professional | Sherrie Suski

Compensation- Getting it Right

November 9, 2017 by Sherrie Suskie

This time of year brings all the excitement of the holidays, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Hanukkah, among others. Amid all the festivities, for many organizations, it brings Compensation planning activities including revisions of salary structures, decisions on merit increases, promotions, adjustments and bonuses. Before you say “Bah Humbug” let’s take a closer look at how to structure a compensation plan and why it’s so important to your organization.

For all of the articles out there espousing compensation as a short term motivator, compensation speaks to our employees. It tells a story of how we perceive their value in the workplace. There is little that is more important than the value one sees in oneself and that is partly determined by the value others place on us and our contributions.

Ask Questions

You have to start out by asking the right questions in order to determine what your company’s compensation strategy should be. It’s OK not to have all the answers, they will provide topics for discussion with your internal teams.

What are your goals?

It’s important to know what problem you are trying to solve before you launch into a strategy to solve it. Do you have excessive turnover? Are you having a hard time attracting candidates? Are you losing your high potential employees at an alarming rate? Do you need to focus certain groups on different goals

How would you define your market?

Is it defined solely based on a geography you are in? Do you need to include competitors outside of your geographical regions? Is it domestic or do you have international competitors as well? Sometimes, you can get a good clue to identifying this by asking where do your employees come from, and where do they go when they leave?

How competitive do you need to be?

Some disciplines like Big Data are highly competitive and there may only be a handful of candidates that everyone is competing for. On the other hand, if your positions are relatively common and there are many candidates available, you may be able to set you target closer to the 50th percentile and be just fine

What and how should you reward?

What behavior do you want to reinforce and what types of rewards will you give? The most effective plans focus on a Purpose Statement and/or Guiding Principles. Your rewards should ultimately drive the culture you are trying to create. Even monetary rewards come in many different forms. They could be merit increases, promotions, short term or long term cash incentives.

All of the above questions will help to guide you toward the most effective compensation strategy for your organization and drive employee productivity forward.

Hierarchy versus holacracy

October 16, 2017 by Sherrie Suskie

Before we delve into whether or not holacracy is right for your organization, how many of us know what holacracy is? Holacracy is a social technology or system of organizational governance in which authority and decision-making are distributed throughout a holarchy of self-organizing teams rather than being vested in a management hierarchy. In theory, holacracy empowers people to make meaningful decisions and drive change.

Instead of a traditional management structure where questions must go from the bottom to the top and decisions go in reverse, organizations that adopt holacracy empower agile teams of people to make and implement decisions.

Self-organization models typically share three characteristics:

Teams are the structure

In holacracy, there are “circles” or many companies simply call them “teams.” Whatever they’re called, these basic components are not, individuals, and not units, departments, or divisions but they are the essential organizational building blocks. Individual roles are defined and assigned in order to accomplish the work. As in more traditional hierarchical organizations, there may be different teams for different projects or functions like finance, tech, sales. But self-managing enterprises have a lot more of them. After Zappos implemented holacracy, 150 departmental units evolved into over 500 circles.

Teams design and govern themselves

Although self-organizing companies try to avoid the traditional hierarchy, the teams are a part of a larger structure, which they are actually able to shape and refine. Holacratic organizations have everyone sign a constitution—a document outlining the rules by which circles are created, changed, and removed. So the circles not only manage themselves; within those guidelines, they also design and govern themselves. The constitution doesn’t dictate exactly how people should do their tasks. It explains in a broad way how circles should be created and operate: how they should assign roles, what boundaries the roles should have, and how the circles should interact with one another.

Leadership is constantly changing

In self-managed organizations, leadership is distributed among roles, not individual people. People usually hold multiple roles, on multiple teams. Leadership responsibilities continually change as the work changes and as teams create and define new roles. Technology is essential for keeping all these changes straight. The information is accessible to anyone in the organization and each individual’s commitments are visible to everybody at the company. Supposedly, transparency enables cross-team integration.

Although it is becoming a buzz word, holacracy is not being adopted at a rapid pace. The organizations who have tried to adopt it run into a myriad of issues, including increased turnover and decreased productivity given the endless meetings. While some look at it with interest, others simply say it does not work. Next week we will delve into some of the issues that have arisen when organizations have tried to implement holacracy.

Putting Words into Action

September 12, 2017 by Sherrie Suskie

There is never a time more appropriate for putting our words into action than in the midst of unforeseen crises and disasters. We all speak of our employees being our biggest asset, of creating a workforce that is engaged and more productive. We know that when we treat our employees well it builds loyalty, a great culture and better metrics at the bottom line. But how many of us really show our employees, in a meaningful way, that we care about them as more than just employees? That we care about their lives and families outside of work?

I am proud to work for a Company that does just that in a bigger way than I have previously witnessed. The unfortunate, recent, back to back hurricanes have devastated parts of Houston, Texas and many parts of Florida. While many companies put out words of encouragement to stay safe, how many really went the extra mile, went above and beyond?

Here are just a few of the more meaningful ways you can show your employees that you care and, hopefully set an example for other companies to follow:

Full Pay

Ensure your workforce that they will continue to be paid full pay for all the hours/days they are unable to get into the office to work due to the storm or subsequent damage or flooding. Many employees live very close to their paychecks and losing even 1-2 days of pay creates an undue hardship and stress on the family.

Insurance

Many employees do carry renter’s or homeowner’s insurance, as well as car insurance, but may not be able to easily afford the deductibles. Some have purposely chosen policies with lower premiums and higher deductibles in the hopes that they would not run into a situation where they needed them. Most of these deductibles are in the $100-$500 range. Think about what it would mean to your employees if you were to offer to reimburse them for their deductibles?

Housing

We are fortunate enough to be a property management company with homes all over the US. We offered all of our employees under evacuation orders, vacant homes to move into, on a short term basis, in other geographical areas out of harm’s way. Even if you are not so fortunate as to have vacant homes to offer, you can offer to pick up the cost of hotels for the time that the employees are forced to evacuate.

Donations

It probably goes without saying that others want to help in times of need. Set up a Red Cross donation through payroll deduction. Make it easy for the rest of your workforce to assist those in need. When we set this up last week, we have over 20% participation with 45 minutes.

Take this opportunity to put your words into action and show your employees that you do truly care about what they and their families are going through and you are here to help. It’s time we learn to take care of one another out of and in the workplace!

Health Insurance 2018

August 14, 2017 by Sherrie Suskie

PwC’s Health Research Institute (HRI) annually projects the growth of health insurance and more specifically, medical costs, in the employer insurance market for the coming year. They also identify the major factors expected to impact the trend. Moving into 2018, the healthcare industry seems to be settling into a “new trend” which is marked by more moderate fluctuations and single-digit medical cost trends

HRI projects 2018’s medical cost trend to be 6.5%—the first uptick in growth in three years.

What does this mean for employers still seeking to get the most for their insurance dollars and provide the best benefits for their employee population? In a labor market that is heating up and becoming more competitive, employers are looking for new cost containment strategies beyond shifting more costs to their employees.

Target Health and Wellness

Many employers are creating wellness programs and enlisting the employees in a partnership arrangement regrading practicing better health habits. Although hard numbers are difficult to come by, many employers believe they are creating a focus on wellness that will pay off at the bottom line. Employers are offering smoking cessation programs, health fairs populated by as many as 100 different vendors, offering everything from multi vitamins to massage, and healthy snacks, like fruit and nuts instead of candy, cupcakes and empty snacks.

Investigate provider arrangements

More employers are taking a harder look the health services they are providing and how those health services are being offered. Some are considering more restrictive arrangements like EPO’s (Exclusive Provider Organizations) where they can get better discounts by decreasing the size of the provider network. Other options include offering 2 tier plans where the employer pays a sizable percentage of the lower plan, but gives the employees an opportunity to “buy up” if they want to choose the more expensive plan.

Evaluate the value of drug spending

Employers are banding together to put pressure on drug companies to moderate price increases. Similar pressures were enacted in the early 1990s and significant decreases in the drug price growth rate.

We are already seeing some pharmaceutical companies take action, limiting price increases, offering cheaper generic alternatives and proactively addressing questions of value in the marketplace.

Even though health insurance price increases have slowed over the past three years, they still outpace inflation and employers need to continue to pursue alternatives that will lead to a healthier workforce and, ultimately, to lower health insurance costs for everyone.

Organizational Value

August 8, 2017 by Sherrie Suskie

There are multiple ways a Human Resources organization can add value. Too often though, there is a mismatch between the value that HR is bringing and the growth and maturity curve of a company. Imagine, for instance, heading HR for a large, established, multinational corporation and believing that the value HR brings lies in the mechanics of setting up employee files, creating salary structures and running benefit programs. Conversely, imagine a situation where there is a relatively small start =up company. The company has grown to the size, maybe 100 employees, where they finally need an HR presence. The person selected start out by talking about aligning the employees to the organizational objectives, but the organizational objectives have yet to be defined. It is important to always keep in mind the match between the HR function and the organization. There are three primary ways that HR can bring true value to an organization.

Mechanics

HR has the responsibility to provide the basic mechanics of the HR function. This can include such basics as:

Running ads and hiring for candidates
Creating salary structures to ensure the workforce is paid correctly
Selecting and running health insurance plans
Keeping I-9’s
Running basic training programs
Legal Compliance

Processes

Moving along the continuum, HR should provide the processes that ensure that an organization can scale efficiently

Hiring becomes……. an on-boarding process with predictive capability
Providing benefits becomes ……..a well thought out approach to which benefits, how to create a benefit matrix and judgment applied to the types and cost sharing of benefits
Legal compliance becomes……an understanding of what we are trying to accomplish and how best to accomplish it
Basic Training programs become….. Training program that meet key corporate objectives where impact is measurable
Basic compensation administration becomes…..internal and external equity comparisons, creative approaches to a three pronged approach and the most bang for our buck, social performance management systems

Strategy

Where HR can truly contribute the most value is when the Mechanics and Processes are in place and we can step back and view the big picture strategy. Where are we going and how are we going to get there?

Thoroughly understand the goals of the organization and get ahead of the curve- what processes, practices and strategies will be needed in 1 year? 3 years?
Communicate corporate goals that align the workforce to the vision and mission of the Company
Align processes and programs across the organization to create high performing teams
Continually monitor the pulse of the organization and make recommendations to solve small problems before they become big ones
Assist executive teams to make sense of the internal and external environments and the impact they have on the organization

What do we hope to Achieve?

Crafted effectively, we orchestrate the above to achieve:

Increased alignment between organizational objectives and employee population goals
Most value extracted from each hire
Greater employee engagement yielding greater employee satisfaction
Reduced turnover
Better hiring decisions
Better use of resources reflected at the bottom line

International HR – Germany

July 17, 2017 by Sherrie Suskie

There are significant differences when it comes to the Human Resources organizations in the US versus companies in Germany, and many other countries in the EU.

Managerial Discretion

Anyone who has worked in the US understands that managers and HR have a lot of discretion over who to hire and who and when to terminate. Sometimes these kinds of decisions can be made in a few days or weeks. In Germany, specifically, these types of decisions are months if not years long, with serious infractions needing to have taken place. Germany has a co-determination practice. Co-determination is a practice whereby the employees have a role in the management of a company. The word is a literal translation from the German word Mitbestimmung.. In some countries, like the USA, the workers have virtually no role in corporate management; and in others, like Germany, their role is more important.

Wage differences

In the US, many studies show that white collar workers can make as much as 20 times that of blue collar workers in the same company. This is drastically different than in Germany. Germany is known for its balanced remuneration system. The average white-collar worker’s wage is only 20% over the average blue collar worker`s wage. In addition, companies are not allowed to hire skilled workers from other companies by offering higher salaries.

Company Loyalty

Here too, the perception differs. In the US, workers are generally always in search of something new or better, and there is very little company loyalty. In Germany, employees feel a much greater sense of loyalty to their companies and, general, will not leave. They will look for opportunities within their current company or subsidiaries and the company will work hard to provide those.

Management decisions

While the US is typically a very individualistic society, making quick decisions and reversing them if necessary, Germany, in stark contrast, tends to work like a democracy in their companies. It is important the whole team has a say and the whole team is bought into the decision. While this can seem appealing, the trade off is time. Decision making will take much longer with a group of employees when everyone needs to be in agreement.

Both cultures have their pros and cons and neither is necessarily best. The US, acting as an impulsive, decisive, all knowing teenager and Germany as the wise parent, moving slowly with certain purpose.

Teach a Man to Fish

July 6, 2017 by Sherrie Suskie

One of life’s conundrums is the choice of when to do something for someone and when to teach them to do it for themselves. This is an age old struggle between parents and children, teachers and students, managers and employees and the Human Resources team and our internal customers. We all want to help those in need whether it’s a child struggling to open a heavy door or an employee who needs a quick answer. But are we really “helping” when we constantly rush in to be the hero or are we really fueling a need within ourselves? Might it not actually be better to teach someone how to be self-sufficient and then step back and out of the way? This would allow you to make a greater and more broad reaching impact.

Especially for those of us in HR who, generally, are in this function because we enjoy helping others, we might want to take a look at how to more effectively “help” others in the organization. It would be beneficial to have a plan when someone comes to you with a problem. A way to identify whether this is a crisis and an immediate need or an opportunity to teach someone to be able to do it for themselves.

Urgent or Immediate needs

HR gets bombarded daily with immediate needs or at least needs that the internal customer thinks are immediate needs. A few examples of actual immediate needs: Someone has fallen and you need to call 911, someone is making credible threats and needs to be escorted out of the building, access to systems need to be shut down due to an involuntary termination for cause. These are the types of needs that you will always handle and are probably not teachable, necessarily, to someone else.

Important needs

Important needs are those that are important but not urgent. Examples might be a question on an incentive plan and how it works or an update on a particular position you are hiring for. Some critical needs can lend themselves to establishing SOP’s, Standard Operating Procedures. Requisitions reports can be created and distributed so that managers can check statuses of their openings. Webinars can be held to explain the nuances of the incentive plans.

Routine needs

Routine needs are those that someone will call you for every time they need the answer. Someone has an address change, or a title change or a change in the car reimbursement program. Routine needs are wonderful teaching opportunities. Offer to walk the person through the steps needed and then establish the SOP’s, standard operating procedures, and let them know where to access them.

Un-needs

Occasionally, you run into those people, or they hunt you down, with on-going, what we will call, un-needs. This is the desire to have someone listen to them by creating a perceived need. In these situations, the best thing to do is to politely remind the person that you have a call coming in or must get back to your work. You can train someone out of this behavior, but not necessarily teach them.

By defining the different classification of needs, you will work more efficiently, have a broader impact and be able to help others to help themselves.

Time management

June 19, 2017 by Sherrie Suskie

There have been copious articles written about time management and everyone no doubt has their favorite strategies. The below are a few that I have found to be helpful in the workplace and in life in general.

Know yourself

Part of being a good time manager is knowing what behaviors prevent you from managing your time effectively. The link below gives you a quick summary spreadsheet for determining what your behavior is to day and what your behavior should be in the future to maximize your time. It is helpful to know when your energy is at its peak- is that early morning, late night or somewhere in between. This will help you to plan critical activities for when your energy level is the highest.

Multi-task

I know this is contrary to many time management theories out there, but wherever possible, multi-task, especially when something does not require your full attention. When you give up the idea of doing only one thing at a time and look for ways to do two, you can get a whole lot more done. Some quick examples: If you’re on the West coast, schedule East Coast calls on your drive into work. Owe the Far East a call back, pop in your earbuds and make the call while you’re making dinner. 6:00pm pst is around 8:00am there.

Touch each e-mail or piece of paper once

This one is big. We all have a tendency to want to “think about” it for a bit and then answer which is likely the answer you would have given in the first place. Force yourself, unless there is truly research that is needed, to answer right away.

Start the night before

A big time saver is to lay out your next day the night before. This allows you to hit the ground running in the morning and not have to stop and get organized. Know what you need to accomplish that day, in terms of key deliverables and follow up items.

Get your follow up items out early so that it allows people time to work on them during the day.

Take a break

While this may sound counterintuitive, often times taking a quick 10 minute break will help you to re- focus and complete a task in a shorter amount of time than if you had stayed with it past your ability to really focus.

Determine what is urgent and what isn’t

Not every e-mail that comes in must be answered right away. Some of the best time managers only answer their e-mails 1-2 times/day. You would be amazed at how many strings of conversation there are where you are only peripherally involved and if you just let them play out, you can catch the last e-mail and be completely up to speed.

Everyone has strategies that work better for them than others. Don’t be afraid to try 20 or 3- and then pick the top 5 that really do save you time and increase efficiency.

HR Systems

May 2, 2017 by Sherrie Suskie

The choices in HR systems today are mind boggling. Everyone wants to get on the band wagon and sell you something that will supposedly make your life easier, is user friendly, (read good UX), allows you to crunch large volumes of data in minutes. HR systems can be as basic as an HRIS or as complicated as a performance management system with 360 review capability and goal planning and accomplishments.

Let’s talk first about functionality and next week about what you want to look for.

HRIS

An HRIS is a Human Resources Information System.

This is your basic system that tracks all the pertinent information about your employees.

HRIS solutions typically track:

Training of employees
Open enrollment and management of benefits
Compensation management
Human resources reporting
Self-service for applicants, employees, and managers
Personal information, Pay information, title, job grade etc..

Performance Management Systems

You may also have a separate Performance System. A Performance Management System normally includes performance appraisal data and productivity information data. Documentation of employee performance and of how the performance was measured and reported is critical to your employees understanding this type of system. Many of these systems come with the capability to offer:

Performance appraisals
360 reviews where an employee is reviewed by the manager, their peers and their subordinates
goal planning, setting and accomplishments
Succession and development plans

Applicant Tracking Systems

Applicant Tracking Systems are systems that allow you to create a user/applicant experience.

The application process becomes paperless with an applicant tracking system, so it is simple to store, recall, or purge applications from the system with just a few clicks. This helps to ensure that no critical information is lost and all necessary information is readily available for open positions now or in the future.

Compensation systems

Ideally your compensation system should track all aspects of your employee’s compensation including:

Base salary
Bonuses
Incentive comp
Long term incentive comp
Equity/stock/RSU’s etc..

It is helpful if your Performance Appraisal system feeds directly into your compensation system, meaning less manual input or expensive integration for you.

Be very careful in selecting your systems. Spend at least 3x the time you allotted to understanding and testing the system before you commit. On a personal note, we have had a very bad experience with Cornestone. While their systems have a lot of capability, you would literally need to be a system admin in order to build out the back end which they require you to do. They are the farthest thing from user friendly with very poor UX design.

Microlearning

April 24, 2017 by Sherrie Suskie

Micro learning is the new buzz word in the Learning and Development Community. It is defined as 3-5 minute short, focused learning sessions that are designed to meet a specific learning outcome. As with many buzz words, the term is often misused and misunderstood. Many have taken it to mean that all learning should be conducted in bite sized chunks as demonstrated in the graphic below which indicates that humans have only 24 minutes per week to devote to actual learning, and that is based on a 40 hour work week, which is a thing of the past for many of us routinely working 60 hour work weeks. Others will site the growth of the millennial workforce that will make up over 75% of the total workforce by 2025 and their much talked about short attention span of 90 seconds.

However, it is unlikely that complex new skills can be acquired in 24 minutes a week, but new skills acquired can be reinforced, practiced and lead to a performance gain in 24 minutes a week. This is where micro learning really needs to be focused. On the refinement and not on the acquisition. Millennials, right alongside other generations, can be uber focused for longer periods of time when the content is engaging and rewarding.

Microlearning modules are best focused on moving right to the point without all the history behind the why, which should be captured in the original training. Video should be an important and engaging component, as should real life scenarios.

Microlearning can be an excellent approach to training for simple tasks as it improves retention and fills in performance gaps and is certainly more cost efficient. However, it should be used in conjunction with, not as a substitute for, more traditional types of learning as it is not suitable for complex tasks and can easily run the risk of seeming fragmented.