COVER STORY qatartoday
amazing workplaces
Moneycan’t buy THIS By Sindhu Nair
To some, a great place to work is one in which the employee trusts the employer, has pride in what he does. To others, it is the pay and the perquisites and to yet others, it is the relationships shared in the work environment.
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here is no arguing that hard, cold, tax-free cash is by far the most attractive perk, and many ills are forgiven for a few extra zeroes in the right place on the paycheque. However, to tide over trying times, a combination of best practices assure long-term commitment. There are many ways to assess a workplace, says Tony DiRomualdo, a Business Researcher, Author and Consultant who helps individual leaders and teams to create Next Generation Workplaces. In his opinion, a great place to work is one that inspires the passion of workers and u.nleashes their talent. “They work in a job or an organisation for more than the usual reasons – for something deeper and more meaningful than a good salary and generous benefits. While engendering passion and emotion are of course vital, the best place to work is also a place where people are able to apply their talent to the fullest. Where they can grow, nurture and apply their skills and knowledge in ways that enable them to consistently produce excellence. Every day. And in every way.� There is no single defining faction, but a happy employee is a productive employee, and that is the maxim most companies believe in. Surprisingly or probably because of the economic strain, companies are placing added emphasis on this.
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Recession-hit organisations need ‘to invest in their best’ to boost employee engagement and to lead their company out of recession. Upskilling is also a key factor when down-sizing. Performance Management Review (a report on the views of 175,000 employees from some of the world’s biggest companies) published by human resources consultancy ETS plc.
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Ka-ching and other pleasant noises employers make
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ecession hasn’t put an end to Google’s free employee lunches or to its emphasis on a nonhierarchical, open environment that encourages initiative. Last summer, the Chicago office expanded onto two more floors of the River North building where it has its headquarters, in part, to create common areas intended to promote greater interaction and collaboration. Though Google’s stock took a big hit in January 2008, the company gave employees the opportunity to trade in their existing stock options for new ones pegged to the firm’s lower share price. Though companies in Qatar are not scrapping the bottom yet, recession has both made employers cautious and placed employees (particularly the expatriate) under pressure. The latter lives and works under the fear of ‘layoffs’ and redundancy, especially while working in a ‘foreign’ country (a Madar Research study reveals that 87 percent of the Qatari workforce is expatriates.) Some of the leading companies in Qatar are well aware of the changing work environment and are weaving in changes and strategies they feel best combats dip in productivity. One, for instance, has introduced the open book management style which allows every employee to take part in decision-making. Alaa Elebiary, Chief HR and Admin Officer of Mannai Corporation QSC, says this has helped in building trust and motivating employees. Oil companies, are said to be the best pay masters in Qatar and many of them even have
a currency protection scheme in place to guard their employees against the fluctuations in dollar rates. ExxonMobil ensures its employees are well compensated by a combination of base salary, allowances, savings plans and other employee benefits, says Ernie Richter, Middle East Human Resources Manager of ExxonMobil. “We take all our benefit plan commitments, very seriously,” he says, “The funding levels of all qualified pension plans are in compliance with standards set by applicable law or regulation. All defined benefit pension obligations are fully supported by the financial strength of the Corporation or the respective sponsoring affiliate. We participate in industry surveys to help ensure we pay competitively.” ExxonMobil has also put in place appropriate safeguards to protect the employees’ savings plans and retirement plans against the financial crisis. The telecom sector sees competition not only in terms of services offered, but also in the brand it projects – which means its employees have to show a ‘happy face’. “Due to the company’s success, Qtel employees have been shielded from the economic downturn in the following ways: salaries remain constant, as do benefits, with a significant improvement in employee Health Insurance Benefits via a new programme launched in September 2009. In addition, we have not initiated any labour reductions, as is the case with many companies in the Middle East,” says Sheikh Saud bin Nasser Al Thani, Executive Director, Group HR, Qtel.
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2009 best place to workk (US) The Qtel Compensation Team continuously conducts local, regional and international studies of salaries, allowances (housing, transportation, etc.), and benefits, and adjusts its pay structure accordingly. In 2008, the housing allowance was increased substantially following such a study. If its about stability and history with one, the other stands for all things offbeat. “Vodafone compensation schemes are based heavily on the ‘pay for performance’ model, which means that employee bonuses are calculated partially on the basis of the company’s success, and partially on the basis of the employee’s own performance. This guarantees that an employee can be rewarded for doing good work, even if the company is experiencing difficulty, while being doubly rewarded if it is not,” says Jan Mottram, HR Director at Vodafone. Another sector that has been affected by the downturn is hospitality. W Hotels, which is the gen Y of boutique hotels, has not laid off any of its talent (as it refers to its staff) in the region. “We invest more in training so that our talent can best help our customers, who in the end are the ones who bring in our salaries, and so increases our return guest numbers,” says Pirki Lahdesmaki, Director of Talent Resources of W Doha. “We also cut on areas where the guests are not directly affected. It is more on operating smartly than anything else; putting more emphasis on training helps us achieve that.”
NetApp topped the list. Why? How about this for starters: Typical of its down-to-earth management ethos, NetApp early on ditched a travel policy a dozen pages long in favour of this maxim: “We are a frugal company. But don’t show up dog-tired to save a few bucks. Use your common sense.” Rather than business plans, many units write ‘future histories’, imagining where their business will be a year or two out. And the benefits are tops: five paid days for volunteer work, $11,390 adoption aid, and autism coverage – used by 43 employees since 2006 at a cost of $242,452. The company has gained market share during the slump, hasn’t had layoffs, and has more than $2 billion in cash on hand to help it ride out the global financial crisis.
Due to the company’s success, Qtel employees have been shielded from the economic downturn in the following ways: salaries remain constant, as do benefits, with a significant improvement in employee Health Insurance Benefits via a new programme launched in September 2009. Sheikh Saud Bin Nasser Al Thani, Executive Director, Group HR, Qtel.
Goldman Sachs was ranked 9. A financial company in the top 10? Really? Here is why: Wall Street survivor turned itself into a bank holding company in September and laid off some 3,000 people across the globe by year-end. Top seven officers agreed to forgo bonuses, but rest of staff was in line to receive performance bonuses, albeit at a lower rate.
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Incentives are closely linked to the concepts of rewards and recognition. While the latter serve as after-the-fact ‘thank you’, incentives are the proverbial carrots to motivate employees to reach for a performance goal.
When the going gets tough, the tough get
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mployee incentive and recognition schemes have become significant elements in the HR toolbox. This is hardly surprising since competitive pressure and the pace of change have increased the demands on everyone at all levels in companies. When quizzed about the employment incentives each company engages in, the companies in Qatar all have different cases to recount, some detailed and some a little less so. Mannai has a performance-based incentive programme aimed at boosting employee morale, encouraging participation. “Mannai adopts performance-linked bonuses, individual performance appraisal, team work concept, etc. all of which are monitored in coordination with the Departmental Heads. Employees who perform up to the expectation are rewarded and recognised in the entire organisation. This is reviewed in January and July, every year,” says Elebiary. “At ExxonMobil, we strive to recognise and award both individual and team performance. We celebrate successes on both a one-on-one basis and as teams. On occasions, we bring the entire organisation together to celebrate milestones and key accomplishments. Most recently, we
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solid employee development programme can spell the difference between a successful company and one that struggles. A company’s chances for growth are closely aligned with its commitment towards fostering employee development. An employee needs to see a promise of opportunities within the company. ExxonMobil has a new hire orientation programme, a mentoring programme for employee development processes and extensive training programmes too, at different levels of their career progression. “Our intent is to develop employees and to provide them with challenging work assignments over the course of their entire career. We develop
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employees through periodic training (both inhouse and external), challenging assignments, access to the latest technology and resources, opportunities for international interactions and assignments, access global best practices, career or succession planning and both formal and informal performance assessments. We have well-defined job competencies and benchmarks that help us gauge where employees are in the course of their development throughout their career at ExxonMobil,” says Richter. Qtel has established a Learning Centre, located in Abu Hamour, where employees have the opportunity to pursue courses to help them with topics ranging from languages to soft skills. Some of the programmes include, e-Gate – Qtel’s Online Learning Programme, open to all
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coverstory rented the beach front at the InterContinental Hotel and hosted an employee ‘Family Fun Day’ at the beach. All employees and their families were invited to a day of good food, games, jet skies, camel rides, volleyball, water slides and music,” says Richter. Qtel, meanwhile, has a long history of rewarding employee achievement, as part of its ongoing strategy to be an employer of choice within Qatar and across its international operations, according to Sheikh Saud bin Nasser Al Thani. He explains how they carry this forward within Qtel. “In July, we launched three awards for employees who demonstrated outstanding job performance. The CEO’s Excellence Award, the Appreciation Award, and the Encouragement Award were designed to recognise the achievements of key employees. “Qtel’s Award and Recognition Programme features both monetary and non-monetary recognition. The awards were developed following an employee engagement survey, ‘Your Voice has an Impact’, conducted in 2008. “ For Qataris with drive and ambition, Qtel says it has processes to help them build leadership skills and develop knowledge and experiences. Recognition is a central part of these measures.
Vodafone uses the Global Recognition Plan – a coordinated effort across the Vodafone Group designed to identify and reward the ‘heroes’ within its organisation. “Our most recent winner, Jihad Abdullah, was rewarded for his tireless efforts and devoted service as a Public Relations Officer, and he was rewarded with a weekend stay at a resort, a profile in our internal magazine, and a personal thanks from our group CEO Vittorio Colao. This programme rewards individuals on a quarterly basis, with our four representing the company at an event in London at the end of the year with other Vodafone Heroes from across the globe,” says Mottram. “W Hotels has a monthly incentive for the frontline employees, the plumbers, the engineering department staff, for their commitment in looking after the guests. It is very difficult to attract new clientele at the moment as the luxury market has been hit severely. We have to ensure that we really look after the ones we have and have made it competitive between departments on who will deliver the best of service. It is called the Guest Satisfactory Index, a customer service feedback form that we send to our guests. The survey is done by a third party company that receives responses via email,” says Lahdesmaki.
Challenge employees who are keen to develop themselves. The programme offers nearly 700 titles covering areas such as IT, telecommunications, office applications, management skills, communication skills, customer care, finance and English language study. More than 700 Qtel family members are now benefiting from this programme. While e-Gate was launched at Qtel headquarters in Qatar, it has spread to include staff at Oman Nawras, Wataniya Palestine, Wataniya Maldives, and Algeria, among other work sites. “Qtel also has a PACE Programme to develop English language skills which additionally helps to develop core behavioural competencies such as team work, communication, drive for results, self-management and customer focus.” Mottram places development of talent as one
of the top priorities of Vodafone. “On an individual level, we have Performance Dialogue, a bi-annual process whereby the employee sets four to five measurable performance and development goals, which correspond to our strategies as an organisation. With the active participation of their managers, our employees then work to achieve these goals over the following half-year period. At the end of this period, the employee then holds a review session with his/her manager to identify specifically whether the goal has been achieved, and on the basis of their mutual agreement the employee’s performance bonus is calculated. “A key piece of this process is that each employee commits to having a Development Plan and it becomes part of an employee’s
“Employees who perform up to the expectation are rewarded and recognised in the entire organisation. This is reviewed in January and July, every year” Alaa Elebiary Chief HR & Admin Officer of Mannai Corporation QSC
“Companies that close development and career programmes will pay the price in their brightest and best people leaving for other opportunities.”
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“Vodafone also has a Culture of Coaching – peers and managers work as coaches or mentors. ” Jan Mottram, HR Director at Vodafone.
responsibilities – and the responsibilities of that employee’s manager – to ensure that he/she is pursuing opportunities to increase knowledge and experience both inside and outside of the company. The employee has to state where he/ she would like to see themselves in a definite period (5-10 years, for example), and for their manager and team members to provide feedback and propose activities which could bring the employee closer to that goal.” At the broader level is the Development Roadmap, an ambitious and active plan of workshops designed to guide every single member of the organisation through a regular series of training throughout the year. In 2009, Vodafone focused on creating a purpose-based organisation. “In 2010, we will focus on Personal Leadership and People Leadership, with topics including
Leading and Succeeding in Emerging Markets, Inclusive Leadership, Coaching and Teambuilding within the framework of a purpose-based organisation. Our Development Roadmap links these high-level trainings to specific processes such as on-boarding, recruitment, performance dialogue, salary review, and development planning,” says Mottram. The company also has a Culture of Coaching -- peers and managers work as coaches or mentors. “There’s no better example of this than our CEO Grahame Maher, who spends a large share of his time actively coaching other members of the organisation,” points out Mottram. At W Hotel, the key is listening to the talent. “We go to them and ask what they need most. With a good mix of young talent in the employee pool, the idea is to go to them and find out what
Ripples beyond telecom
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hen you first walk into Vodafone’s offices at the Qatar Science and Technology Park, there is a large mural alongside the lobby wall that shows an elephant cannon-balling into a pond as a pair of dumbstruck lions gazes on. The headline? “Make a Ripple in the world.” This is the motto of Vodafone Qatar’s internal culture, “to make a difference for all people in Qatar.” Vodafone’s offices are colourful and vibrant, with colour-coded meeting rooms and our very own café, where a professional barista makes espresso drinks and fruit juice smoothies on request. At Vodafone Qatar there are no corner offices, no executive floor: “hotdesking” is practised, where each employee – from the assistants to the executives – carries their own notebook computer and docks in at whatever desk is available. Depending on when you arrive, you may find yourself sitting next to the CEO, or you may find yourself using your wireless connection from the café.
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Or you might not come at all - as a general rule, and as long as one’s line manager has no objections, the employees come to work when they wish and leave when they wish, or they are free to work from home. There are no timekeepers. The irony of this practice is that, when left to their own devices, the staff tend to arrive well before the official 9.00 am start time observed in most offices - after all, they’re eager to get the best seats. Flexi hours is only the start of ‘Trust’ -- one of the key corporate values. At team meetings for instance, employees are asked simply to describe their ‘big three’, or the three highest priorities in their workload for the week. And that’s about as much micromanagement as employees will get. Experience shows that employees then work twice as hard to demonstrate that the trust is well-placed – much harder than if they were to be monitored all the time.
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coverstory they need rather than trying to put our ideas on them. Only then can you make the benefits appealing.” The company conducts a detailed Talent Survey every year, which is called the Star Voice, with 68 questions and open comments. Questions are about the quality of food that is served at their Green Room (the cafeteria), the facilities at the Talent Village (the living quarters of the talent), and feedback from their managers. “We get lots of feedback from this and lots of our benefits are based on this. One of the requests, which was quite simple, was a bus service to the church from the Talent Village. We have 61 nationalities in our hotels and another request was to celebrate the national day of each of their home countries at the Green Room, which was a brilliant idea and we implemented it now. There is national food, decoration and it
generates good will among the talent.” “We, at W Hotels, have a very different rule for Employee Growth. We have a performance management process yearly, for all talent and it is a very structured process. When you have a variety of talent working with you and when numbers are high (we have 530 people working for us currently), this is important. Each one of them knows how they have performed and each also knows the areas they need to improve on. They also have what is called the IDP – Individual Development Programme – where they themselves identify areas of improvement and we help them achieve this. We have a year-end and a mid-year evaluation in August and they are very thorough,” says Lahdesmaki.
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ark Mastrov, Founder and former CEO of 24 Hour Fitness, motivates his people by making an emotional investment. That means showing genuine concern for peoples’ lives outside of work. “At ExxonMobil, we use a merit-based pay system which is well understood by the employees. Employee performance is formally assessed annually as well as informal feedback provided on an on-going basis. In addition to the compensation systems, supervisors can periodically recognise their employees for outstanding contributions with recognition awards and team-building activities,” says Richter. Qtel has an annual Employee Performance Management System (EPM), designed to communicate expectations so that employees know what they must deliver. It also promotes open and ongoing communication between
employees and managers. Employees set their performance targets, goals and objectives early in the year. This is followed by a semi-annual review and then an annual review. “Based upon achievement of targets, goals and objectives as quantified and qualified in the two annual assessments, Qtel employees receive an annual performance bonus,” says Sheikh Al Thani. Vodafone conducts a series of competitions and games among Customer Care and Retail Champions to drive performance. “A recent example, the ‘Productivity Competition’ staged among our Sales and Customer Care Representatives, involved the use of modified KPIs (Key Performance Indicator) as targets for the Champions, with the winner awarded a mobile device – the game yielded instant results, with wide enthusiasm and a notable rise in performance across the entire department,” says Mottram.
Companies need to automate performance management – everything from setting objectives to rewarding high performance. The focus should be on achieving results, not chasing paperwork
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“We have welldefined job competencies and benchmarks that help us gauge where employees are in the course of their development throughout their career at ExxonMobil,” Ernie Richter, Middle East Human Resources Manager of ExxonMobil
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dealing with stress, creatively...
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lmost all large companies have a comprehensive health insurance scheme running, the subtler issue of stress has not been addressed in a big way. In the UK, over 13 million working days are lost every year due to stress. Stress is believed to trigger 70 percent of visits to doctors, and 85 percent of serious illnesses (UK HSE Stress Statistics). Though not relevant to Qatar at present, globally, stress at work also provides a serious risk of litigation for all employers and organisations, carrying significant liabilities for damages, bad publicity and loss of reputation. So, there are clearly strong economic and financial reasons for organisations to manage and reduce stress at work, aside from the obvious humanitarian and ethical considerations. Qatar does not have any such statistics associated with work-related stress but according to a prominent Psychiatrist, the Psychiatry Department at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) has reasons to worry since mental disorders in the country are on the rise. Anxiety, distress, schizophrenia and acute stress are the most common kind of disorders found in Qatar. “Last year, the department attended to 349 schizophrenia cases,” said Dr Suhaila Ghuloum, Chairperson of the Psychiatry department at HMC.
In an environment such as here, where a large number of employees are working and living away from their homes and comfort zones, there is an added onus on companies to pay attention to mental health issues. A simple way of dealing with stress is to lace the work day with out of the box ideas. Creativity is now an important business commodity, the spark that enables companies to launch or improve products, services and processes. Companies these days go out of the way to encourage employees to think out of the box, to bring innovative solutions to the fore. “Our brand refresh has yielded positive results for employees. Chief among them is a new assortment of ‘refresh tools’; all available to help Qtel employees communicate better with customers. A ‘phrase bank’ of words and phrases captures the essence of Qtel, helping everyone to assimilate important information more easily. This clarified, fresh approach is helping to fuel new thinking for all employees, giving them new tools to help them do so,” says Sheikh Al Thani. At Vodafone, creativity is what it’s all about. “Our work environment is extremely dynamic and colourful, for a start. More important, however, is that as a collaborative company we place emphasis on cross-functional thinking, and the typical launch of any initiative in the company will involve representatives from all areas of business brainstorming together. We
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find that this diversity of function and experience always stimulates ideas and keeps the creative juices flowing.” Diversity, according to Mottram, is a key asset in this regard. “Our employees come from 40 different countries across the globe, and are of all colours, religion, and classes. This means that our people are constantly sharing new ideas, having new experiences and learning new things in interaction with one another. “Combine this diversity with the culture of empowerment in Vodafone, employees are given the power to take initiatives and make decisions independently wherever possible, removes all obstructions to creativity.” At W, the grapevine takes on a whole new avatar. “W insiders are employees within W Hotel who know about all the happenings in town, a bit of harmless gossip, the best place for a hot pizza to the great sights in town, and they pass on these information to our guests, who love this ‘value add’ and goes a long way in improving the guestemployee relationship too. “We also invest in trips, to invigorate employees, a Talent Relay, an Oscar Night for the employees, on the last week of January, to let go and just enjoy. Creativity needs time and we need to facilitate that too,” says Lahdesmaki.
n November 2009, EMRA’A (Exxon Mobil Professional Women’s Network) was established, since there has been an increasing number of professional women based in Doha, with over a hundred in ExxonMobil alone. The objective is to expand companywide Women’s Leadership Teams and Networks such as those established in US & UK, to Doha. EMRA’A will provide a forum for professional women to develop skills, find advice as well as support and strengthen social networks. It will also lend visibility to the capabilities of women in ExxonMobil’s Doha workforce. EMRA’A seeks to provide visible leadership, mentoring, and networking opportunities to all professional women. This integrates the second pillar of the Qatar National Vision, which is to enhance women’s capacities and empower them to participate fully in the political and economic spheres, especially in decision-making. Some of the principal activities of EMRA’A will include establishing a mentoring network to support professional and career development and providing a support network for new women professionals relocating to Doha or starting work for ExxonMobil in Qatar. EMRA’A will also try to lead by example with the support of inspirational women from local and ExxonMobil community.
There are two ways of being creative. One can sing and dance. Or one can create an environment in which singers and dancers flourish.
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Driving Engagement by Focusing on Strengths By Brian Brim and Jim Asplund
Too many managers focus on fixing people’s weaknesses – or worse, they simply ignore employees altogether. This doesn’t boost performance.
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he two of us spend a tremendous amount of time helping organisations build higher levels of employee engagement. We do this not just because it’s the right thing to do for employees – we do it because Gallup’s research has proven that the more engaged your employees are, the better results your organisation achieves. That same research has shown that managers play an essential role in driving engagement. We’ve understood this for a long time, but we decided to dig deeper and look more closely at how certain management styles could have a particularly powerful impact on employee engagement.
No news is not good news A manager’s approach to engagement is a broad topic. So to investigate it more specifically, Gallup broke it down into tree categories based on employee perceptions: l employees felt their manager focused mostly on employees’ strengths l employees felt their manager focused mostly on employees’ weaknesses l employees did not feel their manager focused on either strengths or weaknesses To test the effects of these different approaches on employee engagement, Gallup asked a random sample of 1,003 US employees how much they agreed with these two statements: “My supervisor focuses on my strengths or positive characteristics” and “My supervisor focuses on my weaknesses or negative characteristics.” Employees who did not agree with either statement were put into an “ignored” category.
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Reducing Disengagement Gallup research has found that if your supervisor focuses on your strengths, your chances of being acitvely disengaged at work are only 1 in 100. But being overlooked may be more harmful to your engagement than if your supervisor focuses on the negative. If your supervisor ignores you, you are about twice as likely to be actively disengaged than if he or she focuses on your weaknesses.
37% agreed that “My supervisor focuses on my strengths or positive characteristics”
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61%
11% agreed that “My supervisor focuses on my weaknesses or negative characterisics”
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25% were placed in the “ignored” category
40% actively disengaged
57% not engaged
2% engaged
Gallup asked a random sample of 1,003 U.S. employees how much they agreed with these two statements: “My supervisor focuses on my strengths” and “My supervisor focuses on my weaknesses or negative characteristics”. Employees who did not agree with either statement were put into the “ignored” category.
We were disturbed to discover that a significant percentage of the respondents fit into the ’ignored’ category (25 percent). As you can see from the chart above, many US managers ignore their employees, or so the employees perceive. Even more importantly, we found that
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if your manager focuses on your strengths, your chances of being actively disengaged at work are only one in 100. If your manager ignores you, though, you are about twice as likely to be actively disengaged at work than if your manager focuses on your weaknesses. Being overlooked, it seems, is more harmful to employees’ engagement than having to discuss their weaknesses with their manager. Why is this important information for managers? Because employees who are ignored feel like they don’t matter. There’s a crucial phenomenon inherent in employee engagement: The best employees don’t want to be coddled; they want to matter. They want to be part of something greater than themselves, and they want to know how they contribute to that something. They want to be heard, and above all, they do not want to be ignored. So although it seems counterintuitive, when managers focus on weaknesses rather than ignoring employees, those employees’ chances of being engaged actually improve. That’s because people prefer to get any feedback over no feedback at all – even if that feedback is criticism. “I’ve worked with and for, every type of manager represented in your data,” said Larry, a manager we met at a speaking engagement. “Bottom line: A manager who ignores employees is a person who has no business being in that role. People bother them. People are the ‘nuisance’ aspect of their job, so they ignore them as much as possible. If you are the kind of boss who ignores your employees, you shouldn’t be a manager.” We thought Larry had a key insight into managers who concentrate on weaknesses too. He believes that, a lot of good managers fall into that category whether they want to or not.
“I’ve worked in several companies that pushed managers to focus on people’s negatives through a weakness-focused performance review process,” he said. “These reviews might start out with what employees were doing well, but then the process forced the manager to look at ‘areas of opportunity’ – a person’s weaknesses – for the majority of the review.” Gallup research shows that customers suffer when they are served by disengaged employees and consequently flee in droves. What happens to employees and workgroups when companies force managers to take a weakness-fixing approach to employee development? The end result is likely to be a workgroup with a 2:1 ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees. While a 2:1 ratio isn’t great, it might not seem so bad when you consider that the ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees is likely to be 1:20 when managers ignore employees.
The best employees don’t want to be coddled; they want to matter. They want to be heard, and above all, they do not want to be ignored.
Leaving too many employees disengaged The result of focusing on weaknesses – or worse yet, ignoring employees altogether – is striking, especially when it’s considered in the context of an industrial-age model of management. In this model – called ‘scientific management’ by its main proponent, Frederick Winslow Taylor – employees were treated very much like cogs in the wheel of a bigger machine, and their individual thoughts and talents were ignored in favour of rules and regulations put in place by management. This approach is reflected in Henry Ford’s famous lament: “Why is it that every time I need a pair of hands, I get a human being as well?” JANUARY 2010
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“A strengthsfocused environment helps me think about becoming the best I can be based on the unique talents that I bring to my workplace,”
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The industrial age was followed by the knowledge age, and with it came the realisation that employees’ knowledge and understanding could bring value to organisations. This was a turn in the right direction, but many organisations still followed the outmoded industrial model in their approach to employee management and development. Because eliminating errors in manufacturing processes was so successful in achieving production efficiencies, many organisations tried to create similar processes for ‘fixing’their employees. After all, there are all sorts of things wrong with people. The ultimate goal of this approach was to remove employee ‘weakness’. But people aren’t machines, and trying to fix them as if they were simply doesn’t work. Yet many organisations persist in approaching employee development with the idea that fixing weaknesses creates the greatest gain. While this focus on fixing weaknesses may seem like an effective approach to engaging employees, Gallup data tell us that it only appears effective when it is compared to the terrible results managers achieve by ignoring their workers. Generally, Gallup suggests that a 4:1 ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees is a reasonable starting point for companies that want to improve performance by increasing engagement. But as we mentioned above, a weakness-based approach results in a 2:1 ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees. So focusing on weaknesses results in an employee engagement ratio that’s half the recommended starting point. More fundamentally, focusing on weaknesses still leaves 22 percent of employees actively disengaged. Having that many negative, hostile, or miserable employees severely limits what a manager – or an organisation – can achieve. For example, Gallup research shows that customers suffer when they are served by disengaged employees and consequently flee in droves; disengaged employees drive up their company’s costs. So a focus on weaknesses tends to drive down top-line revenues while simultaneously
driving up costs. Ultimately, the data show that managers who focus on the strengths of their employees create the strongest levels of engagement: These managers can achieve a 60:1 ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees. Managers can reach that ratio when they realise that employees want to matter. And focusing on people’s strengths is a crucial way to show them that they matter. Employees with managers who focus on their strengths begin to understand that they are unique and that they can contribute based on the talents that make them unique. They also understand that they are not just a cog in the wheel, but an important part of something greater than themselves. “A strengths-focused environment helps me think about becoming the best I can be based on the unique talents that I bring to my workplace,” Larry said. “And that is a pretty engaging feeling.” This feeling also generates superior performance. Teams with higher engagement levels have significantly higher productivity and profitability than workgroups with lower engagement levels. One great manager we know, boiled this entire conversation down quite nicely: Ask your employees which manager they want to work for – one who focuses on their strengths or one who focuses on their weaknesses. We’re pretty sure which manager your employees would pick. But the big question for managers is this: Which kind of manager do you want to be? Brian Brim is a Principal of Global Client Education with Gallup. Jim Asplund is Chief Scientist, StrengthsBased Development and Principal, Performance Impact Consulting with Gallup. He is coauthor of Human Sigma: Managing the EmployeeCustomer Encounter (Gallup Press, November 2007). Copyright The Gallup Organisation, Princeton, NJ. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission. Visit the Gallup Management Journal at gmj.gallup.com