Eye on the Workforce

My last post was the start of my comments after reading an article about a book. Sounds a bit removed from the source, but it serves our purpose to find the latest best information out there to help us manage the workforce better. This particular article was written by Harvard Business School staff to promote a Harvard Business School book that helps explain the importance of effective corporate communications. I'm taking learnings from that book and applying them to effective project communications, including fixing a problem with enterprise social media not working well.

Basically, the recommendation of the book is to use a conversational approach to up, down and across sharing of information. Away with command and control messages and learning. Bring on the organizational conversation. I'm applying this concept to project communications.

I covered one of four key factors to manage in the first post: Intimacy. After establishing this factor, you are ready to move on to Interactivity where you enable the avenues of communication and get everyone involved.

•  Make sure everyone has a chance to speak in the conversation. This is where social media can help you. Use  highly interactive social media sites to interact with project workers regularly.

• If you have an internal blog make sure others can comment. If you established the first factor, then they should already feel free to comment. Start using open-ended questions to persuade others to join in the conversation.

• When you do get feedback in comments, show appreciation to those who posted, even if they disagreed. Positively reinforce those who build on ideas to create better solutions. This will get everyone to see that they can add value in these particular conversations.

• When you post in social media, make it more informal than like a directive. If you have difficulty, imagine yourself in a hallway talk or in a meeting in a small room where everyone is working together toward a single objective.

• Use this technique for continuous improvement, asking everyone where the project can be doing better to meet its objectives and company goals. Be ready to accept criticism. How you handle that will go a great way to setting you up as a successful enterprise leader.
  Do:  Show your appreciation for all feedback and state that it will be assessed and reported later (into the conversation!).
  Don't:  Become defensive and explain immediately why the undesirable situation exists.

• Keep the conversation moving. Have team leads, for example, monitor relevant conversations and post in useful areas that have slowed down in order to recharge the conversation the interaction.

• When you use ideas from interactions, publicize that fact and praise all who participated in the conversation. This goes for improvement ideas, solutions to project obstacles, just about any positive outcome.

• Build upon the conversations because participation builds ownership. Use the language of ownership in your conversations, such as "our project," and "your new solution".

And consider this:  If there is a dispersed group of business stakeholders without a single clear concept of requirements, would it be better to take what you can get documented and later continue making changes in the project or would it be better to let them build a consensus in a social media setting?

More on improving information flow and learning in your project as this series continues. Until then, keep the conversation flowing.

You need project workers to learn a lot in order to perform at optimum in your project. For example, a worker may possess useful knowledge and experience from previous projects at other organizations, but you have to make sure to fill any gaps in cultural differences, stakeholder preferences, organizational mores, standards, policies and project rules and process assets. It can be a long list.

Just dumping all this information workers at the beginning of a project is not adequate. What are the chances it will be absorbed fully and applied correctly when you need it, even if organized and accessible? Not good enough to maintain high performance and avoid project issues.

Material such as this must be learned by workers together, “processing” it in a special collective way. A new book describes how to be successful at doing this. Does it take some advanced social media feature? Must you engage a more sophisticated content management system module? Not necessarily. The title of the book gives a hint, but may be a letdown: Talk, Inc.

The message is not simply “talk it out.” There is a method to attaining effective discussions that lead to learning and improved performance. There are things you do first, so the things you do next will work. The book is actually written for leadership and enterprise-wide communications, I have used this summary to derive some tips you can use for your project communications.

Start with Intimacy . . . I was a bit concerned when I saw this particular term, but the explanation makes sense. Luckily, it did not include any awkward touching or special therapy-circle language. This is the first step to building a culture that supports information transfer.

• Promote being authentic in communications. Do it yourself by being open and honest.

• Support everyone being trustworthy in activities. Do what you can to do build trust between team members. Show your own trust in people.

• Incorporate the project team’s views in decisions and in learning within the project environment. Show that you listen. Ask questions to learn more and show better that you are an active listener. This will also be an example to others.

By doing the above, you will be laying the foundation for effective project communications, no matter what the media used. In my next post, we will look at the three other characteristics of an organization (or project) that has effective transfer of information, with plenty of tactics for you to use in your project.

Here is a list of the top policy issues HR professionals see as their biggest challenges in 2013. See if you can find the top one. The top challenge is not just slightly ahead of the others, it is far and away ahead of the others.

• Cell phone use and distracted driving
• Attendance and punctuality
• Social media
• Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)
• Computer and Internet

The FMLA has been making news for years, but that was listed as a top challenge by only 15.9%. The same percentage was added as computer and internet. Attendance and punctuality, a perennial concern, is just slightly more worrisome at 17.4%. It was surprising to me to see that cell phone use and distracted driving is the second biggest challenge on the list at 21.6%. Perhaps they are concerned that work-related accidents or deaths may come back to haunt the employer in the way of lawsuits.

The Big Concern, however, turns out to be social media policy, identified by 47.1% of HR professionals. It has long been known that executives add these features cautiously and many close them down when anything controversial occurs in the discussion (which usually occurs in about the first week).

What does this mean to you? Expect HR professionals to be updating social media policies soon. If you are a project manager who uses social media to make your projects work better, then you have to be cognizant of this concern and manage your workforce accordingly to maintain the benefits of social media.

• Make sure you know the social media rules, old or revised.
• Make sure everyone takes training provided by HR or learns otherwise about proper and improper use of social media.
• Have a discussion with your project workforce about what is constructive at work vs. what is acceptable in the "outside" social media world. There's a big difference.
• Make a special effort to ensure discussions are not abused, but that they remain open to diverse viewpoints.

FYI:  The BLR infographic on this topic.

A new standard developed by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) gives employers a guide to showing clearly how they are managing their investments in human resources. This is not just an "FYI" for you, though. You can use the factors that are measured in the standard as a gauge for your own management of human resources. You can make an informal scorecard for your organization or your project.

These are questions to ask for a quick check, but you may be able to think of more.

Factor 1:  Spending on Human Capital

• Does your org track this in any way?
• What does this tell you about investments in human resources?
• If such spending is tracked, how has it been improved recently?

Factor 2:  Ability to Retain Talent

• What is the employee turnover rate in your IT organization?
• Has this measure improved recently?
• Is it even tracked?
• Have costs to replace workers been calculated?

Factor 3:  Leadership Depth

• Does your organization have a plan to replace leaders?
• Is your organization following such a plan?
• Is there already good candidates ready to replace leaders?

Factor 4:  Leadership Quality

• Do you have standards for leadership quality?
• Do you test leaders in any way on leadership skills?
• Is there training for leaders on managing the workforce?

Factor 5:  Employee Engagement (This is an important one!)

• Do you have measures for employee engagement?
• How has this improved over time?
• If nothing official on employee engagement, are there any surveys to discover employee satisfaction? Or employee needs?
• Do you involve workers in determining if they are engaged and how they want to be engaged?

Factor 6:  Human-capital Discussion and Analysis

• Are analyses conducted of human capital in the organization?
• Are their surveys conducted to determine what skills are needed for the future and to determine what training is necessary to meet those needs
• Is there workforce planning?
• Is social media used for wide interactive discussions on employee satisfaction or needs?

If there is not much done in most of the areas above, then your project and your organization may be at risk for high turnover and low satisfaction leading to poor performance. "At risk" may even be an understatement. If poor performance is obstructing your projects, then start with the categories above and do what you can to influence improvements. Unfortunately, SHRM does not have Engagement Magicians.

Having trouble filling positions with the right people on time?  You are not alone. Like many other organizations, you might have to resort to extreme measures. In this article (registration required) IT departments report on their various strategies to get the top performers.

One problem is that for excellent candidates you will likely have to move quickly, even if you work through referrals. In this era of "full IT employment," candidates may have other offers already or may loose interest after seeing new opportunities becoming available. A good salesman knows how to close the deal quickly.

Acting quickly will also show the candidate your genuine interest and your ability to make things happen.

The solution, however, may cause you heartburn. It involves you being able to make a hiring decision (or selection decision in case of a contractor) in a matter of a few days rather than weeks, like Red Door has done as reported in the article. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you understand that during any selection process, you cannot underestimate the importance of identifying those who fit into your work culture - not something you can easily do quickly.

Consider these steps to create a "quick action team" that can work quickly if not simultaneously.

• Confirm that the standard process must be too slow. Cover yourself by talking to those in control of the hiring process and seeing if you can get their participation in creating a faster process.
• Determine who is required to make decisions. Create a simple RACI.
• Involve stakeholders in agreement to participate in a fast track selection process. Get enough involvement to cover the "culture issue."
• Develop fast track steps similar to Red Door such as

Day 1:  Initial phone screening
Day 2 (AM):  Initial interview 
Day 2 (PM):  Stakeholder/Departmental interviews
Day 3:  Social lunch with tech team and detailed reference check
Day 4:  Job Offer

This does not have to be done for every candidate (thank goodness), but when that critical candidate for the important position comes up, you have to be ready.