Guest Post: Rachel On Communication For Managers

This is a guest post by Rachel from The Employment File.

Rachel posted her Deathbed Managerial Advice in response to my "5 Things to say to Managers" challenge. Then I challenged her on her #5 "COMMUNICATE".

I must have said something like "this is great advice, but how do you motivate managers to really communicate when most of them will say that their voice mail is always available and that they have an open door policy (they usually say this when they work in an open space)."

Without missing a beat, she sent back the article below and allowed me to publish it. Since I like to have the last word, I wrote back some feedback, but she qualified my suggestions as "selling and schmoozing" to managers.
...and she challenged me to write a follow up post on "selling an idea to managers".


HR Advice to Managers: Communication

Having your door open or your lines clear is not communicating. There's nothing wrong with being available for these types of communication, but they should not be your primary communication vehicle. Communication is a two way road. While on the one side of the road you have employees "driving" towards you, that lane should be relatively free. On the other side of the road, you're approaching the employee, that lane should be bumper to bumper traffic.

So, let's say that you're on the road and you're ready to initiate communication. If it doesn't happen in voice mail and email where does it happen? Hopefully it's face to face. However, we're aware that it's not always easy to get face time with an employee. You should have set times to communicate with the employee on a weekly basis and work "on the fly" on a day to day basis. It means stopping for a second and checking in. What do you check in about? Well, think of how angry you would be (or your spouse would be) if you came home from work every night, asked how their day was, and then moved on to read the paper. While this is communication, it is communication at a very basic level. This is not the level of communication you want to give your employees or your spouse. Instead of, "how are you" try something like "I know today must have been hard for you working alone. I want you to know I appreciated it." Or instead of "This is the new policy, make sure you follow it" try "Here's the new policy, take a day to read it and come up with questions and then we'll have a staff meeting where I can address your concerns." See the difference?

One of the best ways to communicate with an employee is to provide them with feedback. Everyone loves to be praised! Make sure you reinforce their behavior when they do something right. This does not mean going on about how your administrative assistant can measure coffee, it means telling that assistant that you appreciate her getting your coffee with a smile when you know she'd rather be working on a more challenging project. Now, the opposite of praise is criticism. Don't worry! People don't hate criticism as much as they say. Most people want to better themselves and the best way to do that is to receive criticism. Now how you communicate that criticism matters. Don't tell Jim that watching him do a presentation is like watching paint dry. Tell him that he should look into it, and then....give advice on how to do that. Make sure criticism is always followed by advice on how to improve. It's just good communication.

As for HR, since full communication can be difficult to maintain, we like to give you reminders to keep you on the right path.

Employees 2.0 And HR In General

This is a guest post from a friend of mine. He prefers to remain anonymous, but he swears that everything is true.

Thank you for writing all this stuff about HR "persons" being also employees, this really opened my eyes. It would never have occurred to me that people in HR are also employees (let aside humans).

Recently, I've heard the term "Employee 2.0". It's about the future employees who are now attending schools or universities and who use "new" technologies. The rationale goes like this: a company has to keep up with these "new" technologies and integrate them in the work flows as not to alienate the future workforce. The idea is that these employees will be more productive if they encounter familiar tools like Blogs, Podcasts, Wikis and YouTube clones.

Personally, I believe it's only an excuse for the IT guys to introduce new toys and seem innovative instead of solving the real problems. In my company, they even introduced something similar to YouTube and started a pilot with portable players for Podcasts. They're just crazy bastards!

Last week I met a friend who works at a company of the [bleep] group in [double bleep]. I was quite surprised at how much he praised their HR. It seems that they are not understaffed (maybe they don't have enough beds so some HR people actually have to do some work) and they do more than just hire and fire resources, sorry, employees. It seems they really help you plan your career at their company. This seems odd since I had never heard that this was a task for HR ?!?

Additionally, the yearly employee survey is at over 85% satisfaction and they want to introduce measures to increase it even more. In our company, HR gets a big bonus and starts partying if we are over the destructive mark (which actually hasn't happened in the last few years).

Turnover And Retention: Be Careful What You Google For

When researching information online, you can sometimes come up with true gems. But you'd better choose your search words wisely...

This was definitely not the kind of retention information I was looking for:

Determination of rumen fill, retention time and ruminal turnover rates of ingesta at different stages

(link leads to a pdf file).

Link: Career Advice For HR Professionals

The wise but evil HR Lady replied to a reader question from an HR professional who doesn't know how to continue his career.

The article is awesome as always and the comments are also full of great recommendations to think about:

• there's no clear career path for HR, but the possibilities are almost endless
• what do you really want and what are your strengths?
• management / leadership with a more strategic role or continue to get your hands dirty?
• ...and much more!

Funny fact: specialist / generalist is mentioned a few times. I don't know about other countries, but in Switzerland an "HR Specialist" is usually the most "generalist" you can get.

Turnover: A Quick And Dirty Online Search

A quick and dirty online search confirms that there's a lot of interest for turnover and that it's very difficult to calculate its costs.

Absolute costs of turnover
Many opinions about the costs of turnover range from 25% to 250% of a position's annual salary costs.

How to measure the costs of turnover
Elements that can be included in the calculation are:

• job ads
• recruiting agencies
• temporary staff
• salary of interviewers
• lost productivity
• training of new hire
  
• severance costs
• ...and many more

The Internet is also full of online tools for calculating the costs of turnover. Most of these tools are developed by consultants who will sell you their services once you realize how much money you loose due to turnover.

As everything out there in the Cloud, some tools may be very good while others are probably a joke. But they can give interesting input for developing one's own list of costs elements or calculation tools.

How much turnover is too much?
Specific figures are tricky since in one situation 10% can be a lot while in another it can be absolutely acceptable. A good idea could be to find info about the industry average or the turnover rates of direct competitors. But in general, an increasing turnover rate is mostly bad.

Why isn't turnover always bad?
A bad performer may be replaced with a better one (although it's usually the good ones who leave). Or an exit could give the opportunity to promote a rising star.

And I even heard that there are still a few companies where employees stay for 20 or more years. In this case low turnover can become very costly due to continuous salary raises over a long period of time. And since new employees often bring new ideas, innovation could also suffer.

Turnover or retention rate?
Some articles recommend to measure the retention rate instead of turnover. This way you can analyze who is leaving when and after how much time instead of just measuring how many percent of your staff are leaving.

What I learned from my short virtual trip

• turnover exists (I read about it on the Internet!)
• it costs a lot, but nobody really knows how much
  
• consultants love turnover
• zero turnover shouldn't be the goal
• "retention rate" sounds like something worth looking into
  

Quotes: Too Much TV

I've been watching some tv and stumbled across the following quotes:

First of all, a quote from The Patriot. I saw it on a German channel and when researching it online, I didn't find the final script (only drafts), but what I heard in the movie goes something like this:

A shepherd needs to be there for his herd. And sometimes, he also needs to keep the wolves away from the sheeps.
(The Reverend, when joining the militia)

What it tells me: I spontaneously thought of assholes. I'm currently reading Robert Sutton's book "The No Asshole Rule". Managers need to protect their employees from abusive jerks.

Don't take it personally, just take it seriously.
(Gordon Ramsay on Kitchen Nightmares, season 1 episode 9)

What it tells me: not often enough, but still occasionally, some people may tell us what they really think. Take it seriously, it's a great chance to learn something. Don't be annoyed, don't pout. Consider it. If they're wrong, forget about it and move on. But if they're right, do everything you can to learn from it and become a better person and a better professional.

There's 3 choices in this life: Be good, get good or give up.
(Dr. House to a dying punk-rocker on House, season 4, episode 9)

What it tells me: Some are born good at what they're doing. I don't know many of them. Others give everything they got to become great. But sometimes the best thing you can do is quit. And then you can focus all your energy on things that can really make you successful and happy.

This reminds me of Seth Godin's "The Dip: a little book that teaches you when to quit (and when to stick)".


That's all, folks.

Poll: Why did you start working in HR?

I love polls. "Do you like a, b, or c better?". Somebody wants to hear my opinion? No problem, here you go... But why did you start working in HR?

If you're anything like me, you won't be able to resist clicking on the little button.

The only downside: you have to go to the blog page (you can't vote from an RSS reader).

Admittedly, I've predefined the possible answers, but if you take this survey with a grain of salt, you will certainly have fun.

And if I get more than 10 answers, I will create a pie chart and post it on the Companion Page.