Organizational Value

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sherrie-suski

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

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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.

International HR – UK

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Differences between the UK and US

Much like there are slight difference between states in the US, like the timing of final pay for an involuntary or voluntary termination, ranging from day of termination in California to next scheduled pay period in Georgia, there are greater difference amongst countries around the world. Many of these differences relate to working hours and leave.

 

Overtime

In the UK, for instance, employees cannot be required to work more than 48 hours in a work week, while in the US, there are companies that require, legally, far in excess of this amount, especially during peak seasonal times.

 

Vacation Pay

While most workers in the US get 10 paid vacation days per year, their lucky UK counterparts are enjoying more than twice that at 28 days. And, if you are in the UK, you are going on “holiday”, not on “vacation.”

 

Maternity Leave

In the UK you can take a year off for maternity leave without losing your employee rights. No matter how long you’ve worked for a company. Just let the company know 15 weeks before the due date. The official UK maternity leave policy – known as Statutory Maternity Leave (SMP) – means that employees will still earn money for up to 39 weeks. During the first 6 weeks they receive 90% of their average weekly earnings before tax.

Then for the next 33 weeks either £136.78 pounds sterling (about $225 US  per week) or 90% of their average weekly earnings before tax depending which is lower. Their employee rights, including holiday entitlements and pay raises, are safeguarded during the time they take off. Compare that to the 6-8 weeks that most US employees take and only receive 66% of their normal wages IF they have SDI.

 

 

Teach a Man to Fish

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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.

Applicant Tracking Systems

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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.  If you choose the right system it will make your life much easier.  If you choose the wrong one, it may be unusable or more cumbersome than an actual paper process.

Applicant tracking systems fulfill four main purposes: 1) to manage applications for positions (especially in the face of a high volume of applicants regularly received today) 2) to screen out candidates who lack the required skills 3) to assist with hiring compliance 4) to provide metrics that can enhance the hiring process.

Manage Applications

Depending on the volume of positions you have open and the volume of applications received, this can be a lifesaver or not worth the efforts.  If you have say 10-20 generic positions, an ATS may not be necessary.  However, if you have 100 positions and they are more specialized requiring advanced degrees and skill sets, an ATS will save you a significant amount of time. 

Screen out Candidates

It’s just as important to know what you don’t want as to know what you do. As any recruiter who manages a high volume of positions in a market or time where unemployment is high, knows, it takes an inordinate amount of time just to sift through all the resumes from people who are not remotely qualified for the positions.  With a good ATS you can input key words and the system will spit out resumes that have those key words. 

Hiring Compliance

An ATS can assist companies with hiring compliance. Employment laws prevent employers from discriminating in their hiring practices based on age, gender and ethnicity, among other things. By using an applicant tracking system to select candidates to interview the system gives employers the ability to stay at an arm’s length when selecting their candidates.  They simply type in the key words and the system selects the candidates.  Although failure to hire litigation is much rarer than wrongful termination, it does happen.

Metrics

Every department needs to be responsible for metrics that drive the business.  HR can gain a well-deserved place at the table by focusing on the same metrics that drive the rest of the organization.  By utilizing an ATS, you will be able to pull resumes submitted for a particular position, pre-screed resumes, candidates brought in for interviews and offers made and rejected.  Armed with this information, you can laser focus your recruiting efforts and provide funnel data by position to your hiring managers.  Most are surprised to see that it could take 100 resumes received to net 1 hire.

HR Systems

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Sherrie Suski, HR Systems

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.

Creating an Environment of Engagement

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Sherrie Suski, Environment of Engagement

With the first quarter of 2017 only visible in the rear-view mirror, as unbelievable as that seems, it’s the perfect time to re-evaluate what we want to accomplish in our organizations by the end of this year.

Employee engagement continues to be the buzz word of the decade. Constituents quote the statistics that engaged employees are more than 3 times as productive than the unengaged or 10x as productive as the actively disengaged.

Creating an environment of engagement and learning

To understand this concept, we need to understand the true meaning of the word empathy.  Empathy, as defined by the dictionary, is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.   Borrowing a term from Big Data, it means focusing on the user experience or UX.  It will require designing work for the employee through the lens of user experience (UX) with the goal being able to help the employees feel good about the work they are doing and have a solid understanding of the connection to the greater organizational goals.

It has little to do with nerf guns, skateboards and other “tools” used to sell an environment of engagement and much more to do with spending the time to understand what is important to the individual actually performing the job.  Maybe it’s ergonomic, like a chair with better back support, maybe it’s auditory, like a pair of headphones to tune out the chatter around them, maybe it’s offering a rotation of job duties to stave of boredom and the repetitive nature of the job.

Adopting a Management Style that supports engagement

Equally important to creating the right environment is fostering the right management style to support a team environment. A team is a group of talented people who work together to accomplish something beyond their individual best. In order to work together they need to be supported by managers who allows them to thrive. This style is built by leaders who understand how to communicate the vision of the company in a way that engages and encourages everyone to work towards that goal.

Leaders who are effective communicators, develop a sense of community, and show authentic transparency and concern for others will be able to build high performing and engaged teams of talented people.”

Creating jobs that support engagement

Go beyond traditional training classes that support skills based on-the-job training and look for peer-to-peer opportunities.  investigate ways to allow employees to “try out” another position for a day or even a few hours.   This has multiple advantages.  Not only does it build a more well-rounded and cross trained workforce, but it circles back to our definition of empathy, to understand and share the feelings of another.  A workforce who has had the opportunity to “stand in another’s shoes” is a workforce that is better equipped to understand the full business cycle.

TAH Human Resources 101: Establishing Your Core Competencies

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sherrie suski business meeting

In our last article we discussed determining what the real purpose of your organization is, often referred to as your Mission Statement.  We emphasized how important it is for you and your employees to understand why your organization exists, what it does, who it does it for and how it does it.  This is the first stepping stone to building employee engagement and a productive workforce!

Once you have clearly defined and communicated your mission, your next stepping stone is figuring out a way to drive employee behavior in support of your mission.  One of the ways you can successfully do this is to create core competencies as a part of your overall Performance Management system.  Core competencies are particular behaviors that you want to encourage and measure in each individual in your organization.  You will want to think about 4-5 core competencies that are shared by all your employees.  These should be directly driven from your mission statement and the work you will do to support your mission statement.  

It is important to have shared core competencies to ensure that each of the employees are moving in the same direction and the same behavioral attributes are being rewarded across the organization.  Examples of these core competencies might be “Results Management” or “Critical Thinking”.  Competencies that are important for everyone in your organization to excel in.   You might also think about whether core competencies by function are important.  An example of a core competency by function might include “Attention to Detail” for your Accounting team, while an example of a core competency for your marketing team might be “Creativity and Innovation”.  If you are going to create these by function, try to limit it to another 4-5 so that you end up with no more than 10 total.

Another decision point is whether you want to level these core competencies to account for the differences in expectations between, for instance, an AP Clerk and a Dir., of Accounting.  In general, I feel it is important to use leveling as our expectations of one position are different than of the other.

There are many excellent Performance Management systems that exist on the market today.  Many will give you a list of core competencies to choose from, as well as letting you create more custom varieties for your own individual organizational needs.

Think about engaging your workforce to help choose the core competencies, especially those by function.  This will encourage both buy-in to your Performance Management process, as well as drive employee engagement.

Next time we’ll talk about developing goals which you will incorporate into your Performance Management system.

TAH Human Resources 101: Consciously Created Culture

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What is culture?  Culture is casually defined as the beliefs, customs, behaviors, etc., of a particular society, group, place, or time.  So, just like each society has its own culture, each Company has its own culture as well.  In each company a culture exists – whether or not it is consciously created.  It is created by the way management treats the employees, by the way employees treat each other, and by the way the organization treats its customers.  It is created by the behaviors and attitudes that are rewarded and those that are penalized.  So, if you want to instill a particular culture within your organization, you need to consciously create it, and the sooner you do so, the better.  If you are so fortunate to have come into a blank slate, it is much easier to create a culture from scratch rather than to try and change what already exists.

 

To a large degree, this is the fortunate position we have found ourselves in.  We are hiring a large group of people over a short period of time and have the opportunity to instill our culture from the ground up, at least in the corporate office.  To quote a popular and excellent author, Simon Sinek, we started with WHY.  Why does our company exist?  There are many versions of this; some call it a vision or mission statement, which some use interchangeably although they are different.  Others call it Go-To statement, but it is, basically, all driving toward the same outcome.  How do we all align toward a common goal at the highest level.  Once the common purpose is hammered out and disseminated throughout the organization, which is an article in and of itself, it becomes time to figure out how you will put that purpose in place.  This is a good time to involve the rest of the organization, especially if you are working toward a more collaborative culture.  Create cross functional focus groups, brainstorm ideas on whiteboards or through interactive AV technology.  Work with them until they feel right, like they echo the essence of what you are trying to achieve.  There may be as few as five or as many as a dozen.  From there the real work starts because now each organization has to grapple with what they need to do in order to bring this cultural initiative to light.  These will become the performance metrics used to drive not only your culture, but the performance of your organization.

As a side note, culture can and should be drive by initiatives, performance metrics, goals and other measures, but culture also needs to be driven by the less tangible, kindness, compassion and empathy.  Cultures are driven by the words used and the deeds carried out every day.  They are driven by doing what is right for your employees as human beings.  By bringing in flowers on Mother’s Day, by handing out Good Gotcha’s, by taking the time to listen and to genuinely care.

Next time we’ll talk more about tying Performance Management in an organization to the cultural initiatives and then about metrics and measurements tied to the performance management core competencies and goals.