Give the Gift that Keeps on Giving

‘Tis the season! Various holiday celebrations and traditions will be honored, shopping frenzies will be had, family time will be shared, and unpredictable weather is to be expected. And with these diverse activities come many facets of HR for us to focus on; stress management, vacation policies, flexible work arrangements, emergency weather procedures, not to mention to much-anticipated yearly reviews. And while all of these things are important in their own right, it is invariably more important that we, as partners with our business, remember that this is also the season of the “last big push”.

For operational leaders everywhere, it’s getting last minute product out the door to the customer on time with exceptional quality; for sales, it’s getting every last order in before the books close on 2011, and securing orders for first quarter 2012; for financial leaders, it’s making sure every bill, every variance, every piece of inventory, etc. is accounted for and reported. And for human resources leaders, it should be about utilizing the tools and knowledge in your arsenal to advance these activities, and help your customer groups operate flawlessly.

Often times you hear about the success that HR leaders gain when they step outside of traditional roles and deep-dive into the business, immersing themselves in their client-teams and gaining operational knowledge and skills. And while I highly recommend to anyone who does get an opportunity to do so, more often than not the probability of that being offered to you is unlikely, so beefing up on your operational know-how is something you will need to do on your own, not only for your career, but for the benefit of your clients. One of the biggest complaints about HR is that we are too removed from what is actually happening, and what matters on a day-to-day basis for the business. In order to not only challenge that perception, but change it, and gain the respect of your business leaders, you will need to be able to prove your operational awareness and apply it. December is one of the best times to demonstrate this; instead of pushing unreasonable demands on your leaders and becoming a faceless paradigm known as “HR”, get out into the business, use your specialty skill set as well as operational acumen to help solve the issues at hand.

But how can you gain the in-depth knowledge you need in order to come to the table as a true operational leader? Learn about your business. As mentioned, this is not the month to start having sit-down meetings with leaders, shadowing floor supervisors, inviting yourself to strategy meetings, etc., but you can spend some time to expand on your knowledge of the industry, the company, and your division / client teams specifically, and set goals for yourself the coming year to learn more.

What are their challenges? What have they typically done well in the past? Where are they struggling from a delivery perspective, and how is your competitor beating them? What are the deliverables for the coming year, and what challenges will there be in meeting them? Are we embracing new technological advancements, and if so, how is it allowing us to deliver better/faster? Are we incorporating LEAN systems in our workforce, and training everyone on the mindset?

After you gain a solid foundation, start incorporating this knowledge into the way you do your job – and become more involved in matters typically outside your scope. The more you learn, and become ingrained in your clients and business’ needs, the more you will not just become a human resources leader, but a business leader. You will be able to answer operational questions from a new perspective, as you not only have the operational foundation, but the HR knowledge and people skills that will lead you to think more creatively, and with an eye for what this will do for the business as well as the employee. There are several issues where various employment law or union relations skills would be unquestionably effective, but the knowledge of the operational need is also apparent as well – a successful marriage of both is needed. Talent management is another area where both can be called upon, as operational needs may require different mixes of talent depending up on your cyclical staffing needs; do you have a need for temporary staffing, are your teams staffed appropriately and not too bottom / top heavy, etc. Rolling out any kind of new policy, procedure, incentive, or program can also call for operational knowledge, and extensive understanding of your customer base. For those leaders that can present this knowledge to their customers, as well as their extensive HR knowledge, it will not only be an invaluable tool for the business, but for the leader as well.

Until next time … Be Inspirational!

Are you Thankful for Your Employees?

Well, November has snuck up upon us, and now not only are we almost half way through the month, but we’re only twenty-nine working days (give or take) away from one of the most anticipated times of the year. Many see the next few weeks as a work deadline, many see them as unproductive due to all the various vacations, but all see them as busy in one way or another -  HR professionals included. Wrapping up open-enrollment, sending out communications around annual performance review processes, finishing outstanding projects before the New Year, setting 2012 budgets, etc. – this is an extremely busy time of the year.

With all that being said, there is always room for improvement, room for growth. And that is what this blog challenges you to think about – “How can I take small steps every month to ensure that I’m developing, and that my department is growing in a positive direction? Am I executing best practices in my industry?” November is a great time of year to do that, because many are already inclined to do so on a personal level due to the holiday season – many begin to think about what they are thankful for, whether they have thanked their families enough, what this year has brought them, and what they are looking forward to in the coming year. By extending this line of thinking into a human resources perspective, the answers may lead you to some developmental areas. What would you say your employees are most thankful for? Do you thank your employees often for their contributions? Do your managers? What has this year brought the business that you are most thankful for, and how was it communicated to employees? What is coming in the following year for the business that employees should be made aware and seen as a positive for them? Would your employees see your contributions as positive and be thankful for you? How do you show thanks to your employees?

Most research has shown that engaged workforces can be substantially more productive and thus profitable, but the elusive part is how to engage those employees. I suggest, along with an extensive amount of research by Towers Watson, that implementing a recognition program for employees is a critical area to drive engagement, especially in companies where areas for opportunity are low¹. Depending on your employee base, you may look to external vendors for a plug-and-play model, or you may be able to implement a program organically, as long as you understand the basic premise that you need to be able to reward your employees in a timely, relevant manner, and make sure the rewards are justified by the action – bigger rewards for better performance / actions. Either way, you’ll need to establish the program’s objectives, budget, how the program be administered, who can nominate employees for awards, what the criteria will be used for award levels, etc. Include formal and informal rewards, as research shows people need to be rewarded every seven days in order to remain engaged; embrace peer-to-peer recognition, as it will not only increase the amount of overall recognition taking place, but ensure that employees will feel engaged longer. You’ll also need to create a communication plan to roll-out the program, so that is comes across as sincere and that the senior leadership is fully engaged in this endeavor.

By letting your employees know that you are thankful for them and their efforts, especially in times where they may not be getting all the same “perks” they were once enjoying and are working harder and longer due to leaner departments, you will not only gain more engaged employees, but reduce turnover and foster an environment of team-building through peer-to-peer recognition.

Until next month, Be Inspirational!

1

A 2008 Global Recognition Study conducted by Towers Watson interviewed 10,333 people from thousands of companies in thirteen different countries. The study confirmed that opportunity and well-being are leading contributors to engagement. When appreciation was added to these, engagement scores increased from 77% to 92% in those companies with high opportunity. For those with low opportunity, appreciation increased engagement from 35% to 56%.

Cost of Benefits Scaring Your Employees?

October is here – the month that celebrates homecoming games, carving pumpkins, and trick or treating.  For HR professionals everywhere, it is also the month that brings benefits elections, and projections for 2012 in terms of recruiting, healthcare costs, compensation, and other expenses that leave you and your budget barely breathing from the belt.

The doom-and-gloom messages being plastered across the web, TV, and various print communications have all been forecasting the upward trends in costs for healthcare benefits for both employer and employee, as well as the low to non-existent increases in compensation. At more than twice the rate of inflation, increases in healthcare costs will be a force to be reckoned with in 2012, as well as one to be transparently communicated to employees. While this increase is down from 2011 by about .5%¹, it will still hit the pocketbooks of everyone on your payroll, and that is something that will need to be addressed by you, the employee advocate, sooner rather than later, as employees will need to prepare themselves. And, as far as communication goes, you will also need to be prepared to address your executive level staff on what your department is prepared to do to battle back against these costs, and how you will be aligning your policies in light of the health care reform act. By putting a rigorous focus on a few of the options listed below (and others not listed), you will be better able to cut costs for your organization, your employees, delay hitting the cost ceiling of the "Cadillac" excise tax, and comply with the reform law's early requirements, giving you much-needed time to strategically plan for the future. 

Options for those organizations who want to fight back are increasing usage rates of their CDHPs through various means, including: a grandfather program where new employees only have CDHPs to choose from, but tenured employees are grandfathered into the other benefit options for a certain period of time; eliminating their HMO options completely, as the cost trends are continuing to outpace PPO and POS plans by a significant amount; and incentives for those who sign up for the CDHPs. Other options include aggressively pushing health and wellness programs, which can vary widely depending upon your employee base. On-site fitness facilities, discounted fitness classes, smoking-secession programs, weight-loss programs such as “the biggest loser”, “Weight-Watchers at Work”, or a call-in line with nurses and nutrition coaching available are all valuable options for those organizations looking to implement more compelling strategies to incent participants to understand, and manage, their health.

The last option is for business leaders (this means you HR partners!) to aggressively drive down costs. This is beginning to be known as the “health care cost crisis”, and similar to the national debt crisis, if it goes unnoticed and unstopped, it will undermine our ability as businesses to create jobs, and therefore undermine the economy and its attempt at pulling out of the recession. Without the ability to create the necessary job growth, we will be unsuccessful at holding onto our global competitiveness, and our employees will not be able to sustain their current standard of living, snowballing into a situation of insolvency.

So what does this mean for you? As this blog is dedicated toward making small, timely changes to make your HR department better, faster, and smarter for your employees, I’ll quickly recap for you what you can do this month regarding health benefits, in the spirit of benefits election season:

•     Communicate to your employees as transparently as possible the costs and cost projections for future health care costs (premiums, deductions, out-of-pocket maximums, etc.)

§  Don’t sugar-coat this – employees will only feel worse, or tricked, or like the company is profiting if you aren’t showing them the numbers in plain sight.

•       Make a strong case for whatever counter-measure your organization is using to battle these costs
•      Highlight that it is the employee’s responsibility for their health, and thus their healthcare costs – and to help them, you’re organization is you’re organization is going various activities and incentives from a health, wellness, and safety perspective

§  Open the floor to ideas! If your employees want to put together a walking group, a stress-management group, etc., be open to it and try to put some movement behind it.

•      Use benefit-enrollment meetings as a platform to boost morale and talk up what your company has to provide to your employees. Make sure your employees know exactly what you offer them in their benefit packages, and why it’s valuable; focus on their needs and provide meaningful examples.

Goodbye Summer, Hello 3Q Slump

As promised, I am here to deliver one inspirational and timely article for September - a time for colorful leaves, football/tailgating, and back to school. It's also a time for the famous third quarter slump - followed closely by the forth quarter push. Many will see a huge hiring slow down during this time, except the temporary and seasonal workforce. Most employees will begin to feel the squeeze, will start to see the writing on wall in the media, in the unemployment line, and in their own neighborhoods and wallets. This is the time when it is crucial for HR professionals to create a positive environment in every possible way. Many of you laugh after reading that - and even I, in my cynical seat, want to. But indeed - after your great employees, from the cash cow to the high potentials, stick it out through the end of your fourth quarter and enjoy their holidays, the inevitable happens - budgets find a little more wiggle room, and good recruiters look for your great people to lure away. What separates those from losing employees next January from those who actually keep their great employees and gain more are what they do now - in the thick of this third quarter slump, when money is tight, tempers are high, and dollars are being sought after in every nook and cranny.
Because I set out to specifically focus on one small goal for each month, I'm going to talk about that for September, but I will also relay some information about the overall timeframe as well below. September is the month where all employee's are thinking about time management. Parents are thinking about all the activities their kids are in, PTA meetings, and parent-teacher conferences they'll need to squeeze into their busy schedules. The child-less are thinking about a variety of other activies, depending upon where they are in their life stages - weddings, vacations, taking care of older parents, going back to school, etc. After the lazy days of summer, September hits with a cold wind of reality - and that's when you as an HR professional can step in with a fresh perspective on your companies' time off, flexible working arrangement, job share, and overall work/life balance policies. It is even more critical to think about this now, before the holiday rush approaches and stress levels increase to an even more unsustainable level. Many have also found success in a program that offers employees to "purchase" additional days off - leaving you with a balanced budget, and employees who value more time off with exactly what they need. Being creative with these policies will gain you a monumental moral boost.
For end of third quarter, beginning forth quarter overall, each HR professional should be thinking stragically about other opportunities for low-hanging fruit. What are your known deficiencies? Are you adequately addressing employee diversity issues, and creating an open, creative environment? Do your current policies surrounding, idea creation/implementation, time management (see above), health/wellness, training opportunities, mentoring, etc. give your employees a sense of empowerment and that you as an employer care about their career growth? How open are you to these new ideas and ways of doing things? If you find yourself stagnant in this area, beware - there are many around you who are moving quickly to accommodate not just the generational change of GenY, but those concerns of GenX concerning their career goals and family, and if you're still doing things "because that's the way we've always done them", you better be prepared to lose your top players. Even those who are considered benchmarks in these areas should always be going back to their customer groups (I'll talk about this at a later time - always refer to your teams as "customers" because that's what they are!) to see what they actually value vs. what is being offered to them. Because if I'm offering you peanuts, but your allergic to peanuts (and therefore you don't like peanuts!) but you'd rather have coffee, I would never know this if I don't ask. And it's doing me no good to offer you peanuts - it's wasting my time and money, and frustrating you. I should instead offer you coffee - something you want, something I want you to have and it works as an incentive as well.
Until next time... Be Inspirational!