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New Executive Hires Need Some HR Hand Holding to Keep from Stumbling
Jun 15
New executives can adapt anywhere. After all, they’re in charge, right? Well, as we all know, it’s not quite like that. There have been several classic executive flare outs in the past few years. Each of them seemed to hinge on “corporate culture” and how the executive failed to understand it.
“It’s my way or the highway” might be a good punchline, but it’s not what new executives get to say and not how organizations work. Recent research by leadership expert Michael Watkins says, “The main reason why newly hired outside executives have such an abysmal failure rate (40%, according to one study) is poor acculturation: They don’t adapt well to the new company’s ways of doing things.”
In an article in Harvard Business Online titled Help Newly Hired Executives Adapt Quickly, Watkins says that newly hired executives think they have a mandate, but there are pitfalls to be avoided and a culture to learn.
In some organizational cultures, it’s important for a newly hired executive to know the right people to advance his or her agenda. In others, it’s all about understanding proper procedure. At both GE and Johnson & Johnson, goals are set via rigorous planning processes, but the companies differ on implementation, with GE executives going through specified procedures and J&J leaders relying more on relationships.
It’s HR’s job at the outset to make sure that newly hired executives are prepared and fully aware of the culture they’re entering. What was successful where they’re coming from doesn’t necessarily mean the same approach will work in their new company. Watkins says that quick acculturation is essential: it makes the executive more effective and saves a lot of early embarrassment when “that’s not how we do it here” comes up:
A company can assist its newly hired executives by evaluating all those aspects of its organizational culture and then being explicit about them and about the behaviors it expects. This information should be incorporated into any “Getting Things Done at Our Company” material that may be handed out to new executive hires.
You can read more by Michael Watkins at The Leading Edge on Harvard Business Online.
You Have to Pay Employees to Suit Up
Jun 14A recent ruling in Efrian Rodriguez-Fargas, Alta Gracia Herrera and Marisol Pagan v. Hatfield Quality Meats Inc. found for the plaintiffs and required the company to pay $1.3M in back wages to employees who were required to don protective gear “off the clock.” In an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, writer Michael Matza summarized the case this way:
[A]dvocates…hailed the settlement, which awards back pay to 1,600 employees for time spent putting on and stripping off protective gear, as a quiet victory for the immigrant laborers who dominate meatpacking in Hatfield and nationwide.
Meatpacking isn’t the only industry that requires special safety gear, so HR compensation professionals should be looking at this one and making sure they’re appropriately covered.
Just Brilliant
Jun 13Robert Cenek wrote A Modern Parable today. It’s about incentives and competition. It’s brilliant. Read it and weep.
A Little Background on Background Checks
Jun 13Sure, you do background checks on employees. Or do you? I’ve known of a few people in HR and HR consulting who had some pretty questionable elements on their resumes, let alone regular employees. A famous flareout came when Radio Shack CEO David Edmondson admitted lying on his resume about earning a degree he didn’t have. (Lying about academic degrees seems like a pretty common, albeit easy to verify, “error” on resumes.)
That’s why I thought an article on The Consumerist called Do a Background Check On Yourself made so much sense. Potential employees can check to make sure that their records are correct, and boneheads who chose to lie about their backgrounds can do it at their own peril. The article says:
Companies can order all sorts of reports on you and make judgments about you, from banks, to landlords to employers. Here’s how you can see the data they’re seeing and make sure the record is right.
There are lots of valuable resources listed in one easy-to-access place.
When It Comes to Presenting, Go Big or Go Home
Jun 12Guy Kawasaki posted a set of Steve Jobs’ slides from WWDC 2007. Notice any tiny type? Any 5×6 Rules? Any excruciatingly bullet-pointed lines? I don’t think so. Jobs is a master presenter and he wins because he follows the “Go big or go home” approach to wowing his audience. And whether you’re presenting to 5,000 people or a group of 5 in an an HR meeting, make it memorable.
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