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Oct 20 2010
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Business, Employee Engagement, Human Resources, Leadership, Management

Delivering the Employee Value Proposition

A lot of companies are working hard to define and articulate their Employee Value Proposition or EVP. The EVP is essentially a statement of how the “total work experience” at the company is superior to others. It is the “deal” that you get in return for the skills, capabilities, experiences and time you bring to the workplace. We are just not talking about the “price” the organization pays, but the holistic “offer”  or “deal” that must be offered to attract, engage and retain talent. EVP is a function of multiple things – pay, benefits, company image, career prospects, training opportunities, work-life balance, social experiences or team, purpose of the organization, autonomy, challenge and several other aspects of the role. And each of these variables are emphasized to different extents in different organizations to define a relevant and practical EVP.

Given the immense focus on defining and articulating the EVP, organizations should not be losing sight of an important aspect - implementing or delivering the EVP.  Perhaps, it is much more critical. That is where it will be seen if your brand promise has been delivered or not. The HR team and leaders do play a critical role in articulating, reinforcing and marketing the EVP. But, the key agents who deliver the “deal” are the people managers. They are the ones who take the EVP to the employees in the form of a one-to-one individualized discussion. They will ultimately make or break the EVP promise.

So, if your EVP subtly communicates “median pay levels, but strong work-life balance”, and your managers are not sensitive to help their teams balance their work & personal lives, there is a deviation from the promise. Or, your EVP talks about “multi-disciplinary learning”, but managers nominate their team members for training for their existing job functions only, the deal is broken. There could be a disconnect if your EVP stresses on “a work environment with a daily celebration of success”, but recognition is limited to the Annual Chairman’s Award. The list can go on.

It is critical to align managers to the “what”, “why” and “how” of your EVP. They need to be educated on how to put it into practice and individualize it for their team-members. Remember, they have not been doing this all their lives. In fact, several view the EVP as a sum of pay and benefits alone. We need to support them to make the transition to this more holistic approach.

What are you doing in your organization to ensure that the promise of your EVP is delivered to the employees? How are you translating words into actions?

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Sep 28 2010
5 Comments
Employee Engagement, Human Resources, Leadership, Management

Setting KPIs Based on Employee Engagement Survey Results

A key question facing companies who run Employee Engagement surveys is – “Should we set KPIs around engagement and reward managers for it?” And then – “How should we do it?”

It is critical for organizations to maintain a balance between being completely metric-driven on engagement and developing a well-aligned culture to facilitate engagement? After all, your Employee Engagement initiative does not have an end date! While metrics help you to build accountability, ownership and literacy about this important issue, we also need more intrinsic approaches by the leadership / HR to drive change and progress. A balance is ideal.

Towers Watson (disclosure: my employer) has a comprehensive white paper providing guidelines on how Engagement survey results can be built as a KPI. The report, firstly, builds a case for incorporating these metrics as a part of incentives and then provides a high-level overview of the design approaches. It also mentions that in certain cases, organizations would benefit by taking a segmented approach to setting these KPIs.  Finally, there is a list of factors that you should consider for assessing whether this is an appropriate thing to do for your organization in terms of ROI.

Happy Reading!

P.S. If you are unable to access the report, click here.

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Sep 03 2010
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Business, Employee Engagement, Leadership, Management, Social Media, Technology

Re-inventing Management at the Management Innovation Exchange

The Management Innovation Exchange or MIX is truly a great place for learning about innovative management practices and ideas for reinventing management. I highly recommend it if you have a passion for re-defining the ‘way things work’. In fact, I too contributed a “hack” to make people managers more accountable for their employees by building attrition costs into the managers’ P&L.

I am putting together a small list of hacks and stories which I found most interesting on the forum:

  • Julian Birkinshaw of the London Business School writes a thought-provoking piece on “What is Your Management Model?” We have all talked about business models, but not much about the management model. How are we going to make choices about people, effort coordination, objectives etc.? How will we balance a traditional vs. a new-age management practice? Ultimately, what’s more important – the business model or the management model? Must Read.
  • Matt Sholsberg asks us to reinvent the wheel. And for a reason – the wheel itself is over 5000 years old!

What are your ideas? Or if you like, “hacks” to re-invent management?

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Aug 19 2010
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Business, Employee Engagement, Human Resources, Leadership, Management

Employee Engagement Is Not A “Target”

Several companies think of Employee Engagement as an end-goal – a number – a target – a KPI. And we chase this elusive target. Endlessly at times!

Dov Seidman wrote an interesting piece in Bloomberg BusinessWeek on “Why We Cannot “Motivate” Employee Engagement”. Here are some excerpts which I found very interesting:

WHAT MASQUERADES AS ENGAGEMENT

This problem was illustrated in a recent IBM television commercial, in which a motivational speaker decked out in an “Innovation Man” costume struts in front of a line of office workers standing at attention. Innovation Man singles out one of the professionals and peppers him with repeated taunts and questions as to whether he is “fired up” to innovate. The worker dutifully responds, “Sir! Yes, sir!” Innovation Man then questions the employee’s commitment: “Why are you fired up?!” The befuddled employee pauses before replying, “I don’t have any idea.”

We cannot “motivate” engagement (or innovation, growth, or succession for that matter); instead, we must inspire the kind of outcomes we want by rooting ourselves in a set of values, being in the grip of an idea worthy of dedication and commitment, connecting around a meaningful and shared purpose, and aligning around a common, deep, and sustainable set of human, societal, and environmental values.

A VALUABLE, AND VALUES-BASED, ALTERNATIVE

This is the new frontier, where companies work in a systemic manner to ensure alignment of their purpose and mission to their business strategies and vision, and then cascade this inspiration through their core values into specific leadership behaviors. Only when observable leadership behaviors are identified, communicated, measured, tracked, managed, and integrated into business processes and talent-management systems can an organization evolve on its cultural journey.

Improving employee engagement does not require executives to don their motivational capes and work on improving employee engagement. Instead, the process begins with a simple question about the workforce, a query whose answer leaders should act upon: Are our employees inspired?

I agree with the viewpoint. While we still need metrics and conventional approaches to build accountability and ownership, sometimes we focus excessively on them and lose sight of the essence of the matter. A more intrinsic approach is called for.

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Jul 23 2010
2 Comments
Business, Employee Engagement, Human Resources, Leadership, Management

A Lesson in Communication From Zappos

Even though I never brought anything from Zappos, I am fascinated by the company. I have heard so many good things about the organization, their culture and customer service. I even brought myself the book “Delivering Happiness” by Tony Hsieh (Zappos CEO) and it is “next” on my book shelf.

Apparently, Zappos just completed their 1st anniversary of their merger with Amazon and Tony posted the email he sent to all Zappos employees when the merger was announced (highly recommended for reading). The communication instantly struck a very positive note with me. It was:

  • The message and the details are crisp and clear.
  • He explained the rationale for the decision by highlighting the top 3 reasons, which are easy to understand.
  • He clearly assured people about the incoming change at multiple points in the email. And, his assurance was complete, not guarded.
  • Every change brings forth a lot of questions in the employees’ minds and Tony tries to answer them. But, very cleverly, the most burning questions are a part of the body of the main message, while the remaining are parked at the end of the message. It is so important not to overwhelm people with information overload.
  • Tony comes across as extremely transparent in his communication. For instance, he handles the departure of a senior executive very transparently. And by the way, the very act of publishing an internal company email on the internet sets a very high standard of transparency!
  • Values are important. They set the norms. And it is critical for leaders to communicate, clarify and live the values. They really define the culture. In explaining his decisions, Tony makes references to Zappos’ values such as “Embrace and Drive Change” and “Build Open and Honest Relationships with Communication”. This is a beautiful way to talking to people with your actions centered around defined, accepted anchors.
  • And finally, for most of it, he keeps the language “Human”. I cannot emphasize enough on this and several leaders and companies miss this mark. Tony clearly says that he is sticking to a formal tone in some instances because of legal requirements. But, for most parts, his tone, flow and words are very human and not traditional “business-speak”. I mean – one of the most commonly used phrases in business is “We would like to thank you for your patience and apologize for any inconvenience caused”. Why can’t we simply say “We are sorry. We are terribly sorry. We are so, so sorry”! Isn’t that more powerful?

As a leader, what are your communication mantras? What should be done to connect better with people?

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