HR to Employee Ratio-more than just a number

Sometimes you have to stop and wonder where common sense has gone. Companies are expecting more from their HR team than ever before, but according to data gathered by XpertHR, companies are increasing the number of employees relative to the number of HR professionals. This leads to a number of trickle-down effects, but the major one is forcing those human resources employees into a more administrative function. There’s no hands-on, friendly interaction. There’s no face-to-face discussion of what the company has to offer to you as an individual.

No, it’s just an ever-increasing spiral in an attempt to decrease costs and increase efficiency. While you’ll never meet someone who’s for increasing costs and lowering efficiency, that does come with its own baggage. Recent information from Gallup puts employee disengagement higher than 25%. I know that figure is determined by a number of factors, but if there’s one thing we can push for as HR professionals, it’s the desire for companies to treat their staff like people. They aren’t machines that run endlessly. They will lose motivation over time. They will resent being treated like just another number.

So do something about it.

If you work for a company with a ratio that stifles your ability to impact the organization, try to find out what it would take to get that lower. It may not be possible overnight, but maybe there are some more administrative tasks that can be handed off to an admin so you can focus on more strategic, high-impact HR practices.

I can still remember talking with a local HR pro at a SHRM chapter meeting about how they embed HR generalists into business units to keep the HR team close to the action. For more on this topic, check out Employee to HR Ratio (with a neat infographic!).

So, what’s the ratio in your organization? Is it too much, too little, or just right? 

Hi, I’m Ben, and I’m a disengaged employee.

When we talk about disengaged employees, we look at it as a problem to be solved. In some cases (like mine), there might not be an easy solution. In case you’re wondering, I am not talking about my day job. I’m talking about a second gig I have on the side for the weekends. Read on… Continue Reading »

We are a small company, but we have employees scattered around the US. Last Friday, Mike (our CEO) and I headed down to Fort Walton Beach for our quarterly All Hands Briefing. We only have three employees there, but when we showed up, it was so much fun to see how excited they were to have us visiting. Actually, believe it or not, this was the first time either of us had ever met the employees since we took over their contract one year ago today.

Can you imagine going a year without meeting some of the key people in your organization? Me, either. 

We were there for a whirlwind tour and the short All Hands Briefing with our entire company, and it was fun to tell everyone about the great team we have down in Florida. The customer on site actually said, “They are a small team, but they’re a good team.” Tough to get better feedback than that, and it was shared face to face with the customer and the CEO, to boot!

The moral of the story? Get out of your cave and meet your people. Find out what they do. Look for ways to make life easier on them. We took the time to find out their issues and frustrations, and we’re working to solve those already (less than 2 working days since the trip). They know that we care, and they are going to remain strong supporters of us in the future.

My friend Dave has a great post on how he sometimes travels with the sales team to find out how to help them do their jobs better. Brilliant. Read through it and see if you see a parallel that you can draw to your own business/industry.

The bottom line

I can send emails, call people on the phone, and talk all I want. But nothing replaces face to face interaction with your people. I think that’s one big reason HRevolution is such a success–people crave interaction and we just give them a forum to meet and converse with one another.

Internal promotion is a valuable, yet underutilized, tool to engage employees and managers in the recruiting process, provide career growth, and save on costs associated with bringing in external talent.

As I alluded yesterday, the content covered at Hire Minds was astonishing. The first session was an interview/case study of Chipotle restaurants and how they use internal promotions and development bonuses as incentives to bring in great people and move them up through the organization as they grow. The examples below are pulled directly from that session content.

Reduce employee turnover by 64%

When they started promoting from within instead of looking for talent outside the organization, turnover for salaried managers dropped from 52% to 35%, and turnover for hourly managers dropped a whopping 64% (111% down to 47%).

HR pros often wonder if we should share succession plans with employees in case something doesn’t work out and it demoralizes them. However, in this case, all of the employees know that they are eligible for leadership positions if they are willing and able to put forth the effort.

Pay managers to mentor new leaders

As an incentive for managers within the organization to train the next generation of leaders, Chipotle offers people development bonuses of $10,000 for managers who bring someone up into a managerial position from within the ranks of the staff. Because they are rapidly growing and expanding into new markets, Chipotle is able to use these bonuses to lure seasoned veterans out to the “front.” Because the areas grow quickly, it offers the leaders multiple opportunities to earn the bonuses.

When asked by the audience how often the bonuses were paid out, he replied that Chipotle paid out over $1 million in people development bonuses in 2010. That’s significant! The bonuses are structured where the referring leader receives half up front, and half after 6 months of solid performance from the new manager candidate.

How to keep recruiters busy if you start promoting internally

Everyone in the audience laughed when a recruiter stood up and asked where his job was going if the company achieves its goal of 100% internal promotions into leadership positions. The speaker told us that since the recruiters are no longer spending their time sourcing candidates for management/leadership roles, they are working directly with store owners to develop better hiring practices for their hourly workers.

I’ve said it before–I’m a fan of internal recruiting (video) if it’s possible. Anyone else?

When I received my review copy of Carrots and Sticks Don’t Work: Building a Culture of Employee Engagement with the Principles of RESPECT by Paul Marciano, I wasn’t sure about what to expect. I’ve talked about employee engagement before, and I feel like I know a good bit about the topic.

This book took it to a whole new level.

See, the engagement stuff is usually “fuzzy.” We know it’s a good concept, but we don’t receive a lot of practical advice on how to make it work. This book covers overarching concepts that affect human psychology at work and actionable ideas for employers to use to affect employee engagement on a daily basis. And the interesting part? It’s all based on respect.

If I could boil it down to a sentence, I’d say: It doesn’t take rocket science to help someone love what they do; with a little respect and attention you can have a dramatic effect on levels of employee engagement.

A few quick points

• Giving gifts to employees doesn’t get them engaged. It just creates an entitlement mentality. (pg 30)
• Extrinsic rewards for an activity reduce its intrinsic value. (pg 32)
• Low employee engagement scores are associated with twice as many EEO complaints in one federal study mentioned in the book.

Recently I wrote a post about the cost of disengaged employees as a precursor to this short review. If you haven’t read it, you should. It’s a great preview of what sort of ideas this book can generate for you.

If you’re interested in getting this book, click here to get your own copy.

There’s a free teleseminar today that focuses on employee engagement strategies that I’m looking forward to. As I posted yesterday, I’m really excited about the opportunities that exist once you get your workforce engaged.

If you’re interested in listening in on this free resource, click here and you can learn more. But do it quickly! Patty is going to get things rolling at 1:30 Central on Tuesday, April 12th.

What you’ll learn

Patty will share with you five missing 21st century employee engagement strategies that are preventing your company from becoming the employer of choice, including:

1. The strategy missing that leads to your company’s inability to find great people.  (hint: its not about hiring expensive executive search firms!)
2. The strategy you are missing that leads to a the loss of great employees to your competitors.
3. The strategy you are missing that is keeping your revenues from soaring.
4. The strategy you are missing that leads to exorbitant training costs.
5. The strategy you are missing that is harming your company’s reputation.

If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, click here to sign up for the free call.

For those reading this after Tuesday, April 12th, the call will already be finished! Sorry!

Disengaged employees cost companies money in numerous ways. They are much more expensive to maintain than their engaged counterparts, and many organizations are working hard to find ways to help get their people engaged and more productive.

I’ve been a disengaged employee. It stinks.

I didn’t start out planning to be one. I don’t know that anyone sets their life goal as becoming a disengaged employee, but there are more of them in the workforce than we would like to admit. Here’s my story as a cautionary tale. You can turn an enthusiastic, engaged person into a disengaged, discouraged one with time.

The bright, beautiful beginning

I was excited. I was beyond pumped. I was going to knock this job out of the park. I had been researching ideas weeks before I started the job. I had a list of things I wanted to streamline and improve. I was going to make a difference and impact the organization in a big way.

And then it happened. Not suddenly. There was no explosion or flash of light. I just sort of noticed it, kind of like when you see something from the corner of your eye. It was the beginning of the end.

Where good employees go to die

You know when you start something new you can only see the good things? You see how everything works well and the positive aspects of every little detail. And then as time goes on you start to realize that there are problems, but hey, everyone has some, right? No company is perfect. And eventually those problems accumulate until they block out all else and you finally come to realize that no matter how much you do or care about your work, it doesn’t matter in the big scheme of things. I looked up one day and realized:

• I wasn’t getting any coaching or support from my manager.
• Our executive leadership was incompetent.
• Much of the workforce was unappreciated, including me.
• Fresh, new ideas? They were disregarded or ignored. Why put in extra effort for ridicule or lack of acknowledgement?
• Some of the work I was asked to do did not contribute to the organization in any meaningful way. But it was “essential” that it was completed “like we always have done it.” The best part? When the department went into a manpower crunch, some of the work just stopped being done with no discernible impact. When that happened all I could think was how many hours I had spent wasting time on something that nobody even cared about.
• Other than the executive team, nobody had much of an idea of the overall strategy or direction of the organization. It’s hard to focus your efforts to support that when you don’t know where you’re going.
• Turnover for the positions that made up about 75% of our staff was in the 50% range annually.

If that is disheartening for you to read, I can promise you that it’s much, much worse to live it out in person. But don’t you worry, I’ve come a long way since then and now work for a company that makes the other one, for lack of a better term, look like a pile of manure. My company’s culture and engaged workforce is one that other CEOs dream about.

A glimpse of “the good life”

Notice how much different these aspects are from the list above. The difference is astounding!

• My manager coaches and supports me on a daily basis.
• The executive team is open, honest, and highly connected at all levels of the organization.
• Our people are appreciated and rewarded in many ways (monetary and not) for their efforts.
• Ideas? We have a special database set up to capture them. Even ones that might not fit currently can be deferred until a later date.
• You can see a direct impact that your efforts have on the company’s direction and mission. Even in the HR/operations role I hold, that’s still true.
• Everyone has an idea and grasp of the strategy and mission of the company, and the leadership team readily shares information as it comes out about new victories and opportunities.
• Turnover… We’ve had two people voluntarily leave to go work elsewhere in the history of the company. Telling, huh?

After my experiences, I know one thing for sure. Engagement isn’t easy if you don’t already have it. It’s not about setting up a program or getting your CEO to agree to support you. I’ll talk more about what engagement looks like soon enough. I’m reading Carrots and Sticks Don’t Work by Dr. Paul Marciano. It’s an excellent book and I plan to review it soon, but I read something today about the qualities of a disengaged employee and it brought on the idea for this post. If you haven’t read the book, you are missing out. Big time.

By the way, if you haven’t seen it, check out this free eBook on employee engagement. Feel free to download, print, or just read it on your computer.