Bad Boss Blues?
How many times have you witnessed a person working in a supervisory position without the necessary supervisory skills? How many times have you questioned why some leaders get the roles that they do? Probably, often.
It should come as no surprise to you, then, that at least once in your working life, you will be the victim of a bad boss. This applies to most of us, and when we experience the challenge of a bad boss with sorry supervisory skills, we need all of the help we can find to deal effectively with the situation.
The reason I periodically feature material about bad bosses is to empower you and enable you to deal with them. Let's face it. They do exist. And, what makes you define a person as a bad boss may differ from person to person, but they affect your morale, your desire to contribute at work, and your attitude both inside and outside of the office.
Who needs the discussion at your Saturday night family dinner out to focus on a bad boss? How empowering - not!
Even trickier? You may be the bad boss. This requires that you reach deep inside of yourself to ask that question. Your direct reports will rarely tell you; they have too much career progress at stake. Your colleagues will be careful, too. Many of the negative qualities that make you a bad boss, make you a poor colleague, too. Your well-meaning, often conflict averse, colleagues weigh the price of their silence versus a potentially conflict-ridden scenario.
The worst of all of this? The bad boss may be completely oblivious to the fact that their lack of direction, and other habits described in this article, make them a bad boss. Terra Vanzant-Stern does a good job of describing bad boss actions and discussing what to do about your bad boss.
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More About Dealing With Bad Bosses
Complaints Need a Feedback Loop
Are you interested in discovering your employees' most serious complaints? Knowing what makes employees unhappy is half the battle when you think about employee work satisfaction, employee morale, positive motivation, and retention.
Listen to employees and provide opportunities for them to communicate with company managers. If employees feel safe, they will tell you what's on their minds. Your work culture must foster trust for successful two-way communication.
You need to provide ways for employees to communicate, air their concerns, and see that their voiced opinions had an impact on your work systems. You need to, not just listen, but be prepared to tell employees what their shared concerns changed about your business.
If an employee's concerns changed nothing, give them that feedback, too. But especially, tell the employee why his or her concern changed nothing. Without this critical feedback, employees feel as if their concern went into a black hole somewhere in space. Despite the fact that you took the time to listen, you need to close the feedback loop for the communication to count.
Readers share their most significant employee complaints. Why not share yours?
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HR Gobbledygook
Employers ask a lot about employee satisfaction, employee engagement, employee motivation, employee involvement, employee empowerment, and employee morale. There are differences between each of these concepts, but many people use them interchangeably. I'm on a mission to define them so that they each have a modicum of usefulness in discussions about what employees need and want at work - and what employers need and want from employees.
I want engaged, empowered employees who have positive morale and who are motivated to perform responsibly, effectively and professionally. I also want them to experience deep satisfaction from their work, their involvement in their workplace, their colleagues, and their company's policies and employee engagement programs.
Are you laughing yet? I am. Even smiling? Please. It's not the words; it's the workplace. Let's make them environments in which employees want to work, environments in which employees thrive. And, I'll continue my definitions on this overcast Monday morning.
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Listen to My Gen Y Podcast
Tapping the subject of millennial or Gen Y employees again today as a podcast of my discussion with award winning host, Michael Finney on KGO 810, San Francisco, last Saturday is now online. If you'd like to listen to me talking about Gen Y employees, my segment begins about 30 minutes into the podcast.
You can slide the arrow along the continuum if you'd like to skip the first thirty minutes.
Interested in more about Gen Y and the other generations at work? Here are all of the Gen Y resources that are available on this site. As always, scroll past the ads for more resources.
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Tap Into Employee Motivation
I have a young colleague whose energy amazes me. She's the mom of two and works full time plus is active in professional and civic opportunities. A couple of years ago, she asked me whether I thought she should go on to earn a law degree to supplement the HR masters she was working on at the time.
From earlier conversations, this didn't sound quite right, so I asked her what part of HR she dislikes the most. Employment law, she responded. I asked her what would most likely cause her to get burned out in our field. Employment law and deadbeat employees gaming the laws, she responded.
Hmmm, I said. Have you considered going back to school for your MBA when you finish the HR degree? The MBA would give you broader options in the business. If you stay in HR, the MBA would provide foundation knowledge about the rest of the business including finance. Well, yes, that was her other consideration. I'm glad since the U.S. really doesn't need any more lawyers.
We then moved into a discussion about employee motivation. She is still truly motivated by HR and her interaction with employees, but admits that, after a few years, this work could become old very quickly. How about you? Are you still happy working in your career field, or is it time for a change? Here are the top ten reasons to quit your job, plus five more.
Every person has different reasons for working. The reasons for working are as individual as the person. But, we all work because we obtain something that we need from work. The something obtained from work impacts employee morale, employee motivation, and the quality of life.
My young colleague is still motivated by her job and her field and that is grand. And, she has recently decided that pursuing the MBA is the right course of action.
She also works for a company in which employees really matter. To create positive employee motivation, you need to treat employees as if they matter - because employees matter. These top ten employee motivation ideas will help you fulfill what people want from work.
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More About Employee Motivation
- 7 Serious Ways to Affect Employee Motivation - Right Now
- You Can Make Their Day: Tips for the Leader About Employee Motivation
- Motivation and a Profitable Business Are All About the Managers...Duh!
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Make the Most of Your Millennials
Having a company with many young employees means that an employee or an employee's spouse is almost always pregnant. Indeed, there are usually multiple babies on their way.
We have even hired obviously pregnant applicants, knowing that the new employee would soon take time off for the birth. I think of all of these babies as the next generation talent pool. Occasionally, though, upon completion of the 12 week FMLA leave time, a valued employee decides that work is not a current option and that staying home with the baby is most important.
We support whatever choices our employees make, although we'd like to be in on the decision as soon as possible for planning and work coverage. Lifestyle choices are important to millennial employees (also called Gen Y) in your company. Even many gen-X employees seek flexibility that the Baby Boomer generation never dreamed of demanding.
Here are tips for managing these valued millennial employees and some thoughts about not putting millennial employees in a one-size-fits-all box. Myths abound about millennial employees; don't get sidetracked and miss the best the millennials have to offer in your workplace. It's a lot.
In fact, I ran across a great example of millennial employees successfully contributing to a workplace. Donna Fenn, a respected small business guru, posted on Facebook that the CEO of Tasty Catering in Chicago helped his business grow by handing the reins to millennial employees.
Interesting to me, too, is the company's habit of hiring the best possible employees they can find as interns during high school. Many stay through college and on into their career. Worth your time to hear more, too, about balancing generations in a workplace.
In my company, we hire millennials as interns and offer jobs to the best contributors. It's a real time opportunity to try before you buy, so to say. But, working with Gen Y, as my new article explains, is both a challenge and a joy.
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Ready for an Agile Future?
Think about this changing world that we live in. Changing customer needs, information sought and delivered 24 hours a day to any device and networking far and wide through online social media. Is your organization already on the path to developing agile employees who understand that change is a constant? Or, do you need to help nudge your organization in this direction?
Think about the qualities and characteristics of people who will work most successfully in a rapidly changing, agile environment. How do you ensure that your organization can attract and retain resilient, agile, nimble, adaptive people? You can plan your recruiting to ensure that you are attracting agile candidates. And, you can do so much more.
In an interview about agility, Brian McGowan (pictured), Managing Partner of Aquinas Search Partners, talks about how to recruit, develop, and encourage agile employees. Learn more about agility: why it must be your goal and how to build agility successfully into your organization.
Image Copyright Brian McGowan
More Related to Agility
- Are You Ready for an Agile Future?
- Top 10 Mistakes Managers Make Managing
- Change Management Wisdom
- How to Reduce Resistance to Change
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Delegate: Don't Dump
Delegation can be viewed as dumping by the employee who receives more work to do. A young employee's complaint reminded me. Though she was extremely interested in more responsible work and taking on new challenges, she felt that her manager was just giving her more work to do.
Consequently, some of the delegated work was more challenging; attending meetings during which she helped impact the direction of a developing product was challenging, exciting, and responsible. She believed her manager didn't understand the difference though, so she spent her time doing more work of a mundane, repetitive nature. This workload, that had her working long hours and weekends, interfered with her ability to take on more responsibility.
Admittedly, any job has its share of mundane tasks that have to be completed. I don't like filing and I don't like billing clients. I also don't like doing the wash. But, the manager must carefully balance the delegation of more work with the delegation of work requiring more responsibility, authority, and challenge. Effective delegation is one of the most powerful opportunities organizations have for developing employee capabilities and skills.
Image Copyright Aleksej Vasic
More About Effective Leadership and Delegation
Develop Job Possibilities
The job descriptions I write for the site are comprehensive and attempt to provide the possible scope and range of each of the jobs described.
You'll want to look at the positions in your own company and pick and choose from the job description objectives based on your goals for and needs from the position in your company.
In conjunction with one of the major goals of this site, which is to provide forward thinking Human Resources information for forward looking professionals, the job descriptions challenge you to think about the possibilities for each job.
You may want job descriptions with less detail, but I am a firm believer that people need to know what you expect from them. And, being unclear about expectations is the main reason people don't do what you want them to do. It's also a significant factor in why employees label their boss - a bad boss.
I also like job specifications for use in recruiting and hiring employees. In the case of both job descriptions and job specifications, you need moving targets. My favorite recent reader idea talked about her company's approach in which employees wrote their own job description and updated them annually to show changes. The employees truly owned their job description.
Human Resources Assistant Job Description
Hmmm, said an HR Director friend, looking at the HR assistant job description I developed. You have her doing assistant work, but also generalist work. The answer is "yes." I want the employee firmly grounded and knowledgeable about the basics but also looking forward to her next opportunity as a generalist.
I also know that, for a bright young person, HR assistant work can be deadly dull - yup, you went to college for four plus years to maintain employee files - and I like to add a bit of challenge to the job.
Interested in a quick overview of what an HR manager, director, and generalist do? Take a look at the following for more indepth resources.
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More Human Resources Job Descriptions
Only A Players Wanted
Do you employ A players or B players and which type of employee does this website help you manage? That's what a reader asked me recently when he sought help in managing his B players.
As always, reader questions launch my thinking and I came to several conclusions. First of all, I hate labeling employees. But, I'm going to use labels in this post because we need to share some clarity on the concept of varying levels of employee performance.
My goal is to employ the smartest people that I can find who are committed to continuing their personal development once employed. I want to hire all A players, to use my reader's terminology. But, even in my organization, not every employee is a star.
Every employee has the potential to be a star, in the right job that uses his or her most significant skills and abilities. What else makes an employee potentially a star? Their work environment, the culture that supports the ability to get the work done, profoundly affects an employee's contribution.
The employee's congruence and fit with the culture helps, too. Employees are most successful in a workplace that is a cultural fit with their needs, beliefs, and values. Having a good boss helps, too. Frequent feedback - especially positive - is an employee's dream.
The right recognition and rewards system makes employees feel appreciated. The presence of these five factors that are important to motivation, including communication and employee development, also supports employee success. My whole website is filled with ideas about how to develop and manage these factors in your workplace.
Follow my thinking? All of these things are good for employees and support an employee's success. But, the most important piece in the analogy is still missing, the piece that differentiates your best employees from your mediocre employees. That piece is the employee and how he or she chooses to be in your work place.
Basically, an employee's level of performance is a choice the individual employee makes every day about his or her degree of contribution and success. It's likely accurate to predict that the work choice is reflected in the employee's personal choices outside of work, too.
And, no, I don't want to argue with you about that either. An employee does not make up for failing to be a star at work by writing hot selling novels in the evening or captaining a league-winning soccer team. If that's where the employee performs as an A player, he or she needs to find a way for those activities to fund their lives. I want employees who will be A players at work. You do, too.
You can support your A players and make it easier for them to play as A players, and all of the material on this website will help you to enable your stars. But, my material is primarily oriented toward assisting you to help your B players perform more like A players. How sad is that? That's what I told my reader anyway. Your real A players pretty much bring the needed drive and motivation to work. If something more is needed to support their success, they figure it out. Or, they tell you that they need your help to figure it out.
Ahhh, now on to the employees that you'd label as C players... A category for C and even D players does exist in many numeric, forced-choice employee grading and ranking systems that claim to tie pay to performance, you know. My solution may seem evil, unkind, or even, downright mean spirited, but I seriously believe that your only option with C and D players is employment termination. I have lots of information about how you can fire an employee ethically, morally, and legally. Don't settle; use it.
Nurture your A players. Reward them. Thank them.
Help B players achieve A status - as long as you see progress.
Eliminate the rest. You don't want or need C players.
Any employee can choose to be a star or become a star wherever they are planted.
What do you think?
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Do You Play Well With Coworkers?
Know what employees need? I speak often about the fact that employees need to understand the overall goals of the company - so they understand the parameters of the ball park that they are playing in for decision making and achieving goals.
Today, I'll highlight another factor that is critical to company success. You need to build a team work environment in which employees have each made the commitment to play well with others. Employees who like each other, work well together, and support each other, serve customers well and deliver market worthy products.
This is why you never want to allow an employee squabble to get out of hand. Employees need conflict resolution skills and managers and coworkers need to know how to moderate conflicts in ways that preserve relationships.
In one of my client settings, two women work in the same office and haven't spoken to each other for twenty years. Fortunately, they don't have to work together, but can you imagine how uncomfortable that work environment must be for coworkers? And, I'd hazard a guess that neither of them remembers the details about what caused the breach in the first place.
So, solving bad employee conflicts is a priority. At the same time, you want to enable healthy conflict over ideas, product features, and direction. Balancing the two kinds of conflict adds up to a healthy work environment.
What's your conflict resolution style?Image Copyright Monika Wisniewska
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Are Employee Handbooks Required?
Is having an employee handbook the law, asked another reader recently. Not something I have ever really thought about in the past. Here is my response. What do you think?
Good question. I don't know of a law that mandates employee handbooks; some laws, depending on where you live, mandate certain policies or procedures. These may or may not be in an employee handbook.
That said, an employee handbook is in the best interests of both the company and the employees. It provides a set of guidelines for how things will be handled in your company.
This protects you from such issues as favoritism and discrimination charges. Employees feel that they are treated equally when the procedure is written in the handbook, and the procedure is followed and fairly applied.
Managers are not forced to decide certain issues, such as time off, on a case by case basis, and employees know what to do if something untoward occurs such as sexual harassment. Employees and HR staff are on the same page as to how legal mandates such as FMLA are handled in the company.
Employers use the policies in an employee handbook to protect themselves from lawsuits, such as harassment claims, wrongful employment termination claims, and discrimination claims. Employee handbooks generally contain a code of conduct for employees that establish expectations for appropriate behavior in the workplace.
Progressive discipline and procedures for making a complaint are also in most employee handbooks. In locations where at-will employment exists, the at-will employment statement is in the employee handbook. Since employees sign off on employee handbooks, the employer has a record that the employee read and understood the contents of the employee handbook, so he or she knows the rules.
The employee handbook has positive components as well. Employees are able to learn the story of your company, its history, its culture, and the rights and responsibilities of employees. Benefits, compensation, and other aspects of an employee-friendly workplace are shared. Positive components of employment at your company are highlighted, too, such as company teams, PTO policies, and flexible work schedule guidelines.
In this day and age, handbooks and codes of conduct are your best friends. They are essential components of a well-managed, orderly, fair workplace. Here's my work-in-progress, recommended table of contents for an employee handbook.
As an end note, I also believe that employers should create as few policies as necessary. Not everything needs a policy, especially when the policy is created to change the behavior of just a few people. If only a couple of employees exhibit problems with attendance, for example, an attendance policy that makes every employee use a time clock is unwarranted. It unnecessarily imposes an inconvenient daily task on employees and telegraphs a lack of trust on the part of the employer. Deal with the culprits as individuals. Don't subject the entire team to unneeded shackles.
Image Copyright Pali Rao
Use Mentoring to Develop Employees
Effective relationships and learning are the mainstays of organizational success today. Organizations that find meaningful ways for their employees to connect are more likely to realize greater productivity, enhanced career growth, freely flowing innovation and overall improvement in employee performance. Mentoring serves both purposes.
One-on-one mentoring, with a mentor who exhibits the mentoring characteristics needed by people who become successful mentors, is one of the key methods you can use to develop employees. Group mentoring is a value-added tool for connecting employees and advancing learning within your organization. Whether singly or in groups, employees benefit from learning and exchanges with more experienced employees.
My Mentoring
I've had several mentoring experiences over the years. Dave Schmidt, my first senior HR Director boss, helped me figure out the hierarchy and the way the world worked at General Motors. Ron Carr, the skilled tradesman who took me on weekly plant walks so I could learn the manufacturing environment without ever having worked in it, paved my path to acceptance as their training coordinator by the tool and die guys. (Quite a feat at the time...)
A beloved friend who spent many hours with me when I was starting my business, Leslie Charles is especially memorable because she even took the chance of subcontracting training work to a neophyte consultant. And, we're still friends and confidants twenty some years later. I consider myself blessed and lucky. If you seek, you can find mentoring, too.
Your Mentoring
Organizations can assist employees by developing a culture that supports mentoring. They can provide mentoring training. They can factor mentoring into job descriptions, performance development planning, and their recognition systems. Every new employee should receive mentoring from a current employee. Company stories that employees tell should reinforce the importance of mentoring.
Managers, senior employees, and talented contributors can provide mentoring to others by committing themselves to mentoring, developing a mentoring relationship, meeting regularly, and sharing knowledge.
Believe me, I haven't spent twenty plus years in a successful consulting and writing career without plenty of mentoring and help from others. It's the same in your workplace. The more your organization supports mentoring, the more mentoring help you have from others to help you learn, grow, and practice, the more successful you and your workplace will be.
Image Copyright Jacob Wackerhausen
More Mentoring Resources
No Carrots for Motivation
Daniel Pink recommends no carrots to encourage and reward high level performance in higher level cognitive skills and output.
Loved this less-than-five minute cartoon drawing summary of the presentation about rewards and motivation by Dan Pink from the TED conference (20 minutes, but definitely, worth watching)
Ideas Worth Spreading is TED's tagline and I find many of their presentations insightful and thought-provoking. In this video, Dan Pink, author and career consultant, looks at what he calls the preponderance of the research on motivation. He concludes that the carrot and the stick approach, that has been used eternally by business to reward performance, only applies when skills rewarded are mechanical, basic skills
He concludes that when a business wants to reward cognitive skills, the higher level thinking and creative skills, rewards may even negatively impact performance. You've heard me say in the past that only when employees have enough money to cover their chosen lifestyle do they move on to motivated behavior via more intrinsic rewards.
Mr. Pink argues that if you give employees enough money, so that money is not an issue, then they will strive for three transcendent purposes: Autonomy (self-direction), Mastery (getting better and better), and Purpose (part of larger, defined issue). He calls these the rewards of the 21st century.
Take a look at the videos, and check out many of the TED speakers who do make me think and sometimes, rethink, what I believe. This one is congruent with my thinking, but the research and examples are worth hearing. So is his story about an Australian company that gives its employees a day periodically to work on anything that they want to work on if they think it will further the company's and customers' best interests.
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More About Motivation and Rewards
Is Your Management System Failing?
In a client company, a manager had decided that the goal setting components of the performance development planning process were not clearly communicating his goals and expectations to one of his reporting employees.
In the manager's mind, the employee was failing. So, he had decided to write a performance improvement plan (PIP) for him which more clearly documented the expected contribution and dates of expected completion of goals.
As employees use the lingo, the employee was placed on a PIP. (Many employees consider this PIP the death knell of their employment.) In the manager's lingo, the employee needed clearer direction because the normal communication / goal negotiation process was not working. The employee on a PIP, in most cases, has a limited amount of time to demonstrate progress. But, the goal of a correct PIP process is improvement and employee retention. To lose an employee is a failure, in my mind.
The PIP is a powerful communication tool for improvement when employees take it seriously. At the same time, a manager who has multiple employees fail at performing their jobs, is suspect. The vast majority of employees show up for work wanting to contribute and develop their skills.
So, the manager needs to determine whether his management system has failed. And, he needs to answer these questions:
- Is he communicating expectations regularly and reinforcing employees who are doing the right thing?
- Is he fearful of their competency?
- Does he have a documented track record of providing feedback to the employee or does the employee feel blindsided by the PIP?
- Does he develop a supportive relationship with his employees that invites dialog about performance? Or, is he rarely there for them?
- Is he controlling and micromanaging or does he set goals and set the employees free to accomplish them?
In many cases, since employees leave managers, not jobs or companies, I regard a failing employee as the exclusive responsibility of the manager. Yes, employees contribute to their own downfall - frequently and forcefully, but the manager is the most powerful tool in preventing their demise.
Image Copyright Juan Silva / Getty Images
Creative Recruiting and Selection Idea from Legoland
Looking for creative ways to recruit and test your job candidates? I am a fan of job specific testing because it helps you determine who is really qualified for your open position. The challenge is to come up with legitimate, sensible testing and recruiting methods relevant to your opening.
Consequently, I like to hear stories about creative, exciting recruiting methods. Legoland Chicago presented this opportunity for me. Let's start with what's not to love about Legos? They are a parent and teacher's best friend for interesting children in engineering, building construction, and even, math. Plus, they're fun.
But, I had never thought about the kinds of jobs that might exist at Legoland. Legoland Chicago developed and implemented a winning approach to recruiting. Cassi Weber (pictured), LEGOLAND Discovery Center Chicago's General Manager shared their approach to recruiting a new Master Model Builder with us.
Image Copyright Cassi Weber
More: Brilliant Leaders Convert Creativity into Innovation | 7 Critical Factors to Consider Before You Make a Job Offer | 10 Tips for Hiring the Right Employee
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Make That Bad Boss - Good
A bad boss is a topic that gets most people who work riled up.
Sometimes, it may seem as if the world just never runs out of them, both the inadvertent bad boss and those who are just plain bad to the bone - and revel in their badness. Most of us have had a bad boss - reader stories are legion (more comments) - so you do know the difference when you find yourself with a good boss.
Good bosses exist and my readers share their good boss stories frequently. But, whether your boss is bad or good, you bear the brunt of developing an effective work relationship with that person you call boss. You are the person whom an unsuccessful boss relationship most impacts.
First of all, consider treating your boss as if he or she is your most important client. Take responsibility for nurturing the positive aspects of the relationship rather than dwelling on all of the negatives. You will find that if you change your view of your boss and your attitude toward your boss, the relationship will improve.
By changing your outlook about your boss, you affect the actions, subtle and not-so-subtle, that he or she experiences from you daily. If you're a bad boss, it's difficult to remain bad in the face of a persistently positive, upbeat, can-do employee who treats you as if you are important. Here are more thoughts on managing up for a positive boss relationship.
Image Copyright Digital Vision / Getty Images
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Have a Nightmare Job Interview Story?
Everyone who interviews potential employees has stories to tell.
Stories are a crucial component in shaping your organizational culture, too. But, nothing is better for raising the spirits of managers and HR staff, who have been interviewing numerous potential employees, than candidate stories.
Readers have shared their favorite interview questions and there are some real keepers in the responses. They also share their favorite questions and answers from candidates. These are a hoot, so please take a look.
In addition to your great questions and the remarkable questions and answers that you receive from candidates, I'll bet you have memorable stories about candidates, too. They come late, don't show up at all, answer their cell phones during the interview, and more than I can imagine, you have experienced. Here's your opportunity to share that memorable job interview story. Have a Job Interview Story You'd Love to Tell?
My Nightmare Job Interview Story
I took a candidate to lunch for a client company. She had applied for a sales position and I genuinely liked her and found her qualified for the role. Her potential manager had some concerns about her sales abilities but was comfortable with her experience in business development. The sales role would have taken her on the road with clients quite a bit, so a lunch meeting was scheduled.
Midway through our lunch, the local tornado sirens went off, and amidst thunder, lightning, hail, and a curtain of rain, we were forced to move away from the restaurant window back behind a retaining wall. The next fifteen minutes turned the candidate into a nightmare. She started by taking out her compact and picked her teeth in front of the other customers and me.
Then, she informed me that she wanted to get several coffees for the road and that she'd add them to our bill. Upon her return, I noticed she had ordered a dessert to go, too. These actions in combination with the fact that she talked to me when her mouth was full all during lunch, had convinced me that I didn't want her to be the public face of my client company.
She called the next morning to say she was no longer interested in the job. My suspicion is that she had already decided that when we went to lunch. But, even then, wouldn't you think she'd want our final taste of her professional presence to be positive? (Grin)
Here's your chance to share your nightmare interview story. Have a Job Interview Story You'd Love to Tell?
Image Copyright Chris Clinton / Getty Images
More About Interiewing
Would You Friend Your Boss?
My husband joined me on Facebook last year primarily to see pictures of our grandchildren. But, it turns out that he's much more fun than I am and takes photographs to boot. His joining also brought to my mind a frequent debate I hear and see in companies and workplaces. Who should I friend on Facebook and in other social media?
Interested in my rules that I live by? Here's what I do. On LinkedIn, my professional networking site, I accept any professional into my network of contacts and I invite professionals with whom I want to stay in touch. Pre-LinkedIn, I lost a cherished professional friend, who moved several times in a couple of years. Because her name is so common, online searches yield thousands of potential matches - none of them are Caryl. How do you use LinkedIn?
Who to Friend on Facebook?
Facebook is another matter. I used to run several RSS feeds (subscribe) of this website through my Facebook page and my family members complained that my site was too professional. They were afraid to post on my wall, so I developed a separate page for About.com Human Resources (like). Because Facebook is so friend-oriented, I also made a rule that I will not "friend" our employees because I don't want to make them uncomfortable deciding whether to "friend" me.
Facebook Friending Rules to Live By...
Consequently, on Facebook, other than executive leaders, my only company friends are those who have reached out and friended me. I accept all friend requests from our employees, but it does beg the question. Why would they want to friend me? Knowing each other better, sharing interests, and expanding their community works for me. These rules work for me, too. I don't make our staff members uncomfortable.
Other company leaders play by different rules. Hence, when I received a note from Beyond.com about their website poll, it got my attention. They asked more than 4,100 business professionals across the Beyond.com network of career sites, "Would you be friends with your boss on Facebook?" More than 51% of the respondents said, "No way!" In this blog post, Beyond.com provides some pros and cons of being friends with your boss on Facebook.
My sentiments echo those of commenter Gary who said, "I gladly accept any friend request from my colleagues, but I leave the requesting part to their discretion. I do not send Facebook friend requests to colleagues out of respect for their personal lives and because I do not want anybody to feel pressured or put on the spot in accepting or rejecting such a request." I also do not friend people whom I don't personally know because my Facebook page is for family and friends.
The rest of the social networks? Can't say. I can only keep up with three so I avoid becoming involved in the rest. What do you think and what do you do about social networks and your coworkers and staff?
Image Copyright IKO
More About Using Social Networks
Match Your Strengths to Your Job
Each of us brings strengths and weaknesses to the workplace.
Our strengths and weaknesses differentiate us in both big and small ways. Our approach to work, when we work best, and what motivates us and calls forth our best work, differs. Some people jump into new situations and technology. Others, like me, read the directions, think about it, and make a plan.
I am rarely the first done with anything because I am still planning when the "jump right in" folks cross the finish line. This is why it is so important to choose the right career for yourself that plays on and emphasizes your strengths, not your weaknesses. Great managers know this rule when leading people, too.
In addition to each of us having a different approach to work, we also operate on different clocks. Some are morning people and some are night people. I'm a night person - always have been and always will be. I can remember reading under the covers with a flashlight after my mother said, "lights out" during elementary school and high school years. So, the natural proclivity starts early.
All through college and for years after, I worked nights in restaurants as a waitress, bartender, cook, and dining room manager. We finished every evening with a 3 a.m. breakfast at a local all-night restaurant. And, many of those mornings, I had to show up an hour away to teach school at 7:30 a.m. I was never late, but I think of those years of early mornings as the cruel years. I have to also admit that I have had to show up much earlier for consulting engagements, but somehow early mornings by choice feel a bit better.
I've created a couple of polls. Are you a thinker/planner or a doer? Are you a night person or a morning person? There are no correct answers, just expected personal differences - to be noted and appreciated in your workplace.
More About Diversity
5 Cover Letter Red Flags for Employers
Want to know the cover letter red flags that should capture your attention when you review an applicant's cover letter? The cover letter is an integral component of a job searcher’s job application materials.
Sent with the resume when a job searcher applies for a job, the cover letter enhances the credentials of a qualified applicant - or not. Smart job searchers recognize that the cover letter is an opportunity to point out the connection between their skills and experience and the requirements in your job posting.
How you review a cover letter and what you want to see in an effective cover letter is a topic I've addressed frequently. Cover letters should matter to employers. They are both an opportunity for an applicant to put her professional best foot forward and an elimination tool for the employer.
See five cover letter red flags. Share the red flags you see when you review an applicant's resume and cover letter. What bugs you the most?
Image Copyright Pali Rao
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Staffing Red Flags for Employers | Job Application ReviewThink Multitasking Is Productive?
Looking for tips about how to increase your ability to focus on tasks and stay productive at work? One of the problems employees who are multitasking and doing more work face is that they may be, in fact, accomplishing less.
"As professionals are expected to do more on the job, many are actually doing less, less effectively due to an inability to focus on key priorities," according to Joelle K. Jay, PhD. (pictured), noted executive coach and author. She says that neuroscientists have found that people use maximum focus for only about three minutes in an hour. This results in fragmented actions, interrupted thinking, hasty decisions and overall poor quality of work.
For employers, is employee multitasking a problem? Yes. Companies lose an average of 2.1 hours a day on employee productivity because of multitasking and related interruptions.
Solutions exist to counter this multitasking, the lack of focus and concentration by employees. Dr. Jay, the author of The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices for Personal Leadership, says that, "If you don't schedule time to work on important projects and objectives, you can end up bouncing from one task to another, becoming so buried in the minutia of day-to-day operations that you lose sight of the grander vision for your career. Your actions become reactive rather than strategically aligned with achieving your goals."
She recommends these actions.
- "Establish a short list of well-chosen priorities. Remember that having 20 priorities is the same as not having any priorities.
- "Schedule time to work on a project and treat this time as an appointment, meaning no interruptions. Even if it is just for an hour, set aside this golden hour of unitasking to work exclusively on one project.
- "Try to schedule activities that benefit from the same mindset within a block of time. For example, plan to conduct research and write during the morning and reserve the afternoon for more high-energy, interactive pursuits such as sales calls and client meetings. In this way, you can get into a groove and be more productive."
Do you have thoughts about focus, prioritizing, and accomplishing tasks and goals at work? Please share your secrets.
Image Copyright Joelle K. Jay
More Related to Multitasking and Productivity
Teams Need to Develop Norms
Several teams have requested help with their team work process. They are product development teams that are integrating new members that represent other functions in the company. And, the integration can be rough, especially when the teams are not used to the input and the oversight from the new functions. And, they don't particularly welcome it either.
Plus, the new function doesn't understand that ninety percent of their success will come from successfully building a relationship with the long term team members. They just think they should be accepted because they exist, they have good ideas, and they are a positive, forward thinking innovation. It doesn't work that way.
These are the twelve components of successful team building that must be in place for teams to operate successfully. Absent any of these, focus attention on discussing the issues the teams are experiencing. You can do this through the team norming process.
These are the steps in establishing team norms, the process of establishing how people in groups are going to relate to each other. Done effectively, norms will determine where one function leaves off and the others start. They establish boundaries and determine needed group relationship guidelines. If your team is not functioning effectively, start with these twelve areas and establishing team norms.
Here are sample team norms that were developed by a team. Warning: do not adopt these norms as your own. The most important part of the norming process is the discussion that takes a team to their destination, their own team norms and agreements.
Image Copyright Chris Schmidt
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How to Do HR Business Planning
Martha asks a thoughtful question that I answer and that you may have insights about, too. (In fact, her question prompted so much thought on my part that I have added two new articles to the HR business planning collection on the site.)
Martha's Question: "My boss asked me, 'what is your plan for your HR department?' I'm heading the HR department of a manufacturing plant, with over 500 employees. We have our vision and mission in place, and each department has their own head of department. Other than the commonly established roles of human resources, where can I look for the answer or decide upon an answer to my boss' question?"
My Response: Martha, this is a common question that bosses like to ask HR staff. I find it as difficult to answer as another frequent question I receive which is, "How do I go about starting an HR function or department in my company?"
They're difficult questions because the answer is so company-specific and it depends on your needs analysis of your own workplace. The question you need to ask is, "What does your workplace need from the HR function?"
What are the appropriate goals, organization, and initiatives for a Human Resources department to pursue? Whether your HR function is a department of one or many, basic Human Resources business planning, that includes internal organizational needs assessment and external benchmark comparisons, is needed. This is how you need to approach and accomplish fundamental Human Resources business planning.
Start by asking your boss what he or she wants from you, and then, follow the rest of my recommendations. Then, at last, you can answer your boss's question: What is your business plan for your HR department? But heed this story, too...
Lee Iacocca Business Planning Fable
I'm not sure how true the story is, but it's circulated for years in business seminars. It's as apt today as on the day it supposedly occurred, so I'll share it. It has been said that Lee Iacocca interrupted a business meeting that he was attending when he was Chrysler's President, CEO, and later Chairman, and asked for a particular piece of data. No one in the room, to their embarrassment, could supply the information.
Following the meeting, an employee was assigned to collect the required data from each department. The monthly reports soon filled the shelves of a storage room, but a new employee noticed that no one ever seemed to ask for or use the information that an analyst in each department was now providing monthly.
A brave soul approached Chairman Iacocca and asked when and how he would like the data that the departments had been collecting for several years. As the story goes, Mr. Iacocca looked at his staffer in bewilderment, not remembering that he had ever wanted or asked for the data, and said he was completely perplexed as to why his organization was collecting it.
'Nuff said? Start by asking the boss for more information before you embark on an unnecessary journey...
Image Copyright Digital Vision / Getty Images
More About HR Business Planning
- Develop a Human Resources Department Business Plan
- The Human Resources Department As a Profitability Factor
- Reinventing HR from the Classroom to the Boardroom
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Win With Performance Appraisals
Employee performance appraisals are a long term popular topic on this website and in HR discussions everywhere. Some people vote to abolish them forever; others find them useful to evaluate employee performance and make pay raise decisions.
I am in the camp that believes organizations need a documented way to keep track of and evaluate employee progress on goals and contributions, but that performance appraisals should not dominate the compensation discussion. I do believe that when managing employees, you get what you request and reward. I also believe that performance appraisals, as they have traditionally been practiced and used, don't work.
Sure, they work for straining relationships and making people angry. They contribute to managers going through the motions when many employees want legitimate, helpful developmental feedback. And, performance appraisals make managers angry and upset when both HR and their reporting employees are harassing them for their performance appraisals because their pay raise depends on their completion.
Sure, I'd like all organizations to move in the direction of performance management and I frequently write about how to do that. But, I also recognize that, for a variety of reasons, some legal and some determined by organizations in their effort to be fair to employees, manage employee performance consistently, and avoid any hint of discrimination, not all organizations agree.
So, I have a newly adopted mission. I'd like to work with those of you who live in an organization that requires performance appraisals. You can make performance appraisals significantly more useful, less destructive to relationships and egos, and turn them into a useful tool for employee development and feedback.
With this in mind, I have begun to create a series of FAQs about performance appraisals that will help you significantly improve their use in your organization. Not all of you have the opportunity to affect the total system for performance appraisals within which you work. But, every manager has the opportunity to take the system you've been dealt and turn the performance appraisal process into a positive, rewarding, beneficial process for both yourself and the employees who report to you. These FAQs will tell you how to maximize success with performance appraisals.
Image Copyright Pando Hall / Getty Images
Performance Appraisal Tips
- Where Do Managers Go Wrong With Performance Appraisals?
- How Can Managers Improve Performance Appraisals?
- How Can a Manager Successfully Approach Performance Appraisal Goals?
- Why Are Performance Reviews Not an Adequate Reflection of...
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Confused about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act?
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) has caused much confusion among employers. That's not surprising for the Act encompasses more than a thousand pages. The Act was virtually unread when voted into law. So, employers are still trying hard to know what's in store for their employees as more and more of the components of the law go into effect.
Most employers and individuals who are knowledgeable, support the need for health care reform. Whether this Act is the answer will largely be decided by the Supreme Court later this year. In the meantime, my guest author, Jay Starkman (pictured), CEO of Engage PEO, has provided a balanced piece that talks about some of the Act's impacts for employers.
Whether this Act is the answer, or a reworked Act next year, employers cannot continue to afford the upward spiral of costs. In my own company, we still pay 100% of the employees' health insurance costs and offer a comprehensive benefits package. This has become unusual as more employers share the costs with employees.
My personal vote would be to get rid of all of the ambulance chasing trial lawyers who tout disease class action lawsuits and adopt safeguards for the medical profession. The way things stand now, doctors are so afraid of lawsuits that they order tests and other treatments that may not be needed. Additionally, drug company incentives and a lack of team work treatment by assorted medical professionals make war with the interests of patients. Walter Russell Mead speaks rationally about what our health care system needs for overhaul. Best I've seen. Really.
Additional resources for individuals and employers are available from About.com's Michael Meulemans who provides a complete guide to the health care Act. About.com's Dr. Michael Bihari provides a useful summary timeline that tells you when various components of the Act will be implemented. Another resource, including the Act, for those of you who have a week to read it, is available from Healthcare.gov.
Image Copyright Jay Starkman
More Related to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
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Employee Book Clubs Rule
My husband is the president of our company and lunches fairly regularly with the members of our executive team. When his usual lunch dates are unavailable, he sends out an email looking for "lunch buddies." He has four goals in joining employee groups for lunch:
- seeking out employees who are doing something interesting or exciting to them and learning and sharing about it.
- getting to know our employees better in an informal setting,
- keeping his fingers on the pulse of our organization and nurturing our work culture, and
- lending his support to their efforts.
Recently, he ate with one of our company book clubs. Reading groups or book clubs at work are one of the least expensive, most motivating forms of employee development. For the price of a book, employees learn the concepts in the book to expand their management, team, and coworker skills, out-of-the-box thinking, and pursue personal growth. Book clubs play a central role in your employee development options.
In a book club, employees learn leadership skills by leading book discussion sessions. These sessions are excellent for team building and as an opportunity for employees from different departments to get to know each other. Book clubs are also a way for managers and employees to interact and get to know each other in a relaxed setting.
In company book clubs, employees select books on topics about which they want to learn more. As an example, in a company that sells its products internationally, a group of employees is reading books about globalization. Another group is reading about agile software development. Others are reading management books such as Jim Collins' Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't (compare prices).
Book clubs frequently choose books about teams: interest in building effective teams never seems to wane. But, any topic about which a group of employees share an interest, is fair game and supported for a book club.
Image ©Bobbieo
Beyond the concepts in the books, people also gain a shared language, a shared terminology for the concepts they are studying. I am a fan of reading groups. Here's information about book clubs and recommended books from two companies that appreciate the contribution of their book clubs to their employee development. Then, try one of these recommended books.
Recommended Book Club Reading
These are mostly older books but still recommended. Classics don't go out of date.
Do You Know Who You're Hiring?
Think resume checking and candidate background checking are a poor use of your time? Think again. During times of economic challenge, checking the background and credentials of your potential employee becomes even more important.
Fraud is rampant. Job searchers are desperate. Employers are being duped. Why not find out those less than stellar facts about your favorite candidate before you've come to own him, love him, train him, and integrate him into your company, only to find out later that his credentials are fraudulent?
Yahoo CEO's Credential Problem
Think that you are immune from fraudulent claims by potential employees? There is a long history of even CEOs claiming degrees and other credentials they don't have. Take the current uproar over Yahoo Chief Executive Scott Thompson's claim to a degree in accounting and computer science. Sounds possible. But, the college from which he graduated confirms the accounting and business degree but didn't start a computer science program until several years after he graduated.
Will Yahoo fire Mr. Thompson? It depends on their written policies and how the erroneous information came about. Did Mr. Thompson willfully mislead the hiring team? I don't have insider information, but you want to avoid dilemmas like this one when you offer a new employee a job.
Fraud Rampant in Application Materials
Do you know who you are hiring? Recent studies by various firms, indicate that most candidates mislead, exaggerate, embellish, and / or outright lie on their application materials including resumes, cover letters, and job applications.
One firm found that 64% of candidates overstate accomplishments, while 71% misrepresent the number of years they have held a position. Others found that over half of their applicants misrepresented their employment history.
So, what's an employer to do? These tips will help you avoid the consequences of hiring candidates who have misrepresented any aspect of their employment or academic history. Recent high profile cases say that it can happen to you. With comprehensive candidate background checking, you can increase your chances of knowing exactly who you are hiring.
Image Copyright Steve Cole / Getty Images
More About Candidate Background Checking
- Background Checks: Five Keys to Pre-Screening Potential Employees
- Reference Checking Format
- Who Owns Reference Checking?
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Did You Bring Your Business Ethics to Work Today?
Writing recently about developing a code of conduct or code of ethics, as it is sometimes called, I was struck by the importance of an organization having a code to guide employee behavior.
The truth, in cases of an apparent lapse in business ethics by a high level, high profile employee, always lies somewhere between what a company or the individual is willing to publicly disclose and the voraciousness with which the media report the story. And, I am a true believer in an employee's right to privacy when the issue of employee confidentiality is at stake. So, the public rarely knows the whole story - and that is okay with me.
Business Ethics and Managers
The behavior of any individual in a management role, an employee who is trusted to supervise the work of other employees or a function within an organization, must rise above the standard set and expected by a company for all employees. Organizations need to hold managers to a higher standard than is expected from other employees. Managers must model sterling business ethics behavior.
So, business ethics takes center stage this week in my thinking and writing. My article addresses the broad topic of business ethics and provides examples of ways in which business ethics are ignored in workplaces every day.
Some of my examples of lapses in business ethics may surprise you as they range from the catastrophic to the tiny little decisions that employees make when no one is watching and no one will ever know. To spice matters up a bit, I have also supplied an opportunity for you to add your stories and examples business ethics gone awry. Please help expand our set of examples by entering your example here.
More Related to Business Ethics
Differentiate Skills From Abilities?
I have not spent a lot of time developing organizational competencies that specify knowledge, skills, and abilities essential for the fleshing out of each job role and the qualifications of the employee who will best succeed in the role. I have watched some organizations, primarily public sector, spend a fortune in staff time and energy determining competencies for every job.
I am not convinced of the usefulness of this effort and how the results of thousands of hours of effort have been or will be used by the organization. And, that is the key, I believe. How will the organization use the results. I can be convinced that the time and energy are worth it. Convince me. Please.
A reader writes asking for some clarification. I respond. Can you further flesh out the concept and provide more examples? Help appreciated.
Reader Question: I was conducting a job analysis in my organization. During this exercise I was a bit confused in writing skills and abilities for various positions. I wanted your help in clearing my confusion in deciding over the difference between skills and abilities in a KSA (Knowledge, Skills and Abilities) assessment. Eagerly waiting for your reply...
My Response: This is how I differentiate. A skill is something the employee can learn or is learning or has learned. An ability is a strength that is innate to the employee. It can be improved but the talent or ability for it exists within the individual to start.
Perhaps a good example is (since my husband was reading a photography book recently) found in taking a photograph. The photographer had the skill to take a photograph that was exposed just perfectly. Another photographer had the ability to find a beautiful scene that she composed in such a way that she turned the scene into a stunning photograph. An employee could develop additional skills and competency in both, but that artistic eye might forever elude the technical expert. I trust this helps.
Image Copyright Stock_IMG Business
More About Job Requirements
Avoid Conflicts of Interest
Have you ever had to investigate a charge of sexual harassment against a senior manager? Rather than investigate the charge yourself, the appropriate action might be to hire an external, uninvolved law firm to investigate the charges.
In cases of formal complaints or charges involving the CEO, a president, vice president, or even a lower level manager, in some cases, you risk the appearance of, or have, an actual conflict of interest if an internal employee conducts the investigation. Internal employees may have worked together for many years. Internal employees have an opinion about the integrity of the parties involved, the person making the charges and the person who is charged.
When executive managers are involved, the investigatory climate becomes even more complex. The executive controls or influences the working conditions, promotions, and compensation of internal staff. This intensifies the conflict of interest situation.
When I have investigated charges against a senior manager, I have always retained an outside law firm to conduct the investigation. Even the firm's usual law firms pose a conflict of interest scenario, so I have always retained a recommended attorney who has not worked with the company in the past.
You take these precautions to ensure that the investigation is not tainted by any possibility of favoritism, impropriety or personal gain. Sometimes, even the appearance of any of these influences is enough to set off suspicions about conflict of interest.
Organizations should include policies and guidelines about conflicts of interest in their code of conduct or code of ethics and in their employee handbook. Steps in an investigation should be clearly laid out, too, so employees know what they can expect.
Image Copyright Diego Cervo
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Involve Employees in Your Selection Process
Because so many people are looking for work right now, cautious resume review and diligent checking of credentials gain significance.
Especially resume review, serious attention to cover letters, and job application review are more important than ever. I don't know about your company, but in mine, we interview with an employee selection team. Consequently, employee time invested in each candidate who comes in for an interview is costly.
Plus, the involved employees spend additional time comparing candidates and providing Human Resources employees with feedback and input. Their input about which candidates to invite back for a second interview, that will involve even more people and staff time, are heeded.
Find out more about an effective selection process: Employee Involvement Is Key to a Successful Employee Selection Process
Image Copyright Dean Sanderson
More About Your Selection Process
Your April Faves
You had five significant articles and blog posts that were your favorites in April. Even after almost 12 years of writing this HR site, I am still learning month to month what is most popular with my readers. Sure, overall trends tell me a lot.
You like sample policies, checklists, forms, and samples. You like anything that is new or different or that adds new approaches to your toolkit. Getting along with coworkers and bosses never loses popularity - because people are humans for all that is to love or not about that. Lately, sample HR letters are also high on your list.
But, the most popular in my newsletter are fun to look at every month. So, here are your favorites from April. Have a great week. Happy reading.
- Best Ever One Word Ice Breaker
- What's On Your Mind?
- How to Fire Your Bad Boss
- 40 Ways to Say Thank You at Work
- Top 10 Mistakes Managers Make Managing People
Image Copyright Justin Horrocks
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Flexible Work Schedules Employees Love
May is Revise Your Work Schedule Month. I imagine that many parents, adult caretakers of parents, and people who just want a bit more leisure time for summer activities, will take note of this celebration.
Flexible work schedules have never been more popular as the current generation, that comprises the younger set in the workplace, values time off from work and work life balance with a passion not pursued, by perhaps, equally interested, older generations. For whatever reasons, and that's a potentially enlightening discussion to hold someday - since that generation of Baby Boomers and Gen Xers raised this generation and their parents, they didn't pursue work life balance options such as flexible work schedules with the passion their children exhibit - and even - demand.
Rules Must Rule in Work Life Balance Policies
I support flexible work schedules and other workplace initiatives to make work a more employee-friendly environment. But, guidelines, policies, employee education, and communication must accompany any relaxing of the traditional 8 to 5 work schedule. Otherwise, you will have a mess on your hands.
Different departments will make their own rules and complaints about what should be a motivational component of your workplace will be rampant. Employees who believe others have more leeway or that their needs were not met, are negative about work. Fairness, inclusiveness, consistency, agreed upon success measurements, and feedback must rule.
Flexible schedule not currently available in your workplace? You can negotiate a flexible work schedule.
What Do You Do for Work Life Balance?
Has your employer done anything out of the ordinary for work life balance for employees? These are work life balance tips and strategies that have been shared by readers. Share your work life balance tips and strategies.
Image Copyright Pando Hall / Getty Images
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The Trainer's Eternal Dilemma
Anyone who has ever worked in training can identify the trainer's eternal dilemma. How do you help the pumped up, happy trainees, who pass their training session end test with flying colors, apply the new knowledge back on the job?
You can follow my recommendations about what to do before, during, and after the training session to facilitate the transfer of the training to the job. But, even when you do the right things right to foster training transfer, you do not control the environment in which employees must try to apply the new knowledge.
All components of the work environment affect the trainee's application of skills. Work environments are ready to foster change or they are not. Supervisors may resist employees performing in new ways. Employees have varying degrees of motivation to practice new skills. New ways of doing work may require more time. The employee may receive no recognition for applying new skills.
The above training transfer tips develop an environment that supports skill practice. If the trainer can impact the trainee's workplace, training transfer is more likely to occur.
The trainer's dilemma never ends. Your thoughts about training and training transfer? I've become a serious fan of on-the-job training opportunities versus seminars and training classes.
Image Copyright Jacob Wackerhausen
Training Success Tips
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