The Rules of Employee Engagement

The other night I was at an event with dozens of my former employees. As we chatted about what’s going on in our lives, I heard a recurring theme. One woman told me about her most recent job, “I was hired to replace two people who left.” She started out handling the workload of two people, and did it so well that she eventually got handed the workload of three.

Another friend told me how the more successful he is at his job, the more responsibility he gets. Of course, that’s normal, but what was happening to him seemed a little extreme. He started out overseeing 20 websites for his employer and now handles 96, “I’m just glad they hired some people under me.” But with his duties increasing exponentially, he’s struggling to keep up.

These employees are singing a familiar song, one I heard echoes of in the latest Global Workforce Study by Towers Watson, a global professional services firm. The study, which found almost two-thirds of U.S. workers are not fully engaged in their work, defined three types of engagement:

1. Traditional engagement: Employees’ willingness to expend discretionary effort on their jobs.
2. Enablement: Having the tools, resources and support to do their jobs effectively.
3. Energy: Having a work environment that actively supports physical, emotional and interpersonal well-being.

Overall, just 37 percent of U.S. workers are highly engaged in what Towers Watson defines as a “sustainable way” (meaning they scored well on all three elements of engagement). Here’s a more specific breakdown:

• About one-fourth (27 percent) are unsupported, meaning they are willing to go the extra mile but don’t have the necessary enablement and/or energy.
• Thirteen percent are detached, meaning they feel enabled and/or energized but aren’t willing to go the extra mile.
• Nearly one-fourth (23 percent) are totally disengaged, meaning they score poorly on all three aspects of engagement.

Why the lack of engagement? Towers Watson says it’s:

“The result of almost a decade of pressure to do more with less and respond to the challenges of global competition, ever-evolving technology and the ongoing need for strict cost management.”

Sounds familiar, right? More specifically:

• Only 43 percent of disengaged employees say their supervisors have removed obstacles that prevent them from doing their jobs well.
• Just 26 percent say management involves employees in decisions affecting their lives.
• Less than half (48 percent) feel the amount of work they are required to do is reasonable.
• Only 40 percent say they have enough staff on their team to do a good job.

The employees who reported being highly engaged were far more likely to be positive about these areas.  When you look at what sustainable engagement requires you to give employees, it’s really pretty simple:

• Enough support from their supervisors to do the job well.
• The tools and resources they need to do the job well.
• Enough staff to do a good job.
• Mental, emotional and physical downtime so they can come back and keep doing their jobs well.

What is at risk for your business if your employees aren’t engaged? This isn’t just a feel-good thing. In some related research, Towers Watson looked at sustainable engagement scores for 50 global companies and found that companies with high sustainable engagement had operating margins almost triple those of organizations with a largely disengaged work force.

There are other risks, too. Remember my friend who was doing the work of three people? When she found out her employer was about to take on another huge project that she’d be in charge of, that was the last straw. Not ready to do the work of four, she quit and is now her own boss for the first time in decades. “I’m so glad I did it,” she told me.

How engaged do you think your employees are – and what are you doing about it?

Help Photo via Shutterstock

From Small Business Trends

Read more: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SmallBusinessTrends/~3/3TAhxLH14go/rules-of-employee-engagement.html#ixzz21weF1Xyo

Who Holds the Real Keys to the Organization, Anyway?

What is the narrative of your movie reel?

The rank-and-file workforce had weathered layoffs, had their commissions slashed, and on top of that, their salaries had been frozen over the past five years.

However, the chief executive’s decision was this — let’s have the senior management team take a lavish trip down to Bermuda and live it up.

That was the story over at Benjamin Moore, where the CEO and top executives recently took that fateful trip.

How does clueless look?

The results were not pretty. Warren Buffett, who owns Benjamin Moore, made the decision to oust the CEO basically for being clueless. He flew in a group of officials and they fired Benjamin Moore CEO Denis Abrams on the spot. They even humiliated him by giving him just a few minutes to pack up his things before escorting him from the building.

Incredulously, it was noted that he kept asking what he’d done wrong. ”They told him to clear his stuff out while they stood and watched every move he made.”

It has gotten to the point that I have become jaded with corporate behavior. Nothing fazes me anymore. I heard the Benjamin Moore story on the radio as I was driving home. My reaction? I just shook my head and moved mentally to something else.

Reality and the new world order

The company is in bad shape. No salary increases, commissions slashed, and the decision as soon as the first quarterly sales increase since 2007 comes into view: Fly the senior team down to Bermuda, charter a yacht, have a sumptuous meal, and live large to celebrate.

That is the way it used to be done, but welcome to reality and the new world order. Those types of celebrations are relics of the “Mad Men” era.

I had a friend call me during the past Christmas holiday. His firm had just gone through another round of layoffs. He told me how despondent everyone was and that the CEO had just taken a seven figure bonus. Although their company was really struggling, this leader still took the money.

In a divorce, I have always said there are three sides: husband, wife, and the truth. In the corporate world there are also three sides: CEO, HR, and the employees. Instead of assuming what your employees want, just ask them.

Assumptions can no longer be made

It seems that there is no connectivity between the three aforementioned prongs of an organizations. CEO’s and their team see it one way, while HR has another view — and the key to it all is people.

Want to know who has the keys?

• Employees matter, more than any other entity within the organization — be it products or hard assets.
• Employees are the ones that will innovate and build the products.
• Employees are the ones that support and serve the organization’s customers.
• Employees create value.
• Employees undermine value.
• Employees cultivate relationships and, by the same token, can kill relationships. Employees drive success but they can also undermine success.

The power of energized & motivated employees

Regardless of what the organization’s goals are, if they are in the hands of mistreated, misinformed, and forgotten people in the process, it is not going to happen.

There is no comparison to being in the hearts and hands of energized, informed, and motivated people.

Organizations are ever-changing and are dependent on the engagement, talent, and energy of their people to operate successfully.

At a companies own peril, they can ignore the mental well-being of your people and culture. Step inside any company, no matter the size, stage of development, or level of success, and the culture is either driving the strategy or undermining it.

Timing is the #1 Reason Companies Lose Candidates They Want

Over 100 Boston-based hiring managers in startups and mid-sized organizations (CEO’s, VP’s, Recruiting Directors, Recruiters – basically the people with the highest stake in hiring); They were asked them the main reasons they’re losing the candidates they want in today’s market.

Here are the results of the survey, which did not come as a surprise, to say the least.  The question was asked why hiring managers lost candidates because of the following areas:

1. Timing
2. The ever-so-lovely “Counter Offer”
3. Higher Salary Offered
4. Better Equity/Options
5. Better Environment (bulked in is better product/service for candidate)
6. Better Location

Below are the results.  Anyone surprised?

Why do we lose candidates?

First of all, it’s hard enough to hire the people that are a perfect match, but if you throw timing into the mix, you have an uphill battle with almost every single hiring situation.  I’ve personally seen candidates go off the market in 2 days.  Talk about a competitive market! It is vital to think about timing during every step of the recruiting process.  The market has already turned back to a candidate market, so don’t wait, or you’ll be behind the game.

from Talentconnector.wordpress.com 

Stack Ranking - Good or Bad?

The conversation continues on whether or not ranking employees is the right thing to do in today's business world. The real question to me is does it drive employee engagement and output or does it drive stagnation, and employee malaise? Given the trend today, ranking is out of favor. Good !!

I am all in favor of doing evaluations on strengths and weaknesses but that is the extent of my conviction to performance appraisals and reviews. So why do I feel that way, not because the tide has shifted away from ranking but because it forces the manager to place people in categories or bell curves. That is down right wrong and potentially pushes the lower 20% out to door after you have spent thousands of dollars on training them and some should be continued to be invested in further development.

Since it getting to that mid-year review, how many companies are still following the ranking system? I'd like to hear your comments on this topic and what you are doing.

Making Linkedin Work for You!

Is your LinkedIn profile as effective as it could be? While you can see your “profile completeness” score on your profile page, it doesn’t measure profile effectiveness — how good your profile is at attracting contacts, generating leads and showing off your skills. Use this checklist to ensure your profile is thorough, effective and updated.

1. Use the name you’re known by. Perhaps your name is Robert, but most people know you as Rob or Bob. Or, for women, perhaps you worked under a maiden name for years. Use the name that most people know you by professionally. Cover all your bases by using your main name in your basic information and mention any other names elsewhere such as in the “Professional Headline” field, or in your recommendations.
2. Upload a professional photo. It’s worth the price to use a professional photographer.
3. Create an effective Professional Headline. Add a “Professional Headline” in the “Edit My Profile” page. This is a short bio that sums up what you do. Mine says, “Content Maven aka writer and editor behind meryl.net.”
4. Pick the industry that best represents what you do. Alternatively, you could use your clients’ industry if they all come from the same one.
5. Enter details for current and past positions. Highlight the activities that represent what you do or want to do by mentioning them first.
6. Write a summary that highlights your most important business information. Keep your summary clear and to the point. Remember you can list details under “Current Position.” The point of a summary is to give people instant information on what you do. I’ve looked at various summaries, and there’s no right or wrong way to do it. I used to have a bulleted list, but switched to a short paragraph. When I come across long paragraphs in the summary, I find them hard to read and follow. The shorter ones hold my attention and get the point across fast.
7. List your web sites and blog. Rather than using the name of your web site and blog, use keywords that describe what you do. For example, I use “Writer for hire and blog” instead of “your own name notes,” the name of the blog.
8. Add your Twitter ID. If you haven’t already, add your Twitter name.
9. Request recommendations. It’s OK to ask people to recommend you, but make sure you ask the right people.
10. Write recommendations. Writing recommendations can lead to receiving recommendations.
11. Add applications to enhance your profile. If you have a blog, feed your blog entries into your LinkedIn account with one of LinkedIn’s applications. You can also turn LinkedIn into an online document collaboration platform.
12. Send selected Twitter tweets to LinkedIn. While you can connect your Twitter account to your LinedIn profile, many of us tweet too often or tweet about things that would be irrelevant to our LinkedIn contacts. Instead, select just the tweets you want to show up in your LinkedIn profile by adding the hashtag “#in” to the tweet. You can turn on this feature inTwitter Settings.
13. Select what to display in your public profile. People not connected to you can only see what you allow them to see by setting your Public Profile options. The more you reveal, the easier it is for people to know if they have the right person. Here, you can also set up your Public Profile URL, which shows up as to http://www.linkedin.com/in/yourname.
14. Review and adjust your settings. Though I’ve been on LinkedIn for a long time, I still run into new features and settings. Settings cover everything from profile views and email notifications to personal information and privacy settings. You can provide advice on how people should contact you on the Contact Settings page. Mine says, “Email is the best way to reach me.”

I have been a strong and forceful proponent of social networking and self promotion for years, especially in this new world social media world. I hope that this post will help you in truly distinguishing you from the millions of other HR professionals.

Analogy: The New Way to Spot Strategic Opportunities

When Charlie Merrill (the Merrill in Merrill-Lynch) envisioned banks as becoming "financial supermarkets" in the 1930s, he was describing a new strategic opportunity that no one else had imagined. Using a powerful analogy not only helped Merrill think through the idea of offering a broad menu of financial services to the middle class, but also aided him in selling the idea to others.

Traditional strategy development relies on economic analysis. The problem is that this approach yields opportunities that more than likely will also be discovered by competitors. And thus the power of strategy development tied to analogy: visionaries see opportunity where no one else is looking.

Writing in the July-August Harvard Business Review, HBS professor Giovanni Gavetti calls this looking at "cognitively distant" opportunities because they require a mental leap. "This way of thinking suggests that a crucial component of strategic leadership is the mental capacity to spot opportunities that are invisible to rivals and to manage other relevant parties' perceptions to get them on board."

Harley-Davidson and Ducati envision themselves not as motorcycle manufacturers but as providers of entertainment. Google re-imagined the Internet portal business not as a media business -- the model used by rival Yahoo -- but rather as a technology business. When you re-imagine your business, new ways to compete appear.

In addition to overcoming set ways of seeing things, the visionary has another monumental task: to convince employees and other stakeholders to buy in. Gavetti writes that former Kodak CEOGeorge Fisher clearly envisioned the company's future in digital, but couldn't change the corporate DNA, which was bound to film.

Want to become a thinking-by-association leader? The article preaches the use of structured associative thinking, which is a process for recognizing and working around out our own cognitive biases.

For strategists, reading The New Psychology of Strategic Leadership could be a fruitful way to begin thinking "outside the box."


a reprint from CBS

Why HR Still Isn't a Strategic Partner

For two decades we have been hearing that HR must become a strategic partner to the business. And the fact that we're still hearing it suggests that in many organizations it hasn't happened.

The need to align HR with the business has become more urgent than ever. Financial markets exert relentless pressure for growth, especially in emerging markets. Customers demand more and better service at lower cost. And cost-efficiency, resource conservation and regulatory compliance have become issues for almost every organization. Turnover among top talent is expected to increase in 2012; globalization is requiring stronger regional HR capabilities; and demographic shifts across the world are dramatically affecting availability of qualified people.

Yet, all too often, business leaders still wonder aloud why their organizations even have HR departments. For their part, many HR leaders are willing to partner with the business, but given the unique situation of each individual company, they have little in the way of concrete guidance about how to fulfill that role.

Let me suggest a way to start. Of every action you take as an HR leader, ask this simple question: does it cause friction in the business or does it create flow? Friction is anything that makes it more difficult for people in critical roles to win with the customer. Flow, on the other hand, is doing everything possible to remove barriers and promote better performance. The question applies to virtually any company in any business and it will take you farther down the road faster than the hazy, abstract injunction to become a strategic partner. Even in what appear to be routine HR responsibilities, you can inject the business perspective simply by asking whether what you are doing is going to enhance the flow of the business or impede it with friction.

Why is it so difficult to inject that business perspective? Because as HR leaders we feel ourselves to be near the pinnacle of the organization. The organization reports to us. It must meet our demands for information, documents, numbers.

In fact, that's backwards. We are far removed from the points and people that make a difference with customers and a difference to the business. Our perspective should be that of seeing to it that the people at those points can perform as smoothly, productively, and frictionlessly as possible.

Think, for example, of your talent strategy. Do you simply manage talent, or do you provide talentsolutions that reduce friction and enhance the flow of the business? Often we pride ourselves on trying to recruit the best talent we can find and consistently and fairly spending our resources and focusing our attention equally on everyone. But does that really enhance the flow of the business?

To truly be partners to the business we must identify those critical points of the business where the strategy succeeds or fails, and provide relevant talent solutions. In other words, we must think in terms of what Brian E. Becker, Mark A. Huselid, and Richard W. Beatty call "the differentiated workforce," in their book of the same name. That means managing talent as a portfolio of investments, some of which will pay a much higher return than others. Instead of spending an equal amount of time, attention and resources on everyone equally, you make disproportionate investments in the most critical roles and critical people — not just in terms of compensation, but in terms of development, opportunities, retention, engagement, and human capital planning. All jobs in a business unit are important, but not all are strategic and have maximum impact on the economic value of the business.

Many business units spend time each year identifying talent and competency needs, but few get real about it by developing plans around winning in their critical talent spaces. Let's say you have, in your opinion, spent the appropriate amount of time identifying your strategic talent needs — the difference-making roles. Then ask yourself how much time you and your HR team and line leaders spend focusing on solutions for acquiring, developing, engaging and retaining the talent to fill those needs? Or do you have the "equality" mentality — devoting the same amount of attention to everyone? It's shocking how many HR leaders say that their business has a strategic priority such as accelerating growth in emerging markets, but they and their teams spend little time in emerging markets. Does your investment of time and resources match your business strategy? If not, you are creating friction in the business that diminishes strategic impact.

From Harvard Business Review

More blog posts by J. Craig Mundy

More on: Human resources, Leadership, Talent management

J. CRAIG MUNDY

J. Craig Mundy is vice president of human resources and communications for the Climate Solutions sector of Ingersoll Rand. In this position, he leads the human capital and engagement strategies for the Thermo King and Trane brands, and has implemented a global talent solutions approach for the sector’s business operations around the world.