Performance Management

The Disengagement Gap

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(Keepsmiling4u/Shutterstock)

In many of the HRM NOW! blogs, I have talked about various gaps.

We have the pay equity gap, the PPE gender gap, and now we have a new gap for HR professionals to ponder – the disengagement gap.

But before we get to that, let’s discuss pondering.

Pondering is something more HR professionals should do. HR is good at strategizing, executing and implementing, but pondering is something to add to the HR toolbox.

To ponder is to weigh in with the mind, think about and reflect on, and with this disengagement gap, HR may need to ponder the causes. There seems to be some illogical human behaviour in the disengagement gap, and this is something HR should definitely ponder.

What is the disengagement gap and why is it happening?

An article on HRD calls the disengagement gap ‘a complacency conundrum’:

This DG or the complacency conundrum seems to be incessant in modern day workplaces. A recent North America survey showed the following:

  • 70% of employees are disengaged
  • Only 35 % are planning to leave their organization

This is a strange workplace behaviour. Employees are not happy with their work but are unwilling to change jobs.

This is especially strange when North America has some of the lowest unemployment rates in years. Low unemployment rates should make it easier for employees to leave jobs they do not like.  However, this was not happening in 2018, where 74% of employees were willing to leave their jobs, but in 2019, only 35% are.  Why the drastic drop?

HR professionals must consider why the change in employee’s attitudes. It’s not because employees love their jobs, because most do not.  All HR departments should begin a quest to understand how to engage their employees on a personal level. HR departments that start to ponder and develop some solutions to resolve this disengagement gap will see great performance benefits.

Discussion Questions

Improve your skills as a new HR professional by clicking on Dr. Natalie Baumgartner’s website. Pick one of her posts to read and review, and then ask yourself how an HR department could start to implement some of her ideas about employee engagement.

Performance Management: Motivation by the Experts

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Through our training and development studies, we have learned that motivation is a critical component for on-going employee learning. If there is nothing that provides motivation for employees to learn, then professional development, productivity, and growth will not happen. Motivation can be both positive (reward driven) or negative (error driven), but in either case it provides the prompt for an employee to alter their job-related performance.

HRM Online provides a Human Resources perspective on effective motivation in the context of performance management processes.

Click here to watch a video of Human Resources panelists discussing effective motivation-based performance management strategies.

As noted by the experts in the video, part of culture of continuous learning is a culture of continuous conversation. Employees want to know how they are progressing in their jobs and they look for more than just monetary rewards in order to feel valued in the workplace. As such, it is critical to teach leaders how to have discussions regarding on-going employee development.

The simple motivation of a one-time monetary reward wears off quickly and is often forgotten by the next payday. To counter this, each of the professionals in the video provides a perspective on the value of an ‘always on’ communication focus, and a relationship-based approach for effective employee motivation and performance management. Furthermore, the panelists note that while there is a trend to have only goal focused (‘feedforward’) interactions with employees, people still want to know from their direct manager what was successful in the past and what was not. In order to shape the future in a different way, employees learn from what they have or have not done successfully, and they want to hear this from the person they report to.

Talking to employees may be easy; having effective conversations with them may be much more challenging. However, the result is value that stems from both the motivation and the reward of positive relationships.

 

Discussion Questions:

  1. Which one motivates you the most in a working environment — effective working relationships, or annual monetary rewards? Explain your rationale.
  2. Why are structured performance ratings important in a regulated industry or profession?
  3. As an HR practitioner, identify four motivational elements from the video clip that you would include in an effective performance management program.

Learn or Die with Learning Science

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There is a technology tidal wave on its way and it is going to hit organizations with massive disruptive force. If organizations want to survive, they need to use learning science.

Author and professor Edward D. Hess has stated that organizations of the future will either “learn or die.”

This dramatic statement is the title of his new research-based book on organizational learning. He believes that close to 70% of all American jobs will be displaced by technology in the next 20 years. If technology is going to replace that many workers what can/should HR do to address this issue?

HR needs to help employees develop new skills that technology will not be able to replicate or render obsolete. Dr. Hess believes the following skill sets will stand the test of time:

  • High level critical thinking
  • Innovation
  • Creativity
  • High emotional engagement with others

The problem is our current learning strategies may not be sufficient to truly develop or enhance these skills.

Humans are naturally defensive learners and organizations tend to embody the characteristics of the individuals that comprise them. Organizations are their own worst enemies when it comes to learning; they need to develop new learning strategies. Dr. Hess claims that learning better and faster than the competition is the only truly sustainable competitive advantage.

Click here to watch a short video clip introducing Dr. Hess’ ideas.

So, what will be the purpose of HR in the future, when 70% of the jobs we know today don’t exist? Perhaps it will be to make humans better learners and thinkers.

Discussion Questions:

After watching the video clip, what role do you see HR playing in training the workplace of the future?

Once you determine the future direction of HR, create a 3-minute presentation to convince your VP of HR that this new direction is the way to go if your HR department and organization are to survive.

Monitoring Performance Matters

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Curious corporate businesswoman skeptically meeting looking at small employee standing on table through magnifying glass isolated grey office wall background. Human face expression attitude perception
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Through the course of our Human Resources studies, we have learned that effective performance appraisal systems for employees depend on continuous feedback and constant monitoring. Good performance management on the part of the employer includes a process of employee engagement and should not be viewed as a singular, one-time only performance appraisal event.

High quality performance management systems, therefore,  require a very high level of commitment and involvement on the part of the employer. This can be difficult to implement, especially in a large workforce where employees are spread across all levels of the physical work-space. Most employers simply do not have the time or the resources that allow for such intense day-to-day performance management methods.

This is where technology can step in to provide much needed support. Humanyze, a U.S. based technology provider, has developed wearable technology that tracks employee speech levels, tone of voice and body movements. While seemingly intrusive, if implemented properly these devices allow for immediate feedback to employees about their own behavioural patterns. This type of self-monitoring may have an impact on performance levels, without the need for constant intervention on the part of an individual manager.

Click here to read an article on wearable technology.

Click here to read how wearable technology is linked to monitoring employee performance.

As noted in the second article, these devices allow for data analysis based on patterns of employee behaviours. The data analysis can be used to promote constructive changes in the workplace that create opportunities for increased performance resulting in increased productivity and reduced levels of stress.

All of these have a direct impact on the organization’s bottom line and, as we know, the better the bottom-line – the better the rewards for the organization’s humans.

Discussion Questions:

  1. From a Human Resources perspective, what benefits do wearable technology bring to support constructive performance management practices?
  2. What are the negative implications of wearable technology in the workplace?
  3. Would you be comfortable wearing monitoring technology in your current workplace?

 

From Checkers to Checkmate

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All the right HR moves.

playing wooden chess pieces
Sergey Peterman/Shutterstock

Move toward, move away – very specific and directive, vague and creative. This is what a manager should be thinking about if they want real performance out of an employee. Marcus Buckingham who is a leading management consultant and performance coach emphasizes the concept; if you let people play to their strengths they will perform better for you at work.

He expands on that concept in his Harvard Business Review (HBR) article called “What Great Managers Do.”

Click here to read the entire article.

Marcus Buckingham brings in the analogy that good managers are playing checkers but great leaders are playing chess. If you think back to Fredrick Taylor and his theories of scientific management, all managers should be playing checkers: each job is subdivided into the smallest unit that anyone can understand, make all workers the same and interchangeable. Scientific management parallels the concept of the checkerboard very nicely. That concept may have flourished during the early years of the industrial revolution but not anymore with knowledge workers and fierce competition of globalization demanding higher level skills from workers and managers.

In today’s organizations leaders need to play chess, each worker has a differing purpose, a different move and interacts on different levels with individuals in the organization. Buckingham talks about the three levels every leader needs to know about their direct report:

  1. Learn your direct report’s strengths.
  2. What are the triggers that activate those strengths?
  3. What is their learning style?

Doing the above with every person you work closely with will give the HR professional the ability to leave the checkerboard behind and work with individuals like a chess master.

Discussion Questions

  1. The first step in any great workplace performance is the ability to know yourself. Ask yourself what are your strengths? What triggers those strengths into exceptional performance? What is your learning style?
  2. Now imagine you are having a meeting with your new boss. Create a written two-minute speech on how the boss should manage you to get your best performance.