In this week's Three To See: Productivity, performance and changing expectations.
There is a touch of levity in my first pick which comes via Andy Headworth's blog Sirona Says: Xerox'sInformation Overload Syndrome video raises some serious points on productivity and performance wrapped-up in genuine comedy (although I'm not comfortable with the dart scene at the end).
Holincheck skims the touch points in the employment lifecycle where performance factors (Hiring/Onboarding, Learning/Development, Career Path/Planning, Succession Planning and Compensation) and determines that:
"The answer, to me, is not to get rid of the performance review. It is to do a better job of appraising performance and communicating with employees."
He goes on to share the following options:
Get rid of forced ranking, but keep calibration
Make sure that total compensation alignes with performance, value delivered, and the market
Find other ways to recognize the highest performance other than just compensation
Keep an ongoing performance dialogue going
Before concluding that:
"The bottom line is that I do not think performance reviews will go away because the feedback loop is critical to talent management success. What needs to improve is the performance conversation. Technology can help in some respects, but managers and executives need to step up their game."
Kevin Wheeler's post to ERE: Why Recruiting Good People Will Get Harder and Harder explores the changing attitudes to work of some professionals who are choosing blended careers over full-time work with a single organisation.
This phenomenon, fuelled by recent experiences of the recession, see's some workers engaged in multiple jobs, partial self-employment or other self-sustaining activity that acts as a hedge against economic uncertainty and engenders lifestyle resilience.
Wheeler observes that:
"Individuals are finding new freedoms and exploring their own capacity and taste for change and entrepreneurism. Some organizations are looking for ways to adapt to all of this without endangering their own success, but it may be that these two different needs are not compatible. We will find out over the next 10 years or less. Certainly manufacturing firms and companies where hands-on work is required will not be able to flex to these changes. They will face friction between the workers whose jobs allow them to be virtual or part-time or flex-time and those whose work does not."
This week's Three To See features contributions on employee loyalty, motivation and succession planning.
My first pick comes from NBC's comedy The Office: An American Workplace (which I prefer to the British original). Episode 8 of Season 2 is a classic and deals with Dunder Mifflin's annual performance review day. One of the characters, Dwight Schrute, delivers this stunning line:
"Would I ever leave this company? Look, I'm all about loyalty. In fact, I feel like part of what I'm being paid for here is my loyalty. But if there were somewhere else that valued loyalty more highly, I'm going wherever they value loyalty the most. "
Roesler shares some interesting observations on how Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs model has been mangled by some managers and suggests that:
"1. Physiological and Stability/Safety needs are met through corporate policies: adequate pay, benefits, and safety procedures. These are satisfied when organizations who claim "People Are Our Most Important Asset" back up the statement by ensuring that these needs are met as a matter of policy and philosophy.
2. The higher level needs can only be satisfied by assignments, development, and solid day-to-day management. This means that "Managers are the Mediators of Meaning" for their people. Surveys and research data consistently show that the immediate supervisor has the most impact on one's performance, productivity, and feelings about the workplace."
"There are three reasons to do a succession plan, and identifying a replacement for the CEO and select top executives is only part of one of these reasons. The three reasons are:
Replacement for key employees
To support anticipated growth
To address and deal with talent shortages"
Kubica and LaForest expand upon each of these three points and make several recommendations to managing succession:
Assign responsibility for succession planning to the executive team members (and make its success part of their evaluation process)
Identify needs/key roles currently and in the future that reflect several layers deep
Develop and use methods/tools/techniques for identifying employee competencies and aspirations
Implement a structure for developing potential successors
Implement a structure for transitioning successors to and in new role(s)
Identify and emergency or interim process to fulfill a role if for some reason the potential successor does not work out.
Align your recruitment initiative to succession planning by forecasting key needs and interviewing for growth orientation and adaptability
Evaluate plan effectiveness and update the plan as required, at least annually
"Our old reality focused on the individual. Our "New Normal" focuses on the 'network', or the collection of individuals, as well as what flows between them. Where the "War for Talent" is dying, "War for the Network" is emerging."
I was a little concerned when Letourneau introduced Newtons' 2nd Law, "Force equals Mass times Acceleration" (F = MA), as a means of explaining the thesis (Physics has never been one of my strengths) but it proved to be a useful device:
"Let's say Force (F) correlates to the ability to get things done. Mass (M) correlates to "Human Capital", while Acceleration (A) speaks to "Social Capital", or the ability to quickly mobilize the network.
Let's look at 3 candidates:
"Candidate A (M = 8, A = 4). F = MA, or F = 8x4 = 32.
Candidate B (M = 5, A = 7). F = MA, or F = 5x7 = 35.
Candidate C (M = 7, A = 5). F = MA, or F = 7x5 = 35."
I think its a helpful contribution to the conversation that some in the HCM community, such as Jon Ingham, have been engaged in.
Libby Sartain posted Academic Evidence: Layoffs Are Bad For Business! to the Brand for Talent blog. In the post Sartain shares recent work by Jeff Pfeffer, a professor of organisational behaviour, whose research indicates that:
Layoffs do not reduce costs
Layoffs do not raise a company's stock price
Layoffs do not increase productivity
Layoffs do not increase profits
Companies do not permanently get rid of the employees
Layoffs do nothing to strengthen the organization
Sartain adds an observation of her own: "Layoffs weaken an organization's employer and consumer brand." Interesting opinions - I wonder how they compare with the recent experiences of many HR pros?
In this week's Three To See - a new tool for employers to assess the effectiveness of their Performance Management practices, a post on the future make-up of the workforce and more from Dan Pink.
My first pick this week is StepStone's Performance Management business impact tool which is a free resource in the same vein as the Talent Strategy Assessment released in 2009.
I completed the Performance Management Assessment in under 5 minutes and was immediately presented with a traffic-light scorecard based on my response (pictured) showing the areas that are good (Green), those that are intermediate (Amber) and those that require urgent attention (Red). I also received an email with recommended actions tailored to my organisation and a report on Performance Management drawn from a wide range of research providing a wealth of information and interesting stats such as:
On average organisations with cascading goals experienced a 39% increase in productivity
Of 22 talent management processes, cascading goals are the 6th most powerful
Employee engagement levels amongst high performers dropped 25% in 2009
40% of people that rated their managers performance as poor will look for another job
A 5% increase in retention can lead to 25-85% increase in profitability
Sharlyn Lauby, the hr bartender, is responsible for my second pick: Optimizing talent in the new worforce. In the post Lauby asks a great question on talent strategy:
"If the new workforce is a hybrid composed of employees and contractors, then do companies still need to focus on hiring A-level players? "
She goes on to offer two options:
"Companies could focus on recruiting and retaining B-level (or C-level) talent and then bring in the A team only for projects that require it.
Or should companies still focus on hiring A-level talent and, when they need an extra set of hands, then the contractor doesn’t necessarily have to be top notch?"
I'm particularly interested in how organisations would manage the performance of both types of employee in either context and how this would impact the capability and culture of the business. Lauby makes another good point here:
"if an organization employs B and C level players, this could impact customers and the front line delivery of products and services. If external consultants are brought in to create programs and/or processes, they would need to realize the capabilities of the staff they’re working with."
My final pick for this week, we know next, was produced by the Society for Human Resource Management and features controversial commentator and author Daniel Pink sharing his thoughts in 4 video clips titled:
the new bargain
talent wins
row, row, ROWE
what's next
I thought that the comments were interesting, especially in the fourth clip where Pink shares his observations of the "T-shaped employee" - those individuals with a depth of skills, knowledge and experience in a particular subject combined with the ability to connect their specialty to what is happening in the organisation, industry and the wider world.
My first pick comes from NBC's comedy The Office: An American Workplace (which I prefer to the British original). 
I completed the 
