In General Motors’ first public review of its performance since emerging from bankruptcy 90 days ago, CEO Fritz Henderson said the restructuring process has allowed the company to change its culture and focus more time on customers and products, though the automaker hasn’t shed as many workers as it originally intended.
“It’s where we spend our time as a leadership team, and spending more time on product and customer issues and far less time on” structural issues, Henderson said during a conference call with reporters and analysts on Wednesday, October 7. “That has fundamentally changed in the last six months.”
Henderson attributed the difference to the company’s decision to retain salaried workers from parts maker AC Delco, which it has not sold.
And, Henderson said, GM has retained workers in key technical areas. The company’s push toward building electric vehicles has led to increased demand for engineers with experience in that area.
Henderson said he updated employees on the state of the company in a town hall meeting this week, stressing the company’s new focus on the customer and product, risk-taking, accountability and speed.
“We’re fostering an environment where people are prepared and accept taking risks for the future,” he said.
With many of the changes to its corporate structure and debt obligations complete, Henderson said the company can focus on developing products customers want.
“The most important thing we need to work on is how do we remain competitive in the market and transform the culture” of the company, he said.
California employers would be wise to take another look at their criminal background check policies in light of the possibility the state may be forced to release many prisoners early because of jail overcrowding, some observers say.
Many employers, particularly large corporations, already have such policies in place. Nationally, all employers must contend with myriad state laws limiting how they may use this information as well as concern by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that these checks have a disparate impact on minorities.
In California, a three-judge federal panel has refused to delay a plan to release more than 40,000 inmates from the state’s overcrowded prison system. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration is appealing the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Legislature is considering the issue, but its ultimate resolution remains uncertain.
But firms should take care when constructing or amending background check policies, experts say.
One concern of the EEOC is criminal background checks’ disparate impact on minorities, experts note. According to the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, as of June 2008, with more than 2.3 million inmates held in prison or jails, black males were incarcerated at 6.6 times the rate of white males.
“Studies reveal that some employers make selection decisions based on names, arrest and conviction records … all of which may disparately impact people of color,” says the EEOC in discussing its E-RACE initiative, which is intended to “identify issues, criteria and barriers that contribute to race and color discrimination.”
Meanwhile, each state has its own laws with regard to how criminal background checks may be used. In Pennsylvania, applicants can generally be denied a position only when the job is related to their crime, said Carrie B. Rosen, a member of law firm Cozen O’Connor in Philadelphia. An employer is “going to have a hard time arguing” a secretarial job applicant should be rejected because of a drunken driving conviction, she said.
Other states, such as New York, have a multifactor test, Rosen said.
New York’s law, which took effect in February, generally prohibits discrimination on the basis of criminal offenses and says factors including job responsibilities, the time elapsed since the crime was committed, the applicant’s age at the time, and the seriousness of the offense must be taken into account.
In California, an employer cannot take adverse action against an applicant if a person is arrested, but not convicted; if the criminal offense is more than 7 years old; or if the person was put into a community service-type program, Ashe said. The state also forbids employers from even asking about marijuana-related convictions that are more than 2 years old.
Observers note there are certain sectors where criminal background checks may be required, such as hospitals and schools.
There is no blanket rule on conducting background checks, Olmsted said. “The employer needs to exercise good judgment.”
“An employer, in most instances, is going to be safe in excluding those convicted of a felony, even if not specifically related to the job in question,” Oncidi said. “If the employer says, ‘I just don’t want a convicted felon working for me,’ there’s no law that says the employer must hire that person. It’s that simple.”
However, Paul E. Starkman, a partner with law firm Arnstein & Lehr in Chicago, said, “You don’t want to have a blanket written policy that says felons will not be hired.”
In this economy many HR executives have worried about the mental health of their full-time employees, but they should actually be more concerned about their temporary workers, according to research published by McGill University.
“But if we factor in this increased risk for mental health problems, which we know is a leading reason for absenteeism, that theory might not be correct,” she says.
The study, based on records collected biennially between 1992 and 2002 from the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, focuses on workers who don’t expect to be with their current jobs for more than one year. It was presented for the first time Sunday, August 9, in San Francisco at the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting.
As of 2005, about 4 percent of the U.S. workforce—or 5.7 million American workers—held temporary positions, according to the most recent data available from the Current Population Survey, a monthly survey of about 50,000 households conducted by the Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There are currently 1.8 million workers employed by temporary agencies, according to the BLS.
It would make sense that the paper’s findings are more acute today given the economic environment, says Janice Dragotta, senior consultant, health and productivity, in the San Francisco office of Watson Wyatt Worldwide.
Other than the instability of their jobs, another contributing factor to temporary workers’ inclination to mental health issues could be that they often lack social ties to the rest of the workforce, she says.
“They may not have the opportunity to develop relationships with others or have a sense of work-family that others do in their work lives,” she says.
So you’re in HR, a partner to whomever you serve. Guess what? That means you’re supposed to tell people when they’re messing up. For a lot of us, that’s easy when the target of the constructive feedback is an employee, or even the managers we serve in other departments. It gets trickier when we have to tell our bosses that there’s something rotten in Denmark related to, well, them.
If you, as an HR professional, have been faced with giving your boss needed feedback, you will know that bosses come in one of these two different flavors:
Your boss is a line manager or business executive to whom you report directly. While the personalities and styles of the business-focused, non-HR boss are many, the common denominator here is they aren’t HR pros. You are. That means your relationship and communication style should be focused on the fact that you are the expert in the areas you cover. I’ve always found it easier to give straight feedback to the line managers and executives to whom I reported. After all, they aren’t in HR. So when you apply the people and culture stuff to them, they can easily rationalize it, thinking, “Well, you know, that’s why I’ve got you.” But that only works if your overall relationship with them makes them feel that way.
Your boss is an HR manager or HR executive to whom you report directly. If you report directly to an HR manager, HR director or HR vice president, giving feedback to your boss is usually either going to be really easy or really hard. When it’s easy, it flows as it should. The HR boss gets what you are saying and why you are saying it. But it’s not always like that. Sometimes, especially if the issue is an emotional one for them, it’s harder for the HR boss to hear the feedback you must provide. Deep in your heart, you know why: The boss is in the HR game, so he should likely be aware of what you are telling her. Except he isn’t. And yes, it’s very uncomfortable.
But like the boys from Depeche Mode once reminded the world, people are people. It’s the same with bosses, whether yours is in HR or is running the entire show. Even bosses need some straight talk from the HR pros before an oversight or blind spot mortally wounds them.
With that realty in mind, here’s my list of things to keep in mind once you decide to give the boss an “opportunity for improvement,” otherwise known as feedback or coaching:
You’ve got to give to get. Mix positive reinforcement often. It’s a good practice and money in the bank when you need to make an “opportunity for improvement” withdrawal. If the boss has heard good stuff from you periodically, you’ll automatically have credibility with the challenges you eventually point out.
Positive reinforcement to the boss, while not necessary for your survival, is necessary if you want real dialog. The one-on-one opportunities are everywhere and don’t take a lot of time. For example, you can hit the boss with a private reply to a group e-mail they sent out that simply says “Nice job.” You can also share “heard on the street” feedback that’s positive about how the boss is viewed by the troops. The only limit is your imagination.
Actually, there’s another limitation. It’s the potential for you to feel like a brown-noser in giving positive feedback to the boss. You can avoid feeling like a suck-up by only sharing positives periodically, keeping it business-focused (skip the daily affirmations about boss attire), and above all else, being willing to share the negative as well.
Timing is everything. Financials just came out and the division missed revenue by 20 percent, but you’ve got “Talk to boss” in your day planner? Don’t be a sucker. Kick your FranklinCovey binder across the room and live to fight another day.
You might hold on to the feedback for a month looking for the right time. That’s OK. Deliver it when the time is right. Be sensitive to the weather report that is your boss’s mood.
Don’t throw someone else under the bus. When coaching for improvement to the boss as an HR pro, own your observation. Don’t say, “Johnny mentioned that you had an anger problem in the meeting”. By putting your observations on someone else, the boss wants to go tackle Johnny, not listen to you about the issue. If you’ve done a good job with positive feedback, your boss will listen to you when you need help from her, even regarding her own actions.
What if the boss still wants the name of a complainer? If you have a solid relationship with her, you’ll have to give the name, but only after you’ve provided the necessary context and the rundown of the feedback topic, and received her buy-in.
Have the boss’s back once in awhile. As with the need for positive feedback, you’ve got to be there to take a bullet for the boss once in a while, or at least identify a sniper for her before you both go into a dicey meeting. If the boss knows you’ve acted like a Secret Service agent when needed, she’ll listen when you have something to say on the coaching front.
Think of yourself as the boss’s personal AWACS plane. If providing some context for a political situation in the office might help her stay out of the ditch, you’ll build credibility that can be cashed in later.
And the most important factor to consider when giving negative feedback to your boss:
You’re not judging her; you’re her agent. No one likes to feel judged when getting negative feedback from a subordinate. But everyone likes to have an agent looking out for their corporate image. That’s why you’re going to have the boss’s back, so that you can lead coaching moments with something like the following: “Susan, you know I’m out there making it happen, but at the same time, I’m looking out for you. That’s why I have to make sure you understand that you shouldn’t have fired that coordinator on the spot in front of 25 people. Here’s how I think you should fix it so you’re not hurt by this long term.”
Be the Gladys Kravitz of the office, and the boss will hate you. Be the boss’s personal corporate-image agent, and you’ve got a chance to be heard and maybe, just maybe, get improvement in the area you need, when you need it.
Here’s a final note on the role of an upscale HR pro in today’s organization. (And when I say “upscale,” I mean that you have the personality and political skills to handle something in the right way. It has nothing to do with where you live or what car you drive.) Lots of people won’t challenge the boss or provide feedback under any circumstance. When things get crazy or a little strange, there’s just one individual all those people think could actually handle coaching the boss.
That person is you, the HR pro. When everyone is looking around but afraid to say something, that’s when your boss needs you the most. So advance the cause of upscale HR and do it, but start prepping for the need now by following the points listed above.
It’s not easy, but both you and the boss will be glad you did.
Kris Dunn is a Workforce contributing editor. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
Updated June 29, 2012 By summer 2012, San Diego Zoo Global saw what its chief human resources officers characterized as a culture change in which employees felt that their peers and their managers were being held more accountable. The driver of this shift: a performance management system introduced six years earlier. “It’s been a game changer in terms of creating a culture of high performance, high engagement and high productivity,” chief human resources officer Tim Mulligan says. By late 2011, performance evaluations for all nonunion employees at San Diego Zoo Global were conducted using the Web-based appraisal system. Branded internally as “Z-Max,” the software has bolstered a pay-for-performance strategy rolled out simultaneously at San Diego Zoo Global, which operates the 100-acre zoo, the 1,800-acre safari park and the Institute for Conservation Research. “Everyone is now focused on success and having the organization meets it targeted objectives,” Mulligan says. “It also helps boost engagement, productivity and morale because you know what you’re doing makes a difference and how it’s tied into the success of the company.” San Diego Zoo Global, the name adopted in 2011 for what had been known as the Zoological Society of San Diego, has added “more bells and whistles” through vendor Halogen Software. An online directory, somewhat like an internal LinkedIn, now provides detailed profiles: pictures, work history, professional certifications and contact information. The easily accessible information helps in selecting committees and with succession planning, Mulligan says. Employees particularly like the online journals where they track accomplishments and share it electronically with their managers before midyear and end-of-year reviews, Mulligan says. “It’s taken feedback and communication between manager and direct report to a much higher level,” he says. In this 2006 story, Workforce talked to San Diego Zoo Global a few months after the organization began using the appraisal system for its first group, a core section of about 250 managers.
For years, employee performance evaluations were a low priority at the Zoological Society of San Diego, with no uniform metrics and no consequences for ignoring appraisal paperwork sent by the human resources department. Different versions of the one-page form were used. Managers didn’t judge subordinates on goals, but on a nebulous sense of how they were doing. Some employees hadn’t been reviewed in years—a few of them had waited decades. “It wasn’t taken seriously, and it didn’t hold any credence because there was not a pay-for-performance system here,” says Tim Mulligan, director of human resources for the not-for-profit Zoological Society, which operates the San Diego Zoo, the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park and the Conservation and Research for Endangered Species scientific center. Managers received annual raises, which were essentially cost-of-living increases not linked to their performance, Mulligan says. “HR would send out a form, say, ‘This review is due,’ but then would never follow up to see that it was turned in.”
That is changing. The Zoological Society, which employs 2,600 people, this year introduced an employee performance management system whose ratings will determine managers’ pay raises. It’s part of an emphasis on employee accountability outlined in the organization’s strategic plan, which was being finalized when the nonprofit organization hired Mulligan two years ago. Like an increasing number of organizations, the Zoological Society, whose revenues in 2005 reached $176 million, wanted a Web-based employee-appraisal system that helps guide managers through the process and reduces rote work. The demand for software that accomplishes this is growing. Fueled by the performance and succession management segments, the talent management software market will increase by 20 percent this year, surpassing $2.3 billion in revenue, according to an estimate by technology consultancy Yankee Group. Of 244 large and midsize organizations surveyed by consulting firm Towers Perrin, 34 percent said their spending on human resource technology increased in 2005 compared with 2004. Only 15 percent said spending decreased; the rest of the respondents said spending was flat. This year, the Zoological Society’s management team, which consists of 225 employees classified as assistant managers or higher, falls under the Web-based employee appraisal system. Next year, the practice will be expanded to include all exempt employees. With built-in prompts for completing reviews, performance management applications standardize the format of performance reviews and free human resource professionals from the administrative tasks of reminding managers that appraisals are due. They also tend to be affordable ways to update appraisal processes, have multiple raters and enable timely feedback on performance. Setting goals
Mulligan identified the primary objectives for the Zoological Society’s new system: establish impartial employee goals directly linked to the organization’s goals; include a midyear review to ensure an ongoing dialogue and to prevent end-of-the-year surprises; and require year-end reviews whose ratings will be used to determine merit increases. Mulligan also realized his diverse workforce, which includes everyone from world-renowned scientists to teenage food-service workers, needed metrics to measure performance, as well as easy-to-use software. He created two teams—one looking at vendors, the other at skills that characterized a successful leader within the organization, regardless of their department. “We didn’t want to throw this down our managers’ throats,” he says of involving employees in the planning. “We wanted to have them work on and approve of it.” The process led to performance appraisals based on two categories: goals and leadership competencies. At the beginning of the year, each manager chooses five goals, at least three of which must be linked to organizational objectives. Those goals are based on everything from guest satisfaction to revenue. The other two goals are what Mulligan calls “wild cards”—targets pertinent to their specific area. Together, the performance goals make up 50 percent of the overall employee appraisal. The other half comes from ratings on leadership competencies. Those were identified by 220 managers and then whittled to a list of six, each with five sub-factors. For example, the competency of “professionalism” includes scores on teamwork, communication, interpersonal relations, Zoological Society mission and customer focus. Halogen Software of Ottawa was chosen as the vendor. Halogen has gained a reputation as an appropriate choice for midsize companies. Business-information provider Hoover’s Inc. estimates that Halogen’s sales reached $4.2 million in 2004. Halogen declined to disclose its current revenue but says it is profitable and has added 400 customers during the past two years. The company also says a nondisclosure agreement prevents it from divulging the value of its contract with the San Diego Zoo and the length of the agreement. In a market report last year, research firm Gartner rated Halogen and competitors Softscape of Massachusetts and SuccessFactors of California each as “strong positives” based on criteria that included product capability, affordability, scalability, viability, market momentum and vision. Halogen’s eAppraisal performance management solution lets employees record accomplishments in an online journal that they may share with their manager. Mulligan says the tool helps to craft an accurate year-end review. “Many of our people are very involved with organizations in conservation and in the animal world,” he says. “We don’t want those things to be forgotten by management at the end of the year when they do their review.” The performance management solution’s other tools include a “comment helper” that offers feedback templates that automatically insert pronouns using the correct gender and a “language sensitivity checker” that flags offensive words and suggests alternatives. The company’s product tour shows the language checker suggesting “overqualified” to replace “old,” for example. Many human resource professionals feel an increasing demand to build business cases for HR investments and to calculate their return on investment. Last year, even the publisher of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator introduced a guide for measuring the ROI of the venerable personality-type test. As a not-for-profit organization, the Zoological Society is more concerned about the “return on mission” than its ROI for the technology, Mulligan says. But Halogen’s president, Paul Loucks, points to studies by research firm IDC as proof that his clients can expect a healthy return on their investment. IDC determined that Amcor Sunclipse North America, a division of Australian packaging manufacturing company Amcor, saved more than $300,000 a year since introducing Halogen’s eAppraisal. In a separate analysis, IDC estimated that Halogen client Howard Regional Health System of Indiana might see a 164 percent return on its investment, in terms of cost savings. Flexibility of the web The Zoological Society’s adoption of a Web-based solution also reflects another trend. One of the notable changes in the past five years has been the shift to Internet-based appraisal systems from client-server platforms, in which programs are kept on a central computer connected through a network to PCs. “As long as they have a Web connection, managers can write appraisals at home,” Loucks says. Loucks expects that organizations will expand from using Web-based appraisal systems to adding compensation and succession planning processes. In fact, Mulligan lists such a flexible system among the reasons he liked Halogen. “Those types of processes will be adopted by more companies over the next few years,” Loucks says. “It’s not clear whether the new customers will do it in steps or whether they’ll go for more of the big bang.” Not everyone sees Web-based employee appraisals as all good news. Anthony Chelte, dean of Dillard College of Business Administration at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas, says the key benefits of online employee appraisals are the timeliness of feedback and the efficiency of eliminating paperwork. “When you look at the ratio of individuals to HR people in terms of the number of reviews that have to be looked at for completeness, accuracy and legal concerns, it’s probably far more efficient,” he says. Chelte cautions against relying on online appraisals to deliver feedback, saying one-on-one discussions are as important. “I do not think the online appraisal system is a good proxy for delivering feedback,” he says. “The whole social context is gone. It takes the entire human element out of the mix.” Halogen executives say their system is not intended to replace one-on-one appraisal meetings, but rather to simplify preparation for it. Mulligan says he ensured the “human element” remains intact for zoo staffers. The appraisal must be delivered in person, with the supervisor printing and reviewing it with the subordinate or the two discussing results as they go over it on the computer screen. “It has to be done with two people together,” he says. “You can’t just pull it up and read your review.” The supervisor then must certify that the in-person meeting occurred. “I don’t want us to go back to where we were before, with employees and managers not having this face-to-face dialogue on performance,” Mulligan says. Michele Stancer began working at the zoo 28 years ago, starting in food service while in high school and working her way up to animal-care manager. She describes her experience with the new appraisal system as positive because of discussions with her boss about setting goals and basing raises on performance. “If you perform well, you’ll get more,” Stancer says. “I think people should be held accountable. I’ve been here a long time. You see people who are ‘working in retirement,’ and that’s not good for anyone.” Mulligan says the Web-based appraisal process has helped the zoo attract talent. “What I found is that it’s a recruiting tool,” he says. “A manager who starts here sees that we have a program like this where you have goals and objectives and are given timely feedback and paid for the work that you do. As we come into the modern world here in HR, we have to provide programs like this.” Todd Henneman is a writer based in Los Angeles. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
There’s something comforting and classy about Starbucks. It’s not just the enticing aromas and blues tunes wafting through the air, the handsome surroundings or the likelihood of running into a friend or neighbor. It’s more the way the baristas (never called “counter help”) greet people, perhaps offering a blueberry scone sample, or remembering a customer’s preference for nonfat soy latte with extra foam.
Starbucks attracts a near-cult following, serving 25 million drinks a week at nearly 7,000 locations worldwide. In a four-week period ending in August, the company–which is growing by three to four stores a day–reported net revenues of $335 million, an increase of 26 percent over the same period last year. The Seattle-based coffee empire was among the top 10 on Fortune’s most recent “America’s Most Admired Companies” list. The magazine also rated it the most admired food-services company in 2001 and 2002. Business Week named founder Howard Schultz one of the country’s top 25 managers in 2001.
Since Starbucks began with a single store in 1971, its overriding philosophy has been this: “Leave no one behind.” With that in mind, new employees get 24 hours of in-store training, steeping themselves in information about coffee and how to meet, greet and serve customers. Full health-care benefits (medical, dental, vision and alternative services) are offered to all employees, including part-timers who work at least 240 hours per calendar quarter. The EAP is available to all employees. Employees share in the company’s growth via “Bean Stock” (stock options) of up to 14 percent of their gross pay, and a stock-investment plan allows them to buy shares of Starbucks common stock at a discount (85 percent of fair market value) through payroll deductions. The company also matches employees’ contributions to their “Future Roast” 401(k) plans, adding from 25 to 150 percent of the first 4 percent of pay, depending on length of service.
As a result of such measures, Starbucks employees have an 82 percent job-satisfaction rate, according to a Hewitt Associates Starbucks Partner View Survey. This compares to a 50 percent satisfaction rate for all employers and 74 percent for Hewitt’s “Best Place to Work” employers. Though the company won’t release specific numbers, it also claims that its turnover is lower than that of most fast-food establishments. But it’s not just the benefits that attract employees. Another company survey found that the top two reasons why people work for Starbucks are “the opportunity to work with an enthusiastic team” and “to work in a place where I feel I have value.”
Omollo Gaya, who grew up on a coffee farm in Kenya and immigrated to San Diego to attend college, was drawn inside a Starbucks store seven years ago by the heady aroma. He bought a pound of coffee, struck up a conversation with the employee behind the counter, and was impressed by the barista’s knowledge. As he sipped his brew, “something clicked,” Gaya says. After researching Starbucks, he applied for a job and spent the next four years in a San Diego store before being promoted to his current position as one of eight coffee tasters at company headquarters. After six years, Gaya exercised his Bean Stock options, which netted about $25,000 after payment of the exercise price, to build a new four-bedroom house for his widowed mother on 15 acres in her home village.
“The health benefits, the 401(k) and the stock options really surprised me, and confirmed what this company is all about,” Gaya says. “From my first day on the job, I got a lot of satisfaction when I offered a cup of coffee to customers and saw the smile on their faces, when I answered their questions about coffee, and when I saw their enthusiasm when they returned with a friend or colleague. My love for coffee started when I was 5 years old, but I never thought it would come to mean so much to me. Buying a home for my mother is the highlight of my being with Starbucks.”
Maintaining that kind of feel-good atmosphere in a small mom-and-pop company is one thing. The question is how Starbucks manages to keep the spirit flowing with 11,000 full-time and 60,000 part-time employees in North America, and an additional 7,400 workers globally. “Staying ‘small’ while we grow is one of our biggest challenges,” says Dave Pace, executive vice president of partner resources (the company’s term for human resources). “It sounds clichéd, but we do it by taking our mission statement seriously. Almost all companies have a mission, but at Starbucks, we use it as our guiding principle and hold it up as a filter for decision-making.”
Providing a great work environment and treating employees with respect is number one on Starbucks’ six-point mission statement. The list also includes a commitment to diversity; excellence in purchasing, roasting and delivering coffee; keeping customers satisfied; contributing to communities and the environment; and, of course, achieving profitability.
Starbucks encourages its employees, who are called partners, to keep in mind its mission statement, monitor management decisions, and submit comments and questions if they encounter anything that runs counter to any of the six points. Employees submit about 200 such Mission Review queries a month, and a two-person team considers and responds to each one. As a result of one such review request, Starbucks extended its military-reserve policy to protect the jobs, salaries and health-care benefits of employees who were called into action after September 11 and again during the Iraq war.
The company also encourages community involvement by donating $10 for each hour that an employee volunteers to a nonprofit or charitable organization. Profits from sales of the company’s logo-emblazoned “coffee gear” are channeled into clubs and services for employees, which include everything from running groups and bowling leagues to quilting and book clubs. Employees can donate an amount of their choice to a voluntary “CUP (Caring Unites Partners) fund,” which is used to provide grants to fellow employees who fall on hard times. And every year, as part of its Earthwatch program, the company selects a few employees to travel to coffee-producing parts of the world, where they learn firsthand about environmental and conservation issues from the growers. Last year two were selected; this year five are going.
“People come to Starbucks to socialize and interact, so our partners do much more than just make coffee,” Pace says. “They are the ones who create that environment in our stores and make this a place that people feel good about. So they feel empowered and know they are making a contribution. This is a company where we look out for each other and look out for the community. And when people see us responding to them, they feel like this company really ‘gets it.’ ”
Workforce Management, October 2003, pp. 58-59 — Subscribe Now!
Reward and recognition programs are designed to encourage and reward outstanding achievement. This questionnaire is designed to gain your perspectives on forms of recognition preferred by employees.
Typically, reward and recognition programs are designed to encourage and reward individual and/or team achievement. They can be either “spot award” programs or programs that focus on long-term objectives and continuity. For the purposes of this survey, teams include account teams, departments, and teams organized for short-term project objectives.
II. Directions for Completing the Questionnaire
The following pages of the questionnaire ask for your response to a series of statements. You will be asked to circle a response for “Individual” and for “Team.” Please rate your responses from 1 to 7, using the following scale:
The term “Desirable” pertains to Section III; the term “Agree” pertains to Sections IV and V.
III. Types of Rewards
In this section of the questionnaire, you are asked for a response to a series of statements about different types of rewards as each reward could be used to motivate you as an individual contributor or as a member of a team. For each statement, you should circle one response under the heading “Individual” and one under the heading “Team.” Responses will indicate the degree to which you view each statement as desirable.
Individual
Statement
Team
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Reward with special cash bonuses for “long-term” recognition (sustained outstanding performance over a long period of time)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Reward with special cash bonuses for “on the spot” recognition
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Reward with trips to resort locations for “winners” with spouses
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Reward with special recognition by top management at national meetings
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Reward with special recognition by team management at team meetings
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Reward with certificate for “dinner for two” or evening out
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Reward with plaques/certificates/trophies
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Reward with tangible gift
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Reward with time off with pay
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Reward with letter of appreciation
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
IV. Types of Recognition
In this section of the questionnaire, you are asked for a response to a series of statements about different types of recognition as each statement regarding recognition could pertain to you as an individual contributor or as a member of a team. For each statement, you should circle one response under the heading “Individual” and one under the heading “Team.” Responses will indicate the degree to which you agree with each statement.
Individual
Statement
Team
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Recognition should be given for outstanding customer service
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Recognition should be given for outstanding sales results
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Recognition should be given for creative suggestions that improve performance
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Recognition should be given for significant achievement “on the spot”
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Recognition should be given only for sustained outstanding performance over a long period of time
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
The primary value of recognition is acknowledgement of performance by management
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
The primary value of recognition is acknowledgement of performance by us to our customers
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
The primary value of recognition is tangible reward, e.g., cash or merchandise
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
The primary value of recognition clearer definition of expectations
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
V. Reward and Recognition Administration
In this section of the questionnaire, you are asked for a response to a series of statements about administrative practices of reward and recognition programs as each statement could pertain to individual contributor or team reward and recognition practices. For each statement, you should circle one response under the heading “Individual” and one under the heading “Team.” Responses will indicate the degree to which you agree with each statement.
Individual
Statement
Team
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Senior management should determine who receives an award
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Team members should be able to nominate the team or peers for an award
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Team members should be able to nominate other team or peers outside of their team for an award
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Formal recognition events increase the motivational value of a recognition program
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Informal recognition is of equal importance as formal recognition events
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Broad recognition at a national event increases the motivational value of a recognition program
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Local recognition events are important in a recognition program
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Rewards may be tangible (e.g., cash or prize), or intangible (e.g., praise). Of 100%, what percentage of tangible rewards should be cash versus noncash?
Cash _____
Noncash _____
Recognition can be national, local (e.g., business unit), or regional. Of 100%, what percentage of a reward and recognition events budget should be spent for each?
National _____
Local (Team) _____
Regional _____
Exerpted from Compensating News Sales Roles, Second Edition, by Jerome A. Colettia and Mary S. Fiss. Copyright 2001 Colletti-Fiss LLC. Published by AMACOM Books, a division of American Management Association International, New York, NY. Used with permission. All rights reserved. http://www.amacombooks.org.
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It’s an overcast March morning and Adam Mentzell, director of human resources for Sounds True, is discussing the painful experience of laying off 15 percent of his company’s workforce last summer.
“What did I learn from it?” he asks. “I learned that people are tremendously capable of dealing with hardship. If you hire mature people and treat them well, they can be very resilient.”
As Mentzell finishes his last sentence, the alarm on his sports watch starts beeping. He excuses himself, walks to his desk, switches his telephone to the intercom mode, and strikes a small brass bell sitting next to the phone. He strikes the bell three times, creating low, calming tones that resonate throughout the company’s offices.
“Sorry about that,” Mentzell says as he sits back down to explain that the bell is rung at precisely 11:00 each day to call employees to group meditation — which he usually observes — or to practice 15 minutes of silence. The bell of mindfulness, as he calls it, is a way of reminding employees to slow down and become more present and aware.
Meditation? Mindfulness? These aren’t words normally discussed by corporate HR people. But at Sounds True, it’s fitting that the bell of mindfulness was rung during a conversation about downsizing, for this is a company that deals with all the routine struggles of a growing business, including layoffs, but does so with an eye — and heart — toward the human side of work life.
Sounds True is an audio publishing company based in Louisville, Colorado, a town located 20 miles northwest of Denver along the Front Range of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. The privately held company was started in 1985 by Tami Simon, a 22-year-old woman who had a $30,000 inheritance and a vision to disseminate spiritual wisdom.
Today, Sounds True is a $9.3 million company that produces spoken-word audio tapes and CDs on topics related to world religion, psychology, and alternative medicine. The company boasts a catalog of more than 500 titles, including Women Who Run with the Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Energy Anatomy, by Caroline Myss, and Breathing: The Master Key to Self-Healing, by Andrew Weil, M.D. In 16 years, Sounds True has grown from a one-person labor of love into a 60-employee enterprise. Along the way, the challenge has always been how to maintain the company’s spiritual focus — and spiritual integrity — while also responding to the gritty, mortal demands of business.
At first glance, Sounds True does seem different from most buttoned-down corporate settings. Walk toward the company’s main entrance and you’ll pass a serene white marble statue of an angel. Once you’re inside, a golden retriever will click across the lobby and greet you. And as you tour the quiet offices, you’ll find employees wearing fleece and khaki and hiking boots. They work alongside rippling desktop fountains, or to the accompaniment of bamboo flutes, or underneath warm reading lamps.
But these are just superficial differences. Within this casual, fleecy environment, employees also have to negotiate contracts, meet deadlines, fulfill orders, and generate profits just like any other corporate workforce. How does Sounds True balance the realities of competitive corporate life — profit goals, employee conflict, and customer demands — with its goal to promote spiritual wisdom? How does the company instill self-awareness in employees alongside the requisite business awareness?
Spend a day with Mentzell and you’ll learn that the company’s desire to create an aware workplace is much like an individual’s attempt to find spiritual wisdom: it’s something that needs continual attention. Just as there is no path to permanent spiritual enlightenment — faith and spirituality being ongoing disciplines — there is also no such thing as an unwavering workplace culture.
The best that Sounds True or any HR department can do is to be continuously mindful of those things that contribute to a positive working environment: hiring the right employees, adhering to core values, and conducting business in a way that fosters both individual awareness and business accountability. Simply stated, creating cultural wisdom is a discipline, not a destination, a discipline that might best be called enlightened leadership.
Hiring: It’s not just a job
The path to enlightened HR starts with hiring, and fortunately, Sounds True is one of those lucky companies that attracts people with a natural affinity for their products. Just as techies head to Microsoft, metaphysically focused people gravitate toward Sounds True, supplying the small company with about 20 unsolicited résumés a week. “We attract employees who want to work in a different kind of way,” Mentzell says.
But even though many people have an interest in working for the company, it’s the job of Mentzell and other managers to make sure that those who are hired fully understand and embrace the company’s mission. “In key positions, such as those in the editorial department, it’s imperative that employees have a deep connection to our product line,” he says. This means recruiting people with education and experience in world religions, and having them demonstrate that knowledge both orally and in writing.
For most of the company’s positions, however, religious knowledge is not as important as the right skill set, which is determined by past experience; the ability to communicate honestly and respectfully, which is assessed through a series of team interviews; and support for the overall mission. The last criterion is trickier to assess, because the mission is spiritual and it’s illegal to ask questions about religion in interviews. How does Mentzell determine whether candidates will uphold the mission to disseminate spiritual wisdom? By asking them to listen to taped products, review the catalog, and visit the company Web site.
“During follow-up interviews, I ask a series of open-ended questions about the candidate’s reaction to our products and ask whether or not it is a problem for them that Sounds True produces products from a wide variety of wisdom traditions and schools of thought,” he says. “Rather than looking for adherents, we are looking for capable people who do not have a problem with our material and support our overall mission.”
Sounds True Interview Questions
How will you make contributions to our core values?
If you were hired and we could jump ahead six months, what do you think we would be saying about how you helped forward our core values?
What core aspirations excite you or interest you?
Why in the world do you want to work here?
Tell me what is important to you — what do you value deeply?
Tell me about the last time you lost your cool. What was the cause? What action did you take? What did you learn?
What are your expectations from an employer? Name at least four.
Tell me about a specific situation when you were disappointed by an employer or manager.
Whom do you admire? Why?
Tell me about a time when you were overwhelmed at work. What was the cause? What action did you take? What did you learn that you can carry forward?
What in your history are you most proud of and why?
Conversely, what in your work history do you regret the most and why?
What do you understand the mission of the company to be?
The interest of spiritual seekers in working for Sounds True, combined with the company’s diligent hiring practices, makes it possible for the culture to be almost self-generating. Case in point: Three years ago, the company hired a longtime customer to manage its warehouse, a department where profanity and gruffness are the norm in most companies, Sounds True included. The new manager, thanks to his long-term interest in Sounds True products, used professional language, treated employees with respect, and lived the company’s value system. “He changed the way the warehouse was run not by dictating change, but by setting a good example,” Mentzell says.
Honesty, openness, and accountability
Let’s face it. Even if companies hire the right people, the ugly demands of business have a way of inflicting pain and uncertainty on even the wisest and most aware individuals. How does Sounds True make sure that employees don’t revert to nasty reactive behavior in the wake of tough business demands? They do it by adhering to company values. Sure, many companies pay heed to the importance of values. But at Sounds True, the company’s 20 values are integrated into daily business practices — with the emphasis on the word “practice.”
“One thing we are clear about is that our work is a work in progress,” Mentzell says. “We have set aspirations that we continually strive for, but sometimes we fall short of our goals.”
The guiding principles underlying all of Sounds True’s values are mindfulness, honesty, and kindness. “These are the spiritual or wisdom qualities that are taught on the tapes we publish, so we also want to live them in our own work lives,” says company president Tami Simon.
Let’s start with the practice of mindfulness, which Mentzell describes as the art of paying attention and seeing things in a fresh and non-habitual manner. Sounds True promotes mindfulness by encouraging employees to stop what they are doing and become aware of their thought patterns. This is done through the 11:00 call to meditation, by providing an on-site meditation room, and by opening every large staff meeting with a two-minute period of silence. “This contemplative space provides the opportunity, if only for a moment, for employees to set aside their individual agendas,” Mentzell explains.
The ability to set aside individual agendas allows employees to fully engage in the second guiding principle: honest and open communication. “In many companies, people waste a lot of time through backstabbing and office politics,” Simon notes. “This happens because people don’t trust each other.” She believes that the only way to foster trust is to promote open communication, even if employees don’t always like what they hear.
Sounds True encourages open communication in several ways. First, every Monday morning, employees gather in the lobby to discuss business issues with the management team. During this time, employees can ask any manager, including the president, pointed questions about budgets, the hiring processes, whatever. “Tami has admitted to making mistakes on more than one occasion,” Mentzell says.
Second, the company makes extensive use of peer-review processes that allow team members to provide direct feedback to coworkers about how they may be affecting others. Upward review processes are also used to give managers anonymous feedback from those they manage.
Third, the company promotes collaborative decision-making so that managers jointly make key business decisions, and departmental teams determine their own best way of working together. The only way to arrive at mutually beneficial decisions is for managers and employees to engage in honest communication.
Is there any downside to having such an open and honest culture? “Oh my god, yes,” Simon says. “People who are used to being in corporate environments where there is more strategic game playing don’t always make it here.” Why? “Because it often takes a while for people to realize that honesty, even if it pinches, can lead to much higher levels of trust. Some people just don’t make it that far.
“Many people here are very genuine, and they expect you to be genuine, too. If you are a person who doesn’t want to bring your emotional life to work, you may think that coworkers are poking at you to find out what’s going on in your life.”
Tim Bucher, a recently hired network administrator in Sounds True’s IT department, agrees with Simon. “I had wary thoughts coming in,” he admits. “I was used to a large corporate structure, and I was a bit intimidated by how different the culture was here. Now, I’m used to it. I don’t have to work to weed out truth from lies, because everybody here is so honest.”
The other guiding principle embedded in all of Sounds True’s values is kindness, which simply means respecting others and honoring individual differences. The company honors individual differences through such practices as a nonexistent dress code, flexible working hours, and allowing employees to bring their dogs to work.
Sounds True Values
Sounds True is both mission-driven and profit-driven.
We build workplace community.
We encourage authenticity in the workplace.
Open communication.
Animals are welcome.
We place a high value on creativity, innovation, and ideas.
Opportunities exist for flexible work schedules.
Teams determine the best way to reach their goals.
We honor and include a contemplative dimension in the workplace.
We reach out to a diverse community.
We strive to protect and preserve the Earth.
We have a relationship with our customers that is based on integrity.
We take time for kindness, have fun, and get a lot done.
We acknowledge that every person in the organization carries wisdom.
We encourage people to speak up and propose solutions.
We encourage people to listen deeply.
We honor individual differences and diversity.
We strive for clarity of expectations.
We encourage people to realize their creative potential.
Employees participate in profit sharing and ownership.
A complete description of each Sounds True value can be found on the company’s Web site, www.soundstrue.com.
Building financial acumen
In a company driven by spiritual values, capitalistic concerns such as cost and profit easily can become secondary. Such was the case at Sounds True last year, when the company tried to expand in too many different directions at once and ultimately lost money for the first time in 15 years.
Smarting from the loss, the company was forced to lay off employees in unprofitable divisions and also pay stricter attention to financial concerns. This upset a few longtime employees, who felt that the company was “selling out” to capitalism and chose to leave on their own.
“We had to work to create business-mindedness,” Simon explains. “For 15 years the people who worked here did not pay much attention to the critical drivers of financial success such as cost of goods, margins on product lines, and product formats.”
“What we had to communicate to remaining employees,” Mentzell adds, “is that our mission to disseminate spiritual wisdom is not possible unless the company can also pay its bills.”
To make sure that employees are conscious of the relevant measures of financial performance, Sounds True launched an open-book management program called the Great Game of Business, wherein all employees were trained in financial literacy. Today, department representatives provide weekly forecasts against their specific budgets and then present this information in bimonthly business “scoreboard” meetings. All managers are in attendance at this fast-moving meeting and are expected to report financial information to their teams immediately afterward.
“Information on our performance against budget quickly travels to all areas of the organization,” Mentzell explains. This raises employee awareness of financial measures and stimulates employees to take corrective action when necessary.
Although speaking freely about finances has helped the company get back on track, there are some risks involved. “There is a certain kind of anxiety introduced in an environment where people know all about the business and its accompanying uncertainties,” Simon explains. “In companies where the executive team acts like parents who withhold difficult information from workers, people are protected from this anxiety. But I think that approach gives people a false sense of safety. Here, employees may feel anxious about finances more of the time, but at least everyone knows where they stand.”
The role of HR
It may come as no surprise that Sounds True’s HR director personally embodies the company’s mission. On the door of Mentzell’s office are in and outboxes marked with the signs: Breathing IN I feel calm; Breathing OUT I smile. “I’ve been on my own spiritual quest for 10 years,” he says, adding that he not only meditates regularly but also is a serious student of Western psychology and Eastern religion and philosophy.
Mentzell’s personal connection to the company’s mission helps him to be mindful of the never-ending work involved in creating an aware culture. As HR director, an unusual position in a company of this size, he oversees hiring, mediates disputes, communicates financial results, negotiates benefits, and trains managers. He reports directly to the CEO. “I’m responsible for how management happens here,” he says. Other than that, most of Mentzell’s job is typical HR: recruitment, benefits, compensation, performance reviews, and training.
“I’m surprised how much of my job is routine,” he says, almost sheepishly.
It could be routine because Sounds True is as mindful of human needs as it is of business needs, although Mentzell would be the first to say that maintaining the balance between financial and human goals is not easy. Shift too far in one direction and business suffers. Shift too far in the other and morale withers. But by staying aware that both goals are important — and by integrating that awareness into daily business practices — Sounds True has been able to weather hard times.
“Enlightened HR?” Mentzell asks. “Sounds True should not be portrayed as having figured it out, but merely striving to find a better way of doing business.”
My first comment would be–it’s a free world and everyone is entitled to their opinions, HOWEVER……
I strongly disagree with Ms. Hattiangadi’s statement that “Unfortunately, the gap amounts to nothing more than voodoo statistics–a carefully constructed “factoid” designed to incite women.”
In my experience, women who work in similar positions as men with similar backgrounds (and often more experience and education) are paid less. To address the issue of “hours worked”–has Ms. Hattiangadi taken into consideration the issue of “hours worked” vs. “productivity”? Right, wrong, or indifferent–career women with children may be in the office fewer hours during the week but are often more productive.
Generally speaking, we forgo two-hour plus “working” lunches in order to get real work done and are often more efficient in meetings and one-on-one issues with co-workers, employees, vendors. etc. So, not sure who Workforce’s demographics are but my guess is that the majority of your readers are career women and you will likely hear from many of them who live this on a daily basis and don’t think much of this author’s “opinion.”
Issue: Watching the nightly news earlier this month showing coverage of World Trade Organization protestors in the “Battle in Seattle” has you concerned about how your organization would carry on in the face of such turmoil. Should your organization have a contingency plan in place?
Answer: Definitely. Can all or part of your work site cease to exist for one day or permanently? Would you survive? If the answer is your company would probably not survive, that underscores how important fire, disaster recovery and contingency planning is. These plans, set up to protect and prepare a company in the event of disasters such as earthquakes, floods, fires, vandalism and civil unrest, assume that all or a part of the business has ceased to exist, in the location it is in, for a period of time. How to address the damage, continue critical business functions and “recreate” the company are the goals of these plans.
What should HR do?
It would be impossible to try to develop a crisis plan in the middle of a disaster. Create a written plan now, involving your staff so that it becomes their plan too. Once it is finished, do not leave the plan on the shelf—test it periodically. It would also be wise to check with key service providers to find out whether they have a plan.
SOURCE: CCH Incorporated is a leading provider of information and software for human resources, legal, accounting, health-care and small-business professionals. CCH offers human resource management, payroll, employment, benefits, and worker-safety products and publications in print, CD, online and via the Internet. For more information and other updates on the latest HR news, check our Web site at http://hr.cch.com.
The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion.
