their industry peers."  ‘nough  said.

Next: How to Misdirect a People Strategy! Part A 

One Size Fits All? Part B

Your Corporate Strategy:  It Just Doesn’t Matter?      Part 25b

The great HR leader will also bring a fresh perspective and awareness of risk, practice and policy analysis every company must undertake.   HR/People Departments - as do all departments - tend to become blind to the legal and practical results of their operations over time, a process related to cognitive or change blindness.  Furthermore, a good HR leader makes certain ongoing due diligence and constant oversight of these functions takes place.

I happen to like what Jon Hyman wrote last year in his 12/12/12 blog:

“The Practical Employer -12 is the Magic Number: 12 Thoughts for Your Workplace”.   As previously stated Jon’s The Employer Bill of Right: A Manager's Guide to Workplace Law. …” should be mandatory reading. 

http://www.workforce.com/article/20130116/BLOGS07/130119964/putting-the-human-back-in-human-resources-redux

These a good places to begin gaining a better picture and understanding of where your people policies and practices are and have led you. Remember, ignorance is never a legitimate legal defense, and bad policies resulting in violation or willful violation of employment laws are never defensible.

http://www.workforce.com/article/20121212/BLOGS07/121219981/12-is-the-magic-number-12-thoughts-for-your-workplace

Next: Why Do Top Leaders Need A Real HR Leadership Partner?

One Size Fits All? Part A

Your Corporate Strategy:  It Just Doesn’t Matter?       Part 25a

I regularly see leaders and People/Talent managers from large companies (10,000+) brought into small companies (under 500) in an attempt to implement what existed and worked in a large employment population.  Generally it fails.  (We don’t even know if those policies worked well in the larger company!)
 

The organizational maturity and stage of growth, including the actual job responsibilities, is vastly different in a larger more specialized organization than a smaller more multi-functioning one.  Unless the new HR/Talent/People leader has gone through the various stages of growth, versus having experience only in a mature organization, the programs, procedures and policies will not translate and fail.  The most unfortunate outcome of such failure is the smaller organization may think all such plans fail, when in fact plans and strategies must fit the organization, the execution and implementation realities.

As Priscilla Claman, of Career Strategies, also addresses, “All too often, we in human resources benchmark our departments against the greatest or the "best in class." That GE management development program may not fit a growing law firm. That IBM succession planning process may be entirely inappropriate for a billion-dollar bank. Human resources is not a one-size-fits-all world.”

http://www.career-strategies.com/pages/greatTool.html

Next: One Size Fits All? Part B

Why The Need For HR Leadership At The Top?

Your Corporate Strategy:  It Just Doesn’t Matter?       Part 24

“Today with declining loyal and greater job hopping it is critical that CEOs [or organization head] partner with HR.” – John Bell, Former CEO of Kraft

Whatever the top level HR person’s title is, they will, if empowered, act as the organizations moral, morale and ethical compass…. the window into the organization’s culture actuality.  Whether or not you have, or ever thought of having, a top C-level Talent or People Leader, the vital role played by every C-level person and key manager is their leadership example and how that culture of leadership is being translated, monitored and carried throughout the organization…. to EVERY employee.  If you have line, middle or top management creating an employment cesspool, those affected employees view this as the company and how top leadership leads.  Sadly…………………. it is.

According to a recent Success Factors white paper, these are the top 5 impacts highly effective CHROs deliver to business:

“1. Establish a foundation of talent data.

 2. Focus on strategic business issues, not tactical administration.

 3. Position your company to handle growth and manage change.

 4. Build for the future.

 5. Have strategic guidance ready for your executive partners

….many companies are now trying to remedy [not having HR Leadership at the table]. Between 2008 and 2010, the number of all companies with a dedicated talent executive increased from 21 percent to 30 percent.  Even with that growth, only 17 percent of companies with fewer than 1,000 employees have a chief HR officer (CHRO).”

http://www.workforce.com/article/20120629/ROADMAPS01/120629948/how-chros-deliver-business-impact

If cultural shifting doesn’t sound significant, as outlined in part 18, a recent poll by Success Factors of Fortune 500 companies found organizations with a Chief Human Resource Officer were 105% more profitable than their industry peers!  105%!!!! From my perspective this is a known.  I have promoted and experienced these results within my organizations.  

http://www.hrgrapevine.com/markets/hr/article/2013-10-08-companies-with-chros-outperforming-peers#!

Smaller organizations, on the other hand, need organizational strategies more suitable to their size. 

Next: One Size Fits All?

Why Are C-level Roles So Crucial To Culture? Part B

Your Corporate Strategy:  It Just Doesn’t Matter?       Part 23b

John Bell, said in a CEO.com contribution:  “Why CEOs And HR Should Be Joined At The Hip”:

“Ultimately, it is the CEO who determines the corporate culture, whether good or bad…. I’ll explain it this way: First, these cultural characteristics were monitored and measured. Second, we recruited for the right cultural attitude, followed by skills. Third, our superior financial results were a result of this modus operandi. Could I have done more if HR had been attached to that other hip? There’s no doubt.  Today, with declining loyalty and greater job hopping, it is critical that CEOs partner with HR.”

To be perfectly clear:   Whether a CEO, President, Owner, Founder, Executive Director, or whatever the top position is titled; regardless of private, publicly traded or non-profit; the organization is what the top leader leads is to be.  The organization represents the positives, negatives, strengths, weaknesses and blind spots of its leadership.  How those negatives, weaknesses and blind spots are balanced by the addition of leaders who eliminate negatives, bring strength to weakness and vision to blind spots rounds out a successful leadership equation and builds a great company and a great employer.

Or...a simpler quote from a Nordstrom CEO from years ago,"If it is to be, it begins with me."  So true, so true!

http://www.ceo.com/human_resource_management/why-ceos-and-hr-should-be-joined-at-the-hip/

Former Apple and JC Penney, CEO Ron Johnson and CTO Daniel Walker, obviously had that connection. Unfortunately, Ron Johnson’s path determined JCP was doomed to failure and was ”exacerbated by the fact that Johnson never relocated from California and more often than not was never in the trenches with the executives.”

 

As covered in part 4, “With the pace of change in today’s business and technology, it would be nearly impossible for top Leadership to be too strategic, unless it isolates leadership from what the organization actually does.   Leadership must know where they are, their base line, why and where they are going and its effects.  Providing it’s a good strategy, the execution plan must determine if it can be successfully implemented and how.  This is what top leadership is hired and paid to do!  Ron Johnson isolated himself from the brand and simply did none of this!

Next:  Why The Need For HR Leadership At The Top? 

Why Are C-level Roles So Crucial To Culture? Part A

Your Corporate Strategy:  It Just Doesn’t Matter?      Part 23a

First, I think John Cotter’s article in the Harvard Business Review clarifies much about the constantly misunderstood difference between Leadership and Management:

“….management is a set of well-known processes, like planning, budgeting, structuring jobs, staffing jobs, measuring performance and problem-solving, which help an organization to predictably do what it knows how to do well. Management helps you to produce products and services as you have promised, of consistent quality, on budget, day after day, week after week. In organizations of any size and complexity, this is an enormously difficult task. We constantly underestimate how complex this task really is, especially if we are not in senior management jobs. So, management is crucial — but it's not leadership.

Leadership is entirely different. It is associated with taking an organization into the future, finding opportunities that are coming at it faster and faster and successfully exploiting those opportunities. Leadership is about vision, about people buying in, about empowerment and, most of all, about producing useful change. Leadership is not about attributes, it's about behavior. And in an ever-faster-moving world, leadership is increasingly needed from more and more people, no matter where they are in a hierarchy. The notion that a few extraordinary people at the top can provide all the leadership needed today is ridiculous and it's a recipe for failure.”

http://blogs.hbr.org/kotter/2013/01/management-is-still-not-leadership.html

Next: Why Are C-level Roles So Crucial To Culture? Part B

Use the HR Matrix - to Balance and Align Your People Department.

Your Corporate Strategy:  It Just Doesn’t Matter?      Part 22

The HR Matrix gives you more information than an HR audit.

The HR Matrix suits most organizations better than “benchmarking.”

The HR Matrix helps you define what being a business partner really means.

If you are growing, your People Departments are going through known growth phases.  What you are experiencing is so normal it has distinct known phases!  Unfortunately, most leadership and/or HR are not trained and do not realize there are defined stages.  While you evolve from crawling or clawing your way along to walking and then jogging to running, wouldn’t it be nice to have a simple tool to help your People/Talent Management departments evaluate where it is and what it needs to do next?

Pricilla Claman, co-founder of Career Strategies in Boston, has a simple free tool, “The HR Matrix”.   USE IT! Designed by Lloyd Baird of Boston U and Ilam Meshoulam of Tel Aviv University, I have recommended and utilized it for years.  It may be the simplest and best HR departmental assessment tool you will ever have.  It is manual with no software to lease or buy and works with any budget.  With modification its works in and for other departments, but don’t tell Pricilla that.

Go to her site (link below) and then to free resources and download the 2-part tool (Transition Growth Phases and the Matrix), instructions and sample interpretations.  If there are problems, let me know and I will get  them to you (need email address) and let Priscilla know the link isn't working.

http://www.career-strategies.com/pages/hrPubs.html

Thanks for your knowledge, input, wisdom, kindness and willingness to help, Priscilla.

Next:  Why Are C-level Roles So Crucial To Culture?

Does Your People Department’s Structure Need Changing?

Your Corporate Strategy:  It Just Doesn’t Matter?       Part 21

For those who have helped build an organization from the ground up, or having come aboard during a growth or downsizing cycle, the greatest challenge is recognizing and meeting the demands they place on the company and the People Department’s resources.  Most newer and/or smaller organizations seldom have the luxury of forecasting and planning how to do this…. As a lifelong HR/People/Talent practitioner I have an exceptional amount of experience in reaction versus planned management.  J

I recognize the regular LinkedIn discussion pleas for assistance, agonizing over the newest problems and solutions from current HR workers and leaders….the endless questions regarding or recommendations on how to do this or that.  It is daunting to those doing this for the first time.   I have asked many of the same questions of myself, many times.   Having overseen major change both ways, forecasted and planned is the clear winner!  However, I have to admit, setting growth in motion and scrambling like hell to keep up is a thrilling experience not easily matched in one’s entire career.

I also think we need to reassess what the PHR or SPHR certifications teach HR/People Department practitioners.  These certifications are basically history lessons instead of practical Human Resources/People Services Department guidelines and training.  If these certifications were providing practical and reality based training maybe HR wouldn’t be failing to protect their people and employers from an employment law violation rate of 70-90%!!!  However, this is a discussion for another time.

During growth the difference between a one person HR/Personnel/People/Talent department and a two person department is an easy transition.  Growing from 1 or 2 people to 6, 8, 10 or many dozens is enormous.  The older simple processes no longer work, or at least without major modifications.  This growth means many more people and management now have to learn and be trained on more consistently interpreted company culture, policies, procedures, interactions, hiring, discipline, onboarding, systems, management hierarchy, dispute and people problem resolutions and on and on.  In fact every phase of company growth has unique demands and requirements for HR/People Departments as they mature

Next:  Use the HR Matrix  - to Balance and Align Your People Department.  

Rather Than Reinvent, Why Not Borrow and Use It?

Your Corporate Strategy:  It Just Doesn’t Matter?       Part 20

The previous discussion concerning the 24 hour commitment also appears to be a perfect example of “the more things change the more they echo the past”.   In a recent Forbes post, “Why Management Is Broken - And Why It Matters”, Gary Hamel, outlines what needs to happen with management and why.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=K3-_IY66tpI

Gary Hamel’s states 20th Century management required training agriculture workers as robotic factory workers.  Real robots may do some of that work today, but robot training psychology, teaching and performance is still being used and the norm.  Many companies use data/metrics as the sole criteria for grading an employee’s worth. This is the type of robot mentality people truly hate, especially when they aren’t told how it works.  The number of people unknowingly graded by data is hard to estimate but represents a huge check mark in the anti-people policies and culture column.

Secondly, other than the new industries mentioned in Gary Hamel’s presentation, the approach and solutions are not new!  He has updated them to make them more relatable to newer more globally dispersed, culturally diverse and technically advanced organizations.  Positive employment practices have disappeared along with the slow erosion of legal employment compliance.  However, they are the same tried and true positive employee culture practices great employers have utilized for decades.  The primary difference is very few HR practitioners today have personally learned or experienced them.

Gary Hamel is turning his silver (experience and wisdom) into gold (tried and true practical solutions to current catastrophic people policies and practices).  They work because people have changed very little. Every employment satisfaction survey has produced the same results for decades.  To those newer and less experienced HR/People practitioners and companies these solutions are new only because they have no experience or knowledge using them.  They disappeared as main stream somewhere along the way.

Ex-Apple and now former Penney’s CTO, Daniel Walker, has been practicing since 1974.  There are still many wise and very accomplished People/Talent leaders plying their skills in the HR/Talent/People world.  Their wisdom, experience and knowledge was once mainstream, but is now the fringe.  Their solutions to today’s people culture problems are practical, useful and proven common knowledge to them. You need to utilize their wisdom in your organization by borrowing it, using it and incorporating what works.

One final note concerns the police/cop role many companies place on their HR/People/Talent Department, especially by top leadership.  Without a trusted, open, neutral and safe place for employees to vent and get help, your people will go elsewhere.   This type of organizational culture becomes one of us (management and rule) versus them (the employee).  If the People Department becomes the enforcer, the company’s ability to have a neutral safe house, trusted by employees, enabling a secure pipeline and window into problems for what’s really going on slams shut.  This is where most organizations find themselves today – untrusted!

Next: Does Your People Department’s Structure Need Changing?

Why Not Begin With Simple Engagement Steps (solutions)?

Your Corporate Strategy:  It Just Doesn’t Matter?      Part 19

I believe major key factors are being overlooked or ignored in what is required of management. We are missing something in the rapidly changing competitive business world and the company to employee interaction dynamic.  It can’t simply be just poor culture, poor management and lack of training.   A far bigger change has taken place.  A new, positive and people engaged management culture is required.

One of the first changes I undertook in my first HR leadership role was how employee complaints, problems and questions were handled.  We implemented the 24 hour commitment.  ANY employee question, complaint or problem would be resolved to THEIR (the employee’s) satisfaction within 24 hours.  Even if a mutually agreeable solution wasn’t yet available, the person was personally contacted and told of the progress regarding their issue, with firm follow up dates(s).  If they were still unsatisfied, we personally moved the issue up if we couldn’t resolve it.

Why?? As the key company ambassador to our customers, we wanted a culture that valued and required employee input, thoughts and communications.  No manager or leader sitting in a cubical or office has a more intimate knowledge of the customer than those dealing with the customer directly. They deserved the opportunity to have their concerns listened to and addressed…quickly.  It didn’t matter what type of issue – paycheck, schedule, transportation, personality conflicts, personal issues, policies, etc.  If we didn’t know what the problems were, how could we address them?

Happily, we also found these open communications had greater than hoped for consequences.  The 24 hour commitment resulted in far more positive ideas, inquiries and problem solutions than actual issues by a 3 or 4 to 1 ratio!!!  Open communication brought trust, being a valued part of the organization, a safe place to vent or relate very personal issues including those related to legal and employment.

 

Today I recognize it as freely offering that thing most highly valued by most, our time and concern.  Today’s technology allows this same action to be a simple variation on the trouble ticket.  It is up to you to devote your time and concern to solving the issues.  This is only one relatively free/no cost example of developing and fostering an employee friendly culture.

The 24 hour commitment cost little.  It paid big returns!  We heard of issues quickly, including poor or ill-advised management, and they were solved quickly!  Leadership gained far more.  Our own people had many of the solutions to, or at least paved a path to solving, the challenges growing companies seek. 

Next: Rather Than Reinvent, Why Not Borrow and Use It?

What The Black Hole is Costing You! It’s Staggering!

  

Your Corporate Strategy:  It Just Doesn’t Matter?       Part 18

Having already covered business can ill afford $2Trillion in churn and training costs in the preceding part 6, the additional unknown costs of “Black Hole” recruiting policies really points to some extraordinary issues.

1.      Neither the company nor HR recognize, track or treat the problem

2.      They don’t investigate  and determine the true and whole cost of churn

3.      The company blames HR by cutting budgets, people and programs

4.      More than likely HR/Talent/People Departments don’t comprehend the extent of the            problem.

5.      No one recognizes it effects on sales, costs and profits.

6.      If HR/People/Talent Departments know the facts they cannot or do not represent their    positions well.

7.      HR/People/Talent Departments are profit disengaged or were never engaged.

In the most basic terms possible: 

When the Black Hole application or hiring process tick customers off so much they will never again buy your product or services it reduces sales:

 Is this acceptable?  What would most companies do to quickly raise net profits by 5%, 2% or ½ %?  This increases the $2Trillion churn cost because no one apparently understands and tracks the negative impacts of ridiculous recruiting and hiring practices on sales and profits.

There may be some start up expense for this change...but with a return!  The exciting and tantalizing number is:  Instead of a continuous small incremental erosion of sales and profits (our example of a 5% sales decrease at the bottom line) positive application programs produce a 1/4% to 1/2% or more sales increase!  In our example the net profit swing could approach 10+%!  These are not small numbers!  Most importantly, these can be tracked to insure what you change creates value. 

These costs to your company are mind numbing!  Do you know how your application/hiring process is treating your customers?  However, losing sales and profits from the employment application side due to bad recruitment/acquisition/hiring processes is only part of the story.  Although generalized estimates vary by industry, the additional hard and soft expense costs of hiring and/or replacing an employee can amount to 3X the position’s base wage.   Actual hiring costs are incurred throughout all management levels and hiring authorities within a company.  

Worse, the longer the hiring process takes, the higher the costs.  As previously discussed, this increases the very real possibility high value candidates will not wait for a disjointed, prolonged and non-communicated hiring decision.  While the prolonged hiring process drones on, who’s performing the functions the position is supposed to perform? More money is being lost!  This is today’s norm.  

If you are interested in other reasons the process is broken check out some of My People Thoughts at:

http://johnspeoplethoughts.blogspot.com/2011/09/black-hole-swallows-everything.html

Next: Why not begin with some simple steps (solutions)?

Can We Fix the Broken External Links - The Black Hole Your Customers See?

Your Corporate Strategy:  It Just Doesn’t Matter?    Part 17

Millions of job seekers, active or passive, tell of the communication problems with a prospective employer, HR or recruiter.   While companies and HR watch every penny and utilize new and helpful technical tools to handle the time, cost and drudgery of regulatory and employment record keeping requirements, they have lost the people signal.   They have also become profit disconnected.  They have become poorer at their originally designed purpose… Companies/HR/Recruiters have become disconnected from entire groups and generations of candidates and employees. 

Jon Hyman writes of this in his “putting the human back in human resources” blog.   He also discusses this idea in detail in his latest book, "The Employer Bill of Rights: A Mangers Guide to Workplace Law" 
http://www.workforce.com/article/20130116/BLOGS07/130119964/putting-the-human-back-in-human-resources-redux

AND

"The Golden Rule of employment relations”.      http://www.ohioemployerlawblog.com/2008/01/golden-rule-of-employment-relations.html

These should be required reading for C-leadership, HR/Talent/People departments and required material for most PHR and/or SPHR certification testing.  Thank you, Jon.

Despite all the slick tools available, few HR departments or recruiters ever set up a warm auto-response thanking the job seeker for applying for a position and thinking of them.  Even LinkedIn members responding to LinkedIn job/search announcements may not be thanked or have their profile viewed. Unfortunately, it is the "Thank You", or any response at all, that is the exception, not the rule.

Many, if not most, employment inquiries come from your own employee referrals, customers, their family or friends.  This non-responsiveness and totally avoidable negativity establishes a company relationship that drives customers away!  What could be worse than ignoring a customer??? 

 

Candidates report a total lack of employer contact or a hiring processes taking 3-6 months or longer! Employers regularly lose key candidates they actually want and need because candidates take another position during, or are totally turned off by, the process length.  Candidates feel if this is the hiring process, what is it like to work there?  This also leads to the perception there are not enough qualified candidates, because candidates won’t apply where their networks say they are mistreated or invisible.

Remember, “After… six weeks of interviews for an entry-level… position [s]he was finally offered the job.  There’s just one catch.  More than two months later… They still haven’t given me my start date.” !!!!!!!!!  Or, recently:  “had an interview with a prospective new employer…. at which point they formally offered me the job….. and I was given a new employee packet….. After I accepted the position we both agreed to start in two weeks in order to work out a two week notice with my current employer. ….About 20 minutes after leaving my now former employer my new employer calls me telling me there is going to be a hold up in when I can start because business is slow, maybe a few weeks at most….”!!!!!!  This person never started with this despicable company.

http://careerhorizons.wordpress.com/2013/04/05/evil-stupid-or-busy-why-dont-employers-respond/#comments

Why aren’t the millions of active and passive applicants treated as a valued customer?  Why aren’t companies rewarding applicants, creating loyalty, repeat business, brand recognition, image and sales when they are already in the door and on your website?  What would be the comparable cost to attract customers to your business, product’s, service’s or store’s site and get their undivided attention for up to ½ hour or longer?  Ask your marketing department.

Next:  What The Black Hole is Costing You! It’s Staggering!

Why Do We Have Ridiculous Recruiting Results (the new 3Rs)?

Your Corporate Strategy:  It Just Doesn’t Matter?     Part 16

In late 2013 I asked the recruiting manager of a mega-retailer, during a lengthy advertised search for a higher level HR position, “If there is lack of feedback within your own HR Department…..how do you know how you’re doing?... How can you improve the candidate hire to candidate referral to the hiring manager success rate (metric)?....How do the candidates, probably your customers, feel about the process….?”   The reply was,”…It can be extremely frustrating to network with potential high caliber employees and have nothing to share with them.  Of course, metrics go out the window.”

To this I would refer to number 4 on Lou Adler’s previous list, “Define Quality of Hire before the person’s hired.”  Get direct feedback on how you doing because, “It’s surprising that HR still relies on the dogma of hiring practices 100 years old, and still believes that a 62% interviewing accuracy rate is acceptable.”

This reinforces the fact the link between Recruiting and the Doing (the hiring manager) is broken.  This is just another part of the many disconnected organizational processes.  It points to another of many examples of how far we have to go after losing our way for so long.  How frustrating must it be to try and do your very best and not have a process in place to get simple required feedback (grade)?

No matter how high in the company the hiring person might be, no feedback means no improvement. Worse, this manager didn’t feel empowered to solicit feedback within their own HR Department!!!!  Imagine how it must work outside their own department! Whether internally or externally recruiting, feedback is essential to good hiring practices.

Not long ago I talked to a recruiter who volunteered they were talking to every candidate who had applied for a higher level executive position - 120 candidates!  What???!!!!  Per Lou Adler, “Never interview more than four people for any job. If you need to see more than four people, something’s wrong. So figure out what's wrong before interviewing more candidates.”  The magic number is 4-5 candidates, and has been for a very long time within a well-defined and fully company integrated recruiting/acquisition program.  If you want to improve Talent Acquisition/Recruiting performance do the upfront work first then get feedback to reduce the interview to hire ratios by purposely interviewing fewer people.

In a recent New York times article by Catherine Rampell - Jobs to Fill, Employers Wait for Perfection,

“… for a large majority of positions where candidates are plentiful, the bigger problem seems to be a sort of hiring paralysis.”  For one candidate, “After about six weeks of interviews for an entry-level administrative position at a talent agency, he got some good news: in mid-December, he was finally offered the job.  There’s just one catch.  More than two months later… They still haven’t given me my start date.” !!!!!!!!!

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/jobs-fill-employers-wait-perfection-190422709.html

Additionally, in INC.’s “Hiring Only the Best? Big Mistake” , David Wexler’s article, Freshbooks' Vice President of Human Relations, should completely drain the enthusiasm from any misguided company or HR philosophy of “recruiting only the best” - a major contributor to the 3 Rs (Ridiculous Recruiting Results). 

If you are interested in other reasons why this process is broken you can check out some of my People Thoughts blog points I call the Black Hole at:

http://johnspeoplethoughts.blogspot.com/2011/09/black-hole-swallows-everything.html

Next:  Can we fix the broken external links - The Black hole your customers see