recruiting and recognition Archive

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Getting People Processes Right Drives the Bottom Line

Recognize This! – Companies that do people processes better also have better financial returns.

I’ve posted fairly often on research showing the connection between employee engagement or employee enablement and the bottom line. Thanks to a post on OnlineHumanResources.net, I now know about research making the connection between people processes of all kinds and the bottom line impact.

The Boston Consulting Group and the World Federation of People Management Associations published “From Capability to Profitability: Realizing the Value of People Management” in July. Key take-aways:

Significant Bottom-Line Impact from Getting People Processes Right

“Companies that are highly capable in 22 key HR topics consistently enjoyed better economic performance than those less capable. In several topics, this correlation was striking – up to 3.5 times the revenue growth and as much as 2.1 times the average profit margin. The high performers differentiated themselves dramatically in three of the most important topics: leadership development, talent management, and performance management and rewards… And unlike their less-successful peers, they clearly define performance norms and standards and adopt them enterprisewide.”

Leadership Differentiators

Linking performance and expectations to your core values makes better leaders. And those better leaders are promoted into positions of leadership based on how well they live the values. Doing so makes your company more profitable.

“[High performing companies] are 1.5 times more likely to have in place a leadership model that describes expected contributions and behavior that is grounded in company values. Such models go beyond clichés, offering actionable guidelines that inspire leaders – and that leaders aspire to – daily. Their leadership model guides talent selection and promotion decisions – 1.7 times as often as low-performing companies.”

Performance Management Differentiators

People clearly understand what is expected of them, daily. And these are standard across the globe for one-company focus on acceptable behaviors and outcomes.

“High-performing companies understand the importance of a well-constructed, balanced performance-management system in motivating and developing employees… They have clear norms that drive performance – 2.6 times as often as low-performing companies. Employees understand clearly what constitutes superior performance and, just as clearly, what is unacceptable… High-performing companies have global performance management standards in place 2.2 times as often as low-performing ones.”

Recognize the “How,” not Just the “What”

This is a central best practice for truly strategic, social employee recognition based on core values. It doesn’t matter what you accomplish if you do so in a way that violates core values.

“In all the activities we studied, high performing companies reward behavior, not just results, to a greater degree than low-performing companies.”

Where would you score on “people practices?” Are you driving as much value to the bottom line as you should?

3 Tips to Build and Sustain a Strong Company Culture

Recognize This! – Creating a strong culture requires careful focus and intention.

What’s your ambition for the culture of your organization? If you intend to create and preserve a strong company culture of recognition – one that drives engagement, productivity and performance – how do you that?

1) Focus on Your Culture

If culture is to be central to how the people who make up your organization work and behave every day, then culture cannot be an afterthought. It must be a primary area of focus. Kyle Zimmer, president, chief executive and co-founder of the nonprofit First Book, put it this way in a recent New York Times “Corner Office” column:

“It became very real to me that you have to really focus on the culture of the organization. You can work very hard to build the culture of an organization, and it’s a fragile thing — it’s much easier to lose it than it is to build it.”

The fragility of your culture is something I regularly speak to, comparing it to a bonsai tree. It takes many years of careful attention and focus to prune and bend a bonsai tree into the desired shape, but only one chop to kill it entirely. The same is true of your culture.

2) Hire Intentionally

One important factor to ensure you don’t destroy your culture over time is to hire intentionally. Ms. Zimmer offers this advice:

“If somebody comes in, and has had a 30-year career where they’ve been the boss, and they are not used to being questioned or having their ideas kicked around and challenged, it’s not going to be a fit. It’s also important to avoid hiring those people, because if we do, it’s going to change who comes to the organization.”

Additionally, this article offers some good tips for hiring for cultural fit, including how to get around a candidate’s tendency to say anything to get hired.

3) Make the Values behind Your Culture Real

Part of hiring intentionally is hiring to your values. But it’s not enough to stop focusing on values during the recruiting process. Your values must become central to the daily, ongoing work of all employees. Another CEO featured in the “Corner Office” column, Chris Barbin of Appirio, suggests:

“We have three values that we hire against and three that we run it against. The three that we hire against are trust, professionalism and gray matter — as in, how smart are you? The three we run it against are customers, team and fun.”

This is an interesting approach. Once you know the people you hire have the core personal values you desire, you can then refocus their efforts through daily values focused on organizational success.

What are your recommendations for creating a preserving a strong company culture?

2 Reasons Why Culture Matters to Recruitment

Recognize This! – Strong talent always has a choice of where to work and increasingly is choosing an organization with purpose.

On Monday, I wrote about the importance of culture for organization success and how to do that through consistent, frequent recognition of employees. But your culture matters long before a new employee ever steps through your door for a first interview.

Your organization culture is tied up closely with your employment value proposition. Whether you know it or not, your culture is drawing to you right now the type of talent you can hire.

1) Strong talent is drawn to a strong culture.

Tim Sackett, a recruiting pro, wrote recently in TLNT about a client he ultimately fired:

“The company was tough to recruit for because they had a super bad reputation and nobody locally wanted to go to work there, and on top of that, they weren’t willing to pay leaders to make up for their terrible reputation. I’m not in the business of providing bad talent – it won’t keep me in business long – and they could only afford average talent. But average talent doesn’t want to work for horrible companies, unless you pay a premium, so what you’re left with is bad talent.”

Do you want the best talent available to work for you? Guess what – so does everyone else. Top talent has their choice of work environment. Many even choose less compensation to work in an exciting, invigorating culture. But even average talent won’t work for an organization with a terrible reputation. And that reputation is a result of your culture.

If you want to hire the best, make yourself desirable to the best by creating a powerful culture of recognition and appreciation.

2) Purpose matters

A culture that illustrates purpose is also growing in importance. Calling Brands global research revealed in this news release:

“A new report by global brand consultancy Calling Brands reveals a dramatic shift in employee attitudes towards work – with corporate ‘Purpose’ emerging as a powerful new driver of attraction, retention and productivity that few businesses are leveraging. … The survey also revealed that, on average, 57% of respondents (64% Germany, 58% US, 48% UK) said they would favour joining an organisation that has a clearly defined Purpose. Furthermore, an average of 65% of respondents claimed that Purpose would motivate them to go the ‘extra mile’ in their jobs and 64% claimed it would engender a greater sense of loyalty towards the organisation they work for.”

Is your culture attractive to the top talent in your industry? Does it offer purpose to employees in a way that motivates them to achieve more?

8 Predictions (with 4 Main Themes) for HR Tech from Knowledge Infusion

Recognize This! – Talent is indisputably fluid. So are business objectives. HR must deliver a way to align fluid talent with fluid business needs.

I’ve just finished reading a very interesting report from Knowledge Infusion CEO and Co-Founder Jason Averbook and President Heidi Sprigi. In “HR Tech Predictions & Prescriptions for 2012,” Jason and Heidi make eight distinct predictions (and associated prescriptions).

Across those eight predictions, I see four continuous themes:

Global, mobile and social “just simply is.” You can’t work around them, legislate around them, or ignore them. You must find a way to incorporate global, mobile and social appropriately into the workstream.
Software as a Service (SaaS) is the killer app. “HR is a department, but HCM is a strategy.” And to implement that strategy, HR needs an agile “delivery platform” not just a technology. That platform is SaaS.
Reporting on metrics and analytics that matter is fundamental going forward. “Metrics, analytics and dashboards are the things business leaders care about because they present integrated data in a useful way.”
Fluidity of talent is necessary to meet ever changing business needs and priorities. I saved the best for last. This theme runs throughout all 8 predictions because it’s the new reality of the workforce today. “HR must understand where the business is going, which talent is needed to support that direction, and which decisions will need to be made get there, before thinking about HR processes and technology.”

The challenge with this reality of fluid talent – and fluid business needs – is this: How do you find the specific talent you need when you need it? You need faster, deeper, real-time talent insight – knowledge about your employees, where they reside, and what their current skills and abilities are – than you can get from a traditional performance review or skills assessment.

You need to pull in the wisdom of crowds and let your entire organization tell you, perhaps, who your most consistently innovative employees are so you can pull them together to get a new product designed and developed ahead of your competition.

How you do that is what Globoforce announced today in with its new “Talent Maps.”

Through data populated by peer-to-peer recognition across the company, HR and business leaders can see firsthand who the top performers and influencers are within teams, departments, and the company. This knowledge and data can be used to identify high potential, high performance individuals for succession planning, flight risk assessment, and leadership development. In addition, managers gain actionable data for more effective day-to-day team management and individual performance assessment.

Averbook agrees. He commented in the press release:

“HR leaders have long needed a better way to understand the true performance of individual employees and teams. Globoforce addresses this need with its latest release. Through its social DNA, intuitive reporting, and performance alignment, peer recognition can play a significant role in talent and performance management. The next couple of years will be fun to watch as social recognition fully enters the stage of must-have HR technologies.”

What are you seeing as your major challenges on the horizon? Can you find the people you need when you need them?

CEOs Speak: How They Built Their Powerful Cultures

Recognize This! – No company will build the same culture, but every organization should focus intentional effort on building the right culture for them.

I’ve been traveling a good deal again lately, which means I’ve had time to dig into my “organization culture and leadership” pile of books. A short flight recently gave me the opportunity to read Building a Culture of Intention, a collection of observations from CEOs on their own organization cultures. Today, I’ll share a selection of my favorite observations in the book, based on our best practices for truly strategic employee recognition.

Executives Must Be Involved

Lynn Ann Casey, CEO of arcAspicio: “It is important to sustain our culture with every new hire and with every project and client that we take on. That requires a lot of executive-level oversight of both people and projects.”

Jere Brown, CEO, Dimension Data Americas: “We wanted to emphasize that behavior starts at the top. Senior executives have to embrace and model the desired behaviors and hold others accountable for them… Today, [High Performance Culture] means more to our employees because they have seen our leaders and their peers living these values in their day-to-day work.”

Lisa Dezzutti, President and CEO, Market Connections, Inc: “Knowing that culture stats at the top, I have to remind myself to stop and celebrate before moving on to the next project.”

Bring Your Values & Goals to Life in the Daily Work

Mark Carrier, Senior Vice President of B.F. Saul Company: “We really put in place a program to bring new materials to our line staff that helps our organizational goals come to life and re-energize our people. It keeps our core mission at the front of people’s minds while simultaneously letting us stay course.”

Mary Naylor, CEO, VIPdesk: “The core values of our culture must continue to be emphasized beginning with the orientation process and continue to be highlighted throughout a team member’s tenure… Our Human Resources effort will be critical in helping us maintain our culture. It begins with recruiting individuals who fit into our organization and existing culture.”

Make Your Culture Integral to Your Recruiting and Onboarding

Krista McMasters, CEO, Clifton Gunderson, LLP: “We immerse our new hires in our culture the minute they come on board… We want employees that fit our culture – people who are open, principled, and interested in serving clients in exceptional ways. As a result, we recruit employees the same way we develop business.”

Beth Monroe, President, JustinBradley: “We live our culture on an ongoing basis. That makes it easy for new hires to make business decisions, because the road is clear on what our values and ethics are.”

Base Performance Evaluations on Your Core Values

Mary Naylor, CEO, VIPdesk: “We also try to recognize our team members for their contributions as much as possible… Going forward, performance reviews will focus more directly on the core values of the company as it relates to the team member. We continue to tie everything into the core values, mission, and culture of the organization.”

Doug Layman, Former President & CEO, Kadix Systems (since acquired by Dynamics Research Corporation): “Our twice-yearly formal executive performance reviews included assessment areas for 1) compliance with values, 2) meeting company objectives, and 3) position specific skills.”

Dissatisfied Employees Say They’re Staying Put

Recognize This! – Dissatisfied workers, regardless of intent to stay, are not engaged with your organization, your culture or your priorities.

Are employees jumping ship or staying put? The research and reports swing both ways. Just a couple weeks ago, I wrote about the war for talent still being on. I stand by that point of view, as highly skilled employees in tough-to-fill positions will always be sought after.

Yet last week, John Hollon, editor of TLNT, pointed to a recent Accenture survey that reported:

58% of employees are dissatisfied at work
69% said they do not plan to leave their current employers
64% cited flexible work arrangements as the reason for staying put

I highly recommend John’s excellent summary of the research on TLNT. My initial reaction to the research was to question just how much good work are you getting out of your dissatisfied workers?

I can see some employers reading this research, giving a huge sigh of relief, and thinking, “Great. I don’t have to worry about that anymore. Back to work!” (whip cracking in background)

And that would be a tragedy, indeed. Unhappy and dissatisfied employees are simply not giving of their best in the workplace. More time is spent fantasizing about leaving, hoping annoying co-workers leave, or other distractions.

The research itself points to the truth in this with 64% citing flexible work arrangements as a reason for staying. In most cases, I’m a strong advocate for flexible work arrangements. However, think for a moment about the employees in your office who you know are disengaged and dissatisfied with their work. How confident would you be in their deliverables and productivity in a flexible work arrangement?

Employer reaction to this study should be: “I’m glad they’re staying. I should use this opportunity to uncover the major causes of dissatisfaction, disengagement and unhappiness, and then do what I can to ameliorate that.”

Options can include strengths-based assessments to move people into different roles that may excite and energize them more, look for ways to create a career path (including training and development opportunities), identify ways to enable better work/life balance and – of course – increase positive reinforcement of employee behaviors and achievements through strategic employee recognition.

All of the options above (and many more not listed) convey to employees how much the organization values them and their efforts. I’m more engaged when I know what I do matters. I’m sure that’s true for many others as well.

Are you dissatisfied but staying in your current position? Why?

Retaining Employees * Better Pay or a Better Culture?

Recognize This! – Job seekers cite company culture as more important than pay. Does your culture entice star performers?

Have you ever quit a job to take less pay? Some scoff at the idea, but after the years of fear, anxiety and overwork post-recession, a good company culture in which employees feel valued, appreciated and able to contribute to meaningful work is more important than salary level. A pair of studies found just that:

“The findings of a recent Monster/Unum study of job seekers determined that, over everything else, 87 percent of employees want a company ‘that truly cares about the well-being of its employees.’ By contrast, only 66 percent of respondents rated a high base salary as very important.

“Another 2011 Unum survey with Harvard Business Review Analytic Services solicited human resource executives’ opinions on this issue, with similar results. This research found that corporate culture is critical to driving engagement, recruitment and retention of a quality workforce.

“A company’s values and focus on employee fulfillment are apparently the most important factors in attracting and engaging quality employees, and being a company that cares about the well-being of its staff was twice as likely to be viewed as very important in attracting and retaining staff as providing a high base salary.”

And if that’s not enough to make you reconsider the powerful role of your culture in your workplace, keep this bit of advice from Steve Ford, chair of OI Partners, in mind:

“Employees make career-related resolutions much more often than bosses—however, the top resolution that workers make each year is to find a new job. If more managers resolved to develop their employees’ leadership skills, invite their input, demonstrate continued interest in their careers and recognize their contributions, fewer workers would be determining to find new jobs each year.”

What is your employee value proposition (EVP)? Why would the stars in your industry want to work for your organization? If you can’t articulate that clearly today, then why would the stars in your own company want to continue to work for you?

Like core values and mission statements, EVPs are mere words on a page unless leadership at all levels works to make it a reality through the culture of the organization.

Then again, it’s not just leadership or management responsibility to see to this. It’s up to every employee in the organization to look out for their fellow teammates, notice those working hard to demonstrate the values while achieving the objectives, and then appropriately and frequently thank them for it.

What drives the culture in your organization?

Recruiting Every Day – Your Own Employees, That Is

Recognize This! – “If you are not recruiting your best people, you’re the only one who isn’t.”

Yesterday, I highlighted Bersin & Associates 14 predictions for strategic human resources and talent management in 2012. But while we anticipate the future, we mustn’t stop focusing on today.

The same is true for recruiting – while we are always looking for new talent to bring into our organizations, we mustn’t stop focusing on the top talent already within our organizations today.

Dr. Katherine Jones, an analyst with Bersin & Associates, brought that point home in a recent post on Bersin’s blog, “Re-Recruit the Talent You Want to Keep”

“Re-recruiting is a means to rekindle the levels of excitement and enthusiasm that the brand new hire had coming in the door – and re-engage the existing workforce. It may be easy to take the team you have working for you for granted – easy and dangerous. With the increased capacity of recruiters to locate talent (through tools such as LinkedIn), companies are increasing vulnerable to losing their top talent.”

Research reported by Hay Group analysts Mark Royal and Tom Agnew in their new book The Enemy of Engagement, makes this point quite clear. Their results show employees are generally highly engaged when they first begin, but engagement tails off over time. This is due to new hires learning the rules, and then looking for ways they can continue to make a difference. If they become frustrated in their efforts due to managerial or process-oriented impediments, they well feel less enabled in their work and far more willing to look for a new position where their talents and skills are valued.

Dr. Jones’ last words in her post drive home the point:

“(P.S. The book I was reading was called “The Executive Guide to Integrated Talent Management” by Kevin Oakes and Pat Galagan. Their final word: ‘If you are not recruiting your best people, you’re the only one who isn’t.’)”

Are you the only one not recruiting your top talent? What would you do if your top 20% of engaged performers walked out today?

How Company Culture Could Derail Your Recruiting Efforts

Recognize This! – Top prospects know the culture they want to work in. Does yours measure up?

I’m one week away from my first stop on the “Building Your Winning Culture of Recognition” workshop tour. I’m excited for the Atlanta session on 27^th October and working with committed HR pros to build the business case for strategic recognition in their organizations. (There’s still time to register for Atlanta on Thursday or New York City on Friday, 28^th October!)

With company culture obviously top of mind for me right now, I was intrigued by Ben Eubanks’ post on his UpstartHR blog. He took a different perspective on culture – how to evaluate the culture of the company during your interview to work for them. Recruiters and HR Pros – I highly recommend this post as a heads-up to what your top prospects are looking to understand about you before signing on the dotted line.

A couple of solid suggestions from Ben (quoting):

Ask what sorts of behavior are rewarded and which are punished
Ask what the company’s overall mission/vision is. If a random employee can tell you (at least in general terms) it could signify a strong, unified workforce.

Those two are closely linked. If your employees can’t tell you where the company is heading, how do you know they’re all working together to get to the right end goal? And you’d better be recognizing and rewarding them every time they demonstrate your core values and contribute to reaching that goal. After all, research shows 49% of employees will leave to work for a company that recognizes their efforts.

Ben then offers a good reminder:

“Keep in mind that there are “pockets” of culture within individual departments, so the overall company culture could differ from your specific work area.”

If you found the perfect candidate for a hard to fill role (a purple squirrel) and that candidate asked to walk around your office to speak to a few employees, how would you react? Would you panic and try to organize the walk-around for lunch time when you know most of the cubes will be empty anyway? Or are you comfortable with the idea, knowing your culture will be well reflected in your employees?

If you have any concerns, join me in my “Building Your Winning Culture of Recognition” workshop. Blog readers should use registration code: RECOGNIZETHIS for half-off the registration price.

Dates and Locations:

Atlanta – Thursday, October 27
New York – Friday, October, 28
Chicago – Monday, November 14
San Francisco – Thursday, November 17

Hope to see you there!

Lessons Learned at Zappos: Values, Service, Experience

Recognize This! – Determining your core values and company isn’t enough. You must be willing to commit the time and money to properly build a culture around it.

Yesterday, I mentioned briefly an example Zappos’ powerful culture of empowerment. Last week, a member of my In*sight Services consulting team, Traci, had the opportunity to tour Zappos and see their happiness culture in action.

Traci returned from Zappos excited by all she had observed first hand. Just three of the key take-aways she told me are critical approaches we also encourage our clients to follow:

1) It’s all about the values. Zappos hires, reviews performance, and fires based on their company values. I’ve written before about Zappos “culture assessments” (instead of performance reviews) in which employee success is assessed based on how well they demonstrated the company values throughout the year.

Traci reported employee commitment to living the values was pervasive from the moment when she entered the company parking lot and was kindly escorted to the proper entrance by a Zappos employee who had arrived at the same time. Zappos “family members” constantly enquired how they could help her, offering her free books from the company library and much more – always with high energy and courtesy.

2) It’s all about the service. Both internally and externally, Zappos is committed to service – customer service as well as service to colleagues. Their goal at all times is to build emotional connections, believing these connections between individuals makes it easier to support each other in delivering optimum customer service.

One factor of this is that nobody’s seat is sacred. Desks are shifted constantly to encourage building of relationships between new neighbors. Even CEO Tony Hsieh and his executive team sit in cubicles, not offices. That’s Tony’s cube pictured above. (The jungle theme is in homage to the executives – the “people in monkey suits” – who sit there.)

3) It’s all about the experience. Like I mentioned in yesterday’s post, Zappos is committed to every customer experiencing a personal connection when they call in. Zappos trains employees extensively, offering 42 different courses and requiring four weeks of intensive “incubation” (not just onboarding) in which the company history, culture and approach are critical components.

The result? In the last three years, Zappos has not had a single opening in their customer service team. Not one. Industry standard is 70% employee turnover annually in customer service. For the pragmatic, think of the savings in recruiting and training alone, especially when you factor in the low recruiting costs Zappos has. It’s harder to get into Zappos (4% of all applicants hired) than Harvard University (6% of all applicants accepted as students).

Can you boil your company culture and ethos down to three key take-aways? If I were to come tour your headquarters office, what would I observe about your culture?

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