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ENGAGE TREND REPORT 08.27.10
Mad Men, Mark Hurd, Harassment
Don Draper forgot his keys. The same week, H-P CEO Mark Hurd resigned on the heels of harassment charges.
Have attitudes and life style changed - or just theramifications of getting caught? Technology and societal attitudes are drivingnew thoughts about what constitutes harassment and new approaches to makingsure ethical behavior is enforced in the workplace.
Have attitudes and life style changed - or just theramifications of getting caught? Technology and societal attitudes are drivingnew thoughts about what constitutes harassment and new approaches to makingsure ethical behavior is enforced in the workplace.
In Mad Men,the ad men drink at work and cavort with their secretaries. Women are disrespected. These were the days of openly coercive sexualexploits at work and racial discrimination. That was part of American culture and thosedays are not so long ago.
The Atlantic points out that Mad Men bombards uswith how bad it was back then while allowing some viewers to gloss over theaspects that are still with us in the workplace and beyond:
To people who actually livedthrough the 1960s, the sexism of their culture didn't seem dramatic; the menwho objectified and infantilized women probably bore no specific malice, andthe vast majority of the women who found their lives constrained by those mendidn't imagine that things could be different. Their oppression was invisible, because it was normal. In other words, they were like us. Sexism is stillaround, and in the vast majority of instances it doesn't present itself as someportentous, shocking occurrence. It's just the fabric of daily life, a littleugliness that we take for granted.
Calling out that ugliness, piece by piece, and separating itfrom what we consider standard operating behavior is the first step.
These days, harassment is (usually) not about the stuff you see on Mad Men, and it's not chasing the secretary around the desk.
Much of the problem is that newer technology - e-mail, IM, texting orposting on social-networking sites - makes it much easier for comments to bemisconstrued on many levels. If you admire an employee's new haircut while she is in your office, she can read yourtone and body language; and you can read hers. However, a late-night textmessage admiring your employee's new haircut can take on a lascivious tone, even if that is not the intention.
H-P's investigation found that CEO Hurd violated HP's "Standards of Business Conduct". Hurd was entangled in a personal relationshipwith a hired contractor- an affair he tried to obfuscate with some fudgedexpense reports. We still don't have thefull story of his relationship with actress / reality show contestant / Congressionalstaffer / marketing consultant / real estate executive Jodie Fisher. The 50-year-old Fisher has appeared on areality TV show, and in a string of movies that place her on the fringes of Hollywood fame. Her acting resume includes such films as "Intimate Obsession" (1992), "Body of Influence 2" (1996), "SheerPassion" (1998) and a bunch of other movies that might be hard to explain toyour spouse if they popped up on the pay-per-view cable bill.
$10 billion in share value evaporated as the news broke. Hurd'scontract makes it clear that he is an "at-will" employee who can beterminated at any time. There is nothing to prevent the board fromsending Hurd a letter telling him he has been fired and then stopping paymenton all those severance checks.
Is Hurd accountable? Should he receive his $50 million severance package?
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ENGAGE TREND REPORT 07.01.10
Post Recession Talent Strategies
The weakness of the economic recovery has real implications for the workforce -- and for HR executives charged with maximizing worker engagement and productivity. Do the typical initiatives to increase employee engagement work in this environment?
Aggressive head count reductions have interrupted talent strategies at many top companies. As smart employers strengthen the value proposition and focus on engagement (anything to increase engagement is a good thing), others are losing valuable contributors and dropping the ball on important training and staff-development programs.
There is a better way:
- Beware the scourge of overwork. The average "job footprint" has increased by 1/3 in the recession, with the reward being frozen pay and shrinking perks. While so far workers have felt lucky to keep their jobs, workers who claim to be "disengaged" has doubled to 20% -- "engagement" as a vital source of innovation and creativity is evaporating.
- Address emotional as well as economic needs. In The Why of Work: How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations that Win, Dave and Wendy Ulrich focus on a notion of "abundance" and suggest a list of seven questions for leaders to ask:
- Who am I?
- Where am I going?
- Whom do I travel with?
- How do I build a positive work environment?
- What challenges interest me?
- How do I change, learn and grow?
- What delights me?
While these questions seem unrelated to the bottom line, the answers can provide a powerful catalyst to engagement - and customer satisfaction and profitability. Broad-based employment gains from entry-level positions to senior management are coming... are you ready?
Read the full story from HRE Online.
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ENGAGE TREND REPORT 05.27.10
Study: Millennials ARE Slackers!
You know the stereotypes about Gen Y workers. Their work ethic is underdeveloped. Their sense of entitlement is outsized. They're slackers. Is that, like, totally unfair?
New research has yielded actual data to back up these notions.
In a series of studies using surveys that measure psychological entitlement and narcissism, University of New Hampshire management professor Paul Harvey found that Gen Y respondents scored 25 percent higher than respondents ages 40 to 60 and a whopping 50 percent higher than those over 61.
As a group, Harvey says, Gen Yers are characterized by a "very inflated sense of self" that leads to "unrealistic expectations" and, ultimately, "chronic disappointment." And if you think the Gen Yers in your workplace are oversensitive as well as entitled, Harvey's findings back that up, too. Today's 20-somethings have an "automatic, knee-jerk reaction to criticism," he says, and tend to dismiss it. "Even if they fail miserably at a job, they still think they're great at it."
What about the other big stereotype -- that Gen Yers are committed and idealistic, and determined to do work they believe in. Not true, according to another study, to be published in the Journal of Management in September, which reveals that when it comes to work, the two things Gen Yers care most about are a) high salaries, and b) lots of leisure time off the job.
The study found that while both Gen Y (21 - 30 years old) and Gen X (31 - 44 years old) want sizable salaries, Gen X workers show greater awareness that a hefty paycheck comes with a hefty workload. Professor Harvey believes that this sense of entitlement "gets ingrained in the formative years. It stems from the self-esteem movement, telling kids, 'You're great, you're special,'" he says.
Given the current recession, should business leaders assume that these employees will be happy just to have a job? Can they ignore the next generation's changing needs and demands? Not according to Stan Smith, workforce attitude trends expert and author of Decoding Generational Differences: Fact, Fiction…or Should We Just Get Back to Work? His research shows that these things "won't be changing" and represent serious problems for those who choose to ignore them.
Gen Yers and their employers will eventually have to deal with this as Gen Y increases its presence in the workplace. We could have a group of disappointed and disgruntled employees, where Gen Y says, 'I want everything,' and the company says, 'You're not getting anything.'
Click for the full story.
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ENGAGE TREND REPORT 06.10.10
Does Human Capital Management Predict Stock Prices?
Human capital management is fast emerging as an essential core competency (possibly the essential core competency) for organizations.
Firms that invest significantly in training and developing their employees generally outperform the market. Investment managers would be well-served to pay attention to broad measures of human capital management as a factor in portfolio selection. Engagement = Revenue.
With very few exceptions, an organization's greatest assets do indeed "walk out the door" at the end of each business day. For those who are eager to measure human capital more accurately, who then wish to create a much greater return on investments in human resources for their organization, The ROI of Human Capital is a must read on this subject. This book is an absolutely indispensable resource for helping to achieve these objectives.
For most human resource professionals, measurement remains a critical area of weakness. To allow their organizations to tap the full potential of human capital as a source of competitive advantage, HR strategists need to engage the emerging field of human capital analytics. This would make it possible for organizations to develop and execute human capital strategies that are grounded in actionable business intelligence - rather than relying on the old standbys (intuition, one-size-fits all benchmarking, or accepted measurement myths within the HR profession).
Only then will organizations truly reap the benefits of unleashing their employees’ full capabilities.
For more see the White Paper.
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ENGAGE TREND REPORT 04.27.10
Embedded in the Front Lines
Higher pay is still the top reason employees leave companies. In an era of limited pay raises and doing more with less - what else can an employer do to make top people stay?
A recent study takes a look at the psychology behind how employees make the difficult 'Stay or Go' decisions. This paper develops two theories in the field of job turnover. The first, the "unfolding model," explains why employees quit. The second, "job embeddedness," tells why workers stay. Understanding both of these theories could help employers keep their best employees.
Faced with 'unfolding' circumstances such as a fight with one's boss or an unanticipated job offer, an employee is forced to decide to stay or leave. Turnover decisions are influenced by comparisons between the investments made in their job or organization, the rewards they receive, the quality of alternatives and the costs associated with working for a particular organization -- and all of these comparisons change over time.
Job embeddeddness describes forces that cause one to feel he or she would not leave a job, which includes the extent to which people are linked with other people or to activities, the extent to which their jobs and communities fit with other aspects of their lives, and the ease with which their respective links can be broken, or what they would sacrifice if they left. If employees feel congruence between their values and goals and those of the organization, they will be more embedded in the organization.
Organizational leaders should understand that why employees quit often has nothing to do with being unhappy about the job and that helping build a sense of community among its employees can prevent them from quitting, the researchers say.
If you can't rely on increased compensation for retention, offer your employees the next best thing - a heavy dose of Corporate Culture.
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ENGAGE TREND REPORT 04.05.10
Videogames Make You a Better Person
Two new studies suggest that playing videogames can make you a better person and have a profound impact on prosocial behavior.
The first, published in The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology in June, was conducted at Iowa State University's media research laboratory. A group of students played one of six games for 20 minutes. When their games were over, the participants were asked to choose easy, medium, or hard puzzles for a partner to complete and were told that their partner would receive a $10 gift voucher if he/she complete them. Those who had played a prosocial game were significantly more likely to help their partner by selecting easy puzzles. The opposite was true for those that played the violent game.
A second controlled experiment, conducted at the University of Sussex, in England, confirms the Iowa study's conclusions. In this piece of research, Students were asked to play Lemmings, which challenges students to protect animals from danger, and Tetris, which is a building block puzzle game. When the games were over, the students were asked to say what happens next in three incomplete stories. Those who played Lemmings suggested endings in which the characters in the stories exhibited significantly fewer aggressive thoughts, responses and actions than the ones suggested by the Tetris players.
The upshot for both studies is that videogames are a powerful medium with the ability to shape behaviors. Imagine having employees play 'helping' games at the start of each shift, molding their behavior towards better service and support and at the same time boosting employee and customer morale.
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ENGAGE TREND REPORT 03.04.10
Is Accenture out of the Woods?
Accenture has dumped Tiger Woods. It is peeling his image off airport billboards and train platforms as fast as possible. It would appear that Mr. Woods is not the poster child of 'high performance' and 'excellence' that Accenture promoted.
A cynical ad agency exec we know says "They got their money's worth for years". For him, what Tiger Woods did or did not do isn't the point as much as the measurable value of the sponsorship. Is he right? What is Accenture's vulnerability to the allegations and the recent behavior of Tiger Woods? They built their brand on his shoulders. What does that say about their judgment? Did they vet him appropriately? Worse -- did they know he was the scoundrel he appears to be - perhaps condone it and align with him anyway? Will their clients continue to associate his face as the face of Accenture now that his mask has come off?
Either way, Accenture made four tactical errors in their use of Mr. Woods in their decade-long relationship with him.
1) Accenture made the brand building of Tiger Woods an equal part of their own brand building. When one of these two ships starts sinking, it could take the other down with it. Can Accenture sell 'high performance' solutions as its own brand and not as a jointly branded effort?
2) Accenture tied their brand to a living, young celebrity/personality. There's a reason that some firms use long-deceased icons like Abraham Lincoln or George Washington as brand identifiers. Other firms use animals like geckos or lions as brand identifiers for similar reasons.
3) Accenture failed to see how over-extended Tiger's brand is, endorsing products for Nike, Gatorade, Gillette, Buick, Titleist, American Express, Rolex, General Mills, etc. If Accenture and Mr. Woods really are high performance players, would an Accenture staffer who wore Nike shoes and a Rolex watch be an even higher performance systems integrator?
4) Accenture has overstayed its joint branding with Tiger by a few years. Had anyone asked "How long should this partnership last?" "When does the risk (and cost) start to outweigh the benefit of continuing this relationship?"
Tying a company's brand to a celebrity is always risky. Celebrities are human and they suffer the same foibles that you and I do. They get addicted to sex, gambling, food, drugs, etc. They can have bad parents, bad parenting skills, bad kids, etc. They get photographed in unflattering poses, places, etc. Some know no end to the depths of their human condition and get private, intimate movies of themselves sold on the Internet. Psychology Today succinctly opines on Tiger's actions as being relatively natural. Celebrity endorsements are ripe for trouble and few celebrity endorsements can last a long time.
When you sell soda pop it can be damaging. When you sell acumen and judgment its far worse. Accenture must learn to market and promote itself without the crutch of a celebrity. Accenture needs to make its solutions and abilities (not the golfing industry) sexy and exciting. In his blog, Brian Sommer (ex-Accenture) probes this topic in-depth. High performance is something that potentially exists in all of us. Maybe Accenture can focus more on how they draw that out and bring it to bear on client projects.
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ENGAGE TREND REPORT 11.04.09
FarmVille: All the Rage on Facebook
FarmVille has quickly become the most popular application in the history of Facebook. At high schools and colleges across the country, students are hard at work, tilling land and harvesting their virtual vegetables.
More than 62 million people have signed up to play the farming simulation since June. 22 million log on at least once a day.
FarmVille is the latest incarnation of Occupational Simulations that allow model business data to deliver engaging, fun learning experiences. These include fantasy "careers" like Urban Planner (Sim City), Waitress (Diner Dash), and Amusement Park Tycoon, and real careers like Soldier, Accountant and Investment Banker.
What's new is the integration directly into Facebook social networking. There are implications for both the game industry and for branded game outreach from corporate recruiters.
FarmVille starts off simply: You are given land and seeds that can be planted, harvested and sold for online coins. As you accrue currency, you can buy things, from basics like rice and pumpkin seeds to the truly superfluous, like elephants and hot-air balloons. Impatient players can use credit cards or a PayPal account to buy more money, although purists tend to frown on the practice. Crops must be harvested in a timely fashion, cows must be milked, and social obligations - like exchanging gifts and fertilizing your neighbor's pumpkins - must be met.
The game seems to have mesmerized people from all walks of life. Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, said he had seen the craze firsthand among his students.
"Just like Guitar Hero lets you feel a little like being a rock star - you get to pose and dance a little while you're doing it - with FarmVille there is a real sense that you're actually doing something that has a cause and effect," he said. "The method of dragging food out of the ground and getting something for it is really satisfying."
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ENGAGE TREND REPORT 10.05.09
Could you land Flight 1549?
Recent interviews with Capt. Chesley Sullenberger underscore the role that experience and training played in the miraculous river landing.
Capt. Sullenberger said he had his work cut out for him.
"I needed to touch down with the wings exactly level," he said. "I needed to touch down with the nose slightly up. I needed to touch down at...a descent rate that was survivable. And I needed to touch down just above our minimum flying speed but not below it. And I needed to make all these things happen simultaneously."
Not only did he bring 29 years of experience to the moment, but like all pilots he'd benefited from hundreds of hours of Flight Simulator training before ever touching a fighter plane or a commercial jet.
Try the landing yourself. See if your success increases with practice.
It's a tangible affirmation of the theory on performance excellence put forth in the Malcolm Gladwell book Outliers. The idea - that excellence at a complex task requires a critical, minimum level of practice - surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. Researchers have uncovered a magic number for true expertise: 10,000 hours.
Endless practice has elevated Cardinals receiver Larry Fitzgerald's "predictive control." to track the ball's flight pattern - to the point where he can catch it with his eyes closed.
The lessons for businesses? Training works. Practice makes perfect. Now, some companies are using develop "Flight Simulators" for their own workforces through game-based technology. A step by step "Sim" immerses employees in key scenarios, to experience culture, mission, values concepts and skills. The strategy: give them the confidence to man the controls - and be able do their jobs with their eyes closed before even touching the customer.
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ENGAGE TREND REPORT 09.21.09
Engagement at the Top
Employee engagement is falling faster among top executives than any other group.
Only 13% of senior executives (VP-level or higher) say they are "willing to go above and beyond what is expected of them" - a decline from 29% two years ago. In a December survey of 79,000 members of the Corporate Executive Board, 20% of all respondents said they were disengaged vs. 10% two years ago.
Companies tend to think that in the downturn, senior leaders are grateful just to have a job. In fact, valued players are increasingly likely to be looking around. Among high-potential employees, one out of four plans on quitting in the next 12 months.
"Executive engagement has been under pressure from ever-increasing demand and activism from shareholders, negative attention on executive pay and pay differentiation, and the pace of change, both within companies as well as the industries and geographies in which they operate," says Ray Baumruk of Hewitt Associates.
"As with employees at other levels, key drivers of engagement for executives are opportunities within the organization, the work they do, quality of life, total rewards and the people they work with," Baumruk says. "For upper-level employees however, factors such as status, the ability to influence decisions and outcomes, alignment of personal and company values, and staff support are additional drivers of engagement"
In a contrasting view, the CEB study reported that compensation-based incentives are three times as likely to improve engagement among senior executives as among the workforce as a whole.
Either way, companies that ignore critical concerns and dismiss fear and disengagement among their ranks are not going to be in a position to maximize and retain valuable human capital as business improves and hiring expands.
Companies that have done their best to keep senior management engaged during the downturn will be the quickest to prosper and retain these valued employees when the tide turns.
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ENGAGE TREND REPORT 09.07.09
Experiential Learning: Just What the Doctor Ordered
Two recent New York Times features highlight the importance that experiential learning plays in the medical community.
The first is a Short Video that looks at how medical interns learn how to deliver bad news through role-playing. First-year physicians practice giving diagnoses to actors with live observation with direct feedback as well as videotaping with playback and feedback. According to the report "the use of standardized patients and faculty observation of people doing actual clinical work is part of a growing movement in medical teaching." One of the greatest benefits of this type of teaching is the opportunity for instant feedback on communication skills from observing faculty members.
The second feature is an article about a program that is run by the University of New England called Learning By Living. The program offers medical students who are interested in geriatric medicine the opportunity to spend a two-week period experiencing life as a nursing home patient. Students are given a "diagnosis" of an ailment and expected to live as someone with the condition does. They keep a daily journal chronicling their experiences and, in most cases, debunking their preconceived notions about the patients and the professionals who care for them. The program goes beyond just an experiment, it also provides the student with a realistic job preview that can play a vital role in attracting the right types of people to the field of geriatric care and allow candidates to make informed decisions about their career goals.
For learning needs where a live experience is too difficult or expensive to coordinate, schools and corporations have been utilizing virtual simulated experiential learning programs. A recent Johnson & Johnson program teaches new nurses soft skills via a 3D virtual hospital environment. The nurses pilot an avatar through the halls and rooms of the hospital where they encounter characters that challenge them with real-time decision-making questions in areas such as conflict resolution, legal compliance, and agitated patients. The program allows new nurses to acquaint themselves with common issues that arise in the hospital in a risk-free environment.
The use of experiential learning for medical soft-skills training is a logical step for education. Experiential learning focuses on the learning and discovery process for the individual. For example, going to the zoo and learning through observation of and interaction with the animals allows a learner to make discoveries and experiments with knowledge firsthand, as opposed to reading about others' experiences in a book. For the adult learner especially, experience becomes a "living textbook" to which they can refer. As Aristotle once said, "For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them."
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ENGAGE TREND REPORT 08.24.09
Malcolm Gladwell Emphasizes Training: "Practice makes perfect"
Malcolm Gladwell's new book may make CEOs blink twice before slashing training budgets. Gladwell writes that in the midst of financial challenges it is more important than ever to focus on retaining and developing top talent. Talent should be "thought about as something a company develops, rather than something that is 'acquired'.
Yes, the human trait we commonly call "talent" or "ability" is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers - whether in memory or surgery, ballet, sales or computer programming - are nearly always made, not born.
Ability, according to Gladwell, is just one factor in success. He points to research that suggests that once you have enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. What's more, the people at the very top don't just work much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.
Practice does make perfect. The greatest athletes, entrepreneurs, musicians and scientists emerge only after spending at least three hours a day for a decade mastering their chosen field. This idea - that excellence at a complex task requires a critical, minimum level of practice - surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is a magic number for true expertise: 10,000 hours.
Fortune magazine's review of Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success highlights the importance of investing in communicating company mission, culture and skills. "Look around Wall Street, or what's left of it today," he says, "and you'll see lots and lots and lots of people from Goldman Sachs. That's not a coincidence. It's because they took their mission to invest in people seriously."
Gladwell argues that the state of today's economy is the perfect time to invest in talent development. "When it's easy to make money, you have no incentive to think about development of talent. Now, you're forced to."
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