A Few Thoughts About Good HR

25 Thursday May 2017

Posted by in HR Strategy

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…So it has been about 6 months since I last wrote in this space. I took a break because my process had gotten stale and I think I needed some white space to think about out what I really wanted to write about.

I think I know now.

My HR career began when I decided to move away from pursuing a track as a management consultant after experiences working with two very unique clients changed the way I thought about business strategy and the way managers can deliver the best results.

In the first case, I worked in a team of five on a 6-month engagement to assist a U.S. engineering startup with making inroads into a new supply chain. We were hired for the engagement to complete a market assessment for the firm and (based on the outcome of said assessment) propose a revised go-to-market strategy designed to heighten its brand awareness with prospective customers.

…The client thought its problem was that potential customers didn’t know about their product offering, but what my team found as we worked with the client was that the promotional materials they were sending out and sales pitches they were making to customers were breaking through. Instead, the core of the problem involved the two founders (both seasoned engineers) and their inability to align on the segment of the market they wanted to target. This bled into everything, from sniping about the product price point to the mix of print versus digital media to the positioning of marketing materials.  Their lack of coherence was also reflected in the asymmetry of experience across their (small) sales force and the pitches they’d honed. The founders had a product they were passionate about but very different visions of the niche it should fill. This impacted the customer pipelines they tried to build, the consumer experience they attempted to cultivate, the type of talent they hired to sell their product, and the (inconsistent) ways that they trained them.

…The client essentially hired us to settle the dispute between them on go-to-market strategy, but what they really needed was to put in place a decision making structure that allowed for faster, more decisive decision making. Once they got that in place, they’d be able to begin the iterative process required to find out if they had a product offering the market really wanted.

I don’t know that we got them there, to be honest. But the plainness of the issue (and how little it had to do with the product itself – at least as a starting point) stuck with me.

A few months later, on a different, second project I found myself working on an interdisciplinary team to develop a tablet PC interface designed to provide educational resources for Indian populations living in subsistence marketplaces. The team and I spent time in India for field research purposes, collaborating with a local consulting firm to develop a product prototype and business plan outlining the financial feasibility and sustainability of the interface.

…What was interesting is that we spent months developing the interface and its functionality, only to discover once we got into the field that the product wasn’t intuitive enough for our workforce to grasp without a robust training program. We ultimately ended up needing to develop a training program, put in place a compensation and talent acquisition strategy to bring in trainers, onboard and train the trainers so they could build workforce capabilities, and put in place a performance management and review structure to make sure our program was working. The product was ultimately a success – health and nutrition outcomes improved for the pilot population, and the offering got a wider release. Looking back, doing the staffing and talent management piece of the project well is the reason our product prototype was a success as much as anything we did from an R&D standpoint.

…The second experience more than anything else is why I decided to pursue a career in Human Resources. I saw a path to touch an organization through HR that I didn’t think I could in a consultant or product role.

The thing is, though, once I made the switch I think I spent the first several years of my career focused all too often on writing consistent, well reasoned policies, documenting discipline, understanding the legal and regulatory environment involved in managing high volume labor/employment law issues, delving into nuances of contracts management and compensation/benefits program design, and focusing on building strong cases to move low performers out of organizations. This is all very, very important work, but in the process of doing it I think that I lost sight of what made me passionate about HR… that being its ability to drive operational efficiency within a business, steward over a strong culture, and enhance talent capabilities and capacity so that the organization can grow and prosper. These things have never been primarily about policies. They have always been about understanding people and the way they relate to and find success working within the businesses they support. Policies and programs should just reinforce a culture of integrity and high performance. They aren’t a cause unto themselves. They should bend and break and altogether change with the needs of each unique circumstance and time.

I don’t know how much more frequently I will come back to this space (I just don’t have a lot of time nowadays) – but when I do, going forward I would like to start focusing less on why any given HR topic is philosophically interesting and more so on how said topics drive efficiency/productivity, enhance culture, and/or help organizations build capabilities that deliver both top and bottom line results.

Help keep me honest here/hold me accountable, and as always share your thoughts and insights in the comments below.

Happy Thursday,

Rory

Infographic Thursday: Top 10 Workplace Incentives

08 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by in Benefits

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It’s been a while!

Check out this top ten countdown of the best employee perks from the team at Company Folders. It breaks down the ten craziest workplace incentives… unlimited vacation and concierge services, anyone? But it doesn’t stop there. It also explains why those incentives matter, information I think is often overlooked. The better we can understand what employees really want at work, the easier it will be for employers to meet those needs with great incentives packages and the easier for employees to look for jobs that truly improve their lives.

Have you seen other cool workplace perks? Let me know in the comments below. And as always, feel free to follow Company Folders on Twitter if you like this graphic.

what-top-talent-really-wants

Best,

Rory

A Few Thoughts on Expectations Around Pay

07 Wednesday Sep 2016

Posted by in Compensation, HR Strategy

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Unrealistic Expectations

…Okay, so this morning I was reading this great piece from CEB talking about how several employers – led by GE – are rethinking annual raises. And by “re-thinking” I mean “considering replacing with something less cyclical and more centered on moment to moment performance”. Sounds great, right? If organizations are moving away from annual performance conversations and towards continuous feedback (and it’s working) then why not have compensation/incentive design reflect this new approach to feedback and performance management? Well, for starters there’s this:

Only 1.2 percent of U.S. companies use a discretionary timescale for increasing base pay, according to this year’s compensation survey by Mercer LLC. About 90 percent of companies have a fixed date when everyone receives their raise, assuming one is granted, while about 5 percent make the change for each employee on the anniversary of their hiring or move to their current job.

^In what is likely a surprise to no one, 95% of employers have an annual review process around comp increases – and most of the 5% that don’t are closer to having nothing at all than a continuous process like the one GE is flirting with.

…But why is that? I mean – if one really thinks about it – most employees are unhappy with the 2%-3% they are getting every year. They expect it, and when they receive it often feel like they are being shortchanged in some way. Whether this phenomena is a product of collective illusory superiority or workers really having a valid beef because wages have not kept up with productivity (maybe a combination of both?), at this point the merit increase is more of a retention strategy than a vehicle to recognize and reward high performance: And the de minimis difference between what top performers and average performers receive at review times just further drives home this reality.

But then how does a company break this cycle? Do away with merit and your average performers (who are collectively every bit as important as your stars) will leave the organization. But if you don’t differentiate performance then you push your top performers out since that’s the best way they can get paid.

^To control for the flaws in the merit system, some companies are offering more spot and performance bonuses, with such dollars making up an increasingly large slice of total payroll. Which is fine… except it doesn’t address the fact that employers are still sinking huge sums of money annually into a benefit that doesn’t improve performance and doesn’t make high performers feel recognized. Merit is just the (very high) cost to retain.

…I am not saying anything new here… but thinking (or writing, I suppose) out loud I find myself considering how expectations are formed (and how they shape behaviors) to begin with. Namely, (1) something happens to us for a while, (2) it is a net positive, (3) we get used to it, and (4) our thoughts around one or more aspects of ongoing happiness become tied to the regularity of that thing.

…But just like an expectation that salary will keep going up (or at minimum stay at the same level), the merit increase expectation can be challenged (and changed), I think. For example, if one day an organization just started rewarding its employee for performance on a non-cyclical basis then at the end of the year there would be people that got small or no increases. Some of those people would be mad and leave, replacing them would be painful… and then new expectations around pay would be set.

…So ultimately this is just a thought stream. I don’t have any empirical evidence that any given company could move away from the merit cycle without suffering terminal retention and/or engagement issues. But I do know that expectations are formed through our experiences within a culture, and that cultures change. Whether an organization can have a strong enough culture to insulate itself from broader market pressures around cyclical pay raises is a different, open matter (maybe GE will answer it for us?)… but I find it interesting that the merit cycle is as entrenched culturally in the U.S. as, say, the 40 hour workweek. Employees don’t like it. Employers don’t like it. Why hasn’t anyone managed to input something different at scale yet?

As always, please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Happy Wednesday.

Rory

 

Examining the Impact of Ratingless Reviews and Year-Round Feedback on Employee Performance

31 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by in Compensation, HR Strategy, Performance Management, Talent Management

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<datascience.berkeley.edu

<datascience.berkeley.edu>

…Okay, so much has been written in the news about companies doing away with performance ratings. GE is probably the most famous company to make this change. But companies such as Microsoft, Dell, Adobe, Deloitte and Accenture have also (somewhat less famously) recently re-designed their performance management process, eschewing the formal annual review + rating in favor of more ongoing feedback and check-ins.

The articles I linked to above all have different views on the efficacy of replacing annual, formal review programs with more infrequent and informal fare… and to be sure companies have had varying degrees of success (and failure) with said implementations – often measured internally through employee feedback surveys and other experience data. Some of it has even been published online. But I don’t think that before yesterday I’d seen any large scale survey research that aggregated company experience data to quantify the value proposition companies are realizing (or not) from this performance management shift in the form of talent differentiation and productivity outcomes.

Fortunately, I stumbled upon a great white paper from the folks at USC CEO here that did just this. Surveying 244 different organizations, USC CEO looked at three trending performance management process changes – namely the introduction of ongoing performance feedback, ratingless reviews of performance, and crowd-sourced feedback – and their effect on the way that employees were rewarded and the impact on their development.

…You’ll need to purchase the full working paper if you want to deep dive into the findings, but I want to share a (really compelling) exhibit on the impact that the shift in performance management practices has had on the way employees are developing and being rewarded. From the study:

Rewards Admin

^*80* percent of respondents are saying that shifting their performance management process to a more informal/less cyclical format has improved development outcomes for employees, which is exactly what a good performance management process is supposed to do. 2/3rds of companies also report that top employees are being more appropriately rewarded, with real differentiation between poor, average and good performance that (based on the data) is reinforcing the behaviors merit/reward pay should be reinforcing. Again, developing good performers into great performers is what this is supposed to be all about. And that’s what 4 in 5 are getting out of this change.

And now for my favorite data point:

Reward Allocation

^Again, 80% of the companies responding are – on some level – trusting and empowering their managers to make merit/reward decisions without meddling. And it’s working. Only 21% of employees say they are less clear about how they’re performing, with 62% saying that they feel pay decisions are more transparent (see exhibit #1 above). Much has been made about the subjectivity of a ratingless system… but most employees seem to prefer them and feel that they more accurately capture their value.

Having transitioned away from the rating scale and annual performance discussions in favor of no ratings + ongoing feedback with my own teams years ago, this data jives with my own experience and wasn’t much of a surprise. Still, it’s good to see some survey data coming out supporting what most people managers already know: If you have frequent, candid conversations with your people about what is expected and reward them appropriately, most of the time they will improve their performance (and be more engaged).

…Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for today. Check out more research at USC CEO from Ed Lawler here, and as always let me know what I got wrong (or right – positive feedback is appreciated!) in the comments section below.

Happy Wednesday,

Rory

P.S. Has anyone tried crowd-sourcing feedback yet? Approximately 80% of the companies surveyed here had moved to ratingless reviews, while (I suspect) a much smaller number have started crowd-sourcing feedback as part of the performance management process. It is a novel idea, but I think you really have to have the right culture for this to work. What that culture looks like? I don’t know. Please share your own experiences etc.

Which Talent Should Your Organization Be Investing Resources Into? Why? A Few Thoughts…

29 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by in HR Strategy, Talent Management

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…Okay, so over the weekend I read an outstanding blog post from CEB here. It talks about how to distinguish between high performers in their current roles (who are doing good work but may not be a good fit at higher levels) versus the kind of talent that has the potential, desire and commitment to keep progressing. It turns out that – if you are in fact like 83% of companies – only 15% of your high performers are promotable multiple levels above where they are now, and 55% of the folks in your HiPo programs today will be gone in five years. See the breakdown below of how that plays out in the aggregate companies reviewed (full study can be found in the link above):

55 Percent of HiPos Leave

Let that sink in a bit…

Okay? Let’s move on:

Again, I would encourage everyone to check out some of the prevailing research behind the article here (e-book). Some of the material referenced – such as the 70:20:10 model around learning – is fairly table stakes/well understood stuff, I think, but the more powerful parts of the data deal with the fact that success at higher levels in an organization are contingent on talent having a combination of (1) aspiration to progress (2) ability, and finally (3) the often forgotten engagement/loyalty factor. See the below chart (from the same study) outlined below for more:
 HR HiPo Overview #2

^What this chart basically tells us is that today you probably have:

  1. Folks in a HiPo program/tagged as HiPos that are very loyal/engaged and have aspirations for advancement, but little capacity for growth beyond their current role.
  2. Employees with tons of talent and loyalty but little interest in progressing beyond their current level.
  3. Talent with tons of ability and aspiration that are flight risks due to low organizational engagement and/or a perception that they can do better elsewhere.

…The paper notes that those employees who lack even one of the three characteristics above have less than a 40% chance of success at the next level. This means that organizations needs to be extraordinarily thoughtful about who they invest resources in. Talent isn’t enough. Desire isn’t enough. Loyalty isn’t enough. It’s important to really figure out a way to measure all three characteristics to maximize ROIC in HiPo programs.

As is often the case with issues like this, the key to success is to develop a feedback process that encourages employees to (1) talk about their goals and (2) deliver feedback on what it takes to reach them. And if you’re going to put this process in place in a way that works, I think you need to be prepared to have candid discussions with the talent lacking one or more of the three key criteria outlined above around how to either (1) overcome and/or eliminate the derailing characteristic or else (2) align on career expectations in the absence of that possibility. A few key points:

  • This means that for your loyal and engaged – but average ability – talent you have to be prepared to give some candid feedback around capabilities and be prepared to invest the time and resources into developing that person around the areas where they are lacking (or failing this to have frank discussions around what sort of success is possible internally. You also need to put in place a total rewards and recognition package that recognizes and keeps this talent engaged if further progression is not possible).
  • For your high engagement/high talent but low aspiration folks, you have to be willing to (1) get at what has got them unwilling/disinterested in progressing and (2) be patient and/or content if they don’t want to progress any further. Sometimes high capability+engagement but low aspiration employees just have other things going on in the moment (e.g. they may have personal/family issues going on outside of work) and want to take a step back for a while. Or they may have just found their niche. In the former case, time + flex work arrangements can position this talent to move up going forward, and in the latter case these people make good continuity players that firm up internal knowledge management (on a related note, if these people are at risk of being blockers in a role that you want to use to step future talent up then you have to have a transition strategy in place to migrate your blockers into other roles where they can still add value, but that topic is long enough for another post…)
  • Finally, for your low engagement but high talent/high aspiration folks, it is important to have a careful hand here. Are these people unhappy with their long-term comp outlook? Do they see limited opportunity for advancement go forward? Are they just not a cultural fit? This group can often times be the hardest to get aligned with, retain, and ultimately develop because they are the least likely to engage in a discussion around their derailing issues/concerns, but they are also a group that it makes sense to invest in re-engaging because they (anecdotally speaking) often have the highest upside if you can get them to buy-in to a long-term future with the organization. This is because – while often you can’t teach talent or ambition, generally speaking talented folks with ambition can be re-engaged if you can just get them to open up.

Along these lines, as it concerns our last group I want to share a final graph from the CEB study (again read more here and here):

ROIC Max Engagement

^This should trigger a few ideas around the sorts of discussions and programs you can put in place to engage your high talent/ambition population that might otherwise become a flight risk. The big piece seems to be giving them ample opportunities to take on high risk/reward opportunities while making it clear that you have their back if they fail.

As always share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Happy Monday.

Best,

Rory

Exiting Your Organization Like a Pro

26 Friday Aug 2016

Posted by in Change Management, General HR

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<www.conovercompany.com

<www.conovercompany.com>

…From Dunn (in an April 2016 post titled “MAMBA OUT: When Leaving Your Company, You Should Go Out Doing What Made You Special” – bold emphasis mine):

When the end comes at your company – whether you’re voluntarily leaving or you’ve impacted by a reorganization that allows you to stay in your role for a month or two – WE SHOULD GO DOWN SHOOTING AND SWINGING. That doesn’t have to be negative.

Your role in your final days – if you want to be remembered as a talented person – is to go down shooting…

…Whatever your special skills are, you should use them as much as possible in your final days. Good at pressuring people to do things they don’t want to do? Do more of that. Good at blowing people up so the greater good in your organization is served? More please. Good at making your team feel good about themselves and full of positive self-esteem? Don’t stop. Do more of it.

^Sharing this because I have recently had the chance to watch what this looks like first hand when done well, and if I should ever leave my own organization it’s an ideal that I also want to embody.

…The truth is that no matter how well a company treats you, sometimes a better opportunity just comes along: More money, the right title, a better location, more flexible work hours… sometimes change sneaks up on us and it is the right moment and we just need to pursue it. And conversely, sometimes you may also be treated unfairly by an employer – be that getting severed as part of a re-org, or performance managed out for something you’re left holding the bag over. And it is in these moments – when no one expects anything from you but the minimum – that you can demonstrate incredible character and professionalism by proving that expectation wrong.

Setting aside the fact that it’s a small world (and people you work with now tend to be people you work with or for later in another context), being in the habit of being the best version of yourself every day, all the time will pay dividends throughout your career because it isn’t common. You will start to create separation from your peers – first at the margins and then in abundance. And this separation will turn into promotions and comp that grow exponentially over time against what you’d have gotten by just coasting when you could get away with it.

…I don’t have a great HR insight today or big question… this is mostly a re-share. That said, I wonder if there’s a way to really screen for this “it” factor… anyone have any great interview questions to parse it out? 😉

Happy Friday.

Best,

Rory

Thoughts on the Sort of Talent Discussions That Drive Employee Engagement

25 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by in Employee Engagement, HR Strategy, Talent Management

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…Okay, so an article published about a year ago by Ben Whitter titled “Bye, Bye, Human Resources” has been making the rounds on social media. The piece highlights the way that Airbnb has transformed its HR function – with the focus internally moving away from a conventional approach to HR (recruiting/talent management/labor/total rewards etc.) to focus on employee experience. From Whitter’s piece:

Five Circles
 

…HR theoretically has a place in all of the above employee experience circles, but there is one that I really want to talk about, namely Intellectual (Talent Development), and the role that HR (and managers) have to play in developing this circle well.

Specifically, Kris Dunn recently wrote a piece titled “Here’s To the Crazy Ones: And Why You Don’t Deserve Them” here wherein he talked about the performance review process. From the piece (bold highlights mine):

… The reason you do any type of coaching or performance management is to migrate employees.   If you’re going to do it, you want a system that allows you to support migrating new employees to good performers, and good performers to great employees.

You don’t get there by focusing on the rating scale.  That doesn’t migrate anyone.  You get there by using performance management as a means to have a different type of conversation – one that gets an employee thinking and perhaps excited about taking care of the busy work that’s a part of any job, then having time to come up with some different ideas.

…What does great performance look like?  I think it means that you encourage employees to challenge the status quo.  Of course, if you’re going to encourage that, you better be comfortable telling people that their idea sucks and they need to go back to the drawing board.

…Start having conversations with your best people about what’s possible.  It’s funny how those types of conversations and the exploration that results are actually the best retention tool for your top talent.

^This is powerful for two reasons: (1) because it highlights that a key reason HiPo employees stay with their companies is because they enjoy the type of work they do (above a certain level, pay stops being the primary driver for most), and (2) because it highlights that a collaborative process like this can really only happen if an organization has a culture that encourages both innovation and constructive feedback. Ultimately both (1) mission and (2) feedback are integral to any performance management and talent development process or else it’s doomed to fall apart.

…Concerning point #2 (feedback), Tim Sackett has a really good article on the topic here, but the most relevant component is below:

 …No one cares about what you have to say, unless it’s telling them how good they are.

People can’t handle critical feedback, unless it’s set up in a mechanism where they expect it and desire it.  That’s the crux, hardly anyone has that mechanism and while most people tell you they want critical feedback they don’t have the makeup to handle it.

Here are the types of “critical” feedback people can handle:

“You’re doing a good job, would love it if you could get that big project off the ground. That would really help us out!”

Here’s what you really want to say, critically, but can’t:

“You do good at things I tell you to do, and all basic day to day duties of the job. I need more from this position and from you, and I’m willing to help get you there. I need someone who can take a project from scratch and kill it, without me having to babysit the entire thing. You’re not doing that, and that’s what I really need you to do. Are you willing do that?”

Same message, right?  You do some stuff good, but one critical aspect of the job is not getting done. The problem is, the first level feedback is given 99.9% of the time, because managers and leaders know if you deliver the second level, that person will be destroyed!

They’ll think you think they suck, and they’ll start looking for a job.  When in reality, you were just trying to give them legitimate feedback. Real feedback. Something that would actually help them reach expectations.

^One of the best ways that we can enhance employee experience as a function is continue to develop the mechanisms in which employees are (1) encouraged to innovate / perform and (2) are given candid, actionable feedback on how they can get better in both areas.

…I will be the first person to admit I can get better at the above (as both a manager and in supporting my client group). Because while I go to great lengths to encourage new ideas, collaboration, and dialogue… I sometimes struggle with giving people the feedback they need to move their ideas along (or else take them back to the drawing board). This is partly because I recognize that I personally over-correct in response to constructive feedback (and so try to avoid giving feedback that could cause others to do the same), and partially because as a glass-half-full type I tend to focus on what is going well as opposed to what could be going better.

That said, regardless of where one sits on this continuum, as we continue to spearhead HR transformation efforts that focus on scaling our capabilities and those of our clients, the opportunity to enhance the vehicles through which we continue innovation and deliver constructive feedback have got to remain top of mind.

…I think. -_-

Happy Thursday all. As always, let me know what I got wrong in the comments below.

Best,

Rory

How Relationship Management Impacts Strategy Execution

24 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by in Change Management, HR Strategy, Talent Management

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<www.expersoft.com

<www.expersoft.com>

I recently stumbled across an oldish (late 2015) but excellent executive summary of a Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies (CAHRS) sponsored event examining the changing role of the HRBP. You can read an overview of what the event covered here (and the full executive summary here), but one of the things that stood out to me in the overview was the following section:

Knowledge

^This section jumped at me because – in as much as the focus here was on HRBP knowledge transfer – the highlighted section is really true of *any* leadership role. Whether an organization has centralized decision-making processes or more decentralized ones, to execute on any activity of importance a leader has got to understand the socialization and organizational alignment process (to both ensure support from other key stakeholders and to flush out any institutional issues that might otherwise disrupt a change midstream). Understanding the knowledge level/needs of key stakeholders and making sure the message flows upward and outward to them in the right way is also key. And doing this wells means understanding how each audience differs, what they care about, and what knowledge they do or do not have. From there, the message must be tailored appropriately for each intended stakeholder.

…So at this point you may be thinking “this is table stakes stuff”, and in many ways it is. And yet when I think about the most effective teams and organizations I have worked with compared against those that have been more dysfunctional, for a surprising number of teams within the latter group some combination of effective relationship management/streamlined decision-making was missing. That lets me know that addressing this issue is easier said than done.

Okay – so I suppose my thought questions to readers today would be as follows: Do teams need to discuss information flow and decision-making as part of the onboarding process for new hires? If so, at what level does that start? And on a related note how explicitly does the socialization effort and communication strategy required to advance an idea need to be called out when working through key project milestones? I would argue that maybe it needs to be called out fairly explicitly, because in a lot of cases at all levels I believe this stuff is being considered tacitly understood knowledge when it really isn’t.

Let me know what I have wrong here…

Happy Wednesday.

Best,

Rory

How Cultural Norms Around Work and Family Life are Impacting the Gender Pay Gap

23 Tuesday Aug 2016

Posted by in Benefits, HR Strategy

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Happy Tuesday all.

…So I recently read a great article by Ben Casselman at FiveThirtyEight here that talks about why women are no longer making material progress towards narrowing the pay gap between men and women. Long story short, there are a number of variables that drive the pay gap (such as men’s tendency to opt into high earning careers at greater rates and women’s tendency to negotiate less often), but the one I want to talk about today deals with the article’s primary focus – namely that as a society we are increasingly compensating employees at higher and higher rates for working longer hours – regardless of exemption status. From the piece:

Men make up a bit more than half the full-time workforce, but they account for more than 70 percent of those working 50 hours a week or more. So as wage gains have gone disproportionately to people working long hours, they have also gone disproportionately to men, widening the earnings divide between men and women overall.

The effect being denoted above is illustrated really well in the below chart:

<http://fivethirtyeight.com/

<fivethirtyeight.com>

…Essentially, men work more hours than women because women disproportionately shoulder home-life / childcare duties. And because men work more hours than women, over time their earnings start to diverge progressively more from their female peers who are more likely to take a step back in work hours and/or opt out of the work force entirely.

Of course, this begs the question: What role should organizations – particularly HR – be playing in addressing the cultural legacy issues that leave women disproportionately shouldering home-life issues at the expense of their careers? Should the private sector look to play a greater role in changing expectations around gender roles through more balanced parental leave policies? There are companies that have taken this view, with the outcome of such policies leading to more work-life balance for both genders and a more balanced workload between men and women in the office. And yet anyone arguing that dramatically expanding parental leave policies has the potential to be costly to net workforce productivity would be right; accordingly, implementation of any new leave policy must to be done with the demographics and operating environment of one’s organization top of mind.

…That said, I will close by asking if trying to tackle gender imbalances in the workplace by making it easier for *everyone* (regardless of gender) to work more hours is the wrong way to even think about the issue? Does anyone *really* need to consistently work 80+ hour weeks? What does the data say? I am not sure, but have a sneaking suspicion that if societal expectations around work/life balance shift that much the pay imbalance we see today will shift with it.

Please share any personal/professional experiences and/or studies in the comment section below.

Best,

Rory

Why People Leave Their Jobs (and How Their Reasons Should Shape Your Organization’s Talent Strategy)

22 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by in People Analytics, Talent Management

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<www.teambonding.com

<www.teambonding.com>

Happy Monday all. 

 

…So I spent the weekend reading about turnover and engagement, and this HBR article had some really good insights that got me thinking about talent attraction and retention strategy – specifically how Managers/HRBPs can use human capital data to improve turnover and progression outcomes. The below section particularly resonated with me:

 

“New research conducted by CEB, a Washington-based best-practice insight and technology company, looks not just at why workers quit but also at when. “We’ve learned that what really affects people is their sense of how they’re doing compared with other people in their peer group, or with where they thought they would be at a certain point in life,” says Brian Kropp, who heads CEB’s HR practice. “We’ve learned to focus on moments that allow people to make these comparisons.”

 

^In support of the above quote, anecdotally speaking I can say that my sense of how ‘successful’ I am is in many ways driven by how I am doing compared to my peer group (and most of my friends and associates at similar career stages feel this way as well). One moment, I might feel good about where I am in my career. But if a close friend is promoted to a level that is comparably much higher than mine in their organization and/or their total comp jumps materially higher, I suddenly find myself wondering “Am I working as hard as I could be? What is wrong with me? When will it be *my* turn?”

 

…In some ways this is a healthy line of thinking – focusing on the next milestone and benchmarking your performance is a good way to stay focused on your career and developing yourself. Along these lines, I have had candid discussions with peers around just this topic, and the consensus is that wanting to lead the pack/be the best doesn’t take away from our feelings of happiness for one another’s success – it just sets a new bar for the group and causes everyone to keep pushing one another to get the next title/pay/span of control progression.

 

That said, from a talent management standpoint I believe that understanding this relatively common line of thought around careers means organizations need to be really deliberate about where they source talent and how they retain them. For example, recruiting from a school where the median pay is 20% higher than that at one’s organization, or where potential advancement opportunities are limited against a graduating cohort’s expectations is a recipe for high turnover and disengagement. And I would note that I think many organizations have done some good work identifying what schools/opportunities/managers/profiles are correlated with high internal retention and promotion rates (and reflecting the outcome of this data in their recruitment strategies).

 

…I also wonder if there may be an opportunity to take this work a step further – can we use the same datasets driving our recruitment strategies today to be pre-emptive in the way we communicate and engage with talent? Who is a flight risk and why based on historical data? What sorts of outreach is necessary to retain these people? In some cases do we even want to? Being really deliberate in the sorts of discussions our managers/HRBPs are having with our talent around career expectations could be a fantastic way to drive turnover down and re-direct languishing talent to areas where they can be more successful – either inside or outside of the organization. 

 

I’d love to hear your thoughts on how we can all use analytics – be that through a new HRIS or different reporting (Deloitte has a third party tool available that can do much of the work outlined above) – to develop actionable data that facilitates proactive discussions with key talent that might otherwise be a flight risk. 

 

Best,


Rory