When our house was robbed last year, it caused us to re-evaluate how we secured our valuables. An alarm system, window locks, and security doors have been put in place to help secure our most valuable possessions. We feel safer, but we know that regardless of the measures we implement, we are still vulnerable.
Your organization is vulnerable too. And the thieves who want to steal from you are not looking for televisions and electronics. They are looking to poach your best people. Talent thieves are on the prowl and it’s important to think about your security measures.
Why the rash of talent theft? Economists are beginning to predict an economic recovery. Politicians are claiming that we are “out of the woods.” The evening news is reporting upward trends. We’ve been waiting to hear the good news for years and it’s finally beginning to trickle in. With each positive report, employees are considering their options. Sixty percent of employees in a Manpower survey said they intend to leave their current employer. Pent-up frustration with years of low or no pay increases, benefit cuts, and few opportunities for promotion naturally lead to increased turnover.
Competition for top talent is fierce. Your top performers now have options and the thieves are looking to steal them from you. But you can hold the competition at bay. Here are five tips for fending off the thieves so you can retain your superstars.
Be Competitively Fair. Pay matters. If your compensation plan is not competitive with the marketplace, you will lose talent. But being competitive doesn’t mean you have to pay more than every other employer. It means that the pay you offer is fair and reflects what the job is worth relative to the market. Once the fairness issue is addressed, retention is more about the work itself and how employees feel working for you. Read the rest of this entry »
In many organizations summer brings the opportunity for a mid-year performance review. At the least, it offers a good time to “touch base” with employees, to revisit and revise annual performance goals and to recognize contributions so far. What makes a good mid-year performance conversation?
Your focus is on the employee’s performance, not on the person. The conversation should concentrate on highlighting what the employee has accomplished so far and on what they will be charged with achieving in the remainder of the year. When you direct the conversation on the person, they are likely to become defensive. When you focus on the work and the employee’s results, the conversation will likely remain productive.
You encourage and expect the employee to participate. Rather than doing all the talking, ask questions that invite the employee to identify what they’ve accomplished so far and what they have yet to achieve. Ask for their ideas. Challenge them to identify ways to make the rest of the year a success.
Your focus is on the future, rather than on the past. Even though it may be a mid-year “review” it doesn’t have to be all about the past six months. Highlight the employee’s accomplishments and/or challenges, but spend the majority of the time creating a plan for the balance of the year. Make adjustments to the original plan so the employee has a clear path forward.
What should you talk about during the mid-year review? Try this question-driven agenda to guide your conversation and take notes on what you hear from the employee:
What goals have been accomplished so far?
What goals still need to be accomplished?
Which goals are no longer relevant? Should they be revised or deleted?
What new projects or issues have cropped up that should be represented as new goals?
What do you need to be able to accomplish the goals that remain for the rest of the year?
What challenges do you expect? How can I help you?
What else should we be talking about to help you be successful?
After exploring these questions, you can bring up issues, ideas, and concerns that the employee has not raised. The key is to focus on the future, rather than rehashing the past.
Mid-year reviews give you the opportunity to summarize the employee’s contributions and to refocus and adjust. Don’t miss the opportunity.
At the recent Transforming Local Government conference, sponsored by the Alliance for Innovation nearly 650 local government leaders converged to share ideas for innovating in the public sector. The Alliance is founded on the idea that innovators inspire each other by sharing their visions and best practices. This gathering did just that.
Creative, motivated public leaders say interesting and thought provoking things when you put them in a room together. Here are a few of the most intriguing statements I heard/saw at this year’s conference:
“What if cities sought to not just inform but to inspire?” –tweet from @KUPMC
“Voting is a ritual.” – Dr. John Nalbandian, University of Kansas, Department of Public Administration
“We must value the preciousness of others.” – J. Michael Wilkes, City Manager, Olathe, Kansas
“There’s a mystical power to having a sense of where you want to go. – Glen Hiemstra, keynote speaker
“Define the process before you start the process or spend your money on consultants.” – tweet from @skcopeland
“The process of innovation produces more innovation over time.” – Dr. Janet Denhardt, Chet Newland Chair, USC Price School of Public Policy
“Innovation comes from unplanned spontaneous change.” – Dr. John Nalbandian
“Attendees at TLG 2012 are here because they want to make a difference, not just to get educational credits.” – tweet from @TheClintonO Read the rest of this entry »
J. Michael Wilkes, City Manager of Olathe, Kansas recently facilitated a fascinating session on organizational culture at the Alliance for Innovation’s Transforming Local Government Conference. The event brought together the best and brightest local government leaders to share ideas for making cities and counties better. Wilkes asked workshop attendees how they engage their employees to create positive organizational culture. The ideas flowed like a river. Here are a few of the practices that were shared:
Establish an Employee Committee to field issues of any kind. The committee is free to explore whatever issues are most critical for employee satisfaction.
Create a “Let’s Save a Million” team tasked with identifying cost savings of a million dollars. Representatives from the City Manager’s Office and from an Employee Advisory team join forces to seek ways to save the City money.
Appoint a “Oxygen Committee” whose job it is to “breathe fresh air into the organization.” Oxygen Committee members are those employees who have been with the organization for less than 12 months.
Conduct weekly one-on-one meetings with employees. In a regular 30 minute, face-to-face meeting, employees get 15 minutes to talk about what is on their mind, and the supervisor finishes with their perspective in the remaining 15 minutes.
Celebrate failures. To encourage risk taking, recognize the year’s biggest risk taker with the “biggest failure” award.
Set up a Q2 team whose purpose is to explore issues that are represented in Stephen Covey’s Quadrant II: Not Urgent but Important. The cross-functional, multi disciplinary team is expected to review innovative ideas from teammates and help to vet ideas that require a cross-disciplinary approach.
Conduct staff meetings at locations throughout the community. By meeting at the offices of local businesses or other organizations, city staff has the opportunity to see life outside of City Hall and network with community members as well.
It was amazing to hear the many creative ideas for engaging public employees, ideas that varied as much as the jurisdictions that were represented. While every city and county is different, we can certainly learn from sharing. What are your innovative ideas for engaging employees?
Your success as a manager hinges on your ability to clearly communicate your performance expectations for employees. But what about you? Do you know what your boss expects? Has success been clearly defined for you?
Let’s be honest. Some leaders are not as clear with their expectations as others. With some bosses you have to figure it out through trial and error. With others, the criteria may shift over time. It can be frustrating.
Even if you know your annual goals, you may not always know the full scope of what your boss expects of you. Regardless of how clear your boss has been, there are some common expectations that likely represent what your boss is thinking: Read the rest of this entry »
When you talk about an employee’s pay during a performance evaluation discussion, you are no longer talking about performance. Of course appropriate pay adjustments should follow from your assessment of the employee’s performance. However, when you discuss pay in the evaluation meeting, it distracts from your message. If you have a choice, separate the two conversations so that performance is the main event.
Ideally, assessments about an employee’s performance are done without regard for how the evaluation will impact the employee’s compensation. Divorcing the two issues allows you to call it like it is, without the emotional influence of how much your decision will cost. It allows you and the employee to truly focus on their successes and their plan for the coming year. When pay enters into the conversation, it’s hard to focus on anything else.
Many organizations make the mistake of advertising the pay adjustment structure prior to the performance evaluation process. This practice leads the employee right to the bottom line of the evaluation. We all want to know what our next paycheck will look like. As a result, the “meat” of the evaluation is missed.
If you want to create a work culture that values performance and a performance evaluation process that focuses on outcomes, save the link to pay for another time.
If your performance evaluation system calls for you to assign a rating to employees, it may be time to rethink your process.
The traditional approach to employee performance management, which scores employee performance, is being replaced with an increased focus on coaching and development. According to Bersin and Associate’s High Impact Performance Management Report, seventy percent of organizations say they are already using a coaching and development model, while thirty percent are still using the “document and rate” model.
The solution, simply enough, lies in your hands as a supervisor or manager. You are charged with defining performance expectations and supporting employees so that they can meet or exceed your expectations. While an overhaul of your organization’s entire performance management system may be in order, successful culture change will sit squarely with you.
Here are eight signs that your performance evaluation system is out of date and a few solutions for shifting your work culture to one that is performance-driven and inspiring. Read the rest of this entry »
A ‘five’ rating in my work group is not the same as a ‘five’ rating in another group.
When you design a performance evaluation system you want it to be fair. Yet, fairness is often elusive. A common hope we hear when we are redesigning a performance evaluation system is to enhance the consistency of ratings across work groups. More organizations are tackling this challenge by implementing the practice of calibration.
In a December 2011 survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and APTMetrics, 54% of organizations reported that they conduct formal calibration or group review sessions as part of the performance evaluation process.
In calibration meetings groups of supervisor from the same division or department discuss the rationale behind each employee’s performance rating. Ratings are adjusted up or down as needed to ensure that ratings are consistent over work groups and reflect similar standards and performance expectations.
Sixty-three percent of respondents said ratings are changed infrequently during calibration, but 35% said ratings are changed frequently. Rating changes are made because of inconsistency or when a manager learns new information about an employee’s performance during the calibration session.
Calibration is one more example of the important conversations that should be taking place in your organization to drive a performance-driven culture. If your organization is struggling to find consistency in performance ratings, maybe calibration is the solution.
Join us on March 28, 2012 for this new Alliance for Innovation hosted webinar.
Leadership development is a primary objective for most local governments. With training dollars at a premium development of in-house programs that cultivate leaders are on the rise. These programs oftentimes draw on the resources of the executive leadership team in the development of the curriculum, selection of attendees, and in the presentation of the program.
During this webinar, a panel of experts will discuss the following:
Competency models for public sector leadership development programs
Selection of participants
Resources for instruction
Using project teams to enhance leadership skills
Measuring success
This webinar will be led by Marnie Green, Principal Consultant for Alliance Partner, Management Education Group, Inc. Marnie will be joined by a panel of local government professionals who have experience creating leadership development programs.
This is a live webinar event. Webinar times are 1:00PM ET – 2:30PM ET, 12:00PM CT – 1:30PM CT, 11:00AM MT – 12:30AM MT, 10:00AM PT – 11:30AM PT. (NOTE: Arizona local air time is 11:00AM – 12:30PM)
We are proud to once again partner with CRG emPerform to produce performance management content that you can share within your organization. How to Turn Supervisors into Performance Managers is part of emPerform’s Take10 webinar series. It’s a brief, ten minute video packed full of practical ideas for shifting your organization to one that is performance driven.
Watch this 10 minute webinar presented by Marnie Green and learn greats tips for turning supervisors into performance managers.
