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An Approach for “Action” on Change Implementation Programs

As you would have noticed from most of my writings, I often find that ‘change’ programs and Employee Engagement initiatives fail as a result of poor follow-up on research findings. Organizations, with or without the help of consultants, are able to design great diagnostic tools to measure the right issues. Using analytics, they are able to identify problem areas, priorities for action and set goals for workplace quality. However, they find it difficult to move on to the next logical step of “actions”. There is too much of chaos and confusion about “who is going to own what”. Whether a specific issue needs interventions from the HR, leadership, department heads or people-managers.

I admit that this is a tough situation and requires to be handled carefully to prevent the derailment of the entire change process. The situation is further complicated by the fact that a survey process might yield a large number of areas for improvement. An approach that I would use in such situation is to think of an organization (and it’s problems) as a composite of several sub-systems. What we could do is to discuss in-depth each of the issue for follow-up and identify which sub-system it would fall under. By parking follow-up areas into meaningful buckets, it might be a little easier to set accountabilities. Needless to say, this discussion should ideally be facilitated by an external consultant to ensure that “logic” prevails over bias and personal preferences. Also, all key stakeholders (leadership, HR, dept. heads and representative group of front-line managers) should be encouraged to participate and contribute to this categorization exercise.

One possible set of sub-systems could be:

While this may or may not be comprehensive or even may require customization for your organization’s requirements, it lays down an approach or a basic framework for fine-tuning the change implementation process.

Add comment July 7, 2009

Consulting Majors Towers Perrin and Watson Wyatt to Merge

In an interesting development in the consulting industry, top management consulting firms Towers Perrin (my employer) & Watson Wyatt have decided to merge in an all-stock deal valued at $3.5 billion. The combined entity will be called Towers Watson & Co. with over $3 billion in annual revenues and about 14000 employees. The transaction is expected to be completed in the 4th quarter of this year.

Employee Engagement – Where to Focus?

After having worked with multiple organizations across multiple geographies on Employee Engagement programs, there is still an interesting debate I have with clients, colleagues, friends and HR practitioners.

The question is “Do we need to focus exclusively on workgroup-level engagement or focus on enterprise-level systems / processes first?”

Some feel that workgroup engagement is paramount, since managers hold the key to employee engagement. They cite oft-repeated quotes like “People join companies, but leave managers.” I feel that there is a lot of merit in this thought process. On the other hand, there are frameworks and approaches which emphasize on organization-level engagement with a sharp focus on fixing systems & processes of human capital management.

confusion

So, companies ask their internal experts and consultants – “Which is the best solution for us?” I am afraid the answer is not so simple as A or B or C. The issue merits careful consideration.

In organizations which achieve a high level of maturity on the Human Capital Management cotinuum, there is a supportive platform for people management at a workgroup level. There are established systems for key people processes like hiring, on-boarding, training, development, career pathing, retention, exit etc. Having tools and processes is half the task done. And the other half is all about manager education around sensitization to people management. Most “business” managers are best at what they are initially expected to do – “business”. It is not only because companies demand that as a first priority, but I feel another root cause is lack of focus on people management in management education. So, manager education is needed to help them understand the importance of employee engagement and why it matters to their business. In such a case, an engagement program focused on building workgroup engagement and refining enterprise-level enablers is more suited.

However, many organizations are simply not “there” when it comes to HR capabilities. Or leave HR policies, but there might be a lot of turmoil at the top which can act as a barrier to engagement. There are policies after policies after policies -with no connect to current context, business strategy or employee expectations. Most systems are at best “average” and “ad-hoc”. There is no clear line of sight with respect to strategic direction, accountabilities and business imperatives. In such a scenario, how can HR or the leadership expect managers to deal with the performance management process. How can managers hire the right candidates if we don’t even have a identified pool of candidates and tools to manage the information? How can managers explain career paths to people, if they are unsure about their own? How can managers retain people, if compensation is not benchmarked? How can managers ensure positive exits and build reasonable “return” probabilities, if there is no formal process for handling exits? Frontline managers are often found struggling and grappling with these issues and such a situation is definitely not conducive to build engagement at a workgroup level. In such a situation, what is needed is a robust measurement of enterprise-enablers, with a mild focus on workgroup issues. Then, issues would need to be prioritized using analytics and probing techniques to chart a way forward.

But, the next question is how does an organization determine the maturity of its processes. It is usually done by process audits, benchmarking or even an initial survey covering both workgroup engagement measures and enterprise-level measures to set baseline metrics, understand employee expectations and set the direction for future interventions. Leaders could also use simple, yet powerful tools like Appreciative Inquiry to ascertain the best solution for their organizations.

4 comments June 26, 2009

Key Elements of An Effective Employee Engagement Program

Despite what happens to the business environment, smart leaders always understand the importance of employee engagement. In an upswing, engaged employees help an organization leverage the positive environment and deliver incremental returns. In a bad business environment, the engaged employees are the best source of innovations and ideas on how to do best in a deteriorating environment.

There are a large number of companies across the globe which continue to invest in employee engagement programs despite the economic downswing. While this is a good sign, it is critical to ensure that scarce dollars are spent smartly to ensure good RoI from such programs.

Here are some of my thoughts about the key ingredients of an effective employee engagement program:

Define: Let’s get the basics right first. Different organizations, HR professionals and HR Consultants define employee engagement differently. Some HR professionals confuse employee engagement with welfare activities like staff dinners, family get-togethers, picnics etc. These are small elements and employee engagement is a much more complex beast. I like to think about employee engagement in two ways: commitment and emotional attachment with the company or with the workgroup / manager. In different organizational contexts, different definitions may be suitable.

Communicate: The key to a successful employee engagement initiative is top management commitment and communication around the program. The leadership needs to demonstrate its commitment to the initiative and drive its importance in all forums. Another essential aspect of communication is the emphasis on confidentiality of responses. This should ideally come from the head of the organization.

Key Drivers: While slicing and dicing the data by employee demographics like departments, business units, job levels etc. is important to understand the variance in engagement levels, it is extremely important to be able to prioritize from the mountain of data generated by the survey. One could rely on techniques like regressions to understand the drivers of the intermediate outcome – employee engagement. A good regression model should yield an adjusted R-Squared value of 0.4 and above (by social research standards). Such an analysis would reveal the top influencers of engagement and these would act as high-yield levers to effect engagement levels.

Benchmarking: Try and work with consulting firms which have robust benchmarking data for employee engagement and other workplace quality indicators. Firms offering comprehensive benchmarking will help you to further distill the data and arrive at action items. In most cases, organizations should look at industry benchmarks and country-level benchmarks (local labor market comparisons). Other benchmarks may be suitable depending on the context.

Feedback: Employees give feedback in a survey and anticipate a flow of information back. So, inform employees about how you fared and what you plan to do about it. It’s easy to lose momentum after the survey because most organizations focus too much energy on the survey and too little on post-survey activities. Remember – surveys are just the starting point of any organizational development program.

Act: This is the most crucial step and the area where most organizations fail to live upto the expectations. While the HR should play the role of the facilitator and provide operational support, the “act’ phase has to be driven by the leadership. They need to take the survey to the next level by acting on it. Define ideal state. Draw transformational and transactional change plans. Fix accountabilities. Fix timelines. Monitor and review progress. Improvize. All the time! ‘Change’ is a constant and your change program needs to run continuously.

Involve: And while you are implementing solutions, do not forget to involve your middle management and front line managers. Educate them about why employee engagement matters and how it impacts business outcomes. Encourage them to make engagement a part of the business agenda.

The benefits of employee engagement are many. In today’s world, “people” are your only unique competitive advantage. It’s not an easy ride, but it’s really worth it!

What do you do to make your employee engagement initiatives successful? Do leave a comment. Or if you want a detailed discussion, email me at mittalabhishek05 @ gmail.com

1 comment June 15, 2009

Employee Engagement & Global Economic Downturn

Towers Perrin has released a new quarterly report containing latest research around how are employee perceptions are being shaped in the light of the economic climate. Some of the most interesting observations from the data:

Managing work-life balance is getting increasingly difficult with only 55% of the employees responding favorably to the issue of ‘being able to manage work and personal responsibilities.’
Employee Engagement, a key indicator of organizational performance, has held steady through the economic downturn.
Companies have responded well by redefining organizational structures, connecting better with customers and aligning employees to workgroup and organizational goals.
However, employees feel more uncertain about the future and placed lower levels of confidence in the leadership.
Not surprising at all – the “tendency to look out” has declined considerably.

Finally, the report ends with some handy suggestions on what companies can do to sustain engagement levels:

Get leaders out front to talk with employees about the business environment and how the organization is responding, as well as the long-term vision and what the organization stands for.

Involve employees in efforts to manage costs to help them feel like active contributors.

Communicate consistently and candidly about both short- and long-term objectives.

Listen and gather input from employees.

Promote development opportunities so people can see a future for themselves worth working toward.

Truly, its these “basics” which make the difference.

Get leaders out front to talk with employees about the business environment and how the organization is responding, as well as the long-term vision and what the organization stands for.
Involve employees in efforts to manage costs to help them feel like active contributors.
Communicate consistently and candidly about both short- and long-term objectives.
Listen and gather input from employees.
Promote development opportunities so people can see a future for themselves worth working toward.

Add comment June 1, 2009

8 Tips to Manage Change in The Current Economic Climate

The current environment poses significant challenges to organizations across the globe. Employees are suffering too. Employees face a fair amount of confusion about their companies’ goals & strategy and at a micro-level, confusion about their own job roles. There are heightened concerns over job security & compensation. I could go one with such “descriptives”, but the bottom line is that this environment can potentially erode employee engagement, morale and well-being.

Confusion

These are tough times. But, there are a few things that leaders can do to make the situation relatively better. Here are 8 tips to help your employees to manage change in the current economic climate:

Clarify your plans and strategy for dealing with the economic climate: Explain “what”, “how” and most importantly “why”. Clarity on organizational goals will also help managers & employees take right decisions in the day-to-day work.
Reinforce your long/short term plans and strategy in every forum: Use every employee forum to drive clarity on your objectives and plans. Employees need to be crystal clear to be able to align their priorities with organizational objectives.
How about leveraging common Web 2.0 tools: Transparency, especially in these times, is critical and highly valued by employees. Employees themselves face a lot of uncertainty on the work and personal front and it is critical to ensure that the workforce has easy access to information it needs to deal with the situation. Companies could potentially look at dedicated websites, wikis, group blogs etc. to share information.
Weekly email updates: This is dead-simple. Fire out “all staff” emails on a weekly basis, informing employees about what’s happening, successes, information updates etc. You should be the one telling the employees the “story”, not the newspapers!
Cross-train people: This is a great opportunity for companies to prepare the next set of cross-functional leaders. Use the “optimized staff” situation to encourage people to learn other jobs and handle multiple responsibilities and in the process, groom future leaders.
Explain to employees possible impacts on compensation & benefits: No one likes this one! Tell people ASAP if their rewards would change. Even if the news is not so positive, people like to know what to expect. As far as possible, also communicate the elements of “redesign” of compensation packages.
Harness the latent energy of workgroup innovation: Encourage employees to come up with new ways of doing things. Establish an “unblocked” communication channel to help employees share these ideas. Send a clear message to the people – Ideas are valued, despite the economic environment.
Share KPI data with everyone: This is especially important if your company has changed your KPIs in the light of the changing environment and business strategy. This will help employees to understand how their roles contribute to the organizational objectives.

2 comments May 18, 2009

The Myth of The “Perfect Job”

Julie Gebauer, a senior executive from Towers Perrin, writes at Closing The Engagement Gap blog. In her latest post, she has a strange-sounding, but valuable advice – “Bloom Where You’re Planted.” She challenges the notion of the “perfect job” that so many employees have, especially gen X & Y employees. She writes:

From a practical perspective, the perfect job – or even a better job – may not exist. The global economic crisis is certainly impacting job availability in the short-term and may do so for the longer-term as people who were otherwise intending to retire are rethinking their plans. If there’s not a way to make the current job engaging, companies are likely to have suboptimal performance.

There are ways to do things better in almost every job. Taking a job beyond it’s stated boundaries can be demanding and rewarding. Employees who are in a job that doesn’t seem challenging enough on the surface can look for ways to streamline processes, improve products, or develop new business models.

Considering the longer-term, employees with a strong and broad foundation in their business are often better equipped to move to more senior levels in an organization. With a weak foundation, the career ladder will become wobbly at some point, limiting an employee’s ability to move past a certain rung.

Employees who have first-hand experience in a variety of areas within a business can often develop win-win solutions for all stakeholders impacted by an issue. For example, a Regional Sales Director who also spent time in entry-level R&D and marketing roles is better equipped to establish and sustain an important market feedback process to inform new product development and marketing campaigns.

Truly, given the job supply in the market, it’s prudent to make best use of the available opportunities. And the way people can do it is by using their skills, knowledge and experiences to do their jobs ‘better’ – identifying new ways to do things, refining processes, removing efficiency-killing bottlenecks. And, in the long run, these innovations will pay off in different meaningful forms.

Of course, to help employees see the larger picture, leaders & people-managers need to play a key role. The days when performance dialogues were restricted to an annual performance appraisal are gone. Managers constantly need to have dialogues with their people – reviewing progress, setting goals, explaining the “what” & the “why” and providing direction about the future.

It’s really possible to create a win-win situation.

4 comments April 22, 2009

Forget About Employee Engagement!

David Zinger wrote an interesting piece titled “Why Your Organization Should Forget About Employee Engagement”. David says that organizations need not embark on the “engagement” journey if they are not “ready, willing and able” for it. Senior executives and HR need to instrospect on why they need an engagement program, how it could benefit the organization and how will this be executed. Here is a handy list of questions leaders might want to ask themselves:

Do we believe we can change engagement in this organization?

Do we have the will to improve engagement?

Do we have the skill to improve engagement?

Do we know the key variables to improve?

Do we know how to improve these key variables?

Will we allocate adequate resources (people, energy, money) to improving engagement?

Will we integrate engagement work throughout the organization or will it reside only in HR or internal communications?

Will engagement be an important line function?

Will we adequately train our leaders, managers, supervisors, and staff to improve their own engagement and the engagement of others?

This is indeed very helpful. From practical experience, I feel that there is a lot of “haziness” around the what, why and how of employee engagement. It is just not a matter of “just do it”, but also getting it right! So, if your organization is not perfectly ready for it, don’t just start off “another” initiative. David says:

Radical non-intervention may at least prevent a further deterioration of engagement scores due to cynicism. A mediocre engagement initiative may result in more cynicism, tax limited energies, or create another flavor of the month organizational program that erodes decreasing levels of faith and trust in the organization.

Very useful advice – that’s all I can say.

2 comments April 1, 2009

Talent 2.0

Let me begin with a cliche “Talent Management needs to move to the next level.” Now, what exactly is this next level? By the way, what is the current level?

Let’s say that the systems, processes and practices we have today are “Talent 1.0″. We have the antiquated recruitment systems, tired performance management tools, compensation administration, succession planning etc. all automated by heavily transactional and cumbersome software. While we have the tools and technology, the implementation is rather average. Line managers are reluctant to use these tools because these are complicated, offer little insights about talent and often appear very “admin” kind of activity. These tools are looked upon more from a “compliance” perspective rather than “business critical.”

Let’s call the next level – Talent 2.0. And I reckon a lot needs to change for us to move to this next level. A lot. So, this is how, I think, Talent 2.0 will look like:

Firstly, we need to understand that people managers are the primary interface to talent. Inherently, many managers are not so clear about how talent management works. Simply automating the talent management processes using heavy-duty enterprise software cannot yield the desired results. HR and business will integrate much better to develop a shared understanding of the talent issues.

Next, we need simple, yet powerful tools to stay connected to people. We plainly cannot rely on the enterprise software in its current form. Web applications like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc. and blogs will need to play a bigger role in communicating effectively with employees and mining rich real-time insights about employee behaviour.

Finally, the way we build our talent pipeline would need to change. CV’s and interviews are not enough – how much can you judge a person from a piece of paper and a 45 minute interaction. People would look at hiring talent from within their social networks. There is rampant interactions and sharing of ideas within social networks and employers would know people better when they recruit from these networks.

These are just some top-of-the-mind thoughts. How do you think Talent 2.0 will look like?

2 comments March 24, 2009

The Case for HR Department Blogs

Many companies aorund the world have taken to blogging. Not only we have individual business bloggers, but also one can see a lot of company blogs, team blogs and so on. (Here is one post I wrote about business blogs in India.)

Companies are actively promoting blogs because they serve as an excellent medium for sharing content, knowledge and information. Such blogs not only encourage individuals to create “content”, but also serve as an important self-development tool for the bloggers.

I have been thinking about the idea of “HR Blogs” in organizations.

My discussions with hundreds of employees and tons of employee survey data has led me to believe that employees generally feel the need for more communication from the HR department on policies, practices, guidelines etc. And, I felt that a company HR blog could be one of the media which can be used to communicate and disseminate such information. Such a platform would make the information sitting in dusty files easily accesible to employees on-demand. The blog would also help in reinforcing communication. Some sample purposed which the HR department could use the blog for could be:

Disseminate general information about programs and policies.
Share updates on upcoming training programs.
Inform employees about performance appraisls. Educate managers on best practices for conducting appraisals.
Share other best practices on people management like selection, on-boarding, goal-setting, recognition, alignment to corporate objectives, progress reviews etc.
Disseminate information about HR business partners for other divisions / departments.
Outline the role of line HR and describe how they can help.
Share information on new policies.
Use simple polls to conduct dipstick surveys.
Creating “interview” posts with employees by inviting them to share great ideas, practices and feedback.

Such a HR blog could help in getting employee opinions on many of the HR-related issues and would guide policy-making. Moreover, this will be a much more accessible and searchable repository of information.

Do you think HR blogs would make sense? How could we leverage these?

1 comment February 26, 2009

Get Rid of Performance Appraisals!

SystematicHR blog points to an extremely insightful article that appeared in The Wall Street Journal (http://tinyurl.com/5j6vrt) a few months back. The author, Samuel A. Culbert , prepares a sound case for getting rid of the process of performance reviews as practiced currently in most companies.

I have myself been a critique of performance review processes because they often lead to futile outcomes and fuel employee dissatisfaction further. I have often found myself questioning the role of these reviews in boosting individual, group and company performance, but found it a little difficult to structure some of my thoughts.

appraisal

Samuel says that:

The mind-sets held by the two participants in a performance review work at cross-purposes. The boss wants to discuss where performance needs to be improved, while the subordinate is focused on such small issues as compensation, job progression and career advancement. The boss is thinking about missed opportunities, skill limitations and relationships that could use enhancing, while the subordinate wants to put a best foot forward believing he or she is negotiating pay. All of this puts the participants at odds, talking past each other. At best, the discussion accomplishes nothing. More likely, it creates tensions that carry over to their everyday relationships.

Then there are second-order problems. A subordinate who objects to a characterization of faults runs the risk of adding another to the boss’s list: “defensiveness and resistance to critique.” And the boss who gets her mind turned around by a subordinate’s convincing argument runs the risk of having a bigger boss think she failed to hold the line on what had been decided and budgeted.

I too have often felt that performance appraisals have been reduced to tool for determining pay / bonus only, rather than being used effectively for its core purpose – performance management. And, Samuel feels that even pay-determination is not effectively done by appraisals.

Another bogus element is the idea that pay is a function of performance, and that the words being spoken in a performance review will affect pay. But usually they don’t. I believe pay is primarily determined by market forces, with most jobs placed in a pay range prior to an employee’s hiring.

Raises are then determined by the boss, and the boss’s boss, largely as a result of the marketplace or the budget. The performance review is simply the place where the boss comes up with a story to justify the predetermined pay.

Bang on!

Another element that I often think about is the issue of subjectivity vs. objectivity in appraisal process. Objectivity is possible when you have clear metrics for each role, which is not the case with many roles. And a manager’s feedback is coloured by his own world-view, perceptions, attitude, biases and agendas. Another interesting point is that performance appraisals could even act as a barrier to teamwork.

…leads to inauthentic behavior, daily deception and a ubiquitous need for subordinates to spin all facts and viewpoints in directions they believe the boss will find pleasing. It defeats any chance that the boss will hear what subordinates actually think.

To me, it appears that it is time for re-imagining the entire process of performance reviews. How do you think we could go about it?

Add comment February 18, 2009

Do you “Care”?

One of my friends showed me an SMS exchange she had with her manager:

Friend: “Hi, I am down with high fever and would not be able to make it to work today. Need to see the doctor and take some rest. Hope this is OK with you?”

Boss: “OK”

I just couldn’t help feeling bad about this insensitive response from a manager. As human beings, we have a innate need for being cared for – by our family, friends and, of couse, at work. We roughly spend 1/3rd of our time, five days a week, at work. That’s really significant. And, if the people at work don’t make you feel cared for, your morale / engagement (whatever you like to call it) is bound to be affected adversely. Most importantly, it is the ‘people manager’ who has to exemplify this behaviour. One needs to remember – it’s a “tit-for-tat” world out there. If managers don’t care for their people, it is futile to expect employees to care about their teams and more importantly, the company, thus adding to the problem of talent retention. People should not be merely looked at as “resources” or “machines”.

So, my message to people managers is that “Please start treating your team members as humans and weave genuine care-orientation into your managerial style.” It’s not difficult. We do it with our families, let’s do it with the extended family now.

5 comments February 11, 2009