The Performance Improvement Blog

Complacency in the Cockpit?

Two Northwest Airlines pilots may have been asleep at the wheel when their Minneapolis-bound plane overshot its destination by 150 miles before they realized what had happened, turned the plane around, and returned to their destination. One national TV commentator speculated that since many passenger jets today have the technology to essentially fly themselves, this may have been a case of pilots becoming complacent and not fully doing their job of closely monitoring the plane’s performance. In a previous blog post, I labeled this kind of behavior the “complacency syndrome.”

Airplane pilots are not the only employees who risk complacency. Staying with air-travel examples, I have noticed TSA employees being more interested in socializing with their co-workers than paying attention to the repetitive and mind-numbing task of checking people and their luggage day after day. And flight attendants, who have to announce safety instructions at the beginning of every flight, doing this sounding like they couldn’t care less about safety. And luggage handlers who, over time, become careless and lackadaisical in their treatment of passengers’ precious goods, which leads to lost and damaged property. It’s unpleasant and annoying to passengers when flight attendants and luggage handlers suffer from the complacency syndrome; it’s life-threatening when TSA officers and airline pilots have this disease.   

Colorado Best Buy Says Bye Bye to Employee Engagement

I’ve posted before about Best Buy’s enlightened attention to employee engagement and learning. However, a recent event demonstrates how fragile this distinction for any company can be, especially store by store. I don’t know all the facts and it’s possible the press accounts are misleading, but going by the news stories it appears that the Broomfield, Colorado Best Buy failed to live up to the corporate image. Two employees that attempted to stop a thief as he ran out the front door and pulled a knife were fired for their heroism. You see, store policy forbids employees from pursuing a suspected shoplifter after that person exits the store.

Giving the two twenty-somethings a reprimand or maybe having an all-employee meeting to once again explain and discuss the policy - yes. But termination just doesn’t seem right. This will set back everything the company has done to create a committed, enthusiastic, going-beyond-the-call-of-duty workforce. In effect, the manager of the Broomfield store has said to employees, “Just do your job; don’t think for yourself; don’t take any risks; and, by all means, don’t care about this store and its customers. Furthermore, be careful not to do anything wrong because we will not help you learn from your mistakes.” I don’t think this is the message Best Buy wants to send to its employees.

Communication Increases Engagement in Turbulent Times

From what I’m seeing on blogs and nings, especially the employee engagement ning, business leaders are very worried about how to maintain or increase employee engagement in a recession. Jen Schulte, the Global Engagement Director for Mars, a $30 billion global food brands company, has advice for these leaders based on what she does at Mars.  This is the message she sent to employees (managers and “associates”):

This is a turbulent time – there are many changes going on within our business as well as economic and other external pressures our associates are facing.  Now is the time to talk with each other, reflect back on what has been done to drive associate engagement over the past few months and recognize where we need to refocus.  It is important during times like these to recognize engagement as an opportunity to build trust and restore hope in the future.

Schulte is emphasizing the importance of the relationship between a manager and his/her direct reports. She is saying that managers must communicate a message to employees that builds trust and hope, essential elements of employee engagement. We humans are troubled by uncertainty more than just about anything else. Without trust and hope, uncertainty is intensified. By paying attention to what employees need in order to feel engaged, including trust and hope, managers contribute to a sense of control and predictability that is often absent when economic conditions are as harsh as they are now.

Employee Engagement Is Not Employee Commitment

Retaining talent might be the single greatest challenge companies have in this recessionary economy. Management-Issues blog cites research by The Conference Board that argues that organizations need to find a way to attract, grow, and keep knowledgeable, talented, innovative people who can position their companies for a turnaround. Nic Paton writes:

The difficulty, of course, is that managers will need to spend the next eight to 12 months walking a tightrope between continuing to curb and control costs while ensuring they don't emerge blinking into the economic sunlight bereft of the top talent they need.

As organizations try to do more with less, managers should not assume that simply because they have highly engaged employees that those employees will stay with the company and continue to be productive indefinitely. Thomas Britt, professor of industrial psychology at Clemson University, says that a worker can be engaged but not committed. Scienceblog writes:

According to Britt, there is a difference between an engaged worker, meaning one who invests himself or herself in superior job performance, and organizational commitment, a worker's psychological attachment to his or her organization or employer. Britt's research found that an engaged employee isn't necessarily committed to the organization.

In an interview on mefeedia.com, Britt says that highly engaged employees, although very productive, might be more susceptible to frustration from negative factors in the workplace. These factors include many of the things that happen in a down economy, such as budget cuts, inadequate supplies and equipment, not rewarding employees for success, and pay raises not tied to performance. Highly engaged employees are highly motivated to do well. When they believe that the company is blocking them from performing at that level, they become disappointed in the organization and themselves and will seek other opportunities.

One of the key negative factors that Britt identifies is “insufficient guidelines for what’s expected.” This makes sense to me, given that humans need to feel in control of their lives. Clarity about what is expected gives talented employees a feeling (even if it is illusory) that their work is predictable and manageable. If they don’t have this sense of control, they will either do their jobs less effectively or go somewhere where they know what is expected and can perform at the highest level.

Employee Engagement at Best Buy

Some companies continue to make employee engagement a priority even in this recessionary economy. It would be easy for a company to take the position that it can’t afford to increase its investment in employees. This is not true for Best Buy, the 43 billion dollar appliance and consumer electronics retailer. A year ago I wrote about how Best Buy empowers its front-line employees by giving them the authority to make local merchandising decisions and do what is best for their local customers.  Now, Best Buy is empowering employees with choices about the method, time, and place of training. This is part of the company’s new Results-Oriented Learning Environment (ROLE) program and its three pillars: freedom to choose the training that they need; co-creation of the training programs by employees, customers, and vendors; and an online library of learning materials. John Congemi, senior manager at Best Buy, describes the purpose of ROLE:

We’re opening up learning opportunities inside and outside of the store, and empowering employees to decide how, where, and when they’ll learn best. Co-creation is all about harnessing the expertise and creativity of our employees, our vendors, and our customers. We’re no longer developing training in a vacuum, but rather side by side with experts and end users. The robust library of content makes all of this possible. We’re ensuring our employees can not only access training materials on any topic they choose, but can pick from a wide variety of learning vehicles to do so (e-learning, audio training, videos, paper-based, etc.).

The Best Buy online library includes a wiki which, similar to Wikipedia, allows employees to make changes in the content and to comment on content as well as upload videos and other content that they think might be helpful to co-workers. Using a wiki to provide useful information when and where it is needed is an innovative approach to employee learning. RealTime Performance provides pre-populated wikis that companies can modify over time to fit their learning needs.

Best Buy’s approach to training and learning is certainly innovative, but, oddly, its approach to measuring the results of this “results-oriented” program will probably not tell them very much about results. Apparently, they are relying on customer satisfaction scores and employee satisfaction scores. While these scores are indicators of impact, and I commend Best Buy for trying to link training to business results, these scores do not tell the whole story.  The company will not know what had the effect on the change in ratings, nor will it know how ROLE affected these ratings, nor will it know what could have been done to increase the positive impact of ROLE. I would challenge Best Buy to be as innovative in its evaluation of ROLE as it is in how it is engaging employees in their own learning.

Employee Engagement and the Bottom Line

What impact does employee engagement have on business results? Employee engagement has become quite popular among those people concerned about the culture of work in organizations. Many HR and organization behavior professionals have been jumping on the engagement bandwagon. But unless we can define and measure engagement, it will continue to be a hard sell to management, especially in these recessionary times of deep cutbacks in people and resources.

Defining engagement as an employee’s level of motivation and potential for discretionary effort, Keith Wiedenkeller, SVP, Human Resources, AMC Entertainment, Inc. wrote in Film Journal International’s blog:

In a recent survey process at AMC, we found that our theatres with most improved employee engagement scores tended to have most improved business metrics as well, including better concession performance, better cost control, and better customer service metrics than those at less-engaged units. The correlation was so significant as to overshadow any impact from outside factors.

I have written before about the impact of employee engagement at Best Buy. Now we have some evidence of business results in AMC, a movie theater company. Where else, in this very challenging economic environment, is employee engagement making a difference on the bottom-line?

Employee Benefits, Turnover, and Productivity

In these times of downsizing and layoffs, it’s easy for companies to lose sight of what it takes to continue to attract and retain the best talent. This means paying attention to the culture for company survivors. A study out of the University of Michigan reminds us of the importance of creating a positive, supportive culture, even in a recession. Two Business School professors, Cindy Schipani and Norman Bishara, found a strong direct correlation between “complementary alternative benefits” and employee turnover and productivity. The researchers examined companies on Fortune magazine’s list of “100 Best Companies to Work For” that also provided complementary alternative benefits. Schipani and Bishara determined that these companies had much less turnover than the industry average, saving about $275 million per company.

They extrapolate from there by saying that it is likely that complementary alternative benefits have an effect on other positive aspects of business and even civic life. Schipani is quoted as saying:

Such benefits may be used to build camaraderie and understanding among employees, help promote employee loyalty to the firm by providing enviable treatment of employees, and serve as an example for society and perhaps even as a model for future government action…In all, companies can play a direct role by taking care of their work force through employment practices designed to reduce stress and promote camaraderie in the workplace.

I would not want to infer a causal link between benefits and lower turnover from this data. Lower turnover and increased productivity might be due to the kind of people who were hired, the overall compensation program, leadership, or any of a myriad of other factors. However, the relationship of alternative benefits to productivity is worth careful consideration. It is logical (as Mr. Spock would say) that a work environment enhanced by such benefits as flexible work hours, subsidized health care classes, an onsite fitness centers, and laundry and dry-cleaning services, would reduce stress, create a positive atmosphere, and, therefore, increase employee engagement.

Layoff Survivors

The pink slip parade is getting longer and longer. A CBS graph of layoffs in U.S. companies makes it clear that people are being put out of work at an alarming rate. We should be very concerned about what will happen to these newly unemployed workers and their families. However, we should also be concerned about the survivors. These are the employees who must deal with guilt over still being on the job after watching their friends escorted out the door, who fear that they will be next, and who are frustrated with trying to do the work of two or three people while receiving compensation for less than one person. At the same time, companies desperately need these surviving employees to be engaged, motivated workers who will help the company remain viable during the recession and position the company well when the economy turns around.

Advice for conducting layoffs and helping survivors so that they are engaged and motivated is quite abundant these days. Some experts talk about how to restore morale (See bnet.). These writers offer good suggestions, but I question the leap to restoring morale when many of these companies never had high morale in the first place. Maybe if they had a great workplace, they wouldn’t have to be implementing mass layoffs, at least not at the current levels.

Some experts talk about how to lay-off people. For example, Kawasaki offers his list of the right things to do. He advises CEOs to be visible to survivors and connect with them so that they have confidence the company will weather the poor economy. Still other experts talk about how to keep employees engaged in their work during a period of layoffs. Some talk about holding feel-good events.

All of these suggestions are helpful, but I believe the best way to keep morale up and keep surviving employees engaged in their work after layoffs is to keep employees informed about the issues in the company long before layoffs. As I wrote in a previous blog post:

… I think “communication” is the most important. Keep employees informed whether they request the information or not. In difficult economic times, it is more important than ever to push the information out and make sure that everyone in the organization hears the messages. Keeping open lines of communication is good, but don’t wait for questions and concerns; anticipate what employees want to know and get that information to them. And listen, listen, listen. Offer opportunities for individuals and small groups to express their worries and concerns even if there is nothing that can be said at the moment to allay their fears. Tell them what you know about the situation, acknowledge their strong feelings, and show respect for their views. This will go a long way toward building trust and increasing the level of employee engagement.

Don’t wait for a crisis; communicate now. This will make layoffs a little easier on the employees who are leaving and will give survivors a sense of control over their lives. Nothing is more unsettling to employees than not knowing and feeling helpless and vulnerable in the wake of change.

What are you doing to support the survivors in your organization? What suggestions would you give others for helping survivors continue to be productive contributors to the organization?

Employee Engagement in a Recession

Employees are being laid off. Departmental budgets are being cut. Revenue is down and costs are up. Is this the right time to be thinking about employee engagement? If you want to retain valuable employees, if you want to continue to be competitive, if you want to be positioned well for the eventual economic recovery, then the answer is a resounding “yes”…but it’s not easy.

Erin White in the article, How to Motivate Workers in Tough Times, addresses the fundamental question: “How do you keep employees focused, motivated and energetic when everything's lousy?” White interviewed Jim Harter from Gallup about the advice he would give managers regarding employee engagement. Harter argues that employee engagement is important in a bad economy because it makes employees resilient, which helps them get through tough times. Resilient employees have the flexibility to bounce back from bad news and immediately focus on ways to improve the business. Many of Harter's suggestions for increasing employee engagement are things a good manager would do anyway, such as clarifying expectations for employees, helping employees build relationships, giving recognition to employees.

Amal Aziz, CEO of MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, is another one who thinks that employee engagement should continue to be maintained in a downturn. He believes it is a competitive advantage. He said to BusinessWeek,

Employee engagement in times of difficulties and severe economic climate is far more profoundly important now. Employees are willing to give their all when they are well-treated, appreciated. And the ability to unlock that potential is a competitive distinction…It's their decisions, their actions, their attitude that really make the difference. Imagine taking 10,000 employees, and each and every one of them wanting to give more. That's really the difference between [us and] a company that has its employees just punching the clock and trying to get through the day.

However, CEO Aziz has had to balance his investment in employee engagement with cuts he has had to make due to decreasing revenue. Prior to the recession he surveyed his 10,000 employees and found a lack of communication was contributing to low engagement. In response, he implemented pre-shift meetings to get information to all employees. He also expanded MGM Grand University, involving employees in decisions about its programs, and then offering those programs to employees in all 17 properties of MGM MIRAGE, the parent company of MGM Grand. Aziz’s current problem is that he has to reduce expenses substantially which is affecting these employee engagement efforts. For example, he is doing the same employee appreciation events that he was doing before but he has cut event costs in half.

For additional suggestions on how to keep employees engaged in these difficult economic times, see The Workforce Institute’s blog “The Workforce Stimulus Plan”. Their suggestions fall within six categories: 1) leadership; 2) employee involvement; 3) communication; 4) rewards and incentives; 5) talent management and learning; and 6) creative ways to reduce operating expenses.

Out of this list, I think “communication” is the most important. Keep employees informed whether they request the information or not. In difficult economic times, it is more important than ever to push the information out and make sure that everyone in the organization hears the messages. Keeping open lines of communication is good, but don’t wait for questions and concerns; anticipate what employees want to know and get that information to them. And listen, listen, listen. Offer opportunities for individuals and small groups to express their worries and concerns even if there is nothing that can be said at the moment to allay their fears. Tell them what you know about the situation, acknowledge their strong feelings, and show respect for their views. This will go a long way toward building trust and increasing the level of employee engagement.

Employee Morale in the Time of Recession

We can be sure that the current economic conditions, globally and locally, are contributing to low worker morale. Many employees are afraid they will lose their jobs. If not their jobs, then they are afraid of losing their pensions and health care and not being able to retire when they had intended. If they have already survived massive layoffs, then they are depressed about the loss of friendships and uncertainty about their future with the company. What can executives do to stem this tide of anxiety and fear? Kelley Holland in her NYTimes column writes that team-building activities, family days, volunteer work with local nonprofits, and other feel-good programs are being used to try to improve workers’ attitudes. She points out in her article that rah-rah group activities, while fun in the short-run, do not necessarily improve results over the long-run.

To really make a difference in employee engagement in these scary economic times, including keeping the talent that you want, more attention needs to be placed on organization culture and less on team-building events. First thing to do is communicate. Keep employees informed. Most employee anxiety comes from not knowing. Even if you don’t have answers, be honest and tell employees at all levels what you know and what you don’t know about the future of the company. Be trustworthy. When you say you are going to do something, do it; be consistent and fair with everyone. And encourage managers to support employee learning. Managers and direct reports should be having frequent conversations about training and development, opportunities in the company, and how employees can contribute to the success of the company. You will want all employees prepared for the turnaround.

These are the things that have always been important to do but are even more critical during the current economic downturn. Isolated team-building and feel-good events are not sufficient for engagement and high performance. Creating a culture in which employees are kept informed, managers are viewed as trustworthy and fair, and employees are collaborating with managers on their development and effectiveness will make all the difference over time.