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| Volume 8, Issue 2 |
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In This Issue:
 The HR [professionals] personality
 6 best-practice tips from America's top HR departments
The 7 most dangerous errors in employee handbooks
7 ways to get the most out of Millennial employees
 Career killers
The right [talent] war to fight?
 The many faces of employee engagement
Focus your team with stories
How to hire, train, and retain great employees
HR in the firing line
How to kill morale and start an exodus
 The office: The bad and the ugly
 Best corporate practices 2008
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The HR [professionals] personality
Data compiled exclusively for HRE suggests that while HR leaders share many personality traits with others in the C-suite, there are some key differences that could impact your effectiveness.
ertainly, career experience, skills and competencies are important components. But what about personality -- could that be a factor as well? Could one's inclinations and preferences, one's natural comfort level with certain activities, play a role in
the job of HR? Human Resource Executive® ventured to find that out by asking several leading assessment firms to take a look at the similarities and differences between the personalities of HR executives and leaders of other business functions, such as
sales, marketing, finance and operations. At our request, the firms pulled data from thousands of personality tests given to HR executives -- mostly vice presidents and above -- over a number of years. The results might surprise you. Although the
assessment firms all use different methods to look at personality, their findings were remarkably similar. In most -- though not all -- ways, HR executives and other executives are very much alike, according to the data. For example, they're equally
good at thinking strategically. But it's where the two groups diverge that the real difference becomes apparent. HR executives score much higher in traits such as...
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6 best-practice tips from America's top HR departments
Even if your HR department has only two or three employees, it can still incorporate some of the best approaches to HR management used in the country’s top HR departments.
“You don’t have to be well-funded to focus on what’s good for your employees or the right thing for your business,” says Charles Tharp, co-director of the HR management department at Rutgers University. Tharp and other industry experts cite GE,
Coca-Cola, IBM, Google and PepsiCo as five of the top HR departments. They share some basic approaches to HR that can benefit much smaller departments, including:...
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The 7 most dangerous errors in employee handbooks
An employee handbook can be the foundation of employee performance and a shield against lawsuits ... or it can be a ticking time bomb that confuses employees and strips away your legal defenses.
It all depends on how well it's written and put to use. Too often, handbooks are inconsistent with the way business is actually conducted, or they mistakenly imply that workers have certain rights. Example: Say your progressive discipline policy
suggests that employees will be fired only for good cause. Such language can erase an employee's "at will" status and wipe away your right to fire the employee for any reason—or no reason at all. Even a statement about an initial "probationary period"
can suggest that workers are virtually guaranteed continued employment after a certain period of time. Here are the seven most common handbook mistakes to avoid:...
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7 ways to get the most out of Millennial employees
In today’s workplace, many supervisors have to manage people from four different generations, all of which respond to different kinds of carrots, sticks and management styles.
The breakdown: Traditional workers: born before 1946 Baby Boomers: 1946–1964 Generation X:
- Traditional workers: born before 1946
- Baby Boomers: 1946–1964
- Generation X: 1965–1979
- Millennials: 1980–1995
According to anecdotal information and research (see box below), managers in U.S. organizations are having the hardest time managing the newest entrants to the work force. Millennials—also known as Gen Y or the Entitlement Generation—carry the...
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Career killers
Kudos to the paltry 14% of us who keep New Year's resolutions. The vast majority--a full 86%--go right back to our counterproductive ways as it relates to personal health, careers, relationships, and otherwise. Forgo the ever popular New
Year's resolution to lose weight and, instead, commit to avoiding a simple list of career-killers that so often result in hearing the feared words, "You're fired," again and again in the course of a career.
Avoiding these seven deadly sins will also help individuals balance their "whole life" and assure they are ready to take on new workplace challenges as they are presented--and execute them well...
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The right [talent] war to fight?
A decade has passed since McKinsey & Co. released a report declaring the onset of a "War for Talent."
Looking forward over a 20-year period, the McKinsey report identified shrinking numbers of 35- to 45-year-olds along with forecast economic growth as factors that would cause the supply of talent to fall far short of demand. Employers were
encouraged to prepare for battle--McKinsey asserted that the attraction and retention of talent presented more important challenges to company success than competition, strategy, technological innovations and economic stagnation. In the
subsequent years, boards of directors, top management teams and executive search firms have invested considerable resources in efforts to better identify, recruit and develop talent. It is now halfway through the 20-year horizon McKinsey & Co.
assigned to this "talent war," and our work with executives from a wide range of industries leads us to conclude that a different--and potentially more vexing--shortage exists. Repeatedly we hear from executives that the talent pool is
not nearly as challenging to navigate as is what we have come to call the "values pool." We suggest that, as trends in globalization and technology open new labor markets to employers, the real shortage facing companies in the future will be less
about finding individuals with the knowledge, skills and abilities to do the job than about finding individuals whose personal value system provides a fit with the company's values and mission. As Donna Morris, Adobe's (nasdaq: ADBE - news - people
) senior vice president of human resources, told us: "It is one thing to find talented executives, but it is entirely another to find talented executives who are...
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The many faces of employee engagement
For Britons and Americans it is all about respect. For workers in France and India it is the type of work they are doing. For Germans it is who they work with.
And for the Japanese, it is pay. Employee engagement, it is clear, takes many different forms around the world.
Workers around the world are fired up by completely different things, according to new research, meaning that a global, one-size-fits-all approach to employee engagement will almost inevitably be doomed to failure. A study of workers in 22
countries by HR consultancy Mercer has found sharp differences around the world in what makes workers tick. Employees were asked which of 12 factors most influenced their engagement at work, with surprisingly varied results. Overall, respect was
identified as having the strongest impact on engagement globally, and was the top factor noted in the UK and U.S. But it was notable that in Japan – where respect is much more of a "given" in society and culture in general – it was considered a much
less significant driver of employee engagement. Similarly, workers in France and India cited...
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Focus your team with stories
"We sit through seminars, sermons, and speeches of all types, and what we remember most are the stories." If you're leading or building a team, Annette Simmons has a question for you: "What's your story?" Not your personal background or
what you've been doing in your team building efforts. Not fishing stories, hunting, or war stories.
She wants to know what story you're using to focus your team and draw it together into a cohesive unit. Simmons, whom I first met in 2003, is author of several books, including
Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins. She says we can study just about any inspiring leader and we'll find someone who can tell a story that drives home a point – all the way
down to a person's core. Think about it. We can sit through seminars, sermons, and speeches of all types, and what we remember most are the stories. Why do stories work?...
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How to hire, train, and retain great employees
Where I live (in Idaho), the cost of replacing an employee averages somewhere between $17,000 and $31,000. Employees making over $60,000 per year cost more than
$38,000 to replace. The problem for most employers? Many of these costs are hidden and spread out, so they don't glare at you as a single line item in the budget.
When I present these figures during a training session, some people scoff and say it can't be true. All I can say is don't shoot the messenger. These numbers come from the Department of Labor and the Society for Human Resource Management. What about
entry-level workers? Surely it doesn't cost $17,000 to replace them? Usually true, but it still costs more than people think. A few years back I conducted a workshop for a retail Mall Merchant's Association. In an exercise during the workshop, the
merchants discovered that among their own group, $2,000 was the least amount it cost replace an entry-level employee. If you're an employer, how much time does it take for you to earn $2,000? If you make $50,000 per year it's 80 hours. If you earn
$100,000 per year, it's about 40 hours. If you earn $200,000 per year, it's 20 hours of precious time. Therefore, if you could get something done in less than 20 hours that helped you retain just one entry-level employee, you'd be saving money. That's
an amazing claim, but do the math. Then calculate how much time it takes you to earn $17,000. Then calculate for $31,000. Those are realistic costs for replacing just one employee. From this, it's pretty obvious we need to do more than find great
employees; we need to keep them, too. To keep them around, we must examine the real reasons employees leave. Most say it's because they're seeking better pay. Wrong
answer, try again. The Harvard Business Review reports that the number one reason people leave is...
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HR in the firing line
Unloved and unappreciated, HR departments regularly come under fire from their management colleagues for failing to deliver. And this week is no different.
In the Financial Times last week columnist Luke Johnson sent shockwaves throughout the personnel profession when he described HR as a "necessary evil, and "a burden on the backs of the productive workers." Johnson, who is also chairman of UK TV station
Channel 4 and runs Risk Capital Partners, a private equity firm, warned that with a recession looming employers would be wise to "clear away a lot of pointless administration," and sympathised with Robert Townsend, boss of car hire firm Avis,
who in his book Up the Organisation suggests firing the entire personnel department. Training advisers were also singled out by Johnson, who feels they are "employed to distract everyone from doing their job with pointless courses." Unfortunately for HR
practitioners everywhere, this negative view of the profession has only been underlined in a study released today by consultants Ceridian. Through a survey of
more than 1,000 UK employees, the business services company found that half of office workers feel HR teams make...
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How to kill morale and start an exodus
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Fewer people doing the same amount of work places a lot of stress on everyone" |
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The story you're about to read is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. My purpose for writing this is so that by reading it, people might learn what not to do.
Zoe is the departmental director for a 45-person department. Her employees are highly-trained and regulated. Working two different shifts in three locations, they're responsible for making highly-sophisticated components. Although for years
the department was tightly knit with high morale, it wasn't due to Zoe's leadership; she was known as a task master. It was her department supervisors that kept the gears of teamwork well-oiled. Scheduling people to cover two shifts at three
locations is rather tricky. Fortunately, the locations are within fifteen miles of each other, so if one location is short-handed, it's easy for someone else to be
there in just a few minutes. The first crack in Zoe's dam occurred without notice about three years ago...
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The office: The bad and the ugly
Seven signs that your employees detest you. (By you, of course, we mean some other boss.) There's a reason Dilbert, The Office, and their ilk are so popular.
Satire gets old fast, but the appeal of realism endures. And the real world, sadly, is full of lousy bosses.
Someone ought to do a study on where these louts come from. Were they abused by their own bosses? Did they toss overboard the ballast of human kindness to hasten the ascent of their career balloons? Or is this an example of absolute power
corrupting absolutely? Such research might also demonstrate how ubiquitous miserable managers are. The proliferation of boss-bashing screeds with titles like When You Work for a Bully, Nasty Bosses, and How To Work for an Idiot suggests a plague. A
few months ago I enumerated five ways in which bosses could be great. A bookend column about bad bosses would never fit in this space, because while goodness tends to be monochromatic, badness comes in every color of the rainbow. But bad bosses of
all stripes evoke similar responses in employees; consequently, you can often tell that people hate you, even if you're not sure why.Inc. readers, of course, are all purebreds among top dogs. But on the off chance that a misfit manager stumbles
across this page, here are seven signs that you are a bad boss...
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Best corporate practices 2008
Last year, we showcased some of our favorite corporate management practices (BusinessWeek.com, 3/28/07) in this space, and BusinessWeek.com readers responded in droves.
Easy as it is to focus on the stupidest, most annoying corporate practices we encounter—from no-moonlighting policies to "stitch-level" dress code policies—it
makes sense to highlight the smart moves that employers make in managing their teams, at least once a year...
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