The Performance Improvement Blog

From Diversity to Inclusion and Engagement

The trend has been away from workshops that confront individual racism and towards comprehensive, strategic initiatives that promote diversity and inclusion across the organization. Evidence of this trend can be seen in a December 2007 survey of 2,556 senior HR and T&D executives by the Novations Group which indicates a continuing shift of companies toward broader diversity and inclusion programs, primarily due to globalization.

 

Novations Vice President Ron Adderley is quoted as saying,

D&I has been steadily moving into the T&D mainstream, where the emphasis is increasingly on employee inclusion and engagement, and leveraging the skills talents and abilities of all employees. The challenge is to increase organizational and individual capacity.

Third Sector New England has, from its nearly five decades of experience, identified the following as key drivers of successful diversity initiatives:

• A diversity committee/task force, representing all levels of the organization, that regularly communicates with the entire organization
• Unflinching commitment by the CEO to convey the benefits of organizational diversity to the organization’s mission, vision and values
• An organization-wide assessment or cultural audit to determine major challenges and barriers
• Prioritizing those challenges
• A clear designation of key participants, action steps and timelines to address challenges
• Skill-building for moving beyond differences to develop an organizational language and culture of inclusiveness
• Alignment of diversity planning with the organization’s strategic plan, so the former includes an assessment of funding and other resources needed to support the effort
• A consultant to facilitate developing and implementing a diversity plan
• Evaluation of progress at regular intervals
• Reassessment of priorities as needed

Evaluation of diversity initiatives must change along with this broadening focus. When diversity workshops were more about risk management than organizational change, it was enough to know how many workshops were delivered and how many people attended from each rank in the company. Now, with more initiatives having a business goal of inclusion and engagement of all employees, evaluation must look at the impact of diversity initiatives on the attitudes and behaviors of all employees and on achieving the strategic goals of these organizations.

Building a Learning Culture at Bazaarvoice

I’m impressed with what I’ve read about Bazaarvoice, the fast growing social commerce business, particularly its emphasis on creating a learning culture. Brett Hurt, CEO of Bazaarvoice, describes in his blog the elements of this culture.

 

• Testing for all new hires - many fail the test and it is frustrating when under pressure to hire, but it ensures that we make fewer mistakes and build a strong culture (without a strong foundation, building a strong culture is not possible).
• No vacation policy - we trust our employees to not abuse it and we do not want to limit them from taking personal time when they need it; for example, we had an employee take a 3-week vacation to China just two months after starting with us (and beating all of his goals at that time).
• Quarterly performance feedback (our "3/3/1" process), including "upward" feedback for the managers from their staff - to help all of our employees rapidly grow and reduce the anxiety in our organization (everyone always knows where they stand)

In addition to these elements, he recently rolled out “Total Leadership”, based on the work of Stewart D. Friedman, professor in the Wharton MBA Program. (An hour presentation by Friedman can be seen on youtube.com.) The program is being offered to everyone in Bazaarvoice with the hope that all employees will learn how to be leaders in every aspect of their lives: work; home; community; and self. Friedman got this program started in the company and Hurt will keep it going through a series of discussions and exercises over the next four months. It’s unusual to hear of such a comprehensive approach to learning and performance improvement in a business.

 

I found it interesting that even within Bazaarvoice, a company that has a strong commitment to an engaging and empowering culture, Hurt still worried about participation in learning programs giving the appearance of a “decrease in time spent at work.” To me, learning to be a more effective leader, or employee for that matter, IS the work. Continuous learning must be part of the job in a high performance company.

Employee Engagement and the Bottom-Line at Southwest Airlines

Joe Nocera’s column in the New York Times today is a terrific analysis of the contribution that good training and a positive work environment make to a company’s bottom-line. In contrasting Southwest Airlines with American Airlines, he points out the difference between an airline that is highly profitable and an airline that is losing money, is in trouble with its unions, and would rather upset its customers (e.g., $15 to check a bag) then improve its services.

Quoting Southwest’s founding CEO Kelleher, Nocera wrote:

“You have to treat your employees like customers,” he told Fortune in 2001. “When you treat them right, then they will treat your outside customers right. That has been a powerful competitive weapon for us.” As he stepped away from the company this week, his line didn’t change.

“We’ve never had layoffs,” he told me the day before the annual meeting, sitting on the couch of the single messiest executive office I’ve ever seen. “We could have made more money if we furloughed people. But we don’t do that. And we honor them constantly. Our people know that if they are sick, we will take care of them. If there are occasions or grief or joy, we will be there with them. They know that we value them as people, not just cogs in a machine.”

The Southwest example teaches us that many factors contribute to a successful company and all need constant attention over time. Southwest treats its employees well and has an ongoing commitment to employee engagement. However, they also keep to a sound business strategy (i.e., low fares and exceptional customer service for a target market), do not try to squeeze unions during contract negotiations, use their planes and pilot time efficiently, save money on fuel through hedging purchases, give stock options to employees, and grab new routes and customers wherever they can. Southwest doesn’t do just one thing right; they do a lot of things right. Even when its good name was threatened last year by airplane inspection problems, the way they handled the situation preserved their image and their customers.

Other airlines (and many other companies) look for the magic bullet to decrease costs or increase revenue. They usually rely on ticket pricing, but they do this at the expense of many other factors that could make them successful, including employee training and engagement.  The result is that passengers are becoming more and more unhappy with the airline industry (except for Southwest Airlines). In complex systems it’s never one thing that makes the difference.

Millenials and Boomers: What's the Difference?

Traditionalists, Boomers, Xers, Gen Yers, Millenials. Everyone wants to label entire generations.  It sells books and provides comfort to managers who delude themselves into thinking that they have no responsibility for their employees’ behavior – it’s a generational thing. For example, here is an excerpt from a CBS “60 Minutes” report:

They were raised by doting parents who told them they are special, played in little leagues with no winners or losers, or all winners. They are laden with trophies just for participating and they think your business-as-usual ethic is for the birds. And if you persist in the belief, you can take your job and shove it.

 

… corporate America is so unnerved by all this that companies like Merrill Lynch, Ernst & Young, Disney and scores of others are hiring consultants to teach them how to deal with this generation that only takes "yes" for an answer.

 

The workplace has become a psychological battlefield and the millennials have the upper hand, because they are tech savvy, with every gadget imaginable almost becoming an extension of their bodies. They multitask, talk, walk, listen and type, and text. And their priorities are simple: they come first.

I have a couple of problems with this characterization of 70 million people. First of all, these so-called “millenials” (born after 1980) are not much different from my generation  –  the post-war “boomers” (born 1946 to 1964). We were accused of being spoiled by Dr. Spock, brash, undisciplined, heavily influenced by the new technologies of the time (e.g., TV), and distrustful of anyone over 30. The truth is that all workers have basically the same needs. They want to have an identity in something bigger than themselves. They want respect for who they are and what they offer. And they want to have a sense of control over their lives. It might be comforting to lump 70 million people into a category and then think that you understand them, but it won’t help you relate to the 25 year old who is standing in front of you complaining about a work assignment. That individual might be quite different from the latest generation of young people being disparaged in the press. That individual probably needs to feel respected for what she has to offer and probably wants to be given the opportunity to be self-directed in her work. That’s the same for all of us.

The other problem I have with the Gen Y designation is that the popular descriptions fit, if they do at all, only a small and privileged segment of all people that age. The usual references are to a worker who is college-educated, highly intelligent, growing up had two parents living at home, one of whom was a “soccer mom”, had the wealth to own all of the latest technology, and currently has no pressing spouse or parental obligations. What about the rest of America? Only about a third of young men and 40% of young women get college degrees. And 10% to 15% of Americans live below the poverty line while many more are the working poor. A large percentage of young people born after 1980 did not have the kinds of values-forming experiences commonly attributed to this generation, nor did they have access to all of the latest technology. We should not assume an individual born after 1980 is anything like the descriptions in the popular press.

Evaluation Reinforces Learning

In my last post (5/15/08), I talked about using evaluation to understand the impact of training and development programs. Now I want to say a few words about using evaluation to increase the impact of these programs. One aspect of this is using evaluation to set expectations for learning and performance improvement. Jody Hollis wrote about this in The Winning Teams Blog:

By placing emphasis on a formal evaluation process, you are sending signals to staff and managers that you are expecting a certain set of behaviours and actions as a result of the intervention, and that you expect to get the desired results. That is a very powerful message, and is a very different one to asking if they enjoyed the learning experience.

Training evaluation increases performance in another way, too. An evaluation process that asks learners to recall what they have learned and how they have applied that learning helps to sustain learning and application over time. If there is no follow-up, there is unlikely to be sustained learning and application. It’s like learning to play the piano. Teachers don’t require piano recitals because they enjoy listening to the awful sound of beginners; they require recitals because that motivates learners to practice and because the feedback from a recital improves performance. That is, the evaluative comments from the teacher and others help to improve piano playing skills and retain that learning. It’s the same for workplace learning. It doesn’t need to be a “recital” (although requiring a formal presentation to a panel of executives is not a bad idea in some cases), but it is critical that there is some kind of systematic follow-up that requires the learner to recall what was learned and explain how that learning has or has not been applied.

I have interviewed many managers who, several months after their participation in a leadership development program, told me about having intended to apply the new skills, that they have not done so yet, but that my questions reminded them of how they can immediately use that ability in their work. In effect, following up with these managers, reinforces learning and increases the likelihood that they will use that learning in their jobs. Not doing follow-up interviews would have “left money on the table.” I am convinced that evaluation is an essential tool for maximizing the impact of learning interventions.

Getting Results From Employee Training: All You Have To Do Is Ask

“Our people love this training. It consistently gets an average rating of 4.8.”

“We don’t need to evaluate this program again. We did an ROI study last year.”

“There isn’t anything in the budget for follow-up. We only had enough for the trainers and bringing in all of the managers.”

These are just some of the many excuses chief training and learning officers give for not assessing the impact of training programs and other types of learning interventions. They use these excuses at their own risk. What they don’t realize is that they are failing to maximize the impact of these programs and wasting valuable resources (See the blog post: “Why Training Doesn’t Work – Fifty Years of Research” by Jody Hollis).

I have seen organizations invest millions of dollars in training programs (root cause analysis, project management, learning organization, difficult conversations, etc.) only to find that about 10% of the participants applied this knowledge to their work. Usually the reason for this lack of application of learning has nothing to do with the quality of the training or the accompanying materials. It has to do with factors outside of the training event. You can’t know what is blocking application unless you ask participants and, in some cases, talk to their supervisors and co-workers.

If managers are not following up with employees after they have attended training programs to ask about that experience and how they are applying it in their work, then they can’t know what the learners know, they can’t know how to improve performance, and they can’t know if those learning interventions were worth their organization’s investment of time and money. This kind of follow-up isn’t tangential; it is central to the training and learning process.

If companies truly care about impact and using their resources wisely, then, at a minimum, somebody must ask learners a few critical questions:

What did you learn?

How did you apply this learning in your work?

What difference has it made for you and your organization?

What could have been done to have even greater impact?

Employee Engagement Is One in Three...Maybe

I don’t want to take anything away from the BlessingWhite study of employee engagement: The State of Employee Engagement 2008. As a market research product for their firm, it is excellent. For those of us interested in understanding employee engagement, the report is informative and raises many interesting questions, e.g., What should we do/can we do about employees at different levels of engagement? However, the findings should be read with several important caveats in mind.

First, the report claims that in North America “…fewer than 1 in 3 employees (29%) are fully engaged. 19% are actually disengaged.” This suggests that BlessingWhite surveyed a representative sample of all employees in North America, which they didn’t. It appears that the respondents are skewed towards people who are in management, from HR divisions, and provide banking/financial services. Although the response rate was quite large (3,342 were from North America), it is not reflective of all North America employees.

Also important to keep in mind is that the survey uses two questions to identify levels of engagement: “I like my work and do it well” and “I help achieve the goals of my organization.” In effect, this is the BlessingWhite definition of engaged employees: they like their work, they think they do it well, and they think they are helping to achieve their organizations’ goals. That’s their definition; it might not be yours. And we can’t tell from this survey, of course, how well respondents do their work or if they actually do help their organizations achieve goals, only that this is the respondent’s perception of things.

Another caution I offer is about the “five distinct employee segments”: “The Engaged”, “Almost Engaged”,“Honeymooners & Hamsters”, “Crash & Burners”, and “The Disengaged.” The report and press release imply that these categories and their descriptions emerged from the survey data, but, apparently, that is not the case. This part of the findings is a bit misleading. It is a huge leap in logic from the survey results to the motivations and behaviors described in the framework. Maybe this framework can be supported by the 40 interviews done as part of the study. I can’t tell that from the report.

Finally (for now), some of the comments in the report suggest that surveys are the only way to understand employee engagement and how engagement relates to business performance. That’s just not true. Indepth interviews and focus groups, for example, can offer tremendous insights that do not rely on statistical correlations. We can use these qualitative methods to describe engagement and how it contributes to performance for particular people in particular organizations.

I would just hate to see “one in three” become the accepted statistic used when anyone discusses employee engagement in North America (See HR.com), when we can’t say with any reasonable degree of confidence that the statistic is descriptive of all employees and for all definitions of engagement.

Filling Skilled Trades Jobs

It’s amazing to me that in the U.S. we have companies desperate to find the “talent” they need to fill high-paying jobs that do not require four-year degrees, and, at the same time, we have millions of people out of work, under-employed, or working two, low-paying jobs to make ends meet. Why can’t we get these jobs and these people together?

This is a problem that is not going away. Community College Times reported that within skilled manual trades there are serious shortages, including carpenters, plumbers, stonemasons, electricians, cabinetmakers, and welders. The Independent Street blog reported the results of a survey of employers that identified their 10 hardest jobs to fill:

1. Engineers
2. Machinists/Machine Operators
3. Skilled Manual Trades
4. Technicians
5. Sales Representatives
6. Accounting & Finance Staff
7. Mechanics
8. Laborers
9. IT Staff
10. Production Operators

These jobs go unfilled even though many of them start at over $50,000 a year.

Part of the explanation for these jobs going unfilled is the demographics. “Boomers” are starting to retire and the working age cohorts that follow are smaller. At the same time, a large percentage of high school graduates, who could fill these jobs, are not prepared for college and work. High school graduation rates in the U.S. are low and getting lower. Looking at Detroit for example, the graduation rate has been estimated to be somewhere between 22% and 50% depending on how it is calculated. Detroit’s jobless rate, as reported by the Detroit News, was 14.6 percent in December 2007. I suspect it is much higher for young adults. A little less than a third of Detroiters have a high school diploma. Detroit might have one of the worst economies in the country at the moment but its graduation and employment problems are similar to those of many other large urban areas.

I think a major reason for the disconnect between people and jobs in skilled trades is that companies and union apprentice programs are not doing what needs to be done to encourage all people, including women and minorities, to go into the skilled trades. The total system needs change: recruitment; selection; retention; and ongoing professional development.

All union apprentice programs claim that they are equal opportunity employers but then do little to select and retain women and minority apprentices. In subtle and not so subtle ways, they discourage women and minorities from applying and then put up barriers (intentional and unintentional) to their success. The skilled trades were 2.5% female in 2005 which is about what they were in 1978. This is understandable given the typical experience of women in the trades. William F. Maloney, in his analysis of the sheet-metal industry, describes the situation for women in this way:

Upon entering a site, women may be subjected to taunts and requests for sexual favors, find crude sexual objects left in their tools, pornographic pictures posted around the job site, and physical assault including groping, unwanted touching, and assault. Harassment appears to be perceived as a means of driving women off the sites. A recent survey of female journey workers and apprentices in California determined that 57% of the women had been sexually harassed during the past year (California Apprentice Council, 2004). Is it any wonder why many women do not want to subject themselves to life on a construction site? Many female apprentices see leaving the industry as their only option if they are to retain their dignity.

Obviously, much work still needs to be done to make trade unions and work sites inviting and supportive of women. I suspect a similar situation exists for African-American and Latino workers. The skill and income gap in the U.S. can be closed but it will take a change in attitude and different ways of building the workforce.

Globalization vs. Technology; Flat vs. Smart

Thomas Friedman says the world is flat, and getting flatter, and many people are blaming this globalization for the demise of manufacturing in the U.S. But David Brooks, in a recent column in the New York Times, makes the case that it’s not globalization that is reshaping manufacturing but rather technology, albeit accelerated by competition among countries. Brooks calls this the “cognitive age” and the “skills revolution”. Brooks argues that we can’t blame loss of jobs and decline in prosperity on globalization; the real culprit is technology. He reports that, contrary to popular wisdom fueled by current political rhetoric, manufacturing output in the U.S. is increasing. It’s just that it takes fewer workers to produce cars, appliances, furniture, construction equipment, etc. Brooks writes:

The central process driving this is not globalization. It’s the skills revolution. We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information. This is happening in localized and globalized sectors, and it would be happening even if you tore up every free trade deal ever inked.

Living in the Detroit Metropolitan Region, I read the obituaries about manufacturing every day. But I also know from my role as trustee of a community college, that skilled, technology-savvy, motivated workers are in tremendous demand in the manufacturing sector in Michigan. And these are not Wal-Mart wage jobs. These are high-paying, full-time jobs in everything from large automobile manufacturers to small start-up companies. We can’t keep our students who are studying to be welders, auto technicians, and robotics operators because they are lured away by companies as soon as they have a few courses.

A great example of what Brooks is talking about is the GEMA plant (an alliance of Chrysler, Mitsubishi, and Hyundai) in Dundee, Michigan. Using advanced manufacturing methods, this plant is producing more engines, at higher quality, with approximately 15% of the workforce than the traditional manufacturing plants of the Big Three. These advanced manufacturing methods (Lean, CNC, flexible work rules, etc.) require that employees have a level of knowledge and skill and a way of thinking that was not needed in the old style plants. The GEMA plant requires a minimum of two years of college for all of its employees.

Yes, manufacturing is being affected by globalization, but it is also being dramatically affected by rapidly changing technology and how that technology is applied to the workplace. For the sector to continue to grow and be competitive, we need to prepare workers for a workplace in which they have to be smart. This starts with K-12 preparation for college, continues with successful learning in college (at least a certificate or associates degree), and doesn’t stop as successful workers must keep on learning throughout their careers.