Eye on the Workforce

We are all trying to do more with less. That is made more urgent as we have learned in reports in 2010 (summarized in this blog) that workers will not be satisfied with their jobs unless they receive certain attention and development. But attention and development can be difficult to provide in the anemic economic environment in which we work. Who has time?  When can you spare workers?

Your best employees may be looking for other "better" positions as the economy improves.  It's unlikely you will be able to replace them with a new best worker, so it's time to do even more with less. How can you get these employees additional career benefits to improve their job satisfaction so that  they will remain in their job?

Everything old can be new again. Mentoring can give these employees the attention and development they crave quickly with little impact on your project - or your To Do list. They get a mentor, you stop worrying.

• If your best people need to see that their career has a future in your organization, their mentor help clarify that road map.
• If your best employees need help to find challenging opportunities, their mentor can let them know what is available.
• If your best workers need someone who can supply them with insights that will help them become a more valuable asset to the organization, their mentor can do that.

Mentoring is more sophisticated than coaching and should be a key part of an organization's plan to succeed in the marketplace. It will build effective leaders (and we all know about the dearth in that area).

There is more basic information here and here, but mentoring has been around for a long time. The point here is that you should consider starting or reinvigorating mentoring efforts to retain workers who may move to other companies. If you are not sure how to proceed, check with an HR representative . There may be some type of program already in place, just needing to be dusted off.

In 2011, we should all be experiencing our share of organizational change. It may be driven by mergers and acquisitions or by adaptations to competitive markets or by executives' striving for better performance or by something else from a long list of drivers. As a change manager and leader yourself, how do you design your communications to the workforce? Do you assume that what you are changing from was stable and that your workforce must survive a period until  it reaches a new stability with new org charts, relationships and processes?

You might have seen that organizational change model where there is a block of ice representing the organization. Organizational change is where this block has to melt and reform into another block. Employees are warned that there will a period where the organization is adjusting and that they must be patient and active participants.

In this paper in the Organization Science Journal, the authors take a different position. Forget about states of organizational constancy and steadiness, they say. Instead, embrace the organization itself as a pattern created by adaptation to constant change.

What does this mean to your communications related to managing the change?

• Don't try to convince your workforce that the organization you are leaving has been some kind of refuge or standard. The organization simply must do what it always has and adjust its pattern to the current environment.

• Don't do anything to suggest the previous processes were superior in any way. The only way to judge superiority of processes at any time is how well they enable you to be successful in the marketplace. That ability changes over time for internal and external reasons.

Consider this kind of phrasing: 

"The most recent organizational changes have been designed to allow us to succeed in the marketplace. If we succeed we are more likely to capture additional market share and each of us can continue build our careers. We want you to be an active participant  as we refine our processes in this latest iteration. This is your opportunity to help reduce friction among groups you work with and get work done more efficiently."

News continues to trickle in that the economy is improving slowly, and there are those in your organization who are looking to take advantage of this improvement.

Who are they? That answer in a second.

But first, answer these questions for yourself. During the Great Recession, have you experienced...

• Organizational leaders exhibiting behaviors that have made you lose trust in them?
• Lack of transparency in leader's communications?
• Being treated unfairly or unethically by your employer?

These questions matter. The factors noted are the top three reasons given by employees to seek new jobs as the economy improves (48%, 46%, 40% respectively). I would wager that your organizational leaders have had many opportunities during the extensive economic downturn to at least appear guilty of one of those factors.

So prepare for project workers to jump ship as soon as they can. You'll want to focus most of your effort on retaining top performers. To supplement anything that your organization is doing, you have some options. Among them

• Develop a better relationship with top performers with regular two-way interactive meetings (see recent blog entries on performance appraisal alternative)
• Find out the source of their work frustrations and help eliminate these
• Help with their career development
• Be honest and open as much as possible about your project, doing what you can to counter any untrustworthy behavior exhibited by organizational leaders.
   

Your behavior can be the reason a top performing worker stays in your project even though organizational leaders appear to be unfair, untrustworthy or unethical.

This video summarizes a World of Work survey related to a hot topic here in the Eye.

While human resource professionals responded that 91% have a formal performance management process (a.k.a. periodic performance reviews), most gave their program a C or worse. The basic reason why has been discussed recently here in the Eye, so we are not surprised to see that there is a sense of mistrust in the ranks of the HR professionals:  Only 30% say they trust the performance management system. (Probably because they are also victims of the process.)

When asked for details, HR specialists responded that the top concern is that performance management discussions are still poorly executed by the manager. It appears that, even after all these years, these conversations are still not going well. Imagine!

One speaker in the video says there must be discipline in measurements before the program can be successful. That will only go so far, because the real problem is that the whole process is weighted against the worker.

Rather than continuing to complain about this situation (which does not appear to be ending anytime soon) it behooves us to identify ways to counteract problems resulting from periodic performance reviews, to find something that you specifically can do in your project. You need reasonable interventions that allow workers to receive effective feedback, maintain professional growth, and  feel a sense of trust in the project environment. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Use meetings as a forum to provide detailed positive and constructive feedback between participants to fill in the gap left by managers/supervisors.
• Promote your issues list to be a safe place for all issues (and make sure it is so). This will ensure that workers feel that obstacles to excellent performance are being recorded, much better than waiting a year to be surprised that they are being blamed for 12 months of poor performance.
• Make a special effort to use your influence to resolve worker-identified issues that seem to be from functional areas, but do affect the success of your project. Let workers know you are doing so. You don't have to be successful to build trust.
• Find out what support (training, expert guidance, etc) workers need and do what you can to provide support that in your project.

You don't always have to be at the mercy of other managers' failings or the inadequacy of the periodic performence review process. You can take steps to create a project climate that builds trust - and performance.

 Compensation looks to be going up in 2011 and you may need to keep an eye on your best people.

First, how do we know compensation is going up? Multiple surveys (Towers Watson & Co, Mercer, Hay Group and the Conference Board) have determined that median/average increases will be somewhere between 2.7 and 3 percent. That’s more than the last couple of years. A special report in Workforce Magazine, describes this as a “thaw” in compensation.

What does this mean? Is it good news for your project? The answer depends on what employers and employees think of the change. When employers are surveyed,

• 83% say that increased compensation affects retention
• 48% say that greater job security affects retention
• 56% say that more flexible hours affects retention

 Do employees agree? How far off (in percentage terms) do you think employers are from their employees?  When employees are surveyed

• 10% more employees than employers said that increased compensation affect retention
• 39% more employees than employers said that greater job security affects retention
• 24% more employees than employers thought that more flexible hours affected retention

Employers generally underestimate the impact of these factors. That means employers can be surprised by an exodus of workers when the stars align correctly.

US companies froze pay and reduced workforces more than other countries have over the last couple of years. In the near future, US companies are likely to maintain an emphasis on paying more for the highest performers, but they will also restrict salary increases for everyone else.

 So how will this affect your project? When other companies start raising salaries, your project workers are going to be interested. When other companies stop layoffs and start hiring, your project workers are going to be checking into job postings. When other companies start promoting their new flexible hours to attract the best performers, your best people will have a hard time rationalizing why they should stay put.

 It will take a while for the economy to start humming again, but this in no reason to become complacent about your workforce. Industries that have already started growing will be looking to poach your high performers - and your organization may be underestimating what it will take to keep them home.