by thepeopleplan | Feb 8, 2013 | action plans, job fit
I have the spent the past few weeks having conversations with senior managers in a variety of small and mid-sized organizations, ranging in size from one with 7 employees to one with over 700.
These conversations focus on how we can work together to assist their people to help these organizations achieve 2013 goals, but often the conversation turns to how to develop the staff they have.
These managers like their staff and want to see them grow and contribute more, as well as be more connected to the organization and more fulfilled in their work. They want to retain these team members and to provide meaningful rewards.
Many managers and organizations seem to be challenged by the prospect of how to develop employees, such identifying what skills are needed and how to accomplish this when there is “no time for training.”
A recent book (Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go, Beverly Kaye and Julie Winkle Giulioni) may provide some answers, and challenges some of the myths that prevent smaller employers from focusing development efforts on their team (if they grow they will leave us, the employee is responsible for her own career, it’s about the money, development plans are for the Fortune 500 or just senior managers).
According to Kaye and Giulioni, “Career development is as important as it’s ever been (maybe more). In today’s business environment, talent is the major differentiator. And developing that talent is one of the most significant drivers of employee engagement, which in turn is the key to the business outcomes you seek: revenue, profitability, innovation, productivity, customer loyalty, quality, and cycle time reduction.”
One insight is that employee development can be accomplished with informal, brief, focused “10-minute conversations” that uncover an employee’s aspirations and goals and matches to learning opportunities.
-Diana Southall
Image courtesy of ddpavumba at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
by thepeopleplan | Jan 5, 2013 | coaching, performance
Most small business/ small organization managers interact regularly with their staff members—assigning and coordinating work, answering questions and approving decisions, coaching on skills or techniques, “putting out fires,” and inquiring about progress and status of tasks you assigned.
This is an effective management technique, once dubbed “Management by Wandering Around” by Tom Peters and even given its own acronym MBWA.
The benefits:
Employees appreciate the wandering manager for her accessibility and just in time responses, and managers keep busy and deploy people and resources quickly.
How to improve:
However, MBWA tends to focus a manager’s time and staff’s attention on the daily tasks that consume the day—reacting and getting the job done. This often prevents managers from “getting to my list of projects”—our wish list of projects to improve our operations, customer care, revenue, and costs.
The solution:
In addition to ongoing feedback and coordination, also take time to debrief last year and plan for this one with each employee. Reviewing successes and planning for the coming year involves employees involves employees in creating a challenging and rewarding work plan that will increase their commitment and engagement.
There are several benefits of an annual review meeting with employees:
- Employees expect some type of “formal” review (in a sit down meeting, with written document to review)
- Builds trust and rapport with employees
- Allows employees an outlet to discuss accomplishments and concerns (last year) and job/ career goals (this year)
- Provides opportunity to recognize (and therefore reward with praise) an employee’s accomplishments
- Allows manager to find out what additional responsibilities and work would be challenging and interesting for an employee
- Discuss future department goals and how an employee’s job fits in
- Identify individual action plan items — items from manager’s project list that can be delegated and mutually decide a timeline and plan to accomplish
What should you discuss at this meeting? — here is a short list:
- What are the important achievements of the past year?
- What can be improved in your job to help you be more effective?
- How can I as your supervisor assist you?
- What skills or knowledge do you want to develop in the next year? How can this be accomplished?
So go ahead and schedule a sit down with everyone this month—
it can be lunch in your office, or off site for coffee, or what works with your style.
Your employees will appreciate your time and attention.
As an added benefit- you can delegate some of your “to do’s” to finally get to that wish list this year.
If you finished half your wish list — what could you celebrate at next year’s meeting?
Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
by thepeopleplan | Sep 21, 2012 | culture, job fit, performance
Supervisors—you can’t fire yours, but you certainly can leave them…
The topic of the supervisor- employee relationship has been researched and written about since “industrial psychology” started as a field. A recent book title summarize the importance of this dynamic in retaining and engaging employees, “People Leave Managers, Not Organizations.”
How many times did you come home from work and shared your frustration with your manager to friends or family? If this continued, was this a factor in a new job search?
Okay, you say, good supervisors are important, but what is the real impact of a great one? Perhaps you have a few good ones, and few okay ones and only one that is really struggling to connect with her staff and/or achieve important results.
Consider these findings from Zenger Folkman group (see charts below):
- The best leaders had more than twice as many committed and engaged employees
- The worst leaders had more than four times as many employes thinking about quitting
- The best leader’s team had almost twice the customer satisfaction levels
- The best leader’s team in a sales study had almost 10 times (!) the sales compared to the worst leader’s team and about 50% more than the average leader’s team
What makes supervisors “multipliers” or “diminishers”—read Zenger Folkman article that lists the key “fatal flaws” of managers
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
by thepeopleplan | Aug 7, 2012 | action plans, culture, performance
You have rewarded your best supervisor with a promotion to manager.
She is the one person you could rely on to put out the fire, lead the charge on an install, and to get stuff done. Now you granted her the authority to lead the team and changed her role so now she has the time to “be a manager.”
But for some reason, she is not transforming the department as you expected.
You ask yourself, why does she:
- Continue to react to problems instead of implementing process improvement
- Work at the level of tactics and today’s work instead of thinking more strategically
- Struggle with holding team members accountable
- Spend more time than you expect in the field/ warehouse/ or “wandering around”
- Fail to implement those projects that have been on your wish list for months or years
Your star supervisor may have the competencies to be a manager, or may need business systems and coaching to develop these skill sets.
Here is a short list of common competencies that both supervisors and managers should have:
- Decisive Judgment
- Planning and Organizing
- Driving for Results
- Managing Others
- Coaching and Developing Others
Supervisors and managers also approach their work at different levels knowledge, methods, time horizon and involvement with process:
| Area |
Supervisor
|
Manager
|
| Change |
Adapting to Change
|
Championing Change
|
| Methods |
Motivating Others
|
Relationship Management
|
| Knowledge |
Functional or Technical Acumen
|
Business Acumen
|
| Time Frame |
3-12 months
|
1-2 years (general managers 2-5 years)
|
| Systems/ process |
Follow and support systems
|
Create, monitor, improve systems
|
If this situation sounds familiar, take a moment and rate your manager on the level of competence for each of these skills to answer the question “is she a supervisor or a manager?” Her development plan would then be designed to improve in these key areas.
Image courtesy of Master isolated images at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
by Diana Southall | Aug 3, 2012 | action plans, rewards, training and development
The perception:
“McJob- a low-paying job that requires little skill and provides little opportunity for advancement” (Webster dictionary).
But how wrong they are!
The reality:
According to a recent article by our firm’s founder Dr. Jerry Newman and McDonald’s Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer Richard Floersch, McDonald’s actually has very high employee perceptions of advancement opportunities.
Reward/ Percent Who Love This About McDonald’s:
- Learning and development -80%
- Skill development and opportunity -79%
- Career opportunity -76%
Contrast McDonald’s results with numerous studies that consistently show about half of employees do not see long-term careers at their company, and more than one-third of employees believe they must leave their current employer to advance to a higher-level job.
Opportunity is Key to attracting employees: A recent Experience Inc survey of 2011 college graduates, 55% list career advancement opportunities as the most important factor in choosing a job (just above pay and challenging work).
Opportunity is Key to engaging employees: Aon Hewitt found that a clear career path and career development were two top drivers of engagement.
Typically organizations have positions with multiple levels, but they are not always clearly defined or communicated.
For example, a client had production workers with three levels of responsibility and skill, but they were not apparent to employees.
The company decided to title these three levels production, senior production and team leader. The job levels corresponded to different performance expectations and pay levels. Managers were trained to discuss with employees performance against their current job, communicate the “next” level job responsibilities, and mutually agree on a development plan with each employee who was interested in that next level.
Employees now know the clear career path, how they get there, and what the reward will be when it is achieved. (Or they can choose to stay in their current position as long as they perform to expectation). Managers now have a clear development plan for every employee and can focus their feedback and training on this plan. This also provided a succession plan by building a core of senior and team leaders to assist the Plant Manager and identified an Assistant Manager who is now quite successful.
Image courtesy of ratch0013 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
