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Archive for the ‘Performance’ Category
HR Slim-Down: Your Communication Diet
Apr 15It’s time to cut the fat out of your diet. You know what we’re talking about—the fast foods of HR, the “oh, so convenient” communication candies, those outdated recipes of policies you’ve been using far too long.
Take a look at your company in your office mirror today. Is there anything you’d like to change? We’ll show you how to slim down your at-work communications by eliminating these things from your HR diet.
Dress codes (and other outdated rules)
We’re not advocating a complete disregard for common social courtesy, but we’d also like to point out that we’re not living in the Mad Men era anymore. We’re all professionals, which means we have a pretty good idea what we’re supposed to be doing. Leave the choice of what to wear up to us.
Time clocks
Measuring your employees’ workday down to the minute is just as bad as assigning them a dress code. Not only is it a waste of time for them having to constantly worry about the exact second of arrival or departure, but it wastes your time when you focus on these menial details, rather than the bigger picture.
Employee of the month
Okay, so you get a special parking spot and your photo on the wall. When’s the last time you’ve looked at another coworker enviously for getting that coveted spot? (Exactly.) Rather than create a contrived contest on a fixed schedule, give your employees continuous feedback and reward them where it actually counts. Do things that matter.
PowerPoint
Showing off a flashy PowerPoint presentation in a corporate meeting is about the same as showing off a Tamagotchi in elementary school show and tell—it’s just not impressive, anymore. Just because there’s a cookie-cutter presentation program out there doesn’t mean you should cancel out all other possibilities of good communication pieces. Take the time to figure out the best way to show off your information.
Peanut butter pay-for-performance
If you say you pay your employees for performance, don’t just spread your budgeted amount evenly across all of your employees like peanut butter. Paying for performance means your employees won’t all receive the same straight percentage of a raise. It also means you reward your top performers, not all of your performers. Show your true rockstars they’re worth more than a one percent pay increase.
Book Review: Get Rid of the Performance Review!
Apr 6
There are just a small number of books that every HR practitioner and manager should read. Get Rid of the Performance Review! is one of those.
Authors Samuel A. Culbert, who is a Professor of Management at UCLA Anderson School of Management, and Lawrence Rout, who is a senior editor at the Wall Street Journal, make an incredibly compelling case to defenestrate performance reviews. They write about how much damage performance reviews do to company performance. They say this:
It all comes down to two lies:
- First, pay and performance are not linked and the workplace is unfortunately a meritocracy.
- Second, the performance review is not really about the employee and is mainly about everybody else from the boss, the bigger bosses and HR.
Honestly, people in HR should read this book and weep. I agree with Culbert and Rout who argue that a lot of performance management systems are in place to make HR appear more powerful. And they write about the destructive forces that Jack Welch’s “Rank-and-Yank” system wreaked on companies — including GE.
And managers should read Get Rid of the Performance Review! because everything they think about performance assessment is wrong. I’m not going out on a limb to say that. Managers don’t know. And the HR people who taught them are wrong, too. Don’t hate me because I’m right. Go buy the book. It’ll change your mind.
How much do you hate performance reviews? Here’s a quiz to find out. Let me know what you think. Do you love performance reviews? Hate them? Feel like you are going to throw up in your mouth when you have to get or give one?
10 Things Millennials Might Say at Their Performance Reviews
Mar 10Many Millennials were raised during the Self Esteem Movement. There was no second place in their parents’ eyes. Everyone’s a winner.
Now those Millennials are getting performance reviews. Here’s 10 Things Millennials Might Say at Their Performance Reviews*:
- You mean I don’t get a trophy just for participating?
- My parents won’t let you give me anything but an “A.”
- I’m better than everyone else. I once scored three goals in soccer when I was five.
- I don’t see “GREAT JOB!” and “YOU CAN DO IT!” on here. This can’t be my review.
- Why isn’t there a ranking beyond “Outstanding”?
- You’ll need to explain yourself at the Parent-Teacher conference.
- I’ll cry if you don’t give me positive feedback…and nothing else.
- What does “It’s a zero sum game” mean?
- I can’t be wrong. You must be wrong.
- I quit.
*We have a lot of Millennials working at our shop. Not a one of them would say or think these things. But their unemployed and underemployed cohorts are in this camp.
Doing What You Say You'll Do Has Never Gone Out of Style
Feb 11We got two backbreaking snows in Philadelphia within five days. While I was in Chicago on Tuesday morning in the middle of a huge snowstorm, I texted my wife: “See if you can hire someone to do our driveway.”
Our backs were sore from digging out the two feet of snow we got over the weekend. Now two more feet of snow was on its way.
Sheryl ran into our 16-year-old next-door-neighbor, JD, and asked him about snowblowing our driveway when the big snow came.
“Forty bucks,” was his answer when Sheryl asked him how much. (Best $40 ever spent, I said.)
The snow came. Local stations called it the “Snowpacalypse” and “Snowmageddon.” It was really bad. We got a foot of heavy, dense snow plus another foot of powder on top of it. It was like white sand. On the order of 50lbs a shovelful.
Here came JD. He came in the morning and cleared the driveway, even though it was snowing two inches per hour. Job done, right?
Not even close.
JD came back at around 7pm. There was at least three feet of snow piled everywhere in the driveway. (Tons of wind made this a real joy.) After about five minutes I heard the snowblower quit. I figured he went home for dinner. Not quite.
At around 8pm, Sheryl looked out the side door.
“Omigod. JD, Jeff, and Teresa are out there SHOVELING,” she said. “Get your coats on.”
The snowblower broke. But instead of giving up, JD went home and enlisted the help of his brother and his mother. Yep, JD’s mom, our friend, was out shoveling our driveway. Sheryl rushed out there.
“We don’t want you guys to shovel our driveway,” she said.
“We made a commitment. We’re going to honor it,” JD said.
How many 16-year-olds would say that? How many 26- or 36- or 56-year olds would say that? If you’re lucky, those people work at your shop.
JD comes from a family of Eagle Scouts and good old-fashioned work ethic. He’s going to go far in this world with that attitude.
These are the kinds of stories that don’t make it on resumes. But I tell you, it’s the kind of thing I look for in people I want to work with.
Doing what you say you’ll do has never gone out of style.
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Just to give you a little sense of the Herculean task those guys performed, here’s a short video of the snow piled on the sides of my driveway.
Need More Proof That Bad Performance Management Processes Wreck Companies?
Nov 16Read the first five paragraphs of After Bankruptcy, G.M. Struggles to Shed a Legendary Bureaucracy. Weep if, like many companies, your performance management “system” is a joke.
If you’re over-engineering your performance review process, do the right thing and stop. Today.
Want to play in the big leagues? Make performance management make sense. Help your company make money.
That is all.
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