Ron Ulrici
Ron Ulrici is currently an HR/Management Consultant. He has over 30 years experience in the field and holds a Masters Degree in Human Relations. His book, "The Way Book" is aimed at helping HR professionals jump into the mainstream of their organizations and play an influential role at the table.
Performance Appraisals – Why Do We Do Them?
So, why do we do performance appraisals? I have been around for quite awhile and I’m still not sure. Let’s review the traditional reasons HR tells line managers…
1. People need to know where they stand. Really? You mean to tell me you don’t talk to your employees everyday? You are not constantly playing the role of coach and counselor? If you tell them once a year in a performance review meeting, that will suffice?
2. Employees need to know what they are doing well. This is true, but you should be telling them when they do it, not a year later.
3. Employees need to know where they need to improve. One more time – you are going to wait a year to inform them of a performance issue?
4. You need a documented performance appraisal in order to determine a salary increase. Even Human Resource people have different views on this one. I’ve worked in HR departments where they separated the timing of the review and the merit increase just because they didn’t want to associate one with the other. Also, there has been countless studies that show most performance appraisal ratings are skewed upwards which doesn’t allow for objective criteria for determining salary increases.
5. You can’t fire someone unless you have documented evidence. How many times do managers walk into the HR office and ask to terminate someone for bad performance when all the appraisals in the file show no evidence of it? A lot.
I’m still not sure why we do performance appraisals. It gives Human Resource people something to do?
“Managers As Servants” Is Still A Great Concept
Remember the concept that managers are servants to their employees? The concept works well when you turn the organization chart upside down. In this form, you can see who is really serving the customers – your people who are making the product or providing the service.
It then makes it easy to see that our role as managers is to provide the support and service to our people so that they can better serve our end customers. We are no longer “supervisors.” We hire the right people, provide them with the right tools and then get the heck out of their way. Tools are encouragement, software, training, coaching and efficient processes.
It is also important for us to involve them in the decision-making along the way. Involvement gets their ownership and their commitment to provide over-the-top customer service. Oh, and be sure to tell them what the end-customer wants – they need to know. In the electronics industry, we used to periodically send some of our assemblers or other operations personnel to our customer sites along with the sales people so that they could taste and feel the customer.
The Union Suicide Mission Continues
I’ve thought many times over the years about the folks in the Rust Belt and all other places where manufacturing used to rule. I have to wonder if maybe, just maybe, they wished that their union would have been more flexible, more giving than taking so that their livelihoods might still be intact today.
One more casualty is about to happen. Harley Davidson is considering a move out of Milwaukee which would jeoparidize almost 2000 jobs. Our beloved U.S.A. Motorcylce company just needs the union to make concessions, but they won’t even return the company’s phone calls. This type of arrogance will only harm their members.
Milwaukee is als0 the city which used to be known as the beer producing capitol. Schlitz Brewing claimed that they made Milwaukee famous, but that was before their union problems drove them out of business.
If you’ve read my blog entries in the past, you would know that I also hold the Labor Relations personnel accountable for the demise of manufacturing in this country. Most of the time, Human Resources in these unionized companies have not done their companies a favor by giving away the store.
I feel sad every time a manufacturing company bites the dust – not just for the company and the employees, but for our entire country.
Lessons From The Movies Part 2
I just watched Invictus, the movie about President Mandela using the 1995 Rugby World Cup to unite his country. His challenge was to alleviate the white citizens’ fears while not losing the black citizens support. The South African Sports Committee had already moved to eliminate the Rugby team’s name and colors because they signified apartheid to the committee and to the black populace who rooted against their own home team. Mandela reversed their decision and subsequently encouraged the team to improve so that they could win the cup. He felt strongly that his country needed a big win for national self-esteem and he needed both sides to participate.
The “Nelson Mandela Model” should be the basis for every company takeover or corporate merger. He wisely knew how important symbolism is to human beings. We treasure our logos, history and lore. I learned early on from Dr. Charles Hughes that the best thing to do in a “takeover” is to preserve as many of the policies, procedures, logos, mores, customs and values of the previous regime. Without this type of respect in action, resentment is sure to set in.
This Oldie Is Still A Goodie
The year is 1896. General Electric is one of the 12 companies listed on the DOW. Besides still being listed on the DOW, GE was considered the largest company in the world by Forbes magazine in 2009. General Electric has over 304,000 employees. In the depth of the current recession, GE earned $30 billion. Even during these dark times, the company is still spending a large percentage of it’s revenue on research and development. The company also knows how to use PR to the max by positioning itself as a green company. They call this initiative “ecomagination.” President Obama uses Immelt as one of his financial advisors.
What is the constant factor that has kept GE in a lead position for over 100 years? Good Management. Jeffrey Immelt credits much of his company’s success to their leadership program – LIG (Leadership, Innovation and Growth). Immelt tasks his managers to “Drive change and develop other leaders.”
They’re Playing My Song, Ma
Regarding “inspiration as worker incentive,” Consultant Dov Seidman states that companies are still “asking employees to play by the rules, to follow company policies and using just carrots and sticks to compel or incent them to do so (perform) is a system that is fraying and showing its limitations – especially in a recession when there are fewer carrots to go around.” His suggestion is…”not to get leadership and culture through governance, but to get governance through leadership and culture.” He goes on to say, “I think we have entered the era of inspiration. When you are inspired, you are acting from within. You are guided by beliefs that you hold to be fundamental. You’re pursuing a mission that you think is worthy of your dedication.”
Dov, we have always been in the era of inspiration whether management knows it or not. Intrinsic motivation has always been the most powerful incentive. It is just that most managers I’ve known believed that workers will only jump through their hoops for financial or material rewards. They regarded anything else has “touchy-feely” nonsense foisted upon them by those Human Resource people.
You Don’t Fire Your Kids
Layoffs do not only hurt those employees hitting the street, they also hurt the companies as indicated in the latest research. The data tells us that the companies which cut the deepest deliver smaller profits and weaker stock returns as long as nine years after a recession.
The report actually gave a reason – these companies can’t ramp up as quickly once a recovery begins. Makes sense.
However, my experience has told me that most companies that reduce their workforce are more hurt because of a loss in a level of trust from their remaining employees. The guy or gal who is left behind has to be thinking, “Am I next?”
Another observation from my time in the trenches – employee productivity goes down after a layoff. When you would think that employees would work harder to avoid the axe, they generally don’t. I believe that their motivation suffers because they no longer believe in the company like they used to – loyalty takes a hit.
Many companies tell their people that they are like a family. Well…. when your real family has a financial setback, you don’t fire your kids.
HR As Employee Advocates, Oops, Not So Fast
A recent article penned by Jim Redon stated that HR “…is not always your advocate. Employees often turn to HR if they’re having a problem with manager, but they don’t always come away satisfied…employees should realize that HR answers to the company…HR is a spear carrier for the boss.”
It’s Time To Put The Performance Review Out Of It’s Misery
“It’s time to put the performance review out of it’s misery,” claims Samuel A. Culbert in a recent article. He goes on to say that the performance review is a “pretentious practice that produces absolutely nothing.” Mr. Culbert also presents an alternative method where the boss is held accountable for the success of the employee. He encourages conversations between the two where the manager asks the employee, “What do you need from me to deliver what we are both on the firing line to produce?”
Labor Relations “Professionals” Keep On Hurting Us
You’ve heard me cast dispersions on the Labor Relations people at the auto makers. You know, how they gave the store away to the union and caused the demise of the auto industry. Well, the same Labor Relations folks are alive and well and doing their “roll-over” act in our local, state and federal governments.
Let’s take, for example, my home state of California….
San Luis Obispo County Supervisor, Adam Hill, said during a pension presentation at a board meeting, “The old joke that GM is just a health insurance company that makes cars on the side is not a joke. My concern is that the county government is becoming a pension provider that provides government services on the side.” What Mr. Hill was referring to is the fact that his county will pay 5X as much on pensions as it does on prosecuting criminals.
How To De-Incentivize
We can certainly learn from the government on how to de-incentivize people. For example, Roberta Hanson searched for work for 22 months. She finally landed a part time position which paid her minimum wage. Unfortunately for her, the State reduced her unemployment stipend from $483 per week to zero. Thanks to the system, Roberta took a drastic paycut by going to work and she regrets ever landing her job.
One More Time: What Motivates Employees?
Yet another survey has asked the question: What motivates employees? 600 managers surveyed previously thought it had to do with recognition and incentives, but a new multi-year study has shown that it is…
Making headway in their work.
People get annoyed when they are spinning their wheels. They want to make progress on their job. They want to achieve their goals, solve problems and accomplish their tasks. I personally think that employees have to love what they are doing in the first place, but I can understand the results of the survey – I have always felt great when I was able to get things done in the performance of my job.
This also coincides with what I have always coached managers to do: Hire the right people, give them the right tools, remove obstacles and get the heck out of their way. It really is that simple (just hard to do).
Maybe We Don’t Belong At The Table
Did you see Michael Lewis on 60 Minutes last night? Mr. Lewis has written a book on the financial collapse on Wall Street and I think he nailed the core issues. He stated that, “The incentives for people on Wall Street got so screwed up, that the people who worked there became blinded to their own long term interests….it was a story of mass delusion.”
From a Human Resources point of view, I was interested about his comments on the bonuses that are paid at the major financial organizations. As a bond trader in his twenties, he was awarded bonuses in excess of $100K and he had no idea why. Michael said that if asked, the HR department at Goldman Sachs would tell you that they have to pay these bonuses because their employees would go across the street to Morgan Stanley if they didn’t.
Sex Still Matters
Sex still matters; I guess. 78% of the jobs lost in this recession were held the male sex while, at the same time, women’s wages rose 1.2% .
Roxanne Rivera wrote an article describing why women have fared better during these difficult times. She gave a variety of reasons for her opinion:
Women multitask and work harder than men because they feel that they have to. They do not measure their self worth by their jobs. They build stronger support networks, do business by relationshiops and aren’t aftaid to tighten their belts. Women lead by consensus and know how to strenghen their bench. They also are not afraid to ask for advice.
Wow. I know a lot of guys who lost their jobs and they aren’t faring well, but neither are the women.
Being in the Human Resources field for some time, I’ve gotten very weary of articles, books and other media that separate us more than unite us. I thought by now we would be blind to color, gender, and whatever else that makes us look different from others. Well, so much for this fantasy becoming a reality. What a shame.
Dilbert Nails It Again
Pointy Haired Boss to Junior Engineer: “Asok, the company isn’t growing, and no one is quitting in this economy. Your only hope for promotion is if a senior engineer dies.”
Dilbert to Wally with Asok listening in: “I joined a Gym.”
Asok screaming: “No-ooo!”
So….Human Resources – Are you listening? Dilbert should be required reading for all of us in the field. In this particular case, I’m reminded of…
compensation schemes that create numerous levels of job categories with slight changes in requirements and duties. Most of these levels are established to supply “promotional opportunities” to folks (not really promotions, just excuses to get more money for people outside the regular merit cycle).
