HR Mistakes To Avoid In A Startup

We all probably know a lot about HR management and the value of good team in a startup. To further help on the same issue we surveyed some startup employees and have compiled a list of most popular and significant mistakes committed by some well known Indian startups and their founders. For privacy issues we have not used any names.

1. Forgetting to appreciate: You have read enough about employee motivation but you must learn to appreciate daily procedural work as well. Things that look trivial actually make a lot of difference to your company in the long run. Like a good resume found by your HR department on Naukri or forwarded by your current employee. Appreciate that, even if it was their daily work. This requires consistency and may not be easy but certainly keeps the employee excited all the time. – HR executive, BPO

2. Not defining tasks: Learn to define the task in one simple line, being very specific about what is to be delivered. Most of the time a task is undone not because the employee is not making enough efforts but because employer never knew what exactly he wanted to be done. -Graphic designer, Ecommerce

An acclaimed Indian creative director puts it this way – “If i don’t get an idea after reading the brief for the 3rd  time then probably the brief is all bull shit and I will deliver bull shit.”

3. Not encouraging to ask questions: Remember, if he is interested in asking questions he will also do the job well. If he leaves with a question in his mind, he will come back to you without the work. Give me some time to clear my doubts before you say “I want it by EoD”. – Programmer, IT services

4. Forcing decisions in cases when you are not an expert: Say if it is about deciding the color of your website. Both you and your emlpoyee are not an expert, then you should let the employee decide. It won’t make any difference to the product but would encourage him and not make you a Hari Sadu. – Programmer, Ecommerce
5. Not crediting salary on time: In a startup there are chances that you are already underpaying him so even a single day delay matters. The paychecks should be handed out before the month ends. You are not giving him advance for the remaining number of days but it is he who worked for you without pay for these many days. Do you take up a project without advance payment? – Network Manager, Hosting Services

Their might be a risk of high churning rate at month end but that is again for the X type of employees, that too the low skilled workers.

6. Restricting certain websites: You might have done this for productivity issues but you do not realize that it makes the employee believe that you do not trust him. By doing so you have proven that he is not motivated enough. He is not a kid who has to be forced to study (work). If he does not want to do it, he will not deliver his best. This might increase procedural efficiency but not effectiveness of your team. – UI Designer, Web Marketing.

Platforms like Youtube etc. host a lot of informative videos as well. Also, if a quick game of 5 mins can refresh his mind, he would be more productive for the next 55 mins.
7. No or Limited free coffee – Programmer, Classifieds (and about 8 others)

Founders, try and conduct a regular session with your team where they can speak their heart out. If you already conduct such sessions do share your experience.

The craft of connecting

Effective communication is among the top five characteristics needed by teams and leaders to succeed in a complex working environment

Between 2000 and 2004, companies with most effective communication programs returned 57 percent more to their shareholders than companies with the least effective communication programs, as per the findings of Watson Wyatt’s 2005/2006 Communication ROI Study. Good communication is among the top five characteristics needed by teams and leaders to succeed in a complex working environment. A key factor that emerges from studies of successful managers is that they have a regular and meaningful communication process with their staff. They connect! Let’s look at how this meaningful connection is established.

Crafting the connection

It is essential to clearly establish objective of the communication, timeframe for it and how and when it is to be done. Every conversation you have, every communication you make in the work context takes you a step closer to a goal. So it is important you craft each one of the communications with care.

Firstly, promise something only if you can follow through with it. Also, avoid any gaps in understanding – it is a good idea to clearly communicate your understanding and get agreement on it. Equally important is to maintain consistency in communicating a message, whether within your team or across groups. Gone are the days when it was possible to develop tailor-made communications for different groups. In today's networked society, where information spreads fast through blogs, social networks and other kinds of speedy media, every group can become aware of the communications to other groups.

Base your decisions on visible and logical factors. People want to know why they are being asked to do or not to do specific things. Such knowledge not only helps them execute their tasks more effectively but also helps them accept the instructions and decisions more willingly. Even adverse decisions like a retrenchment can be made acceptable if employees understand their rationale.

Try changing the questions you ask. Instead of asking “Why are we falling short of this month’s sales goal?” ask “What do you think we can do to ensure we meet our sales goal?” In the first case you make the listener feel defensive, and in the second case he/she will feel involved in the solution (versus being accused of the problem) and will be receptive to brainstorming alternatives.

It is of utmost importance that you select communication methods appropriate for a particular target audience. For instance for communicating with an employee in another location you may want to use e-mail, instant messaging, intranets, social media and other web tools. There are some very interesting possibilities in the new-age communication tools. While company intranets can serve as central hubs of information about the organization for employees, teams can hold brainstorming sessions or maintain ongoing conversations with questions and answers on a blog.

You can even use wikis to manage projects, share best practices and research case studies. The CEO can keep a blog or a podcast and companies can use RSS feeds to send regular news to employees. If an organization plans to use new-age communication tools, then it is important to effectively implement them and provide necessary training and support in the use of the same. This will ensure that employees experience higher levels of communication satisfaction.

Connecting effectively by knowing your audience

An important step in connecting to people is being aware of who you are connecting with and what essential information they need. For instance, while working with the executive level (board of directors, executive staff, your direct manager), you need to take hierarchy into consideration, depending on the culture at your workplace. Also, you need to focus on business and ROI. On the other hand, while communicating with your team, consultants or vendors, you need to explain the technical background, outline and explain requests, justify outcomes and specify clear instructions and conditions for the satisfaction of requests.

When communicating with peers or other functional groups, you should be clear and concise. You need to make sure that you answer questions, like ‘when, where, why, and why not. And finally, while communicating with external customers, you should be politically correct, aware of revenue impact and conscious of issues related to security and breach of contract.

Internal communication best practices

If you want internal communication to succeed, it is essential that communication be ‘two way’ i.e., employees should not only receive communication, but always have a chance, and be encouraged to ask questions, discuss and express their ideas. Asking for feedback identifies problem areas where messages are misunderstood or not received at all.

Very often good news is given, bad news is withheld. Be it feedback on individual poor performance or difficulties the company is facing, if they are not shared and discussed with the employees an important opportunity to build trust and to improve performance is lost. So don’t just share the good news, but also share bad news if any.

Feedback mechanisms and sharing best practices internally should be an integral part of organizational performance and individual performance management system. Provide regular, on-going opportunities for employees to provide feedback to management. The opportunities can be provided through employee surveys, suggestion boxes, town hall meetings, individual or small group meeting with managers, and an organizational culture that supports open, two-way communication.

It is also crucial that you measure improvements in your performance and not just communication since you are ultimately using communication to achieve your work goals. Have there been changes in the way your team communicate with customers? Are you getting closer to your customers? Is employee retention improving? Is information being communicated throughout your department on a timely basis? You need to seek answers for these questions on a time-to-time basis.

Be it giving work instructions, aligning individual goals to company goals, inspiring team members or understanding team needs, effective communication, without a doubt, forms a key factor in making these connections successful.

The author is Founder of The HR Practice

Engage or be out of business

Many researches reveal that best employers excel at employee engagement. So how can you drive employee engagement in your team?

Does employee engagement seem like another buzzword to you? And yet you must be experiencing the presence or absence of it every day at your workplace. Tim Rutledge, Owner and Publisher, Mattanie Press and Author of ‘Getting Engaged: The New Workplace Loyalty’ writes ‘truly engaged employees are: attracted to and inspired by their work (‘I want to do this’), committed (‘I am dedicated to the success of what I am doing’), and fascinated (‘I love what I am doing’).’

The concept of employee engagement was developed in response to increasing globalization. Global competition forced businesses to become more flexible in responding to employee needs. There was also a rising interest in employee engagement due to the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, which caused the economy to dip and created unemployment. Then came the Millennials, a new generation of workers who demanded more from their employer than just pay. Technology continues to revolutionize not only how work gets done, but also how people access their work and each other. As the economy changes and employee needs evolve, employee engagement becomes more and more essential in increasing productivity while satisfying employee needs.

Hewitt has been conducting Best Employers studies around the world. Their research shows that the best employers excel at employee engagement. As a result, they enjoy a bigger pool of talent to select employees and experience lower employee turnover, lower absenteeism rate, increased customer satisfaction, higher economic returns, and greater sustainability in the face of business challenges.

What drives employee engagement and how can you drive it?

Frederick Herzberg observed over 40 years ago that the same employees who complained about poor working conditions, such as cold, dirt and dim lighting were quite happy to work on their cars in a dingy, dusty garage at home. So there was something else that was driving engagement. In fact there are several factors that drive employee engagement. Let us look at how as a manager you can help in creating employee engagement in your team. 

1. Relationship with manager and managerial support: Very often, employees leave an organization not because of the dissatisfaction with the company, but because of the dissatisfaction with the manager. As a manager, you need to provide your team with required direction and resources to support work processes and activities. Be supportive of the engagement initiative while monitoring the work-life balance of employees.

2. Role clarity: Being a manager, you are the best person to provide clarity to employees about what is expected from them at work. Also make them understand how their goals relate to the company goals and how their unit/department contributes to the company’s success. Helping employees clearly understand the mutual responsibility and accountability is at the heart of an effective employer/employee relationship.

3. Challenging work: Being able to do something interesting and meaningful helps create a sense of personal inspiration and accomplishment, leading to pride in one’s work and one’s company. There are certain things that you can do to help promote a more stimulating and challenging environment for your subordinates. You must encourage people to take initiatives, coach and develop people’s skills, and hold people accountable for their performance.

4. Performance feedback and recognition: Regular, specific performance feedback is a powerful tool to engage people. As important as pay and benefits are in attracting and retaining people, they are less important in engaging people in their work. So, offer recognition for employees who excel or who demonstrate a strong passion for their work and organization.

5. Career development opportunities: Get to know your employees, as well as their goals and aspirations, so that together you can develop a clear path for advancement and opportunities for growth. Ensure that high performers in your team advance in the organization.

6. A sense of ‘team’: Foster a sense of community and team work. People’s positive emotions are strongly influenced by the people they work with day-to-day, by collaboration, teamwork and shared goals, and by a sense of a purpose in work.

7. Communication: Effective communication is not just about disseminating basic information. Rather, it is providing context, commentary and ensuring a two-way dialogue. Employees want to know what management thinks and believes and how it plans to act. And they also want forums to give their inputs. Engage employees through direct communication by involving them in important decisions and keeping them informed of new developments or changes within the company. Listen to employees and act on their suggestions. Just listening and not acknowledging, responding or acting on what is being heard can damage credibility and engagement.

8. Control: Employees should have an appropriate decision-making authority and appropriate decision-making input to be truly engaged. If you consistently keep your team members fully informed, you are providing them the necessary foundation to behave responsibly and accept accountability for making their own decisions.

9. Leadership: A clear vision from senior management about future success and senior management taking steps to ensure company’s long-term success are important in driving engagement. Leadership’s interest in employee well-being also helps increase employee engagement. As a manager you can keep your team updated on what the leadership team is doing for them.

10. Company credibility: Organizations that proactively manage their reputations also enjoy higher levels of employee engagement. Employees distance themselves from the business when they believe their company does not have a good reputation. By talking positively about the company and its practices and by correcting any negative perceptions that employees have about the company, you can contribute to employee engagement.

Thus, it takes commitment, consistency, trust in employees’ judgment and strong leadership practices to create employee engagement. Most importantly, it takes strong day-to-day management.

The author is Founder of The HR Practice

Four Ways CLOs Can Change Their Company's Culture

Often in approaching an organizational issue, the conclusion a learning and development professional comes to is that it comes down to culture. In order for a company to truly change itself with respect to a given aspect of performance - ethics, for example - it has to embed its intentions in its culture to succeed. The conventional wisdom is that it has to happen from the top-down; from the C-suite down through the ranks.

But how does a CLO change a company's culture? That's easier said than done. According to Joseph Grenny, co-chairman of VitalSmarts, a corporate training and organizational development consultancy, this is because it hasn't been approached correctly.

"We think it needs to be top-down and driven by leaders, when in fact that's just a recipe for resistance," Grenny said. Grenny prescribes four critical competencies for building a high performing organizational culture: self-directed change; intellectual honesty; 360-degree accountability; and influential leadership.

1. Self-Directed Change

Grenny identified execution and innovation as the primary abilities a CLO seeks to foster in an organization. "The basis of that - the core ingredient - is self-directed change," he said. "If you have a capacity in your organization for individuals to examine where the organization is headed and create self-directed change to be able to examine their own habits, alter them as the occasion requires, and align with the direction of the organization and their own professional aspirations, that really is what unleashes individual potential. Then the leader's job is just to guide that self-direction."

2. Intellectual Honesty

According to Grenny, a significant barrier to effective organizational culture is created when employees don't feel free or able to speak up about bad decisions or mistakes that their company may be making. "If they are; if they can be intellectually honest; if they can talk about the elephant in the room, that's the process by which self-correction happens in an organization," he said. "When dissent gets stifled, then our capacity to execute well diminishes because we can't talk about what's wrong with the way we're executing and our capacity to innovate disappears, because innovation is fundamentally a function of spirited debate. Intellectual honesty means you're getting my full honest view of reality and what ought be done in the organization."

3. 360-Degree Accountability

Another way of describing such accountability would be simple transparency. "It means that everybody is responsible for everything at some level," Grenny said. "Strong ethics happen in an organization when the norm is to challenge."

In order to achieve this, it's important that companies get away from strict vertical accountability. "In healthy organizations, peer accountability and upward accountability are the norms," Grenny said. "People can let their boss know when they're letting them down. People hold their peers accountable."

This is not a process that can occur just once a year. "That's malarkey because that's so late in the process," he said. "If it waits until some performance review nine months after the episode occurred because that's when it comes into the boss' purview, then you've already paid an enormous price in execution and innovation."

4. Influential Leadership

Grenny feels that leadership is an area lacking clarity with respect to learning. "One of our problems in the learning and development field is we don't define leadership particularly well," he said. "So leadership is this vague, abstract concept, when fundamentally leadership at its heart is about influence. If people aren't changing their behavior as a result of your leadership you aren't leading. One of the greatest deficits in organizations is leaders not only don't know how to do that, they don't even know how to think about the process of changing behavior across a large social system in a rapid, profound and sustainable way."

That is a tall order. But according to Caroline Turner, a former senior vice president of Coors Brewing Co. who now heads consultancy DifferencesWORKS, it can be achieved through creating inclusive work environments that allow people to thrive. The key to this is an engaged company culture.

"If you don't have engaged employees, you don't have committed employees who are willing to give you their best quality and focus," Turner said. "Engagement really means a sense of belonging and commitment and it's linked to retention, productivity and profitability. Then inclusiveness is a key competency because only by creating a culture where people who are very different from one another and from the leader feel valued and included will you get engagement."

By Daniel Margolis - managing editor of Chief Learning Officer magazine.

Top 5 Women-friendly companies in India

Top 5 Women-friendly companies in India

MINDTREE CONSULTING, IT SOLUTIONS

They have Toddlers Park, a day-care centre, and an infrastructural facility, called Baby's Day Out, from where mothers can work while taking care of their child. For cases of extended maternity, accompanying their spouse on travel, or caring for dependent family members, special leaves can be claimed.

SILVER SPARK APPARELS, CLOTHING MANUFACTURERS

Ninety per cent of their 2,000 employees are women, and all of them come from a rural district of Bangalore.They have women-friendly facilities: a creche, teachers to teach the children of women employees, social activities involving the parents and workshops on health and hygiene.

ACCENTURE, CONSULTANCY 

They have a formal community of women employees, called Vahini, to bring about inclusiveness in the organisation, and make them good parents, empowered citizens and fine financial planners. Expecting mothers can enjoy regular visits by a gynaecologist and special cabs for their smooth travel. There is also a dedicated 24x7 emergency helpline for women.

ERNST AND YOUNG GLOBAL SHARED SERVICES (GSS), BUSINESS ADVISORY

A prominent feature is their creche, called Ashray. Employees can also choose to work from home on a full-time or part-time basis. A security guard escorts women employees who use late-evening transport. Half their employees are women.

INFOSYS, IT SOLUTIONS

It is the first Indian company to set up a dedicated office for gender sensitivity, called Infosys Women Inclusivity Initiative (IWIN). Women employees can avail 24x7 counselling facilities and nursing stations. For new mothers, there are satellite offices where they can stay close to home and work. They can take upto a year's leave for their family and continue to be on the rolls.
Source: The Great Place to Work Institute (2009).

How to Know When It’s Time For You to Go

What to ask if you think you should go

Here are a few questions to consider when making these decisions:

• Have I reached my goals here?
• How will my future here contrast with what I’ve already done?
• Does my success here help me do something else I want to do more than carrying on in this situation?
• What’s keeping me here?
• Am I still growing and learning?

How to Build and Maintain Trust

Whether it's the world of business, politics or sports, there is no shortage of leadership failures to illustrate the effects of broken trust on a personal and organizational level.

Consider these recent, well-known examples of prominent leaders breaking trust where the damage extended beyond the individuals:

Tony Hayward, former CEO of BP, left the company after his series of trust-eroding gaffes and missteps following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. BP received significant public criticism and damage to its brand image as a result of Hayward's seemingly uncaring response to the environmental disaster.

Jim Tressel, former head football coach at The Ohio State University, resigned under pressure in May 2011 after admitting he knew some of his players had violated NCAA rules but chose not to alert his superiors about the infractions. Between self-imposed penalties and those handed down by the NCAA, Ohio State stands to lose millions of dollars in football revenue.

New York Congressman Anthony Weiner resigned under pressure last year after initially denying, then later admitting, he sent a lewd picture from his Twitter account and engaged in "sexting" with numerous women over a period of years. Weiner's actions seem to reinforce a growing lack of trust in politicians and their integrity.

Trust or Consequences

Prominent breaches of trust such as these garner the news headlines, yet it's leaders' everyday actions that determine the level of trust in organizations. Most employees have experienced broken promises, unfulfilled commitments and leaders withholding information, have been treated unfairly or heard blatant lies and dishonesty in the workplace. Repeated occurrences of these kinds of trust-busting behaviors by leaders foster low-trust environments resulting in employees who are demoralized, afraid to take risks, disengaged, unproductive and ultimately at a higher risk to leave the organization.

According to "Trust Matters: New Links to Employee Retention and Well-Being," a 2011 Kenexa High Performance Institute WorkTrends report, 50 percent of employees who distrust their senior leaders are seriously considering leaving their organization, compared to 14 percent of those who do trust their leaders. Deloitte's 2010 "Ethics and Workplace Survey" reports that 48 percent of employed Americans who plan to look for a new job as the economy improves are doing so because of a lack of trust in their employer and a lack of transparent communication from senior leadership.

Distrust in leaders and organizations has health and well-being implications for employees as well. According to the "Trust Matters" report, employees who distrust their leaders are seven times more likely to report they are mentally and physically unwell, and 62 percent of employees who lack trust in their leaders report unreasonable levels of stress compared to 13 percent of those who do trust their leaders.

Trust Improves the Bottom Line

Organizations are increasingly taking proactive steps to build high-trust cultures because it helps improve the bottom line. Lowe's, the second largest home improvement retailer in the world with more than 1,750 stores in the U.S., Canada and Mexico and nearly 235,000 employees, emphasizes the importance of trust in its leadership development practices and has seen the benefits.

Greg Nell, vice president of learning and development and a 22-year veteran of Lowe's, said, "My personal experience at Lowe's, as well as the results from our employee engagement surveys, has shown that when there is a high level of trust and engagement in teams or stores, people costs around accidents, turnover, sick hours and inventory shrink are less, customer satisfaction is higher, and sales and profits are higher. Conversely, in stores or teams that have a lack of trust, the engagement results are lower and the people costs are up."

Nell's experience at Lowe's has been mirrored in several studies and reports that show the benefit of trust in the workplace. Research by the Great Places to Work Institute, publisher of the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list, has shown that between 1997 and 2011, high-trust companies outperformed the Russell 3000 and S&P 500, posting annualized returns of 10.32 percent versus 4.02 percent and 3.71 percent, respectively. Further, those best companies provide four times the returns as market average for comparative low-trust companies and typically experience a 50 percent lower turnover rate.

A Common Language of Trust

For leaders and organizations to realize the benefits of high levels of trust, they should establish a common definition and framework of how to build it. Many people don't give much thought to intentionally building trust; they just assume it happens over time.Yet the reality is that trust is built or eroded by the use of specific behaviors that people perceive as either trustworthy or untrustworthy. For leaders to be successful in developing high-trust relationships and organizational cultures, they need to focus on using behaviors that align with the four core elements of trust. To represent the four elements in the language of trust, The Ken Blanchard Cos. created the ABCD Trust Model - Able, Believable, Connected and Dependable.

1. Able:

Being able is about demonstrating competence. One way leaders demonstrate their competence is by having the expertise needed to do their jobs. Expertise comes from possessing the right skills, education or credentials to establish credibility with others. Leaders also demonstrate their competence by achieving results. Consistently achieving goals and having a track record of success builds trust with others and inspires confidence in one's ability. Able leaders are also skilled at facilitating work getting done. They develop credible project plans, systems and processes to help team members accomplish their goals.

2. Believable:

A believable leader acts with integrity. Dealing with people honestly by keeping promises, not lying or stretching the truth and not gossiping are ways to demonstrate integrity. Believable leaders also have clear values that have been articulated to their followers, and they behave consistently with those values - they walk the talk. A 2010 Maritz Research survey reported that 11 percent of respondents strongly agreed that their managers showed consistency between their words and actions. Treating people fairly and equitably are also key components to being a believable leader. Being fair doesn't necessarily mean treating people the same in all circumstances; it means people are treated appropriately and justly based on their own situations.

3. Connected:

Showing care and concern for people builds trust and helps to create an engaging work environment. Connectedness with leader and connectedness with colleague are two key factors involved in creating employee work passion, and trust is a necessary ingredient in those relationships. Leaders create a sense of connectedness by openly sharing information about themselves and the organization and trusting employees to use that information responsibly.

Leaders also build trust by having a people-first mentality and building rapport with those they lead. Taking an interest in people as individuals and not just as nameless workers shows that leaders value and respect their team members. Recognition is a vital component of being a connected leader, and praising and rewarding employees' contributions and their work builds trust and goodwill.

4. Dependable:

Being dependable and reliable is the fourth element that builds trust. One of the quickest ways to erode trust is by not following through on commitments. Conversely, leaders who do what they say they're going to do earn a reputation as being consistent and trustworthy. Maintaining reliability requires leaders to be organized so that they are able to follow through on commitments, be on time for appointments and meetings, and get back to people in a timely fashion. Dependable leaders also hold themselves and others accountable for following through on commitments and taking responsibility for their work outcomes.

By using the ABCD Trust Model, leaders can focus on the behaviors that build trust, and by sharing this model with those they lead, create a common framework and language to discuss trust issues in the workplace.

Rebuilding Damaged Trust

Despite their best intentions, there will be times when leaders break trust with those they lead. Although trust can take a long time to build and just a moment to destroy, there is hope for recovery if the parties involved are willing to put in the time and effort necessary to restore a healthy level of trust to the relationship. Leaders can follow this five-step process to rebuild broken trust:

1. Acknowledge:

The success of the 12-step recovery process shows that the first thing that has to be done is acknowledge that a problem exists. Depending on its severity, a breach of trust can have difficult and emotional consequences that many leaders would rather avoid. Yet to begin the rebuilding process, leaders must acknowledge a situation exists and needs to be addressed.

2. Admit:

Second, leaders have to admit their part in causing the breach of trust. They need to own up to their actions and take responsibility for whatever harm was caused. This is a crucial step that leaders shouldn't overlook. Refusing to admit mistakes reflects negatively on a leader's believability and can let a mistake in judgment turn into an indictment of character.

3. Apologize:

The next step in repairing damaged trust is for leaders to apologize for their role in the situation. A good apology incorporates steps one and two - acknowledging the mistake and admitting involvement - and expresses regret for the harm caused and assurances that the offense won't be repeated. The apology needs to be motivated by sincerity and remorse, not be contrived or forced. Avoid making excuses, shifting blame or using qualifying statements that detract from the apology.

4. Assess:

The fourth step is to assess which elements of the ABCD Trust Model were violated and create an action plan to improve in those areas. In their assessment, it's important for leaders to narrow down the specific behaviors that cause the breach of trust. Repairing a breach of trust can seem like a daunting task, but if leaders identify the specific behaviors at the root of the issue, they can create a manageable and realistic plan to move forward.

5. Agree:

The final step in the trust rebuilding process is to agree on an action plan with the offended party on what will be done differently moving forward to help rebuild trust. This step is an ongoing process of evaluating the consistency of the leader's behavior and its alignment with the action plan.

Leaders can afford many kinds of mistakes, but the one thing they can't afford to lose is trust. The ability to build and sustain high levels of personal and organizational trust is a defining and critical competency for today's leaders. By using behaviors that align with the four core elements of trust - able, believable, connected and dependable - leaders can effectively build trust and lead their teams to higher levels of productivity,engagement and success.


By Randy Conley-  practice leader at The Ken Blanchard Cos., a leadership training organization.

Enablement & Energy: 2 Key Factors to Sustainable Employee Engagement

Abhishek Mittal, a Towers Watson management consultant based in Singapore, is one of my go-to sources for on-point research and thinking on employee engagement and, critically, how to apply that research and thinking in practice in the organization. A recent post in his Mumblr blog linked to an article he published in Indian Management magazine.

I was most taken with the Towers Watson research he reported showing the difference between Engagement and Sustainable Engagement, which relies on two additional factors of enablement and energy.

We are now learning that employee engagement takes a company only so far. Other critical factors in the work environment also play a critical role.

Firstly, organizations should look at providing support to employees in achieving their work objectives. Secondly, organizations should focus on creating a work environment that fosters employees’ physical, social and emotional well-being. We call these factors Enablement and Energy respectively. Taken together, these can help organizations sustainably engage their employees and boost business performance further. This new framework called “Sustainable Engagement” is a combination of Engagement, Enablement and Energy. A recent validation research done by Towers Watson looked at companies with high levels of Engagement and those with high levels of Sustainable Engagement. We examined their financial performance in terms of operating margins and found that Sustainably Engaged companies on operating margins by a factor of 2-1.”(emphasis mine)

Considering earlier Towers Watson research found that organizations that increase engagement by 15 percent improve operating margins by 2 percent, such an additional increase from Sustainable Engagement is something to take quite seriously, indeed.

I’ve written about enablement elsewhere several times, but this topic of energy is just as important.

Energy in the workplace

Energy and energizing the workforce is a passion of mine and my CEO, Eric Mosley. But precisely how do you energize a workforce?

In his article, Abhishek suggests:

Companies need to focus on building a work environment that can sustain high energy levels. For example –respectful treatment of colleagues, effective teamwork and a fair balance between performance expectations and job pressures.”

“Respectful treatment of colleagues” – we all think we know that looks like. I’m sure we all know how we would each want to be treated respectfully ourselves. But how do you measure that? How do you know that respectful treatment is actually happening? Because if you can’t measure it, you can’t intervene to fix it in underperforming areas.

Measuring energy

We’ve addressed this internally at Globoforce by making “Respect” one of our four core values as an organization. Indeed, respect is a unique value for us in that it is the only one directly focused on behaviors. (The three others – imagination, determination, and innovation – we consider to be aspirational.)

Within our own employee recognition program, Globostars, employees must select a reason for recognition from these four values. We believe so powerfully in the importance of respect that we’ve broken it into several factors such as “respect for teamwork” and “respect for urgency.”

It’s quite powerful to look at our Social Recognition news feed and see the flow of respect throughout Globoforce, across teams and departments. Even better, we can measure it. We can look deeply into our metrics to see where, perhaps, teams or individuals have never been recognized for respect and determine if that’s an anomaly or an area needing intervention and training.

By Derek Irvine -Vice President, Client Strategy & Consulting Service at Globoforce

The Keys to Building and Sustaining a Culture of Trust

If there is one thing movies about the workplace tell us is that Hollywood believes bosses come in all shapes and sizes, and they are all pretty terrible people.

Why the bad rep for leaders?

Well, it’s no secret most employees have been disappointed and let down at some point in their careers by a manager or leader. Thanks to those negative relationships, employees are pretty cautious with how much they trust their bosses.

The reality is trust is hard to establish and easy to lose.

Would you want to work for someone you don’t trust?

This is why nine out of 10 leaders are in “negative trust territory” before they make their first request of an employee to do something, according to John Hamm, author of Unusually Excellent: The Necessary Nine Skills Required for the Practice of Great Leadership. That’s right – even before you say one word, your employees may already be questioning your honesty.

This puts leaders in a difficult situation because your success in inspiring others largely depends upon whether or not you are a perceived as a person with high integrity. When it comes down to it, you simply can’t afford to lose your employees’ trust. When trust is lacking, performance and productivity will suffer.

Think about it: would you want to work for someone you don’t trust?

Look, inevitably you will suffer mishaps as a leader; but keep in mind that small deviations from complete honesty and integrity are often magnified and remembered for a long time. While no one wants to believe they are considered untrustworthy, sometimes an individual’s actions have unintended consequences that can cause people to doubt their integrity. They might have been guilty of being inconsistent, not speaking frankly and honestly, or having ignored or even violated one or more of the organization’s values.

Development tips to remember

It’s pretty difficult to immediately convince people you are a trustworthy individual, so you need to work hard at being consistent and operating with acceptable ethics at all times. No pressure or anything.

Here are some development tips to remember:

• Do not promise or commit (including committing to deadlines) unless you will be able to honor the commitment. And be sure to consistently follow through on your commitments.
• If you have lost trust and do not know what you did, ask. Listen carefully to what is said, without arguing or getting defensive. I know, it’s easier said than done. After you fully understand what you did that came across in a way you did not intend, you can begin to develop a strategy to make it right.
• Don’t give tough messages or express negative emotions via email or voice mail.
• Make sure your message is consistent. Avoid saying different things to different audiences.
• Don’t promise confidentiality if you aren’t certain you can or should keep the information private.

By Derek Murphy is CEO of The Booth Company

How to Treat Employees Who Flag Problems

The chief aim of corporate compliance is to prevent, detect and correct problems before they lead to the stiff penalties the law imposes when the public is harmed, careers are ruined and the impact of illegal acts lingers.

In fact, the Federal Sentencing Guidelines reward firms whose compliance programs take defined steps to find out and fix problems before they cause damage. Newly proposed amendments will provide additional incentives to firms that act aggressively to maintain legal and ethical workplaces.

As I’ve written elsewhere, we would have been better off if we’d been able to stop the practices before they occurred rather than addressing their resulting chaos. Instead, they brought us financial chicanery, systemic disaster, recalls of dangerous pharmaceuticals and automotive products, and oil spewing through the Gulf.

A reluctance to “blow the whistle”

There are laws in place to prevent retaliation. Organizations also devote massive resources to hotlines, compliance training, corporate policies and structures. Yet these efforts have often been less than successful in effectively encouraging individuals to come forward before bad practices turn into outright catastrophes. If they had been successful, retaliation claims would not be on the rise and the whole issue of compliance would be a stagnant rather than growing problem.

Recently, when I was interviewed for a New York Times article on the practical issues that employees face when they bring ethical issues forward, I offered several tips for identifying signals to discover illegal or unethical conduct.

It’s usually easy for us to recognize the obvious signs of a potentially serious violation. What’s really hard is to know what, if anything, to do about it. This is not because of a lack of systems, processes, or policies. Instead, it is the lack of organizational credibility: people usually know where to go to complain but often don’t believe their organization really wants to know about problems.

It doesn’t help that we call these people who step forward and identify issues “whistleblowers.” The word calls to mind a traffic cop blowing a whistle, stopping you from jaywalking.

Over the years, I’ve noticed most people across many industries are reluctant to “blow the whistle” because they don’t want to be labeled as troublemakers. Many believe that they would be better off just focusing on what they can accomplish rather than problems that no one wants to think about, much less fix. Others rightly feel that their organizations would prefer to rid themselves of whistleblowers rather than the problems they uncover.

5 tips to help employees who flag problems

Organizations that really want to root out problems need to turn around this perception. Fair warning – this is not easy, especially if the organization’s culture includes examples of individuals who were ignored, ostracized or released for speaking up.

Here are five tips to help you create a welcoming environment for people who step forward and speak up about problems.

• This is a leadership issue first and a compliance issue second. Hot lines and complaint systems are part of a commitment to find out about issues but not the commitment itself.
• Leaders have to regularly talk about and demonstrate their willingness to hear about problems, no matter how serious. If leaders don’t deliver the message themselves, it won’t take hold in the organization. Remember, the natural instinct we all have is to keep quiet rather than to speak up, especially in a challenging economy where jobs are scarce, the risk of job loss is high, and employees are already wary about speaking up.
• Employees and leaders need to understand why finding and fixing problems benefits everyone. If they don’t see how revealing problems will benefit them, their organization or the public, there’s less motivation for them to do so and more motivation for leaders to ignore or stifle complaints. Leaders should make it clear that they won’t tolerate actions that prevent them from finding out about problems. They must also clearly state, “If we find out about problems, it helps our organization.” The following are concrete examples of what discovering and resolving problems can do for your organization:
• Reduce costs
• Protect its reputation
• Minimize burdens of later fixes
• Demonstrate a commitment to values
• Prove the organization is committed to operating legally
• Leaders at all levels must understand retaliation and the behavioral steps which encourage employees to talk to them about all problems. This involves not only what they say when they are told about issues, but how they react in terms of body language, tone of voice and follow through in responding to concerns. This is a specific behavioral model that, in years of practice, we have learned helps employees know that their organization and direct managers are serious about uncovering issues.
• Finally, let’s get rid of the term “whistleblowers” with all of the negative associations it produces. How about calling people who come forward organizational guardians, protectors or friends. Surely we can think of something more welcoming in tone than company cops, stoolies or tattlers

BY Stephen M. Paskoff, Esq.- founder, president and CEO of ELI® eliinc.com, an Atlanta-based training company

How Can You Get the Best People on Your Team, and Keep Them?

In today’s post-recession environment, businesses are operating with pared-back workforces.

Picked to the bone, the burden is placed more than ever on the best-of-the-best people who remain. A focus on results in the best cases — or simply survival in other cases — has burned out many leaders.

In places that have misidentified their leadership talent and thus have an inordinate amount of mediocre performers leading that lean workforce, the burden on the elite few is even greater. These leaders are swimming upstream against a rapid and rising current.

At the same time, compensation and rewards have become commoditized when attempting to retain or attract talent. Early into the recession, companies learned that offering competitive salaries, titles, and rewards for results in the form of bonuses and options could help retain and attract the best.

Yes, these enticements are important and necessary, but they are no longer sufficient. As a human resources executive with the good fortune of having worked in companies with great people and extraordinary leaders, I can tell you that it is imperative that the components of compensation are aligned with the strategic goals of the organization.

The 3 common denominators of recruitment & retention

Today, recruiting and retaining the best talent result is an enormous competitive advantage for those who do both well. My experience clearly indicates there are three common denominators to the companies and their cultures that excel at attracting and retaining top leadership talent. These are:

1. A leader who seeks input from the team and knows how to inspire and motivate through communication.
2. A team of extraordinary executive leaders who share similar values.
3. A high-performance culture that wins.

In their book Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, & Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton highlight the vital importance of seeking out disciples deeper in your organization.

We can’t find a shred of evidence that it is better to have just a few alpha dogs at the top and to treat everyone else as inferior. Rather, the best performance comes in organizations where as many people as possible are treated as top dogs. If you want people to keep working together and learning together, it is better to grant prestige to many rather than few, and to avoid big gaps between who gets the most and least rewards and kudos.”

They go on to conclude that “rigorous studies DO imply that great people make great organizations.”

The 4 types of employees

In his model of situational leadership, Ken Blanchard categorizes four basic types of employees:

• Enthusiastic beginners, who are low in competence but high in commitment.
• Disillusioned learners, who are still relatively low in competence and also low in commitment.
• Reluctant contributors, who are relatively high in competence but low in commitment,
• Peak performers, who are high in competence and commitment. These are your potential disciples.

Continually diagnosing where your people are in the development cycle and flexing your leadership style to meet their specific needs are steps that are paramount to your ability as a leader to develop your peak performers, those self-reliant achievers.

Ironically, though, these folks often remain below the radar precisely because they are so reliable! You can delegate to them and forget about them. These self-sufficient employees allow you to focus your scarce time on other important issues, knowing that they will take good care of the projects, tasks, and areas of your business for which they are responsible. However, these are the very people who deserve your attention most! They yearn to be recognized and challenged further. Seek them out.

Using these principles, businesses can attract and keep the best talent, even through tough times. Show your employees that you are invested in them and in their growth, and make your business a place that people are excited to work at.

BY David Casullo is president at Bates Communications