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Why Does HR in the Caribbean Need a Major Reset?

A New Contribution| A Fresh Reputation

You are a Caribbean HR Professional who has noticed the respect finance professionals receive in the C-Suite. What they say seems to matter.

As a result, your colleagues in the finance department can see a clear path for themselves to the C-Suite. From accounting analyst, to manager, to director, to CFO, to CEO/MD.

But the same isn’t true for you. In fact, the total number of HR managers to gain a promotion to the CEO level in anything other than a small company is negligible.

By contrast, a recent survey showed that some 52% of UK CEOs have finance backgrounds. But this wasn’t always the case.

Back in the 1980’s accountants were just not that important in companies. They were merely the bookkeepers.

However, they undertook a deliberate effort to upgrade their profession. Using technology and analytics, their value increased as their contribution became essential. New regulatory requirements didn’t hurt.

In other words, they undertook a reset.

What would it take the HR Profession in the Caribbean to do the same?

Fortunately, it already has a business partner. According to research, most CEOs want more from HR Departments. But when surveyed, they only complain “HR is not being strategic enough.”

But what can you do with that vague level of feedback? Here are some specifics gleaned, in part, from my experience hosting the CaribHRForum community and also from leading executive team retreats for two decades.

Evidence-Based Diagnosis

Data is a common element in all great strategic plans. Fortunately, this aligns with most HR Professionals who also would like to use more than anecdotes. The importance of data is something that they now recognise. But, it’s not enough.

I have seen a pattern that repeats itself in over 50 strategic planning retreats. HR presentations are seldom based on analytics and data. Why?

It’s a fact: many HR jobs below the C-Suite don’t need these skills. The result? Before joining the executive ranks, HR professionals have had little practice.

As such, a significant gap may become apparent when they are promoted. Other departments are now competing for the same resources and attention. The counterparts have already been using evidence-based and analytical language to gain approval from top-level executives.

By contrast, CHROs struggle. A vicious cycle can even occur when they request better software but are repeatedly denied. Why? They can’t make the case for a positive ROI…because they lack the data the missing tools would provide.

Unfortunately, CEOs are not likely to identify this problem independently. Like Finance before it, HR must establish a strong business case for a major reset to stop the vicious cycle.

Transformational Innovations

But these analytic capabilities are just the beginning. The Caribbean experiences a significant loss of productivity due to invisible friction. HR has an opportunity here.

For example, workers who struggle to predict their commutes accurately are prone to showing up late. If their on-time presence is required to start work, then the cost of being tardy is high.

The conventional HR approach would be to conduct interviews with employees and encourage them to leave for work earlier. But a department focused on analysis would recommend investing in a minibus exclusively for employees.

HR should keep their focus despite the possibility of objections that the move encourages laziness. Why? The actual inquiry is whether the expense is a worthy investment, based on a clear cost-benefit analysis.

HR needs to take a proactive stance as shown in this example, which is the approach CEOs want. It’s a fact that most departments have people-problems that they can’t solve alone. They require the help of HR professionals with advanced skills and predictive data.

The way the company operates can be changed by these interventions. The crucial point is that they anticipate the needs of the executive team like CFOs are expected to do.

People Predictions

HR can begin planning the organisation’s strategic future once practical measures and data are in place. For example, the Caribbean has a demographic problem looming. Our current population is not being replaced due to insufficient childbirths.

Most HR professionals are unaware of this fact. Does it matter?

Yes – the trend points towards a future with more competition for talent. This has the potential to cause wage inflation. Or a decrease in migration from the region. Or more migrants from other countries. To say it another way, there’s a potential strategic threat forming.

This fact was mentioned during a recent long-term strategic planning session. But not by HR.

However, as an HR Professional, it’s important to track these types of predictions and impacts. In fact, you could function like a CFO, but for everything regarding people.

Your company will find you indispensable if you acquire these skills. However, you will also have the opportunity to experience the gratification that comes with conquering a difficult challenge in your journey towards becoming a highly respected professional. Or even a member of the C-Suite.

This article was based on a Jamaica Gleaner column published on 8/20/2023.

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Why People Analytics Isn’t Just for HR

Your company is aware of people analytics. It wants to use these techniques to increase productivity. But it’s not clear who should champion this transformation: HR or another unit?

In companies across the world, COVID has accelerated the call for data-driven innovation. Consequently, managers in your organization are concerned. Productivity has fallen due to work-from-home arrangements, but are they thinking about improving it in the best way?

The traditional approach to determine knowledge-worker productivity is borrowed from the factory floor. Put people together in tight quarters. Keep a close eye on them. Then, make sure their bodies are doing the right things.

However, COVID has blown a hole in that practice. Now, it’s obvious that, unlike physical work, knowledge work can be performed anywhere. But this fact hasn’t stopped your managers from campaigning for a return to “the good old days”.

Fortunately, stale, inefficient ways of full-time face-to-face working aren’t coming back. Also, companies which insist on treating employees as if they are manual workers will see their best people leave. Why? Top performers prefer to work with colleagues who trust them to do their finest work, regardless of physical location.

Case in point: a local colleague conducted a search for a remote job. His queries uncovered a company on the US West Coast. Consequently, this A-class worker quit his government position for an organization 3000 miles away.

If this transition is one your best people also wish to make, your organization should beware. Consider the growing use of People Analytics as a productivity tool to help workers and managers become more effective and engaged. Here are three steps.

  1. Retire Old Productivity Indicators

Before COVID, everyone knew a Chatty Cathy who talked a good game in the office. This polished extrovert speaks well. Studies show that her tendency to pipe up first is seen as a sign of leadership ability.

Some Cathys also make it their business to remain highly visible. They attend all meetings involving executive exposure. They never stay quiet, so their voices are known.

Finally, Cathys always arrive to work early and leave late. And on weekends, email threads never lack their input.

In summary, Cathys play into the weakness of managers who judge productivity visually. This lazy method of assessment promotes Cathys, even if their actual work is only average.

Unfortunately for them, COVID has changed the game. Gone are the visual cues Chatty Cathy used to wow managers. And the old flawed ways of measuring her productivity may never return.

  1. New Productivity Challenges Being Ignored

If you have never heard of “People Analytics” you may not realize that it’s an update to the notion of “HR Analytics”.

They are used everywhere employees can be found…not just in HR. For example, metrics are being gathered to reverse productivity losses in two nagging areas: email and meetings.

Both problems have become worse due to COVID according to research by Harvard Business School. In spite of the negative impact, companies treat them like rush-hour traffic – something we all hate but can do nothing about.

Today, rudimentary analytics tools are measuring both.

For example, your company could end each meeting with a smartphone survey of attendees. This should improve its quality.

Email effectiveness can also be surveyed manually, but that’s not all. Sites like emailanalytics.com measure an individual’s message volume and responsiveness automatically.

For instance, it helps you see that a manager who has 3,456 unread email messages is not just “bad at email”. He is a nuisance to his colleagues and an unproductive detriment to the bottom line.

I mention these two areas because they are relatively easy to measure. All it takes is a serious commitment to productivity. Plus a willingness for managers to use data to identify their lack of efficiency.

  1. HR’s Capacity to Lead People Analytics

Your HR Department may not be thinking in this way yet. It may not even have tools or skills available. The truth is that few are ready to lead their companies in this area.

Instead, HR has earned a reputation for being numbers and technology averse. This is a bigger problem than ever given the growing requirement for managers to use People Analytics. They want to impact every aspect of worker performance, not just productivity problems.

Eventually, managers will find the analytics they need even if they must do the search themselves. But this isn’t the best solution.

The revolution in your company’s People Analytics needs to start from HR Departments who understand how and why workers work. The future beckons professionals in HR to stay abreast and get ahead if they intend to remain relevant.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To search his prior columns on productivity, strategy, engagement and business processes, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.

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How to Manage a COVID-era Ineffective Employee

Is there at least one staff member in your office whose lack of productivity has been exposed by COVID? Before the pandemic, you had a favorable opinion, in general, of the person’s performance. But once they began to work from home, their output plummeted. How should you intervene? Is it worth the time and effort?

The fact is, you may be in a bit of shock. In each company, there are employees with diplomatic skills who excel in social gatherings, are constantly active via email and get along with everyone. They’re always available to help, playing the role of a consummate corporate professional. Some dress and speak with authority, enjoying a first-hand relationship with members of the C-Suite.

However, working from home has been a breakdown for them. While you couldn’t imagine an office without their daily presence, the pandemic has taken away their ability to impress. Now, they are being judged solely by their most recent outputs. Unfortunately, since March 2020, you can hardly point to anything they have created of significance. While others have shined, they have disappeared.

As you look back, you wonder. The truth may be that their performance was always lacking. Perhaps they just didn’t keep up with technology. Or new knowledge. A few were living on past successes, reminding everyone of their historic value.

Sadly, you conclude that they had become experts in “keeping” rather than “doing” their job. Now, you must make a decision about their future. Here are some steps to follow.

  1. Get the facts

Oftentimes in Caribbean companies, low performance goes unflagged because managers are unwilling to have difficult conversations. The result? Years of performance reviews which produced stellar reports. In short, there may be no written record or warning of any issues whatsoever. Any discussions which hinted at a problem are, in the past, forgotten.

If this is the case, in the absence of any other information, it’s safe to assume that the employees have no idea they have fallen behind. While they may have personal, private suspicions, don’t speculate. Most employees care about doing a good job and have some degree of anxiety regarding their continued employment. Don’t presume an emotional state.

Instead, focus on the facts and separate them from any interpretations which you have added. If you need to write them down for the sake of clarity, do so. By the end, each factoid should pass the video-tape test: visible actions that could have been recorded if a camera were available.

If you recall incidents which took place before COVID versus those which showed up after, all the better. However, if you have no facts; stop. You can’t take further action until you can satisfy yourself (and others) that it’s all not just a figment of your imagination.

  1. Prepare for the Conversation

With the facts in front of you, take time to prepare to have a difficult conversation about what they mean. If you have never used a feedback model before, find one you feel comfortable with. I prefer the Observation-Impact-Suggestion framework as a kick-starter. It begins with the observed facts, continues with their impact, and concludes with a suggestion.

Practice this conversation opener with a colleague. Ask them for coaching to make it as effective as possible, even as they roleplay extreme reactions.

When the time comes, be ready to have a lengthy exchange with your employee to come to some sort of agreement on a way forward. Be prepared to help.

  1. Confront the Work from Home Reality

Beyond this individual’s performance lies the reasons why this discussion must be conducted in the first place. Performance management in most regional companies is weak, a fact which COVID has revealed. In response, some managers are itching to go back to the way things were, when they didn’t have to confront low-performers.

Make no mistake: the newly exposed low-performers also want to return to the safety of the office. Hence, both parties are in an awkward spot. But they will receive no mercy from the high-performers, who have found ways to motivate themselves during the pandemic. Freed from micro-management and wasteful commutes, they have shined brightly; some for the very first time.

What would it be like to have a full complement of self-motivated staff? If you commit to such an outcome, don’t simply lapse into business as usual, acting as if COVID was just an unwelcome interruption.

Instead, grasp it for the opportunity it is to transform the culture of your workplace. This bump in the road could be a catalyst for breakthrough results. Perhaps it’s an answer to your prayers.

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Why CEO’s Want HR to Transform Itself

Human Resource departments are facing an unprecedented demand to become analytic and data-driven. But few are answering the call. What should HR practitioners and consultants do to respond?

A few years ago, I substituted for a VP-HR of a major company who died suddenly. For four months, I attempted to pick up the pieces while seeking a replacement. I discovered that he didn’t leave much of a structure behind. Everything, it seemed, was in his head.

Fast forward to today, and HR organizations are under increasing pressure due to the COVID-era need to digitize functions. CEO’s have longed for HR Departments which look more like Finance, Operations and Sales, whose employees are digitally savvy.

Unfortunately, there are few HR teams I have worked with who have sufficient skillsets and mindsets to embrace technology, analyze data and provide dashboards. Case in point: after facilitating numerous strategic planning retreats, only a single presentation by HR stands out in these areas.

Such was the situation before COVID. Now the pandemic has widened the gap. HR, with low tech skills, has stayed in the same position, watching others surge ahead with new capabilities. This observation is backed up by global research from the Academy to Innovate HR (AIHR). Some 60% of HR Professionals say they are falling behind their more tech-savvy colleagues in terms of efficiency and impact.

What can local Human Resource Practitioners do to catch up and close the gap?

  1. Embrace the CEO’s Perspective

Perhaps what scares C-Suite leaders more than anything else is that the pandemic has made HR’s role more important than ever. But, it’s also annoying them at the same time. Why?

They don’t have visibility into staff-driven operations. While most agree they must make fresh investments in people to thrive in a new economy, they lack the data.

For example, while they are painfully aware of talent gaps, HR usually cannot predict what happens after key roles are filled. Will individuals stay? For how long? And should they be paid at the 25th or 75th percentile of the average wage? To what effect?

When such quantifiable questions can’t be answered, it’s easier for executives to invest in a new piece of equipment. After all, it usually comes with an easy-to-understand cost-benefit ratio.

Unfortunately, I only know a couple of CEO’s in the Caribbean who have HR backgrounds. As a result, most leaders don’t intuitively understand the invisible tradeoffs HR must make. And without data, no-one can offer a clear, numbers-driven explanation.

The solution is for HR to think like CEOs who need to implement big, fact-based decisions.

  1. Hire and Train

Maybe not surprisingly, the AIHR survey showed that the best place to develop such talent is at the bottom of the organization. Often, the newest and youngest employees in HR are the most digitally proficient. They are the ones who should drive improvements by picking up new capabilities and teaching them to others.

At the same time, hiring savvy mid-career HR professionals may help fill critical gaps – if they can be found. But the most difficult choices surround those HR team members who don’t have the capacity to grow fast enough. Their future might be grim as their lack of quantitative skills makes it hard for them to find employment.

All these changes add up to a major investment in talent acquisition and development within HR. However, most organizations have not recovered from the deep cuts made in training budgets during the 2008 recession. Arguably, this led to the problems we see today.

  1. Be Strategic

The fact is, most HR departments aren’t in a position to advocate for these investments on their own. They need the company’s entire strategic plan to call for a transformation in staff and talent in order to thrive in the future.

This kind of widespread change requires informed leadership from the top. Consequently, HR must focus on educating other executives using tools such as analytic reports and dashboards. This approach could ultimately lead to the game-changing decisions that can drive any or all other strategies the company pursues. As CEO’s know from painful experience, trying to make big changes with the wrong people in place will fail.

What would it be like to have a top class HR function in your organization? While the global standard has suddenly been raised without warning, take this as an opportunity rather than a rude surprise. Everyone will benefit when HR steps up to the challenge of transforming itself to use analytics. While it probably won’t be the first unit to do so, it has the potential to influence all company functions.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To search prior columns on productivity, strategy, engagement and business processes, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.

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How to Prevent Biased Interviews

What’s wrong with holding interviews? Plenty, it turns out. Most companies rely on a series of informal chats with several prospects that ends with a hiring decision. However, there’s strong evidence that this approach needs to be retired in favour of better techniques proven by scientific research.

Here’s the problem in a nutshell.

Interviews are filled with biases. In North America, studies have shown that during the average unstructured interview, the person hired is more likely to be tall, slim, good looking and speak in a deep voice. According to psychologists like Dr. Ron Friedman:

– Tall people tend to be evaluated as having better leadership skills. Decades of research show a relationship between height and salary at every age.

– Hiring professionals shown a picture of a heavy-set woman are more likely to describe her as lazy than other women by 21%.

– Good-looking people are thought to be more competent, intelligent and qualified.

– People with deeper voices are thought to have greater strength, integrity, and trustworthiness.

Here in Jamaica, it’s likely that skin colour, perceived class, and speech patterns are also invisible determinants. It probably helps to have browner skin, Upper St. Andrew pedigree and all the H’s properly pronounced.

Apparently, this judgement takes place in the first ten seconds of a conversation. The interviewer instantly decides what kind of person he/she is dealing with and slightly alters the questions accordingly. This isn’t random but an unconscious, powerful effort to confirm some initial, unwitting bias.

A few disagree, arguing that they are entirely fair and non-judgemental: their gut instincts and intuition are impeccable. They even share anecdotes which prove their superiority. This article is not for them. It’s for the rest of us who suspect that hidden tendencies are always embedded in interviews, requiring us to find provably better techniques.

If You Are the Interviewer

Here is a simple improvement to make: ask each person the same set of questions.

Another quick one is to phrase queries in specific terms that relate to actual events versus general what-if’s. For example, discard questions like “Share what you would do if you came across a difficult customer”. Instead, use the simpler “Tell me about a time you dealt with a difficult customer.” Unfortunately, research shows that 81% of people lie during interviews in their attempts to appear impressive. This technique is a great separator of future fantasy from factual, past-based reality.

However, the best approach is to treat the entire affair as an audition. In other words, find ways for interviewees to demonstrate their abilities in real time. It’s the ideal way to compare actual performance in critical skills with other prospects.

For example, musicians trying to join an orchestra or band should play a given piece on their instrument. Draftees in NFL and NBA try-outs (known as “Combines”) actually perform physical drills on the field.

In the corporate world, Google and other tech companies ask prospects to write code. McKinsey & Co. famously poses an unstructured problem for the prospect to reveal their best methods. Some companies require individuals to work alongside a team for a day. Other firms prompt them for solutions to case studies relevant to actual projects.

If you find yourself unable to craft such interviews, try using audio and videotape recordings. Ask each prospect to perform a typical task. Then, review the recording as a team to undertake an impartial comparison.

Unfortunately, most companies don’t bother. The creative challenge is too much, so they use no more than a nebulous test: “If mi spirit tek to dem or not.”

If You Are the Interviewee

On the other side of the table, you can turn the conversation into more of an audition.

Start by being prepared to show them your intentions. With whatever information you have, walk in with a mid-term plan of action to address the key issues.

As you share your plan, and its underlying assumptions, ask the interviewers to correct your data and add new facts. Use clarifying questions to uncover the true meaning, then adjust your plan in the moment based on this new input. Doing so reveals the flexible approach you take to solving difficult problems using scarce data. It’s as if they are looking over the shoulder of a composer masterfully creating a new melody.

In this way, you transform the conversation from a pre-prejudiced chat into a real-time, problem-solving session.  Plus, you learn something about your new manager’s level of expertise, engagement and EQ.

As you may imagine, in such a scenario, both sides win. The biased, old-style interview is replaced by an experience which produces fresh information everyone needs.

 

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. Missed a column? To receive a free download with articles from 2010-2017, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com

 

 

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Connecting Strategy, Performance, and Daily Activity

How do you ensure employees are balancing their time between routine activities and long-term, strategic projects? Managers and their HR Partners have been tackling this problem for decades but continue to fail to separate the two different energies essential to sustain high performance. Here’s why.

Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” was a cult hit, but his follow-up book, “Lila” offered important, practical ideas for every organization. He outlined two kinds of value in everyday life: Dynamic and Static Quality.

Dynamic Quality is the energy needed to make change happen. He defines it as a disruptive force which upsets the status quo, drives improvements and makes a difference. Its opposing “yang” is Static Quality, the energy needed to keep things the same. This is the source of maintenance chores; the continuous reliability which allows daily life to function.

Most people prefer one or the other, but in Pirsig’s brilliance, he brought the two together. Instead of seeing them as enemies, he imagined they exist in a symbiotic, alternating partnership.

He explains that each kind of quality has its season. There are dynamic moments when change must be driven versus its static counterpart where gains have to be consolidated. The key is to ratchet between the two at the right tempo, without getting stuck in either “harem-scarem” chaos or brain-dead stasis.

How does this idea apply to your organization?

Each year, when your firm conducts its annual strategic planning retreat, it’s allowing dynamic quality to run unbridled and free. Representing a dramatic departure from the routine of daily activity, it deserves its vaulted place in the calendar.

However, static quality probably reigns supreme on every other day. Immediately after the event, the status quo re-asserts itself, adding friction. Innovation degrades into wishful thinking. Customers remain upset, processes are never fixed, and profit margins don’t improve. The retreat is ultimately judged as an expensive waste. Some companies stop having them altogether.

In the 1990’s, to answer this problem, Drs. Kaplan and Norton invented the Balanced Scorecard. Along with the Strategy Map, these tools were intended to connect long-term plans with daily activity. After two decades, we now realize much more is needed.

The duo never imagined the mistake most companies make in implementing their ideas. In direct contravention of Pirsig’s call for clear separation, they implement performance management systems which throw dynamic and static quality into a single lump. As a result, staff is unable to answer: “What do I need to do to keep things the same, versus change, and how do I achieve a balance of time and effort between the two?”

The result? Staleness. Boredom. Failed improvement initiatives. Here are three tactics which will begin to break them out of their predicament.

  1. Bravely Separate Dynamic and Static Quality

In my firm’s planning retreats with executives and board members, we find ourselves working hard to keep the two energies apart. “The effort to envision a shiny future must be informed by the status quo but not limited by it,” is our mantra as participants reach for Dynamic Quality.

The very purpose of a retreat is to consider a brand new vision: a courageous act for most teams.

To wit, I have been in retreats where attendees risked their jobs to birth a breakthrough future. In one case, executives were collectively and ultimately successful; but they paid the price before their vision came to fruition when some were summarily fired. Needless to say, this is an extreme example, but Dynamic Quality always requires courage.

  1. Create Organizational Strategy and Business-as-Usual (BAU) Metrics

To strike a balance between the two energies, companies need to measure two kinds of activities after the retreat. The first set applies to the annual strategy and tracks its implementation. The second, BAU metrics, are ones required to maintain company functions and change little from year to year.

At the highest level, the CEO and employees must keep track of both. However, boards should demand to see the former, while saving any interest in the latter for the exceptional circumstance.

  1. Deploy Blended Performance Management

In most companies, the individual employee has no clue which parts of their job are strategic versus BAU in nature. Therefore, they have no idea where to focus. In its place, provide each person the means to define separate targets in both areas. Also, appreciate the fact that while some employees will only be doing BAU activity, everyone must be able to explain the difference between the two.

These practical steps help staff-members step out of muddy waters where Dynamic/Static quality, Strategy/BAU metrics are confused. Their clarity increases the odds that your futuristic plans succeed, while simultaneously ensuring the continuity of previous, hard-earned gains.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. Missed a column? To receive a free download with articles from 2010-2017, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com

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How Leaders Can Train Employees to Enjoy Their Jobs

How Leaders Can Train Employees to Enjoy Their Jobs

What intervention would make a difference with employees who aren’t motivated? One novel approach is to teach them how to fall in love with their work.

The recent U.S. television series “Dirty Jobs” fascinated millions. Each week, it highlighted a group of employees who specialize in filthy or dangerous jobs. For example, an episode featured Mexican workers who scuba dive into the capital’s underground sewers, just to keep them flowing.

You should be forgiven for believing that they must despise their lives. Nothing could be further from the truth and it’s not because they are grandly paid. For the most part, they simply love what they are doing. Unlike the two-thirds of employees in the average company who are disengaged, they are highly motivated.

So are most Jamaican executives. They enjoy unusual levels of daily mastery, purpose, and autonomy, a key factor in their high motivation and frequent promotions.

However, there’s often a skill they fail to develop: they aren’t equipped to help others attain this mindset. In their single-minded pursuit of personal excellence, they don’t pay much attention to those who were outperformed and therefore left behind.

Unfortunately, newly minted executives must turn around and find a way to motivate these “losers”. Untrained for this particular task, they often flounder. Instead, they complain about the bad culture – the same one they helped create.

Perhaps that makes them hypocrites, but this realization doesn’t assist them to figure out what to do. Logically, they realize that folks have real bills to handle, kids to feed and school fees to pay. But they don’t know how to motivate someone who just wants to work as little as possible to maintain a minimum flow of cash to their bank accounts.

This dilemma keeps leaders up at night. They (and their companies) can lose everything if they are unable to find a way to engage staff. While many approaches exist, here’s one that’s unusual: teach employees how to enjoy their work, just like their executives. Try these three steps.

Tactic #1 – Don’t Try to Merely “Give People What They Want”

According to “Why Workers Won’t Work, The Case Study of Jamaica,” multiple studies reveal the crude assumption born in new managers upon their promotion: people are greedy mercenaries who only respond to money. As I have pointed out in prior columns, this conclusion is demonstrably incorrect.

Even in jobs like teaching which are long overdue a raise in pay, employees know that giving everyone

all the cash rewards they want won’t work. Therefore, the first tactic is to bypass simplistic polls, intuitions or old wives’ tales which only reinforce this old explanation. They only sustain an “us vs. them” dynamic.

Instead, look deeper, beyond demeaning questions and pat answers.

Tactic #2 – Don’t Leave People Stuck With Just the Work They Like

Some managers believe the answer is to bend over backward to provide employees with the work they prefer. In other words, ask (or psychometric test) them to find the stuff they like, then devise ways to give it to them.

Once again, research shows this to be a mistaken approach. It produces a blend of unhappy workers in the long term, and a company lacking the skills it needs to thrive.

Tactic #3 – Teach People How to Find Inherent Meaning in Any Job

When employees have a supportive boss, they can learn how to enrich all aspects of their work by doing the following:

1) linking to a higher purpose. Look around: there are people who risk their lives daily for a big enough, non-monetary reason. By contrast, are your team members playing it safe, refusing to exceed their comfort zones? Is doing the right thing seen as all-important versus going along with the status quo?

  1. ii) finding an opportunity to challenge themselves. While competition appears to spur innovation, it really is a trigger or excuse for someone to push themselves beyond their normal limits. Is your environment sufficiently gamified to do the same? Or is work merely a nasty, week-day tax they pay in order to find growth, fun, and joy on weekends?

iii) experiencing newfound levels of independence. People who act as if they are in charge of their destiny love the feeling of ownership. By contrast, do your managers systematically treat staff like idiots who must be told what to think and when?

If you guess that this also has something to do with a manager’s skill at coaching, you’re right. But instead of leaving this competence to chance, train managers to help employees craft their best, most fulfilling work. In small steps, you’ll create an environment which bridges the gap between executive and employee motivation.

 

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. Missed a column? To receive a free download with articles from 2010-2017, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com

 

 

 

 

 

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20180325/francis-wade-how-leaders-can-train-employees-enjoy-their-jobs

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Toxic Culture Resistance

Leading in a toxic culture? Transform it by absorbing, not resisting

How do you escape a corporate culture you hate to work in each day? Should it be attacked head-on, or is another more subtle approach needed?

Perhaps you know the feeling of being trapped in a toxic work environment. The stress you experience each weekday is real. It can’t be escaped by positive thinking, thoughts, and prayers or any of the other techniques that work on lesser problems. Plus, simplistic advice like “Just quit, nuh?” isn’t helpful in a weak economy where everyone you know is scrambling to hold on to a job.

Unfortunately, we are taught from early on to conquer evil by launching strong resistance. After all, this approach worked to end slavery, get the vote and achieve independence. It also works in wars.

Fighting hard to win seems to be the best way to change your company’s culture. It appears to be a far better strategy than merely surrendering making it the tactic most corporate leaders use.

Unfortunately, it has faults which only makes things worse. Here are three examples.

Denial

An executive sits at her desk looking at the exit statistics. The best performers are consistently leaving for other companies, siphoning away the second-bests within a few months. Before long, only third-bests will remain—a recipe for disaster.

The head of human resources tries to convince her there’s a huge internal problem. But she refuses to accept it. Her people are being stolen by those with deeper pockets, an injustice. She angrily denies that the culture of her company is driving people away.

In her mind, she is the big victim.

Scolding

A CEO scrolls through the survey results. The staff has spoken: employee satisfaction and engagement scores have dipped even further. Obviously, the prior year’s interventions didn’t work, in spite of his hard work and extra effort. In fact, they actually made things worse.

“They shouldn’t feel this way.”

His response is all-too-human. As a species, we have a remarkable ability to argue with reality even when it’s staring us in the face. The response is instinctive – a way to protect ourselves from bad news.

It’s also beside the point. Given his goal of changing a toxic culture, the new scores provide valuable data which tell a nuanced story. Instead of being discarded, they need to be the basis for new plans going forward, as the leadership team “wheels and comes again.”

However, whenever he repeats the refrain in every executive meeting, real discussion stops. Lots of words are spoken, but his comment inserts a dangerous fiction at the moment the team should be grappling with hard truths.

As a result, they make no progress.

Selfish Disengagement

A Managing Director is stunned by the ungrateful nature of his staff members. His official Coffee Chats, an opportunity to meet with small groups of employees, has not turned out the way he wanted.

“Is this all you people do each day… just b***h and moan?” he finally lashes out, frustrated. All future open conversations are cancelled.

In his mind, they only became a bottomless pit of complaints. Instead of presenting a useful balance of positive and negative experiences, they dwelt on the bad stuff.

In response, he withdraws, turning into himself: an act of self-preservation in which he can lick his wounds in private. He limits his meetings to people he knows are happy, eschewing group gatherings. After all, no-one seems to care that he is also a human being who has real feelings.

The First Step

The behaviors displayed in the above examples are commonplace among leaders.

In each case, they experience unwanted internal feelings, triggered by other people’s unhappy expressions. To cope, they attack the source in the hope it will go away.

This tactic sometimes works in life, on simple problems. However, it fails to transform complex corporate cultures. In the high stakes positions they inhabit, the only answer is to learn how to fully accept, absorb and “be with” the stuff most people resist. In other words, instead of turning unwanted internal feelings into the enemy, they must mature to a place when they can be embraced.

While this is much easier to write or say than to practice, top executives need to evolve to the point where they can step aside from their own instinctive reactions. It’s the first, unavoidable step towards transforming themselves, demonstrating the radical kind of inside-out change that people need to see.

 

As such, this message isn’t only for top executives. It’s for any employee caught in a toxic company they can’t stand, but can’t immediately leave. Acceptance rather than resistance is the most powerful first step.

 

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. Missed a column? To receive a free download with articles from 2010-2017, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com

 

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20180225/francis-wade-toxic-workplace-resistance

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Is your company gaslighting its customers to accept poor service?

There are companies in which staff members are rightly embarrassed by the poor service offered to the public. But there are also badly-run organizations who operate without any sense of remorse: no apology ever offered, no-one willing to be responsible. Consider them to be gaslighting their customers.

The term isn’t normally applied to corporations, but to individuals. Perpetrators are often narcissists, abusers, dictators and religious leaders who say things which cause people to question their sanity. The victim’s norms are discarded or disputed. Universally accepted standards become individual proclivities to be ignored.

I have met personalities who fit the bill nicely but recently, my bank showed some disturbing signs. Unknown to me, it froze my account because I failed to respond to a posted letter from its Compliance Department…they say. I have no evidence such a correspondence was ever sent.

Their comeback? My mail system had to be faulty. Therefore, I was guilty and deserved the disruptive sentence I was handed.

Unlike the human gaslighters I have met who are easy to spot, I found this situation confounding. After all, the Customer Service Representatives (CSR’s) I spoke with were friendly, polite and helpful. They used my first name repeatedly as if we were old chums.

However, in retrospect, they all parrotted the company line: the multiple phone numbers and email addresses they have on file for me are “with another department” and “could not be used”. All that was needed to update their files were two pieces of updated information. With robotic efficiency, they assured me full restoration in five working days, in addition to the holiday weekend.

Incidentally, they didn’t mention the fact that they go overboard to “incentivize” customers to be paperless. Or that I was severely and stressfully inconvenienced because of their actions. Or that their explanations were ridiculous. None of them seemed to think these were real issues.

Instead, I was left wondering: “Is this just me? Am I the only one in this conversation who thinks this is crazy?”

Now, a week later, I can name the experience: corporate gaslighting. My definition? “When a company persistently disrupts the wellbeing of its customers in novel ways, then uses its staff to indirectly but politely attack complainants’ common sense.” It forces customers to question their sanity, while CSRs must shed their humanity in order to do the job.

If you work for an organization, let’s assume that gaslighting is a fact: the only question is how much of it is taking place each day. Ask the following questions to find out more.

  1. Are customers leaving without telling you why?

Don’t answer this looking at the loud complainers or those who write letters to the editor of newspapers. Instead, find those who quietly quit your brand and shift their behavior without warning.

Gaslighters convince themselves that customers leave because they have been enticed by the competition. In other words, it’s something they can’t control. Don’t believe your own story – find out the reasons why you are silently repelling people, forcing them to seek service elsewhere.

  1. Can customers find relief?

In a separate institution, I am forced to deal with someone who is incompetent. As my “point person”, she routinely ignores my emails and voicemails. Direct calls are useless. Desperate pleas to individuals in the organization, including her manager, produce no change in behavior or even positive acknowledgment.

As far as I can see, I have exhausted my appeals, so I’m actively searching for a new provider.

If you offer an essential service and your customers are at a dead-end with no further recourse, your company is gaslighting them. Fortunately, the answer could be simple: set up an easy to find, independent ombudsperson with enough resources to track any problem to its root cause. Have him/her report to an executive to avoid entanglement in your bureaucracy.

  1. Are you eager to uncover problems?

The best CEO’s I have ever worked with are quite demanding, especially in one way. They insist I tell them the stuff their colleagues won’t, focusing on areas I consider to be their blind spots.

Here’s a real-time test: if you bristled at the suggestion that your company is gaslighting its customers, you probably share some characteristics of the weakest leaders. They defend themselves lustily, even in the face of obvious evidence. To keep criticism at bay, they suppress people with outside opinions, while actively promoting bootlickers. As a result, it’s just a matter of time before an issue arises which blindsides their cabal, sometimes resulting in disaster.

Gaslighting in companies is hard to detect: it requires hyper-vigilance and a willingness to empathize with the abuse customers experience. Therefore, it takes supreme but uncommon courage and discipline for leaders to root out this organized form of corrupt service delivery.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20180114/francis-wade-gaslighting-customers-accept-poor-service

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How to Recruit Super Employees

The following article wasn’t published in today’s Jamaica Gleaner as I expected, but here it is in full.

How to Recruit Super Employees

In a recent column, I gave some advice to employees who are asked to do the job of one or more people in addition to their own. Demands for this kind of surplus productivity cause headaches for employees, but they signal a greater problem for companies when they see no willingness to improve, or even worse, when some workers see the request as unfair: a clear sign that something important was missing when they were selected.

Given the high cost and effort of replacing low-performers this problem can be deadly.

It’s a real challenge for Jamaican companies. Many local firms are not competitive compared with their foreign counterparts, which can sometimes do the same work with fewer people at a lower total cost.

The first gambit some Jamaican firms take avoids the human resource issue. They blame high prices on the usual suspects: devaluation, security, the recession. These excuses last for a while – until competitors’ aggressive improvements catch up and overwhelm them. By delaying employee productivity improvements they are eventually forced to close.

The ultimate solution doesn’t involve lobbying, politicking or complaining that the government isn’t doing enough. The global forces of business improvement are much bigger than any of these, and they are ultimately inescapable. Also, history has shown that Jamaicans will do anything to pay the price we believe is fair – including importing products in suitcases. We take high prices personally, and we don’t use fancy words like “price-gouging” – we simply say “dem too t’ief.”

The fact is, providers of products and services need to find ways to drive employee costs down — and productivity up, not just sometimes. Always. That means they have to find ways to ask workers to do more with less. Not just once, but every single day.

A great place to start is in the way new employees are selected from a pool of candidates. When it’s done well, this process is one way to separate the rare, self-motivated employee from his/her peers.

Going Beyond Interviews

The days of hiring based on an interview alone are quickly passing. Research shows that it’s simply too easy to be swayed by externals: nice diction without dropped (or misplaced) “h’s,” a lighter shade of brown skin and attendance at the right schools. Add to that a recognizable family name: these things used to be enough to create the comfort needed for a job offer.

However, today, the recession is producing job candidates who are willing to work harder than ever before, and employers would be foolish to continue using gut instinct to make important hiring decisions. A few admit this openly, and they have adopted a best practice that has been around for some time: “assessment centres.” But the phrase is misleading – it’s not a physical location. The phrase refers to a process.

The Solution: An Assessment Centre

This complicated phrase is built around a simple principle: the best way to evaluate someone’s aptitude is to evaluate his or her ability to do select tasks. For example, a mini assessment centre to hire a gardener would test candidates’ ability to cut the lawn, trim hedges and create a new bed for your tomatoes. The candidates would know that they are each being tested and compared against others, and the best performer would win the job. To conduct this simple assessment centre, you would have a clear set of criteria to use as a guide.

However, in practice, most businesses don’t use this method: it’s just easier and quicker to use gut instinct than it is to set up assessment centres. The fact is that they aren’t easy to craft.

Setting them up requires an in-depth knowledge of the essential parts of the job. In many workplaces, standard job descriptions are of little help, if they exist at all. Expertise hasn’t been captured, and when an employee departs, their knowledge of how to perform the role leaves along with them. It makes the task of determining the core elements of the job an uphill struggle.

It also requires some skill: translating the tasks required by the job into “assessment tests” takes creativity. I have seen everything e.g. video role plays, written tests, computer games and mini-projects. Together, they have a surprising quality, revealing spontaneous and breathtaking performances: both good and bad.

When centres are run properly, they effectively separate candidates from each other, and it becomes much easier to hire employees who are willing to do the job of two or more people, while playing the never-ending game of getting better all the time. Then, the candidates who are hired are the ones around whom a powerful future can be built.072