Author Archives: Ben

HRevolution 2013 Closing Thoughts and Comments

I’ll keep this as brief as I can. It’s been a long few days and I’m still trying to catch my breath.

I’m always floored by people who say they read this blog. I see the stats–there’s a lot of you out there. However, it’s always interesting to meet someone face to face. Jane, you know who you are. Thanks for reading.

The session I led with Matt Charney was a success. We wanted to cover specific topics with regard to generations in the workplace, and although we didn’t prepare heavily (you normally don’t for an unconference-like event like HRevolution anyway), it went exactly as we had hoped. We helped the audience to open their eyes to the idea that maybe everything they “know” about Gen Y isn’t really as solid as they once thought.

The HR improv session was, by all accounts, pretty freaking hilarious. My only regret? I was running the A/V and wasn’t able to do videos again this year of all the presentations. Darn. Next year…

The session on “anything but HR” was a blast. I left there with some new ideas and am still trying to decide what it all means to me. Thanks to Jennifer McClure for asking some big questions.

We’re already discussing the next HRevolution. This year we had about 50% new participants. That’s amazing. And so many that I spoke with were itching to come back again. It’s tough to measure the effectiveness or success of the event quickly, or from year-to-year, but this year’s event was above par, even for our high standards.

For those of you who wanted to come but couldn’t make it, I urge you to make it happen next time. Tickets are cheap. The experience and deep questions you leave with are anything but.

Thanks again to my great teammates and to the volunteers who jumped in last minute to help this event be as successful as possible. I appreciate all of you, and I’m honored to know you.

4 Necessities for High Performing Teams

Great teams can propel organizations to new levels of success. Today we're looking at how to improve team performance with an approach that has proven results across a spectrum of cultural, geographic, and generational challenges. A few years ago The Orange Revolution was written by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton. The book focuses on great teams and where they come from. According to the authors, there are four things that skilled leaders do in order to develop great teams.

  1. Ensure the right people join
  2. Translate corporate goals into team goals
  3. Facilitate great team conduct
  4. Promote a culture of appreciation

great team blue angelsWhen looking at teambuilding through that list of requirements, it's easy to see how each of these elements can tie into the plan. Let's break it down to each individual component and discuss each in turn.

Ensure the right people join

This is the crucial first step. Especially when looking at cross-cultural teams that might involve language barriers, geographical distance, or other difficult pieces, it's important to select the correct individuals that will “mesh” with each other and be able to collaborate effectively.

Translate corporate goals into team goals

This is often one of the more difficult pieces for team members to understand. Many are familiar with individual goals, but translating those up into top level team goals and overarching corporate goals can be more challenging. The essential power of a good team comes when each member understands the unified purpose and works toward a common goal.

Facilitate great team conduct

The majority of people have worked with a team that didn't get along well. The variety of attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors in the workplace virtually guarantees that there will be occasional friction; however, a good team lead will help to reduce that friction and enable each person to contribute to their fullest abilities.

Want to learn more about leading a team? Check out How to Manage a Team.

Promote a culture of appreciation

Sometimes, a difficult piece of working with a team could be a lack of individual appreciation for a job well done. Helping each team member understand how they can provide appreciation and recognition to their peers will increase overall satisfaction within and among the group.

These four key elements to building great teams are a great reminder that there is substantial potential for great performance in a well-built team.

How to be Excellent at Work

Earlier this month I was promoted to become the HR Manager at Pinnacle, which is a lot of fun. I’m doing work I love with people I enjoy being around, so I couldn’t ask for more. This week I was talking with one of our managers and discussing what makes people successful at Pinnacle. I think it’s probably the same as most companies, but sometimes it’s hard to tell with the significant differences between large and small organizations. I wanted to share some of those thoughts here, and maybe this will help with some coaching discussions as we head into the performance appraisal season…

How to be successful

As fast as I can rattle them off:

  1. There’s no job too small. You’re never too good to do anything.
  1. Treat everyone with respect. There’s always time to help people who ask to some degree.
  2. Become known as the expert in something (or multiple things). People will want your advice, and there’s a chance they will actually take it if they solicit it up front.
  3. Do your work with excellence, but also know a little about a lot of other areas. Otherwise you’re in a vacuum and relatively ineffective.
  4. Build others up whenever you get the chance, even if they don’t reciprocate.
  5. Learn to love things that others hate. More below on this one.

Loving what others hate

The easiest non-work example I have of this is running. I absolutely love running hills. Why? Because everyone else hates them. If I practice enough, I can easily be better than others in that area, and it ultimately serves my needs of wanting to run faster/stronger.

It applies at work as well. Have a software package that everyone uses but nobody likes? Take an hour to learn the ins and outs (at least at a basic level) and next time people grumble, ask if they’ve tried x or y solution.

Learn about the biggest challenges people face and try to determine how to solve them. Even if you don’t, you’ll still learn more about the tool and how it works.

In the end, the goal isn’t to make others love it. It’s to become an indispensable piece of the workforce.

Additional reading

If any of this struck a chord with you, then I highly recommend that you check out “How to Be the Smartest Person in the Room” and “How to Become the Go To Person at Work“

Do Millennials Make The Worst Employees?

Liars. Disloyal. Prima donnas.

It’s not star athletes, folks. It’s your very own Millennial generation. So says a set of studies done in recent months surrounding the latest group of employee to hit the workplace.

I’ve debated on writing on this topic for a while, but when the latest came out about a study describing honesty as it pertains to generational boundaries, I had to jump in. I’m usually the very last person to ever talk about specific generational issues, because I really don’t believe most of the hype. However, when you’re asking a group of people to report on themselves, the results are a little more useful than the opinionated blathering of a self-proclaimed expert.

The Gap

In my opinion, the major dividing line between the generational factions up to this point hinges on what I like to call “the gap.” Here’s what I mean:

Are Millennials Team Players?

  • 60% of Millennials thought they would work well with a team
  • But 22% of HR professionals believed Millennials would make good team players

Do Millennials Have Strong Interpersonal Communication Skills?

  • 65% of Millennials responded that they relate well to others
  • 14% of HR Professionals thought that Millennials were strong communicators

Are Millennials Hard Workers?

  • 86% of Millennials identified themselves as hard workers
  • 11% of HR professionals thought Millennials would work hard

Are Millennials Able to Lead?

  • 40% of Millennials identified themselves as leaders
  • Only 9% of HR professionals believed that age group had the ability to lead

Are Millennials Loyal to Employers?

  • 82% of Millennials self-identified as being loyal to an employer
  • A mere 1% of HR professionals believed Millennials to be loyal to an employer

That’s the gap, courtesy of this study.

Now for the killer

Okay, if you only had the last set of data to go on, you can plainly see there’s a disconnect there. Now what if that was compounded by a study where Millenials admitted that they would lie to get out of a tough spot. In my profession, there are “tough” spots on a daily basis. I always assume someone is telling the truth unless they give me reason not to, but even then this type of information is stunning. To be honest, every group surveyed thought it was okay to lie to some extent, but not to the tune of 80% of the population.

A whopping 80 percent of Millennials find it acceptable to lie to avoid embarrassment, compared to 57 percent of Baby Boomers, who believe it's OK to lie their way out of an awkward scene.

What are your thoughts? Is this limited to a specific generation, or is it more widespread? Is your organization concerned about these types of studies? Why or why not?

In Depth Recruiting Training

Several months ago I was looking for some recruiting training opportunities, and I ran across a few promising offerings. I ended up not pursuing those for a variety of reasons, but I recently had an experience that gave me a different perspective on the subject.

uh-60m instructor pilotI recruit often for helicopter pilots. It’s fun, interesting, but also tough (these guys usually aren’t hanging out at the employment office). I’ve always thought it would be fun to take a ride in a Black Hawk, but it’s not easy to do since the majority of them are government/military aircraft. However, a few months back a friend was able to secure a ride for me on a UH-60M, which is the model I most often recruit pilots to fly.

The ride, in short, was amazing. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and I am so thankful for the opportunity to paricipate.

A more familiar example

My friend Michelle previously worked for a manufacturing company. A few days a month, the accounting and HR staff had to jump onto the line and help the workers get all of the work accomplished to meet their production quotas.

As the HR manager there, she learned just how important it is to ensure proper rest breaks, adequate safety measures, etc. The insights gleaned from those experiences made her a better recruiter and HR professional.

The question I have for you is how deep is your knowledge or understanding of the positions you recruit for? Can you at least carry on a conversation about the key concepts, or are you lost without another person as a translator?

My initial learning curve

It’s more embarrassing to not ask a question and look like an idiot than to ask the question and get an answer. At least that’s my philosophy, anyway. So when I started getting open requisitions for positions like “provisioners” and “UH-60M instructor pilots,” I started asking questions.

  • What does a _____ do?
  • What are a few keywords that I should look for in a resume?
  • What sort of background prepares someone to be good at this job?
  • How do you tell if someone is qualified or not?

Based on those answers, I can at least do a good preliminary review and find some qualified people. I’m still not qualified to do a full technical review of the person’s skills and abilities, but that’s why we allow technical people to participate in interviews! I think what helps me to do well as a recruiter is not necessarily my technical knowledge, but just being excited about the company, the work, and the people.

 

I’d encourage you to dig in and learn what you can about your employees’ jobs. You never know when that information will help you relate to them in a meaningful way or enhance your recruiting abilities.

Setting Employee Goals

People perform better when they feel a sense of control over their surroundings. That also ties into what I mean when I bring up the topic of a person’s locus of control. When people feel empowered, in charge, and in control, they typically do better than when they feel the opposite (powerless, uncontrolled, chaotic, etc.). Here’s the backup:

Research by BI WORLDWIDE  found that those who set their own goals perform 37% better than those who are assigned goals.

“Allowing your employees to select their own goal doesn’t mean that they select it from an entire universe of options,” said Tim Houlihan, vice president, Rewards System Group at BI WORLDWIDE.

In this study, participants were shown three levels of performance – all above their current run rate and were allowed to select which goal they were shooting for from among those three options.

We’re getting to our annual goal setting and performance review process in the next month or so, and I’m going to use this to help managers develop employee goals. We already let employees set their basic foundational goals based on career development choices, personal/professional interests, etc. Then the manager has the option to tweak or add additional content to ensure the employee is meeting the overarching business goals as well.

Using the ideas above, managers can create 2-3 “goal paths” for employees to choose from. At the end of the review period, instead of wondering how things went, the employee will have a great idea already of how well they are doing based on which set of goals they chose.

Another idea that goes hand in hand with this is setting goals almost to the level of a behaviorally anchored rating scale (BARS). Yeah, that term takes you back if you haven’t read a textbook in a while! Basically a BARS allows each job to have its own specific goals, targets, measurements, etc. It’s definitely more labor intensive, but it also spells out very clearly what expectations are for employees, what levels of performance are acceptable/unacceptable, and how the ratings will be given. Much less subjective than traditional appraisal methods, but again, it also consumes more time.

Maybe it’s a pie in the sky silly idea, or maybe (more likely) it’s used specifically for high performers to challenge them and allow them to really push the envelope with their performance. It’s hard to know at this point, but it’s certainly something worth considering.

Do you allow employees to select some or all of their own performance goals? Why or why not?

The Double Down Effect

I’ve been thinking about what I like to call the “double down effect.” It’s also known as push back, resistance to change, and a host of other terms used to describe what happens when you try to push people in a direction they don’t want to go. Instead of merely rejecting the information, they “double down” on their efforts to continue unchanged, even if it is harmful in the long run.

resistance to changeOne recent example was in the area of wellness. A company started pushing its employees to start eating right and exercising, but it was heavy-handed and not at all tailored to individual needs. Employees quickly came to resent the latest management fad/program, and they began to make a game out of eating fast food, avoiding the “recommended physical activities” under the wellness plan, etc.

What was meant to help actually ended up hurting the workforce, because any further attempts to implement a wellness program would have to not only overcome the initial hurdles, but the lingering affects of this clumsy attempt at changing a deeply-ingrained set of behaviors.

So, now what?

If you’re still with me on the concept, you’re probably wondering how to avoid getting this backlash any time a change is recommended. There’s no blanket answer, but if we’re following the example above, here are a few ideas to consider when you begin the process of planning and communicating a change to the workforce.

  • Use your key influencers. Get the informal leaders on board early, then leverage their connections to grow the movement organically. 
  • Develop a communications strategy. Throwing out an email or a flyer with no advance warning is the best way to immediately invite resistance. Instead, offer previews of what’s coming. Talk about the benefits. It’s a sales process, to sell it!
  • Offer multiple messages for different groups of people. Some employees prefer to hear news about changes from their manager. Others like to get bits and pieces and develop their own opinions. Still others prefer to discuss the ideas in groups. Provide multiple avenues for gathering information (and for goodness sake, please don’t make HR the gatekeeper for all the data!).

You’re still going to get some resistance to the change process, no matter what the change might be. If you’re looking for some additional wisdom on the topic, I’d recommend this book on change leadership that I reviewed earlier this year. Good stuff in there on this specific topic.

How do you avoid the “double down effect” with your own staff? I’d love to hear some additional tips and tricks from the field.Â