- Three Questions for Potential Managers to Ask Themselves
- New Managers: Alone and Out of Their Depths
- Middle Managers: The Meat in the Sandwich
- Caring for Your People: Part of the Boss's Job
- The Penny Challenge
- How to Have More Productive Performance Appraisals
- The Dreaded Performance Review
- Straight Talk in a Slump
- What Leaders Can Learn from a Doctor About How to Deliver Bad News
- 7 Mistakes Bosses Make When Giving Criticism
- Ask Three Questions to Clarify Expectations
- Managers Who Coach Ask Questions That Enlighten
- Managers Who Coach: Overcome Dependency
- Develop Outstanding Employees Utilizing Effective Feedback
- Better Mentoring
- Adding a few points to Seth on leadership
- How To Inaugurate Effectiveness In Your Project Team
- If You Want Accountability, You Must Grant Authority
- It’s Not About FINDING Talent. It’s about IDENTIFYING and TAPPING What You Already Have
- Promotions and job fit
- What Alienates Top Performers
- Rewarded Employees Work Harder
- The Art of Giving Praise
- Leading Clever People
- Nine Ways to Identify Natural Leaders
- How to Identify Your Employees' Hidden Talents
- Empowering Leaders: Hand Over Your Keys
- Handling Quit-and-Stays
- Problem children: Dealing with whiney, crybaby malcontents in your ranks
- Management Interview Questions and Answers
- What makes a good boss?
- Stop Demotivating Me!
- Leadership: Intentional Influence
- Does Your Do Match Your Tell?
- How to Handle the Pessimist on Your Team
Showing posts with label talent management. Show all posts
Showing posts with label talent management. Show all posts
Thursday, September 17, 2009
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!
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Leadership in a Culture of Compliance
“The straightest line to success is to conform to prevailing views, as opposed to challenging them.”
- Mark Stevens
As you know, I am a big fan of CPSRenewal. If you haven’t already done so, please go to their blog and read their latest column entitled “The Development in Leadership”. I found it to be perhaps their finest post to date, partly because of the topic and partly because of the slightly contrarian perspective. I initially wanted to comment directly on their blog, but once I got going I had so much to say so instead I chose to make it a separate post here.
First, some of the highlights:
Last week, a friend of mine forwarded me an interesting article written by G. Hayward and C.Everett entitled “Adaptors and innovators: data from the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory in a local authority setting” (Published in the Journal of Occupational Psychology, 56, 339-42). Using the Kirton Adaptor-Innovator Inventory which measures on a continuum the behaviour of innovators and adaptors (or "non-innovators" if you prefer), the researchers found that local government workers were more adaptive (i.e. less innovative) than the general population. Furthermore, the longer workers had been employed in the government, the least innovative they were. The research also found that new recruits were mildly innovative, but within five years they would fall to the same level as the rest of the staff. Junior employees were more innovative than intermediate or senior staff.
The researchers conclude that “organizations become adaptive (or innovative) mainly because people leave or stay according to whether the organization suits their personality.” This “leads to more entrenched positions, adaptive organizations becoming more adaptive and vice versa. More adaptive styles reduce the range of responses available to the organization and lead to it becoming less flexible in its search for solutions, with the dangers this implies in a world of conflicting and rapidly changing pressures.”
Not surprisingly, the authors add that the public service “may well appeal to people who are adaptive by nature, and those with an innovative bent may find the work uncongenial or may not fit socially in a team of adaptors. However, to some extent the current employment situation may alter their behaviour, in that jobs are not easily obtained. Staff may remain and choose to be miserable rather than moving to find work more suitable to their innovative natures. […] It is much more likely in our view that, in order to fit, individuals can make only superficial changes to their behaviour. For the most part the individual must either find a niche within the organization, make alterations to the job in order to get a better fit, or, as a final outcome, leave the organization.”
Dr M J Kirton reaches similar conclusions in his article entitled “Adaptors & Innovators - Why New Initiatives Get Blocked”. Noting that “middle-ranking Civil Servants were markedly adaptor-inclined”, Kirton writes:
“Organisations in general and especially organisations which are large in size and budget have a tendency to encourage bureaucracy and adaptation in order to minimise risk. [...] The aims of a bureaucratic structure are precision, reliability and efficiency, and that the bureaucratic structure exerts constant pressure on officials to be methodical, prudent and disciplined, and to attain an unusual degree of conformity. These are the qualities that the adaptor-innovator theory attributes to the ‘adaptor’ personality. For the marked adaptor, the longer an institutional practice has existed, the more he feels it can be taken for granted. So when confronted by a problem, he does not see it as a stimulus to question or change the structure in which the problem is embedded, but seeks a solution within that structure, in ways already tried and understood – ways which are safe, sure predictable. He can be relied upon to carry out a thorough, disciplined search for ways to eliminate problems by ‘doing things better’ with a minimum or risk and a maximum of continuity and stability. This behaviour contrasts strongly with that of the marked innovator. The latter’s solution, because it is less understood, and its assumption untested, appears more risky, less sound, involves more ‘ripple-effect’ changes in areas less obviously needing to be affected; in short, it brings about changes with outcomes than cannot be envisaged so precisely. This diminution of predictive certainty is unsettling and not to be undertaken lightly, if at all, by most people – but particularly by adaptors, who feel not only more loyal to consensus policy but less willing to jeopardise the integrity of the system (or even the institution). [...] Tolerance of the innovator is thinnest when adaptors feel under pressure from the need for imminent radical change. Yet the innovators’ very disadvantages to institutions make them as necessary as the adaptors’ virtues in turn make them.”
So back to leadership development programs and my response to CPSRenewal’s contentions...
“Employees do not need to be in a development program to lead.”
I couldn’t agree more. Having spent four years in a development program, I can say I have seen many of my peers embody the status quo.
“Opportunities to lead are most likely more numerous outside development programs where there are fewer restrictions.”
I can only speak based on my own experience, but one of the beauties of leadership development programs is that you can get away with murder! People will forgive your mistakes more easily because you of the label “still developing” stamped on your forehead. However, that freedom to lead and innovate doesn’t always come with the credibility you need to push the ideas forward and see their implementations. For that to happen, you may need the support of a credible sponsor or manager with a lot of pull.
“Leaders and innovators tend to be drawn to where opportunity congregates, in this case outside development programs.”
I don’t disagree with the statement, but I would like to qualify it. I would argue that leaders and innovators tend to be drawn to where there is a void to fill or a need to address, and because of the high level of attention employees in development programs often get (in contrast to the employees who are not in those programs), the most pressing needs and significant voids are likely outside development programs.
I have been in a government leadership development program and had the distinct privilege of nearly failing my first promotion board. Despite superior achievements in my assignment and outstanding evaluations from my managers and clients, I didn’t do well on the interview (my heart was just not into it for a host of reasons, including the fact that the interview had been rescheduled four times and was now six months late). So when I met with the promotion jury (another six months later) to find out my results, they told me: “Etienne, you did not demonstrate you met the requirements to be promoted. But we are going to do you a favour and give it to you anyway.”
Obviously, I was frustrated by the fact that the verdict was based on my performance in a one-hour interview and totally dismissed my performance during the 2500 hours of work that preceded it. But first and foremost, I was disgusted by the fact that I was given a promotion that, according to the standards of the members of the promotion jury, I should not even deserve. Basically, I was becoming a prime example of the Peter Principle and they were telling me that they were promoting me to what they thought was my level of incompetence!
For my next promotion, I decided to play by the rules. Since now I knew that all what really counted was the interview, I was going to comply with the process. More specifically, I knew I would be asked questions about my home department, such as mission, vision, organizational structure, priorities, etc. The problem was that by then I had not worked in my home department in over two years, and had been in three other departments and agencies in the meantime. I suppressed all the feeling of futility and silliness I was experiencing and memorized by heart the content of my home department’s website. Fortunately, I’ve always had very good memorization skills, so at the interview I regurgitated word for word everything from the website. At one point I noticed from the body language of one of the senior executive on the jury (who was from my home department) that he didn’t even know about the departmental priorities and objectives I was discussing, so I dug even further. When I asked them if they wanted me to keep going, they told me they had enough for the purpose of the assessment (none of them were going to admit their own ignorance!). I nailed that interview and got my promotion.
That day I learned an extremely valuable lesson about what leadership means in a culture of compliance.
- Mark Stevens
As you know, I am a big fan of CPSRenewal. If you haven’t already done so, please go to their blog and read their latest column entitled “The Development in Leadership”. I found it to be perhaps their finest post to date, partly because of the topic and partly because of the slightly contrarian perspective. I initially wanted to comment directly on their blog, but once I got going I had so much to say so instead I chose to make it a separate post here.
First, some of the highlights:
- “One of the effects of being in school for a prolonged period of time is that people become accustomed to its normative framework and to the structured progression.”
- “One participant even said that she was very concerned about the prospect of working for a manager who was quickly promoted because they excelled at thinking inside the box.”
- “The problem with development programs is that they do not necessarily produce leaders and innovators. In effect they reward and perpetuate herd mentality and produce predictable outcomes.”
- “Leaders and innovators typically lead and innovate despite the status quo, not in support of it. Yet, the best a development program can do is provide employees with the skills that have been determined to be important in the past and in the immediate present. In essence, development programs are cyclical in that they support and reinforce the status quo, creating predictability and producing (process and rule) followers.”
- Given that the ethos of public service management is to comply and ensure compliance, what conclusions should we draw about the people who succeed the most in the system (i.e. get promoted to high level positions)?
- What kind of leadership and innovation can we expect from people who know so well how things should be done?
***
Last week, a friend of mine forwarded me an interesting article written by G. Hayward and C.Everett entitled “Adaptors and innovators: data from the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory in a local authority setting” (Published in the Journal of Occupational Psychology, 56, 339-42). Using the Kirton Adaptor-Innovator Inventory which measures on a continuum the behaviour of innovators and adaptors (or "non-innovators" if you prefer), the researchers found that local government workers were more adaptive (i.e. less innovative) than the general population. Furthermore, the longer workers had been employed in the government, the least innovative they were. The research also found that new recruits were mildly innovative, but within five years they would fall to the same level as the rest of the staff. Junior employees were more innovative than intermediate or senior staff.
The researchers conclude that “organizations become adaptive (or innovative) mainly because people leave or stay according to whether the organization suits their personality.” This “leads to more entrenched positions, adaptive organizations becoming more adaptive and vice versa. More adaptive styles reduce the range of responses available to the organization and lead to it becoming less flexible in its search for solutions, with the dangers this implies in a world of conflicting and rapidly changing pressures.”
Not surprisingly, the authors add that the public service “may well appeal to people who are adaptive by nature, and those with an innovative bent may find the work uncongenial or may not fit socially in a team of adaptors. However, to some extent the current employment situation may alter their behaviour, in that jobs are not easily obtained. Staff may remain and choose to be miserable rather than moving to find work more suitable to their innovative natures. […] It is much more likely in our view that, in order to fit, individuals can make only superficial changes to their behaviour. For the most part the individual must either find a niche within the organization, make alterations to the job in order to get a better fit, or, as a final outcome, leave the organization.”
Dr M J Kirton reaches similar conclusions in his article entitled “Adaptors & Innovators - Why New Initiatives Get Blocked”. Noting that “middle-ranking Civil Servants were markedly adaptor-inclined”, Kirton writes:
“Organisations in general and especially organisations which are large in size and budget have a tendency to encourage bureaucracy and adaptation in order to minimise risk. [...] The aims of a bureaucratic structure are precision, reliability and efficiency, and that the bureaucratic structure exerts constant pressure on officials to be methodical, prudent and disciplined, and to attain an unusual degree of conformity. These are the qualities that the adaptor-innovator theory attributes to the ‘adaptor’ personality. For the marked adaptor, the longer an institutional practice has existed, the more he feels it can be taken for granted. So when confronted by a problem, he does not see it as a stimulus to question or change the structure in which the problem is embedded, but seeks a solution within that structure, in ways already tried and understood – ways which are safe, sure predictable. He can be relied upon to carry out a thorough, disciplined search for ways to eliminate problems by ‘doing things better’ with a minimum or risk and a maximum of continuity and stability. This behaviour contrasts strongly with that of the marked innovator. The latter’s solution, because it is less understood, and its assumption untested, appears more risky, less sound, involves more ‘ripple-effect’ changes in areas less obviously needing to be affected; in short, it brings about changes with outcomes than cannot be envisaged so precisely. This diminution of predictive certainty is unsettling and not to be undertaken lightly, if at all, by most people – but particularly by adaptors, who feel not only more loyal to consensus policy but less willing to jeopardise the integrity of the system (or even the institution). [...] Tolerance of the innovator is thinnest when adaptors feel under pressure from the need for imminent radical change. Yet the innovators’ very disadvantages to institutions make them as necessary as the adaptors’ virtues in turn make them.”
***
So back to leadership development programs and my response to CPSRenewal’s contentions...
“Employees do not need to be in a development program to lead.”
I couldn’t agree more. Having spent four years in a development program, I can say I have seen many of my peers embody the status quo.
“Opportunities to lead are most likely more numerous outside development programs where there are fewer restrictions.”
I can only speak based on my own experience, but one of the beauties of leadership development programs is that you can get away with murder! People will forgive your mistakes more easily because you of the label “still developing” stamped on your forehead. However, that freedom to lead and innovate doesn’t always come with the credibility you need to push the ideas forward and see their implementations. For that to happen, you may need the support of a credible sponsor or manager with a lot of pull.
“Leaders and innovators tend to be drawn to where opportunity congregates, in this case outside development programs.”
I don’t disagree with the statement, but I would like to qualify it. I would argue that leaders and innovators tend to be drawn to where there is a void to fill or a need to address, and because of the high level of attention employees in development programs often get (in contrast to the employees who are not in those programs), the most pressing needs and significant voids are likely outside development programs.
***
I have been in a government leadership development program and had the distinct privilege of nearly failing my first promotion board. Despite superior achievements in my assignment and outstanding evaluations from my managers and clients, I didn’t do well on the interview (my heart was just not into it for a host of reasons, including the fact that the interview had been rescheduled four times and was now six months late). So when I met with the promotion jury (another six months later) to find out my results, they told me: “Etienne, you did not demonstrate you met the requirements to be promoted. But we are going to do you a favour and give it to you anyway.”
Obviously, I was frustrated by the fact that the verdict was based on my performance in a one-hour interview and totally dismissed my performance during the 2500 hours of work that preceded it. But first and foremost, I was disgusted by the fact that I was given a promotion that, according to the standards of the members of the promotion jury, I should not even deserve. Basically, I was becoming a prime example of the Peter Principle and they were telling me that they were promoting me to what they thought was my level of incompetence!
For my next promotion, I decided to play by the rules. Since now I knew that all what really counted was the interview, I was going to comply with the process. More specifically, I knew I would be asked questions about my home department, such as mission, vision, organizational structure, priorities, etc. The problem was that by then I had not worked in my home department in over two years, and had been in three other departments and agencies in the meantime. I suppressed all the feeling of futility and silliness I was experiencing and memorized by heart the content of my home department’s website. Fortunately, I’ve always had very good memorization skills, so at the interview I regurgitated word for word everything from the website. At one point I noticed from the body language of one of the senior executive on the jury (who was from my home department) that he didn’t even know about the departmental priorities and objectives I was discussing, so I dug even further. When I asked them if they wanted me to keep going, they told me they had enough for the purpose of the assessment (none of them were going to admit their own ignorance!). I nailed that interview and got my promotion.
That day I learned an extremely valuable lesson about what leadership means in a culture of compliance.
Monday, February 09, 2009
Random Thoughts on Talent Management
Take the quiz:
1. What do we mean by “talent management”?
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:
But I have to ask managers and senior executives:
What type of organization do you want to be?
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:
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:
Your thoughts?
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
- a) The so-called “best and brightest”
- b) Anyone with interests and talents that can be put to contribution
- How do you know who “best and brightest” are?
- How do you know you are not overlooking anyone who is actually talented?
- 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:
- Predominance of program and policies over good people management.
- People management is often an afterthought, and takes a backseat to all other priorities.
- Doing what is easily measurable rather than what is important.
- 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.
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
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:
- Alignment (with mission, values, strategy of the organization)
- Skill (to do the job)
- Interest (in the work)
- Attitude (whether disruptive or not)
- 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
- 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.
Your thoughts?
Monday, January 26, 2009
The challenge is on!
In case you missed it, the government blogosphere is welcoming a new member.
Yes Doug, I have noticed the blurb, and I will happily take it as an open challenge to improve my own performance! ;-) It will actually give me some extra motivation. After all, isn’t that what fellow bloggers are for?
Speaking of which, Mike Kujawski had a post this morning about Kaplan University’s latest ad. Coincidentally, I wanted to use another Kaplan U ad for my panel on talent management last week in Montreal.
When I pitched the idea of what I wanted to do with the ad to some of my friends, they advised me not to do it, because they doubted the crowd of senior executives would get it. However, they thought the readership of this blog would probably "get it".
So here’s the idea. Watch the ad, and then imagine a slightly different context: the DM comes to talk about talent management to a group of employees, and makes the following speech (adapted from the ad):
Inspiring or cheesy? You decide! ;-)
Yes Doug, I have noticed the blurb, and I will happily take it as an open challenge to improve my own performance! ;-) It will actually give me some extra motivation. After all, isn’t that what fellow bloggers are for?
Speaking of which, Mike Kujawski had a post this morning about Kaplan University’s latest ad. Coincidentally, I wanted to use another Kaplan U ad for my panel on talent management last week in Montreal.
When I pitched the idea of what I wanted to do with the ad to some of my friends, they advised me not to do it, because they doubted the crowd of senior executives would get it. However, they thought the readership of this blog would probably "get it".
So here’s the idea. Watch the ad, and then imagine a slightly different context: the DM comes to talk about talent management to a group of employees, and makes the following speech (adapted from the ad):
“We stand before you today to apologize. The system has failed you. We have failed you.
We have failed to help you share your talent with the PS and the PS needs your talent more than ever.
Yet it is being wasted everyday by management practices steeped in tradition and old ideas. It's time for a new tradition.
It's time to realize talent isn't just about the “best and brightest”. It's about everyone.
It’s time we learn from you and refrain from telling you what you ought to think and do, because we don’t always know what’s best.
It's time to rewrite the rules of talent management, to unleash your talent rather than contain it.
It's time to adapt the way we manage talent to your needs rather than forcing you to adapt to how we manage talent.
It's time for a different kind of talent management.
It's your time.”
Inspiring or cheesy? You decide! ;-)
Sunday, January 25, 2009
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:
Also, two more links related to my last post:
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:
Friday, November 21, 2008
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”:
(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.
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”:
- The hiring manager himself is on-the-spot to hire the employees (as opposed to a delegated report or an HR advisor);
- The Statement of Merit Criteria is well suited for on-the-spot assessment of the candidates by the manager.
- The manager is able to overcome any personal bias (positive or negative) with regards to gender, ethnicity, and other employment-equity-like characteristics.
- 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.).
- Whenever appropriate (read: most of the time!), the job offer is conditional to further background or reference check.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- There is ongoing and immediate feedback between the manager and the new hire to correct any behaviour that is not in line with expectations.
- The hiring manager is held fully accountable for the hiring decision and managing the performance of the employee.
(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.
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