HRCleanUp

To Hyatt or Not to Hyatt

 
That is the question here in Boston.  So, let me tell you a story.  The Hyatt Hotel in its attempt to, I'm sure, save money recently outsourced all of its housekeeping staff.  But that isn't really the story here.  I am all for outsourcing when it makes sense but I'm more familiar with white collar outsourcing than I am with blue collar outsourcing.  This was downright mean outsourcing.

Click here if you want more details

In any event, the management of the hotels told the housekeepers that they were training new workers to fill in for vacations and to reduce overtime.  The staff, of course, was more than happy to train the relief workers and they understood that there would be less overtime.

Then, the hotel fired all of the housekeepers.  Some with over 22 years of tenure.  They had dutifully trained their replacements.  The Hyatt leadership team thought this was a great idea.  Well, it didn't please the Governor of Massachusetts, the Mayor of Boston, or the Cab Drivers.  Yep, all three threatened a boycott of the hotels. 

Yes!

They Hyatt responded.  They offered the housekeepers their jobs back with the new outsourcing company at their current wage and benefit level for one year.  Then, of course, their jobs would be eliminated and the new lower paid, crappy benefits team would rule the school.

And the Hyatt was surprised when many of the housekeepers didn't take the deal.  Why?  Hmmm, it is like a slow death--just waiting for the clock to count down the days until they are finished.  Many other hotels in town were more than happy to pick up the talent.  In fact, the Hyatt housekeepers, fully trained in working in a full service business class hotel were happy to put themselves to work at the Marriott, Hilton, Westin, and the new uber hip W.

I reflect on Ted Kennedy Jr.'s speech at his father's funeral mass.  When young Ted queried his father about why he left money for the maid when she already gets paid his father reflected back to him "Teddy, making beds all day long is back breaking work.  This woman has a family to feed and life isn't easy" (I'm sure I've butchered the quote but you get the idea).  If you want to hear the eulogy.

I think Ted Kennedy said all that needed to be said.

Coaching the Uncoachable by Guest Blogger Bobby Pruitt

Bobby Pruitt is my collegue and all-around great guy at Profiles International.  He is Vice President for Enterprise Solutions at can be reached via email at bobby.pruitt@profilesmail.com. 

Coach the Uncoachable
...What happens if they just don’t get it??

By a show of hands, who has ever coached the uncoachable... come on, be loud n’ proud! It's can also be referred to as:

• The immovable force
• Who made that hiring decision, HR?
• The 80/20 rule or some variation of the 80/20 rule...

Or most widely referred to as...

… a waste of my time!!!

As "fair" and equally grounded as we typically say that we are, there's no getting around it -- some of our team members can “appear” to be a waste of “our” valuable time (said as if we are sharing the only unique asset we have complete control over), Having said that, we typically stop doing it the second we make the realization that the “light’s on, but nobody is home”!
To quote one of my favorite lines in a movie (Tombstone): “It’s like playin cards with my brother’s kids”!

Perhaps they were mis-recruited/mis-hired to begin with; perhaps they were promoted well past their ability to effectively lead others just like themselves; perhaps they simply don't want to do what's required; or perhaps we are totally wrong about them all together... I don't know nor would I spend a ton of time analyzing the "why." The "what," is "I'm spending my time for no return, when I could be spending it on someone else for a recognizable value."

Not really much of a choice, is it? On the other hand, it might be our choice all together.
“They” say (They=Consultant somewhere...) that we spend 80% of our time on those things that deliver us 20% of our total goal. I would argue that, when discussing employee performance, motivation, and one-on-one development or coaching, that figure is much closer to 90%.
So, be honest with yourself: How much time do you spend with your Top Performers... your top 5-10%? Don’t consider face-time, drinks after work, or breakfast get-togethers. I'm talking about working with that A-player, investing your personal time and expertise, and making sure that the "A's" receive more emphasis than the "C's."

Yes, we should do an appropriate amount of development for those employees who don't quite "get it," but seem to have the ability, activity and the "potential" to grow significantly with some well-thought out development. But be critical, wary, and skeptical; you should be prepare to “cut the cord” the moment you realize you are repeating yourself, notice issues of ethics or integrity, or that the employee's "light" just hasn't "turned on."

Remember, development equals the sum of all of its parts (coaching, training, appropriate responsibilities) – and is a vital part of growing our future leaders. But they must bring a few things to the table that you simply cannot "train in..." You can't train them to have a work ethic, for example. They must bring that with them when hired. You cannot train them to be honest and ethical -- someone well before you influenced that beyond repair. You should look at Attitude, Activity, and then Skill before you are able to dismiss a “perceived” marginal performer.

As a coach-manager, your attitude toward making a person successful will make up 80% of their success or failure.  ARE YOU PREPARED TO CARRY THAT WEIGHT ON YOUR SHOULDERS? If you understand this concept, you “have skin in the game”! You can look for the good and increase the number of positive encounters. Before you know what is hitting you, you will be embracing the concept of the “Performance Preview*” This Kum-Ba-Yah world is filled with

1. Company initiatives aligning with individual team members goals
2. Open communication
3. Results exceeding expectations

On the flip side, you also eliminate those “mis-recruits and mis-hires” by pointing them in the right direction (and sometimes that direction is right out the door).

*Wall Street Journal article: Get Rid of the Performance Review by Dr. Samuel A. Culbert

The Sustainable Organization

 Today, I went to a NEHRA seminar title "The Sustainable Organization" that was lead by Robert Kelleher, Chief Human Capital Officer for AECOM. 

I've been to many sessions about the trends that are impacting our organizations including generational challenges, loss of available talent, the power of social networking, the cost of employee disengagement, and the fact that the number of available workers is going to continue to shrink despite our current environment of layoffs.

Bob, however, took all of these seemingly disparate events and brought them all together in his presentation.  For any HR or organizational leader, any of the single events is cause for concern but aggregate them and there is cause for alarm.  Bob's session was food for thought for many in the room.

Bob's 12 trends included:

1. Changing demographics and declining savings
2. Fostering generational harmony
3. The new definition of diversity
4. The World Is Flat (as an aside, required reading for my HR students)
5. Declining ambition
6. The loyalty factor
7. Engagement
8. Are we flexing?
9. Innovate and educate
10. The era of the CFO
11. Corporate social responsibility

I think, however, that rather than thinking about these trends and worrying about them, it is time for HR leaders to step up to the plate and start putting in the policies and programs that are going to effect change.  Not just little bits of change but sweeping change.  Change that will forever impact the way we think about organizations, leadership, and work itself.

Each of these trends, alone, is a project or two.  As an HR professional, which one to tackle first. 

Today I was talking to our department project assistant.  We were talking about something as simple as cleaning up the common file folder.  She told me "it is just such a big task" and I reminded her that "a journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step.  Let's start by creating a taxonomy and we can go from there".  In fact, let's schedule some time to this this week.

So, HR Leaders...what is your first step?

Overheard at LaPaloma in Quincy, Mass

Last night, I went LaPalmoa to have dinner.  We don't have very many Mexican food restaurants here in the Boston area and LaPaloma is considered one of the few good ones.  It was--but they put carrots in their salsa.  Oh wait, this is an HR Blog...

As we were eating, I had the opportunity to listen to the two guys at the table behind me discuss how difficult it was to deal with the HR department.  I of course tuned right in and between chips, was focused on their conversation.  As one of the guys put it "They offloaded HR to some other company" and "now it is impossible to get anything done".  He went on to lament how he had questions about his vision insurance and couldn't get a straight answer about what was covered and what wasn't.  He talked about being "on hold" for 20 minutes with the outsources and had to call back several times when his claim was denied. 

In the end, he finally just gave up and paid the bill out of pocket.

What went wrong here?  The guy seemed reasonably intelligent--knew the lingo and seemed to have a professional position.  How is it that we make it more difficult to do business with us when, in our heart-of-hearts we want to simplify things? 

Any organization that outsources the administration of human resources had a duty to constantly manage the service delivery vendor.  In fact, I recommend that the organization appoint an ombudsman to advocate for employees who are caught up in proverbial red tape--it is critical for organizations to keep at least one human, within the company, for employees to go to when they don't know where else to go.

Most HR outsourcing organizations are focused on delivering amazing service to their clients.  It is the occasional failure that leads to distrust and misinformation to run rampant throughout a company.  How many people has this guy shared his story with?  If you were his coworker, would you believe the voice on the other end of the phone?

Employee Disengagement is a Global Challenge

Level of Disengagement by Generation and Region

Country	Baby Boomers (1946-1964)	Generation X (1965-1977)	Generation Y (1978-1990)
Australia and New Zealand	13%	24%	25%
China*	--%	34%	33%
Continental Europe	18%	20%	28%
India	16%	12%	14%
North America	17%	20%	35%
Southeast Asia	16%	20%	35%
United Kingdom and Ireland	18%	22%	30%

*There were too few survey responses for Baby Boomers in China to include

There are some interesting observations that you can draw from the information above.  First, disengagement isn't a problem only in the United States...it is a global problem.  Second, the problem crosses generations. So, those boomers who preach "younger workers didn't have to pay the same dues as I did" are not totally preaching the truth but the numbers do show that younger workers are more disengaged.

What programs are you putting in place to improve engagement from all of your workers?  My company, Profiles International can help.  We focus on employee engagement, pre-hire selection, and leadership development.  We frequently start, however, with engagement.

Do Your Employees Dream?

People give up their discretionary time for a dream--not a strategy or a spreadsheet.

What have you done to help people fulfill their dreams?

Performance Reviews--Ewww!

Samuel Culbert had a great article appear in the Wall Street Journal the other day titled Get Rid of Performance Reviews!  I couldn't agree more--and many of my students agree with me.

Last week, we were talking about Integrated Talent Management systems.  An ITM is all things talent management--it includes applicant tracking, performance management, succession planning, etc.  When we got to the performance management portion of the lecture, we ended up having a great discussion about the trials and tribulations of the performance management system (and it didn't seem to matter if the "system" was in Excel or in a great web based performance management system).  The students all lamented about the same things:

1. It makes me, and HR in general, feel like the organizational "nag"
2. We have to force managers to complete review
3. Everyone hates the process
4. No one is learning anything--in fact, most managers turn in the ratings so they can process the merit increase before they write the review!

Perhaps it really is time to change the methodology for performance reviews.  As Generation Y and the Millennials come into the workplace regular feedback and performance discussions are critical--how will we meet their needs without a performance management system?

When we do leadership development work with organizations at Profiles International, we focus on coaching and on 360 assessments.  Leader know thyself.  Manager, know your people and play to their strengths and develop their weaknesses.  Easier said than done but many companies out there are trying and we're anxious to help more make a real impact on their people--and their bottom lines.

October 19th Marks the First Day of the Mortgage Banking Association’s Annual Convention

Wouldn’t you like to attend that event?  I can think of nothing more depressing that spending days on end talking about what is going on in the mortgage industry.  Between layoffs, home foreclosures, and the millions of possible foreclosures there is going to be a dark cloud over the event.

So why do we get together?  Because we’re an optimistic society and misery loves company.  At our heart-of-hearts, we know it is going to get better.  It always does.

If I was going, I’d be sure to sign up for the session “Coping, Controlling, Capitalizing”—which promises to tell attendees how to survive and thrive in what organizers have chosen to call a “constantly changing environment” or might just pass on this year’s convention.  Hey, times are tight.

What is HRs role in all this?  How do we keep employees motivated to stay with us especially when they are in commissioned sales?  I think that there are three things we must keep in mind:

1. Communicate frequently and honestly
2. Celebrate what is going well and individual successes
3. Continue to invest in people--this economy will rebound and if we play our cards right, we'll still have good employees working for us

43% of American’s Don’t Like Their Managers Management Style!

That statistic came from a Yahoo 2008 survey of American workers. What does that mean for us—well, it means that those of us on the people side of things have a lot of work to do. The question is so broad…what don’t you like? How the delegate? How they don’t delegate? Do they “micromanage” you? Do they not trust you to get the job done? The reasons are endless but you can do something about it.

The reason why most American’s don’t like their Boss’ management style is that they don’t know their boss and conversely the boss doesn’t really know them. And, as an front-line HR manager knows, getting the two to talk is like pulling proverbial teeth. However, my company, Profiles International, has a simple tool that helps managers and employees start the conversation. It is called The Workforce Compatibility Survey and it requires both the manger and the employee to take a 45 minute assessment that examines thinking style and behavioral traits.  The tool than does an instant analysis and examines both sides of the story and produces a report is the output that shows where the employee scored v. where the manager scored and it gives both sides suggestions for working together.

Imagine having a guidebook to work with your manager? Or, as a manger, understanding why your direct report does the things she does.

High Performance Empowerment, Part 2 of 2

By Guest Blogger Bobby Pruitt

An essential element of leadership success within High Performing Organizations is empowered employees. Empowered employees spring from empowered leaders. Empowering leaders act from positive beliefs about people and situations. Some of the principles here include sharing information widely; letting people know about problems and challenges; having employees participate in substantial decisions, and considering expanding employees' job scope.

Before we get too far into successful leadership behaviors or principles, let's dispel a myth: leadership is a learned skill. Don't feel bad if you were not born with the inherent ability to convince otherwise sane people to charge a hill with bayonets bared. Except for a very few charismatic leaders mentioned in every history book, leadership is a learned skill. And more good news É & it can be taught!

Leadership principles - all of them - have been in use for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The theory is not new. Some of the applications may change over time, but the theory is not new. Consultants occasionally need to sell a book, so they'll take a tried management concept, give it a new name and an interesting "spin," and off we go É fad of the month. And we sometimes get too wrapped up in this whole leadership versus management issue.

Let me offer a compromising look at leadership, since I believe it to be folly to consider an ineffective manager capable of being a successful leader. Leadership is the successful application of sound management practices, effective motivation, and personal credibility. All must exist to be a successful leader.

Another favorite myth is that leading by example is something you should do. Newsflash - you lead by example whether you want to, try to, or not!! Now, are you a positive example? That may be another story. People in your charge, and others around you, will emulate you, good or bad. You always lead by example.

The principles of High Performing Organizations aren't a magical list to tick off, or a series of tables and charts to compare. They can really be summed up as a combination of empowered employees alongside successful empowering leaders. If we can teach both employee and manager to lead É well, we're almost there.

Want to talk to Bobby directly?  Email him here.