Summer's Top 150: Supervision & Performance Management

I know, I know. This "dump post" includes way too many articles. But the topic is soooo important!

1. Three Questions for Potential Managers to Ask Themselves
2. New Managers: Alone and Out of Their Depths
3. Middle Managers: The Meat in the Sandwich
4. Caring for Your People: Part of the Boss's Job
5. The Penny Challenge
6. How to Have More Productive Performance Appraisals
7. The Dreaded Performance Review
8. Straight Talk in a Slump
9. What Leaders Can Learn from a Doctor About How to Deliver Bad News
10. 7 Mistakes Bosses Make When Giving Criticism
11. Ask Three Questions to Clarify Expectations
12. Managers Who Coach Ask Questions That Enlighten
13. Managers Who Coach: Overcome Dependency
14. Develop Outstanding Employees Utilizing Effective Feedback
15. Better Mentoring
16. Adding a few points to Seth on leadership
17. How To Inaugurate Effectiveness In Your Project Team
18. If You Want Accountability, You Must Grant Authority
19. It’s Not About FINDING Talent. It’s about IDENTIFYING and TAPPING What You Already Have
20. Promotions and job fit
21. What Alienates Top Performers
22. Rewarded Employees Work Harder
23. The Art of Giving Praise
24. Leading Clever People
25. Nine Ways to Identify Natural Leaders
26. How to Identify Your Employees' Hidden Talents
27. Empowering Leaders: Hand Over Your Keys
28. Handling Quit-and-Stays
29. Problem children: Dealing with whiney, crybaby malcontents in your ranks
30. Management Interview Questions and Answers
31. What makes a good boss?
32. Stop Demotivating Me!
33. Leadership: Intentional Influence
34. Does Your Do Match Your Tell?
35. How to Handle the Pessimist on Your Team
    

A Bigger One!

I know some of you would like me to comment on each link I share in these "dump posts" or at least give a snippet for what the article is about, but that will have to wait (I just can't make the time for it right now)! In the meantime, enjoy the best of the last week:

1. Making presentations in the TED style
2. "Sir, we don't actually do what we propose. We just propose it."
3. 4 Tips for Efficient Succession Planning
4. Smart Stuff from HiringSmart
5. You Don’t Know Everything
6. Stepping Up & Intrinsic Rewards
7. The Utility of Paradigm Shifting for Professional Learning Communities
8. The Geometry of Employee Engagement
9. Change is Good: The Movie
10. Three ways to impress your boss
11. The World We Live In ORC 09
12. The times they are a-changin’
13. Hope Springs Eternal for HR & Leadership
14. The Tyranny of Consensus
15. The Importance of Clarity - pt II
16. The Cost of Everyday Interruptions
17. Would you pass a stress test?
18. Over Half of Employees Say Their Managers Are Ineffective
19. Five Steps To Better Employee Communications
20. Dealing with workplace negativity
21. Combatting Negativity, Changing Attitudes in the Workplace
22. We Are Only What We Do…
23. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Together: Part 11

Random Thoughts on Talent Management

Take the quiz:

1. What do we mean by “talent management”?

• a) The programs, policies and processes in place to support recruitment, retention, training and development, staffing, succession planning, etc.
• b) The actual day-to-day management of talented people

2. What do we mean by “talented people”?

• a) The so-called “best and brightest”
• b) Anyone with interests and talents that can be put to contribution

3. If you answered a) to the previous question:

• How do you know who “best and brightest” are?
• How do you know you are not overlooking anyone who is actually talented?

4. Talent management should be done in the interest of who?

• a) The organization
• b) The employee
• c) Both

***

My working definition of talent management goes something like this: “Getting the best from employees so that employees feel they are contributing their best.”

While the first half of the definition is straightforward enough, I feel the public service tends to fall short on the second half. Indeed, according to the 2005 Public Service Employee Survey, 96% of federal public servants are “Strongly committed to making difference in organization” (Question # 86). However, the overall employee engagement score for the public service is only 56,8% - a 40% gap!

(The methodology to determine your employee engagement score is explained here, but in short you just need to calculate the average of the percentage of employees who “agree” or “strongly agree” with the statements contained in the following ten questions of the 2005 PSES:
Q. 16 Encouraged to be innovative or take initiative in job
Q. 18 Have a say in decisions/action affecting work
Q. 27 Supervisor takes suggestions for improvement seriously
Q. 37 Satisfied with how informal complaints are resolved in work unit
Q. 44 Immediate supervisor does good job at helping develop career
Q. 46 Have opportunities for promotion within dept or agency, given qualifications
Q. 63 Department or agency works hard to create a workplace that prevents harassment and discrimination
Q. 65 In work unit process of selecting person for position is fair
Q. 78 Sr. management does good job at sharing information
Q. 87 Overall, organization treats with respect)

I sometimes wonder if senior executives and managers are aware of this gap. A group 300 senior executives from a federal department were recently polled at a meeting: “Which leadership competency is strongest in the Department: 1) Values and Ethics, 2) Strategic Thinking, 3) Engagement of People, 4) Management Excellence”. 46% of the respondents answered “Engagement of People”. Yet, this department is in the bottom 20% in terms of employee engagement according to the Hill Times’ ranking of federal public service organizations...

***

I see a number of obstacles preventing the public service from doing better with regards to talent management.

At the organizational level:

1. Predominance of program and policies over good people management.
2. People management is often an afterthought, and takes a backseat to all other priorities.
3. Doing what is easily measurable rather than what is important.

At the field level:

• Generally speaking, from the outset, we don’t hire people for their talent.
• Good performance and poor performance are practically treated the same.
• You can’t talk about talent management and expect to be taken seriously if you put bad supervisors in front of employees.

With the current economic context, I know many managers are thinking: “See, working for the public service isn’t so bad all of sudden, because we have a certain level of job security that the private sector doesn’t necessarily enjoy.” That might be true. It is also true that many public servants will content themselves with their current jobs, not making as much noise about poor people management practices as they would in less turbulent times.

But I have to ask managers and senior executives:

What type of organization do you want to be?

• The one people cling to and feel lucky to be in when the economy is bad? Or,
  
• The one people want to join when the competition for talent is at its peak?

***

Back to talent management and the Public Service Employee Survey (PSES).

The 2008 PSES presents a number of changes over the 2005 PSES. I counted 21 questions that were removed, and the addition of 16 new ones. Of those 16 questions, there are five to which I will pay extra attention when analyzing the results for my organization, as they have clear implications for talent management:

• Q. 10 I know how my work contributes to the achievement of my department’s or agency’s goals
• Q. 16 My job is a good fit with my skills
• Q. 4. My job is a good fit with my interests
• Q. 8 I get a sense of satisfaction from my work
• Q. 9 Overall, I like my job

So what’s the connection with talent management?

My organization has made performance management a top priority given the number of new supervisors who were appointed over the past three years. One of the things we did was giving each supervisor a copy of the book “The Managerial Moment of Truth”. I love this book as it offers a very simple methodology to provide accurate feedback to employees. One of the most interesting chapters of the book however, is the one on “managing the mismatch” (Chapter 10). The authors argue that four elements need to be present in order to get the best performance from an employee:

1. Alignment (with mission, values, strategy of the organization)
2. Skill (to do the job)
3. Interest (in the work)
4. Attitude (whether disruptive or not)

I see a clear linkage between these elements and the 2008 PSES questions I listed above:

• Alignment = Q. 10 I know how my work contributes to the achievement of my department’s or agency’s goals
• Skill = Q. 16 My job is a good fit with my skills
• Interest = Q. 4. My job is a good fit with my interests
• Attitude = Q. 8 I get a sense of satisfaction from my work
• Overall job match = Q. 9 Overall, I like my job
  

Now I agree, the correlation is imperfect and the data incomplete (for instance you may argue that Q 8 and 9 should be inverted, or that the attitude of an employee might be the result of some past history with his organization). But that is not the point. What is more important for the manager is to get a sense of what needs to be addressed (or leveraged) as far as talent management goes. For example:

• You would normally expect “alignment” (Q. 10) to be high, but if it’s not, this is something you can easily fix as a manager through improved communications with staff.
• If you think of talent management as the day-to-day management of talented people, you should do well on “skill” (Q. 16), but if that’s not the case, it’s never too late to take the time to sit down your employees and identify with their strengths are and how they can put them to better contribution.
• Same thing goes for “interest” (Q. 4).
• “Attitude” (Q. 8) and overall job match (Q. 9), are partly out of the control of managers, but they are also a consequence of the three factors above.

In all case, there are implications for talent management and you as a manager can have a significant influence on it.

Your thoughts?

Staffing and Job Fit

Last week I was invited to be part of a panel on talent management at a meeting gathering over 300 senior executives from my (undisclosed) department. By my sides were Jocelyne Cormier (Visiting Director General, Canada Public Service Agency) and Julie Cirillo (Vice-President, Talent Management and Organizational Development, Rio Tinto Alcan), which made me the "insider", and the only non-EX on the panel.

Of all my remarks, the one that received the most attention was the one about my organization systematically staffing all its vacancies internally in less than three weeks for nearly the past two years. I guess the word hasn't gone around yet. :-(

Since I am on the topic of staffing, here's a list of interesting blog postings I have come across on staffing:

• Help Candidates Self Select with Work Levels Job Descriptions
• How not to conduct a selection interview
• You’ve got to distinguish between skills and credentials
• Knowledge and experience are two very different things
• How New People Can Bring Unexpected Problems
• Hiring Star Performers Can Be a Mistake - The Dangers of Overhiring
• One in Five Employees is Underutilized
• Hiring the Right Employee - Not Hiring is Better than Hiring the Wrong Person for the Job
• The Dangers of Promoting from Within - Avoid “Right Place at the Right Time” Promotions
• Why Perfect Candidates Still Fail on the Job
• Who’s Onboarding Your New Hires?
• Canadians have trouble fitting in at work: survey
• Who is Accountable for Hiring Mistakes?
• The Best Way to Evaluate People is to Watch Them Work
• And in case, you hadn't seen it, PSC’s Five Year Evaluation Framework

Also, two more links related to my last post:

• What Kind of HR Pro Are You?
• 2009: What Will Happen?

On-the-Spot Job Offers: Real Solution or Quick Fix?

There is a fair deal of excitement right now in the federal public service over “on-the-spot job offers” to students in college and university job fairs. Personally, the concept of “on-the-spot job offers” leaves me skeptical at best.

Rather than launching into all the reasons why I feel that way, let me start be enunciating the conditions to which I agree with the idea of “on-the-spot job offers”:

1. The hiring manager himself is on-the-spot to hire the employees (as opposed to a delegated report or an HR advisor);
2. The Statement of Merit Criteria is well suited for on-the-spot assessment of the candidates by the manager.
3. The manager is able to overcome any personal bias (positive or negative) with regards to gender, ethnicity, and other employment-equity-like characteristics.
4. The manager is able to resist the temptation to hire a clone (i.e. someone who studied in the same institution, shares similar interests, has the same kind of personality, roots for the same hockey team, etc.).
5. Whenever appropriate (read: most of the time!), the job offer is conditional to further background or reference check.

That is just the first half of the work, i.e. the portion that happens at the recruitment event or immediately after. But for an on-the-spot hire to be successful in the long-term, the following criteria must also be met:

1. There are very strict conditions of probation attached to the job offer and the organization has a solid probationary process in place with clear accountability for managers.
2. Managers set up the new hire for success by providing him or her all the necessary orientation, training and support during the first days, weeks or months on the job.
3. There are regular formal performance appraisals during the first year (ideally every three months at least) during which the new hire is assessed thoroughly against objectives and expectations.
4. There is ongoing and immediate feedback between the manager and the new hire to correct any behaviour that is not in line with expectations.
5. The hiring manager is held fully accountable for the hiring decision and managing the performance of the employee.

Those conditions are necessary to highlight the fact that “on-the-spot job offers” don’t simply result in the hiring of a person for a job, but the hiring of a public servant for what could be an entire career. In other words: “Are you ready to be held accountable for hiring this employee in the public service for the next 30 years?”

(Gulp!)

Assuming all the conditions are met, and assuming the manager feels confident about the whole “on-the-spot job offer” thing, then we must ask ourselves the $1,000,000 question:

"If we feel fine about hiring a total stranger after a 15 minutes assessment in a college gymnasium, why do we still resort to iron-clad processes that take months or years to administer to assess career public servants we often know (such as our own staff!)? Why can’t we use the same type of “on-the-spot” assessment to appoint internally?"

Some may argue that the jobs we staff with university grads don’t require the same level of expertise than the jobs we staff internally. I don’t buy it for a second. I just look at all the steps, tests, interviews and reference checks involved in the creation of CR-4 and AS-1 internal pools and I see major inconsistencies with the argument.

Others will argue that we need to make “on-the-spot job offers” to people in highly specialized fields where expertise is rare or unique, otherwise they will choose another employer. That makes sense, but then I wonder how we can assess highly specialized workers in 15 minutes when we take months and months to hire people for generic clerical jobs…

The real answer for the difference of treatment between external candidates to who we are ready to make an “on-the-spot job offer” after a 15 minutes assessment, and the internal employees who are qualified, experienced and who we know intimately is the following: fear.

We are afraid of confronting unsuccessful employees, especially when we know them. We dread a complaint to the Public Service Staffing Tribunal, not simply because of the extra work it might require on our part, but because it could make the Deputy Minister look bad (or, alternatively, make the senior HR advisors look bad to the eyes of the DM for allowing such a thing to happen!).

Consequently, many managers would rather leave appointment decisions in the hands of a tool (preferably a standardized test that can’t be challenged) than come up with a few simple questions that would suffice to assess the applicants fairly accurately in a matter of hours, use their judgment and demonstrate courage in making the appointment decision based on this assessment.

The perverse effect of leaving appointment decisions in the hands of tools such as written tests rather than exercising our judgment is that many applicants who are successful in staffing processes are just that: people who do well on tests.

At the risk of bringing discredit upon myself, I will acknowledge in public what I have often confided in private: I have been lucky to get a job in the public service. I was hired not so much for my competence or talent, but mostly because I did well on a series of tests (IQ, written communication, situational judgment), in-baskets, simulations, and interviews. In all fairness, the process I originally went through was very rigorous, and I do take pride in having made it through. But I know many people who would have made just as good (or better!) public servants, employees, or managers. But they’ve never really done well on tests, or at least couldn’t do well enough to go past this early screening stage. (Fortunately, in all of these cases, the public service’s loss was another employer’s win!)

So back to “on-the-spot job offers”. I don’t want to condemn these so-called “innovative” hiring methods. But when I look at the gap between this and the staffing methods we used internally, I shake my head. Couldn’t we have come up with some sort of middle ground?

For instance, managers could do an early screening of university applicants based on a 15 minutes interview during which we assessed a limited number of well-defined merit criteria (i.e. education, experience, etc.), and reserve a more thorough assessment (i.e. skills, background and reference check) for later, thus cutting by many months the recruitment process, narrowing the pool to a smaller number of high profile candidates, and remain a competitive employer.

Only time will tell if those “on-the-spot job offers” really work, or if we are simply solving a recruitment issue by creating a performance management problem elsewhere.