Talent Management Excellence Essentials - July 2022 by Excellence Publications by HR.com

JULY 2022 • Vol. 9 • No.07 (ISSN 2564-1972)

IT’S TIME TO RETHINK PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

Themed Edition on

The Future of Performance Management

- Jamie Aitken,

Vice President, HR Transformation, Betterworks

The Future of Performance Management 2022-23 Sponsored by

Page 21 - 54

Talent Management Excellence

INDEX

Themed Edition on

The Future of Performance Management

JULY 2022

Vol.09

No.07

(ISSN 2564-1972)

It’s Time To Rethink Performance Management A changing workforce demands a better way

On the Cover

- Jamie Aitken, Vice President, HR Transformation, Betterworks

Articles 14 Cryptocurrencies: Are They Going To Revolutionize Job Payments? The positives and the negatives

- Nina Pączka, Career Advisor and Job Search Expert, Zety

55 Redefining The Employee Experience Through Another Covid Year And The Great Resignation 3 best practices - Dr. Kristal Walker, VP, Employee Wellbeing, Sweetwater

62 Them’s The Breaks: How To Leave Your Job On Good Terms

68 Looking To Improve The Gender Balance Within Your Organization? Focus on early career women - Christie Hunter Arscott, ChristieHunterArscott.com 71 The Top 3 Reasons Behind Job Switching Offer The Key To Recruitment And Retention We are at a crossroads in terms of the future of work - John Woods, Provost and Chief Academic

Officer, the University of Phoenix

75 Building A Winning Team: A Great Team Needs a Great Coach HR.com Professional Education Team

6 do’s and don’ts

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Events

The Future of Performance Management 2022-23 Page 21 - 54

Top Picks

INDEX

The Future Of Performance Management Delivery mechanisms can help, but culture is key - Sean Loboda, Chief Human Resources Officer, Leaf Home

Performance Management In 2023

The future belongs to those who adapt - Senthil Rajagopalan,

President & COO, Profit.co

Accelerating Performance: Seven Steps For Promoting Employee Engagement Refocus your team and improve team performance - Kate Zabriskie, President, Business Training Works, Inc.

The Great Resignation Or Forced Resignation? How to identify and nurture your essential talent in turbulent times - Denise Leaser, President,

MyInnerGenius and GreatBizTools, LLC

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The Changing Face of Performance Management With the ‘Great Resignation’ impacting organizations in a significant way, managing, developing, and motivating employees through performance management has become more critical than ever before. And with the evolving workforce trends, traditional performance management is being replaced by continuous performance management. Organizations today are realizing that it is all about creating new processes that enable great employee performance while making the experience of work more rewarding. In the July edition of Talent Management Excellence, we have handpicked a few articles that focus on modern performance management programs, the future of performance management in 2023, redefining employee experience, and much more. Also included is a research study, The Future of Performance Management 2022-23 by the HR Research Institute, which investigates the capabilities, goals, and challenges of the PM processes today. A great way to think about the difference between traditional processes and modern approaches to performance is that it’s an intentional move away from “management,” which implies control and hierarchical intervention, toward “enablement.” How can companies drive better performance, increase employee engagement and improve employer net promoter scores? Betterworks' Jamie Aitken, in his article, It’s Time To Rethink Performance Management, talks about the relevance of putting employee experience and performance at the center of everything.

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While there isn’t an instant solution for increasing enthusiasm, focus, and initiative, there are steps any leader can take to improve team performance and orchestrate success. Business Training Works, Inc.'s Kate Zabriskie talks about that in her article, Accelerating Performance: Seven Steps For Promoting Employee Engagement. While most organizations have relied on performance evaluations and other historical data to identify the talent they want to keep, forward-thinking HR groups are turning to an emerging toolkit that relies on new technology: Big data and data science. For more insights into this topic, read Denise Leaser 's (GreatBizTools, LLC) article, The Great Resignation Or Forced Resignation? In brief, this issue of Talent Management Excellence explores various talent management strategies and tips to navigate the new workforce. We hope you find the articles in this issue informative and helpful and, as always, we welcome your valuable feedback and suggestions. Happy Reading!

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COVER STORY

It’s Time To Rethink Performance Management A changing workforce demands a better way By Jamie Aitken, Betterworks

ith all the change the workforce and the workplace have experienced, just in the last few years alone, it’s hard to imagine that so many companies continue to rely on a process developed more than 70 years ago to manage and evaluate employee performance. And yet, they do. Timeconsuming, backward-looking, and frequently tied to static goals that have no basis in reality once the end of a quarter, half or year comes around — the traditional performance management process is broken and it doesn’t change performance. We, as HR and business leaders, have to stop pretending that it’s not. If performance is the point — and it is, because why else does a company hire someone to do a job — why treat the management, enablement, and assessment of it as a compliance-driven event? Why should it feel punitive and anxiety-inducing, and not helpful to the people participating? And why rely on cumbersome technology that wasn’t purpose-built for performance management to administer it, simply because it’s “included” with your HR system of record — especially if it creates extra work, wastes time, and has no real discernible benefit to your managers and employees?

Employees Deserve Better Employees are taking notice, and the lack of investment in the processes that enable them to

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perform at their best, grow, and advance in their jobs is a contributing factor to the record turnover we’ve seen this year. A recent workforce research report from Betterworks showed that nearly 50% of employees were planning to look for work this year as of the end of February and that 1 in 3 could be lured away to another opportunity by the promise of better career growth opportunities. But even as the economic winds begin to shift and the number of active job searchers decreases, top talent is setting a new bar for the value exchange in employer-employee relationships. And if the companies they work for hope to retain their talent long-term, it’s important that the entire employee experience — including their processes for performance management — evolve to meet new demands. Against the backdrop of a years-long pandemic that continues to affect businesses around the world, many workers are still remote, navigating a global environment that’s been anything but certain. They’re more productive than they’ve ever been without commutes and the other time costs of office culture, but they’re burning out fast — particularly working parents who bore the brunt of childcare access and affordability crisis that’s only worsened with time. Employees increasingly desire to invest their time and talent in companies and jobs that give them a sense of meaning in their work and offer the autonomy and flexibility they need to prioritize well-being.

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It’s Time To Rethink Performance Management

Their expectations of managers and company leaders are changing, too. Employees want to know how they’re doing in real-time, how they can make a direct impact on the business with their work, and understand how their effort will help them get to the next milestone in their career. They want to see your DEI strategy made real by working to ensure that feedback and evaluations, along with the promotion and compensation decisions they often inform, are unbiased. They want to see internal mobility and know that there’s a future for them at your company. They want the growth and learning opportunities that can equip them for that future. An individual’s career is something that matters immensely to them — and companies who provide the tools and resources that enable great performance on an ongoing basis see significantly higher levels of engagement, retention, and attainment of top company goals. Companies, however, have been slow to adopt the performance practices that can give employees the development and growth they want, and most aren’t investing in technologies that improve the experience of work. The same research from Betterworks revealed that two-thirds of employees don’t get 1:1 check-ins with a direct manager to receive feedback and coaching on work and progress toward goals more than twice a year. Furthermore, over half reported that they don’t discuss career goals with their managers more than once a quarter, and 60% feel like they don’t have the tools they need to track career progress and growth. If performance is essential to business growth, and career growth is essential to employee engagement and satisfaction — why are these numbers so low? What better way to reinforce to employees that their relationship with you is superficial and transactional than to only offer career-impacting feedback conversations every six or twelve months?

Performance Management — And Its Role — Must Evolve Rethinking traditional performance management isn’t about making the old way better. It’s about creating new processes that enable great employee performance while making the experience of work more rewarding. It’s not an episodic event, but an

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incorporation of performance processes and tools into the way teams engage every day, in the flow of work. And at its core, it’s a shift in company culture. A great way to think about the difference between traditional processes and modern approaches to performance is that it’s an intentional move away from “management,” which implies control and hierarchical intervention, toward “enablement.” Performance enablement puts employee needs at the center and gives them the autonomy to create ambitious goals along with the confidence that they’ll be supported in achieving them. The critical elements of a modern performance management program include seven practices that have proven to help companies drive better performance, increase employee engagement and improve employer net promoter scores. ●● Transparent, flexible goal setting ●● Frequent check-ins between managers and direct reports ●● Structured and unstructured feedback ●● Consistent recognition of work well done ●● Using data to make the right people decisions and eliminate bias ●● Formal development paths and plans ●● Coaching

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It’s Time To Rethink Performance Management

In concert, these practices are a powerful and effective foundation for integrating performance management into the way employees work and can have a measurable impact. By building meaningful conversations and feedback into your company’s culture and the interactions that managers and employees have with each other, not only are teams more likely to stay aligned to top company objectives, they’re more likely to accomplish them. According to an analysis of customer data, Betterworks found that when performance programs include flexible goal setting (including both professional and personal goals), regular check-in conversations, feedback, and recognition, goal progress increases by an average of 30%. By giving employees and teams autonomy to create meaningful goals and course-correct as needed, as well as equipping managers to coach and enable — versus dictate and evaluate — companies not only achieve better business results but also create a more engaging and rewarding employee experience that increases satisfaction and loyalty. While the future of work is full of uncertainty, one thing can be expected: that the emphasis on employee experience, employee engagement, and cultivating an inclusive and collaborative company culture is here to stay for the long term. The benefits of these investments are well-documented and the workforce demands them — and when employers fall short, their employees are increasingly leaving — a real risk

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during a time of constant change, when business continuity and institutional knowledge are important advantages. Companies that want to both accomplish their goals and create a work environment and culture that employees thrive in, must not only rethink their performance management processes; they must be bold and visionary enough to shift the culture toward one that puts employee experience and performance at the center of everything they do.

As Vice President of HR Transformation at Betterworks, Jamie Aitken brings over twenty-five years of experience in delivering organizational development, HR transformation, and employee engagement strategies that contribute to business performance. Her portfolio has spanned multiple industries and sectors working both within those organizations as an HR practitioner as well as supporting them as a consultant across the entire spectrum of human capital practices.

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TOP PICK

The Future Of Performance Management Delivery mechanisms can help, but culture is key By Sean Loboda, Leaf Home

workplace fallout from the pandemic and tight labor market. Performance management trends that focus on where, when, how, and even if businesses should deliver performance reviews are taking shape in workplaces around the world. It’s important to get this right because people crave feedback and recognition, and they don’t thrive on ambiguity. Put another way, if employees don’t know where they stand, they’ll be less likely to stay.

ome HR teams experiment with performance management in response to workplace changes, but the basics haven’t changed. Company culture still matters the most. The future of performance management is a hot topic in HR

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as people management teams look for new ways to attract, engage, and retain valuable employees. More broadly, HR leaders are rethinking traditional approaches and, in some cases, retooling their tech stacks in response to the ongoing

JULY 2022

So, feedback is vital, but will performance management trends fundamentally change the employee-employer relationship? Can different methods and tools help businesses keep their best people on board? I’d argue that company culture is more important than any feedback delivery mechanism or process. Let’s examine some current performance management trends to weigh the pros and cons.

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The Future Of Performance Management

Performance Management Technology

Eliminate Formal Performance Reviews

Perhaps the hottest trend in performance management today is the idea that HR can modernize and transform employee evaluations with software. My experience as an HR leader tells me the modernization component is true, but the transformative effect may be over-hyped. When my team moved from a paper-based to a digital performance evaluation approach, we streamlined processes and alleviated administrative burdens, which was incredibly valuable. It enabled greater review frequency, which is also beneficial. But it didn’t change the fundamentals of providing constructive feedback, just the mechanism we use to deliver it.

Some companies propose doing away with performance reviews altogether. It’s a way businesses differentiate themselves on the employee relations front, similar to the unlimited PTO trend. Every company is different, and eliminating performance reviews (or PTO limits) may work well for some businesses.

Provide more Frequent Performance Reviews Another performance management trend is to step up the cadence of review frequency. One argument some HR leaders make in favor of this approach is that when companies do annual reviews, sometimes employees are surprised by the feedback they receive due to the lengthy timeline. My view is that the formal feedback provided in a review should never be a surprise, whether the reviews are annual, semi-annual or quarterly. HR may find value in providing more frequent formal performance reviews, but manager feedback should be continuous, and if it truly is, employees won’t be surprised by the formal evaluation because they’ll know where they stand.

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That said, feedback is still critical to eliminating ambiguity, recognizing employees for a job well done, and identifying and addressing performance issues. So, while the HR team may get rid of formal reviews, they’ll still need a way to deliver feedback, even if they use a less formal approach. In that scenario, it’s still important to create a framework for providing feedback because consistency is critical to achieving fairness and equality. So, will performance management trends fundamentally reshuffle the employee-employer relationship? It’s difficult to generalize since each workforce is unique, but I believe company culture is always the overriding factor. New approaches, processes, and tools might make a difference at the margins, but they won’t fix a broken culture or disrupt a healthy one. Building a company culture that emphasizes communication and transparency should be the top priority. It’s also critical to invest in training for frontline managers, who provide most of the feedback employees receive.

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In the absence of manager training, significant employee engagement, productivity, and retention issues will inevitably arise. People aren’t widgets, so they’ll always need human-to-human connections, even if technology provides the framework in which the communication takes place. Employees crave continuous feedback, and that will be true regardless of the frequency (or elimination) of formal reviews. The bottom line? Performance management trends come and go, but the importance of company culture endures.

Sean Loboda is the Chief Human Resources Officer of Leaf Home. Since joining Leaf in 2019, Sean has spearheaded a number of improvements, including a focus on programmatic recruitment advertising, the implementation of a new learning management system to both invest in employees and keep up with state-compliant training, and fostering new initiatives to emphasize diversity and inclusion recruiting. Sean brings with him 15 years of expertise with proven success in recruiting, human resources, and talent management. Before joining Leaf, he was previously the Director of Talent Acquisition for National General Insurance, where he was responsible for all human capital planning and recruitment marketing.

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Cryptocurrencies: Are They Going To Revolutionize Job Payments? The positives and the negatives By Nina Pączka, Zety

ryptocurrencies. We all know what they are—digital money that can make us earn a lot or lose even more. As Zety’s study proves, 99% know what cryptocurrencies are, most often pointing to Bitcoin (97%) and Ethereum (86%). People are also familiar with NFTs, 90% know what non-fungible tokens are. We are already used to news about Bitcoin’s big drops, celebrities bragging about their investments, or people creating personalized cryptocurrencies. So now it is time for a new trend. Namely, receiving a monthly salary or bonus through digital coins. Sounds ridiculous? Maybe not so much. But let’s not get ahead of the facts and explore the topic of cryptocurrency payments from the beginning.

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Attitude to Crypto Salary As you already learned by seeing some stats, we can’t deny that crypto is popular. People don’t just follow the market, they actively engage in investing or trading. So it’s safe to assume that the trend of getting paid in crypto has captured their interest. The research respondents were pretty open to receiving salaries and bonuses in cryptocurrencies. 57% rated the idea as good, while 16% believed it was very good. Overall, this gives us 73% of respondents in favor of crypto salary. And when diving deeper it appears that: ●● 40% would prefer to be paid both in standard currency and crypto. ●● 21% would like to receive all payments from their employer in crypto.

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Of course, they are also those more skeptical. 8% of respondents believe getting paid in crypto is a bad idea. 17% have a neutral attitude. Do these numbers imply any practical experience–good or bad? Well, 75% of survey takers claimed that they received a salary or bonus in digital coins at least once. The number is surprisingly high, isn’t it? Here, due to some survey limitations and the impossibility of being specific about how the process went, it is reasonable to assume that respondents may not receive a direct crypto transfer from employers. It’s quite likely they converted their salary, or a portion of it, into crypto after getting paid. Nevertheless, as it turns out, this decision has worked out well for them. 98% of those who decided to be paid in crypto observed

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Cryptocurrencies: Are They Going To Revolutionize Job Payments?

an increase in their coins’ value. That said, this data was gathered in April 2022, before the worst of this year’s bear market kicked in. Their answers may be very different now.

Bright and Dark Sides To make the skeptics happy, let’s start with the cons. According to the respondents, the top five crypto salary disadvantages are: ●● unstable crypto rates

Do employers and HR departments have something to say about the subject? Are they looking forward to a wider implementation of cryptocurrency payout options? Or are they more concerned about this trend? If asked, they would certainly point out the many disadvantages of getting paid in crypto. However, we’ll present both the positives and the negatives.

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●● vulnerability to hacking attacks ●● complexity of tax regulations ●● lack of personal knowledge of crypto ●● no fraud protection The list continues. We can add many other crypto disadvantages to it, depending on our

JULY 2022

knowledge of the market and previous experience. But crypto is not only an evil creation. Digital coins also entail many advantages, which were also seen by respondents: ●● investment opportunities ●● transactions speed ●● international transactions done without fees ●● bypassing the bank ●● trending subject And similarly, as with disadvantages, we can go on and on and on here.

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Cryptocurrencies: Are They Going To Revolutionize Job Payments?

71% would appreciate it if the company paid bonuses in digital coins. Being paid in crypto is likely to succeed only as an additional benefit using which the employer can increase employee satisfaction or attract new talent. Probably no employer has yet thought of offering employees a crypto-only paycheck. And if you have, drop the idea. 69% of respondents, when asked if they would quit if their employer started to offer a salary ONLY in crypto, said yes.

All things considered, it’s up to the employee to decide whether cryptocurrencies replace their standard paycheck or money transfer. However, it’s ultimately up to employers, as well as HR and finance departments to offer workers such an option. Should employers consider this option?

employee benefit. For some, it may even be more attractive than dental insurance or free lunches. Actually, the idea of offering staff salary or bonuses in crypto, makes employers more innovative, open to changes, and therefore more attractive to the best talent.

Crypto Employee Benefits

Again, Zety provides some stats here. 74% of workers would like to work for an employer paying a monthly salary in crypto. Similarly,

Indeed, the possibility of paying in cryptocurrencies could be considered by employers as an

So, this crypto trend won’t overtake traditional compensation, or at least not in the next few years. However, with the rise of Web 3.0, the consolidation of cryptocurrencies, the emergence of legal regulations, and better protection of traders, this may change. Already 86% of respondents admit they’d be fond of being paid in crypto if the proper legal and tax regulations were created. But now, let’s sit tight and see what the future will bring.

Nina Pączka is a career advisor and job search expert at Zety. She offers professional expertise to everyone wanted to gain insight into the job market. Her professional advice and guidance help people find a satisfying jobs and pursue a career. Nina’s mission is to support jobseekers in their path leading to finding a perfect job.

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TOP PICK

Performance Management In 2023 The future belongs to those who adapt By Senthil Rajagopalan, Profit.co

hat will the future of performance management look like in 2023? Let’s take a look at current trends and the characteristics of a modern performance management system! The past few years have had a seismic impact on the way businesses around the world are working. While 2020 and 2021 had many teams busy adjusting to remote working and optimizing their productivity in a hybrid environment, 2022 has opened many doors for further development in other important areas, such as employee engagement, task management, and performance management. Today, we’ll focus on the future of performance management in 2023 and what this will look like for businesses around the world!

Changing Performance Management Paradigms Forbes.com shared the top three trends they envisioned for 2022. These trends include shifts that will carry into 2023: 1. The impact of hybrid work 2. More continuous feedback and check-ins 3. Using performance data gathered in real-time Hybrid work has led to a higher demand for flexibility. Work from home is no longer a perk that companies can use to sweeten the deal when attracting top

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talent– instead, it’s an expectation, as is all of the flexibility that comes along with hybrid work. Additionally, Forbes predicted that there would be more continuous feedback in check-ins. Currently, this prediction is heavily backed up by statistics from other sources– ClearCompany notes that 43% of highly engaged employees receive feedback on a weekly basis. Lastly, companies have developed new methods for gathering and using performance data. The shift to remote work forces employers to find new ways to measure employee contributions. How long an employee sits at their desk is no longer a good indicator of whether that employee is performing well or not. Instead, companies are focusing on outcome-based performance data, such as KPIs and targets tracked using OKRs.

Characteristics of a Modern Performance Management System In 2023 and beyond, we’ll see performance management develop in many different ways. As an HR administrator or business leader, it’s important to keep up with recent trends so you know how to best evaluate and support your team as the norm develops. Here are seven characteristics of a modern performance management system that you can implement right now to bring your organization up to speed!

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Performance Management In 2023

1. Set Flexible Goals Instead of setting rigid annual goals for your teams that come from the top down, allow for flexibility. Goals should shift according to the top priorities of your team within a given quarter. It’s also important to allow individual employees to identify their own goals and take ownership.

2. Different Criteria for Different Job Roles Ensure that all employees are being evaluated based on the skills that matter most to their job role. Depending on the employee’s department, seniority level, and role within the company, you should adjust what performance reviews focus on.

3. Clearly Defined Criteria for Compensation It can be discouraging for employees when they feel that their compensation doesn’t line up with their contributions to the company. Therefore, it’s very important to have a compensation plan in place that is transparent, clearly defined, and easy to understand.

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This plan must be clearly established with everyone in the organization so that there is no ambiguity in what to expect.

4. Integrate Technology in the Performance Appraisal Process Organizations that integrate performance tools into their team’s workflow are much more likely to see positive results from the process. Making performance feedback a natural part of day-to-day work makes it easier to coach employees and managers alike.

5. Giving Feedback Giving feedback is a crucial part of the performance appraisal process, but many leaders don’t give it often enough to engage employees. Feedback should be a continuous, open conversation between an employee and their manager. All feedback should be recorded so that when it comes time for a quarterly or annual performance review, recency bias doesn’t skew an employee’s review.

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Performance Management In 2023

7. Help Employees Become Successful Instead of Pulling Them Down One-on-one check-ins help identify performance issues early on rather than forcing managers and employees to wait for weeks to discuss them. Managers should make sure that any criticism they give the employee comes from an unbiased and honest place, and always include action items the employee can take to improve their work. If the employee is successful, the team and the organization are, too. This will help employees feel more confident when performance review time comes around, making it a more positive experience in your company.

6. Get Data that Matters Oftentimes, data used in performance reviews doesn’t dive deep into employee contributions, and feedback and performance that are more recent. This tends to skew the evaluation. To help resolve this, organizations can get high-quality data by using systems that collect information on employee performance on a regular basis. Gathering performance data year-round means that the company is getting better insights into employee performance and employees are receiving more accurate evaluations.

The future belongs to those who adapt. Performance management is continually evolving and responding to changes within organizations and around the world. Companies all around the globe have had to adapt to changing circumstances in the past two years. Now, it’s time to improve your processes and work on becoming the best at what you do. While every organization is different, everyone can benefit from enhancing their performance review process to develop more engaged, skilled, and satisfied employees– and a more productive organization!

Senthil Rajagopalan is the President & COO at Profit.co, a San Francisco bay area based SaaS startup that helps companies improve their goal management and execution through their industryleading offering software. Senthil is responsible for marketing, sales & customer success at Profit. co. He has nearly 25 years of experience in technology and consulting, including 12 years working with enterprise customers in North America. He has been in B2B SaaS for the past 10 years, co-founding a startup in Bangalore, India. He is an OKR lead coach and a certified agile coach. He spends 50 percent of his time with customers helping them with their goal management (OKRs) and performance management initiatives.

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Special Research Supplement July 2022

The Future of Performance Management 2022-23

Create performance management systems for the new age of work

INTERACTIVE

JULY 2022

Sponsored by:

ARTICLES

HR’s Guide to Effective Performance Reviews

By Ben Hastings, PerformYard

Defining Outsourcing vs. Staff Augmentation: What’s Right for You? By Caroline Healey, ELB Learning

Navigating Performance Management in the Post-Pandemic Era

Navigating Performance Management D.E.E.P Rooted Core Values in the Post-Pandemic Era 46 By WORKDOVE

By Sri Chellappa, Engagedly

Maximize Employee Adoption By Harrison Kim, Pavestep

How Manager Effectiveness Impacts Performance, For Better or For Worse By Genevieve Michaels, 15Five

Navigating Management The HRPerformance Research Institute, powered by HR.com, the world’s largest social network in the Post-Pandemic Era for Human Resources professionals, is a key part of our mandate to inform and educate today’s HR professionals. Over the past three years, the HR Research Institute has produced more than 85 exclusive primary research and state of the industry reports, along with corresponding infographics in many cases, based on the surveys of thousands of HR professionals. Each research report highlights current HR trends, benchmarks, and industry best practices. HR Research Institute Reports and Talent Management Excellence presented by HR.com JULY 2022 22 Submit Your Articles Infographics are available online, and always free, at www.hr.com/featuredresearch

The Future of Performance Management 2022-23 Create performance management systems for the new age of work

Exclusive Study By The HR Research Institute

oday, in the aftermath of the pandemic, performance management is set for unprecedented changes. Organizations and

their employees are looking for agile, transparent, and fair performance management systems that serve as an aid to improving employee development, engagement, and retention. An exclusive study conducted by the HR Research Institute investigates the capabilities, goals, and challenges of the PM process today.

many still view it in a negative way, and few view it as crucial. ●● Most managers lack PM-related training, which could explain their poor performance management skills.

Navigating ●● Most organizations use performance Performance Management management technology, but their in the Post-Pandemic Era capabilities need improvement. ●● The future of performance management is focused on the development and based on frequent, natural conversations.

Key Findings ●● Most HR professionals report that performance management in their organization changed in response to the pandemic. ●● Performance management processes are often below average in their capabilities across multiple objectives. ●● Manager ratings and SMART goals remain popular methods of measuring performance. ●● Although a majority of top leaders view performance management in a positive light, 23

RESEARCH REPORT SUMMARY

STATE OF THE INDUSTRY RESEARCH

The Prevalence of Performance Management Nearly all organizations (93%) have some sort of performance management process. However, just 49% say it is a structured and formalized process. A further 31% say it has both formal and informal

Large organizations are most likely to have a structured and formalized PM process, with 57% of respondents from such firms reporting formalized systems. Few large companies only have an informal PM system (9%).

informal performance management system with

Performance Management Responses to the Pandemic

no formalized elements, and 7% of respondents

Most organizations made changes to performance

say their organization has no performance

management as a result of the pandemic. Some

management process at all.

of these changes—originally made in an ad hoc

elements. Only 13% say their organization has an

manner as a response to the pandemic— have now become the norm.

RESEARCH REPORT SUMMARY

STATE OF THE INDUSTRY RESEARCH

Survey Question: How has performance management changed from the pre-pandemic era till now? (select all that apply) Managers are conducting performance discussions remotely rather than face-to-face

46%

Managers are touching on issues aside from performance (e.g., well-being)

42%

Managers are scheduling more frequent one-on-one meetings

Nearly one-third say organizations are adapting performance management goals to the new circumstances

36%

Organizations are adapting performance management goals to the new circumstances

31%

Organizations are emphasizing short-term agility rather than long-term performance goals

19%

Managers are creating performance management skillsets for remote work

13%

There have been no changes

21%

The Effectiveness of Performance Management When asked about the effects of the performance management system in their organization, 44% say that it meets all organizational performance goals to a high or very high extent. Another 44% say it results in better employee development to a high or very high degree.

employees learn and grow (69%). A close second is to boost communication between employees and managers (68%). Another popular objective for organizations to conduct performance reviews is to help improve overall performance (67%). About half of respondents (49%) also say that one of the objectives of performance reviews in their organization is to facilitate performance-related changes in pay and to increase employee retention

The most common objective for conducting

(46%).

performance reviews is to help individual

RESEARCH REPORT SUMMARY

STATE OF THE INDUSTRY RESEARCH

The Future of Performance Management The future signals a shift from a high-stakes, once-a-year appraisal to a more continuous and development-focused approach to performance management. The majority of respondents

RESEARCH REPORT SUMMARY

(69%) say that, over the next three to five years, performance management will be based on more frequent and natural conversations (69%), more focused on development activities (58%) and more integrated with employee engagement and satisfaction data (58%).

STATE OF THE INDUSTRY RESEARCH

Survey Question: Where do you think the future of PM is apply) Will become more frequent and include natural conversations

69%

Will become more focused on development activities

58%

Will become more integrated with employee engagement and satisfaction data

58%

Will become less formal and structured

49%

Will increasingly be based on verbal or written conversations rather than ratings

39%

Will become better at boosting employee performance

37%

Will have more automated components related to artificial intelligence

35%

24%

Will become more objective

Will increasingly disappear from the landscape

14%

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Few respondents (14%) think performance management will increasingly disappear from the landscape

RESEARCH REPORT SUMMARY

STATE OF THE INDUSTRY RESEARCH

Performance is not only about number ratings but

more communication, coaching, appreciation and

a more holistic approach to enable employees to

fairness than ever before.

work to the best of their potential. This involves

The Future of Performance Management 2022-23

To learn more about The Future of Performance Management 2022-23, we invite you to download and read the complete report today, including 11 key takeaways, to learn how these outcomes and insights may apply to your organization.

Read the Research Report

RESEARCH REPORT SUMMARY

STATE OF THE INDUSTRY RESEARCH

HR’s Guide to Effective Performance Reviews Ben Hastings, PerformYard

ew company-wide strategies are so critical, yet ineffectively implemented, as performance reviews.

A great performance review cycle can calibrate employee performance, identify top performers, reward excellent work, and help a company in its strategic planning. On the other hand, poorly implemented performance reviews can lead to confusion, frustration, endless meetings, and a real dip in company performance. So how can you ensure that your organization implements effective performance reviews? As you develop or update your performance review cycle, there are a number of steps you can take to focus, modernize, and streamline performance

reviews so that each review cycle works for your employees. We’ll take a look at those steps in this article to help you create and implement effective performance reviews.

What Makes an Effective Performance Review? Effective performance reviews don’t just happen— they are the product of thoughtful and proactive systems that stress objectivity, achievement, and transparency. When aligned, they powerfully reinforce good performance and help course correct where necessary. Below are seven components of an effective performance review for your organization to consider.

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STATE OF THE INDUSTRY RESEARCH

1. Reviews Should Be Frequent

cussed and followed-up on during check-ins and

Ineffective performance reviews happen rarely or

subsequent reviews.

sporadically, leaving employees surprised when suboptimal performance is called out months after an event occurred. Effective performance reviews happen frequently and build upon each other. In an effective review, excellent performance is reinforced and feedback is given to correct suboptimal performance. Employees then have a chance to correct their mistakes and discuss

Performance reviews and goal setting come together to create a system where performance is discussed, next steps are agreed on, and progress is reviewed.

4. Reviews Should Be Transparent Performance reviews shouldn’t hold any surprises for employees. Managers can improve

progress by the next review.

transparency by sharing rubrics and evaluation

Frequent performance reviews help employees feel

helps employees understand ahead of time where

more comfortable discussing goals, receiving

their manager believes their strengths and

feedback, and talking about performance.

weaknesses lie and gives them time to prepare

questions ahead of performance reviews. This

for a discussion.

2. Reviews Should Be Objective and Performance-Oriented

Transparency also builds trust between a manag-

Effective performance reviews should leave little

er and employee. When performance reviews are

room for interpretation and should be based on

transparent, employees know how their manager

specific criteria, rather than opinions or feelings.

views their performance and clearly understand where expectations lie.

To ensure objective reviews, an organization may develop performance review rubrics that can be

5. Reviews Should Be Conversational

consistently used across the company. These

Every performance review should be a two-way

rubrics should grade employee performance and

conversation. Reviews are not inquisitions—they

competencies, not personalities.

are opportunities to look back on past performance and position an employee for optimal future

3. Reviews Should Incorporate Goals

performance. This is best achieved by striking a

Performance reviews take place to help employees

conversational tone.

drive positive change. Goals are the best way to ensure that change actually takes place.

Managers should begin performance reviews by asking the employee how they think their

Ideally, direct reports and managers will work

performance has been or to highlight their wins and

together after a performance review takes place to

their shortcomings. Once the review is underway,

set achievable goals that will guide an employee’s

managers can add in their findings.

development. These goals should then be dis-

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STATE OF THE INDUSTRY RESEARCH

6. Reviews Should Take a Holistic Approach to Feedback Most reviews are made up of two parts: self-evaluations and manager evaluations. Depending on your organization, this may be the best way to evaluate an employee. But many organizations are supplementing these two components with peer feedback.

on what is expected of them during performance review cycles. Here are some tips that you should communicate to managers that will help make their performance reviews as effective as possible.

Set Expectations Early We believe that an effective performance review is

Combining feedback from multiple peers and stakeholders (also known as 360 reviews) allows managers, employees, and organizations to get a holistic view of how an employee’s performance impacts the company. This holistic view helps managers and HR make more objective decisions about scoring and compensation, leading to improved employee morale.

7. Reviews Should End With a Clear Understanding of the Future

a continual process, not a one-day meeting. Managers and employees should meet at the beginning of the year to set goals and expectations. Expectations should be crystal clear. Then, when quarterly or end-of-year performance reviews come around, the conversations should reflect the effort and feedback that was given over a period of time.

An effective performance review should end with a good plan of action for future performance. Coming out of a review, employees should understand their strengths, weaknesses, and what’s expected of them in the future. In turn, managers should provide employees with actionable ways that performance can be improved, as well as an appropriate timeline for improvement.

Tips for an Effective Performance Review As HR manages the entire performance review process, it’s critical to train managers on how to complete performance reviews effectively. Ideally, you should hold training sessions with managers throughout the year to provide clarity

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STATE OF THE INDUSTRY RESEARCH

Use Performance Notes as a Guide

This can be accomplished by a manager asking

Managers should not leave a performance review

open-ended questions to get the employee to arrive

to the mercy of their memory.

at conclusions on their own.

Instead, managers need to take notes throughout

Managers shouldn’t be silent during a review. They

the performance cycle on their direct report’s

should affirm conclusions that seem accurate and

performance—both positive and negative.

push back on conclusions that don’t seem correct.

This will ensure that an employee’s strengths and

By the end of the discussion, both parties should

weaknesses are accurately and fairly incorporated

feel that their views have been heard and

into the review.

acknowledged.

Give Specific Feedback

Effective performance reviews are critical for

Specific feedback ensures that the review is

identifying and rewarding top talent,

objective.

recalibrating employee performance, and guiding

Instead of saying, “You don’t check your work

company strategy.

before you send it in,” a manager could say, “When

With some foresight and proactive planning, HR can

you turned in that PowerPoint on spending in our

create an effective performance review process

department, there were some incorrect figures and

that emphasizes frequent meetings, stresses

a few spelling mistakes. It is important that you

objectivity, and incorporates holistic feedback.

check your work in the future.” This allows direct reports to better internalize feedback and sets them up to make necessary changes in order to improve performance. Managers should be sure to call out specific wins. When employees see their performance being recognized, they understand that their hard work

Ben Hastings is CEO of PerformYard – a software solution for streamlining modern performance management strategies. PerformYard is flexible for HR and simple for employees. Create the process that is right for your organization and let your people focus on effective communication and quality feedback.

directly benefits the company. This encourages positive future performance.

Encourage a Discussion

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Reviews should be a discussion, not an interrogation. Ideally, the employee should lead the conversation, or at least direct the conversation around their own strengths and weaknesses.

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STATE OF THE INDUSTRY RESEARCH

Navigating Performance Management in the Post-Pandemic Era

Performance management is a central pillar in every organization, and in the past few years, it has taken a comprehensive and a holistic approach. The post-pandemic business challenges and The Great Resignation have made organizations rethink and realign their processes. They are becoming more peoplecentric and focus on employee experience, thereby adapting to the ‘Future of work’. Prepandemic performance management systems are too outdated to meet today’s workforce demands. As a result, employees feel disconnected and undervalued. Management is faced with a huge challenge when it comes to modernizing their work practices. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 11 million open jobs at the end of October 2021, while there were only 7.4 million unemployed people. This wide gap shows that employees need much more than a salaried job, that is better workplace experiences. “Research indicates that workers have three prime needs: interesting work, recognition for doing a good job, and being let in on things that are going on in the company.” - Zig Ziglar. The solution stands true even today! The key area where people leaders and managers need to focus today to attract and retain talent is performance enablement. They need to make sure that employees work in an environment where they are the most productive, feel

valued, heard, and empowered. Here are some key points to craft better work experiences and drive higher performance.

Help Them Find Purpose & Fulfillment The tumultuous years of 2020 and post-2020 have made everyone reconsider their priorities. Employees are no longer motivated only by money; they are looking for much more than that. Since most employees spend the greater part of the day at work, they are looking for a place now where they are mentally satisfied, have a work-life balance, and find resilience or purpose. Once you overcome these obstacles, you get an engaged and productive workforce that stays longer in your organization. As a leader, help your employees understand why they should work for you, and how they contribute to the business goals. They must believe in the mission, vision, and goals of the organization to drive it forward.

Designing a Performance Management Process that Drives Performance | 2

Challenge Them to Perform What challenges your employees to perform well consistently? It is when they have clear but at the same time challenging and attainable goals to direct them. It not only motivates them and improves their confidence and job satisfaction, but also keeps them engaged and focused. Challenging goals help employees prioritize work and drive them to perform better. It helps them to plan ahead and be better prepared. While setting challenging goals will drive your employees, but at the same time they need to have access to the resources to attain these goals.

Nurture Them As per LinkedIn 2020 Workforce Learning Report, 94% of employees would stay with a company if they invested in their training and development.

Your employees are your biggest assets, and they thrive and grow in environments where they feel valued and empowered. Nurture your employees and allow them to grow professionally and personally. Learn about your employees’ goals and aspirations and what they want to achieve. Invest in your employees’ development and see them grow and stay with the organization. This will not only help them bridge their skill gap and help in their growth and development, but will also prepare them for the new era of work and allow them to take up challenging roles. Not to mention, it increases motivation and engagement, which in turn improves retention and productivity for the organization. It’s a win-win for both sides.

Designing a Performance Management Process that Drives Performance | 3

Celebrate Wins In the last two years, most employees have been working from home, which has taken a major hit on their morale and motivation. The sudden transition in the way they work impacted their engagement levels and productivity. Even now, as we are shifting towards hybrid work, keeping them motivated and feeling valued is something which organizations should continuously focus on.

for their contributions. So reward and recognize your employees for their wins and contributions, irrespective of where they are working from.

Any form of recognition is said to have a long-lasting effect, even a simple ‘Thank you’ email or PTO will do the trick. We do not expect the workforce to be the same as it was in the post-pandemic era. But the performance enablement strategies focussed around the E3 model of business strategy execution, talent enablement, and employee engagement will help you deliver better workplace experiences for the current generation workforce. They miss cheering on floors for each other, team outings and lunches, praising team members for their support and exemplary work, and most importantly, getting recognition

Designing a Performance Management Process that Drives Performance | 4

Navigating Performance Management in the Post-Pandemic Era

Designing a Performance Management Process that Drives Performance | 5

Maximize Employee Adoption Harrison Kim, Pavestep

o you love your performance review process?

and retaining employees. So now what? Maybe you

Was it a super quick, painless process? Do your

are thinking about implementing a new continuous

employees find your annual reviews inspiring?

performance management tool to help solve your

Probably not.

problem. However, this alone isn’t a silver bullet either.

If you’ve been in HR/People Operations for more

than a few years, you likely know that traditional

Many HR/People Operations professionals have

reviews are just simply ineffective at developing

spent countless hours and resources setting up

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STATE OF THE INDUSTRY RESEARCH

Sponsorship: You must have buy-in and role modeling behaviors from leaders across your organization. Get them involved from the get-go and hold them accountable for the processes that you have put in place. Leaders need to lead by example (“walk the talk”). Education: You must educate your employees on why it’s important to foster this culture of feedback and accountability, as well as how they should act on it. For example, you need to educate your employees on how to share feedback in an effective way. Process: You must have the processes in place to reinforce the right behaviors, which will turn into habits, and over time, a part of your culture. Having an easy-to-use tool is only one piece of the puzzle. While it makes managing employees’ performance easier (especially in a remote or their new performance management tools, only

hybrid environment), these three drivers are what

to find out that their employees hate it. More

will make a real difference in your team’s

often than not, just implementing a continuous

performance, development, and retention.

performance management tool doesn’t actually create a culture of feedback and accountability that develops, motivates, and retains employees. We understand this challenge very closely - we are that sexy, new performance management tool. So… how do you create this elusive culture of feedback and accountability? More specifically, how do you get your employees to love it and adopt it? In our experience, tools that are implemented

Harrison Kim is the CEO of Pavestep - an employee feedback and performance management solution. He founded Pavestep to help organizations develop their people faster and retain them longer. He is obsessed with feedback, performance, and culture. He is a former McKinsey consultant and a former private equity investor specializing in the human capital management sector.

without the right support and processes will not transform organizations. Here are three drivers that we need to think about if we actually want to create

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change: sponsorship, education, and process.

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STATE OF THE INDUSTRY RESEARCH

Defining Outsourcing vs. Staff Augmentation: What’s Right for You? Caroline Healey, ELB Learning

ince the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, many people have found themselves switching jobs,

or even industries to work in a fashion that they prefer. This is also known as the era of the “Great Resignation”- and it is causing a talent shortage. With this talent shortage comes the need to restart training programs and upskill existing employees. However, hiring a new employee is a big decision and you may be unsure of your exact needs. Perhaps a better solution would be to start outsourcing employees to fill specific roles or to consider staff augmentation - but how do you know when one is the best solution over the other?

Staff augmentation can meet the demand for entire teams or individual positions with candidates who are fully sourced and have solid experience and credentials. When staff augmentation is used, you get access to a pool of L&D talent who accurately aligns with your immediate or long-term requirements, and is ready to join your team.

A staff augmentation vendor provides your learning and development team with employees who have the specific skills that your team may lack. Outsourcing an employee includes finding one person to join your organization to work on a specific set of tasks. The talent brought in through outsourcing becomes limited to that one employee’s expertise, whereas staff augmentation

Working with a staff augmentation vendor ensures your organization has a qualified team that can fulfill the top most requested job roles, such as: ●● Instructional Designers

allows you to experience as many people as you

●● Technical Writers

may need to get the job done under one contract.

●● LMS Administrators

There can be many pros to outsourcing employees, starting with reduced costs and lower project risk. Outsourcing may also be the most viable option when it comes to a specific gray area where your organization lacks expertise.

Reasons for Staff Augmentation

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●● Facilitators/Trainers ●● And many more! Staff augmentation is an agile approach where vendors cooperate with your business goals and

STATE OF THE INDUSTRY RESEARCH

quickly assist your organization in finding quality

to train existing employees on an initiative they

and temporary talent solutions. The advantage

don’t specialize in, staff augmentation provides

of staff augmentation is a group of immediately

talent with qualified knowledge and resources. This

available talent who understands your business

leaves your existing employees to stay focused

strategies.

on the current tasks whereas staff augmentation

Pros and Cons of Outsourcing Talent

teams can quickly fill a role to meet fastapproaching deadlines.

In some cases, the general practice of outsourcing

Increased Flexibility

talent and hiring permanent employees can be the

A staff augmentation team is brought in for specific

best option for your business depending on your

skills and current project needs, and they can

business needs. Outsourcing an employee gives

be kept long-term or short-term. Once a project

you more control over who you are recruiting and

is completed and finished, their services are no

the projects they are working on. Outsourcing is

longer needed. Therefore the contract ends with

also a great way to stabilize your L&D budget and

no additional commitments. This is different from

create projected expenses and deadlines.

outsourcing, where you are locked into a contract that cannot be easily terminated.

Outsourcing, or hiring a permanent employee, means there needs to be strong communication and an ongoing dialog between the employee and the leader (or supervisor). A lack of communication can affect project quality and outcomes, making it difficult to work directly with an outsourced employee. The other risk is that if the outsourced employee is not needed at all times, you could still be on the hook for paying the full contract amount. In this case, outsourcing might not be costeffective.

When outsourcing an employee, a key factor to think about is timing. Is it the right time within your organization to take on a full-time employee? Will their full-time service be fully utilized? Will you have to take the time to train them in areas they aren’t familiar with? When it comes to staff augmentation, you place a knowledgeable member who specializes in the project’s desired area, an individual or a whole team, whatever is necessary. Your staff augmentation vendor will have a deep

Benefits to Staff Augmentation Hiring a staff augmentation vendor is also a great way to reduce costs versus hiring a full-time employee through outsourcing. Plus, there are other

pool of highly equipped talent that can be inserted and removed depending on what skills are needed to get the job done within your timeline.

benefits:

Ability to Source Specialized Talent

Increased Agility

Learning and development teams are constantly

L&D strategists can offer specific skills to fill gaps within an L&D team. Rather than taking the time 43

Reduced Time-to-fill

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updating their strategies and implementing modern methodologies based on new learning

STATE OF THE INDUSTRY RESEARCH

requirements. For many businesses, this task

a single job role. Ultimately, it doesn’t appear that

can be a struggle as some organizations do not

hiring permanent employees is as stable as one

have the money, resources, or time to innovate

might think.

strategies and educate their employees on their own. That’s why staff augmentation can be noted as the go-to solution. Staff augmentation broadens the capabilities of your L&D team.

Why Hire a Staff Augmentation Team? Staff Augmentation is a critical strategy to

Lastly, staff augmentation allows you to pinpoint specific budgetary targets and keep everything in the black. Should you require more support, you add more hours to the project. If you discover some talent that you feel is the perfect fit for a position, you can then reach out to them with an offer to move to a permanent position. So rather than losing quality talent in the first 90 days, you can have a “try before you buy” strategy that allows

strengthen existing teams that can expedite project delivery, create a flexible workplace, and support agility within an organization. Based on what your team’s needs are, a staff augmentation vendor can work with you long-term or short-term. A vendor can supply individual employees to work on parts of single projects, or a team of people who can manage an entire project, leaving you to put more focus on your business.

you to audition talent first.

Selecting a Vendor Permanent Hires Can Offer Stability

A good vendor understands your long-term

When outsourcing employees, ideally you want

capabilities, contact ELB Learning for a free

them to be invested and dedicated to your business goals. When you fill a permanent position, you have

and short-term business goals, and has a solid reputation. To learn more about staff augmentation consultation.

a great deal of control over the quality of talent you bring into the organization. This can impact the level of control L&D leaders have on L&D project outcomes. As we’ve come to understand in recent years, not all permanent employees are guaranteed to be there for the long term. Research suggests that

Caroline Healey is the Marketing Manager at ELB Learning. Previously, she was the Chief of Staff at CoreAxis Consulting, which was acquired by ELB Learning in 2022, Caroline has experience and extensive knowledge of staff augmentation, marketing, and learning and development products and services.

around 33% of new employees quit in the first 90 days. Some leave for personal reasons, others are disillusioned with job expectations, and some

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may have been courting alternative job offers. Whatever the reason, the cost to repeat the hiring and onboarding process puts a hefty price tag on

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STATE OF THE INDUSTRY RESEARCH

D.E.E.P Rooted Core Values

hile defining organizational culture may

employees within an organization. Therefore, the

prove to be a challenging undertaking, most

behaviors, customs, and traditions that occur when

would agree that culture is largely determined and

leadership is NOT around is the unspoken language

influenced by the top leader.

we know as “culture.” Each team member has a unique connection and contribution to culture.

Leadership creates and sets the tone for the organization’s mission, vision, core values, and goals. This, in turn, influences the behaviors of the

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However, leadership determines the health and direction of an organization’s culture - intentionally or unintentionally.

STATE OF THE INDUSTRY RESEARCH

What then are the thoughtful steps a leader may

marketplace. What are a few behaviors your

take to ensure the culture they are creating every

organization rewards most often? Are there

day is one that is healthy, strong, and true to the

customer or employee stories you proudly tell

core of the organization?

because they sum up the perception of the organization you want listeners to grasp? That’s a

Let’s start with a working definition of culture: the

natural place to start.

behaviors and actions that are lived out on a daily basis. Without information, we often assume and

For those in the startup phase, you might ask

fill in the gaps with our own made-up story. In the

yourself what foundation you wish to build.

absence of intentionally defined actions and

Startups need business builders as their first

behaviors that leaders expect of their employees,

team members. What about your culture would be

employees are left to guess and may revert to what

attractive to the talent profile you are seeking to

is known, comfortable, and desirable for them.

hire? The early days require individuals who believe

Intentionally creating culture must first start with

so strongly in the what, why, and who they are

leadership defining and relaying what those

doing it for that they are willing to wear many

expected behaviors are in the form of core values.

different hats and work harder and smarter. What

Using an acronym, this article will outline how to

core values would keep those people pressing

craft and live out D.E.E.P.-rooted core values.

forward even on their most challenging day?

D - Define Your Core Values

Organizations in their more mature years may find

Choosing core values begins with values that res-

redrafted. In this common scenario, it is helpful to

onate with you, not just what sounds good in the

take a step back and really look at your team. What

their core values need to be revisited and

are commonalities high performers that are also

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STATE OF THE INDUSTRY RESEARCH

good team players share? What makes them great

out on a daily basis - into your onboarding process.

and have repeatable success? It is also wise to

At WorkDove, we do this with every new hire; every

listen to any consistencies your clients or

employee goes on a “walk and talk” with their

customers are voicing. While customer reviews and

manager on their first day to learn about

surveys should not be the sole determinant of your

WorkDove’s core values, culture, and our

core values, their comments and personal

expectations of them. This exercise is one of the

experiences can bring to light overarching themes

highest-rated onboarding experiences of our new

you may have missed about your team. For

hire program. Also, consider quizzing people on

example, if you notice a pattern of customers giving

them in meetings or at events. Revisit them at every

feedback that your team provides quick and

staff or department meeting until they become

accurate responses to questions and concerns,

second nature.

what underlying value is believed by your team members that push them to react quickly and efficiently? Could it be the value of drive, accountability, or grit?

E- Encourage “On-Value” Displays of Behavior

Core values become interwoven throughout a Beyond the core values that may already be

culture when they are displayed for all to see. When

subliminally present in your organization, being

an employee or group of team members act in such

aware of current weaknesses may illuminate values

a way that they are truly living out a core value of

you wish to integrate into your culture in the future.

the organization, recognize this “on-value” display

If there has been a problem in the past with “water

and share it informally through shared stories and

cooler talk,” aka, talking behind co-workers’ backs,

formally through recognition programs. By doing

perhaps a core value of inclusivity needs to be

so, all team members now have a visual and deeper

defined and implemented.

understanding of what is truly expected and celebrated at their organization. They have a

Once the values are nailed down, qualify them with

measuring rod and accountability for what TO do

actual, applicable definitions. These definitions

instead of merely what NOT to do.

must be one’s employees can easily understand and recite. The goal is for core values to be

Note: An effective digital recognition tool like

interwoven into the common language of your

WorkDove makes this step easy.

organization, so keep it simple by choosing short descriptions people will easily remember.

E- Examine On a Regular Basis

The last step is to share these values regularly.

Making a practice of regularly examining core

Incorporate the “story telling” of your core

values, such as once a year, holds leaders

values - what they are, what they mean, and

accountable by ensuring they are still relevant and

examples and expectations of how they are lived

genuinely embraced by the organization.

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STATE OF THE INDUSTRY RESEARCH

Are product and/or service decisions made with

employee properly matched with the position?

the core values in mind? Do values have a place in

When all factors are considered, a fair and

the hiring and firing processes? Do employees take

equitable performance review will measure and

ownership of these behaviors? Why or why not?

address performance AND core value alignment separately. The Performance-Values Matrix is an

P- Performance Evaluation of Core

empirically proven management model2 for

Why include core values in the performance review

Regardless of how seasoned your organization

Values

process at your organization? Ever worked with a brilliant jerk? Or how about the lovable slacker or nice team member who can’t get the job done well or fast enough? These are just two of the reasons organizations should evaluate core values in a performance review. The brilliant jerk is the individual who meets and even exceeds goals or performance objectives but does so in a manner that is not in line with the organization’s core values. Their “what” is on point, but sadly, their “how” is toxic. The lovable slacker may display your core values beautifully, but their performance consistently misses the mark. It is vital to evaluate

effectively accomplishing this.

is, it is never too late to create, define, and incorporate deep-rooted core values. Core values will lay the foundation for a strong culture you as a leader can be immensely proud of. If the growth of your organization is akin to a tree, the strength of the tree is solely dependent on the depth of the roots. If core values are surface level, the tree will be easily swayed by a strong wind. In contrast, deep-rooted values give way to a culture that can withstand just about anything. Need help defining your core values? Visit WorkDove.com for free example behaviors.

behaviors in both scenarios. If the brilliant jerk was only evaluated on performance, they would likely carry on with business as usual and cause damage to your organization and customers. The same goes for the lovable slacker. If they are only ever evaluated and praised for how well-liked they

Notes 1. Phillippi, Melissa (2019). Overcoming Challenges of the Idiosyncratic Rater Effect. Retrieved from https://workdove.com/overcoming-challenges-ofrater-bias/

are, their performance will likely never improve, which causes a different kind of damage to the organization.

Beyond these two scenarios, leaders must

2. Phillippi, Melissa (2020). Summary of Findings from the Research Report: Values-Based Management or the Performance-Values Matrix: Was Jack Welch Right? Retrieved from https://workdove.com/ the-case-for-the-performance-values-matrix/

constantly work to evaluate employees holistically. For example, was proper training afforded to the employee? What does multi-rater feedback1 reveal about how others perceive and benefit from the

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output of this employee? Is the skill-set of the

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STATE OF THE INDUSTRY RESEARCH

How Manager Effectiveness Impacts Performance, For Better or For Worse Genevieve Michaels, 15Five

o quote everyone from Damocles to Spider-Man, with great power comes great responsibility.

It’s a truism for a reason, but it’s more relevant to managers than most. An employee’s relationship with their manager defines their workplace experience. That gives them exceptional power over their team’s performance, for good or bad. Company culture, policies, and values all filter through the manager — no matter how carefully they were crafted at the strategic level. Manager effectiveness impacts organizational health and influences all areas of an employee’s experience, including engagement, growth and development, and productivity. And with the right structures to support your people, good managers can be provided with the conditions to become great.

impacts, and can devastate crucial business metrics like turnover, retention, and morale. The statistics are sobering—poorly engaged managers cost the American economy $319 to $328 billion dollars every single year.

How Bad Managers Hold Back Their Team

The Impacts of Low Manager Effectiveness

Here are just a few ways low manager

When managers are underskilled, they create

Low Morale

stress, frustration and disengagement in those working under them. Managers can quite literally make or break an employee’s workplace satisfaction. That’s why 63% of workers with a bad manager are thinking about quitting within the next 12 months.

effectiveness impacts performance:

Underskilled managers might fail to give their team the praise they deserve for a job well done. This proves discouraging and demotivating for employees, leaving them unsure of their performance and where they stand. A selfperpetuating cycle is created as employees

Interpersonal challenges like these aren’t just subjective, individual to be dealt with at the team

level. Inefficient managers have far-reaching

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continue to underperform, and consequently, receive even less recognition.

STATE OF THE INDUSTRY RESEARCH

High Turnover and Poor Retention Turnover rates are one of the clearest indicators

powerful strategy to improve employee experience and company performance across the board.

of manager efficiency. Managers who don’t inspire their team’s best work create restless, unfulfilled

These assertions are backed up by real data.

employees, who eventually seek professional

According to 15Five’s 2022 Workplace Report, over

development elsewhere.

53.8% of Americans shared that an unsupportive manager would be a key factor behind their

High Burnout

decision to leave. But an even larger portion felt

Workplace struggles aren’t just isolated to the 9-5. Manager-related stress can take a serious toll outside of work, even leading to physical illness and burnout. When affected workers need to take time

that strong, supportive management would be an important reason to stay.

Closing the Experience Gap

away, other staff end up overloaded to compensate

Frustratingly, ineffective managers often don’t

for their absence. This further perpetues

perceive themselves as needing improvement—in

the problem.

sharp contrast with their teams’ experience. Recent 15five research revealed this experience gap and

Low Productivity Ineffective managers often don’t provide their teams with enough clarity around roles, expectations, and responsibilities. That creates an environment where employees are not equipped to do their best work, and struggle to prioritize and complete important tasks. In fact, 76% of employees shared in a recent survey that they work harder when their employer shows investment in their professional growth.

The Managerial Skills Crisis Unfortunately, these manager-related issues are not the exception. They’re a widespread issue across the American workforce. In an already tightly squeezed labor market, underskilled, ineffective managers are causing hundreds of thousands of talented people to leave their jobs.

has found it to be shockingly widespread among managers and their teams. Recently, we conducted research into the state of the performance review, one important tool managers can use to boost performance and productivity. The report revealed that: ●● 83% of managers felt they were skilled at having regular performance related conversations with their team — but just 54% of those team members agreed ●● 75% of managers perceive themselves as skilled at facilitating performance reviews, but only 53% of their employees agreed ●● 68% of managers thought their review process improved relationships with their direct reports — but that feeling was shared by only 43% of their workers

But while companies should certainly take the

These figures reveal that often, managers think

existential threat of poor management seriously,

they’re providing feedback and guidance that

the flip side is that investing in managers is a

empowers their people and elevates their work.

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STATE OF THE INDUSTRY RESEARCH

But employees aren’t accessing that value.

they aren’t taking the time to discern the true

They may be unsure of how to express this

talents of their employees.

disconnection, or even worried that voicing disagreement could jeopardize their jobs.

How Boosting Manager Effectiveness Impacts Organizational Health Managing people is a skill — a skill that can be taught, learned, and practiced. If your managers need attention, improving how their work is possible. Even better, doing so will create a domino effect across your entire organization, leading to better performance, better employee experience, and a healthier, more productive organization.

It Trains Managers to Be Great Coaches While managers influence at least 70% of your employees’ engagement, most aren’t given the right training or structure to properly coach their teams. The reality is that most people are promoted to manager-level positions through their stellar technical skills, not because of how well they’re

When managers seek out the unique strengths of their employees and foster an environment that builds on those attributes, businesses can remain agile even through challenging times. Plus, giving employees the opportunity to gain mastery in specific skills and the space to perform at their peak helps them become more intrinsically motivated to do their best work.

It Sets Managers up with the Right Tools and Practices Organizational systems are designed at the top, but it’s managers who reinforce these systems by guiding individual employees to success. And because 65% of managers today are struggling to perform, they’re feeling less prepared and more challenged than ever before, according to 15Five’s 2020 Workplace report.

able to connect with and lead people.

Help your managers better support their teams by

Soft skills, such as emotional intelligence, empathy,

These structures, such as 1-on-1s, check-ins, and

and compassion, are becoming power skills that managers must master in order to help their organization succeed. When these so-called soft skills are paired with strategic day-to-day practices it creates a powerful structure and an effective

giving them the right tools and practices to do so. objective tracking, help set your managers and their employees up for short- and long-term success. Want to dive even deeper into manager effectiveness? Check out our eBook, Spotlight on

method of management.

Manager Effectiveness: Why It Matters and How to

It Encourages Strengths-Based Management

To learn more about how 15Five can help boost

Creating the space and offering the right resources

Improve It.

manager effectiveness, check out Transform.

for people to discover their natural talents allows those at the top to help develop leadership strengths on every level. But companies often fall

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short of actually utilizing these abilities because 53

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STATE OF THE INDUSTRY RESEARCH

The Future of Performance Management 2022-23 Talent Management Excellence • July 2022

For more information: 1.877.472.6648 sales@hr.com www.HR.com/epubs

The HR Research Institute tracks human resources trends and best practices. Learn more at hr.com/featuredresearch

Redefining The Employee Experience Through Another Covid Year And The Great Resignation 3 best practices By Dr. Kristal Walker, Sweetwater

Are we officially in the post-pandemic era? Will we experience another version of the outbreak? Will the demand for remote and hybrid work increase? How should companies keep employees engaged when the global workforce seems to be in a retention crisis? These are just a few questions that continue to challenge HR practitioners in redefining the employee experience. As we head into another year of ambiguity around the Covid-19 pandemic, it's more important than ever to understand the needs of

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employees from the start. One way to do this is by looking at why employees are leaving their current roles. A recent study by Gallup found that the number one reason employees leave their jobs is due to a bad manager. In fact, this has been the case for the past 10 years. This finding is even more prevalent now as we come out of the pandemic and into a new normal. If managers are indeed the culprits for this uprising, then surely there is an opportunity for greater collaboration between HR and people leaders to change the narrative. This article includes three best practices for maximizing that relationship to redefine the employee experience.

JULY 2022

Understand the Key Drivers of Employee Engagement As data scientists continue to study culture and engagement in the workplace, what has become clear across research from McKinsey, Gallop, and the Human Capital Institute are the top three drivers of engagement. These drivers are solely based on the employee's perceived reality in the workplace and include: 1. opportunities for career progression, 2. having a trusted friend or companion in the workplace, and 3. working for a company with a strong sense of purpose.

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Redefining The Employee Experience Through Another Covid Year And The Great Resignation

While these three issues can stand alone, there is certainly intersectionality between them. For example, a company that truly operates its business based on mission-driven philosophies that translate into measurable outcomes across the employee life cycle will most likely own a talent management strategy to support the mission. That strategy would also most likely speak to the opportunities for career progression. When that information is made visible to employees, they can clearly see where they fit in the big picture and make life decisions that render a mutual win for both the company and the employee.

employees may not want to always rely on some AI approach to assess their mood, especially if the work environment is a factor in it changing so frequently. When employees feel like they have a friend at work who can regularly check in on them, and actually mean it, the experience not only contributes to their sense of engagement, but it can also make all the difference.

Having a trusted friend at work in tough times is also a huge engagement factor. Oftentimes,

Leveraging these kinds of relationships can be a challenge, but there is a way to do so. HR teams should be more intentional about having tough conversations with leaders who may not have the people skills required to lead inclusive and collaborative teams. In the same way, leaders need to understand that their role in supporting employees

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JULY 2022

during tough times is critical to engagement and retention.

Create an Employee Experience that is Both Inclusive and Engaging As we move through the rest of 2022 and beyond, it is more important than ever for HR and people leaders to work together to create a positive employee experience. This can be done by focusing on inclusion as a way to create organic engagement. For clarity, inclusion means that everyone feels a sense of belonging in their respective work environments. While inclusion is not a new concept, it has taken on new importance in recent years as the workforce has become more diverse.

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Redefining The Employee Experience Through Another Covid Year And The Great Resignation

and initiatives to keep those employees engaged. For example, if the data reveals that employees are leaving because of a lack of career opportunities, then the company might benefit from creating an internal career pathing program that allows the employee to not only see what could be on the horizon, but also upskill, reskill or cross-skill in the areas that would position best for career advancement opportunities.

As HR and people leaders continue to partner in their efforts to redefine the employee experience, they should be mindful that inclusion is not a one-time event or initiative. It is an ongoing journey that requires commitment from everyone in the organization. While there are many ways to promote inclusion, one of the best ways to do so is to encourage employees to share their stories and experiences. People love to share the highlights of both their personal and professional experiences. In some cases, they may just need a direct invitation to do so. That invitation may need to be prompted and demonstrated by HR and leadership teams.

interpreted can be a little misleading. Human Resources teams are in a unique position to use data to their advantage when it comes to employee retention. By analyzing data, HR can identify potential problems and investigate the root causes of them. Additionally, data can be used to create targeted solutions that address specific issues. For example, if data shows that employees in a certain department are leaving because of their inability to connect with their manager, then the company can focus more on creating relevant training and tools to address that specific gap.

It's true. Data doesn't lie, but perhaps the way it is often

Looking at data can also help Human Resources professionals understand which employees are most at risk of leaving. This information can then be used to create targeted programs

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JULY 2022

Focus on Retention through a Data-Driven Approach

When it is all said and done, employees want to feel welcomed, valued, and supported even in a post-pandemic climate. Additionally, every situation is unique, so there is not a “one size fits all” solution. HR practitioners must be strategic and deliberate when it comes to crafting the employee experience, as it can make all the difference in employee engagement and retention rates, as well as company culture and morale... even in times that feel like the Great Resignation.

Dr. Kristal Walker is the VP of Employee Wellbeing at Sweetwater.

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CHART YOUR PATH IN OUR UNCERTAIN WORLD OF WORK 16-17 November 2022 ExCeL Venue, London

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Accelerating Performance: Seven Steps For Promoting Employee Engagement Refocus your team and improve team performance By Kate Zabriskie, Business Training Works, Inc.

“They’re here, but they’re not here. My staff isn’t committed, and it’s obvious to me and our customers. We’re in trouble.” “To say that initiative is lacking is an understatement. My staff doesn’t think beyond the basics. If they hit a wall, they stop. The idea of looking for a window never crosses their minds. Frustrating!” “Maybe it’s them. Maybe it’s me. Our team just goes through the motions. I wish there was a magic formula to get people focused and motivated.” While there isn’t an instant solution for increasing enthusiasm, focus, and initiative, there are steps any leader can take to improve team performance and orchestrate success.

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Step One: Communicate the Direction It’s hard for people to reach a destination if they don’t know what it is. Whether you call it mission, purpose, or something else, employees need to have a solid understanding of the organization’s why, the team’s why, and their why. Leaders who promote engagement regularly connect day-to-day tasks and expectations with the bigger picture. Work on creating clear lines of sight. For instance, “Debbie, we’re here to service members. Everything we do should help our members get the most from our conferences. As the registration clerk, it’s important for you to accurately register members and send their confirmation

JULY 2022

documents within two days of receiving a request. Our goal is timeliness and accuracy.”

Step Two: Delegate Responsibility and Authority Once people know the direction, good leaders give them responsibility and the tools they need to execute the plan. Will everything be done exactly as the leader would do it if he or she were to take on the task? Doubtful. However, great leaders know when to step in and when to stand back and let others own their work. “John, your job is to manage customer returns. While I have guidelines for you to follow, you can decide and then let me know how you will organize your work.”

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Accelerating Performance: Seven Steps For Promoting Employee Engagement

Step Three: Recognize Good Work and the Importance of Others No matter their role or level in an organization, people like to be appreciated and recognized. Whether someone is a vice president or a temporary worker, leaders who engage their teams communicate the idea that everyone has an important role. Take the time to articulate how others contribute. “Eric, you are the face of the office. When people visit us, you are the person who sets the tone. Thank you for taking pride in the appearance of the reception area and screening visitors in a friendly way that doesn’t feel like an interrogation. You’re nailing it.”

Step Four: Support Stumbles Slips, trips, and falls will happen when people solved problems, and leaders who engage their

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teams to the full capacity have the good sense to support the stumbles employees will inevitably encounter. In other words, it’s about having the maturity to get beyond blame and focus on what to do differently in the future. Do you assume the best? Do you steer clear of throwing others under the bus? Do you treat errors as learning opportunities? If not, you’ve got some room to improve. “Eric, the event did not go as you had hoped, and now is the time to learn from the experience. In hindsight, what could have been done differently?”

Step Five: Instill a Sense of Calm and Certainty Without a clear course, employees spend a lot of time worrying and focusing on what-ifs that may never happen. But with a sense of certainty, people’s shock absorbers function at maximum capacity. A leader with a plan reduces fear, uncertainty, and

JULY 2022

stress. The plan can be short term and it can change, as long as it’s there and communicated. Do you do all you should do to keep people in the loop? “Folks, we’re in a period of transition. We have several companies interested in acquiring us. Nothing has been decided and for the next two months, we’re going to operate as usual. When I get information to share, I will share what I know. Until then, if you have questions, ask. Our top focus today is hitting the numbers on our secondary production line.”

Step Six: Promote a Level Playing Field Fairness trumps favoritism every time, and people will stick with a leader through some horrible circumstances when that person is a straight shooter and doesn’t favor some over others. Stay mindful of what’s fair, and think about how your team will perceive your actions.

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Accelerating Performance: Seven Steps For Promoting Employee Engagement

Step Seven: Address Problems Engaged teams eschew mediocrity, and the people at the top have high standards for everyone. When problems

occur, leaders who engage confront them head-on. If you have conversations you’ve put off, now is the time to reset and communicate what’s expected.

Leaders who engage, don’t do so by accident or without work. If you want to jumpstart or refocus your team, start with these seven steps. With some deliberate effort on your part, you should start seeing results.

Kate Zabriskie is the President of Business Training Works, Inc., a Maryland-based talent development firm. She and her team provide onsite, virtual, and online soft-skills training courses and workshops to clients in the United States and internationally.

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JULY 2022

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Them’s The Breaks: How To Leave Your Job On Good Terms 6 do’s and don’ts By Christine Macdonald, The Hub Events

t goes without saying that this week has been one of the craziest in British politics. In the last few days, the Prime Minister has lost the support of his MPs and is set to resign in the Autumn. This comes as a shock to the 87% of Britons that didn’t think the Prime Minister would offer his resignation. Whilst 60% of Britons thought Boris Johnson should resign, it seemed like the Prime Minister was going to hold out until the bitter end. But if you find yourself in a similar situation to the Prime Minister then you need to figure out how to leave your job on good terms. Here are some red flags that might help you out.

Tell Management of Your Decision Do: Once you know your leaving, write your letter of resignation and deliver it to Management or

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HR. If necessary, sit down with your boss or HR to discuss your reasons for leaving and to put a transition plan in place. Be professional and courteous, but don’t be clear about your reasons for leaving.

Don’t: Be unclear about your current position or intention to leave. This can cause a lot of confusion and have an impact on your ability to continue to do your job effectively until you’ve completed your notice period. Always be clear and effectively communicate where you currently stand.

Provide a Clear Notice Period Do: When leaving any role, it’s important to work with management to outline your notice period. This helps you and your company to set clear expectations for when you leave and to put an effective exit plan

JULY 2022

in place. Once your notice period has been agreed you’ll be able to plan around your exit making it a smooth and stress-free transition.

Don’t: Be vague about when you expect to leave. Not having an end date in place can make it difficult for you to manage your remaining responsibilities and for management to begin looking for your replacement. Setting a clear exit date can make the leaving process easier for all parties involved.

Get Your Files in Order Do: Before you leave, take some time to review any projects or tasks you’re currently managing. Are there important documents you should share with your team or interested parties? Are your files easily referenced? Can someone easily pick up where you left off? All of this can help ensure a smooth transition.

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Them’s The Breaks: How To Leave Your Job On Good Terms

Reflect on Your Experience Do: Be honest about your experience. Reflect on everything – the good, the bad, and the ugly – while still maintaining your professionalism. Break it all down - Where did you do well? Where did you go wrong? What can you improve on going forward? These are all important questions that can help you develop personally and professionally beyond your finished role.

Don’t: Don’t: Forget to give your successor or management access to everything you previously handled. A structured handover can ensure that all projects are seamlessly handed and that important issues or files can fall through the cracks.

Finish Strong Do: Finish the last of your role on good terms with your co-workers both personally and professionally. Make sure to complete any and all projects you can before you leave and provide a clear outline for your successor. Everyone at the organization should feel that you left well, not that you were escaping your current situation.

Don’t: Be tempted to slack off the last few days on the job or cause issues with colleagues. Allowing your productivity to fall or causing disruption will always cause more

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harm than good. See-through any projects and develop an efficient handover to leave a good impression.

Leave Well Do: Be respectful. When leaving a job, it’s tempting to talk about your experience. While many of us hope for a positive work experience, some might be negative. But before your take to Twitter to call co-workers out, take a breath. Be cool, calm and collected throughout your notice period and beyond.

Don’t: Call out co-workers or management. While it’s fine to critique your former employer, avoid making unsubstantiated claims or engaging in things like name-calling - it could come back to haunt you. Don’t say anything you wouldn’t want an employer to see or it could hurt your progress in the future.

JANUARY 2022

Take your experience for granted. Whether you left your role for positive or negative reasons, there is still a lot you can take away. Reflect on everything you learned from the experience - good and bad - and use that to make positive changes in the future.

Christine Macdonald is the Founder of The Hub Events. Christine started her career in sales and marketing, moving into learning and development over 15 years ago. She’s got a keen interest in employee engagement, performance management, and learning evaluation.

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The Great Resignation Or Forced Resignation? How to identify and nurture your essential talent in turbulent times By Denise Leaser, GreatBizTools, LLC

n the month of March alone, more than 4.5 million American workers quit their jobs. Now, with a potential recession, some HR organizations are shifting their focus from “The Great Resignation” to the “Forced Resignation.” Companies, from Coinbase to Compass, Redfin and Tesla, are announcing massive layoffs, up to 18% of their entire workforces. And, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks layoffs at startups, nearly 14,000 jobs have been cut in 818 startups since early March. This level of churn is creating havoc for organizations and uncertainty for HR teams. In every case, HR must develop new and better ways to identify their best talent, the talent that will be needed to weather these events, and ensure organizations are prepared for the future. In fact, only 16% of new hires possess the needed skills for both their current role and the future, according to Gartner.

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The question is how. While most organizations have relied on performance evaluations and other historical data to identify the talent they want to keep, forward-thinking HR groups are turning to an emerging toolkit that relies on new technology: Big data and data science.

Using Big Data and Data Science to Identify the Talent You Need to Keep Most organizations know very little about their employees. They capture basic biographical information, job histories, salaries and performance metrics. But that information will not help HR identify the best talent that can move an organization forward, the employees who can actually “future proof” the company. At a time when job roles and the labor market culture are changing at an accelerating pace, HR must collect data on what an employee

JULY 2022

can do, not just what they did in the past. They must be able to understand motivations and personality traits, like ethics, adaptability, creativity, dedication and innovation. With this information, you can determine things like whether they can drive innovation or whether they are suited to work from a home office. And with job roles changing rapidly, they need to understand the distinctly human capabilities an employee possesses; capabilities that transcend existing job roles. Job knowledge can always be learned. But there is another problem: Many employees, perhaps a fifth of your workforce, are in the wrong role. They fell into the wrong roles somewhere along the way and their past job histories and resumes condemn them to continue in those roles; it’s often the only data hiring manager have to match them to a role in the company.

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culture score, they calculated each topic’s SHAP (Shapley additive explanations) value to understand the impact each feature has on a company’s overall culture rating.

Organizations need to perform a full audit of their employees, take inventory of skills and understand, deeply, the desires and motivations of their workforce. Fortunately, a new breed of datascience-driven tools can help an organization take a complete database of every employee’s uniquely human capabilities. And they can do it in less than an hour. New technologies use data science and validated assessment instruments to create an unbiased profile of an employee and can suggest better roles in the organization. These tools can also show the skills gaps and automatically generate personalized skills paths that will be needed for future roles.

The Side Benefit? Happy Employees and Happy Customers Using Glassdoor data, MIT Sloan/ CultureX performed a multi-year research project to identify problems in the labor market, specifically why employees want to quit and what will make them happy. They used Artificial Intelligence, specifically Natural Language Understanding, to analyze the language workers used to describe their employers. Sentiment analytics revealed how positively (or negatively) employees felt about various topics regarding the corporate culture. Then, to identify which factors were most important in predicting a company’s overall

Meaning was identified as one of the key drivers in the study. Employees want to know that their work makes a difference to people and that it enriches their lives. They also want to work in a role that matches their values and builds their skills. Problem is that many employees are in roles that do not match their skills or their values. Compounding that, employers are using a “warm body” approach to hiring, not considering the personality traits, motivations or skills of candidates.

Take Inventory and Become a Data ScienceDriven Organization Companies that use data science-driven approach to enrich their understanding of their employees by identifying each employee’s unique talents and dearths – and matching them to the correct roles in the organization -- can dramatically reduce the impact of the inevitable shifts in the labor market.

Denise Leaser is a serial entrepreneur in the HR Tech space. She is the President of MyInnerGenius and GreatBizTools, LLC. Denise holds an M.S. in psychology with an emphasis on research, evaluation, and measurement. She is a SHRM Senior Certified Professional with more than thirty years of practical experience working with enterprises and educational institutions.

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Looking To Improve The Gender Balance Within Your Organization? Focus on early career women By Christie Hunter Arscott, ChristieHunterArscott.com

“It is only a matter of time.” More women at the bottom will eventually equal more at the top.

Focusing on more senior women is analogous to only plugging the final hole in a leaky pipeline that has many cracks before the end.

This common but incorrect assumption implies that if there are improvements in representation at entry levels, there will inevitably be comparable improvements at the most senior levels of organizations. It will just take time.

Research shows that women go into the workplace equally as ambitious and confident as their male counterparts. However, early career women:

Unfortunately, our historical track record shows us that the ‘Pipeline Theory’ doesn’t hold weight in practice and would be better termed the ‘Pipeline Myth’. In the 1990s, women were well represented at entry level in many organizations across a wide range of industries and locations. Yet this trend has not resulted in comparable representation in the upper echelons of management. The state of progress has been glacial at best.

Where is the Disconnect? My fifteen years of work and research in the gender space have shown that to date, the majority of organizational efforts to advance women are focussed on female employees at the middle management, senior executive, and board levels, but this is too late. In reality, the talent pipeline in most organizations has many fissures where women leak out along their career journeys and this starts early.

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●● lag behind men in aspiration and confidence by the second year of their careers. ●● report lower levels of job satisfaction. ●● are promoted less often than men. ●● lag behind men in both job level and compensation when they enter the workforce— and never catch up. According to Lean In and McKinsey’s “Women in the Workplace 2019” report, “Women are left behind from the get-go.” Their subsequent studies reconfirmed the early career crisis for women, noting that too many women are getting stuck in entry-level jobs. The pandemic has exacerbated the gender divide and created more fissures in the earlier stages of the pipeline, with one in four women reporting that they are contemplating leaving or downshifting their careers.

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organization; the broader the base of early career talent you are reaching, the more likely you will be to change the gender balance at later stages of the pipeline. Target significant mass and provide a chance for all early career women to rise to the opportunity.

Despite women facing unique challenges from day one on the job, the lion’s share of strategies, programs, and resources still focus on women at more senior levels in their careers. This is too little, too late. Researchers from Catalyst, a global nonprofit that works with over eight hundred companies around the world to accelerate women into leadership, have said: “When you start from behind, it’s hard enough to keep pace, never mind catch up—regardless of what tactics you use.”

What is the Solution? The solution is to focus on early career women. Recent research shows that by concentrating on hiring, promoting and developing more junior women, we could get close to parity in managerial roles over the next ten years, ultimately altering the shape and makeup of the talent pipeline up to senior levels of organizations. The key takeaway is: We must invest in women before they reach management levels if we are going to move the needle on gender parity.

How Can Your Organization Take Action? 1. Include a focus on early career women in broader talent strategies and inclusion programs. Start early! 2. Design inclusive rather than exclusive early career programs. In other words, don’t limit your programs to your star women who have been identified as high performers or high potential employees. Cast a wide net. Virtual programming and offerings are an impactful way to reach many women at your company. Inevitably, some attrition will happen in your Talent Management Excellence presented by HR.com

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3. Focus on both skill sets and mindsets. While technical skill sets are important, mindsets are the critical differentiators and career catalysts for women. In Begin Boldly: How Women Can Reimagine Risk, Embrace Uncertainty, and Launch a Brilliant Career, I tap the wisdom, advice, and hindsight of women leaders. Their key piece of advice: Look inward. These women’s career successes were largely a result of their mindsets and their inner game. Their inner game directly influences their outer game— their ability to take risks and build brilliant careers. Cultivating courage, overcoming self-limiting beliefs, and redefining risk and failure are just a few of the topical focus areas that can make a difference in accelerating women’s careers. Comprehensive programming for early career women should incorporate a focus on both skill sets and mindsets. 4. Offer targeted support at critical transition points. My work and research have highlighted that early career women need extra support through key transitions in their careers – including when they make the leap from university to their first job, when they change roles, and when they return from parental leave. All of these transitions often occur within the first ten to fifteen years of one’s career and companies should start early and pursue targeted interventions at these critical career and life junctions. For example, one of my clients has developed a coaching program targeted at the critical transition point of parenthood. They are offering a series of one-on-one career coaching sessions to anyone returning from parental leave. The sessions can start while the employee is out on leave to help her prepare for reintegration and can continue as she ramps back into her role. Critical transition points require critical support.

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5. Equip the organization, not just the individual. While there still is an important place for efforts designed to support individual women, these must exist alongside broader strategic organizational efforts to address systemic barriers to gender parity. The most successful organizations address both the individual and the organization, ensuring that organizational cultural norms, policies, procedures, and day-to-day practices are evaluated and enhanced to create an environment where women can rise and thrive. For example, my work and research have shown that transparency in the promotion process, increasing the visibility of female and diverse leadership, men as gender champions, agile working, measuring progress on key people metrics, and implementing strategies to interrupt bias in the performance management process are a few organizational practices that can make the difference in accelerating the careers of women earlier on in the pipeline.

Plug the Holes at the Beginning of Your Pipeline Despite overwhelming research highlighting the unique challenges that early-career women face, the majority of existing programs designed to advance women focus almost exclusively on women in more

senior roles. I have worked with over a thousand early career women; women who are calling for organizations to broaden their focus to include earlier stages of the talent pipeline. If we are truly committed to achieving greater levels of gender parity in key decision-making and executive positions, we must start early. Don’t wait until it’s too late. It’s not a matter of time until women rise to the top. It’s a matter of early support.

Christie Hunter Arscott is an award-winning advisor, speaker, and author of the book Begin Boldly: How Women Can Reimagine Risk, Embrace Uncertainty, and Launch A Brilliant Career. She is a leading expert on how we can harness the power of intentional risk-taking to create more dynamic and vibrant careers and organizations. A Rhodes Scholar, Christie has been named by Thinkers50 as one of the top management thinkers likely to shape the future of business.

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The Top 3 Reasons Behind Job Switching Offer The Key To Recruitment And Retention We are at a crossroads in terms of the future of work By John Woods, University of Phoenix

abor shortages have been a top challenge for employers across sectors over the past two years and this trend does not appear to be slowing down. The recent Career Optimism Index® study from the University of Phoenix Career Institute™ shows that nearly a third of workers in the U.S. say they would quit their job without having another one lined up. This figure is representative of deeper shifts in the relationship between employees and their workplaces. Among workers who have changed careers in the last six months, the top reasons for making the switch included seeking a better work-life balance, pursuing a higher salary, and the desire to try something new. These insights provide a roadmap for employers looking to recruit new talent; leaders should examine what is already being accomplished in these areas to determine how existing offerings can be better marketed throughout the recruitment process, in addition to making improvements where necessary

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to make their companies more attractive to new employees. Even better, these findings present an opportunity for employers to uplevel career development support for their existing workforce. About 69 percent of employees say they would consider staying at their current job if they thought things could change—and we now know the exact areas where employees desire improvement. By prioritizing enhancements that directly address these priorities and values, employers can quell the need for extraneous, continuous recruitment by starting at the source. Whether employers are prioritizing attracting new talent, retention of their current workforce, or both, here are tactics to consider implementing to tackle the top three workplace values driving employees’ career decisions:

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The Top 3 Reasons Behind Job Switching Offer The Key To Recruitment And Retention

Prioritizing Mental Health and Wellness to Increase Work-Life Balance Overall, approximately half of employers and employees currently feel work-life balance is being prioritized at their companies. These are figures that need to improve in order for businesses to maintain a resilient workforce. One aspect of how work-life balance can be better addressed in the workplace is through the provision of mental health and wellness resources. About 85 percent of employers say such offerings are already offered within their companies, however, less than half of employees say that they have taken advantage of these resources to manage work-related stress. This points to an issue of workplace culture, which must incorporate encouragement around the utilization of such resources to instigate real progress. It should be noted that healthy workplace behaviors often need to be modeled from the top-down; from demonstrating participation in mental health and wellness programs to holding ongoing conversations that perpetuate a value of wellness at every level of the company, leaders’ engagement in this aspect of the workplace is critical to its ongoing success.

Strengthening Transparent Communication Around Compensation It is a well-known fact that pay has been a significant driver of attrition throughout the Great Resignation. Our study found that a missing piece in this part of the conversation is the lack of communication from employers around employee compensation and financial rewards. Only 56 percent of employers say their companies hold regular conversations around pay, with a mere 37 percent of employees agreeing with this claim, which is concerning as transparency and open communication are key to attracting and retaining a workforce. Across the board, it must be a top priority for employers to gain an understanding of employees’ needs and expectations, so that they may take action to alleviate key pain points and build trusting employee-employer relationships.

Upleveling Skills Training to Increase Internal Career-Change Opportunities

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We are at a crossroads in terms of the future of work—employees have made it clear what their needs are, and they have been direct with the fact that they are willing to move on if their needs aren’t met. Now it is up to employers to decide how they are going to apply these learnings to ensure the future of their businesses.

John Woods is the Provost and Chief Academic Officer at the University of Phoenix.

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employers should provide opportunities for their workers to explore such options internally before making the decision to leave. One way employers can do this is through increased skills training. According to our research, 65 percent of employees said they would be more likely to stay with their company throughout their career if their employer did more to reskill them. By focusing on creating a culture of learning and continuous improvement and, consistently offering upskilling and reskilling opportunities and sourcing talent from within, employers are not only aiding people in their career enhancement and increasing engagement and retention but building a more agile workforce and stronger organizations that are better equipped for the future.

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Building A Winning Team: A Great Team Needs a Great Coach By HR.com Professional Education Team

ttention HR folks, this article is meant for you to share with managers in your organization who want to become the best leaders they can be. Coaching shouldn’t just be about doing today’s job. You should also help employees think about their career path and enable them to grow in their existing role, move laterally to a new role, or move up to a bigger role.

It Starts with Your Heart

Do you genuinely care about your team? You cannot be a great coach without heart. If you don’t genuinely care about people - if you are coldly tactical and distantly technical and efficiently process-oriented and leave your heart out of it, then your people will follow you only part of the way. They need to believe that, by following you, they will go places they would not even see without you at the helm. So sure, one reason you coach is to improve productivity, but at heart, it’s about heart. This is all about humans, so connect

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to your team members on a human-to-human level when you begin to coach. If you connect well, then you’ll be able to get the most out of your workforce. Many managers do not.

Why It Can Be Hard to Start with Your Heart

We expect that you agree that it’s sensible to “start with your heart.” We all want to be open, transparent, honest, and humble. Unfortunately, that can be hard

JULY 2022

to do. Managers often feel they have to take on a certain persona as a leader and that ends up making them less than fully authentic. Managers might worry that they won’t be able to say the right things or give the right impressions. Some managers suffer from “imposter syndrome” where they feel they are not fully qualified for the role, and they’re afraid that if they are open and authentic, then they’ll be called out.

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Building A Winning Team: A Great Team Needs a Great Coach

There are many reasons why coaching from the heart can be hard. At this point, the most important focus should be on why it might be hard for you personally and what you can do about it. So ask yourself these questions: ●● How comfortable are you coaching your employees? ●● What might be hindering you from being open? ●● How can you make at least one little step towards overcoming the barriers that prevent you from coaching from the heart?

How to Coach

True or false, no one has time to do coaching? (Especially you.) If you said “true,” we’ll give you a half-mark if you meant, “I don’t have time to sit down with employees for hour-long sessions helping them figure out their life.” You only get half a point because that’s not how effective coaching by managers works. Coaching by managers should be in continuous and ongoing short sessions.

Coaching from a Distance

If your employees are in a different location, working from home or on the road, then coaching simply requires some different methods than in a face-to-face setting. The principles are the same; it’s just that you can’t pop into the cab of a truck barreling down the interstate to ask a driver, “What’s on your mind?”

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The solution to this is two-fold. First, there are the obvious methods: phone calls, text messaging, video conferencing, and occasional visits. The second part is harder and really depends on your commitment to improving performance. The second part is making time to coach people who are out of your sightline. It’s relatively easy to find opportunities to coach someone you walk by five times a day. Those kinds of opportunities don’t spontaneously occur for people who are not in your location. You’ll have to build a schedule of check-in communications, and use those as opportunities to coach. That discipline is what will make you a spectacularly successful manager.

Take a Moment to Reflect on your Coaching Skills As always, just a little self-reflection can go a long way to improving your management skills. Ask yourself the following: ●● How can you coach your team to achieve team and company goals? ●● What is your current coaching style (if you have one)? ●● Is your present coaching style effective? If you believe so, what evidence reveals this?

Being Fair in Coaching

Who do you spend the most time coaching? Is it the employees you don’t like? Is it employees you don’t feel really comfortable around? Unless you are some kind of saint, this won’t be the case. (If you are a saint, feel free to skip to the next section.) Be careful that you use your coaching time fairly. We say ‘fairly’ instead of ‘equally’ because there are some people who benefit much more from coaching than others, and you want the highest return on investment in your coaching time. We can’t give you a formula for fairness; only you can look at your own behavior to see if some employees are being overlooked.

Career Pathing (Looking Ahead)

There should be a natural step from coaching employees about how to do their existing job and coaching them for their next job. Yes, they love working for you now, but they may not want to work for you forever. Most employees have ambitions of moving up the ladder at least a rung or two. As a manager, you owe it to them to help with that process. Hey, it may feel as if you are shooting yourself in the foot to help one of your good employees move to a new role, but not to worry. If you show an employee you care about their career, they are more motivated and more productive.

●● If not, what can you change about your approach to make it more effective?

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Building A Winning Team: A Great Team Needs a Great Coach

Besides, most will not work for you forever whether or not you do career coaching, so you might as well try to help them move up or laterally within your organization rather than looking for opportunities elsewhere. A great manager is one who coaches their team members to one day replace them! (Or who helps them get where they want to go in their career.)

The Nature of Career Paths Think about careers. How often do they progress in a series of straightforward, predictable steps? How often do new opportunities arise in totally unexpected ways? Since so much in life is unpredictable, you will not be able to give a clear career map for most employees. You are likely to find that you will have three main categories of employees: 1. Employees in roles where the next step in their career is pretty clear 2. Employees where the next step is clear but getting there appears unlikely 3. Employees where you have no clue what their next step up could be The first category, the clear ones, includes employees that have a pretty traditional career path where there is an existing job ladder. Job ladders are quite common. There might be a path of Junior Clerk to Clerk to Senior Clerk. In this case, it’s pretty easy for you to explain to an employee what they need to do to progress.

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The second category, where making the next step up is unlikely, will be harder for you to deal with. It might be the case that there is a clear path such as store clerk to store assistant manager to store manager. However, there may be twenty store clerks and only one assistant manager, so few will make it up to that next rung. Sure, you can talk to your twenty store clerks about this career path, but most will recognize that it’s not particularly realistic.

you like doing? What are your interests? Be honest with them that either there are no obvious next steps or the competition for that next step is fierce, but tell them you’ll work with them to figure it out. Think about extra projects they could take on; introduce them to managers in other departments where they might be a lateral move; encourage them to explore their interests and learn more about other jobs in the company.

The third category, the unclear ones, are jobs where there is no obvious next step. Maybe you have a forklift driver and you can’t think of a bigger job this person would ever be qualified for—unless it’s driving a bigger forklift (and you don’t have any bigger forklifts).

The reality of careers is that many moves are lateral, opportunistic and some are wildly unexpected. You can’t hand an employee a career path on a silver platter, but you can be encouraging, inventive, and supportive.

How To Coach Employees on Career Paths

Where your employees are on a job ladder, it’s not too hard to manage coaching conversations. You do need to have a discussion with them about their career interests (which may not be on the ladder); you do need to explain what it takes to move up to the next step, and you do need to support them in acquiring the skills. Okay, you know all that, we’ll leave you to it. Go and schedule some career discussions if you’ve not done so. For the jobs with no obvious career ladder, you need to take a slightly different tactic. Again, start with the conversation. What are your ambitions? What do

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All you have to do is have conversations with your employees about their career interests, and then do your best to help them explore ways to get ahead. It’s their career; they’ll figure it out, but as their manager, you should be a source of ideas and support.

Thinking Outside the Box

One of the barriers to having meaningful career discussions is that we think inside the box of “What is the next job up in this department?” That problem is too large for that little box. We’re gonna need a bigger box! The bigger box includes project work, volunteer work at a charitable organization, and temporary lateral moves. All those things can be options for moving someone towards their career goals.

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managers struggle with this. Here are some questions to help you improve your approach: ●● List each of your employees. When was the last time you had a brief chat about their career goals? ●● How effectively do you feel you help your team navigate their career paths to meet their career goals? Another barrier to meaningful discussions is that employees don’t have a good idea of what they want or what options exist. Those same tactics of getting people involved in things that are new to them (projects, charitable work, etc.) will help people see new possibilities for their life and career. If you approach career discussions as a process of discovery, it’s a lot more fun than if you think you need to specify exactly how and when an employee will get their next promotion.

Being Fair in Career Discussions

There is a problem with discussing careers with your employees. It is a place where subtle (or sometimes not so subtle!) biases can run rampant. Do you tell the good looking young employee with the nice suit that they could well be the next CEO? Do you tell the hard-working person from a poor family that they might enjoy a lateral move, but only after they’ve proven themselves?

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So let’s take an unpleasant moment of self-reflection. Think about each of your employees and what potential career path you see each taking. Now think about how much that assessment of potential is based on superficial aspects of their style, background, or personality? If you are like most humans, superficial matters often play a big role in your view of someone’s potential. But in the end, you won’t be like most managers; you’ll be one of the really good ones. The main trick here is not to presume too much in your discussion about careers. Use a coaching mindset and ask a lot of questions. Answer their questions. Encourage them to strive to achieve what they want. Your job is to help each individual be their best. You don’t need to predict how high (or in which direction) they will go.

Take a Moment To Reflect on Your Ability to Coach Career Pathing Are you doing a great job of helping employees navigate their careers? Maybe not, many

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●● Can you think of creative ways to help people move towards their career goals? ●● What creative ways can you think of to help people broaden their horizons and discover new career goals?

This article is an excerpt from HR.com’s book, HR Fundamentals for Non HR Managers, which is part of the reading materials for the course HR for Non HR Managers. This course was developed to enhance a manager’s partnership with HR, improve team performance and avoid headaches in complying with national, regional, and local labor laws, or as we like to put it, “the stuff that your HR department wishes you knew or wishes you were doing as a manager”.

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