Recruiting new employees should feel like a relief. Fresh perspectives, new possibilities, and more balanced workloads. Although, if you’ve ever done recruiting, you probably know that it rarely works out that way.
What begins as an exciting endeavor to seek out that person whose presence will restore order to your over-encumbered and frantically busy team becomes a long, draining, slog of an effort.
In 2013, CEB research found that 86% of organizations had recently made significant changes to their performance management system, or were planning to. In 2014, a Deloitte survey found that 58% percent of companies surveyed did not think performance management was an effective use of time, and many media outlets jumped on the opportunity to air their grievances.
At gothamCulture, authentic community is one of our five core values. As you may have read on our website, “We connect with each other in authentic ways because we know that together we can do more than any of us could alone. Each of us plays a unique part in fostering a community of involvement and inclusion.”
This sounds nice, but what does it mean? And more importantly, what does it look like in action?
Remember when your mom told you, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all?” Turns out, there’s a lot of merit to that advice.
No one likes a complainer. When you show up to work and try your best to add value while being as positive as possible, the resident Debby Downer of the workplace can instantly turn your best intentions into another bad day.
Having to tolerate a perpetual complainer in the workplace has many downsides, not only for you but for the rest of the team. Here’s how.
We live in an age of data. Big data. The ability to collect and use data to make business decisions has become table stakes for any organization looking to gain operational efficiencies, drive innovation, obtain market share, and manage targeted and timely development of human capital. Looking back even five years, a McKinsey Global Institute report communicated the value of big data.
“We estimate that a retailer using big data to the fullest has the potential to increase its operating margin by more than 60 percent. Harnessing big data in the public sector has enormous potential, too. If US healthcare were to use big data creatively and effectively to drive efficiency and quality, the sector could create more than $300 billion in value every year. Two-thirds of that would be in the form of reducing US healthcare expenditure by about 8 percent.” (MGI, 2011)
Over the course of these past five years, we have gained a lot of capability and capacity to help us manage all of this data. And yet, many organizations still feel as though they’re falling behind.
It amazes me how many executives are knuckle-draggers. A knuckle-dragger, for purposes of this conversation, is someone who is unintelligent (or makes unintelligent decisions) and is stuck in the past, promoting and using antiquated and ineffective methods.
This is the person who is still wandering out of his/her cave with a club in search of something to knock in the head and eat for dinner. There isn’t a lot of thought that goes into a knuckle-dragger’s actions. In an office environment, it is the executive that screams at people when they make mistakes. Or a C-Suite that performs mass layoffs.
Yep, I said it. If you do mass layoffs, you are a knuckle-dragger.
According to CNBC, in January of this year, layoffs surged to a 6 month high. Over 75,000 planned job cuts by US-based companies were announced last month. That’s 200% more than December, and 42% higher than this time last year. Two of the major contributors are Wal-Mart and Macy’s, cutting 16,000 and 4,820 respectively.
People try to justify mass layoffs by talking about the good of the company, looking out for shareholders, blah, blah, blah. Here’s what they don’t tell you: They are laying off people because of their failure. Simply put, most executives rely on mass layoffs to compensate for their inability to lead properly and make the right decisions.
A great example is Al Dunlap, aka “Chainsaw Al.” He was famous for downsizing. Everyone thought his methods caused companies to become successful by “cutting the fat.” However, what people didn’t realize was his turnarounds were elaborate frauds. When Sunbeam brought him in to solve their financial issues, he downsized. Sunbeam went bankrupt, and he was caught trying to engineer an accounting scandal.
The simple truth is that downsizing and mass layoffs are BAD for your company. They will give you an uptick in profits at the end of the year if done at the proper time, but they are not a viable long term solution. In fact, in the long term they are detrimental to the sustainability of your company. Here are four myths and realities about layoffs:
Improving Productivity
Downsizing and mass layoffs are thought to improve the productivity of the organization. It supposedly motivates employees (which we will talk about later), consolidates resources, and makes the organization leaner.
But the simple truth is that organizations aren’t any more productive after a mass layoff than they were before it. The budget sheet looks better because there are less expenses, but productivity doesn’t increase. In fact, studies show you are likely to see a drop in productivity in the short and long term. Here’s why: When an organization has a mass layoff, they usually don’t determine who are the talent players (often because the people making the decision have no idea who they are laying off). So they choose some metric, and get rid of people using that.
Because they are only measuring performance based on a single factor, they get rid of both talented and untalented employees. The result is a smaller workforce, not a more productive one. Often mass layoffs cause employees to look for work elsewhere. Would you want to work where you could get laid off any minute? Usually, the better employees get hired at other places and leave. Once this happens, the level of talent at your organization actually decreases.
Motivating the Workforce
Downsizing and mass layoffs are thought by some to motivate employees. They don’t motivate, they distract. Think about it. When a company has a mass layoff, it causes widespread uncertainty and fear. Every employee wonders if they are the next to go. While they might work a bit harder for a short time, they are constantly worried about losing their job.
At best, mass layoffs motivate your most talented employees to look for jobs elsewhere.
Solving Financial Issues
Many people think mass layoffs will solve an organization’s financial problems. But rather than actually solving the problem that caused the budget shortfall, layoffs are usually used to offset it. An organization fires a large amount of people to help their budget and then, as things seem to get better, they hire all these people back until they are in the same spot they were in to begin with. 3-5 years later, they have to have another mass layoff. The cycle repeats itself.
In addition, studies show that layoffs actually drag down a company’s stock value.
Making the Company Stronger
There is this perception that mass layoffs make companies stronger. They don’t. Usually, its because they don’t solve the root of the problem. The problems might even be making the layoff decisions.
Other than some major external factors shifting without warning, the failures that lead to a mass layoff are the responsibility of the C-Suite. And in the end, it is the failure of company leadership that causes mass layoffs. Sadly, they often don’t see it and aren’t held accountable. Instead, they hold others accountable for their failure in leadership and decision making.
It saddens me how many executives think mass layoffs are a viable option. To be fair, in some rare cases they are, but not usually. Yet, we have created a business culture that says it is just another way of doing business. But the ways of doing business are changing, and mass layoffs are more of a detriment to your organization than ever before.
Think about millennials, for example. We constantly hear companies complain that the millennials don’t want to work for them, or are more concerned with personal gain than their loyalty to the company. I’ve heard many business executives shake their heads, tsk and complain about this behavior. Guess what, knuckle-draggers? You caused it. Who’d want to be loyal to a company when mass layoffs are a just another way of doing business?
Financially, layoffs reduce stock prices. They reduce productivity and cause a need for payouts in severance, plus the cost of rehiring employees as business improves. They cause a burden on the tax payers because of the increase in unemployment recipients. They make people wary of working there, have a severe negative effect on employee health, and often leave the organization with a less capable workforce in the long run.
So, with the overwhelming amount of evidence about the detrimental effects of mass layoffs, why do they still do it? How do we get the knuckle-draggers to put down the clubs, become leaders, and make better decisions?
There I was, sitting in a conference room with my client, the Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) of a large, San Francisco-based company. I wasn’t quite sure what I was getting myself into. I had been onsite supporting an unrelated project when my client asked me to join her in a meeting with another consulting firm to review the results of the company’s recent employee engagement survey.
When I was a young child, I was convinced that the characters I saw in the glowing image of my family’s television set were actually running around inside the box. They walked, they talked, they even told jokes. As far as I was concerned that was all I needed to conclude that they were, in fact, real.
Only later did I learn that those wonderful images on the television screen were actually created by electromagnetic waves that passed through the air to produce the illusion—a manifestation that captured my attention all those Saturday mornings.
When I talk to people about the concept of organizational culture as it relates to business challenges, a similar phenomenon tends to occur. Our conversation centers around what people think the reality of their situation is. What they often describe when sharing their experiences are the manifestations of the underlying culture rather than the culture itself.
This is what makes the study and shaping of an organizational culture so difficult. We can only really see the impact of a culture on us as the roots of what drive those behaviors (the culture) remains beneath the surface.
Whether it’s high turnover, lack of sales growth or declining customer service, business leaders tend to focus on visible business challenges. It makes sense, as these challenges are easily measurable. The real question becomes, how does one dig beneath the visible manifestations of a culture to begin to understand the beliefs, values and assumptions that are driving behavior and results to begin with?
Here are four tips to help you begin to really understand what is driving behavior in your organization:
Take a moment to look at your organization’s culture. What do you see? How are the collective behaviors of your team helping or hindering business performance?
Whether you can see it or not, there is a lot happening under the surface. We may not always be able to best determine what it is that drives behavior. We might be influenced by own values or assumptions, or the behaviors of others. But once you see through the looking glass, you may find that your culture is impacting business outcomes in more ways than you realize.
This article originally appeared on Forbes.
If you do not manage culture, it manages you, and you may not even be aware of the extent to which this is happening. — Edgar Schein*
Guest Article Written By Kristy Sundjaja
Reward and recognition programs have a tendency to get on auto pilot, with a few star employees and top sales people lauded by management the same time every year as crystal trophies collect on a handful of desks. But as a new breed of employee enters the workforce—one the values rewards and recognition for a job well done—companies are starting to turning to these programs as a way to keep their entire staff satisfied, motivated and productive.
For LivePerson, a leading provider of digital engagement, we’ve looked to reward and recognition programs as one way to keep our 1,200 employees invested in not only their own success, but that of the company. And we’re not the only ones that are investing heavily into programs like this. Nearly 75% of companies have some kind of program in place.
However, after an internal employee survey conducted in 2013 uncovered that LivePerson employees weren’t satisfied with the current methods of recognition, we knew we had to rethink this critical element of the employee journey.
The first step in redesigning our recognition program was to look to our mission of creating meaningful connections, and our values of being and owner and helping others. Using those established ideals, we created a reward and recognition program, the Outstanding Employee Awards, that served to recognize our employees. This program also brought them closer together through the peer-to-peer nomination style while shedding light on the behaviors of our most successful employees. The results were phenomenal. We had almost 600 nominations from across our company, an engagement rate that more than doubled our goal. And not only did the winners feel great, but their peer nominators felt involved and heard as well.
Here are some ways that you can use your company’s culture to establish a strong program to reward and recognize your employees and involve everyone, not just a select few “usual suspects”:
Encourage peer-to-peer recognition. Employees are the ones that see the day-to-day success and accomplishments of their peers — especially those who are behind the scenes and might not have lots of public exposure. It not only inspires more connection and collaboration among employees, but colleague recognition can make a bigger impact than manager recognition (not to mention it’s 35% more likely to have an financial impact than manager recognition).
Involve a community aspect. Millennials want more than just a job that pays the bills. Instead, they are looking for purpose and expect the companies they work for to give back to the community in one way or another. Including a volunteer day is an easy way to make employees feel good about themselves and their company.
Connect them with leadership. In large, global companies especially, employees can feel pretty disconnected from the executive team. A chance to spend some time with them outside of the office can go a long way to making an employee feel special.
Give them a break. In this digital era, employees tend to work around the clock, even on what should be a stress-free vacation. This can lead to serious work fatigue, so encourage them to shut down the laptops, stay off their emails for a few days, and get some R&R.
Look past cliché team activities. Bringing your employees together for a day of fun is a great way to connect them, especially if your company, like LivePerson, believes that true innovation comes from collaboration. Encourage team or group activities that they wouldn’t normally do, but be sure to look past the ‘team building’ trust falls and look to more unique experiences that bring them closer together. And you may just uncover some hidden skills and talents that could be beneficial to the whole company.
Above all, stay true to your culture. Before your company launches into a reward and recognition program thinking that it’s the way to reboot unmotivated employees, it’s important to keep in mind how a program like this would fit into your own company’s culture.
Do you have other ideas that have worked to reward and recognize your employees? Please share!
Kristy Sundjaja is Chief of Staff and Global Head of People at LivePerson, the global leader in intelligent online consumer engagement. In her role, Kristy integrates and aligns business and people strategies to deliver the company mission of creating meaningful connections to consumers and brands. LivePerson currently employs 1,200 people in 13 locations around the world
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