#ProOpinion: Closed Mouths Stagnate Progress

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Working in HR you get your fair share of discussions around the need to have a town hall or to administer a survey. I’m pretty sure most of the workforce is over surveys, because two things happen: 1) They end up answering questions leadership knows the answers to and 2) There is usually no action behind the surveys- making employees’ efforts fruitless. I believe in soliciting feedback from the very people we serve: employees and customers. Despite the stigma around surveys, they still have an important use in many areas of business when utilized appropriately. It is clear that, businesses focused on new ways to serve their customers and employees are poised to see continuous growth in their organizations. It goes back to the old saying:”You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” How can businesses stay ahead-of-the-curve while operating their businesses blindly? The truth is they can’t and many CEO’s are adjusting to this new reality of data-driven decision making.

A 2015 Global CEO survey by PWC found that 60% of CEO’s are concerned about threats to their businesses given the increased transparency around business operations in the past few years. Additionally, they found that 67% of US CEO’s feel their are more opportunities for their business today than three years ago. Even in this instance, you can see the power in surveys and soliciting feedback. We simply have no way of knowing where we have been, where we are currently and where we are heading; unless we ask the those connected to our markets how we are doing.

You can question the efficacy of surveys, but what I do know is closed-mouths stagnate our progress in business. If a product is terrible and doesn’t do what it purports to do- the business never knows they need to make a change unless consumers speak up. If a business process is slowing down the productivity of employees, leadership has no clue and carries on as usual- if none of the employees speak up. One of the ways we get people to let us know where we can improve is via surveys. Per my earlier sentiment, if those customers and/or employees don’t think their voice is important enough to record their thoughts in a survey; nothing will change.

This is why I am so happy to be working with ProOpinion as a brand ambassador. ProOpinion allows business professionals to make data-driven decisions that will drive results. Essentially, they are a survey partner for businesses that need to get feedback on their products or market behavior from professionals like you and I. I just completed a survey today about business communications, the providers I use and why I use who I do for my communications needs. I have had so many trials and tribulations with phone and internet providers that I was actually happy to provide some feedback on my experiences. Will my feedback change certain providers behaviors? I certainly hope so. However, I can rest easy knowing I didn’t sit in silence when my voice and opinion could have made all the difference.

Image Courtesy of ProOpinion

Image Courtesy of ProOpinion

I need a favor from you. You all are professional rockstars and have shown up for me in the past. Sign up for ProOpinion here. It is free and will enable you to have input into some of businesses most pressing concerns. Additionally, you have the ability to earn rewards like Amazon.com Gift Cards and gift cards from many other retail outlets. In addition, you will have access to their infographic vault and blog filled with timely business information and metrics. Your initial profile creation will be around 20-25 minutes, but that is just so they are clear on what surveys to send you. Surveys come straight to your email inbox specifying the time it will take to complete it and the amount of reward points you will earn for your efforts.

Join me on ProOpinion and start allowing your voice to have an impact on business while earning great rewards. After all, it isn’t often that you get so much for free. The only thing that isn’t free is your time, but what better way to spend a few minutes than to chime in about topics that are important to you. Check it out you won’t be disappointed.

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Will HR Transform or Be Transformed?

 

Transform HR

Image courtesy of IBM Smarter Workforce

 

I love Human Resources.The idea that we are charged with an organizations most prized possession- its people- is no easy task. Everybody has their niche in HR. My role in the organizations I worked for were focused on process improvement and facilitating strategic transformation. In essence, I was often brought in as the person that would see the state of the companies processes and strategies and develop a plan for moving it forward. It is a skill and niche I continue to enjoy as I serve customers through my business.

As HR practitioners, we have enjoyed the luxury of working within siloed niches with very little gumption or energy to look up from our mounting work to see how much the workforce has changed. There are certainly progressive HR departments trying to increase their value and move in unison with the businesses they support. The problem is as a discipline we aren’t moving forward together in a way that will support our survival in the future. You have people on the left hating HR and counting the days to its demise. The ones on the right-who are happy living in Personnel World circa 1980; and then the ones in the middle that are following whatever the latest trend in HR is despite any applicability of the trend to their particular business.

There is so much potential collectively and separately for HR to transform the organizations they serve. It requires us to take a step back from what we think we know and examine the economic, societal and business-specific realities of the overall workforce. To continue down this road of doing HR for the sake of keeping the discipline alive is really to be an accessory to the inevitable death of HR. Business and technology are evolving quicker than we are as a discipline. This realization is not a reason to be defensive, but a memo to all of us that we need to either transform or be transformed.

Last week, IBM announced a partnership with SAP (yes, you read that right) that will allow them to deliver a consistent and streamlined customer experience via an offering of an integration between SAP’s SuccessFactors® Employee Central and IBM Kenexa’s cloud-based HR software Talent Acquisition Suite. This alliance is an effort that will allow IBM customers to move to the cloud; while also reaping the benefits of ongoing support and services from these two tech giants. IBM and SAP are competitors. Each of these companies could have continued in privacy creating and deploying products independent of one another. What I get from this partnership is: they have realized that offering a better product to consumers is far more important than anything they could do separately. Will it be lucrative? Only time, will tell. The point is they looked at the market and they are transforming rather than being transformed.

Everything in life and business travels in cycles. There are times for rebuilding,  stagnation, and transformation. We are in an age of evolution and transformation and it is exciting. What can you be doing as an HR practitioner to raise the bar in your own organization?

Stop. Don’t answer that question now, but please accept my invite to IBM Smarter Workforce’s #SWFChat where I will have the pleasure of co-hosting a chat with Denise Holt of Grateez, Inc. about the Transforming HR and the evolution of Talent Management.

You can join us on Crowdchat by following this link: https://www.crowdchat.net/swfchat. I hope to see you there.

For the complete press release on the IBM SAP alliance, please click here. Also, follow the hashtag #IBMSAP on Twitter for more insights from the New Way To Work and IBM communities.

Five Ways You Could Be Undermining Your Talent Management Strategy

Courtesy of Pixabay.com

Courtesy of Pixabay.com

There is nothing more reassuring to a jobseeker than hearing that opportunity abounds in the company you are interviewing with. It isn’t the most important aspect for everyone, but for a good majority- it is the defining factor next to compensation and other candidate bait. There’s very little reason for candidates to doubt your claim of endless upward mobility. That is until they get burned. When they start a job and  find out the yellow brick road to career greatness is more like quicksand; it leads to initial disappointment-but they haven’t lost hope in every employer yet. They start to search again and find another seemingly good company. To ensure that they don’t make the same mistake again, they ask your recruiter better questions during the interview process. They join your company with hope and promise beneath their wings; but this time there is a new set of tricks that halt their career progression. Now, it hits the candidate like a ton of bricks that there’s something wrong. Either they are really bad at choosing companies or they aren’t as great as they thought. To put it plainly it is utterly frustrating.

At a time where retention and talent management are all the rage, you would think companies would be more intentional about looking at practices that may be undermining their efforts.Whatever your sentiment is about how employees progress in the company, you have to agree that the following practices are pretty lame and counterproductive to your talent management strategy.

1) Bogus Job Postings– Here we have those highly-coveted positions where you have quietly identified your candidate of choice, but decide to waste your employees’ time, energy and emotions as they fawn over a job they have no possibility of attaining. The worst part about this is the imposition you put both your recruiters and candidates in. Both parties know how it’s going to turn out, but instead they have to go through the motions because you want it to appear that you conducted a competitive search.

2)  Sneak-Attack Promotions- When you feel the need to confidentially promote employees followed by a celebrity-worthy press release announcing your decision- morale is going to plummet. It doesn’t say very much about your leadership ability, when you don’t think enough of your team to give them a chance to apply and interview for positions they are qualified to do.

3) Hold em’ and Fold em’- Are your managers undermining your employees’ ability to transfer by creating performance issues and personality narratives that never existed? This is typical when opportunity presents internally, but the manager does everything in their power to keep the employee from progressing further by sharing off-the-record performance fodder that influences the selection process. The problem with this is the employee catches on eventually and realizes they’ve been blacklisted.

4) The Relic on the Shelf- Poor tenured employee who has done well in becoming the go-to gal or guy in their department, but can’t seem to get any further. So you mean to tell me that this person who has been with the company for 30+ years with nary a bad performance review and happens to be fluent in the company rules, norms and culture is suddenly not good enough for any other opportunities in the organization or even their own department? Stop the madness!

5) Give Me More… more education, more experience, more skills, a third arm, the stem cells from your first child- I get it-you don’t have time to train and you need them up and running like yesterday. How do more KSA’s help when you haven’t established what is absolutely essential to your operation? In addition, why is it necessary when you have promoted and continue to promote people with no credentials? If you’re going to ask someone to go back to school or learn more, the request needs to be consistent and operationally-warranted. Last time, I checked Jesus Christ already has a job.

Here you have five scenarios where there is likely a disconnect between your intention and practice. The moral of the talent management story is this: if someone isn’t performing well, don’t promote them. However, have the decency to have a conversation about how they can fix it. When they do fix it, don’t hold their past performance mistakes and deficits over their head indefinitely. Strike a balance between what you want and what is needed. You may think you “need” someone with a PH.D and the ability to read minds for that receptionist role, but does it have to be so?

For God’s sake be thankful for your tenured employees, if not for them many of your triumphs and financial gains would not be possible. If they aren’t trained to the standard of the current workforce, blame yourself for not investing in them and insisting that they continue to grow professionally. Speaking of growth, stop hiding and withholding opportunity from your workers. Be transparent about present and upcoming opportunities. Allow your employees to apply for internal opportunities aligned with their backgrounds and interests. The best case scenario is you could find out you have been missing out on some unknown strengths of your employees. The worst case…you hire the right person and your employee carries on knowing that you at least gave them a chance.

Lastly, no more bogus searches. External and internal candidates alike know when you are full of sh%&! Stop putting out external postings knowing you want a qualified internal candidate and stop posting internal positions knowing there’s a VIP in mind. Interviewing for a job is stressful and we have all been there. There is nothing considerate about making someone go through the scrutiny that is synonymous with the interview and selection process for no reason. Being honest about opportunity is just one more way of building rapport with your employees. It also ensures that prospective employees aren’t deterred from joining your company because you haven’t committed to a consistent and fair talent management strategy.

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