Topsy turvy management, active dis-engagement and the return of the supervisor in this week's Three To See.
My first pick is Put Your Employees First, an interview with Vineet Nayar, CEO of HCL Technologies Ltd, for Harvard Business Review in which he talks about engaging employees by 'inverting the management pyramid.'
The paper explores how top-performing organisations have adopted the systematic improvement of employee engagement as a core strategy to achieving critical business outcomes and suggests that the Engaged/Actively Dis-engaged Ratio has a significant bearing on this.
There is some interesting content here, including a comparison of the distribution of engaged employees in average and world class organisations:
Engaged: 33% in average organisations compared to 67% in those considered to be world class
Not Engaged: 49% in average organisations compared to 26% in those considered to be world class
Actively Dis-engaged: 18% in average organisations compared to 7% in those considered to be world class
Paul Hebert posted my final pick to the Fistful of Talent blog: More Supervision, Less Management is a wry reminder of the difference in emphasis of the two in which Hebert urges us to "Quit Managing".
Zinger makes some incisive comments about Employee Engagement including this:
"Engagement is about achieving results that matter to all. Ensure that everyone benefits from engagement and ensure employees fully realise engagement is not a management term for ‘sucking out more discretionary effort’ from employees."
And:
"Ensure managers realise that engagement is not an extra on top of far-too-many demands. Help managers and leaders realise engagement is how we manage and lead in this decade. We engage through co-created results, conversation, collaboration, community and high quality connections."
I wonder what he'd make of the strip below from Dilbert creator, Scott Adams?
OK, so employee satisfaction and employee engagement is not the same thing - although rating satisfaction may provide a means of engaging with employees and assessing likely levels of motivation, loyalty, morale etc - I just hope that this gag doesn't resonate in your workplace.
Ironically enough, the results just aren't there yet
Haun's post is a valuable contribution to the discussion on the "Results Only Work Environment" which I mentioned in previous posts in the summer of 09 and earlier this year.
In Three To See this week; new social stats, HR hate abates and employee fear-fatigue.
My first pick came via Luis Suarez on the Content Management Connection blog: Social Media Revolution 2 from Socialnomics.
There are some interesting stats in the clip but one that stood out for me was the claim that "80% of companies use social media for recruitment" and that 95% of these use LinkedIn, prompting me to ask recruiters the question - does this reflect your experience?
"The real problem is that too many organizations aren't as demanding, as rigorous, as creative about the human element in business as they are about finance, marketing, and R&D. If companies and their CEOs aren't serious about the people side of their organizations, how can we expect HR people in those organizations to play as a serious a role as we (and they) want them to play?"
Taylor isn't letting HR off the hook with this statement, rather he is defining the valuable role that the profession can play in a way that outsiders can understand:
"You can't be special, distinctive, compelling in the marketplace unless you create something special, distinctive, compelling in the workplace. Your strategy is your culture; your culture is your strategy. The most successful companies I know understand that the most important business decisions they make are not what new products they launch or what new markets they enter. What really matters is what new people they let in the door — who they hire — and how they create an environment in which everyone in the organization can share ideas, solve problems, and develop a psychological and emotional stake in the enterprise."
So it got me thinking - if this guy bought the names of the people that he wanted to work for, what's to stop an employer buying the names of the people they want recruit or retain and using it to deliver a message to that individual?
The Drive To Normalcy by Ian Till appeared on DDI's Talent Management Intelligence blog. In the post Till discusses "four talent risks and opportunities as we drive" to what McKinsey have labelled, The New Normal:
Flat Tires: Unengaged employees who feel their jobs are monotonous and flat
Road Rage: The recession may have brought about a ceasefire in the War for Talent, but the war is still raging
Speeding: As we prepare for better times, and move back into cyclical patterns of resignations, organizations must not fall back on making poor and hasty selection decisions simply to fill seats
Blind Spots: Leaders cannot solely rely on past skills and approaches to navigate the future.
I think there are some useful points in the post that blend nicely with my final pick; The Harvard Business ReviewIdeacast: Keep You Top Talent from Defecting. This is an audio interview of Jean Martin and Conrad Schmidt of the Corporate Executive Board's Corporate Learning Council in which they share some of most common mistakes that managers make with their talent, including:
Failing to properly identify top talent
Assuming that top talent is highly engaged
Expecting stars to share the pain that the organisation is going through
Forgetting that talented people still care about getting paid
At 14 minutes, this podcast is well worth listening to.
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
My first pick comes from NBC's comedy The Office: An American Workplace (which I prefer to the British original). 
