Motivation and Engagement: Hey Managers – Get Out of the Way
Posted on 10. November 2011 by Melany Gallant
Have you seen that terrific Daniel Pink (@DanielPink) video Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us?
If you haven’t, take a few minutes and watch it now. It’s really thought provoking.
RSA Animate — Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us from Daniel Pink on Vimeo.
The research Pink references shows that, once basic financial needs are met, autonomy, mastery and purpose – not money – are better motivators of performance.
Pink points out that engagement and motivation come from a sense of self-direction – of trust, and of ownership. The message for managers here is that it’s time to get out of the way.
Fostering Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose
Let your employees take on projects that interest them, that will develop their skills and challenge them to be their best. By providing employees this freedom, you give them a sense of purpose, and ultimately the outcome can be extremely beneficial to your organization.
Why are doing Performance Appraisals and Performance Management?
Posted on 30. September 2011 by Bowland SolutionsThis was a key question at a recent client meeting, where the desire was to find a new way to implement performance appraisals and performance management in a way that was productive and engaging.
We often find that when talking to clients about another area of our expertise, namely, 360 degree feedback, that this question of ‘Why are we doing this?’ is more readily discussed and easier to identify.
This is because the concept of conducting a 360 degree feedback process is a conscious decision for the organisation; it might support a leadership development programme or be part of an assesssment centre initiative – in any case, it is evaluated with a specific purpose in mind.
Getting Your Managers on Board with Talent Management – Part 2
Posted on 18. May 2011 by Melany Gallant
This is our second post in a 5-part series on ‘Getting Your Managers on Board with Talent Management’.
In our last post, we discussed how to get your managers to deliver effective feedback. Today we discuss how to get your managers to write meaningful performance reviews.
Have Performance Appraisals Lost Their Meaning?
Tips to Getting those Meaningful Performance Reviews
As HR pros, we know the importance of employee performance appraisals. We understand that they’re the linchpin for compensation, employee development, succession planning, employee engagement, and even organizational performance.
So why don’t managers always get this? Why are they inconsistent or indiscriminate with their ratings? Why do they so often complete them late? And why do some ignore the process altogether? But more importantly, what can you as an HR pro do about it?
Here are tips to address 5 common challenges HR pros face when trying to get managers to write meaningful performance reviews.
Challenge: Performance ratings given are too uniform or are inconsistent.
The Benefits of Hiring Overqualified Candidates
Posted on 17. May 2011 by Melany Gallant
“I have 10 years of experience, I have strong references, excellent connections, but I can’t find a job because I’m overqualified.”
This is the story that many newly unemployed, ‘overqualified’ job applicants know all too well. Though there is often concern that hiring someone with too much experience could be risky (the main worry being that they’ll use the job as a stepping stone until something better comes along), studies have consistently shown that the benefits of hiring an overqualified candidate far outweigh the risks!
As the American economy slowly tries to recover from its devastating financial collapse, managers face a common challenge: how to handle all the eligible candidates that come through their doors.
Let’s debunk the myth of the alleged risks in hiring overqualified candidates and look at the actual benefits of taking a chance on an overqualified contender.
But first…
What Is Overqualified?
Too educated, too experienced, we call a person overqualified when their skills and/or level of education are beyond what is necessary for a certain position.
Some of the initial concerns managers have about hiring people with too much experience include:
- Boredom. Lack of challenges may cause the overqualified worker to get bored with work and leave the company.
Getting Your Managers on Board with Talent Management – Part 1
Posted on 11. May 2011 by Melany Gallant
While I’m sure that most of your organization’s managers act with the best of intentions, you’ll probably agree that when it comes to being the frontline stewards of your talent management strategy, they often fall short.
So how do you help them be better at things like giving effective feedback, writing valuable performance appraisals, aligning and managing their employees’ goals, developing bench strength in the organization, and effectively rewarding performance?
We’ve put together a 5-part series of practical resources you can use and even share with your managers to help sharpen their skills and get them on board with your talent management initiatives.
Here’s Tip 1, as it relates to the classic ‘feedback problem’…
Negativists in the Workplace: How to Identify and Handle Negativity at Work
Posted on 29. April 2011 by Melany Gallant
Organizational negativity can take on many forms and happen for many reasons. Improper or unreasonable working conditions, lack of career advancement opportunities, or badly implemented corporate and policy changes are all reasons employees’ morale and the organization’s productivity decrease and negativity spreads.
However, the organization is not always to blame for a negative environment.
Sometimes…it’s the people.
At some point, we’ve all worked with a “Debbie Downer”, a “Lemon-Sour”, or the guy who never has anything nice to say. They are what we call negativists. Negativism, in case you didn’t know, is the habitual attitude of skepticism or resistance to the suggestions, orders, or instructions of others.
It’s a real challenge to work with people who are frequently like this, because their negativity rubs off on us. The human brain is wired to have a “negative bias“, and it reacts more strongly to stimuli it deems negative. Think about how profoundly a tragic event affects you, how long it stays imprinted in your mind. Witnessing a horrible car accident creates a surge in the brain’s electrical activity, whereas a picture of pretty flowers elicits much more neutral feelings.
In the spirit of one of our previous posts on how to handle egos in the workplace, let’s look at how to handle negativity in a work setting.
The Failure of the Annual Performance Review
Posted on 21. April 2011 by Derek Irvine, GloboforceRecognize This! – Annual feedback (if that) does little to motivate, inspire or keep employees on track.
Our semi-annual survey of U.S employees, the Globoforce® Workforce Mood Tracker™, found an overall dissatisfaction and disconnect among U.S. employees regarding both the frequency and effectiveness of performance reviews. (Read the news.)
• 53% received a performance review annually
• An alarming 22 percent reported never having a review at all.
• 24% dread the annual review more than anything else
A measly 7% receive monthly reviews of their work. When you look at all of that, it’s clear that companies have substantial motivational issues on their hands at performance review time. And who can blame the employees or the managers who have to review them? As our CEO, Eric Mosley, said in a press release last week on this topic:
“Providing employees with feedback and recognition only once a year is not only unfair, it minimizes the importance of each and every one of those people to the organization. An ongoing, 365-day review process that accurately measures employees’ year-round performance not only displays achievements, it uncovers the true leaders and influencers across the organization. This type of approach, driven by a strategic recognition program, provides employees with the feedback, appreciation, and direction they need to approach their peak performance level.”
Incentives For Their Own Sake?
Posted on 20. April 2011 by Chuck Csizmar
It’s fairly common these days to find articles written by those who advocate increasing the eligibility of employee incentives. Their recommendation is to push inclusion further and further down the organization’s hierarchy. What a grand concept! Everybody wins, right? The argument is that all employees affect a company’s success, that each and every will chase the almighty dollar of variable pay, and that the opportunity for ever larger rewards will motivate them to do great things. All of which would, in turn, deliver improved financial results for the company’s bottom line.
Maybe.
And maybe it’s not such a good idea after all, when you think on it. Perhaps it’s a bit of a crap shoot as to whether the corresponding higher compensation costs (which would be a certainty) will result in improved financial gains (possible, but certainly not a slam-dunk). Let’s take a look at the challenges to be faced when you consider a broader eligibility for your annual incentive program.
Top 5 Critical HR Priorities: #5 Performance, Planning, HR Effectiveness
Posted on 8. April 2011 by Derek Irvine, GloboforceRecognize This! – HR priorities are many. Solving one can be the solution to many others.
Concluding my week-long series on the Top 5 Critical HR Priorities for 2011 from the Corporate Leadership Council HR global agenda poll, is a tie!
Priority 5 for HR in 2011: A Tie! — Improving Employee Performance, Workforce Planning, Improving Strategic Effectiveness of HR
Improving Employee Performance has a lot to do with management of the company culture itself. Two research studies on this topic seem to contradict each other. The first argues changing culture is hard because it’s “sacred.” If you break culture down into climate, and then into habits, change becomes easier because are more willing to change habits. Based on brain science, the second study argues habits are, in fact, hard to change because doing so is actually painful, requiring a conscious override of “deeply comfortable neuronal circuitry. But (and this is a critical point I think the first researcher would also agree with):
“Therefore, to engender change among people in an organization, it’s important to keep attention focused on the desired end state, not on avoiding problems. This goal-directed positive reinforcement must take place over and over. The most effective way to achieve this is to set up practices and processes that make it easy for people to do the right thing until it becomes not only second nature, but an ethic taken to heart (and to the brain) by the entire company.”
Manage Performance, Don’t Mangle It
Posted on 6. April 2011 by Erik Samdahl
How did we get to a point where the term performance management instills fear and dread at its mere utterance? Employees tend to loathe the process, which is commonly perceived to be little more than a vapid popularity contest that does nothing to recognize their work, yet determines their pay for the next year. Managers see it as a huge time suck that culminates in a series of uncomfortable conversations and confrontations they would rather not endure.
At its core, the concept of managing performance makes complete sense. Any organization worth working for wants to ensure that its employees are focusing on the right things, achieving strategic goals and improving their performance. All of these factors directly affect organizational performance. Giving employees feedback on how they are doing helps them improve, offers managers insight into their teams and provides leadership with an overview of the talent they have at their disposal.
So what happened?
7 Best Practices for Managing Remote Employees
Posted on 6. April 2011 by Melany Gallant
In today’s wired world, information can reach many places at once, in real-time, and this has had a radical effect on the way business is conducted today. Given the proper resources, a computer, an Internet connection and access to the company’s internal network, many people can and are opting to work from home or other remote locations.
In fact, a Microsoft 2010 U.S. Remote Working Research Summary showed that 62 percent of people surveyed believed they could fill their job duties at a remote location.
And, according to the Telework Research Network:
- 20 to 30 million Americans currently work from home at least one day a week
- 15 to 20 million are road warriors / mobile workers (work at least 10 hours per week away from home and from their main place of work, e.g. on business trips, in the field and use online computer connections when doing so)
- 10 to 15 million run home businesses
- 15 to 20 million work at home part-time (with about half doing so 1-2 days a week; and about 3 million are based at home full-time (including self-employed)
Working remotely offers many benefits for employers, employees and even the environment. Fewer commuters on the roads means reduced fuel consumption, traffic congestion and air pollution. According to a report released by the American Electronics Association, an estimated 1.35 billion gallons of gasoline could be conserved annually if every U.S. worker with the ability to telecommute did so 1.6 days per week.
How Good is Your Performance Data?
Posted on 4. April 2011 by Cathy Martin
For many of my readers, you know that I am a huge proponent of analyzing performance data combined with other HR and customer data to increase organizational and individual performance.
6 Common Questions About HR Metrics Answered
Posted on 29. March 2011 by Melany Gallant
As an HR professional, you collect a wealth of talent data. And no matter how that data is stored – in filing cabinets, spreadsheets or through an automated system – you need to measure and analyze the right data to effectively assess how employees are performing against corporate objectives.
To do that, you need to first determine which talent metrics are most important to your business.
In February, I had the pleasure of co-hosting an HR.com webinar on making talent management metrics matter with Cathy Martin-Missildine, Principal and Co-Founder of Intellectual Capital Consulting.
Cathy is a sought-out speaker and expert in strategic Human Resources Management and we’re pleased to have her keynote Halogen Software’s Sixth Annual User Conference this September.
In this post, I chat with Cathy about six common questions related to establishing and using HR metrics strategically.
Sean (S): What are some common mistakes people make when trying to establish HR Metrics?
Improving Employee Performance In 3 Simple Steps: A Restaurant Case Study
Posted on 16. March 2011 by Melany GallantThe following is a guest post by Greg McGuire, editor of food services blog The Back Burner. In this post Greg discusses how restaurants can maximize employee performance by creating a corporate culture that reduces turnover and encourages excellence in service.
Restaurants face some unique challenges when it comes to achieving high employee performance. The average employee is younger and more likely to be receiving an education for something besides a career in food service than most other industries. The work can also be physically uncomfortable and much more stressful than many other jobs.
These factors mean turnover tends to be much higher in the restaurant business, and high turnover makes the job of keeping employees motivated and performing at a high level much more difficult.
That doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Restaurants that have weathered the recession of the last few years the most successfully, have done so in part because they have taken the time to get the most out of their employees.
Leadership Development: Strong, Skilled, Successful
Posted on 8. March 2011 by Melany Gallant
The following is a guest post by leadership consultant and award-winning author Sylvia Lafair. In this post, Sylvia discusses leadership development and the qualities and characteristics of effective leaders.
Investing in leadership development is critical for today’s climate of constant change, continued complexity, crises, and challenges.
The big question is how to prioritize and underline the characteristics most important for an effective 21st Century leader to take charge and lead his or her organization.
Leadership Skills – What really needs to be developed?
In simpler times we could say that to bring out the best in the brightest and to enhance natural talent, there would be a yearlong immersion into personal as well as professional development. Now, the speed of change makes that a luxury no longer appropriate.
