Author: Theresa Ph.D.

If you travel, particularly in the U.K., you will recognize this often used phrase: “Mind the gap.” You hear it as you enter and exit subways or when you embark upon or depart the trains. You are warned not to fall through the cracks as you transition from one place to another.

    The same advice could be given to HR leaders as you start 2007. The news is full of stories about talent management, the importance of getting and keeping the “right” employees, and the impending lack of employees as the workforce changes. With these dire warnings come many ways to select and retain employees. However, in addition to getting them on board, you then have to keep them.

    Minding the gap refers to a method of learning from your new-hire talent in order to help the new employee become productive right away. New employees want to be productive, and if they are not, they will leave. This is particularly true for hard-to-get talent.

    In this article I will explain the results of a study done with a technology firm that was doing an incredible amount of hiring in 2006. They learned from studying—or “minding”—their gaps.

What is the gap?
   When you hire a new employee, there is a transition period between the hire date and the time when a new employee becomes optimally productive. This transition denotes a productivity gap, and it is important to minimize this gap in order to create and sustain long-term competitiveness and performance. In our 2006 study, we examined the “productivity gap” for a set of new technology employees.

    Productivity gap is defined as the difference between an employee’s energy level at work “today,” and the level where the employee is most productive. The calculation is as follows:

    Productivity gap = (energy today – energy where most productive)

    Why energy? We used energy because it is a validated metric that predicts performance, and our ability to quickly assess energy (one question) allowed us to conduct the research without taking so much time out of the employee’s day that the study itself negatively affects productivity.

    How it works: We expect a productivity gap with the majority of new employees. It takes time to learn the job, to make things work with a new team of colleagues, to get processed (e.g., get new computer, find desk, learn how to use phone, equipment, etc.), and more. Thus, we anticipate and find in our work that there is a gap between an employee’s energy at the time of being hired (we study energy at work specifically) and the energy where the employee is most productive. In most cases, the gap is negative.

    Typical new employee gap: Energy today = 3
   Energy where most productive = 7

    Productivity gap = -4

    However, we want the gap to be minimal, and we want to close the gap as soon as possible. It is up to the manager to “mind the gap” and work to make sure the gap is reduced. You want the employee to be at the level where he/she is most productive as soon as possible, and you certainly don’t want the gap to increase.

    Goals are to reduce the gap or move to a positive gap. It is better for productivity to have an employee working slightly above where most productive; however, our research shows that you do not want the employee to move to a state where she/he is more than one point above where most productive, because prolonged time in that “overly energized” state leads to lower productivity and burnout.

    In this study: We examine the gap for 183 employees who started participating in the Pulse Dialogue process during 2006. In this snapshot of the study (which is now continuing), we report data from June to October.

    Background: In each data collection, we asked employees to rate their energy level. We also asked for levels where the employee was most productive on this same scale. This is a process that I have researched and validated in numerous studies for the past 10 years (across hundreds of thousands of employees). Unlike many employee metrics, energy is an optimization construct, not a maximization one. That means it is negative to be at the too-high or too-low levels. Thus, we find out where employees are most productive (by asking them at multiple periods of time) and then run analyses using both energy and where people are most productive. Gaps predict outcomes such as turnover, customer service, sales and other performance outcomes. The goal is to reduce the gap and help employees remain at a level of energy where they are most productive.

What did we learn?
   First, we learned that the trend, overall, was headed in the right direction from June to October. The mean gaps from Time 1 (June) to Time 2 (October) are as follows:

    June: -1.16
   October – 0.97

    Second, we learned that there were significant differences in the trends when the patterns were viewed by manager and then within a manager’s department by job level (or grade). See the graph below as an example:

Productivity Gap Chart
Manager No. 1: Gap by Job Grade

    The goal is for the gap (difference between employee energy and where most productive) to be reduced over time (or for the trend line to go down). That means the employee is moving toward an energy level that is close to where he or she is most productive.

    In the chart above, you can clearly see that when it comes to Job Grade 1, this manager is having a very positive experience. Between Time 1 and Time 2, the gap was reduced significantly. But for all other grades (grades 2 through 4), the gap increased. In addition to asking employees to rate energy and where productive, we also asked one open-ended comment question asking them about the new-hire experience. We content-analyzed this data, and we were able to connect the stories to the metrics.

    In general, across organizations, we find that more attention is given to the Grade 1 (or entry-level) employees. Everyone expects they need training, mentoring and communications because they are really new. These are the people coming in who have less experience in the field, and it’s accepted by all peers that they need training. However, as one becomes more senior in a career, then there is a natural tendency to let new senior employees take care of themselves. In the current intensively busy environment in which we all work, no one would want to waste time trying to help someone who does not need help. In fact, you might think that it would be a waste of time.

Lessons learned
   It does not take long to see from the data that, at least with this particular manager’s team, all levels of employees needed help. The trends indicate that the productivity gap went up over time for the more senior people. This represents a productivity problem and a talent management challenge. If new senior employees feel their experience with the organization makes them less productive, they will not stay.

    In this sample at least, the employees live in a city where there are ample opportunities to find employment elsewhere. Thus, if the HR team can diagnose a new-hire acculturation problem and act on it, they can save their organization money by reducing search expenses and by optimizing the productivity of the talent that just hired.

    When an HR team has data across its organization, it can use data from other parts of the business to help a particular manager. In this case study, we look to the data from Manager No. 2 to understand positive experiences for the senior job grades (see chart below).

Productivity Gap Chart
Manager No. 2: Gap by Job Grade

    The trend data above clearly show that Manager No. 2 is creating an environment where new hires in all job grades are experiencing a reduction in their productivity gap. In contrast to the data from Manager No. 1’s group, the more senior employees are seeing a significant reduction quickly.

    The opportunity for HR is to assess what’s working for Manager No. 2 and share those best practices with other managers. This is one of the most effective forms of learning any HR manager can use because learning from peers creates the kind of tactical outcomes for managers that are rarely seen in other types of learning environments.

Going beyond traditional talent management
   Talent management goes beyond just hiring; it means optimizing the talent that you bring into the door. However, in HR few employers are truly studying the new-hire experience in the detail that this case represents. We do a much better job of spending money to do exit interviews than we do to study the experience of new hires. This case is just one example of how data can be used to learn and to break through traditional ways of managing talent.

I must admit that I had some fun with a recent Leadership Pulse study. It was October, and perhaps it was the mischievousness of Halloween that led me to devote the study to the topic of surveys. In fact, I used a survey engine to ask questions about how people like taking surveys. And I used a loaded word in two of the questions.

    I asked participants the degree to which they thought the annual employee survey and customer surveys were “evil.” Then I followed up with a few other more traditional questions about surveys.

    I took care to define the word “evil” before I asked survey participants to answer the question. Evil was defined as “a situation that is very unpleasant, harmful or morally wrong.”

    As you might expect, most of the 307 respondents were content enough with surveys to decide that they were not actually evil. (The Leadership Pulse sample consists of leaders who have opted into the study. About 40 percent of the sample are C-level executives, and about 75 percent are director level and above. About 4,000 individuals are part of the core group.)

    The table below reports the percentage of people who agreed (using a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 equals “strongly disagree” and 5 equals “strongly agree”; respondents who agreed answered 4 or 5 on the scale).

   You may wonder why anyone would think a survey is evil. Below are some of the prevalent comments that explain these attitudes:

• “They are poorly worded, do not address the real issues, fail to be acted upon constructively and are typically used to manipulate employees.”

  
  

• “People have learned that surveys can be manipulated, so the importance of surveys has been minimized.”

  
  

• “Auto dealership surveys tell you, ‘They have to have an “excellent” response to all questions.’ This is intentionally skewing the data.”

  
  

• “Most of the time the information goes into a black hole or is used to ‘beat people up’ for not making the right scores. More often the focus is on fixing the numbers instead of understanding what is being said. The last one we did, the CEO did nothing with the information.”

  
  

• “Surveys do not lead to improvements. It seems more like a ‘check the box’ exercise.”

  
  

• “The problem with most surveys is the lack of feedback and action after the data is collected and analyzed. Most leave you with a sense of ‘Why did I bother?’ “

  
  

    Clearly, there are people who are not having positive experiences with taking surveys. However, even with those negative experiences, these individuals were willing to take time to share their opinions and experiences in my survey about surveys.

Other dimensions of surveys
   In addition to the “evil survey” questions, I asked a few more traditional questions about surveys. The overall responses are in the table below:

   As you review these additional scores, it becomes clear that although no one really considers surveys “evil,” respondents did not think very highly of them either. In fact, the comments are in general not so favorable. And as you dig into the data, you quickly see that the most favorable comments come from the people in jobs most likely to do surveys:

    From individuals in marketing:

• “When a company conducts a survey, I feel they are making the necessary steps to want to improve as a business.”

  
  

• “I have participated in my own companies’ surveys and as a customer of another company. I feel providing feedback is critical to improving the customer experience”

  
  

    From individuals in human resources:

• “I have written them, and have participated in them. I believe, if done well, they can be a valuable tool in information gathering and continuous improvement.”

  
  

• “If surveys contain relevant content and are used they work great.”

  
  

• “Surveys are a valuable tool for leadership to assess the attitude of the workforce.”

  
  

    I don’t know what your conclusions are right now, but my take, after reading all the comments, is that even the positive comments are not very positive. In general, people are very ambivalent about surveys. They don’t really “hate” them (although I did not ask that question specifically). But they don’t like them either.

Programmed to comply?
    Could it be that no matter how much we dislike surveys, we are simply programmed to comply with requests to take them? Is it something left over from school, when we weren’t allowed to say no to tests, but simply had to start filling in bubbles and checking boxes?

    There seems to be something to this idea. I meet many companies that do big surveys. Although they sometimes spend millions of dollars on annual employee surveys or customer surveys, I rarely find anyone who has a documented ROI or result from a survey.

    My hypothesis is that there are two competing models at work in the survey world. One is the focus on numbers and scores. There is an entire industry in getting benchmark data. Companies feel a keen need to compare themselves with others, and to do this, they need data.

    Thus, many surveys are really designed just to get a score, and to compare the company to other organizations in their industry. When this is the goal, perhaps there is really no interest in doing anything with the data. So, if this is the case, why not be honest about it? Why not just tell the employees and customers that this is a “score-focused” survey. Answers will be used to provide an assessment of our organization. Period.

    Then there are surveys designed to truly engage people in a dialogue about change in order to drive results. People like these kinds of surveys. Employees and customers want to know that their voice is being heard.

    Traditional, long surveys are fraught with too many problems to truly provide an avenue for voice. If you want to do a survey for change, then the rules need to change. For example, make the surveys short, ask questions that a manager will appreciate (they can take action on the answers),and create a process that starts a conversation that leads to action. In this type of survey, the data are used to start a conversation, not to be an end point or benchmark.

Biased surveys
   Surveys can indeed be biased. In fact, three of the Leadership Pulse participants did a great job of “dinging” me for pursuing a biased survey:

• “I’m concerned with your ‘evil’ bias. I would have expected a more objective mind-set.”

  
  

• “I have a problem with the way some of these questions are written: biased, leading, extreme.”

  
  

• “The use of the word ‘evil’ in this context seems quite out of place and overdone.”

  
  

    But every survey is biased. Whenever you choose to ask a certain set of questions, you are biasing the respondents to think about what you want them to consider. That was my goal. I am simply tired of the confusion about surveys, and I wanted to seek out some additional opinions on the topic. I also was ready to have some fun with the topic. Humor engages people in the conversation a bit more than a boring, academic survey can.

Data that open a dialogue
    In the first page of the “evil” survey I was quite open about my biases. I told the respondents that I was in search of an alternative for surveys. I’m not interested in creating the “perfect survey,” because I believe there is no such thing. No magic questions. No perfect constructs.

    I am convinced, however, that you can use survey data to initiate incredibly rich conversations. Data and dialogue about the data are the magic. You can entice people to discuss topics that were taboo. I have done this with the most senior of executive teams. The data are “magic” because it allows everyone to share an opinion about the data versus an opinion about themselves. Consider how well this can work with mergers, for new leaders, or in organizations going through dramatically high rates of change.

    But data for dialogue will be very customized. It will not provide good benchmark data. The key to keeping the surveys “not evil” is that, regardless of goal, the people running the surveys admit how they are using the data. If purpose is honestly communicated to survey participants, there will be fewer complaints and higher participation, and the result will be improved relationships with survey participants.

If you want to join the Leadership Pulse study and receive technical reports on these data, you can sign up here.

Click here to view the complete technical report of these findings and other leadership pulse reports.

In order for the HR function to maximize its impact on the organization, HR-related issues and HR executives need to be “at the table.” This phrase means that HR is involved in devising strategy in addition to implementing strategy. This subject is one that has been discussed for many years, in textbooks, news articles, HR publications and elsewhere. The question that arises today is whether HR has “made it” yet, and I ask this question in a somewhat different way: Is HR at the table, or under it? If it’s under the table, is it holding up the table or hiding?

    This question comes to the forefront of my thinking due to a research study that I recently completed. As part of an ongoing research study of global leaders, with about 4,000 having participated to date, I have been tracking leadership confidence, engagement, and studying other topics related to leadership in general and human resources management. The study involves sending very short “pulse” surveys to the sample of leaders every other month. About 10 percent of the leadership sample responds to each survey, and my analysis shows that the data are representative of our overall population.

    The sample consists of approximately 50 percent C-level executives (CEO, CIO, CFO, etc.). About 80 percent of the sample are VPs and above. The respondents are from Fortune 1,000 firms, smaller businesses and women-owned firms, and they range in size, revenue, industry, etc. Although the sample is global, it is predominantly based in the United States.

    A recent Leadership Pulse study, as the project is called, examined the items that “derail” execution of 2005 business strategies. Based on several reviews of the literature on strategy and prior Leadership Pulse study results, I identified 15 potential “derailers.” Those 15 items range from those that are external, such as budget and customers, to many that are internal to the firm, such as culture, the president of the company or the HR function. Below is a table that includes the means (or averages) for each item in addition to the percent of the sample who agreed that the particular item was a derailer. The survey used a 1 to 5 response scale. One means the item did not get in the way of strategy at all. Five means the item very much got in the way of executing strategy.

    Notice that human resource management is at the bottom of the list in terms of derailers. One would think that this is good news for HR as a field. The HR function is not getting in the way of executing strategy. I have presented this data to a number of senior and junior HR executives, and rather than receiving positive feedback, the results tend to initiate rather interesting—and not very positive—discussions.

    It was not the low score for human resource management that generated the enthusiasm in the subject, but it was the fact that the past, habits, culture and the way people work together were all rated fairly high as derailers, while human resource management was rated low. The HR audiences that I have been speaking with seem to think this is a “disconnect” for HR. The question these HR executives asked was, “Are we not seen as being in charge of culture and the way people work together?”

    In order to understand the data better, I ran a more detailed analysis of the data. First, I conducted a factor analysis, which produces a grouping of the variables into overall scales. The general rule of factor analysis is that you keep an item in an overall scale, or factor, if the factor weight is 0.60 or above. This means that a given item, such as human resource management or culture, for example, “belongs” to factor or scale and not to the others.

    When I ran the factor analysis for these questions, the result was a three-factor solution. I labeled them as external factors, leadership and process. The question for HR is where human resource management falls in this scheme.

    The results show that human resource management should really be left out of the factors because in no case did human resource management “load” at the more than 0.60 level.

    The resulting factors with the items that belong to each are below:

At the table or not?
    Maybe HR is indeed at the table, having high impact on the business. Or, it may be that with all the outsourcing and downsizing, HR is fading out of sight. Thus the question: Is HR under the table?

    Perhaps HR is down there, holding everything up. Perhaps it is a support function that people may not see but that still remains active when it comes to strategy. That is the notion of HR holding up the table. Another possibility is that HR is hiding.

    This is a possibility that, frankly, my current research study cannot answer. I can follow up on this question in future surveys, but for now, what can be learned from these data that can help us find HR, or at least suggest where HR should be seated?

    First, the company’s past and habits are the No. 1 strategy derailer. So a key question for HR, no matter where it is in relation to the table, is how to help their organizations minimize the possibility of their past habits and policies getting in the way of strategic execution.

Alignment vs. realignment
   In the survey, we asked leaders to comment on what’s getting in the way of their ability to execute strategy. We heard what we might expect from this dialogue: much discussion about aligning strategy with HR and making sure all employees are aligned to the new strategy.

    But even when companies make the magic alignment act happen, leaders tell us that something still gets in the way. That something seems to be a key aspect for HR to understand. Perhaps the secret to execution of strategy is not alignment but something tangential to this subject. That is realignment.

    We work very hard in HR to make sure we get our employees aligned. We change compensation, we alter selection, and we work on new slogans and educational efforts. But we do this a lot, and in many cases, employees have become immune to this activity. They have leaned to lay low and focus on some core behavior that will get them by until the next wave of strategic stuff hits them. It’s an inevitable part of business that once you get your organization aligned you will need to change it because the business environment is moving faster every day.

    Companies that win will master the ability to realign. The skill set that they will teach leaders will focus on agility, not alignment; leaders and employees need to understand the language of ambiguity.

    The difficult part of alignment is that when you work hard at alignment and then change your mind in any way, shape or form, employees become disengaged and disillusioned with management. They don’t trust that management knows what it is talking about.

    In the June 2005 Leadership Pulse study, I asked respondents a question as a follow-up to the strategic execution results. I asked respondents to explain what exactly it is about their habits or past that is getting in the way of executing strategy. Below are some of the comments:

“The inability to adjust fast enough at the moment.”
“Failure to prioritize the key strategic initiatives and placing adequate resources and time to complete well.”
“Perhaps we’re a little slow to change our model to meet the market opportunities as competitively as we could.”
“Fear of growth.”
“We have a habit of having too many priorities. The workload is large and we never have enough staff.”
“Allowing the busy routine of daily business to get in the way of planning and implementing change.”
“Slowness in executing strategy.”
“Lack of effective prioritization mechanisms for significant strategic decisions.”

    All these questions suggest another opportunity for HR leaders.

Challenging the alignment goal
   The only way for HR to accomplish anything is to come out from under the furniture. And a good place to emerge is to address the needs of an organization where the past and old habits are deterring execution of strategy and so are slowing growth and business improvement. HR can be an active partner with the management team in making change happen.

One assumption to challenge is that alignment is the ultimate process for growth. Instead, consider these paths:

• From alignment to realignment.

  
  

• From big plans to setting priorities.

  
  

• From learning to execute to learning to be agile.

  
  

    You want to introduce the language of realignment as part of the basic business strategy because new opportunities should be explored on a regular basis. If the leadership team and workforce are ready to realign when new opportunities arise, your organization can move forward with tremendous momentum. This is because your new habits are the habits of change or the habits of movement and growth. Change, in a realignment culture, does not threaten the status quo, because change is part of what the organization values.

    HR can play an incredibly important part in making this type of change because HR has at its disposal the key ingredient to agility, realignment, opportunities and priority-setting: the employee population. HR can be at the table with insights about the business obtained from employees because HR is the conduit to the employees.

    HR can, through various initiatives that reach out to employees, obtain employee insights and ideas about the business. HR can be the table because HR will have information about the business that no one else in the organization has at present. Employees are the stealth ingredient to creating a realignment culture. If you ask employees for information, and you use their input to realign, they are now part of the change, which means they are much more willing to move forward with the leadership team.

Come out, come out
   Our experience is that moving from under the table to sitting at it is a function of HR’s willingness to take risks. If HR is willing to go beyond the traditional role of HR as keeper of employee satisfaction and administration of HR, then HR can have an impact on culture, habits and management.

    But this means that HR might step on the toes of many deeply entrenched habits and beliefs in your organization. One such organizational belief may be that HR belongs under the table, where it has always been.

    If you emerge, people are going to notice. There will be an initial rejuggling to gain balance. HR has to be willing to let the shaking moments happen, and even risk a small crash. As the team sees you, they’ll interact with you. And it may not always be pleasant.

    The move, then, is a big one–and not without risk and discomfort. But it will help your organization move toward the future in a bold, new way.