Philosophizing

Photo: NIOSH, Public Domain,
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39802192

This week more than most, I have had time to talk to companies about their philosophy toward employees and the role of HR. So I thought I would take a minute to share the basics of my own.

• Our employees are potentially the single greatest competitive advantage we have. If that isn't true in your workplace, it's on the company's leadership.
• Most employees want to do a good job; many want to do a great job. Only the very rare individual stays up nights thinking of ways to make your life miserable.
• Respect, civility, and fun make any workplace better.
• Employees model their leadership, so choose your models wisely.
• Maximum transparency is best. What employees don't know about the employer's motivations and actions, they make up. What they imagine is never good for the employer.
• Honesty truly is the best policy. But if you make a habit of shooting the messenger, you won't get it.
• HR's job is to help the organization take advantage of the enormous talent of the workforce in order to achieve the organization's goals. Not to be the compliance Nazi or party central. Compliance and fun are important, in small doses. They should comprise a very small slice of HR's time.

Penny's Top 7 Best Practices

In the last blog post, I talked about the Top 10 employment law mistakes. That blog was focused on compliance. Compliance is not my favorite thing about HR. You do compliance because you have to. It is a cost avoidance/risk management strategy. But compliance doesn't make you money. In fact, it costs you money--you just hope it is less than you would have lost without it.

Today, I want to talk about what types of HR practices can make you money. HR isn't thought of as a revenue-generating activity. It is seen as a cost. And it is true, that by itself, HR doesn't produce any products or services your customers buy. But I can tell you for certain, that your HR practices have a huge impact upon whether your company is successful because people matter.

So here are my Top 7 HR best practices that can make a real difference in your organization's profitability (and make it a better place to work.) My personal opinion is, "Grow Your People, Grow Your Business." Hence the graphic for this blog post.

1. Pay close attention to culture. Culture is what tells people what is really important, regardless of what your policies might say. It is really more of a leadership responsibility, but have no doubt that your HR policies can support the culture you want or they can undermine it. Consider a culture audit--if you are serious about building and sustaining a culture of a certain type, you have got to pay attention all the time. The foundation of a growth culture is trust.

2. Have the right kind of HR. Most HR departments tend to be one of two types. They are either all compliance all the time or they are what I think of as "tea and sympathy" HR--we want to make the employees happy. Most of the time, I don't fault the HR person--they respond with what they think leadership wants. Many companies have additional duty HR. These people were never trained in HR and have other responsibilities. HR is just an extra piled on to an already busy workload. In my opinion, you need people with superior interpersonal skills (especially in the coaching area), strong professional knowledge, and a business mindset. They should be thinking all the time, how can I help this workcenter be more productive? How can I help the employees be better at their jobs? What would have the most impact on revenue?

3. Hire right. If we hired right in the first place, we could prevent the majority of our people problems. I am not talking just about hiring right off the street--I am including internal promotions/transfers in this. None of us have a crystal ball. We are not going to choose the right person every time. But we can improve our odds by using a solid process. The topic for another post.

4. Not all employees are created equal--they are not interchangeable. We tend to treat employees as if they are interchangeable cogs. We treat employees as disposable. Somehow we have developed the notion that we can pick up a spare part any time we need one.  That's pure B.S. There are very real differences in knowledge, skills and motivation. If you pay attention, some employees make fewer mistakes, sell more, and are valued by your customers. This is worth something. Don't be afraid to pay for that.

5. Invest in your employees--especially your supervisors. Employees should be an investment, not an expense. I hear it all the time, "I'm not going to pay for that training because Joe could go to the training and then quit. I would be flushing my money down the toilet. Why should I pay for him to find a better job?" First, I pay for it because he will be better at his job while he is working for me. Next, I plan to be the best job whenever possible, so he doesn't leave. If you have limited dollars to spend, the single place where you can have the most impact is at the first level supervisor. If you invest nowhere else, invest there.

6. Listen. We don't always have all the answers. We don't even have the best answers. The people who know the most about what our customers want are those who interact with them every day. The people who know how messed up our processes are do the job every day. Get over yourself. Listen and learn.

7. Be fair (that doesn't mean exactly the same.) Employees value fairness. Management often thinks being fair means treating everyone exactly the same. It doesn't. Treating people exactly the same can be very unfair. If Sally makes you 25% more money than the average worker, why should she make the same amount of money as the loser who makes you 10% less than the average? Fairness does mean I need to lay out my expectations and hold people accountable. I need to tell people how they are judged and what I use as my yardstick to determine how I decide what to pay, but that doesn't mean we all have to be paid the same. I find employees to be okay with different treatment for different people as long as they can make the connection between that treatment and the standard. hey don't trust smoke and mirrors.

So there are my Top 7. Obviously there are a lot of other things you can do. But if you can focus on these, the rest will be easy.

Cutting Off Our Nose to Spite Our Face

I'm sure you're all familiar with the phrase, "Cutting off your nose to spite your face." Nowhere is that more evident than companies that do not invest in and grow their talent pool.

Managers carefully consider investments in facilities, equipment and technology and spend millions to purchase what they feel they need to make their businesses more efficient, their services more effective, or their product/service more appealing in the marketplace. But mention spending money on people, and the wall goes up.

I can understand some of that: it is hard to quantify exactly what people bring to the table in terms of profitability. With few exceptions, companies make no attempt to figure that out--it doesn't show up on the balance sheet. People are reflected as a cost only.

The excuse I hear most often however is, if I invest in an employee and they leave, I have lost that investment. And they are absolutely right. Which leads to the questions: Why do they leave and how can I prevent it?

We don't have space/time to tackle all of that today, but let's start the discussion with taking a purely anecdotal approach--we can flesh out some hard data in future posts. Have you left a company because of poor customer service? Do you stay with one company over another because you trust the people you interact with? Do you have some employees who work circles around others in your company? Are there key people that would leave a gaping hole in your capabilities if they left?

My guess is you answered 'Yes" to one or more of these questions. Probably all of them. Which points out the importance of people in your organization. The people you have, their capabilities and their interactions with your customers directly impact your bottom line.

When we buy new equipment or facilities, we carefully evaluate our options. We make sure we have the right environment and supplies to ensure we get the best performance from our investment. And we provide ongoing maintenance and occasional refurbishment.

We treat our people differently. We often have a poor methodology to determine the type of people we need (I am not talking just technical skills here--I am focusing on the entire package of competencies.) We don't invest the time or effort into the hiring process we should. We don't have a process to get employees up to speed as quickly as possible and we don't invest to keep their skills sharp. We use them up, throw them out (or they leave) and we repeat the cycle. So because we don't want to take a chance we will spend some money and the employee leave, we purposely leave ourselves open to poor customer service, poor quality, and low productivity. This is classic cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face mentality. You're planning for mediocrity, and you'll absolutely get mediocrity.

But as a consumer, I'm not looking for mediocrity, especially for products and services that are important to me. I need vendors I can rely on. Are you one?

There is No Such Thing as Pixie Dust

In my practice, I work a lot with organizational leaders and do quite a bit of training. I enjoy it. However, I sometimes get the impression that management looks at training as a shot of pixie dust. Sprinkle a little bit on their people and performance magically changes.

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as pixie dust. If I had pixie dust that worked like that, I would be a gazillionaire. But I'm not.

There is a good reason for training. It can impart new knowledge. However, to change behavior (which is often the desired result), training has to be combined with organizational support, most importantly manager coaching, to reinforce the desired change.

As a consultant, I am rarely with the organization after the training. I am in, do the training, and leave. I always tell the organization that follow-on support from organizational leaders is required, but I am not there to help ensure that takes place. That bothers me, because I know how important the follow-on is and how seldom it happens.

If you are trying to achieve a change in behavior that leads to improved results, training is an important piece of the game plan. However, the organization also needs to look at what policies and systems are in place that may support or obstruct the desired change. In addition, you need to ensure managers have the appropriate coaching skills and support the change. They, especially first-line supervisors, are key to translating the knowledge gained in training to changes in behavior, which leads to improved results.

The bottom line: there is no magic pixie dust. Changes in behavior and improved results require training, coaching and organizational policies and procedures that support the behavior desired. That requires a plan and some hard work.

Sorry, Real Leaders Do Fire People

Liz Ryan's blog post, "Real Leaders Don't Fire People" got a lot of play on Twitter when it was published. Always on the lookout for leading edge thought on leadership and HR, I read the post and admittedly was turned off by the message. However, I did think there were some important points in the post, so I tweeted it myself.

Sometimes, the fact that we are uncomfortable with a point of view doesn't mean it isn't correct. So when I agree with some points but am still turned off by the message, I have to think about it for a little while. If I agree with the subpoints, what is wrong with the overall message? The bottom line is I believe absolutely that real leaders do (and should) fire people. Less often perhaps. With more thought usually. But not every person fits your job requirements or your organization.

I agree with Ryan on the following points:

  - Most of us work hard to hire the right person. The fact that we may decide later we were mistaken doesn't necessarily mean were are poor leaders taking the easy way out. It means our hiring process is flawed. Unfortunately, being humans trying to evaluate complicated humans without all necessary information, no hiring process is going to be perfect. But if you hire too many people you later let go because you hired the wrong person, you need to figure out the problem.

  - Sometimes managers do fire to avoid the heavy lifting required to develop their people. We think we are going to find the perfect person. They will come in knowing everything we want them to know and with all of the skills needed. We will just point them to their work area and tell them, "go forth and conquer." And they do. Well, that's a pipe dream. If you have managers who take the easy way out, look at your leadership development process. It's likely your managers are learning from you. So put real effort into developing the leadership skills of your team. If your managers cannot learn to develop people (and some won't), they can't stay in a leadership position. If  you have a non-leadership role they can effectively fill, fine. If not, move them out.

  - Employees who complain are not always troublemakers. Listen to complaints. You'll learn something. However, you know and I know there are employees who seem to stay up nights thinking of things to complain about. Those few people need to go before they infect the entire organization.

In large organizations with lots of positions, perhaps Ryan's point that we can find a place for people who are not working out in their current job has some merit. We've all probably modified positions to capitalize on employee strengths and in some cases to minimize their weaknesses. But what is possible in a large organization is much harder to do when you are a small organization of 3 or 4 or perhaps 20 people--which is the majority of our businesses. A small organization cannot afford to carry a person who is not right for the job and/or the organization.

There are some things you cannot tolerate in an organization:

  - A lack of integrity/ethics. There is no good reason to tolerate this. Ever.

  - Negativity. As noted above, just because a person complains doesn't make them a bad employee. There may well be an issue that needs to be fixed. But some people whine constantly. For some people a glass half empty would be a more positive view than they have on their best day. They will depress the performance of the entire team.

  - Bullying or other violent behavior. Fear, intimidation and violence have no place in the workplace. I include in here people who engage in discriminatory behavior. In cases of ignorance, you might be able to change this behavior. But if they know better, but the behavior doesn't change, act fast.

If you are not happy with a person's performance, it is quite possible they are unhappy working in your organization. If you rule out your own leadership shortcomings and you have listened to the complaints and cannot or don't want to make the changes necessary to resolve the issues, then it's time to move on. You'll be happier, the employee will be happier and so will their co-workers. Don't suffer needlessly. Examine your motivations and if firing is the best thing for your organization and the team, then do it. You can and must treat the departing employee with respect and courtesy, but continuing a poor working relationship is not respect; it's patronizing. I don't fire a lot of people, but believe it or not, I have had some former employees come back and thank me for letting them go. It allowed them to find a job they liked better.

Real leadership is blending the strengths and talents of the team to build a high-performing unit to obtain your organization's objectives. Not everyone is going to be the right fit. If not, it's not all bad to recognize that and sever the relationship.