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Day: May 17, 2017

Don’t make middle managers the meat in the sandwich

by

Give your middle managers the best chance of succeeding.

While I was having dinner with a friend the other night, she complained about being overworked, unappreciated and misunderstood at work. She ended her lament with, “I thought this job would be a great opportunity to step up and prove myself but I just feel like the meat in a rather unappetising sandwich. I haven’t had any leadership training and I work ridiculous hours with no thanks from anyone and resentment from my family.”

My friend is a middle manager in a large teaching hospital, but this isn’t the first time I’ve heard such a protest. This is often the experience and complaint of so many middle managers. So why do they have such a rough time when they are the glue that holds an organisation together, bridging the gap between senior leaders and frontline workers? After all, aren’t these the people we rely on to implement strategy and organisational change and at the same time keep employees engaged and motivated?

A recent Harvard Business Review study suggests that middle managers are the unhappiest group of workers. And in my conversations with senior managers and frontline staff, I was struck by the opinions of those to whom I spoke. It seems although they’re much maligned as a group, senior leaders often see middle managers as an unwieldy group of underperformers who prevent their organisation from achieving its strategic objectives. What an indictment!

What’s more, some of the frontline staff I spoke to described middle managers as slaves to senior leaders, cracking the whip to get things done quickly. In their view, they are not prepared to innovate; they’ve lost touch with operational reality and no longer act as an advocate for their people. “They have become one of ‘them’ and just want to look good at our expense,” one person told me.

So why are middle managers getting criticised from all angles? Are these accusations fair? There are several hypotheses that warrant some attention.

Is it because middle managers are struggling to step up to the job?

The transition from being an individual contributor or expert to being a leader of others is not easy. Organisations are failing to give middle managers the support and tools they need to do this. In order to succeed, middle managers need to understand and develop the transitional behaviours that are required to help them step up. Currently, attention and investment is being made into the development of those at the top and on the frontline, but middle managers are missing out on these development opportunities. According to a recent study, only 50 per cent of mid-level managers received any kind of formal leadership development in 2012.

Each leadership stage requires different skill-sets and values, and at each transition, leaders have to develop these in order to lead successfully. This framework helps middle managers focus more clearly on the requirements of what they need to stop, start and keep doing. If they can get the first two leadership ‘turns’ in their careers right, it will help them to increase their flexibility and effectiveness.

Is it because organisations in 2015 are much flatter?

With more and more businesses operating in a matrix structure, managers have a broader set of responsibilities and are having to adopt a different mind-set in order to engage people. Middle managers, now more than ever, need to effectively influence a group wider than just those whom they directly line manage.

Is it because organisations are struggling to flex and adapt to the megatrends affecting today’s workforce?

The composition of the workforce has never been so complex. Managers have the additional challenges of working with generations X, Y and Z as well as record numbers of part timers. These employees are all working together with vastly different expectations – a challenge that is new and demanding. On top of that, middle managers are having to deal with the legacy of the recession and motivating a workforce which has had its psychological contract with the organisation broken. Employees no longer have the same sense of loyalty and are not prepared to consistently put in discretionary effort to do a great job. Those on the frontline have become disenfranchised with their work places, and their expectations of their managers are increasingly unrealistic, making it near-impossible for a middle manager to succeed.

These are all valid theories. However, I think the main problem is located somewhere else. Middle managers find themselves as ‘the meat in a rather unappetising sandwich’ (to use the words of my friend) because senior managers are not creating the right conditions for them to succeed. They are not clear about the strategic direction for their organisation, do not communicate effectively or often enough, and do not support and mentor this critical cadre of the workforce.

Middle managers are the driving force behind the execution of organisational priorities and the lynch pin that aids the communication between many disparate teams. However, what they end up doing is trying to navigate various relationships upwards, downwards and amongst peers which can be emotionally draining.

Silver bullet to success

Hire and develop people who believe what you believe, and not those who just do a job. This is no mean feat and requires approaching communication in a radically different way. There is a growing body of research which clearly shows that the way senior leaders have been trying to engage with their workforce has been fundamentally flawed. In order to truly inspire and create clarity, our leaders need to take a broader view on how they communicate.
– They need to tell compelling stories about why the organisation exists, its purpose and core beliefs;
– They need to focus on how the organisation is going to achieve its strategic ambitions; and
– And then, and only then, should they get to what the organisation needs to actually do.

But most leaders do the exact opposite and start with the ‘what’ – jumping straight to operational or tactical targets without any broader purpose. Naturally, this is also where new middle managers tend to focus their efforts as that’s all they’ve ever known. But this is where we’ve been going wrong!

Three steps to re-engaging your middle managers:

Trend 1: Communicate the ‘why’ up front.
Why are we doing what we’re doing? Why are we making these changes? Engage with people’s sense of purpose, which in turn will influence their decision making and behaviour.

Trend 2: Help middle managers understand their role within your organisation.
By understanding the part they have to play in the bigger picture, and by being personally engaged, they’ll be able to better communicate these important messages to the frontline.

Trend 3: Continually support and develop your managers.
Mid-level managers are expected to possess a huge variety of skills and traits, but waiting for someone to ‘mature in the role’ is no longer an option. These mid-level managers will one day be the future leaders of your organisation – so not only do you want to develop in them the right behaviours for them to be successful managers, but also the right traits and behaviours to support your business strategy.

Not convinced? Think about how many times you’ve said, “This doesn’t feel right,” or you’ve had a gut feeling about something. Samuel Pierpont Langley, one of the greatest minds of the 19th Century and renowned astrophysicist was given an investment of $50,000 to develop the first flying machine. He had the support of the good and the great. Langley wanted to be rich and famous and was in pursuit of the result.

At the same time, Wilbur and Orville Wright, two brothers from Ohio, without a college education or any financial backing, also shared the dream of building a flying machine. The difference was that they were driven by a cause, a purpose and a belief that they could change the world for the better.

On December 17, 1903 the Wright brothers took flight for the first time and Langley subsequently resigned – he was no longer going to be rich and famous or the first.
Imagine how successful our organisations could be if we helped middle managers tell compelling stories, helping the ‘why’ to come to life.

Lubna Haq is a Consultant for Leadership Transformation at Hay Group, www.haygroup.com.

This article appeared in the August 2015 issue of HR Future magazine.

Why enhance your employee value proposition

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Innovative actions can win the talent war.

Compensation is no longer enough to attract and retain key talent. Today’s diverse workforce requires a compelling employee value proposition (EVP) – in other words, “total rewards plus”.

EVP is the total value an employee receives from the employer, encompassing compensation, benefits, career management, workplace/lifestyle and employee pride. Successful and profitable businesses differentiate their products and services to attract targeted segments of the population and retain them as long-term customers – thereby ensuring a significant market share.

In a similar fashion, successful employers view their employees as customers, striving to attract qualified talent and retain that talent through offerings (a unique EVP) that distinguish the company and its values from others. Well-designed EVP can make the right individuals want to join an organisation, stay on, and deliver their best performance. When it reflects and reinforces the company’s external brand and values, EVP gives employees a sense of ownership and pride, distinguishing the organisation from its competitors. It also provides a common language and culture to guide all initiatives, communications and touch points for potential candidates, new recruits, and employees. Management typically considers EVP a success if it results in improved talent outcomes, better business performance and engaged employees. But it must present the company as an employer of choice by being unique, compelling, and credible.

EVP’s evolution: the x factor

In the past, salary and benefits played the key roles in motivating employees. As the field of human resources developed, most forward-thinking employers changed the traditional approach to total rewards so that it involved four factors:

1. Compensation represents the employee’s “value” today;
2. The benefit package is the employee’s “protection”;
3. Work and lifestyle refers to quality of life; and
4. Future value involves the individual’s development and career.

But EVP has taken the concept of total rewards further. A fifth (X) factor – an emotional connection – complements the contractual deal between employees and employer. In essence, the greater the emotional connection, the less dependence there is on contractual components such as salary.

EVP employee value proposition

 

Beyond basic EVP: innovations from the market

With the emotional connection taking a more central role in the workplace, companies are looking for ways to enrich their employees’ experience by re-evaluating EVP components. The external labour market provides insights into traditional packages, along with the new, creative programmes offered by progressive companies to engage their workforce.

Innovative programmes can mean many things – for example, imaginative ways to make the workplace more attractive or low-cost benefits that offer high value to the employee. Some companies segment their workforce demographically and offer targeted programmes to focus on, say, younger employees in an early-career phase. Innovations can also emerge from certain industrial sectors or world regions where employers struggle with talent scarcity and heavy competition.

Compensation

Base salary, as the cornerstone of the reward package, should be internally equitable and externally competitive. Employees view base pay as the most important element of “the deal” between themselves and their employers, so that the way in which pay is set and progressed can have a huge effect on how an employee engages with work. Innovation in compensation typically occurs in discretionary pay elements, such as bonuses, special allowances or retention incentives. Most compensation plan designs have in-built linkages to performance and talent management programmes and systems.

Salary: Traditional offerings
– Base salary;
– Annual wage supplement;
– Overtime.

Salary: Innovative offerings
– True broad banding that reduces the number of salary grades;
– Choose your own pay mix of base and variable pay for executives.

Allowances: Traditional offerings
– Car, transportation, commuting;
– Phone;
– Shift, night, weekend, standby, call-back.;
– Site, hazard, hardship;
– Clothing, laundry, dry-cleaning;
– Position, job, skill;
– Long service, retirement;
– Housing;
– Education, child education.

Allowances: Innovative offerings
– Holiday bonus for top performers;
– Heating allowance.

Incentives: Traditional offerings
– Performance bonus, variable pay, sales incentive, commission;
– Signing, retention, long-term bonus;
– Spot award;
– Professional development;
– Employee referral;
– Attendance, punctuality, employee of month/year;
– Profit sharing, productivity gain sharing, employee share/stock purchase.

Incentives: Innovative offerings
– Cash co-worker award given by colleagues;
– Exceptional reward;
– Pay-to-quit programme;
– Vested retention bonus.

Benefits

Employee benefits are a significant company investment, though often undervalued by the workforce. Although employers need to ensure market competitiveness, they must communicate and differentiate their offerings to attract and retain critical talent.

An additional advantage is that benefits can incentivise certain behaviours that drive desired outcomes – for example, wellness programmes can have a positive impact on company culture, wellness and medical claims. Creative and engaging solutions, based on employee demographics and preferences, can also help boost productivity.

Benefits: Traditional offerings
– Medical, health insurance;
– Flexible benefits spending account;
– Free medical centre;
– Retirement, statutory pension;
– Insurance for life, auto, home, unemployment, travel, pet;
– Loans;
– Company car benefit, free or discounted car.

Benefits: Innovative offerings
– Annuity bidding service;
– Benefit market place;
– Cashless medical care that provides 100% premium and claim coverage;
– Death in service benefit;
– Holistic integration of benefits;
– New parent benefit;
– Profit-sharing based flexible spending account that allocates flex points based on company profits.

Career management

An authentic, inspiring employee experience is more than just a message or slogan. Progressive employers reinforce EVP throughout the employment lifecycle as an embedded part of their leadership, culture and human resource programmes. Organisations that can successfully link long-term career aspirations to available career paths are more effective in driving long-term engagement and retention. The new thinking on career framework is that there is no “one” path, as it involves performance, competence and opportunity, with choice a key component. Comprehending the various paths an employer can offer is crucial in delivering choice, allowing employees to decide on the next step to achieve their career aspiration. An employee-centric career framework reflects the way people talk about their careers: “what I want to do and what I’ve done.” The company expresses career steps as experiences, rather than competencies. Career progression builds on previous experience and gaining new expertise rather than directly linking to hierarchy or role mobility.

Career Management: Traditional offerings
– On-the-job training, job shadowing, on-boarding;
– Special assignment: stretch, industry secondment, rotation, apprentice, intern, ambassador;
– Graduate programme, education funding, university partnership, corporate university;
– Senior management interaction, coaching, mentoring;
– Performance development, promotion, advancement, people development as a core skill, role design, career counselling, 1:1 meetings;
– Classroom, online, virtual learning, peer training;
– Self-assessment;
– Technical, functional, leadership career path;
– Career outplacement, development fairs, journeys, marketplace;
– Professional development, organisation membership, conferences, journals.

Career Management: Innovative offerings
– Buddying/peer coaching;
– Career explorer, an online portal or app that simulates potential career moves and what it might take to get there;
– Experiential profiles for destination jobs that replaces traditional competency frameworks with profiles that describe a career journey;
– On-and-off ramping programmes to maintain a connection with employees who take time off;
– Pair programming so engineers, for example, can work together on a situation with a single screen.

This is a series. References for all the parts of the series will be featured after the final part.

Anne-Magriet Schoeman is the Talent/Country Leader at Mercer Consulting (South Africa) Proprietary Limited, www.mercer.com.

This article appeared in the July 2015 issue of HR Future magazine.

Click here for part 2.

How to enhance your employee value proposition

by
Mintzberg

Undertake long term career management to engage and retain talent.

This month we continue considering more innovations from the market which extend beyond basic EVP (click here for part 1).

Career management

An authentic, inspiring employee experience is more than just a message or slogan. Progressive employers reinforce EVP throughout the employment lifecycle as an embedded part of their leadership, culture and human resource programmes. Organisations that can successfully link long-term career aspirations to available career paths are more effective in driving long-term engagement and retention.

The new thinking on career framework is that there is no “one” path, as it involves performance, competence and opportunity, with choice a key component. Comprehending the various paths an employer can offer is crucial in delivering choice, allowing employees to decide on the next step to achieve their career aspiration. An employee-centric career framework reflects the way people talk about their careers: “what I want to do and what I’ve done.” The company expresses career steps as experiences, rather than competencies. Career progression builds on previous experience and gaining new expertise rather than directly linking to hierarchy or role mobility.

Career Management: Traditional offerings

– On-the-job training, job shadowing, on-boarding;
– Special assignment: stretch, industry secondment, rotation, apprentice, intern, ambassador;
– Graduate programme, education funding, university partnership, corporate university;
– Senior management interaction, coaching, mentoring;
– Performance development, promotion, advancement, people development as a core skill, role design, career counselling, 1:1 meetings;
– Classroom, online, virtual learning, peer training;
– Self-assessment;
– Technical, functional, leadership career path;
– Career outplacement, development fairs, journeys, marketplace; and
– Professional development, organisation membership, conferences, journals.

Career Management: Innovative offerings

– Buddying/peer coaching;
– Career explorer, an online portal or app that simulates potential career moves and what it might take to get there;
– Experiential profiles for destination jobs that replaces traditional competency frameworks with profiles that describe a career journey;
– On-and-off ramping programmes to maintain a connection with employees who take time off; and
– Pair programming so engineers, for example, can work together on a situation with a single screen.

Workplace/lifestyle

Workplace and lifestyle is the EVP dimension that has driven the most innovative insights in recent years. The workplace is being reinvented, minimising the distinction between a casual home-like environment and the actual worksite. Providing exceptional on-site amenities and services, along with flexible work arrangements, encourages productivity. Unlike traditional plans that strive to advance employee wealth, lifestyle benefits – which consider demographics and their impact on the company – instead aim at advancing employees’ well-being at work or at home. Truly innovative insights in the workplace and lifestyle space tend to include a mind-set shift in approaching the employee-employer relationship. Rather than controlling and sometimes infantilising employees, innovative workplace and lifestyle insights tend to place the trust element at the centre of the relationship between employer and employee.

Employee-friendly workplace: Traditional offerings

– Flexible schedule, work from home, short Friday, summer hours;
– Pet-friendly office;
– State-of-the-art information and communication technology, ergonomic tools and workstation, computer choice, bring your own device;
– Idea board, games;
– Casual dress;
– Theme day;
– Room for prayer, lactation, smoking;
– Free fruit, snack, drink, or take-home dinner; and
– Free transportation, expense reimbursement, overtime transport, alternative transportation rewards.

Employee-friendly workplace: Innovative offerings

– Community garden;
– Compressed workweek;
– Design own workspace and exceptional office design;
– No Blackberry after office hours;
– On-site happy hour;
– On-site transportation; and
– Bring your own devices.

Holidays and leave: Traditional offerings

Public holiday and annual leave replacement, paid sabbatical leave, birthday leave, banking leave, and holiday encashment.

Holidays and leave: Innovative offerings

– Unlimited holidays; and
– Unlimited sick leave.

Engage/support family: Traditional offerings

– Wellness (exercise, relaxation, gym membership; discounted fitness equipment, products; corporate marathon sponsorship; health awareness programmes; flu shots; maternity and pre-/post-natal care; nap time);
– Professional advice (retirement, financial planning, legal);
– Employee assistance programme, childcare support, dependant care, adoption assistance, housecleaning help, summer camp and child activities;
– Relocation assistance; and
– Tuition discount.

Engage/support family: Innovative offerings

– Eco-home improvement; and
– Family care, compassionate, grandparent, and eldercare leave.

Other: Traditional offerings

– Celebrations (creative welcome package, festive gifts, or cash in festive season, monthly celebration of employees’ birthdays, congratulations for life events, farewell);
– Free/discounted company products and services, coupons, freebies, discount shopping;
– Club subscription;
– Social activities for singles, interest group or class;
– Emergency fund;
– Internet entitlement; and
– Corporate wardrobe.

Other: Innovative offerings

– Annual travel credit;
– Concierge services;
– Discretionary credit card;
– Free rental car; and
– Running tab.

Employee pride

Generating positive employee emotions – through building pride, affinity, and purpose – is a fairly recent concept, largely driven by US tech and start-up companies facing business-critical attraction and retention issues. There is usually a significant overlap between building employee pride practices and corporate social responsibility.

Generating positive employee emotions also largely contributes to building a company’s brand and reputation as an employer to help attract, motivate, and retain employees.

Employee pride: Traditional offerings

– Company celebration;
– Team building, retreat;
– Company/external award, accolade;
– Recognition letter;
– Employee stories;
– Idea board, online employee feedback;
– Employee/business resource group, network; and
– Charitable activity.

Employee pride: Innovative offerings

– Bring kids to work/family day;
– Co-worker recognition;
– Industry award and accolade;
– Influential speaker;
– Matching gift;
– Noncash reward (an “experience”) to reinforce the emotional impact of rewards;
– Paid volunteer time;
– Personal time, thinking time; and
– Talk-to-the-boss.

Best programme still needs the best communication

In designing the EVP, “a critical determinant of success is how the value proposition is experienced by employees through the organisation’s total reward strategy – and by that I mean not just pay and benefits, but also careers, work-life balance, and even the work environment itself,” explains Kate Bravery, Mercer Partner and Talent Management Practice Leader, Growth Markets. “Typically, companies emphasise one or another of these levers, but in doing so, fail to create stickiness with employees as they neglect to address the entire value proposition.” Bravery adds, “Great EVP design will have minimal impact if the communication tools do not meet the needs of today’s tech-savvy, busy workforce – these need to be easy to navigate, relevant, and interesting enough to visit more than once.” For many organisations, the total rewards portfolio comprises the largest single expenditure. “Yet, surprisingly, few human resource and finance leaders have full knowledge about their actual cost and the effectiveness of the overall total rewards portfolio and its component programmes at enhancing business and workforce performance,” according to Puneet Swani, Mercer Partner and Rewards Practice Leader Asia, Middle East, and Africa.

“The total rewards programme ensures efficient and affordable allocation of resources across the spectrum of rewards programmes, thus optimising their alignment with strategic business direction, cost constraints, and workforce needs in totality.” Swani adds, “It also acknowledges the interaction of various programme components and ensures that decisions related to one component do not have unintended consequences for others. Further, it provides comprehensive and consistent employee messaging to support the overall EVP and brand.”

“Attraction and retention are often the drivers for looking at EVP. But sometimes they lead to ‘me too’ thinking,” Bravery cautions, “as companies seek to adopt the next new thing or look for a quick solution. Taking a holistic view can reveal potential attraction and retention hot spots that might have the desired impact on groups who are critical to engage. With the rise of the experience generation,” adds Bravery, “we are seeing a shift towards careers and learning as essential parts of the EVP, especially in growth markets.” To create the most effective EVP, employers must recognise what attracts, retains, and engages their workforce.

Understanding generational needs can help the company achieve strategic goals through its engaged, productive workforce. But even the best-intentioned EVP, if it lacks clear communication, will not deliver on expected outcomes. Companies need to spread the good word about what they do, or risk an unsatisfied and unproductive workforce. The purpose behind any communication effort is to deliver the right message to the right people at the right time to elicit the desired action. Employers should leverage innovative ways of communicating and delivering benefits, for example, through online enrollment platforms, tools that test and track employee health, career apps, and campaigns to drive engagement. Employers have to sell the programme – all five components – to get employee buy-in so that employees believe in it, follow it, and know their responsibilities.

Proactive companies win the talent war

Attracting the right skilled individuals and keeping them engaged is a requirement for driving long-term organisational success. Mercer’s database of human resources policies and practices in the marketplace can help clients develop the best programme to enrich their EVP while achieving corporate goals. Taking the process a step further, Mercer’s Online Workforce Metrics Tool can support the EVP programme by measuring its effectiveness in terms of financial outlay, productivity, workforce cost, workforce structure and span of control, employee retention, and functional outsourcing. To fine tune the analysis, companies can view data by year, headcount size, industry sector, and more.

Anne-Magriet Schoeman is the Talent/Country Leader at Mercer Consulting (South Africa) Proprietary Limited, www.mercer.com.
 
References
Develop an Effective Retention Strategy to Enhance M&A Deal Success (Mercer POV).
http://www.mercer.com/insights/point/2014/develop-effective-retention-strategy-to-enhance-MA-dealsuccess.html.
Mercer Global Mobility Handbook, Volume 1.
Mercer’s Making Accountability Work: 4 Generations at Work.
Online Mercer Metrics Tools.

This article appeared in the August 2015 issue of HR Future magazine.

Click here for part 1.

Good pilots are never lost

by

It is better to be vaguely right than precisely wrong.

There are old pilots and bold pilots but no old, bold pilots. Caution, judgement, self-mastery and restraint have prolonged many a career. The real professionals maintain a healthy self-doubt.

The only thing scarier than a bug-eyed, white-knuckled, map-shuffling lost pilot is a bold one who is blithely, confidently, flying in exactly the wrong direction to a dark and brief future.

Canny pilots learn early on that they are never lost, only ‘temporarily uncertain of their position’. And the difference isn’t semantics. A pilot, or anyone, in a ‘lost’ state is tense, confused, adding error to error, ploughing further onwards into the unknown, hoping to find something familiar, working from false assumptions and literally on a wing and a prayer.

But a pilot who is temporarily uncertain of his position is in a quite different mindset – managing, calculating, averaging, observing and surmising – narrowing down the possibilities, scoping the parameters and homing in on the certainties. It’s the art of making reality your friend, of rough accuracy, circles of error, broad certainties and ultimately of good, safe judgements. Finding the precision can come later.

On my commercial pilot’s licence course, way back when, I kept getting the mysterious acronym ‘RTFQ’ on test papers returned from the hoary aviation veterans supplementing their retirements by coaching bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, would-be pilots. So I asked. “READ THE QUESTION, lad”, the old man of the air replied, with a dour smile. For no matter how clever and brilliant your answer or plan, if it’s answering the wrong question or solving the wrong problem, it’s ultimately useless.

One of the criticisms of MBA graduates, in years past, is that they became SAMBAs – Smart Assed MBAs – who, unburdened by self-doubt, regressed to a teenage certainty about the world in general and the world of business in particular. And the fault was not theirs so much as that of the business schools. The second generation of business schools, post Harvard, promoted analytical precision and a 2×2 matrix-driven certainty about the world of work, often deaf to the views of the veteran thinkers such as Peter Drucker or the critics such as Henry Mintzberg. Armed with these tools – that often worked wonderfully on the tactical problems of the day – their graduates risked becoming very precisely wrong about the strategic issues and blind to the unanticipated consequences of their actions. An MBA or manager on autopilot can became persuasively, precisely and confidently inaccurate on a grand scale. It’s important to teach people that every strategy and every KPI is at heart an experiment. It’s necessary to attune our managers to nuance and context, and to share the dictum of that great poet and pilot Antoine de Saint Exupery: “That which is most essential is invisible to the eye.”

Flight schools create a generation of simulator trained and electronics-attuned pilots, perfectionists who are immersed in continually more capable and intelligent flight management and auto control systems. How can they simultaneously create a healthy and detached scepticism about both their own and the instruments’ perceptions? How can they ensure the capability to actively interpret, not simply analyse and operate? And to a great extent it’s the same with managers.

The art of being vaguely right is a noble one, useful in all areas of our lives and crucial when immersed in complexity. And who among us isn’t? Our assumptions dictate how we interpret the world and to a large extent even determine what we see and notice. “We see the world as we are, not as it is.”

Take our lost pilot. He’s reading ‘map to ground’, trying to fit what he’s seeing to where he thinks he is or even wants to be. But our ‘temporarily uncertain’ pilot is reading ‘ground to map’. Having worked out where he was last certain of his position, and rationally calculated roughly where he must be now – a circle of error – he’s looking for big or definitive features on the ground and fitting them to the map, maintaining a healthy scepticism until the picture fits.

Rules of thumb and rough scoping are vital tools for a pilot and can be for a manager too. Here’s a simple game to show how we know answers, more or less, even though we don’t like to be vague. Or seem to be unsure, uninformed or painted into a corner.

The next time someone comes to you with an idea or project, ask them how much it will cost. Mostly they’ll say they don’t know and would have to work it out in detail. Then ask, “Well, is it closer to 500 or 50,000?” or whatever an appropriately broad range is. When they say, for example, “Nearer 50,000” ask, “Is it closer to 20,000 or 40,000?” Normally, after a couple of iterations, you will have a ball-park range of the project scope to help you start thinking about it. It’s likely that good entrepreneurs think like this automatically,

So, in a world that increasingly sees perfect answers and professionalism as the gold standard, being vaguely right can seem, well, amateur and sloppy. But make friends with your inner amateur, and let it guide you to increasing effectiveness in your life. And passion. After all, ‘amateur’ comes from the Latin word ‘amare’ – to love.

Jon Foster-Pedley is the Dean of Henley Business School, Africa, www.henleysa.ac.za. He is a former airline captain, and was a flying instructor and aerobatics pilot for 15 years as well as a senior executive in the European aerospace industry.

This article appeared in the August 2015 issue of HR Future magazine.

Your people are NOT your greatest asset

by

“Our people are our greatest asset”, or “Our people make the difference”, have become buzz statements in organisations today.

At the same time, possibly the greatest challenge organisations say they face is people-based – how to win their hearts and minds, align them to the vision and values, lead them, develop them and retain them.

Certainly people are important to the success of any organisation. Competent, high achievers are attracted to companies where there is room to grow, where they will be supported and where training, mentoring and coaching programmes are in place to develop them. However, even in companies where career paths are discussed and planned, and people development takes place, how do you get talented people to stay long enough?

In the present-moment focus of today’s world, succession planning has often been overlooked. Sourcing people externally to fill key positions externally is expensive, and often does not deliver the anticipated results.

The point is that focusing on people alone is high-risk, and can deliver a low return on investment. So what is missing?

Recently I was in conversation with the head of Talent Management in a large multinational organisation. He was reflecting on rather dismal results that had recently come in from an organisational survey on the HR team. Their managers consistently receive highly positive ratings in their performance reviews, yet the ratings of HR from the business tell a different story. Where is the disconnect?

Renowned Management Consultant Peter Drucker points out that “culture eats strategy for breakfast”. The environment in which your people operate has a fundamental effect on their ability to perform at their individual and collective best. Typically, this is what sabotages performance, not specifically their skills, competencies or even their attitudes.

It is important to have high-performing people. However, when you put them into an environment where individual performance alone is recognised and rewarded, where people are target driven and incentivised to outperform each other, the focus turns inwards. Then your people become in competition with each other rather than with external competitors, silos arise and toxic relationships develop.

Your organisation’s greatest asset is not its people – competent, even excellent though they may be. Your organisation’s greatest asset is a culture which enables these people to perform at their best – which collectively should be significantly higher than the sum of the individual parts. This kind of culture is the rare element which enables personal accountability, commitment, resilience and willingness to go the extra mile. Job satisfaction – even delight – is experienced within a workplace community that exists for a meaningful purpose, where people enthusiastically contribute their energy and talent and draw from that of others, in service of their collective success.

New recruits coming in from outside will be absorbed into your company’s culture – whatever this may be. It’s ‘who we are and how we do things around here’. The culture will either limit them or empower them to be more. Working in an enabling culture is certainly not for everybody and those who don’t like it won’t stay long. Your collaborative high performers will. This creates self-sustainability and repeatability.

“Creating flexible, high-performing, learning organisations is the secret to gaining competitive advantage in a world that won’t stand still”.

Creating such a culture is easier said than done, yet possible with the will and commitment to the process from the top. It requires leadership to be open, transparent, even vulnerable – learning as much from what doesn’t work as from what does. It does take significant effort, yet many companies have achieved it. The successful companies of tomorrow are those in which all levels and categories of stakeholder participate in the learning, growth and development of the system, whilst simultaneously learning, growing and developing themselves as individuals.

Barbara Walsh is an executive coach and coaching consultant with Metaco, www.metaco.co.za. She has an MSc in Coaching and Behavioural Change from Henley Business School in the UK, and is an accredited Neuro-Semantics Meta-Coach and Coach Trainer.

This article appeared in the August 2015 issue of HR Future magazine.

New generation, new rules

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Report reveals variety, flexibility and transparency rule in succession management.

Career and succession management no longer simply imply linear movement up the career ladder, a recent study shows. In a much more competitive environment, how are HR Managers and business leaders to approach talent management and retention? African Top Employers are leading the way with 91% having formally defined their career and succession management processes and steps.

A new generation of workers is valuing varied experience and flexibility far more than traditional and linear progress up the corporate ladder. This is a key finding of the Career and Succession Management Report recently published by Top Employers Institute (TEI).

Headquartered in the Netherlands, TEI globally certifies excellence in the conditions organisations provide for the development of their employees. The Career and Succession Management Report is based on a global HR Best Practices Survey among a sample group of 600 certified companies in 96 countries.

Two global developments are forcing HR Managers to rethink career and succession management strategies, according to the report. These are: a) Skill shortages and global competition for the best talent, leading to increased risk of losing business-critical knowledge due to the ageing of the workforce; and b) a new generation of workers that are seeking diverse work assignments and flexibility, which results in less loyalty to their employers and less interest in the traditional step-by-step climbing of career ladders.

Furthermore, employees want to be made aware of the opportunities that exist throughout their organisations.

Employees are preferring a greater degree of transparency at all levels of their organisations. It is no longer viewed as a very competitive practice to source leaders only from the upper echelons or to focus development programmes on top performers only. Diverse development plans, directed through all levels of an organisation, are the key.

Top Employers certified in Africa are following the transparency trend. “Clarity and transparency around career plans to all employees become increasingly important when you are dealing with talent that is very marketable”, said Antoinette Irvine, HR Vice President at Unilever. “If you want people to stay long term, and not to go anywhere else, then they need to know why they are staying, and that is very much a performance discussion, but more importantly a career discussion.”

Following the release of the report, CEO of the Top Employers Institute, David Plink, also pointed out that, for HR Managers, it is no longer possible to try to hold on to top performers, applying the traditional set of incentives. “What is needed is a broader approach to employee development with greater awareness for the changed needs and values of the younger workforce,” he said. “HR Managers have to move away from being talent hoarders to playing their part as talent producers.” Organisations are therefore being called to develop talent, not source it.

Let employees determine their direction and you may be surprised at where they lead you. Just remember: be transparent, let employees take the lead, and offer a variety of opportunities organisation-wide. It may lead to a far more competitive practice.

Samantha Crous is Regional Director: Africa and Benelux, Top Employers Institute, www.top-employers.com.

This article appeared in the August 2015 issue of HR Future magazine.

Money alone just doesn’t cut it anymore

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Salary, benefits and a great bonus are no longer enough to keep a top employee.

It is no longer enough for a manager to think that by giving an employee a salary increase every year he or she should be motivated to do a good job, despite the fact that the manager may not know their name or exactly what they do or how well they do it. It probably never was enough, but now that we know it, we can do something about it.

Getting employees to go the extra mile is one of the most difficult tasks managers face. An article written by Nitin Nohria, Boris Groysberg and Linda-Eling Lee for the July-August 2008 Harvard Business Review, Employee Motivation, a Powerful New Model, had this to say: “Some of history’s most influential thinkers about human behaviour – among them Aristotle, Adam Smith, Sigmund Freud and Abraham Maslow – have struggled to understand its nuances and have taught us a tremendous amount about why people do the things they do.”

These researchers found four main drives that motivated:

Drive to acquire: We all want to have nice things, not just material things, but also social status, promotion, getting the corner office. This drive tends to be relative, as we always compare with others, and is almost always insatiable, as people always want more. This is why we always want to know what our colleagues earn.

Drive to bond: Humans bond with their immediate family, extended family or tribe, and even organisations, sports teams and nations. When an employee feels part of a work “family”, this is a valuable motivator. Alternatively, if an employee feels isolated at work, they feel betrayed and their work will suffer.

Drive to comprehend: It is human nature to want to understand the world around us, on a larger scale and a smaller scale – at work. If our work seems meaningless and an employee does not see how it adds value, this is a demotivator. Employees want to see that their work makes a meaningful contribution, and they want to understand how it happens. More talented employees who see their work as meaningless often move to more challenging jobs.

Drive to defend: This is the basic fight or flight instinct which is rooted in all of us. We will all defend ourselves, our families, our property and what we have achieved. It causes humans to want to create and work for institutions that promote justice, that have clear goals and intentions, and that allow people to express their ideas and opinions. Fulfilling this need leads to feelings of security and confidence, while not fulfilling it produces strong negative emotions such as fear, resentment and, ultimately, anger.

Organisational levers of motivation

To meet each of these drives, the researchers suggest that each drive be met by a distinct organisational lever of motivation.

Reward system. The drive to acquire is met by a company’s reward system. Employees want to know that good performance will be rewarded and given opportunities for advancement.

Culture. Creating a sense of camaraderie and belonging among employees means creating a culture that promotes teamwork, collaboration, openness and friendship.

Job design. The drive to comprehend is best addressed by designing jobs that are meaningful, interesting and challenging. A good example of this is Cirque du Soleil. Despite gruelling rehearsal and performance schedules, it attracts and retains performers by accommodating their creativity by pushing them to perfect their craft. Performers get to design their own performances, and they get to say who they want to be taught by in the future. This is an extremely successful circus act.

Performance management and resource allocation processes. Fair, transparent and trustworthy processes for performance management and resource allocation go a long way to meeting people’s drive to defend.

It has therefore become clear to company leaders that money alone does not motivate people to work harder, nor does it retain talented employees.

Light hearted approach

A light hearted but very meaningful research carried out by Jessica Gross asked, “What motivates us at work, more than money?” Her research led to her conclusion, as with the above study, that there is a lot more at play than simple remuneration. We are also driven by the meaningfulness of our work, both others’ acknowledgement – and by the amount of effort we’ve put in: the harder the task, the prouder we are. Some of the questions asked of employees in Ariely’s research, which was included in Gross’s thesis include the following:

Seeing the fruits of our labour may make us more productive

The study being “In Man’s search for meaning: The case of Legos”, Ariely asked participants to build characters from Lego’s Bionicles series. In both conditions, participants were paid decreasing amounts for each subsequent Bionicle: $3 for the first one, $2.70 for the next one, and so on. But while one group’s creations were stored under the table, to be disassembled at the end of the experiment, the other group’s Bionicles were disassembled as soon as they’d been built. “This was an endless cycle of them building and us destroying in front of their eyes,” Ariely says.

Results: the first group made 11 Bionicles, on average, while the second group made only seven before they quit.

Upshot: Even though there wasn’t huge meaning at stake, and even though the first group knew their work would be destroyed at the end of the experiment, seeing the results of their labour for even a short time was enough to dramatically improve performance.

The harder a project is, the prouder we feel of it

In another study, Ariely gave origami novices paper and instructions to build a pretty ugly form. Those who did the origami project, as well as bystanders, were asked at the end how much they’d pay for the product. In a second trial, Ariely hid the instructions from some participants, resulting in a harder process – and an uglier product.

Results: In the first experiment, the builders paid five times as much as those who just evaluated the product. In the second experiment, the lack of instructions exaggerated this difference: builders valued the ugly-but-difficult products even more highly than the easier, prettier ones, while observers valued them even less.

Upshot: Our valuation of our own work is directly tied to the effort we’ve expended. (Plus, we erroneously think that other people will ascribe the same value to our own work as we do.)

Knowing that our work helps others may increase our unconscious motivation

As described in a recent New York Times Magazine profile, psychologist Adam Grant led a study at a University of Michigan fundraising call centre in which students who had benefited from the centre’s scholarship fundraising efforts spoke to the callers for 10 minutes.

Results: A month later, the callers were spending 142 percent more time on the phone than before, and revenues had increased by 171 percent, according to the Times. But the callers denied the scholarship students’ visit had impacted them.

Upshot: It was almost as if the good feelings had bypassed the callers’ conscious cognitive processes and gone straight to a more subconscious source of motivation, the Times reports. They were more driven to succeed, even if they could not pinpoint the trigger for that drive.

The promise of helping others makes us more likely to follow rules

Grant ran another study in which he put up signs at a hospital’s hand-washing stations, reading either “Hand hygiene prevents you from catching diseases” or “Hand hygiene prevents patients from catching diseases.”

Results: Doctors and nurses used 45 percent more soap or hand sanitizer in the stations with signs that mentioned patients.

Upshot: Helping others through what’s called “prosocial behavior” motivates us.

Positive reinforcement about our abilities may increase performance

Undergraduates at Harvard University gave speeches and did mock interviews with experimenters who were either nodding and smiling or shaking their heads, furrowing their eyebrows and crossing their arms.

Results: The participants in the first group later answered a series of numerical questions more accurately than those in the second group.

Upshot: Stressful situations can be manageable – it all depends on how we feel. We find ourselves in a “challenge state” when we think we can handle the task (as the first group did); when we’re in a “threat state,” on the other hand, the difficulty of the task is overwhelming, and we become discouraged. We’re more motivated and perform better in a challenge state, when we have confidence in our abilities.

Images that trigger positive emotions may actually help us focus

Researchers at Hiroshima University had university students perform a dexterity task before and after looking at pictures of either baby or adult animals.

Results: Performance improved in both cases, but more so (10 percent improvement!) when participants looked at cute pictures of puppies and kittens.

Upshot: The researchers suggest that the “cuteness-triggered positive emotion” helps us narrow our focus, upping our performance on a task that requires close attention. Yes, this study may just validate your baby panda obsession.

The less appreciated we feel our work is, the more money we want to do it

Ariely gave study participants – students at MIT – a piece of paper filled with random letters, and asked them to find pairs of identical letters. Each round, they were offered less money than the previous round. People in the first group wrote their names on their sheets and handed them to the experimenter, who looked it over and said, “Uh huh,” before putting it in a pile. People in the second group didn’t write down their names, and the experimenter put their sheets in a pile without looking at them. People in the third group had their work shredded immediately upon completion.

Results: People whose work was shredded needed twice as much money as those whose work was acknowledged in order to keep doing the task. People in the second group, whose work was saved but ignored, needed almost as much money as those whose work was shredded.

Upshot: “Ignoring the performance of people is almost as bad as shredding their effort before their eyes,” Ariely says. “The good news is that adding motivation doesn’t seem to be so difficult. The bad news is that eliminating motivation seems to be incredibly easy, and if we don’t think about it carefully, we might overdo it.”

The trend seems to be ratified by yet another finding, but at a slightly different angle.

Company branding

An article that appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition, titled “Company brand, not salary, key to keeping top talent in Asia” concluded that senior executives in Asia require more than money to motivate them to stay with their current companies.

The survey involved 234 chief executives and human resources directors in the consumer goods, retail, apparel, hospitality and media sectors in 10 Asian countries.

Nearly 60 per cent of chief executives and senior executives were considering other employment options, while 28 per cent planned to leave their current jobs within two years if a better opportunity arose, according to this study, released by executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles.

Unexpectedly, respondents to their survey said that when considering the next job, compensation was the least important factor, the report said.

“Gone are the days when more money meant more staff motivation. Today’s candidates also value intangible job benefits that make their work rewarding,” says Karen Fifer, a global managing partner of consumer markets practice at Heidrick & Struggles and the author of the study.

Employment considerations that mattered more than remuneration included credible and inspiring leadership teams with a global outlook and experience across diverse business areas, the health of the company and its reputation, the level of innovation and commitment to driving social sustainability, and even the chief executive’s personal brand.

To retain talent in a fluid job market, Fifer said, companies should have a more active employer branding strategy. “Top talent brings top results. Just as the customer experience is at the epicentre of every retailer’s and consumer-facing company’s strategy, ’employee experience’ should be at the heart of every company’s employer brand,” she said.

While 95 percent of respondents acknowledged the importance of employer brand, only 54 percent had such a strategy in place. The proliferation of social media platforms has made corporate behaviour highly visible, meaning an employer’s brand is not just what a company says about itself but what people “out there” are saying. To win the talent war, companies need to rethink and enhance their employment strategies and ensure that what is appealing about their brand and employment practices is externally visible.

And so it appears that human resource executives and company boards have a lot to think about when it comes to motivating – and retaining – their employees. Many companies and smart executives are already getting it right. If you, as an HR executive are concerned about your company’s motivation levels, have a look at their incentive systems and what they offer their employees aside from money.

Dr Mark Bussin is the Executive Chairperson at 21st Century Pay Solutions Group, www.21century.co.za, a Professor at University of Johannesburg, Professor Extraordinaire at North West University, Chairperson and member of various boards and remuneration committees, immediate past President and EXCO member of South African Reward Association, and a former Commissioner in the Office of the Presidency.

This article appeared in the August 2015 issue of HR Future magazine.

Can an effective HRIS add to my bottom line?

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Make change management the key driver when implementing a new HRIS.

One of the continual challenges that faces the HR team is procuring sufficient budget to enable them to meet the goals and targets. Often, because HR is seen as only a cost centre/service department, budget is usually hard to come by. Worse still, in tough economic times, budget cuts often start with cost centres, making the HR team vulnerable to losing a portion of whatever budget they had procured for meeting their goals in the current financial year.

One of the most effective tools an HR department can deploy is an effective HR Information system (HRIS), as this would assist the HR team in automating and reducing many of their administrative tasks, in addition to adding value through advanced functionality dealing with issues such as talent management, which should lead to reducing the costs of running the HR function. But the question often asked by the executive is, “Is this really achievable?” because, as we all know, technology is not cheap, and all good things come at a price!

So the challenge for HR is finding an effective HRIS that will assist in reducing the overall costs to the organisation, better management and visibility of areas such as:
– better allocation of resources – using the right people in the right jobs at the right time;
– planning and executing cost effective training;
– effective performance management;
– managing those hidden costs that can swell if not made visible to line management such as:

  • Employee absence;
  • Employee timekeeping;
  • Employee overtime; and
  • Sick leave abuse and so forth.

However, in the process of selecting and implementing an effective HRIS, there are many pitfalls that should be avoided in order to ensure a successful implementation and execution of the selected HRIS. This month I would like to address the process that is probably the most important, but also the one that is most overlooked.

Change management

Organisations that fail to ensure that a change management component is inserted into the project plan for the implementation of a new HRIS are courting disaster, as failure to manage change within the organisation can and will derail the project sooner rather than later.

Cognisance of the fact that the main differentiator of an HRIS implementation and that of other systems, is that the HRIS ultimately affects every employees in the organisation.

Just looking at two of the most basic components, the importance for change management is quite evident:

– Often a new HRIS will include the implementation of a payroll, as most HR systems are now totally integrated with payroll functionality, and if you want unhappy employees, just mess with their pay or even just the layout or presentation of their pay slip.
– When looking at another basic component such as self-service, which is often used as the drive or motivator for acquiring new HRIS technology, employees will often resist change, through the mere fact that it is change, even if it is ultimately for their own good. A good change management plan is essential to help prepare your employees for the changes the new HRIS will bring.
– When going through their planning stages of a new HRIS, if you find yourself sending out communications in an instruction format, for example “As from 1 November, only leave transactions submitted via the self-service portal will be approved – “, you have got it so wrong!
– In my experience, instructions to change processes generally meet with resistance. Through a planned and well executed change management control process, by preparing employees, you should generally be faced with employees asking when they can start using the new technology. A major change in the perception of the changes can have a huge impact on the cost effectiveness and ultimately the return of investment you will receive from the new HRIS.
– I often ask, “What happens if the ROI of a new HRIS system is based on the projected cost savings of automation?” For example, in an organisation with 1,000 employees, the costs associated with the submission of manual leave forms over the period of a year can be calculated, and the cost benefit through automation determined.
– However, if through some form of passive resistance, a subset of employees continues to utilise the existing manual processes, then you effectively end up running two sets of parallel processes, one automated and the other manual, thus negating any of the ROI that could have been achieved, and ultimately negating the motivator for acquiring the new HRIS.

And so, in conclusion, what is the answer to the question, “Can an effective HRIS add to my bottom line?” The answer is in how the implementation project is managed. Change management is not an aspect of your project seen as a necessary evil, but rather as the component that will determine whether your HRIS implementation project is a success or a failure. And this is what will ultimately determine whether your new HRIS is able to deliver the proposed benefits and, as such, be able to add to your organisation’s bottom line.

Rob Bothma is an HR Systems Industry Specialist at NGA Africa, a non-executive director, Fellow and Vice President of the Institute of People Management and co-author of the 4th Edition of Contemporary Issues in HRM and member of the Executive Board for HR Pulse.

This article appeared in the August 2015 issue of HR Future magazine.

What are golden handshakes really paying for?

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Do not use golden handshakes as a method for removing or replacing people in an organisation.

HR professionals are likely to be familiar with the term “golden handshake” as a payment to an employee – mostly at executive level – who retires early or is made redundant, for example, owing to restructuring, a merger or an acquisition. The payment would generally be in terms of the executive’s employment contract.

When the payment is made to an executive who had contributed positively to the organisation and it is properly approved and declared by the organisation, it would mostly be considered acceptable. However golden handshakes in the public sector are increasingly being viewed negatively. Not only are the number and magnitude of these payments a cause for concern, but so too are the circumstances and intended outcomes of the payments.

This year alone, golden handshakes were paid to executives at the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), the Hawks, SARS and Eskom.

Mxolisi Nxasana served as the National Director of Public Prosecutions for only 22 months of his 10 year tenure before parting ways with the NPA – for which he received a golden handshake of R17m.

The R13 million payment to Hawks boss, Anwa Dramat, followed a long legal battle following his suspension for alleged involvement in the rendition of Zimbabweans. However, what that reason disguises is the view that Dramat was targeted for investigating dockets implicating influential people and for continuing to investigate Nkandla – in other words for failing to toe the party line.

The amount involved in the golden handshakes paid to former SARS executives Ivan Pillay and Peter Richer are yet to be revealed. The rationale for the payment confounds logic – because both were being investigated for allegedly operating a rogue spy unit within SARS. However, the combination of their resignations and payouts saw all charges being dropped.

Having been suspended in March 2015, Tshediso Matona, former CEO of Eskom, reached an agreement with Eskom in May 2015 to part ways. His golden handshake will only be revealed in Eskom’s 2016 financial report.

Adding an incisive perspective to these examples, political analyst Mzoxolo Mpolase, quoted in the Rand Daily Mail, notes as a worrying sign that “you can be in an organisation such as Ipid or the Hawks and receive a golden handshake for being fired for incompetence”.

The process of suspending someone and thereafter terminating an inquiry process or disciplinary or legal proceedings and paying the person a golden handshake when they resign appears to be a common trend. These circumstances allow one to speculate as to whether the payout is aimed at preventing the incumbent from pursuing a particular approach or line of enquiry, or if the payout is an inducement (no doubt with a very tight non-disclosure agreement) to leave quietly. Both reasons effectively open the way for someone else to be appointed who presumably would be more amendable to the party line.

Using a golden handshake as a mechanism to remove and replace those who are either incompetent or “unco-operative” is troubling on three counts. Firstly, the extent that it erodes the independence and impartiality of state institutions or state owned entities is cause for great concern. Institutions that have the responsibilities such as policing, investigation or security should operate without fear or favour.

Secondly, in many cases the payout serves to disguise or completely bury the real reason for the termination of the person’s employment. As aptly stated by Cope spokesman, Dennis Bloem, in a News 24 interview, “The truth – is a constant loser”. In the absence of the facts, speculation will invariably fill the gap with a myriad of possible reasons – and mostly negative ones at that.

Thirdly is the question of who funds these huge payouts. When payments are made by private sector corporations, shareholders who disagree with the payment have the option to sell their shares or question the company in the appropriate forum. In the public sector, it is the taxpayer who pays every time.

The UK provides an interesting example of government action against large public sector payouts. In the Queen’s Speech on 27 May 2015 at the Houses of Parliament, she announced that six-figure “golden goodbyes” for senior public sector staff who are made redundant will be banned in terms of the Enterprise Bill. Payments for departing civil servants, senior town hall staff and health service managers are set to be capped at £95,000. The UK Government said the move would save millions of pounds for the taxpayer but was primarily driven by a sense of fairness.

No such action appears to be likely in South Africa. It is therefore important that taxpayers, and civil society generally, question these payments, and if an unsatisfactory answer is given, that they exercise their voting powers accordingly at the next election.

Notwithstanding these options, the loss to the fiscus is still of great concern, particularly in a country with such great need.

Cynthia Schoeman is Managing Director of Ethics Monitoring & Management Services, www.ethicsmonitor.co.za, and the author of Ethics Can (2014) and Ethics: Giving a Damn, Making a Difference (2012).

This article appeared in the August 2015 issue of HR Future magazine.

New developments from Home Affairs

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A few important changes have taken place and perhaps some policy shifts?

I have previously written about some of the irrationalities, illogical and perhaps even some unconstitutional changes in the amendment to the Immigration Act and new regulations which came into force on 26 May last year.

Objections from civil society, which went unheeded or were simply ignored are now coming home to roost.

This is evidenced by certain shifts and changes that emanated from a series of Directives issued by the Director General of Home Affairs in recent weeks.

First of these is related to a “prohibition” in the new regulations which stated that the holder of a Corporate Work Visa in terms of section 20(11) of the Act could not change status from within the borders of South Africa and would indeed have to leave the country prior to expiry of their Corporate Work Visa, return to their country of usual residence and apply for a fresh new visa from that country and await the outcome of that visa application in that country.

Given the fact that the rationale and underlying purpose of the Corporate Work Visa in the first instance was to facilitate the movement of large numbers of highly skilled and critical skilled foreigners, this type of visa was an “expedited” type of visa, recognised the need for the importation of those skills, and made it relatively easier to obtain such visa. By contrast, the requirements outlined in the new regulations provided for the involvement of the Department of Labour in making recommendations on skilled foreigners who applied for General Work Visas, and that in itself became an impediment, and in fact remains an impediment in this regard. The only category of skilled foreigner who escaped the net of having to get embroiled in the quagmire of Department of Labour recommendations was that of the Critical Skills Visa. This category covered certain specified professions, trades and occupations which are listen in a schedule to the Immigration Regulations and which, subject to the conditions of those visas, did not require any advertisement for the position nor any Department of Labour recommendation.

Unfortunately this process, given the many infrastructural projects that are on the go within South Africa, became an impediment to many of the highly skilled and critical skilled foreign nationals who are needed on those projects, many of them relating to power generation, and they had to come into to the country on the Corporate-Visa Scheme.

On 21 April 2015, the Minister of Home Affairs in essence acknowledged indirectly that this had become an impediment and issued a Directive relating to “retention of critical skilled foreign workers who are on a corporate visa” which made provision for any holder of a corporate work visa who also fell into one of the professions, skills, trades or occupations listed in the Critical Skills Visa list in order to allow them to apply for a change of status to that of a Corporate Work Visa from within the country.

This move is to be welcomed, not only because it is a good move, conducive to a better mechanism for importation for critical skills, but also because it has indeed restored the status quo ante which was much more skills importation friendly.

It is important to further note that the holder of a corporate work visa who does not qualify in one of the critical skills visa professions, trades or occupations will still have to return “home” and have to apply for any new visa from that country and await the outcome there.

The Department of Home Affairs has also, as of May 2015, issued a brand new Directive which in essence does away with the requirement for the holder of any type of work visa and who wishes to study part time at a tertiary educational institution from having applied for a change in their status and conditions and for a “Hybrid” type of endorsement onto their visa allowing them to take up part time studies.

With effect from the date of issue of the relevant Departmental Directive, any foreigner on a work visa in any category or a business visa, which is valid and current, may take up part time studies with a tertiary educational institution without having to first apply for such change of status or conditions to be attached to their work visa.

The primary requirement is that the relevant tertiary education institution must be registered and accredited with the Department of Higher Education.

In specific, the categories of visa holders who can take advantage of this situation are the following:

  • General work visa holders;
  • Critical skills work visa holders;
  • Intra-company transfer work visa holders; and
  • Business visa holders.

A very important point to note, however, is that the dispensation allowing for this part time study visa whilst on a work visa would be for the duration period not exceeding the expiry date of the work of business visa.

This too is a welcome development and a departure from some of the restrictive conditions imposed by the May 26 regulations in 2015.

There are many more inconsistencies and, as indicated above, possible unconstitutionalities and certain provisions which are bad in law and which would hopefully either be addressed by the Minister of Home Affairs or Director General of Home Affairs in further Departmental Directives and in some instances there is litigation pending by our High Courts.

Julian Pokroy is one of South Africa’s leading immigration specialist attorneys, www.immigration.org.za, and currently heads the Law Society of South Africa’s Immigration and Refugee Law Specialist Committee and the Immigration, Nationality and Refugee Law Committee of the Law Society of the Northern Provinces. He is a member of the South African Law Reform Commission Committee.

This article appeared in the August 2015 issue of HR Future magazine.

You’re simply the best parent

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No-one can be a better parent to your children than you.

How do you rate yourself as a parent? One would think that the obvious way to answer that would be to ask your children. If you’re hoping for a glowing report from them, hope on – You’re not going to get much out of them other than a reluctant admission that you might be, well, fairly ordinary parents – in their opinion.

For all your faults and human weaknesses, if you’ve tried your best while raising your children, you are actually the best parent your children could ever have. I know it sounds a bit hard to believe, what with all the mistakes you feel you’ve made along the way but, if given a choice, you’d be surprised to find that, when it goes down to the wire, your children would probably pick you again.

After all the things your children have said to you (think, “I hate you,” and “I wish you were dead,”), if given a choice between yourself and some other parents, you’d win hands down.

Of course, while that’s a comforting thought, don’t expect your children to admit that. They’d rather let wild horses drag them down your street than admit it.

We forget how strong the relationship between us and our children really is. That relationship has been forged in the fire of everyday life – life that consists not of momentous events but of small, ordinary events that would never make the newspapers but which nevertheless have a massive impact on our children.

A case in point about how strong the relationship is between the person who raises a child and that child is the discovery of a 17-year-old teen, known as Zephany Nurse, who, after being confirmed to have been raised since birth by the woman who allegedly kidnapped her, has chosen to remain in contact with the woman.

The shared experiences which are taken for granted as children grow up set into a very strong and hard concrete which lasts a lifetime. The sacrifices you have made for them on an almost daily basis and the routine activities you have engaged in with them all form part of that concrete mix.

It’s not only about doing cool stuff with them like taking them to the movies or taking them on holidays but it’s also about washing their faces, feeding them, tucking them in at night, reading them stories, allowing them to jump into your bed during a thunderstorm, bathing them, dressing them, feeding them (I know I’ve already said it, but you know what I mean – all parents understand that they spend a large part of their children’s lives trying to get food down their throats) – You and I could make a very long list between us.

One of the things I remember with great affection are the sandwiches my dad used to make for my two sisters and me for snacks over the weekend or at night. Almost quite unintentionally, I have carried on the tradition of sandwich making for my children. I am regularly asked to make sandwiches for them, even though they’re young adults and sucker that I am for my children, I make them!

So don’t feel pressured to give in to all sorts of things in the hope that you’ll be popular with your children. You’re not there to win a popularity contest. You’re there to be an example, provide guidance and teach your children how to become responsible, kind and caring adults who can ultimately do without you.

And you’ve got to lavish lots of love on top of all of that!

Take heart. Your children will probably never thank you for their upbringing. In fact, they will think that they raised themselves. When one day you hear them telling their children things you used to tell them, you’ll know that you must have done something right!

Alan Hosking is the publisher of HR Future magazine, www.hrfuture.net, and an Age Management and Self-Mastery Coach to senior executives, and the author of best seller What nobody tells a new father.

This article appeared in the August 2015 issue of HR Future magazine.

Hardwire coaching into your company’s DNA

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Creating the right coaching culture can contribute to a better performing workplace.

Coaching is widely used in many organisations, yet the question of ROI (return on investment) seems to be a conundrum.

That coaching adds value is clearly not in question, as most coachees/clients will attest to. The gap, however, is in the business/mission connection. What is the value of coaching to performance improvement in the bottom line?

Before rushing to develop models of quantitative ROI, it might be necessary to acknowledge that the science of coaching doesn’t naturally lend itself to hard numbers. Coaching is a science and an art, given the intense, intimate human connection between coach and coachee, which cannot be easily captured in a balance sheet. This doesn’t invite esoteric coaching by novices who aren’t able to explain the science of coaching nor does it invite an accounting analysis only.

DNA of coaching

Beyond the individual performance improvement based on hard targets, coaching does bring other value to the team and organisation. These are at the level of organisational culture. The magic of coaching is that inherent in this discipline is a set of core practices that ‘by default’ contribute to a better performing workplace that is also more human and genuinely engaging.

Coaching effectiveness depends on rapport building and a genuine listening to the other. In this interested and curious space that is free of judgement, the coachee (individual, team or organisation) is confident to experiment, innovate, challenge paradigms and realise potential. In this space, human beings are treated with respect and care. It is not a ‘wishy-washy’ space where people are singing ‘Kumbaya’. It is a place that is clear about strategy, operational plans and current and desired performance. It’s a place where hard conversations happen; where senior managers have the courage to challenge, encourage and take tough decisions and not beat about the bush because of the insecurities they bring into their roles.

Coaching and culture

How do we get to this culture of high performance and care that is sustainable and not just a fad? Coaching, in light of this challenge, has to be integrated into the learning, performance and development plan of the organisation. It cannot remain an HR hobby or the exclusive territory of licenced coaches. It cannot be a quick fix for line managers that do not take responsibility for solid performance management. It cannot be a nice add-on to executive development programmes with an outsourced coaching component. Coaching at an individual, team and organisational level has to be integrated into the core business/mission of the organisation.

For this to happen in a sustainable way, organisations have to be deliberate about creating a coaching culture. Culture is simply defined as ‘the way we do things around here’. So what does a coaching culture look like in and amongst a host of other competing cultures in an organisation? How is coaching culture different from ‘high performance culture’, ‘best practice culture’, ‘collaborative culture’ and ‘innovative culture’? Coaching culture in my view is connected to all of these culture choices an organisation makes in that it is an enabler. In a way it is a ‘meta-culture’. It’s there not an end in itself but in service of the strategy and culture choice of an organisation.

In the table, I describe coaching at individual, team and organisational level, and suggest that building a coaching culture requires an integrated approach across all levels using both expert coaches and organisational coaches both as peers and line managers as the most desirable state.

Coaching at individual team and organisational level

Coaching only at an individual level has limited impact in shaping a coaching culture in the organisation. I will illustrate the impact and reach of coaching by looking at Executive Level Coaching. Typically, an external coach is hired to work with the executive team as part of a new culture or strategy drive towards high performance. Most often executives would go through an intensive one-one suite of coaching conversations to improve their personal effectiveness. This has mixed results depending on the readiness and motivation of coachees to be part of the ‘programme’. Value is hopefully experienced by the executive team. Often this level of executive coaching is not explicitly connected with executive team effectiveness, which means that individual effectiveness does not automatically translate to team effectiveness.

I have worked with several executive teams where the CEO and/or executive directors have been through coaching, but this does not manifest in team effectiveness. What is missing is the need to expand coaching to a wider level – manifested in team coaching. At this level the focus is not on individual targets and personal effectiveness but on the value addition of the executive team as a collective ‘the sum of the parts’. Individual effectiveness no matter how brilliant is trumped by team effectiveness. Often teams calibrate to an equilibrium which might not bring the best out of the team.

This equilibrium is not in targets, results and strategies – it is in manifested in the group dynamics. Patrick Lencioni describes well the five dysfunctions of teams and its corollary for effectiveness. At this level, teams can become inward looking because of the powerful unspoken dynamics that consume team time and energy. Skilful team coaching opens up collaborative space for teams to genuinely work together for a common goal.

Finally, coaching at an organisation level acknowledges the group systems nature of organisations which is manifested in the organisational culture. This is the level that shows up the organisation as it is – in all of its strengths and weaknesses; in all of its clarity and contradictions; in all of its talk and action. Change at this level of organisational culture is most powerful given the systemic impact. Coaching at this level cannot be done by ‘fly-in’ executive coaches both because of cost and sustained impact. Neither can it be done only with internal coaches who are embedded in the larger system already. At this level, coaching becomes part of the culture of learning and performance of the organisation.

Building on individual and team coaching, coaching culture can be expanded through the line management structure which will cover all parts of the organisation. All line managers are required to plan, organise, lead and control. Line managers can be taught to do their core work which is primarily people-centred through individual and team coaching. Here the scope of coaching is defined by the work that has to be delivered with the line manager coaching the team to bring their best. As this coaching practice becomes a way of working around here, the DNA of a coaching culture is further strengthened.

Strategies for creating an enabling coaching culture

1. Coaching culture as an integrated delivery mechanism – part of the organisation’s OD strategy

Integrate coaching with other people-management processes. In order for coaching to get traction in the organisation, it needs to be better integrated with people processes such as learning and development, talent management and job competency models and business strategy. This is from a HR/OD functional perspective.

2. Culture as part of OD strategy driven by the business/mission priorities

Link coaching outcomes to the organisational strategy, showing a clear business case for coaching. Ideally, creating a coaching culture is viewed as a ‘business’ initiative rather than just as a ‘people’ initiative. This requires ownership and accountability for coaching results at senior level. HR/OD executives need to locate coaching in the business strategy and not as an HR intervention so that shared ownership moves from functional to executive space.

3. Capability building to ensure sustainable coaching practice and desired culture change

Be clear about the value of coaching at different levels (individual, team, organisational); the role and value of: internal and external coaches, peer and line coaches. Agree coaching standards for the organisation for the different mix of coaches and clarify their scope of coaching engagement with mechanisms for internal and external referral based on coaching competence and also the need for professional and peer supervision. Provide the requisite skills training for coaches internally.

4. Celebration of success through coaching as opposed to command and control

Recognise and reward coaching culture behaviours. This can be done in individual performance discussions; through team incentives and for line managers and peer coaches that are investing in getting results through coaching. Highlighting role models and the positive outcomes produced by these new behaviours reinforces the desired culture of collaborative working.

Dr Stanley Arumugam is a Leadership Advisor at Action Aid International, www.actionaid.org/south-africa.

This article appeared in the September 2015 issue of HR Future magazine.

Minimise regrettable turnover

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Dr Rob Bogosian explains to Alan Hosking what every manager should know about employee turnover.

Why has employee turnover become a priority?

It may seem that undesirable employee turnover can come out of nowhere, especially to the unsuspecting manager who hears the phrase, “I quit,” from a valuable employee. Companies regret turnover most when it involves high-value employees who possess important tacit knowledge and hard-to-replace skills. High-value employee exits can slow knowledge transfer resulting in decision-making and problem-solving delays.

The labour market is tightening and employers are once again very concerned about retaining the “best and brightest” talent. Statistics establish a business case for managing the preventions and interventions to minimise regrettable turnover.

According to the US Board of Labor Statistics, the overall US Quit Rate is 24 percent with 34 percent in the retail sector and 45 percent in the hotel/service sector. Replacing an employee can amount to 100 percent of the departed employee’s salary. Tacit knowledge is depleted when a valuable employee leaves, which is also costly.

What can managers do to minimise turnover risk?

Although managers may be caught off guard when employees give their notice, there are things they can do to better prepare for turnover risk. First, consider that there is a typical pathway that employees follow when exploring alternative employment options. The search pathway usually begins with a shock (Allen, Bryant & Vardaman, 2010), an event or perception that leads the employee to evaluate their current situation and begin searching for a new job. There are four distinct shocks that can initiate the search process: (1) job discontent, (2) job offer, (3) career planning strategy, and (4) a negative shock such as being passed over for a promotion. Some pathways, however, are unavoidable and not in the manager’s control. For example, when the employee’s spouse is relocated, turnover is unavoidable unless a remote work arrangement can be made.

The four search process drivers can be on your radar screen IF you know what makes your people tick. This means you have to have a strong relationship with each of your direct reports. Hosting frequent one-to-one meetings where your employee drives the content and you LISTEN and encourage dialogue. The content should not be the usual project updates that you receive from your employees. I suggest content that is related to the employee’s work and relationship experiences that can impact overall performance and lead to voluntary exit.

I advocate using the “20/80 Rule”. You give your views and opinions 20 percent of the (one:one interaction) time and you listen and encourage dialogue 80 percent of the (one:one interaction) time. Practising the 20/80 Rule successfully assumes that you and your direct reports operate with trust. More specifically, ask your direct reports two questions: (1) about what parts of your work do you feel strongest? and (2) with what parts of your job do you struggle? The goal is to learn as much about your employee’s work experiences as possible without judgment and jumping to solutions. This data will help you understand the level of job satisfaction of each of your direct reports. You may not have the full picture after one or two meetings, but using this line of inquiry is likely to encourage voice and interaction.

The promotion-passover-shock should be met with a high level of acknowledgement and legitimisation of any and all employee emotional responses. You can do this by focusing on the future. Prepare yourself for a talent performance discussion that basically answers the question: “What will it take for you to advance your career”? This discussion assumes there is a perception of fairness and justice in the promotion decision. If your direct report perceives promotion criteria as unjust, you must resolve this fairness issue first.

Is there a generational difference in the way people leave a company?

Research (D’Amato & Herzfeldt, 2009) shows that late Baby Boomers and Millennials do not have the same psychological contract with their employers when compared to early Baby Boomers. The layoff frequency experienced by Millennials’ parents and friends is the likely culprit in this psychological shift from loyalty to independence and self-protection. The consequences are lower levels of organisational commitment and a need for greater career and skill development. If your company doesn’t have an explicit career development policy or process, then it’s up to you as the group leader to create one for your group. At the very least, include career related conversations in your one-on-one discussions.

This can create an open and honest dialogue that results in a trusted relationship where the employee can bring their exit plans or thinking to the forefront. If this seems like a long shot, put a stake in the ground and start with the one-on-one meetings and the two questions.

What incorrect views do managers have of retention?

All turnover is not the same.There is voluntary and involuntary turnover and regrettable and functional turnover. Voluntary-functional (VF) is least risky. VF turnover occurs when a replaceable, non-strategic employee departs voluntarily. Voluntary-regrettable (VR) is most risky. VR turnover occurs when a high performer, with strong social ties inside the company, departs voluntarily.

Companies can and should have HR policies and practices in place to minimise and predict VR occurrences. For example, knowledge transfer using deliberate social and learning events and knowledge management practices should encourage the transfer of valuable tacit knowledge and codify it with knowledge management technology.

People don’t quit because of pay. People quit because they determine that pay is not fair compared to others in the same job and organisational level. This pay issue is about perceptions of fairness NOT the actual dollar amount of one’s salary.

People don’t quit because they don’t like their jobs. People may determine that they are not a good fit for their current job or that the company’s values are misaligned with their personal values. Employees use multiple pathways to a final exit decision. For example, they may complete a degree programme or have a spouse who changes job locations. Multiple exit pathways require multiple talent retention prevention and intervention pathways.

Turnover is not out of the manager’s control. Studies show that manager/employee relations impact the decision to leave. You can develop strategies to strengthen management practices that positively influence retention.

Three main reasons why employees decide to stay include:

Work relationships (social capital). Social capital is often ignored and misunderstood in organisations. Building performance and healthy relationships should become part of every organisation’s strategy if it is serious about talent retention;

Values compatibility (company vs individual). The values for your company and each individual leader should be defined and declared. Employees want to know that their values are aligned with those of the organisation, where they spend more than 50 percent of their waking hours (Slap, S, 2005); and

Exit costs. These are the implicit costs typically considered during an employee’s exit option evaluation. For example, employees consider their career potential, tenure, learning and growth opportunities and the relationships they have with their manager and colleagues.

Retention strategies can’t be one-size-fits-all. Multiple Exit Pathways require complex, well thought out retention strategies.

Companies can’t accurately predict turnover in restructuring initiatives. Research (Trevor & Nyberg, 2008) shows that a simple move from a status of “non-downsizer” to “down-sizer” can increase voluntary turnover by as much as 19 percent. Downsizing by one percent can lead to a 31 percent increase in post-downsize voluntary turnover.

Carefully structured HRM practices can mitigate the surprise of regrettable voluntary turnover. Retention strategies are the responsibility of every leader in every company. They should have explicit policies and practices designed to minimise regrettable turnover. Leaders must become knowledgeable about turnover behaviour and specific leadership practices that are known to reduce or better prepare for voluntary turnover.

Dr Rob Bogosian is Executive Adjunct Faculty at Florida Artlantic University (FAU) and former Professor at Hult University (formerly Arthur D Little School of Management) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States. He is the founder and principal consultant at RVB Associates, Inc. which offers a range of consulting services focused on linking management and leadership development to business strategy for achieving competitive advantage. Rob is co-author of Breaking Corporate Silence: How High Influence Leaders Create Cultures of Voice with Christine Mockler Casper.

This article appeared in the September 2015 issue of HR Future magazine.

Unbearable vagueness of HR analytics

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For HR analytics to be of value, one has to ask the right questions and make good decisions.

HR is undergoing something of a revolution with the influx of analytics people.

It’s true that compensation has always been steeped in numbers but, in general, HR has been staffed by “people” people, and in some cases by people who explicitly chose the profession because they didn’t like mathematics.

For me the signal that this revolution is real is the increasing number of people who have “HR Analytics” as part of their title. If this is you, good luck, because you have two big problems to address: the unbearable vagueness of analytics and the gap between the numbers people and the “people” people. In this column we’ll look at the problem of vagueness. In a future column, we will look at how to close the gap between the numbers people and the “people” people.

Why HR analytics seems so hard to nail down

It’s quite right that leadership wants HR to be more rigorous, and it’s also right that analytics can help bring rigour to HR. The trouble is that few companies are clear about what they really want analytics to do. One way you know that something is awry is that you keep hearing the same examples over and over again. For example, bring up “predictive analytics” and consultants will mention using analytics to predict when individuals will leave.

Okay, that might help, but what else can we use predictive analytics for? You may not get an answer at all. People start getting vague about the value of the technique when asked to go beyond one or two familiar cases.

Another signal that something is wrong is that when HR does produce data that someone has asked for, such as a dashboard, only to find managers look at it once, get bored and ignore the results. The HR analytics manager works hard to create information, but there is a big gap between having the information and managers acting on it.

The HR analytics manager is in dangerous territory if he or she has only been given a vague mandate for what HR analytics is meant to do or if the things they are meant to do don’t result in any new action.

How to solve for vagueness

In my work with my HR community of practice, I help HR analytics managers clarify which question they are trying to answer or decision they are trying to make. That hardly seems radical, but it stands in sharp contrast to people asking, “What HR metrics should I use?” or “What should I do with all this time & attendance data?” Yes, it is possible to start with the tool (analytics) and then look for a way to use it, but that approach is much more likely to fail than starting with a good question that needs to be answered.

So the first step a successful HR analytics manager should take is to have conversations with his or her HR colleagues (both those in centres of excellence and HR business partners) to seek out questions that need to be answered or decisions that need to be made. Make sure the people are senior enough to be involved in making decisions, not ones who are busy executing the work.

Don’t just leap on the first question you find. Try to get at least one reasonable question/decision from each person you talk to. There is nothing wrong with having several rounds of conversations since, as you go through this simple process, you will get better at probing for good issues. At the end of this process, map out all the questions in a two-by-two grid of “importance” and “difficulty”. That should help you zoom in on the issues where HR analytics is most likely to have an impact (that is, questions that are important and the analytics required are not too difficult).

When you have a question that is important and manageable, it usually is reasonably clear what the HR analytics manager needs to do, and it’s quite clear what the HR leader responsible for the issue will do with the insights analytics provides. It will also reveal that analytics per se isn’t what is needed to answer the question or make a better decision. That takes us down the very productive path from the narrow world of HR analytics to the broader world of evidence-based management.

David Creelman is CEO of Creelman Research, www.creelmanresearch.com, in Canada. He works with a variety of organisations, academics, think tanks, consultancies and HR vendors in the Americas, Asia and Europe.

This article appeared in the September 2015 issue of HR Future magazine.

Dear HR, stop hiring data scientists until you’re ready for data science

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Be honest enough to admit it if you’re not ready for data science in your HR department.

I have just had another call from a brilliant data scientist working in a Human Resources Department of a major business.

This HR data scientist has both a strong analytics and predictive analytics background. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Statistics and a Master’s Degree in Predictive Analytics. She excels in R, maths, predictive modeling, machine learning and all things quantitative. She is also excited about applying data science from other domains to solve interesting workforce optimisation challenges.

She applied for a quantitative HR role that promised to let her use her skills and interest in solving difficult employee-based challenges. She was hired for this role. What’s the problem you ask? HR won’t let her do Data Science.

Over and over again she has suggested a data science approach to help solve employee focused challenges that have plagued the organisation for years, and cost many millions to the organisation’s bottom line. Over and over again she is denied the ability to move forward.

Her comment is that HR seems to be scared or hesitant in moving forward to a new way of solving solutions. The real concern is that the “reason” was not fully discussed so she could learn.

Instead, she is asked to work on generating monthly or weekly reports that the organisation has grown addicted to. When she is allowed to solve an interesting problem using analytics, and brilliantly does so, the executive HR leadership won’t give it executive visibility or implement it in production. Results are found “interesting” but not deployed. Then, she’s back to generating reports.

She isn’t alone. And, this article isn’t about one unique HR Data Scientist. Not by a long shot. I hear this all the time. As a result, I also see brilliant HR data scientists jumping from one company to another. I can see it on LinkedIn updates as brilliant HR Data Scientists move from one company to the other. I hear it in the conversations I have with them about why they left and their angst before they leave.

My plea to HR (and any other department hiring a Data Scientist)? Stop hiring real Data Scientists until you’re ready to do real data science.

I think I understand some of the problem. Perhaps the pressure on HR to begin using an analytical approach has led them to hire data scientists but, when it comes to actually using this approach, it’s too foreign or scary or “not what we’ve done before”. HR needs to learn from these brilliant people they’re bringing into their domain or stop hiring them to begin with.

“Anyone can hire a Data Scientist. Not every HR department or organisation is ready for data science. Generating reports are not analytics – even if they’re prettier or faster reports. Dashboards are not analytics even if they’re really pretty dashboards. More than anyone, HR should understand the devastating impact of changing job description of someone that’s been hired.”

Ironically, the Data Scientist hire is perhaps one of the most brilliant and strategic hires your HR Department has made — perhaps ever. But only if they let her do what she was hired to do. HR Data Scientists can help move HR from being tactical to strategic, using an analytics approach to highlight never seen before patterns, make decisions based on data and the like.

Tips on letting that brilliant HR Data Scientist you hired be one of your most brilliant hires:

1. Assign Reporting to someone else. It’s a very important task, but it doesn’t require a Data Scientist. Reporting will quickly bore them to tears and they’ll resign.
2. Don’t block them from talking directly to your business areas. (I often hear they have to go through the HR Business Partner who protects the business leader and blocks them from access). Working with the HR Business Partner of course makes sense. Being blocked by the HR Business Partner doesn’t.
3. Task HR Business Partners with finding either high turnover roles or low performance roles that your Data Scientist can work to help with. These are great projects for your Data Scientist.
4. Have them focus first on solving business challenges (like Financial Advisor turnover) not HR challenges like compliance issues. This will give visibility to the great work they do and introduce HR’s new expertise to solving business challenges that affect the bottom line.
5. When they complete an analytics project, give them a chance to talk and present the results, regardless of the outcomes. Did it help or not help? Don’t keep the results inside of HR.
6. Admit that you’re a little nervous about what they do. They’re nervous about what you do too.
7. Trust your Data Scientist. Stop being scared. You hired them because they have an area of expertise traditional HR doesn’t have. Embrace their area of expertise. You need to trust their advice and approach or, yes, they’ll leave.

And mostly, don’t hire a Data Scientist if you’re not ready for Data Science. If you thought you were and you find out later you really aren’t, let them know. Be honest. Don’t put them in a different role and block them as they keep trying to be successful.

Greta Roberts is the CEO and co-founder of Talent Analytics, Corp, www.talentanalytics.com. Follow Greta on Twitter @gretaroberts.

This article appeared in the September 2015 issue of HR Future magazine.

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