LEADING THOUGHTS

Between LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social networking sites, it’s easier than ever to reconnect with colleagues and friends from your distant past. Maybe you’d rather keep those connections in the past. But there’s a good case to be made that dormant ties can be even more valuable than current ties. “Insights from dormant ties tend to be more novel, and more efficient to get, than those from current ties.” Read the article

They are too infrequently performed, though they can help employees immensely. When they are done, they can be biased or focus on the wrong metrics. Can performance reviews be redeemed? Turns out, feedback loops and other innovations are giving performance reviews new life. Read the article

When it comes to being effective negotiators, women have it tough. Either they’re reluctant to push their interests or, if they do, are tagged with being pushy for asking too much. What to do? One, the female negotiator should get smart by learning what others in the organization are doing to advance themselves. Two, she should practise negotiating with shopkeepers or family memebrs. Third, she should “pay more attention to the style and impression that she is creating so she makes sure she doesn’t come off as being too aggressive.” Easier said than done. Read the article

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A new box is being pencilled into org charts: chief operating officer for HR. The motivation: to coax more performance improvements from the talent pool. Business leaders may not be getting the HR services they want, but shouldn’t the existing HR leadership be able to solve this problem? The debate continues. Read the article

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By rights, solid knowledge management techniques should help work teams avoid reinventing the wheel. In fact, new reseach shows that when project teams have access to stored organizational knowledge, they complete tasks more quickly, but the quality of their work doesn’t necessarily improve. Teams that are most likely to show increases in both efficiency and quality are those dealing with constantly changing projects. Read the article

In the UK, for example, there’s a proposal to tie top public sector pay to a 20-times multiple of low pay, and to publish the salaries of the highest earners.

Amid all the huffing and puffing, the huge UK-based HR association, CIPD, is providing a gutsy contrarian view. In a recent report, CIPD argues in favour of variable pay and bonuses, a tough argument to make in these days of retrenchment.

“Politicians and, perhaps more importantly, more strident parts of the media need to stop seeing pay in the public sector as only a cost to be driven down,” the report says. “Instead, used well, it can be a tool to drive up standards and increase value to the taxpayer.”

So how should compensation be designed to deliver what public sector bosses and their political masters intend? CIPD suggests that, for the most part, what works for the private sector should work for the public. To wit:

Ensure reward practices match the purpose.
The key question is: “Are the ways that the benefit package is structured likely to make any day-to-day difference to the ability of the organisation to deliver its objectives, or the effort delivered by individuals to help it do so?”

Make compensation transparent.
Employees need to know what is expected of them and what they need to do to earn a pay raise or bonus, and what is expected of others. Transparency also builds credibility with taxpayers. In fact, CIPD likes the idea of publishing the names of high earners, not merely their job titles. U.S. states such as Utah, Washington, Nebraska, and California already have publicly accessible online databases containing the salaries of state employees.

Reward performance.
This won’t please the “slash the pay packet” crowd but CIPD suggests public sector managers make greater use of variable pay to reward individual or team behaviour. This is a good way to recognize high performance without continually ratcheting up comp levels and pension commitments. “Bonuses can help focus minds by communicating what’s important to the organisation and can be more cost-effective than consolidated pay awards.”

Adopt flexible compensation schemes.
CIPD recommends moving from national pay agreements, “pay spines/increments”, and service-related pay progression to flexible pay structures. More flexible pay grades and progression mechanisms should be adopted to allow individuals to progress through their grades faster.

Download Transforming Public Sector Pay and Pensions

You’re flush with excitement because you’ve just hired an industry high flier. How can you make sure that your new star employee isn’t a flash in the pan?

Top-notch talents do not automatically perform at high levels, say Groysberg (Harvard Business School), Lee (RiskMetrics Group), and Abrahams (Harvard Business School). Writing in the MIT Sloan Management Review, they offer advice on how to get the best out of the best.

Their main point is that “star” hires perform at their peak when surrounded by colleagues of similar talent. As proof, they point to a study they performed among equity analysts who benefited (as did their customers) by working with sharp portfolio strategists and salespeople.

Why is this so? It turns out that high-quality colleagues act as sources of information, provide insightful feedback, serve as valuable interfaces between knowledge workers and clients, and enhance the reputation of their star colleagues.

This management strategy also leads to higher retention of the top performers, the authors state. “The goal here is the so-called Matthew effect: The more stars a company has, the easier it is to develop and retain such high-caliber individuals.”

Three other pieces of advice:

:: Avoid lavishing high salaries on your new star hire; doing so risks demoralizing co-workers. In fact, the authors write, high achievers may be willing to accept a pay cut for the opportunity to work with similarly talented employees.

:: Stars may not have the instinct to play well with others, especially when managerial time and resources are scarce and the urge to compete is greatest. Managers should therefore create a culture of collaboration by encouraging face-to-face contact and building a compensation package that rewards appropriate behaviour.

:: Don’t neglect home-grown talent. By developing high potentials from within and building bench strength, you will be rewarded with greater loyalty and less disruption when a key person leaves.

“What it Takes to Make ‘Star’ Hires Pay Off”, by Boris Groysberg, Linda-Eling Lee, and Robin Abrahams; MIT Sloan Management Review (Vol. 51, No. 2, Winter 2010, pp. 57-61)

photo credit: Noel Feans

Fun is in the eye of the beholder. So it is with workplace fun and the growing efforts by organizations to engage employees with games-playing and other officially-sanctioned hijinks.

Researchers are now turning their attention to measuring when workplace fun initiatives have a positive influence and when they are counterproductive. Eric Lamm and Michael D. Meeks (San Francisco State U), for example, conducted a study to find out whether or not there are generational differences in how workplace fun is viewed, and if there are different outcomes depending on generation.

In the journal Employee Relations, the authors write that, based on generational theory, we would expect to see these attitudes:

Baby boomers (born between 1941 ad 1960): “Boomers’ win-at-all-cost perspective and reliance on success as a measure of self worth likely results in a perception that workplace fun is counterproductive to their competitive edge.”

Gen Xers (born between 1961 and 1980): “Since Xers have a preference for fun and embrace balance in their lives, planned organisational fun activities may engage these sometimes disengaged workers and more fulsomely direct their energy toward the organisation instead of individual, non-work pursuits.”

Millennials (born between 1981 and 2000): “Unlike Boomers, who may oppose workplace fun, and Xers, who may be indifferent to workplace fun, Millennials are likely to regard fun in the workplace not as a benefit, but a requirement.”

Armed with this background, Lamm and Meeks surveyed 701 individuals from all three generational groups. They found that indeed there are measurable generational differences in how workplace fun is regarded.

Millennials, for example, showed stronger links between workplace fun and organizational outcomes such as job satisfaction, task performance, and “organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB).”

Surprisingly, though, the authors found that baby boomers were not as negative about workplace fun as originally thought. “This has large implications because Boomers, with a reputation of ‘achievers at any cost’ and thus regarded as likely impediments to the successful implementation of planned workplace fun, may in fact not only benefit from workplace fun, but may be supportive, whether as a participant employee or facilitating manager.”

“Workplace fun: the moderating effects of generational differences,” by Eric Lamm and Michael D. Meeks, Employee Relations (Vol. 31 No. 6, 2009, pp. 613-631)

If you cannot find this journal is your local library, email me for a copy of the article at Alan [at] AlanMorantz.com

photo credit: inf3ktion

“Diversity management” (DM) has become one of the more successful management ideas of the past 25 years. It entered the lexicon in the late 1980s in the U.S. as a response to growing frustration with legislation-based affirmative action and equal employment opportunity initiatives. DM was taken up in Europe a decade later, beginning in the UK and Netherlands.

DM aims to encourage employees to be comfortable with diversity in the workplace and appreciate differences in race, gender, or sexual orientation. It focuses on demographic groups, organizational self-interest, and workplace training. “Diversity” has become an industry in itself, fed by management consultants, conferences, and publications.

Writing in the Scandinavian Journal of Management, Evangelina Holvino (Simmons School of Management, Boston) and Annette Kamp (Roskilde University, Denmark) take a hard-boiled look at diversity management in practice in the U.S. and Europe. They identify a number of DM “dilemmas”:

:: Does DM refer to individual or group-based differences? For some, diversity refers to all the similarities and differences among organizational members. For others, diversity refers to identities based on membership in social groups and their power relations in organizations.

:: Is DM all about reproducing the status quo or “catalysing change in inequalities and power relations”?

:: Should DM be based on a business case or on social justice? In North America in particular, DM is sold as an effective HR and marketing strategy, encouraging team effectiveness, increasing employee retention, and improving financial performance. But as the authors point out, assessing DM outcomes is a tricky affair. Few organizations seem interested in measuring the success of their diversity efforts, and independent findings have been inconclusive or contradictory.

“DM, like other ideas, has become blurred and blunted, distorted through inappropriate quantification, and taken over by academic researchers making it increasingly unsuited for practical purposes,” Holvino and Kamp write. “In the U.S.A., DM has provided an opportunity to discuss differences, identity, power, and equity in organizations like no other management idea has done before, but its ‘success’ as a managerial discourse has hindered its power as an idea that can make more of a positive difference in the world.”

“Diversity management: Are we moving in the right direction? Reflections from both sides of the North Atlantic,” by Evangelina Holvino and Annette Kamp; Scandinavian Journal of Management (2009, 25, 395—403)

If you cannot find this journal is your local library, email me for a copy of the article at Alan [at] AlanMorantz.com

photo credit: PaDumBumPsh

Four of every 10 employers in the U.S. profess to be concerned that the aging of the workforce will have a negative impact on their business over the next three years. But it might be all hand wringing and no action: the same survey found that two-thirds have not analyzed the demographics of their workforce and 77 percent have not analyzed the projected retirement dates of their employees.

So what do you make of that seemingly mixed message? According to the Sloan Center on Aging and Work, the unit that gathered the data as part of its Strategic Talent Management Study, part of the answer lies in the tight financial circumstances in which many organizations find themselves.

Researchers at Sloan dug deep into their survey of 696 U.S. organizations and identified four different employer groups:

• “Lower pressured employers” anticipate a positive or neutral impact from the aging of the workforce and are not suffering from the economy (24 percent of the sample).
• “Economically pressured employers” aren’t concerned about an aging workforce but are struggling to keep up in the economy (36 percent).
• “Age-pressured employers” are really worried about the aging workforce but are in decent financial shape (12 percent).
• “Age/economically pressured employers” are stuck in the worst of both worlds (28 percent).

The Sloan report builds the case for organizations to conduct a rigorous assessment of their workforce demographics, projected retirement dates, and future skills needs. The report includes a handy chart outlining workforce planning considerations for employers, depending on where they sit on the “pressure” scale.

Download a copy of the report here or email me at Alan [at] AlanMorantz.com.

photo credit: AMANITO

This week’s gold star goes to the McGill Institute for Health and Social Policy and the Harvard School of Public Health. Their newly launched site, Raising the Global Floor, is a superb online database of labour practices in 190 countries.

This is how the researchers explain their objectives: “We set out to examine a series of working conditions that affect workers’ ability to meet health and welfare needs, which could be analyzed in a comparable way across countries. We focused on the daily lives of working men and women, their ability to continue to earn a living when special needs arose, and their capacity to care for their families on a routine basis.”

The site is well executed, easy to navigate, and thorough. You can compare labour policies for up to five countries at a time, view global maps, or read country summaries.

These are the policy areas covered by Raising the Global Floor:

• Work schedules and hours
• Paid leave from work
• Sick leave
• Pregnancy, birth, or adoption
• Leave for children’s needs
• Care for elderly and disabled family members

This is a great resource for those needing to compare labour practices or for policy wonks who like to see how countries stack up. Beware: this is a sticky site. Once in, you may never get out.

LINK: Raising the Global Floor