Performance
HR can be involved in exploring ways to foster both organizational and supervisory support of innovation through assisting with strategic business and individual goal setting while encouraging, supporting, recognizing and rewarding innovative individual and team contributions. Other ways HR can take a lead in this process include channeling the diversity of skills and experiences within the organization, as seen by human capital acquisition and retention strategies and processes, most notably through recruitment and training practices. Lastly, HR can be on the forefront assuring the development and support of policies and practices that encourage a workplace where creativity and innovation thrive.
Title 11 of the United States Code is referred to as the “Bankruptcy Code” or the “Code.” Title 11 consists of several chapters, of which Chapters 7 and 11 are the most applicable to organizations. Chapter 7 is specific to liquidations when an organization intends to close its doors. Chapter 11 deals directly with reorganization under the Code, in which the debtor seeks to rehabilitate and reorganize its financial structure. Chapter 11 permits organizations to propose an acceptable plan of reorganization to be voted on by its creditors. In light of the complexity of the provision, seeking legal counsel is encouraged. To begin the process, organizations must file a petition with the bankruptcy court, which constitutes an order of relief under this title. This toolkit offers a compilation of resources to help gain understanding of the elements of bankruptcy and offer guidance to successfully manage the bankruptcy process. This toolkit also covers the antidiscrimination component of the federal bankruptcy law, which protects employees and applicants from discrimination based on having filed for bankruptcy.
You are more likely to invite a neighbor to the party you’re hosting this weekend if they have previously invited you to one of theirs. You can be persuaded to leave the waiter a bigger tip if he places a piece of candy on the table along with your check. Fundraisers can increase the chances that you will make a contribution if they accompany their request itself with a small gift.
Continue reading about Seize the Persuasive Moment after “Thank You”
Given last week’s election results, it’s a good time to think about movements. Wikipedia defines a social movement as “A coordinated group action focused on a political or social issue.” That allows for quite a spectrum of movements. The civil rights movement was designed to bring equality to a system where it was it was [...]
Continue reading about Power and Politics: The Anatomy of a Movement
There are certainly no shortage of human resources consulting firms to choose from but you must make certain that the company you hire is able to do the things that you need done. You are looking for solutions to problems not a long-term contract with just any company that can provide services. Many of these [...]
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People often ask me to introduce them to others who are well connected or well respected in their fields. Strategically, when it makes sense, I’m all for putting them in touch with whomever I think can help their cause, personally or professionally. And yet, while I love making meaningful connections for people, I am extremely thoughtful about protecting colleagues’ and friends’ time or best interests — I don’t want to damage our relationship by pulling a fast one on you.
Continue reading about Being an Effective Gatekeeper: How to Keep Out the Riff-Raff
In the July/August HBR, Roger Martin argues that business is being held back by the idea that strategy development and execution are separate, and he recommends a choice-cascade model to overcome it.
The spotlight on the military in the November issue may be the place to pursue this important theme further. As may have become apparent to readers from some of the pieces written by officers in this issue, the military have worked out how to use a choice-cascade approach to deal with the problem Martin raises. They have also worked out what other elements are needed to make a choice-cascade effective. Readers may not be aware how long ago they did so and just how much of value can be learned from the approach, known today as mission command.
Continue reading about Mission Command: An Organizational Model for Our Time
Facebook wants you to become someone who attracts, wins, and manages a social network of friends and acquaintances while becoming more sharing and open about your own life. Google wants you to become someone always willing to take a few moments to tap a few keys to explore any question you might have around any topic you might be interested in. The iPad wants you to become someone who’s willing to touch and stroke your way to digital entertainment and information anywhere and anytime. The Kindle wants you to become a bookworm extraordinaire; a textually-tropic annelid who loves to read, annotate and share books and magazines.
Continue reading about The One Question All Innovators Need to Ask
President Obama’s trip to Asia has inspired a wave of worried commentary about America’s diminished standing in the world economy. And there’s no bigger worrier than New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who has spent the last few years sounding the alarm about the challenge to the West of the rise of East. Friedman normally focuses his anxiety on China, but this past Election Day, he looked at India and a new generation of startups poised to disrupt established business models.
Continue reading about New Business Models Are America’s Most Undervalued Export
Pensions were created to provide individuals a secure income for life. Traditionally, pensions have been the form of a guaranteed annuity payment to a retired or disabled employee or to a deceased employee’s spouse, children or other beneficiaries. Pension can come in two forms: defined benefits or defined contribution benefits. The defined benefit is determined by age, years of service, pay and other factors. The defined contribution benefit is where the employer and employee contribute to the pension plan. The contributions are placed in an account that grows through investments.
Many managers these days face a social dilemma. They want to use social media to get input from many different customers and employees, because they know that an organization’s judgment is improved if its ideation and decision processes incorporate insights from multiple perspectives. But they can’t bring themselves to let employees use social media at work, because they fear too much social activity will hinder productivity. While we’re all becoming familiar with tweets, profiles, writing on walls, and open online discussion, the key to turning those conversational activities into business value has been elusive.
Continue reading about Want Value From Social? Add Structure
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment Standards Administration, Wage and Hour Division, administers and enforces the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) for all private, state and local government employee and some federal employees. Most federal and certain congressional employees are also covered by the law and are subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management or the Congress.
Modern Human Resources is defined as the strategic leveraging of information technology, quality, leadership and employee knowledge, skills and abilities to consistently achieve the mission of the company and get one step closer to achieving the vision of the company everyday.
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Last week NBA legend-turned-entrepreneur Magic Johnson sold his Starbucks franchises back to the corporation for a reported $75 million. Rumor has it, he’s freeing up some cash to invest in a professional sports team (he also sold his stake in the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team).
About 12 years ago, Magic Johnson formed a joint venture franchise program with Starbucks (Urban Coffee Opportunities) to open coffee shops in developing urban areas such as Harlem. The goal was to reinvigorate under served neighborhoods with jobs. It was a a successful partnership. Under the Urban Coffee Opportunities, more than 100 Starbucks operate in under served urban neighborhoods across the country, including Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit ,Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C.
Continue reading about Dear Entrepreneur: Think Cash, Not Ideas
The High Overemployment Rate: ” In this tough economy, perhaps no single economic metric has gotten as much attention as the unemployment rate, stubbornly stuck near 9.6%. As Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria, writing in the November issue of HBR, observes, “In the United States, for example, the corporate sector — judging from most [...]
Bonus or no bonus? That is the question. This is the time of year where expectations are high, and so is the volume of chatter around the water cooler in anticipation of that great corporate tradition…The year-end bonus. So what’s it going to be this year…a turkey, an extra paid day off, a cash bonus, stock/options/warrants, something creative or nothing at all? Complicating matters further for CEOs attempting to determine what to do about bonuses is all the recent media attention and public outrage in regard to what is perceived by many to be excessive, frivolous compensation. In today’s post I’ll take a look at the well intentioned but often misguided practice of year-end bonuses…
Back in 1914 Henry Ford had the crazy idea of giving his factory workers a huge raise. He doubled the standard wage from $2.50 to a whopping $5. The business press excoriated him for his ‘five dollar day,’ but it turned out to be a brilliant move.
He had two reasons. The first, which he gave publicly, was that his new assembly-line system enabled him to produce far more cars than ever before. But after all that efficiency a Model T still cost $500, beyond the reach of most employees at Ford and elsewhere. With the huge raise he hoped to spark a movement to enable American workers to buy a car.
Getting Started
CCH Business Owner’s Toolkit:
Pros and Cons of Health Benefits
Which Benefits Should You Offer?
How to Find Benefit Providers
How to Negotiate Your Policy
You’ll never be a great leader without being loving and compassionate. While today’s post is a bit more kumbaya than most, please don’t check out on me because you perceive this topic too gooey and gushy to be relevant. If you take what follows to heart, it might just change your world. I saw a brief Twitter exchange yesterday between Becky Robinson and David Hutchens which piqued my curiosity. David asked Becky, “How come no one ever talks about love as a leadership competency?” I think it’s a great question. While love and leadership are certainly two words you don’t often hear in the same sentence, I can assure you that rarely does great leadership exist without love being present and practiced. In fact, if you examine failed leaders as a class you’ll find that a lack of love, misplaced love, or misguided love were a contributing cause of said failures, if not the root cause. In the text that follows I’ll examine the softer sides of leadership – love, compassion, humility, kindness and empathy.
If there is anything this nasty, fear-driven, dispiriting political season has demonstrated, it’s that no politician — Democrat, Republican, or otherwise — has any compelling solutions to what ails us. Even as partisan a figure as Jeb Bush is suggesting voters are feeling “disgust with the political class.’
We live in a world that has grown increasingly complex and contradictory, angry and fearful, polarized but utterly interdependent.
How, then, to feel more control over our destiny amid so many daunting challenges and so few clear answers?
Here are four very personal behaviors to consider, offered in a spirit of hopefulness and humility:
Continue reading about Fueling Positive Emotions in a World Gone Mad
The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) of 1985 mandates that employers that have with 20 or more employees and offer health coverage continue to offer employees benefits when they quit, are laid off or fired or have their work hours reduced. It should be noted, however, that when the employee has been terminated for gross misconduct, an employer is not required to offer continuation of benefits. Additionally, benefits must be offered to the employee’s spouse and dependents. COBRA benefits apply to health care plans, medical spending accounts, dental plans, vision plans, prescription drug plans, etc. Benefits may continue for up to 18, 24, 29 or 36 months, depending on the cause for the loss of benefits.
As much as some people won’t want to hear this, “help” is not a dirty word. Rather asking for help is a sign of maturity as a leader. So my question is this: Are you easy to help? Think about it…do you make it easy for others to want to help you, or is your demeanor such that most people won’t lift a finger to assist you in a time of need? How many times during the course of your career have you witnessed executives and entrepreneurs who desperately need help, but either don’t recognize it, or worse yet, make it virtually impossible for someone to help them? In today’s post I’ll address the importance of positioning yourself to be helped…
In my last post, I explained that process improvement programs that don’t focus on a company’s competitive advantage can be a huge waste of resources. Improving supply chain processes is strategically important for companies like Wal-Mart or FedEx that compete by providing customers consistent and low-cost products and services. But for companies like Apple and Nike whose competitive advantage is product innovation, world-class supply processes must be at competitive parity. Efficient supply chains aren’t the reason customers buy their products.
In any large enterprise, innovation presents an inherent challenge because, overwhelmingly, the processes, structures, and resources that guide people’s actions are optimized for the work that must be done well today. Healthcare organizations in particular must focus relentlessly on achieving error-free care, making it hard for their people to switch gears into the often messy and inefficient pursuit of tomorrow’s breakthroughs.
Continue reading about How The Mayo Clinic Invests in its Next Century of Innovation
Getting ready for the holidays: Can anyone handle that? We have enough trouble handling everyday life. Now throw in the gazillion obligations and distractions that fill mid-November through December, and you have a headache seemingly beyond remedy.
The issue? Never before in human history have we asked our brains to process as many data points per minute as we do today. We now process many orders of magnitude more data points every day than we did just 10 or 15 years ago
Continue reading about How to Buy Time for the Holidays — Free of Charge
Performance metrics are objective, quantitative numbers that compare actual performance to company goals. All metrics should be both valid and sound. The most common metrics in sales are revenue or profit per day, week, month and year by individual, group or organization. Plus conversion metrics like cost per lead, cost per sale, leads per appointment, shows per appointment, closes per show, net closing percentage after cancels, etc. Other common HR metrics are number of employees tardy, people sick, people on FMLA, number of overtime hours, department salary budget at 50% of revenue after product or inventory expenses, etc.
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The AFL was created in response to the Citizen’s Alliance, which used open shop and welfare capitalism to prevent union organization. Open shops were not really open, they were just anti-union. Welfare capitalism involved improving supervisory practices, implementing hiring and firing procedures, offering wage incentives, providing insurance benefits, encouraging a positive culture, improving work environment and safety and providing employee voice. The AFL stands for the American Federation of Labor and attempted to establish and maintain standards at work through work rules.
Tina Brown’s Triumph: ” The combination of Newsweek and The Daily Beast represents yet another career achievement for uber-editor Tina Brown. Following on the heels of her success at Vanity Fair and The New Yorker and her brief stint as founding editor of the now-closed Talk magazine, Brown has, over her 30-year career in the [...]
Unions, labor inequities, economies, human resources and legislation are in a constant state of flux. As with any other issues of discussion, unions have advantages and disadvantages. In this paper, I will discuss both the advantages and disadvantages of unions from the perspective of labor inequities, economic activity, human resources and labor legislation to shed some light on the future of labor relations and human resources.
Scope—The subject of managing for employee retention involves a company’s strategic actions to keep employees motivated and focused so they elect to remain employed and fully productive for the benefit of the organization. A comprehensive employee retention program can play an important role in both attracting and retaining key employees, as well as in reducing turnover and its related costs. All of these contribute to an organization’s productivity and overall business performance.
Staffing & Human Resource Consulting is about $18.4 billion industry today & is expected to grow even larger in the times to come. In this competitive world where optimum & proper resource for any job specification is the need of the hour, Manpower & Human Resource Consulting is a very handy tool for success. It [...]
Warning: Your Attention is Under Siege: ” So I’m watching ‘Morning Joe‘ while running on my treadmill this morning and Mika Brezezinski asks her co-host Joe Scarborough a question. He looks at her blankly. This is live television. Then he acknowledges that he was distracted by something that appeared on the iPad on his desk. [...]
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The notion that we can be excellent at anything prompted passionate debate. On the one hand, it’s empowering and inspiring to believe that excellence is within our reach in any area to which we devote ourselves with sufficient diligence — something the researcher Anders Ericsson calls ‘deliberate practice.’
Just think of how many movies — often based on true stories — tell the story of inspiring teachers, coaches and mentors helping undervalued kids become extraordinary performers: The Blind Side, Stand and Deliver, Lean On Me, Mr. Holland’s Opus, The Bad News Bears, and Dangerous Minds, among many others
Continue reading about Six Ways Leaders Can Fuel Excellence At Anything
Outsourcing is contracting out a department, business function, project or position to an external provider. In this sense, two organizations may enter a contractual agreement involving an exchange of services and payments. Whereas offshoring is contracting out to an external provider in a foreign county. In addition, several related terms have emerged to grasp various aspects of the complex relationship between economic organizations or networks, such as nearshoring, multisourcing and strategic outsourcing.
How much work is too much? How do you carve out time for family while continuing to be a top performer at the office? In this, the final installment in a seven-part series on personal productivity, Bob Pozen, chairman emeritus of MFS Investment Management and a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, talks to HBR’s Justin Fox about balancing work and life.
Pozen began to develop his approach while growing up in working-class Bridgeport, Conn. His dad was a BVD underwear salesman. The younger Pozen held down two jobs while playing basketball and tennis — and graduated first in his class at an inner-city high school where, he said, “academics were a low priority.” He then made his way through Harvard College and Yale Law School on a combination of scholarships and side jobs.
Continue reading about It’s Not the Time You Spend but the Result You Produce
I’ll never forget the Vice President of Sales who — after only five days on the job — sent a company-wide email calling all his coworkers “complete idiots,” swearing at senior management, and declaring he was walking out then and there. After that email, about 950 people who barely knew his name would forever remember him as “that guy who crashed and burned after only one week.”
This is the worst possible way to leave a job. This VP of Sales won’t get a reference, won’t be eligible for rehire, and will seal his reputation to throngs of former coworkers as the guy who lost it and walked off the job. Although sometimes it’s difficult to resist going out with a bang — especially if your departure is forced — it’s always in your best interest to part ways on good terms with the people you’ve worked with.
There are plentiful examples today of companies using design to create value for consumers and shareholders. Despite the growing interest in design across industries, there are also persistent misconceptions that keep many business leaders from realizing its potential in their organizations. Here are the most common ones:
Continue reading about Five Beliefs that Inhibit Good Design
Employee benefits in the United States constitute a large, complex and ever-changing set of programs. They are either mandated by federal and/or state law (such as Social Security, unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation) or voluntarily provided by the employer to help attract, retain and motivate employees and to contribute to the organization’s strategic objectives. Such voluntary benefits include pensions and other retirement income programs, health insurance, and paid time off. The distinction between mandated and voluntary benefits has become somewhat blurred in recent years, as the federal and state governments mandate requirements to all employers that once were voluntary (e.g., medical and family leave and state mandates to health insurance contracts).
Another distinction exists between the private and public sectors. Public sector employment practices, including benefits, have had somewhat of a separate development. Not-for-profit organizations, the “third sector,” are also different, but receive relatively little attention. This discussion will focus primarily on the private sector.
Jack Welch, a humble chemical engineer, tells us in his memoir why he was able to make strategic decisions all across GE’s portfolio, from nuclear power to the nightly news. The essential character trait at the heart of Welch’s story is simple: integrity. Integrity was ‘our No. 1 value,’ he writes in this book. ‘We never had a corporate meeting where I didn’t emphasize integrity in my closing remarks.’
Continue reading about The American Leader’s Love Affair with Integrity
While the 2004 average turnover rate for all industries was 18%, the top three industries with the highest turnover were retail, service (profit) and service (nonprofit) with annual turnover rates of 34%, 24% and 22%, respectively. All those figure translate into millions or billions of dollars in lost revenue.
Did Mark Zuckerberg start Facebook friending because he was unable to make friends? That’s the main theme of the hit film The Social Network. Zuckerberg didn’t care about money, several say; he was compensating for a lack of friends.
Did Evan Williams, who just stepped aside as CEO of Twitter, jump on the bandwagon of an instant communication site because he is quiet and slow to make decisions? That’s an inference that can be drawn from a New York Times profile.
These could be examples of entrepreneurship as compensation for personal weaknesses and inner misery. Strategy-as-psychology might be back in fashion.
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With the economy in a tailspin that some experts say will take months, if not years, to recover from, companies are more concerned than ever about maximizing the effectiveness of their staff. Performance management (PM) is moving front and center as less emphasis is placed on hiring new staff, while more is being placed on utilizing the staff that are already on board effectively.
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Let’s start with what we know: After a dispute with her supervisor, an employee, Dawnmarie Souza, made disparaging remarks about the supervisor on her Facebook page. In response to this status update, other employees of American Medical Response of Connecticut, posted comments supporting Ms. Souza and criticizing the supervisor. American Medical subsequently fired Ms. Souza, claiming she had violated company policy, which disallowed any employee from depicting the company in any way on social media websites without permission.
Continue reading about When Are Facebook Updates a Firing Offense?
The U.S. government will spend more than $25 billion on health-care-related IT as part of the health care reform bill passed by Congress in March of 2010. The goal is to help make the extraordinarily complicated, fragmented U.S. health care system more interconnected and efficient. Where should they look for ideas? Poor countries, surprisingly enough. [...]
Continue reading about An Innovation for the Poor That Should Open Eyes
I was talking with a colleague about gaming when I heard these phrases come out of my mouth. I run a digital research centre in a city, Vancouver, that’s a serious player in the gaming industry. That means I’m one of the few people who worries that I don’t spend enough time playing video games. Sure, I have a few games on my iPhone, but as I told my colleague, I’ve got better things to do with my time, like catching up on Twitter. I’ve got a Wii, but at my age, it’s way easier to see the point of blogging than the value of World of Goo. I got a Playstation 3 so that I could play Uncharted 2 &38212; all the hype about the latest generation of truly cinematic games made it sound like an important development — but hey, I don’t need to become a champion gamer.
Continue reading about Countering the Excuses for Avoiding Social Media (and Video Games)
The purpose of assembling a team is to accomplish bigger goals than any that would be possible for the individual working alone. The aim and purpose of a team is to perform, get results and achieve victory in the workplace and marketplace. The very best managers are those who can gather together a group of individuals and mold them into a team. Here are ten key differentials to help you mold your people into a pro-active and productive team.
The Boston Globe recently listed the 30 highest-paid CEOs in Massachusetts, a list filled with six- and seven-figure salaries, with some apparently paid more than their companies showed in earnings last year and many pocketing substantial bonuses despite dismal or at least declining performance. Juxtaposed with these was a chief executive named John Hatsopoulos, cofounder and former head of Thermo Electron, whose annual salary at each of the two young energy companies he now runs is $2.
Continue reading about Ask Not What Your Company Can Do for You…
Is microfinance the new subprime? We’ve been hearing that portentous analogy for years, and now that the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh is riveting the world with stories of loan-shark-style microfinanciers driving borrowers to suicide, the claim has taken on fresh currency. Considering the industry’s growing commercialization, it is an obvious comparison to draw. But the most obvious metaphors are not always the most appropriate ones, and sloppy metaphors can easily drive bad policy.
Respect Employees: Be Tough on Them: ” There’s a painful new-employee moment in the PBS documentary ‘Circus,’ and it really resonated for me. A veteran clown at the Big Apple Circus is showing a recent hire the extremely subtle difference between the wrong and right ways to remove a hat in front of an audience. [...]
Defined Contribution Plans, also known as 401(k) plans, were created under the defined contribution plans section of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC), (hence the name 401(k)) in 1978. 401(k) did not gain general acceptance until 1981 when IRS final regulations were issued. 401(k) predecessors, 401(m) plans, were defined contribution plans which offered no pre-tax advantages for employees. Contributions were made on a post-tax basis and the plans had no provisions for hardship distributions. As a result, 401(m) plans were not widely popular. Following the introduction of 401(k) plans, similar IRC changes to permit pre-tax defined contribution plans for tax exempt organizations and schools, universities, and research institutions (403(b) plans) and tax exempt and public sector organizations (457 plans) took place.
It is tempting to look on the current foreclosure procedural moratorium as a reprieve for desperate homeowners, giving them more time in their homes. But a sustained backlog not only undermines any housing recovery, it threatens the entire economy, putting the country at risk for another recession — the dreaded double dip.
Continue reading about Foreclosure Crisis Provides Opportunity for Bankruptcy Reform
President Obama’s upcoming trip to India is probably the most highly mediatized presidential visit ever. The fact that the trip comes so soon after a “shellacking” in the mid-term elections makes it even more important. Expectations are running high in both the US and India with geopolitical experts and media pundits comparing the visit to Nixon’s trip to China in 1972, which ushered in a new era in US-China relations. Larry Summers, Obama’s outgoing economic advisor, is even calling for the so-called Beijing Consensus to be replaced by a “Mumbai Consensus” as India is poised to eclipse China’s economic growth by 2015.
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Greater demands than ever before are being put on U.S. military service persons—whether active duty, reserve or National Guard. The United States has had hundreds of thousands of troops deployed in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq for longer than the duration of World War II. These deployments have relied heavily on reserve and National Guard troops drawn out of civilian jobs. The larger “war against terrorism” has no foreseeable end; moreover, hardly a month goes by without a state governor calling on National Guard units to respond to a natural disaster somewhere in the United States.
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If corporate growth is what you seek, but you lack the patience to endure the slow pace of organic growth, and don’t have the capital necessary to finance an acquisition binge, then you might want to consider the many benefits associated with partnering. While the concept of creating a strategic partnership is familiar to many, the reality is that few companies take advantage of them. Let me offer the initial disclaimer that the subject of today’s post is a complex area that would require much more in depth coverage to do it justice. That said, in the text that follows I’ll provide an overview of the many reasons why partnering should be included as a key component of your corporate growth strategy…
This book shows us “How habits affect our character” and “how character affects our destiny”.1 It encourages us to live by specific “principles”, which represent the seven habits of highly effective people.2 There are many more principles that contribute to your overall success, but these ones are specifically geared to help you build a foundation for maturity, accomplishing your goals, and continuous growth. The seven habits help us develop into highly effective people by living them everyday.
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For many employers, a health care strategy means one thing: Managing and containing health benefit costs. Yet it can, and should, be so much more. “Health care strategy should be a piece of the organization’s overall total rewards strategy,” said Gary Kushner, SPHR, president and CEO of consulting firm Kushner & Co. in Portage, Mich. Yet given so many uncertainties, by necessity “health care strategy is more of a process at this stage than a set of preconceived conclusions,” he observed.
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Performance Management is crucial to aligning company goals with compensation, staffing and retention. Without performance reviews, companies do not have a formal plan for improvement and accountability. A well-defined performance review will focus the employee on the critical few metrics necessary for success in their position. Whether they are an accountant, a receptionist, a manager or a sales person, each person is part of the team and their performance affects the company’s performance as a whole. If you want a high performing company, you need high performing employees. Most people have not heard of performance budgets; I created them as a useful management tool for making objective decisions about raises and terminations. Objective performance evaluations also give people a map for improving their performance, which creates loyalty, higher compensation for the employee and the company and lower turnover (Job 2008). Generally higher performing employees result in higher retention and lower turnover and staffing. The cost of hiring and training someone new can vary by position. However, $20,000 per person is a reasonable estimate. If you multiple that amount by your yearly turnover, you can see the financial impact of staffing, retention and turnover. Likewise, if you use SMART evaluations and budgets to improve performance, you can increase the profitability of the company. Although this paper is not focused on performance management, you can definitely see the tremendous impact performance reviews and compensation have on strategic staffing and achieving company goals.
Unemployment benefits, established in 1935 as part of the Social Security Act, provide a temporary source of income to unemployed individuals. Unemployment benefit is administered by each state and is funded through employer’s taxes. States set the requirements on who is eligible to receive benefit, how long an individual must wait to receive benefits and how much of a benefit is received. They also determine which circumstances disqualify an individual for benefits. When a former employee is disqualified for benefits, the employer is not charged.
Pulling for the Long Term: ” The Big Shift presents many challenges, including developing new practices and institutions. But from our experience, the greatest challenge will be creating a new mindset, one that stands in stark contrast to the dominant mindset of the push world. A mindset is comprised of assumptions (in this case about [...]
“Retail Is War Without Blood”: What Foot Locker’s CEO Learned in the Army: ” This post is part of an HBR Spotlight examining leadership lessons from the military. Ken Hicks, the CEO of Foot Locker, formerly the president and chief merchandising officer of J.C. Penney’s, graduated from the United States Military Academy and spent six [...]
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The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 ( HIPAA ) is a federal law that established guidelines for protecting private personal health information (protected health information, or PHI). Covered entities such as an employer’s health plan, health care providers and health care clearinghouses must protect identifiable health information that is transmitted electronically, by paper or via verbal communication. HIPAA provides individuals with more control in how their information may be used. Authorization must be received before identifiable information is used or disclosed. Employers can no longer just provide identifiable information to an insurance broker. Steps must be taken to make sure the information is no longer identifiable.
For the past year, I’ve been interviewing entrepreneurs and business-builders as part of a book project. Their successes have inspired me, but so have their failures. In the course of interviewing them, I’m constantly reminded of the need for humility. Through this quest to learn more about the elements and principles that drive business-building success, we have met people who have reached the highest echelons of their peer groups and have made the various lists…
The “Q12″questions, dubbed by Buckingham and Coffman, were key to Best Buy’s findings. As Buckingham notes: “We had grown tired of not being able to convince executives that treating employees well makes them more productive. We set out to prove that if your Q12 scores go up, you’ll lose fewer people, face fewer worker-compensation cases, suffer less shrinkage, and earn higher profits.”
Human Resources Consultants in Los Angeles and Bakersfield, California provide comprehensive assistance in human resources management. These solutions are complete and cost-effective, and are typically offered by a PEO or Professional Employer Organization. With assistance from HR consultants, your company can divert its resources to core tasks alone and ensure greater productivity and earnings at [...]
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The workplace health toolkit was designed to put in one location resources HR practitioners can use to manage work-related health issues. From drug testing to communicable diseases, employee assistance to government standards, sick building syndrome to safety, mental health issues to wellness programs, HR practitioners will find the resources they need to administer and effectively manage workplace health concerns. This toolkit offers such resources as white papers, guides, FAQs’, sample policies, applicable federal agency laws and regulations, and workplace health calculators.
Last week, I visited India. It’s such a big, diverse place that I can’t help but leave each trip with some new observations. This time, I observed how the country’s infrastructure affects everything, at a hospital that had many of the trappings of a modern hospital that you would see in the West — until the power flickered out.
I also saw firsthand evidence that Winston Churchill was right when he said ‘India is a geographical term.’ I visited two states I had never visited before, and quickly noted their unique culture, food and dialects. Even more striking is the urban-rural divide in India (though, the peals of laughter of children at school in rural India sound like the peals of laughter of children anywhere in the world).
Continue reading about Innovators: Live the Market to Know the Market
The goal of human resource (HR) management is to maximize the utility of an organization’s human capital. According to Human Resource Management, 10th Edition, by Mathis and Jackson, HR management is “the design of formal systems in an organization to ensure effective and efficient use of human talent to accomplish organizational goals.” Whether in the public- or private-sector, HR management professionals share this goal. Circumstances surrounding the practice will be different, but the profession itself is the same.
Pharma giant Pfizer recently announced a $350 million partnership with Biocon, one of Asia’s leading biotechnology companies. The deal gives Pfizer the exclusive rights to commercialize Biocon’s biosimilar versions of insulin. (For full disclosure: Dr. Prasad Kaipa, one of the authors, headed up the Biocon Cell for Innovation Management at the Indian School of Business till April 2010)
It took me a couple of years after I left the academic world and went into the business against my will (long story, not interesting) to realize how much I hated one particular aspect of my old life: The academics I had been hanging out with seemed to spend every minute of their life with one another trying to show that they were the big dog in the room. I’m certain this was worse because I was in philosophy where there is no objective measure of truth and so few external markers of success. So, you are constantly being challenged to show that your ideas are unique and uniquely valuable. This resulted in a typical form of conversation that accepts what was just said as obvious and that then shows how your own thinking is far more profound: ‘Well, yes of course that’s right, but only if one fails to notice that ____.’
I write and talk a lot about Enterprise 2.0 and the new cornucopia of technologies that let people come together, interact, and collaborate with virtually no preconditions. No workflows, no set division of labor or roles and responsibilities, no concept of hierarchy. It would be easy to read my book or listen to a few [...]
The CEOs said they want HR to be part of a team of corporate executives who spend time with customers, understand their multinational businesses, and who are prepared to rotate through other functions to get the breadth of experience necessary to make their companies successful.
Continue reading about CEOs Say HR Plays Critical Role in Growing Businesses Globally
“Customer experience” has become a very commonly used phrase in recent years, but like “innovation” and “design” it is actually difficult to find a clear, commonly-held definition, even though many businesses see improving their customer experience as a competitive differentiator. How we can really improve something if we can’t even define it? This is the first in a series of posts looking at customer experience — what it encompasses, how to structure it, how to approach and improve it.
Human resource audits involve a company’s strategic actions to take an intensely objective look at its HR policies, procedures and practices. This type of comprehensive review of the company’s current state can help to identify whether specific practice areas or processes are adequate, legal and/or effective. The results obtained from this review can help to identify gaps in HR practices, and these gaps can then be prioritized for attention in an effort to minimize lawsuits and/or regulatory violations, as well as to achieve and maintain world-class competitiveness in key HR practice areas.
After years spent acquiring and organizing gigabytes of data about the workforce, HR’s challenge is to provide business leaders with actionable information that helps them make decisions about people with the same kind of rigor, logic and facts they use to make decisions about investments, marketing strategies and new products.
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You know you have leadership potential and can take on responsibilities far beyond your current role. But how can you ensure that others notice your managerial expertise? In this blog post, HBS Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter offers six ways to move beyond your job description, stand out from the crowd, and lead organizational success.
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The Three Threats to Creativity: ” Creativity is under threat. It happens whenever and wherever there’s a squeeze on the ingredients of creativity, and it’s happening in many businesses today. According to the Labor Department’s most recent stats, productivity is up. But stretching fewer employees to cover ever more work in our job-starved recovery is [...]
I was on a plane, flying back to New York from California where I’d spent the week in an intense workshop, The Radically Alive Leader, led by Ann Bradney. In the aisle across from me, a mother was sitting with her two daughters, one about five years old, the other about seven. I happened to look over as the mom was working with the younger daughter on a math problem. I listened for a moment…
What is the single most important driver of success for a company to turn the commercial promise of social media into solid dollars? To find out, we studied 34 organizations from a variety of industries, ranging from providers of telecommunication services, to pharmaceutical manufacturers, to temporary placement agencies, and to direct marketers of consumer goods. We found it all boils down to leadership — specifically leaders who can build communities both inside and outside their companies.
“Most people treat outsourcing as a zero-sum game—one foreign worker replaces one American worker. But this is not how the dynamic global economy works. In 2007, Matthew Slaughter, an economist at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, published a comprehensive study of the hiring practices of 2,500 U.S.-based multinational companies.
Continue reading about Outsourcing and Insourcing Both Create U.S. Jobs
An HR professional may have personal liability for participation in employment actions under federal, state and local employment laws, depending on how the term “employer” is defined in the particular employment law and interpreted by courts. There may also be personal liability for HR professionals under common law. You can help protect yourself from liability by complying with all applicable employment laws, following your company’s policies and procedures and consulting legal counsel for definitive guidance for complicated situations.
Since Coco Chanel unveiled her iconic black dress in Paris in 1926, that little black dress has become a clothing essential in every woman’s wardrobe.
In a similar vein I have been working with an international research team for the last decade to discover the essentials of management. This team — from the Harvard Business School, Cambridge University, the London School of Economics, McKinsey & Company, and Stanford University — has surveyed over 10,000 firms in over 20 countries, interviewed hundreds of CEOs, and even run multimillion dollar management field experiments in an unparalleled research effort to reveal some basic practices that every manager should follow.
Continue reading about Management’s Little Black Dress: Essential Practices for Leaders
I admit I’m a process improvement enthusiast. I’m continually tempted to believe that all companies need to improve all their processes all the time. As I argued in my first post in this series, organizations, like people, need to maintain fitness. But even I have to admit that sometimes, process improvement is irrelevant.
Process improvement programs that do not expressly target competitive advantage are doomed to fail. This may sound like common sense, but it happens far too frequently. Process improvement zealots often warn senior managers of the need to continually assess and improve processes everywhere in the organization. They project a religious and indiscriminate tone that can lead to improving the wrong activities and ignoring the ones that matter.
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Travel can be the bane of an otherwise well-organized life. It can disturb your routine, rob you of sleep, mess up your diet. Or not. In the sixth of a series of posts on personal productivity, Bob Pozen, chairman emeritus of MFS Investment Management and a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, tells HBR’s Justin Fox about his approach to travel. (The original conversation this series was based on took place in May; so when Pozen says ‘last week,’ he means a while ago.)
Continue reading about Business Travel With Eyeshades and Flashlights
Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal reported that more and more companies have begun to worry that their automated call centers have left their customers frustrated, dissatisfied, even angry. We’ve all had the same mind-numbing experience: You dial a toll-free number looking for answers to a question about a home appliance, or a credit-card statement, or a banking problem, and you get one of those computer-generated voice prompts: ‘Press 1 for product information, press 2 to check on an order, press 3…’ You make your choice, get another computer-generated voice prompt, and so it goes for 10 or 20 minutes. The process is inhuman by design, and often ineffective when it comes to solving simple problems.
Continue reading about Press “3″ if Automation Is Making You Crazy
For four years in the early 1980s, John Meyer spent most of his time in an underground bunker with only one other person, 150 nuclear warheads, and an enormous amount of responsibility. He’s now the CEO of Acxiom, a marketing services and technology company. HBR asked him about how his early career in the Air Force prepared him to lead a company.
Continue reading about Training for Nuclear War and the C-Suite
There are many advantages to having an HRIS from going paperless to saving trees and money from reducing the companies paperwork footprint. The best HRIS systems can do the work of several people giving modern HR the time to focus on strategic goals like performance management (Hackman 1976).
Human resource management is among the most important aspects of managing an organization. Be it a small or medium sized business, their success depends upon the way they manage their resources. Unfortunately, it is not possible for all small and medium sized enterprises to have a separate HR department, so they prefer to outsource their HR processes to human resource consultants. These consultants play a major role for the growth and success of these businesses.
It’s gospel that you have to cultivate your personal brand, particularly if you have designs on the C suite. But because everyone has a brand nowadays (Tom Peters describes it as ‘your promise to the marketplace and the world’) simply having one is insufficient if you want to advance. You can’t just be known as “the guy who speaks Spanish” or “the programmer who can explain things well” or “that woman in legal who gets things done fast.” That’s nice — but there are a million of you, and in a globalized world, your company can find an alternative to you fast. That’s why you need to establish yourself as a thought leader. Good employees and good executives are nice to have. Thought leaders are irreplaceable — and indispensible.
Continue reading about How to Become a Thought Leader in Six Steps
One of the biggest problems businesses face today is developing an employee benefit plan that not only follows all state and federal regulations, but is also superior to the plans offered by rivals. These days, offering competitive salaries isn’t enough to attract and retain top employees. Instead, companies need to incorporate packages that encompass viable retirement plans, excellent health insurance, and efficient payroll services. HR Consulting, a national leader in human resource consulting services, allows you to do all that and more.
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A Rolls-Royce engine blows up, and … silence — for four days. The great British engineering company took its time to find out what had happened to the Trent 900 engine mounted on the wing of a Qantas A380 superjumbo, which had to make an emergency landing in Singapore a few days ago. The company preferred to offer facts rather than speculation. Its brief statement on Monday, declaring that progress was being made in the investigation, calmed investors, initially. By Friday it had identified the faulty component. So not too much harm done. Probably.
You’re probably wondering when and how fast the economy is likely to recover for a lot of reasons like: when are sales likely to increase, or when should I hire more employees. Every business is different, but overall you should see the following occur within a reasonable margin for error. These figures were created from historical unemployment data from 1976 to Dec. 2009. These projections are purely economic-based.
Continue reading about Projected California Unemployment From 2010 to 2020
Volatility, complexity, and ambiguity—business leaders in every industry face daunting market conditions—the same challenges that military personnel face. Learn how your company can develop leaders who can tackle any situation by adopting the U.S. Army’s always-on approach to training.
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This article lists several real life examples about how outsourcing and offshoring improve profitability and create jobs. According to SHRM the average HR Manager in 2010 earns $75,000 a year as an exempt employee and the average HR Generalist earns $55,000 per year. Small business with 50 employees or more need a part-time HR Manager for a variety of reasons. However, many companies hire an HR Generalist to fill the role of the HR Manager to save money. It’s also common for companies to have a receptionist, general manager or an administrative person fill the role with no education or experience in employment law, performance management, risk management, etc.
Continue reading about How Outsourcing Improves Profitability and Creates U.S. Jobs
How Engineers Manage Uncertainty: ” The microfabrication facility in Taiwan produced thousands of integrated circuits or microchips, designed for pacemakers. But 5% of these microchips could not be used because their performance metrics fell outside an acceptable region of safety. They were made in the same production step, at the same time, with the same [...]
A brand represents a company’s promise to its customers. It articulates to the world who the company is and what it delivers. The people who deliver on that promise are employees. As a result, making sure they understand and can deliver the brand to customers is vital—especially for companies within the service industry, where the relationship between employees and customers is key.
Financial Professionals Weigh in on Global Reforms: ” As world leaders were making their way to Seoul for the G20, I had my own opportunity this week for some deep discussion of Basel III, financial regulatory reform, and the reshaping of the banking industry — and of other topics, like the future of rating agencies [...]
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Five Ways to Get Out of the Rut and Get Moving: ” Stuck. That’s how slow growth economies make everyone feel. Just when companies need fresh ideas and strategies to secure the future, employees are overloaded and disengaged. Organizations in every field need innovative approaches. Here are a variety of ways to climb out of [...]
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Analysis shows incompetent interviewing skills blamed for poor employee performance and bottom line resultstwelve December 2007o74% of people inside business use poor interviewing techniqueso35% of poor interviewing techniques end in poor performance in employeeso24% believe it affects bottom lineo33% of interviewers are poorly trainedo25% of interviewers pay more than forty minutes making ready for an [...]
The subject of managing organizational communication encompasses both formal and informal communications throughout an organization, including communications to employees, with employees and from employees to upper management. This discussion reviews the basics of effective organizational communication, the importance of a communication strategy, the role of different communicators within the organization, types of messages and vehicles, training for better communication, and methods for measuring results.
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Briefly, leaves can be divided into two classes. First are involuntary leaves which occur when an employer is subject to leave requirements due to federal or state law. The second class involve voluntary leaves, governed by organizational policies and which reflect the organization’s philosophies in terms of leave allowances. These class distinctions can become confusing due to the fact that many employers permit various types of leaves to run concurrently, i.e., an individual may be on Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) leave, workers’ compensation leave and an approved voluntary leave simultaneously. In classifying leaves, they can further be differentiated into those that are paid, unpaid or a combination of paid, partially paid and unpaid leaves. Pay status is important while on leave since benefits plan continuation (where required or offered) require that additional steps be taken to ensure that employee contributions for such benefits are adequately communicated and administered.
AndrewRichardWebmaster level: intermediate A few weeks ago, we introduced Page Speed Online, a web-based performance analysis tool that gives developers optimization suggestions. Almost immediately, developers asked us to make an API available to integ…
Continue reading about Page Speed Online has a shiny new API
Webmaster level: intermediateAt Google, we’re striving to make the whole web fast. As part of that effort, we’re launching a new web-based tool in Google Labs, Page Speed Online, which analyzes the performance of web pages and gives specific sugges…
Continue reading about Introducing Page Speed Online, with mobile support
Not long ago a senior HR executive confessed to me that her company’s succession planning and talent management processes didn’t work very well. She also expressed frustration that her team had spent countless hours studying other well-known companies and had copied most of the best features, but somehow what worked elsewhere didn’t work for her company.
More recently I met with a senior team to share ideas about reducing complexity — and during the course of the conversation I talked about how GE had developed the Work-Out approach to build a culture of simplification. Several of the executives quickly remarked that they had tried Work-Out in their organization already, but it didn’t produce any results. Again, what had worked in one company hadn’t worked in another.
Continue reading about Why Best Practices Are Hard to Practice
Demonstrating his molecular gastronomic prowess at a business innovation conference in Bilbao, Basque-born cook Eneko Atxa made a throwaway comment about how his kitchen was able to recreate the rich aromas of the sea for a special oyster dish: ‘I called the local university for help.’
Being the talented young ‘chef of the future’ at a Michelin-starred restaurant doesn’t hurt, of course. But the enraptured crowd of salivating Spaniards didn’t fully grasp Atxa’s ingredient for innovation success. Pick a tasty, provocative problem. Pick a problem that gets academics excited.
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I work for a company with an open-door policy. Open doors send an excellent message about collaboration and transparency. But they are tough on the ears and concentration. I hear the office printer and copier chug away every few minutes. Chats from the conference room and kitchen — both six paces from my door — waft in, along with ringing phones, voices in the hallway, speaker phone conversations, and other sounds of a busy publishing office. Semi-protected by three walls, and a door I can close if needed, I have it better than my colleagues who work in cubicles.
We learn in elementary economics that organizations must work hard to meet the needs of their customers. But meeting customer needs is not enough. You must exceed needs if you want to remain relevant. Technology disrupts the habits of the customers so quickly that if you focus on needs, you will never be an industry leader. You can’t keep early adopters loyal by just meeting their needs. They want more from you.
They want you to understand their expectations. Even if you have met their needs, they want more. Your heating customers want green solar energy, but all they can afford is dirty coal so that is what you give them. You have met their immediate needs, but they expect you to do more, quickly. Agile firms serve that expectation and retain their customers.
Continue reading about Mastering the Apple Game of Customer Perception
The Medicare reforms that become effective on January 1, 2006, constitute the most dramatic changes to U.S. health care in four decades. The introduction of Medicare Part D not only provides retirees with prescription drug coverage, but also reduces eligible retirees’ financial risk by approximately two-thirds, with roughly one-third subsidized by the government. This creates a unique opportunity for employers to restructure their retiree coverage.
What role should an employer play in preparing for the retirement of its employees? How can employers best prepare their employees and their organizations for retirement of their workers? According to a survey conducted by Fidelity Institutional Retirement Services, “workers demonstrate a clear need for more assistance as they prepare to retire. Employers can address this need by taking a more active role in helping their employees successfully navigate the retirement transition.” The 2005 survey also reported that 92% of respondents who used their company’s pre-retirement assistance and related resources found the guidance to be valuable, including 32% who said that they “could not have made the transition without it.”
There are a variety of innovative options employers use to help resolve work/life issues. Here is an overview of some of these solutions.