Category: Training

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The Untapped Talent Pool of People With Disabilities

Recently, Dana Marlowe’s technology consultancy was managing a software project at a Fortune 500 company, when the client told her he was so impressed with her project manager that he wanted to hire him on the spot. That’s not surprising in a world where great tech talent is hard to come by, but it may be surprising to hear that this particular project manager is both deaf and legally blind.

“He’s a brilliant guy, and why wouldn’t they want to hire someone who is brilliant?” said Marlowe, who is principal partner of Accessibility Partners, a Washington, D.C.-based firm that helps organizations ensure their information technology products and services are accessible for people with disabilities. She prioritizes hiring workers with disabilities with the goal that at least 75 percent of the workforce has a disability.

Having workers with disabilities on her team is about more than doing the right thing, she said. “Employing people with disabilities just makes good business sense.”

The unemployment rate among disabled workers is double the average population, according to the U.S. Labor Department’s Office of Disability Employment Policy, or ODEP. Yet many of these workers are highly educated, deeply talented, and very loyal, Marlowe said. “People who overcome challenges on a daily basis can handle whatever workplace issues you throw at them.”

In an economy where companies are facing serious talent shortages, workers with disabilities offer a great value proposition. They not only bring expertise and experience to the table, they help organizations create a more inclusive workplace culture, said Kathy Martinez, head of the ODEP. “Diversification breeds innovation,” she added.

That’s important today as older workers are opting to stay in the workforce longer and could develop a disability while employed. “If you train a person for 30 years and they lose their vision due to diabetes, you would make accommodations so they can keep working,” she said.

Yet a lot of companies shy away from hiring candidates with disabilities in part because they aren’t sure what “accommodations” those employees will need to do the job. Employers imagine they will have to buy expensive equipment or adapt their office space, but the reality is quite different, Martinez said. According to an ongoing study by the Job Accommodation Network, 58 percent of accommodations don’t cost the company any money, while the rest typically cost about $500.

“Accommodations are really just productivity tools,” she said. Many solutions are as simple as lowering a desk or buying an extra piece of software like a screen reader for the blind, or an amplified phone receiver for someone hard of hearing. “It’s not going to be as expensive as you think.”

The other obstacle that hiring managers face is the discomfort that comes with not knowing how to discuss the disability, or what questions they are allowed to ask. But most of the concerns are answered in the Americans with Disabilities Act. For example, according to the ADA, an employer cannot make any pre-employment inquiry about a disability or the nature or severity of a disability. An employer may, however, ask questions about a candidate’s ability to perform specific job functions and may, with certain limitations, ask an individual with a disability to describe or demonstrate how that person would perform these functions.

“People with disabilities usually know what they need to do the job, so just ask them,” Martinez said.

Even if hiring someone with a disability requires a little discomfort or a small investment in new technology, it’s worth it for the value they bring to the organization, Marlowe said. “This is a huge, untapped talent pool, and companies would be foolish to ignore them.”

Sarah Fister Gale is a writer based in the Chicago area. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.

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Why Culture Trumps Compliance

On July 30, the Wall Street Journalreported the following on a recent meeting of the New York Fed:

Thomas Baxter, Executive Vice President and General Counsel of the New York Fed, stressed at the outset of his remarks that he was only speaking for himself, but he pointedly critiqued company culture, saying that if a firm’s values don’t support the rules used to guide employee behavior, the organization ‘is headed for troubled territory.’

Baxter is right on the money. His statement applies not only to banking but also to other types of businesses. NAVEX Global recently released a survey reporting that most compliance officers have shifted to transforming culture as opposed to simply – and it is relatively simple – educating employees on applicable regulations. This is a welcome development. Unfortunately, it’s happening a little too late for organizations like General Motors and the Veterans Administration.

In 2002, I met with the number two aide to one of the nation’s top general counsels. We were discussing how his organization would comply with the newly-enacted Sarbanes Oxley Act, which introduced major changes to the regulation of financial practices and corporate governance requirements.What he told me that day proved to be a common organizational approach.  He said his organization planned to communicate basic standards and document leader and employee receipt. The company’s leaders had concluded getting material out broadly, not whether it had impact, was all that needed to be done.

I thought his employer and others following the same course had made a grievous mistake. And, history has made it clear that they did. Time after time, organizations with supposedly robust compliance mechanisms have proven their systems to be as effective as paper shuffling. They’ve become prey to gross violations that all of their policies, actions, and public commitments promised would never happen.

Compliance initiatives based solely on systems, processes, memos, and other activities – which are largely ignored – tell people what to do; but it’s organizational culture that determines what people actually do. Culture is derived by what people see being done by those they respectand, frankly, may fear. It’s based on how individuals are rewarded or punished when they meet or breach key values. This varies from organization to organization: I know one company that fires anyone who lies on an expense report, no matter how high up the chain they are; another allows employees to cut corners on business deals and deceive clients as long as they meet their financial goals. The reality is people violate rules all the time and either don’t believe they’ll be caught or get into trouble if they are. 

Thus, culture represents the way organizational values are actually lived, not the words by which they are expressed. And, a healthy organizational culture won’t take root by forcing employees to sign documents they’ve barely read and that are ignored by individuals who control their workplace opportunities and futures. Defining clear principles on paper is a first step, but that’s all it is.

To instill ethical behavior, organizations must provide incentives and encourage everyone to not only act properly but also to report violations. And, they need to recognize and, perhaps, reward people when they do. That’s the strategy banks, auto manufacturers, healthcare institutions, government agencies, etc., should follow if they’re serious about making ethical choices, welcoming values, and having daily meaning. It’s much bigger than just handing out compliance-worthy statements and having employees check the box.

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How Do We Make a Supervisor Deal With a Problem Employee?

Dear Intimidated:

Unfortunately, what you describe is all too common in our workplaces. The supervisor’s lack of response is why employees often quit complaining.

Bullying is a persistent and malicious behavior that intimidates, degrades and robs others of their humanity. It may be subtle and nuanced (eye rolling, isolation, ignoring someone, gossip, etc.) or overt behavior such as yelling, swearing or assault. 

If the complaints have been coming to you as an HR professional, you have a responsibility to follow through — particularly if the supervisor does not. One of the primary problems: HR receives a complaint about bullying, but fails to take action.

When HR receives a complaint, specific questions need to be asked about the misconduct:

  • What are the observable, objective behaviors (rather than euphemisms such as bullying) that constitute misconduct? 
  • How often does it occur?
  • Who is the target?
  • Who witnessed it?

It is imperative to determine if the misconduct is directed at someone in a “protected class” due to their age, race, religion, disability and gender, to name a few. Your organization puts itself in peril by failing to investigate allegations of bullying or harassment. Although there are no federal or state anti-bullying laws, employees and their attorneys are getting creative in suing employers for “bullying” using various tort laws. Conducting an investigation and following through on any findings is the first step to minimize your liability.

Train all supervisors and managers on their legal and ethical responsibilities related to bullying, discrimination and harassment. Additionally, they must be trained on how to intervene when they are informed of or observe the behavior. Often managers don’t intervene because they lack the skills. This is a second opportunity for HR — teaching the skills and then coaching the supervisor to use them when required.

Assuming your organization has a code of conduct policy, emphasize to supervisors their responsibility to make sure all employees adhere to it, ensuring the workplace is free from intimidation. If the supervisor fails to adhere to your requirement, despite training and coaching, then it is time to approach the supervisor’s manager with a documented report of the problem. It then becomes a performance management opportunity for the supervisor’s manager.

SOURCE: Susan Strauss, Strauss Consulting, Eden Prairie, Minnesota, May 10, 2014

 

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‘Hardcore Pawn’s’ Les Gold: The Motor City’s Wheeler-Dealer Dishes on Management, Part Two

Ashley Broad, Les and Seth Gold are the stars of the truTV reality show "Hardcore Pawn."

In part one of my interview with Les Gold, I mentioned that the “Hardcore Pawn” star had a little difficulty answering the question of what his title is. That was only partially true. While he had to confer to come up with his actual title, “owner” of Detroit’s American Jewelry and Loan, he was quick to add that, at home, his title is “garbage taker-outer.” Some titles we don’t get to pick.

In the second part of our interview, Gold discusses his thoughts on minimum wage, knee-jerk reactions on television and what drives him to succeed.

I did ask him about his falling out with a former employee, Rich Pyle, who he had a heated exchange with a couple of years ago, but he declined to address the topic, saying only: “I wish him the best, and I know he’s done very well for himself, and I’m glad for that.”

About the leather jacket and white sweater Gold wears on the show, I’m sorry to inform you there’s no interesting story behind them. He simply wears them for continuity on television, he said.

An edited transcript of our talk follows.

WW: What are your thoughts on raising the minimum wage? I know that Michigan has recently decided to raise the minimum wage to $9.25 by 2018. There’s been a push, especially in the fast-food industry saying that they need to raise minimum wage. What are your thoughts as an employer?

Les Gold: The fast-food industry is changing. Once you bring up the minimum wage for them, that dollar hamburger’s going to be $1.25, which is going to affect everybody. I’m not against raising the minimum wage, not by a long shot. But we have to be very careful because it’s going to cost everybody money. It’s not just the business owner who’s going to be affected. It’s going to be everybody down the line. I think people need to make more money, no question, but we have to be very careful about how it’s going to be effective for everyone concerned.

I was just reading — was it Washington? — where they want to raise the minimum wage to $15?

WW: Yes.

Gold: Which is going to make that dollar hamburger $2. … Let me be honest with you, at American Jewelry and Loan, nobody makes minimum wage, so I’ve been a big advocate of that for a long time.

WW: Do most of the employees work on commission?

Gold: I have nobody that works on commission. Everybody is hourly, so everybody makes a lot more than minimum wage.

WW: OK, back to the show: Do you ever feel like when you’re watching episodes of the show, you look back on it and say, ‘I made a knee-jerk reaction?’ I think of a time, especially with your son, Seth, when an employee was caught stealing and he wanted to start frisking all the employees, are those knee-jerk reactions based on what’s good for television? Where do those come from?

Gold: To say the least. Seth has been in the business for 10 years. Ashley has been in it for 20 years. I’ve been in it my whole life, and once you see, you were talking about thievery, it affects you emotionally. So you’re going to make some decisions maybe hastily that you’ll regret, but one of the things that [is] important to me is you learn by your mistakes. Mistakes teach you what not to do again.

When people make a knee-jerk reaction, sometimes it’s in the worst interest of the business, but occasionally it’s in the best interest of the business. Like I said about mistakes, sometimes you’re going to make mistakes. No question. But in the long term, once you’ve been trained to understand the industry you’re in, sometimes a knee-jerk reaction is the way to go.

WW: In your book, ‘For What It’s Worth,’ you talk a lot about how fear of failure drives you, and it was instilled in you as a child in your dealings with your father, so at this point in your career, what do you have to strive for and why do you keep pushing yourself the way you do?

Gold: That’s a very good question. I do a lot of speeches, and during my speeches, I come out on stage and I say to the audience, ‘I have a question for you.’ And the question is: ‘How bad do you want it?’ I just turned 64 the other day, and I want it just as bad today as I did when I was 24, and the reason for that is you have to strive for something. You have to have meaning in your life each and every day when you wake up. When you’ve accomplished everything that you think you want to accomplish in life, you don’t want it bad enough and all you do is shrivel up and die. …  That’s something that I don’t want to do. I work out seven days a week because I want to have that mental and physical ability each and every day. I look in the mirror in the morning and I go, ‘Hey, old man, I’ve got a question for you: How bad do you want it?’ [Laughs]

WW: You want it bad, but working in a pawn store isn’t necessarily the safest career choice. And you’ve had some experience firsthand with workplace violence, especially back in the early 1970s [Editor’s note: In 1971 there was a robbery at Gold’s grandfather’s story where two people got killed]. Can you tell me a little bit about what you learned from that experience?

Gold: I learned how to be safe. One of the things that we make sure of nowadays is our security force. Our security force is trained in all aspects of security. I need to make sure that my customers are safe, my employees are safe and most importantly my family is safe. I learned a lot during my tenure of being a pawnbroker. Safety is one of those issues, and we make sure of it.

WW: Let’s talk about employees. How quickly when you’re hiring can you size up a potential employee?

Gold: I can size them up relatively quickly. Doesn’t mean that people don’t surprise you. People have an ability to pull the wool over your eyes, but it’s very rare that someone can with me, but in the big picture, it doesn’t take long once I sit down with an employee. For example, I had a person come in with an application who wanted to have a sales position. And so we’re sitting and talking, and … the person across from me is into jewelry sales, and I pull out a pen. And I go to them, ‘Sell me this pen.’ Well, it puts them right off-guard, and the way to put a potential sales clerk off-guard is to give them something that they’re not used to selling. And giving them the pen gives me the opportunity to see how fast they can think on their feet.

WW: You have about 55 employees, right?

Gold: Yes, I do.

WW: So how is the Affordable Care Act going to affect your business?

Gold: Well, it’s something that we have to deal with. It’s something that we’ve started looking into about a year ago. Right now we’ve begun offering health care to my employees. We began offering them positions of being able to get money from our profit margins, and we have 401(k)s, so we’ve really looked into it to make sure that our employees are taken care of as they get older. That’s very important to us.

WW: I have to ask you this: When my wife and I watch the show, we’re constantly dumbfounded when people come in and say, ‘I want $1,000 for this thingamabob.’ And then you give them a look and all of the sudden, they say, ‘Well, I’ll take $500 for it.’ How do you do that? Or is it just on television that it happens that quickly?

Gold: No, it happens consistently. People have this expectation of how much money they think the item is worth, especially when they have this intrinsic value. It was given to them by grandma, their mom passed away or these things mean something to them. Once I give that first comment, ‘How much do you want?’ They come up with some astounding number, then I say, ‘What will you really take?’ it brings them down to a normal idea of how much their item actually is. And then we start wheeling and dealing, and I tell them what their item is worth.

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How Can I Create a Willingness to Learn Among My Employees?

Dear Shared Responsibility:

Engaging employees and managers in taking personal accountability for learning and development requires a quality foundation that they see as relevant and valid. Changing the culture is a final outcome, not the opening argument. A quality foundation needs to be established around the purpose/mission/goals of the business unit, the goals of the job, the skill/performance requirements of the job and the current state of the individual relative to the requirements.

Benchmarking the job’s talent requirements using a role’s key accountabilities will go a long way to creating this quality foundation for individuals.

In manufacturing production, there are technical skill requirements across most of the jobs. There are also certain soft skills that enable high performance. Training for technical skill competency and ignoring the soft skill development needs for the job can greatly affect the expected outcome. Ensuring any initiative is seen as relevant and valid for the manager and employee will make the following strategy steps easier to implement.

To increase engagement in creating the foundation for training and development personal accountability, try using these steps:

·       Increase urgency for change by developing a change vision first. This requires creating a compare and contrast current and future state image (not data) that makes it personal. 

·       Share success stories/examples of what current state and a desired future state look like.

·       Based on that new sense of urgency from some, look for the early adopters from both managers and employees. Build “pilot teams” based on the individual interest to follow through with pursuit of the change vision – to take personal accountability for training and development.

·       Budget appropriately for development – don’t make it difficult for managers to cost-justify training budgets. Expect success stories to drive other, slower adopting managers to start budgeting for the same training for their employees. Low ROI on a training initiative won’t likely be repeated by others.

·       Enable the “pilot teams” to determine their own vision – to define what needs to change (that results in a learning and development objective) and the best way to make the vision a reality. This doesn’t replace a learning and development (L&D) function or staff. The pilot team members have their own job to do. They don’t have time to research the training options but they do have insight and opinions that can help an L&D staff member define, focus and compile relevant research. The L&D member can then report back to the pilot team what solutions they identified and empower the pilot team to evaluate and select the right L&D solution.

·       Keep in mind the 70percent-20percent-10percent training rule – 70percent of learning will be through experience, 20percent through exposure and 10percent through education. Create a L&D strategy with that formula in mind.

·       Communicate to the greater organization what is happening and share any success stories coming out of the initiative – do your homework prior to communicating, especially to understand what people are feeling.

·       Empower action by employees and managers. Recognition and reward systems are certainly part of this – they need to inspire, promote optimism and build self-confidence in program participants. You want to reward behaviors/efforts that you want repeated. But a great L&D solution is usually something participants will easily “recommend” to co-workers.  Rather than taking the success and rolling it out as a mandate to all, use “classes” or “cohorts” where the members of the new class or cohort are nominated by a manager or past participant. By creating a sense of “by invitation only” you create a natural interest by others and will create demand for the training. Be sure to watch for bosses who seriously disempower their subordinates.

·        Look for early wins from the training. Make those wins as visible as possible to as many people as possible – wins that are meaningful, unambiguous and speak to powerful players whose ongoing support you need.

·       If the training solution is applicable to a broad cross-section of the operation, don’t let up with a pilot. Once the pilot has been deemed a success, look for ways to improve it using participant feedback and immediately organize and implement the next offering of training. Limit the number of participants. If you need to be more aggressive, start offering the training program more frequently but only one class registration at a time to maintain a sense of demand for the program. Include training and development personal accountability as part of the performance review process.

·       Use training personal accountability success stories from employees to showcase in new hire orientation and use the promotions process to place people who are taking personal accountability for their own learning and development into influential and visible positions.

According to John Kotter at the Harvard Business School, “a culture truly changes only when a new way of operating has been shown to succeed over some minimum period of time.” Trying to shift the norms and values before you have created the new way of operating does not work. The vision can talk of a new culture for training and development personal accountability. You can create new behaviors that reflect personal accountability for training and development. But those new behaviors will not become norms and take hold until the very end of the process as I’ve outlined above.

SOURCE:Carl Nielson, The Nielson Group, Dallas

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How Do We Keep Up With Change?

Dear Staggered:

You are entirely on point in realizing that the choices you face with respect to learning and development are more important than they ever have been. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but the health care industry isn’t all that’s changing. So, too, is the deal in the workspace, the expectations of employees and clients, and a delivery window that is shrinking by the day. So, your L&D approach must take into account highly targeted, strategically anchored content offerings, intelligent and efficient delivery modes, and a host of changing expectations. Here are a few thoughts:

Voice of the Customer

The first stop on your journey should be to make sure that the client’s voice is well-represented. Don’t assume that you know what clients are facing and what they need from your organization. Take the time to engage them and ask about both their immediate and anticipated needs. Listen hard, and then make sure that their needs are well-represented in your L&D plans and priorities.

You would do well to look at your workforce as clients, too, albeit the non-paying type. They can tell you a lot about what’s working and what’s not with respect to their preparation, and identify some needs that paying clients haven’t even thought about yet. Avoid at all cost the trap of letting trainers clutter the agenda with their favorite chunks of content. Then, be exceptionally well-prepared to fight for the right L&D priorities and the resource Commitment (capital ‘C’ intentional) to breathe life into them.

One Size Fits One, But …

On one hand you’ve got to achieve critical mass by making sure that certain competencies are well-shared in the organization. But on the other hand, you need to do a fair amount of micro-targeting. People will no longer endure, let alone embrace or pay for, learning content that is poorly designed, delivered in the wrong mode or at the wrong time, or attempts to treat everyone the same.

Find a way to get senior executives, the organization’s rock stars and other centers of influence seriously involved. See to it that everyone has a personal development plan and is expected to accomplish it. For that matter, all staff members should negotiate both the terms and funding for their development plan. In other words, let them own it. Be willing to take a fresh look at various delivery modes, including gamification, coaching, shared services and the use of MOOCs. Don’t be afraid to incorporate a heaping dose of fun.

Career Development Isn’t What It Used to Be

During the last 60 years, average job tenure in the U.S. has shrunk from nearly 20 years to about four years. Indeed, in a gig economy the word “career” has taken on completely new meaning, since a person’s body of work can be literally all over the map, housed in an assortment of short, disparate stays. For L&D purposes, that means you’ve got a much shorter and steeper runway to help people gain the needed proficiency.

Nowhere is that more evident than with your leadership cadre. Not unlike football quarterbacks who go straight from the college ranks to starting NFL jobs — something that used to take five years — emerging leaders are commonly thrust into managerial roles with little to no preparation whatsoever. On Friday, you’re an individual contributor, and on Monday, having had all weekend to get ready, your life changes.

Unlike the college player, most of them have not even had the benefit of coaching, because their bosses are completely overwhelmed by their own jobs. Make a determined effort to provide your emerging leaders with some coaching. If you can do nothing else, make sure that real leadership qualifications are baked into the selection criteria for management positions at all levels. Good luck.

Bill Catlette, Contented Cow Partners, Jacksonville, Florida, April 7, 2014

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How Do We Deliver Performance-Based Learning?

Dear Map But No Direction:

Learning in the workplace needs to be constantly adapting and evolving to continue to build talent in the most effective way for the learner. Performance-based learning, or PBL, is a great way to accomplish this. Although it can be difficult to design and implement, conducting it properly pays a huge return on investment.  

PBL is a type of teaching and learning that emphasizes gaining specific skills for a job. The outcome of learning is the focus rather than the functions and information being taught.

Studies have shown that PBL can cut lesson time by up to 50 percent for students while increasing their retention. Employees absorb the necessary skills and require fewer “touch points,” making them more effective on the job and within a shorter time frame — a big win for management.    

With an organization of 600 people, taking the time to focus on which employees need improvement with what skill may seem overwhelming and unrealistic. Your PBL curriculum can be manageable if you divide it into these three steps:  

  • Determine your competencies.
  • Design your training around learning outcomes.
  • Make it tangible, real and a little sticky.

Determine your competencies: Meet with your team leads and/or managers to determine core competencies. If possible, conduct a companywide survey to gain a pulse on what skills are lacking. The questions and outcomes must focus on which skills need improvement, not just the knowledge that has to be acquired.

To help your training take shape, take the top 15 to 20 needed skills and group employees with like needs. Your curriculum will become specialized and therefore more realistic to manage.

Design training around learning outcomes: Customize your training based off the survey results. Tailoring your training modules (instead of offering a blanket studying course) will encourage participants to learn vs. coasting through the curriculum. You can design your training program by:

  • Intermixing live training, webinars and e-learning to reinforce the outcomes by capitalizing on different learning styles.
  • Structuring time and encouraging employees to practice, make mistakes, reflect and try again.
  • Allowing for peer-to-peer regroup sessions to discuss the lessons and help each other improve.

It will take more upfront work, but learners need to learn by doing. Through PBL, employees can master a skill and there is less downtime spent on retraining those skills.

Make it tangible, real and a little sticky: To have a truly successful PBL curriculum, students need to take responsibility for their own scholarship. Education allows for increased confidence and ability. However, as with all lessons, an air of uncertainty and self-doubt can ensue. Overcome these limitations and make it stick at your organization by:

  • Re-evaluating the skills learned to ensure PBL is still applicable and effective.
  • Delivering direct and sincere feedback in a comfortable environment.
  • Having virtual (weekly newsletter, social media, community board, emails, etc.) and in-person (morning meetings, evaluations, etc.) recognition sessions on PBL skill accomplishments.

SOURCE: Brad Karsh, JB Training Solutions, Chicago

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Can Low-Potential Workers Become High-Potentials?

Dear What About the Also-Rans:

Most talent management initiatives focus on so-called high potentials — employees than an organization believes are capable of advancing at least two levels beyond their current position. If you consider the traditional bell curve, high potentials may represent up to 15 percent of your organization. At the bottom of the curve, poor performers represent 15 percent — leaving at least 70 percent of your people in the middle. Conventional wisdom is that organizations invest most of their training and development budget on high-potential programs, since the return on investment generally is greater. But your inquiry alludes to a bigger question: What happens with the remaining 70 percent of employees?

As HR professionals, we should be careful about labeling employees. While “high potential” is a common term applied to some people, I recommend you avoid the low-potential label. All people have potential.

Just as one cannot turn a fox into a leopard, an organization cannot turn an individual into a high-potential employee. However, your company can provide every employee with an opportunity to develop their talents, skills and competencies, which indeed reflect their potential.

The question you’ve raised also points to a larger fundamental issue: Who within the organization takes responsibility for employee development? Is it the organization itself or the employee? It’s my belief that the employee is responsible for his or her own development — but your organization must serve as a catalyst to help unlock their full potential.

Not everyone wants to advance two levels and frankly, even if they did, your organization likely would be unable to meet the sustained demand. Your goal: facilitate processes that enable each person to strive to reach their potential. This begins with conversation between your managers, employees and immediate supervisor about career aspirations, strengths and developmental needs. 

While seminars, classroom training and degree programs are worthy endeavors, the most effective learning occurs from on-the-job-experience. Short-term special projects, stretch assignments, task forces, cross-training, broadening responsibilities and lateral job rotation enable employees to demonstrate potential beyond their current roles. Some employees may welcome the additional opportunities. Others value stability and may simply be content to perform their job to the best of their abilities and remain in their current position, and that has value too.

Perhaps only a small percentage of your employee population will ultimately be designated as high potentials and capable of advancing two levels. However, you strengthen your talent base, enhance performance and create a desirable workplace by helping people unlock their full potential. That’s the essence of HR professional.

SOURCE:Jeffrey Husserl, CoralBridge Partners,Chicago, Feb. 13, 2014.

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How Do I Show Training Impact?

Dear Mission Impossible,

Many organizations don’t see how training connects to tangible business improvements, even when it does. Attendance at training programs is often seen as a perquisite, similar to a day off with pay, rather than as a means of developing value-adding new skills and abilities.

I call this the “invisible flower” syndrome. We plant the seed and hope it flourishes, but even if it does, the result often goes unnoticed. The real problem here is that we really don’t know what we are looking for out of most training experiences. Here’s a simple way to fix training.

Do a Snag Analysis

A snag analysis is a brief review of individual or group performance that reveals specific needed improvement. Start by looking at performance reviews, coaching notes and disciplinary writings to determine where development opportunities exist (for example, spreadsheet skills).

Next, determine specifically how much time the inefficiency is costing your organization. In this instance, you could look at the time it takes finance managers with higher-level skills to accomplish the same tasks and compare it to the finance manager with whom you are working.

Assume a snag analysis found that a finance manager’s lack of expertise at using spreadsheets caused him to spend three hours a week more on this duty than his cohorts.

Specify the financial or other operating cost of the inefficiency. Assume this finance manager makes $50 per hour. If you are losing approximately 150 hours of productivity a year, this costs your organization about $7,500.

Do an Opportunity Allocation

Doing training to improve a base skill is pretty much a waste of time unless you can use the recovered time productively. Who wants to spend money training someone to get his or her job done in three hours less time per week, just so that person can chat with and distract others or surf the Internet?

Work with the employee to identify three hours a week of specific value-adding additional work that will be done once training is completed. Determine how that additional work benefits the organization.

In this case, the minimum return would be three hours of additional work a week. Frequently, however, the value of new work that is completed exceeds the value of work it replaced. For example, your finance manager could spend three hours more a week negotiating better terms with vendors. This can very easily turn into a significant new contribution to the bottom line.

Measure and Report

It’s an old saw but nevertheless holds true: “What gets measured, gets done.” Ask for a weekly report on how long it takes to complete the required tasks, such as learning to use spreadsheets, and track it for several weeks once training is completed.

Also ask the manager to report on the additional value created by the time recovered. What additional work was completed? What additional financial or other results were generated?

Do the Math

If the manager was gone eight hours for training ($400) and the training cost the company $600, the organization allocated $1,000 to this development activity. 

Assume that you’ve identified $7,500 worth of return on this investment. Most companies will gladly invest $1,000 to get a sevenfold return.

Following these simple steps brings your “invisible flower” into view, provides tangible return on investment and equips your employees with skills and attributes that satisfy your organization’s evolving business needs.

SOURCE: Rick Galbreath, Performance Growth Partners Inc., Bloomington, Illinois, Feb. 5, 2014

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Five Points to Train Your Staff

Human resources managers are a business’ front line for employee complaints, which all too often involve discrimination or harassment claims. Training managers and the workforce on how to avoid complaints and effectively address those that do occur is critical. These five points will help employers avoid discriminatory harassment among employees.

1.    Preventive Action. In 2014, HR managers know that employers need an anti-discrimination, anti-harassment and anti-retaliation policy. But creating a sound, comprehensive policy is just a necessary first step. Supporting and enforcing that policy is where the rubber meets the road. Therefore, ensuring HR managers are trained to support, communicate and enforce the policy is a vital second step. HR managers must be able to distinguish complaints that may have legal consequences from complaints that need professional attention but do not require escalation to legal counsel. Training, whether done internally or through an outside resource, can assist managers and supervisors in learning and acting on these distinctions.

2.    Responding to a Complaint. An anti-harassment policy should provide a detailed explanation of the complaint procedures. HR managers, supervisors and employees all should be trained to understand the complaint process and the importance to the business and the employee of following the established complaint procedure. In particular, HR managers and other supervisors must take complaints seriously, be objective and fair towards all parties involved, and show concern. An especially sensitive area is learning how to respond when an employee does not want her name to be used in an investigation. Seasoned HR professionals are trained to assure the employee that the investigation will be confidential to the extent possible, but that complaints must be investigated. At the same time, they know how to let potential victims of harassment or discrimination that their jobs are safe from retaliation when they cooperate in an internal investigation.

3.    Retaining Records. All complaints of harassment should be well-documented and preserved. Not only is retention of employment records required for certain time periods under the law, these records will be helpful if an employee files a charge of discrimination with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or an equivalent state agency. In today’s workplace, harassment can occur in emails or tweets, and, therefore, any potentially relevant electronic data as well as paper files must be preserved. HR managers can help train supervisors and employees to understand that deleting or destroying potentially relevant emails or documents can have serious legal consequences.

4.    Distinguishing Between Workplace Bullying and Actionable Harassment. When does a conflict between employees rise to the level of harassment that violates anti-discrimination laws? If the harassment is based on the victim’s race, ethnicity, gender, religion or other protected category, it might be illegal as well as inappropriate. On the other hand, employee conflict, bullying or intimidation based on other characteristics such as personality traits may hinder workplace productivity that requires prompt professional attention but not legal input. There can be a fine line here, so training can teach supervisors and employees that what seem to be innocent comments concerning issues such as clothing or hair style, could lead to a claim of unlawful discrimination or harassment. As mentioned before, well-trained HR Managers can separate workplace issues that can be resolved through professional concern and discretion from those that may require legal input.

5.    Addressing Electronic Information and Social Media. HR managers can help employees understand that company computers and mobile devices are company property, and that employees have no reason to believe that any information on any such computer or device will remain private, including posts on social media on company-owned computers. However, before taking any action based on an employee’s posting on social media, consult with legal counsel, as this is a rapidly developing area of law.

Cary Donham, Rachel Schaller and Richard Hu are attorneys with the employment law group at  Shefsky & Froelich in Chicago. To comment, email editors@workforce.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.