It's Time to Pay Attention to Personnel

We should never lose sight of the fact that people make a company what it is today and what it will be tomorrow. Also, we should not forget our people in the development and organizational sense as well as the retention situation. Have we taken our people for granted? Like other industries, the employee in the Home Healthcare market does not always feel as passionate as the owner about the mission of the organization, and they may be confused about how they fit in to the organization’s changing future. Many employees are becoming discouraged when they hear or read about the industry’s problems.

In all types of industries, the training and development of the employee is usually ranked first or second by most surveys listing the Top Five Methods to increase employee retention. 73% of all companies provide Leadership Development Programs, with Team Building, and Empowerment Programs. However, in the Home Healthcare Industry, many of the key executives, managers, and supervisors in a Home Health Care company are licensed professionals with extensive clinical backgrounds, but they possess very little in the way of formal management training. Is it like this for your company?

Home Heathlcare example of business: Take orders for products. Process the order after it has met all the qualifications. Deliver product in a timely manner with minimal expense and upon receipt of acknowledgment of delivery, bill the appropriate payer and await the payment that normally takes approximately 85 days or more. Phew!

How many people in your company get involved in any of those above processes? Now is the time to develop both your people and organization simultaneously to improve productivity and profitability through training and education. Leadership starts at the top. The application of this type of training, both philosophical and practical, must be instilled in all managers and supervisors by the executive team. Many companies suffering from the normal industry problems can provide resolutions to such by looking at organizational and personnel development that can lead to enhanced performance with improved productivity. There is no better time than now for the small to medium sized business owner is to start acting like a real leader and develop your people to make your company stronger to handle this highly competitive environment.

Leadership Management Programs are available in presentation, seminar, or spaced- repetition formats. A spaced - repetition program is convenient for most management in the fact that the time required for presentation will allow the manager to miss the least amount of time from the office. It also will provide multi-sensory impact, compliment the classroom activities with audio reinforcement, and allow the participant to complete assignments at home or at work. More importantly, it has been demonstrated that participants completing such programs implement more course techniques into their daily work activities and change many of their current behavioral processes. Almost any program, product, or process can be customized to meet the needs of your company. Every member on your management team should participate in a Leadership Management Program custom designed to compliment your mission, vision, and values. Quality management starts at the top and the best way to demonstrate such is to “lead by example”.

For more information on our management training visit www.ILDV.org or call 609-390-2830.

Are we Crazy or is it a Craze?

I have to admit that the terminology being used with the organizational development challenges is starting to get sensational in nature. When I read the highlights of an article that appeared in the 2nd Quarter of 2008 issue of the Organizational Development Journal, the title of article was: “The Human Craze: Human Performance Improvement and Employee Engagement”. “Craze” to me is certainly an unusual word to use in relationship of OD and productivity and/or engagement.

The “craze” refers to the need for Human Resources Professionals and Departments to focus on human productivity improvement and engagement as a way to create a competitive advantage for their companies or organizations. What have the Human Resources professionals or departments been doing before this? If they were interested in performance, productivity or engagement, where have they been hiding?

I do not find that most HR Professionals have been given the opportunity to demonstrate their business acumen to the rest of the executive team in terms of metrically contributing to the success of the organization. I am frustrated with the fact that unless the challenge becomes a problem, there is no focus toward the people. It is focused externally toward the market conditions and internally toward the reduction in operating expenses. This may of course include layoffs to reduce payroll and benefit expenses. Today we find ourselves in a very reactive marketplace and most HR professionals need to step up and be more proactive. They are sitting back awaiting the direction to move forward in a reactive position with things like hiring freezes, elimination of training programs and incentive programs, and eliminating unnecessary benefits or lowering healthcare costs.

I would like to see the title of the article read, “The New Craze: Corporate Leadership Turns to HR” to provide the process for developing the strengths of their people to better react to the current economic climate and market conditions. I really feel that the strengths of the people within an organization can make the difference and to maximize people’s strengths we have to focus on their talent and contribution to the overall success of the organization. Personal productivity and individual performance adds up to corporate success and has done so for centuries. So, why isn’t the HR community focused on human development and performance improvement? Maybe they just don’t know how. If the HR professional doesn’t get more involved, the talented people will find a company that provides the engagement and development and move on.

If you’re in HR and are reading this, tell me how you have been proactive in this reactive business world! I’d like to hear success stories.

Chewing Gum and Band-aids

I just received the Chamber of Commerce Southern New Jersey’s Board Council’s on Responsible Government Report – Phase III – Meeting the Challenge: Saving Taxpayer Dollars by Adopting Best Practices”. The publication pointed out the differences between the Private Sector Practices and that of State Government followed by recommendations to the State for improvement by implementing these best practices.

This publication focused on the following: Job Classification Systems, Hiring Practices, Employee Assessment & Pay for Job Performance, Professional Development, Disciplinary policies, Human Resources and Personnel Management.

This is not a political commentary but when hasn’t the private sector had to focus on hiring and selection, retention, performance management and people development. What I questions, is, “How many companies in the Private Sector do anything more than acknowledge the need or focus on the concern?" Most companies today are aware of the employment statistics facing us today and many have moved on to the planning stage and have started to develop Succession Plans, Behavioral Interviewing Scorecard, utilization of an Assessment Process, implementing some type of “three strike rule”, retention of Key Employees or Top Producers, and a Career Management program.

I still would bet that those same companies have not implemented formalized plans or more importantly, designed processes to compliment the needs and focus of the company. Band-aids and chewing gum are being used to cover the gaps created by the “good to great” employees that are bailing something better or we are doing everything in our power to keep the baby boomers from jumping ship. I really feel that this “quick fix” mentality will not hold for long.

We are loosing a talented management pool that we are not training and developing at a speed equal to that of the exodus from the workforce by the baby boomers. We will find ourselves with a inexperienced, non-communicative, non-inspirational management team that can only lead by example because they will not have the skills to move the workforce upward and onward. They will have to be task-masters to gain the knowledge that the exiting management team declined to share.

There is only one Best Practice out there that satisfies the needs of any company in the areas of productivity, performance, and passion. It can eliminate the worry about employee engagement or motivation and it can provide the foundation for performance management. The Best Practice that needs to be embellished by both the private and public sector is to spend the time and money on your middle management. In simplest of terms, train the immediate supervisor because he or she is the one that is going to make the difference in hiring and selection, personnel development, performance management, positive discipline, and more.

The ROI for the training and development of your management team will easily be satisfied when you look at turnover, key employee retention, knowledge sharing, cross training, and behavior in the workplace.

Leadership and Dysfunctional Behaviors

Leadership.

I have always related leadership to being influential in the workplace. Being able to influence the culture of an organization or being able to compliment the core competencies of an organization have always been integral components of a successful leader. I was intrigued by an article in the February issue of Training and Development that reported that 90% of leaders say dysfunctional behaviors have become acceptable in the workplace and the consequences that have resulted from this bad behavior are lower employee satisfaction, lower productivity, and decreased quality. Our organization focuses on the healthcare marketplace and we find that dysfunctional behaviors play a major role in decreased quality and lower productivity. Both patience and employee satisfaction is determined by those factors.

Is it because we don’t consider dysfunctional behavior poor performance? Inappropriate behavior in the workplace is destructive and must be considered a performance issue.
We should focus on the behavioral issues within an organization and make sure that they are addressed by our performance management system. According to a most recent survey completed by Joseph Glenny, A Provo-Utah based author and management consultant, “finger pointing” or shifting blame, gossiping, and creating territorial borders and boundaries are three of the most destructive behaviors in the workplace today. It also noted that 64% of leaders do very little or nothing to change these behaviors.

It appears that the leaders today are fearful toward addressing the issues because of the consequences…whatever they may be. Many leaders turn to HR or Training and ask them to sprinkle “magical dust” over the situation and expect instantaneous results from the training department or vendors.

Changing behavior is a process and it requires implementation of more than just “dust”. It requires expectations in the workplace from the top down. The leadership team and their management team must define what behaviors they would like to see while stating emphatically those behaviors that will no longer be tolerated. The Performance Management system must focus on the interpersonal side of managing and believe it or not, these behavioral changes can be measured. It appears that the influential leaders of today aren’t willing to view behavior in the same light as they do performance. Maybe we should redefine leadership and not associate it with influence. It obviously is not working!

Cautiously Optimistic

The Feds have reduced the rates and are forecasted to do it again this week and the American Corporation and small business owner are to let out a big “sigh of relief”.
I can tell you from my experiences this past week that no one is breathing a “sigh of relief”. Companies have put some of their spending on hold, like training and development, marketing and promotional materials, and are continuing to focus on the costs and related expenses that can be reduced.

Why is it that we as business people tend to hide in our caves until the storm blows over instead of getting out in the mix and making the necessary adjustments so that everything is more in order to weather the storm than ever before?

The return on investment for training and development expenses can be measured and defined. Believe it or not, there is a system where behavioral change can even be measured over time so why is it that we don’t take a more aggressive approach to an external threat like economic conditions, especially the prospect of a recession?

One of the reasons we are not more aggressive when threats affect our businesses is that we have not strategically planned for this threat. Any company that did a strategic planning exercise using S.W.O.T. (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis or similar exercise certainly came up with economic conditions as a potential threat in 2008. If you didn’t record economic conditions as a possible threat, please retire now and/or transition or sell your business. The problem I see is that most people use strategic planning to set action steps when the climate internally and externally is at its calmest and not as a vehicle to help them through the periods that get the roughest.

So, let’s sit back down and make sure our external resources in terms of opportunities and threats are well reflected in our planning as well as our internal strengths and weaknesses.
Effective organizational effectiveness can minimize the effect that an external event has on businesses and people can become totally engaged when they know what they need to do to overcome the external challenge.

Awareness, planning, implementation and results…it sure sounds like something that focuses everyone on the challenge, defines a plan to get somewhere, allows for mid-course correction if the weather changes, and focuses everyone on the results. I guess if we all do that I can become cautiously optimistic….but I am not.

Frustrated!

Frustrated by the fact that when the Stock Market or the Real Estate Market takes a turn for the worst, training and development along with marketing are the two things that immediately appear on the radar screen and are transferred to the “hit list” of most CEO’s. People development just seems to go out the window along with the things that hopefully will bring the customers in. I think the expression that my mother used was, “we tend to cut off our noses despite our face”.

It is well documented that we have the greatest number of employees leaving the workforce and we have the greatest number of future workers with the least experience ready to take their place. Due to current market conditions, we now can’t afford to train them so that our plan for the succession of the “baby boomers” goes right out the window. This transition will now become a transformation because it cannot possibly be as smooth and transparent as originally intended. We certainly enjoy being in the reactive mode and not the proactive mode.

I think we are viewing the re-structuring of our workforce very similarly to that of our highway system or mass transit system. We will worry about the problem of having companies with no trained workers only when it is time to be productive or close the doors. When are we going to realize the need for mass transit?...when there are too many cars on the highways so grid-lock is commonplace or it now takes twenty hours to go from Philadelphia to New York..

The exodus from the workforce is well under way so when are you going to feel an obligation to do something about it…..when you receive your first check from Social Security or now, when you can call it succession planning. I think as “boomers”, we are obligated to make sure that our companies have qualified people with the appropriate skills sets to make a difference in the future. Let’s not wait for our companies to be “bottle-necked” by lack of qualified personnel. Train, coach, and mentor now before it is too late and the “bottle-neck” is equivalent to “grid-lock”.