The HR Cafe

Aging workforce: A strategy for improving employee productivity

Dear HR Executive,

Is your workforce getting older? Not surprising if it is. Lots of data shows that more employees are likely to work into what used to be considered retirement age.

To improve the productivity of an aging workforce Michael Silverstein, professor of occupational health at the University of Washington, suggest you target four key areas:

Work environment.  Consider tools from ergonomics and universal design – like bright task lighting, contrast controls on visual displays, nonskid surfaces, etc. – to improve the safety and efficiency of older workers.

Health promotion and disease prevention.  This is about more than reducing health care costs. It’s about encouraging older workers to do the things they specifically need to stay healthy and productive – like making sure to get flu shots, and regular vision and hearing exams.

Work-life balance within the organization.  Arrangements ranging from job-sharing to telecommuting to phased retirement fall into this category.

Work-life balance outside the organization.  Don’t forget the social support mechanisms in the community that older workers may want to take advantage of, such as public transportation or senior recreation services. You may want to help them leverage these services through focused employee benefits.

You may not be in a position to attack all four of these targets at once. But the more you achieve in at least one or two areas for improving employee productivity, the more your organization will benefit from your older employees’ skills and efforts.

Dave Clemens
Editor-in-Chief
The HR Café Newsletter

UPCOMING AUDIO CONFERENCE: Don't miss B21’s upcoming audio conference , "Change Management: How to Get Reluctant Employees to Align Behavior with Company Goals."   On Thursday August 6, our speaker Carol Hacker, will describe what it takes to become an effective “change agent,” – that is, a leader with the ability to get “buy-in” from employees, and align their behavior with the new processes required to make your company successful. Do that and you’ll increase the probability that instead of being hurt by change, your organization will embrace change and exploit it to achieve competitive advantage.

The blues may be sapping employee productivity more than you imagine

Dear HR Executive,

Would you believe a quarter of your employees are depressed – putting your company at risk of lost employee productivity in at least four different ways?

That’s a shocking figure, but it’s what researchers at the Integrated Benefits Institute (IBI) claim. Working with data from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Health and Work Performance questionnaire, IBI found that 28% of employees self-report as depressed.

Stark comparison
This compares with just 10% of the working population if you use only data from medical and disability claims.

True, most employees aren’t doctors, and their depression diagnosis might not agree with that of a medical professional. But the 28% figure does suggest that depression may be a much bigger roadblock for employee productivity than you knew.

IBI also estimated that of lost productivity associated with depression – whose money value has been put at $44 billion a year – 64% comes from presenteeism: employees who are at work but not performing adequately. Another 18% comes from sick days taken because of depression.

The other 18% is associated with short-term disability claims – 5% from STD claims with a diagnosis of depression and 13% from employees who go on STD and then get depressed.

Early treatment
What can HR and Benefits pros do to increase employee productivity? At least three things:

• Promote the idea that “real men” (and women) don’t suffer in silence with depression. WHO says it takes, on average, eight years from the onset of depression until it’s first treated. That’s too long, and productivity can suffer throughout.

• Make sure your health insurance plan covers mental health treatment.

• Consider some kind of Employee Assistance Program (EAP).

Dave Clemens
Editor-in-Chief
The HR Café Newsletter

UPCOMING AUDIO CONFERENCE: Don't miss B21’s upcoming audio conference , "Seven Steps to Help HR and Managers Create Bulletproof Documentation."  You hear it from your legal counsel all the time: document, document, document.  But, managers find it either too painful or frustrating to take the time to document or wind up creating documentation that is inadequate.  Not surprisingly, poor documentation can create as much liability as having no documentation at all. On Wednesday July 29, our speaker Allison West, Esq., SPHR, will give participants an in-depth overview of the dos and don’ts of documentation and lay out seven steps to creating “bulletproof” documentation.

The effects of sleep deprivation on job performance

Dear HR Executive:

You don’t want people sleeping on the job, naturally. But you do want people to sleep well off the job.

That’s because the effects of sleep deprivation can hurt your bottom line. Lack of sleep causes a clear decline in attention, resulting in increased safety risks and lower productivity.

These points emerge from a new study on the effects of sleep deprivation from Michigan State University. Using DOL data, researchers looked at the sleep-deprivation effects on workers of the “spring forward” change from standard time to daylight time. They found that workers lost an average of 40 minutes of sleep, with the result that workplace injuries rose 6%. 

The research will be reported in the September issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology.

The researchers also generalized their conclusions to any kind of sleep deprivation, whether caused by time changes or something else. “Lost sleep causes attention levels to drop off,” they said.

Are your people suffering from the effects of sleep deprivation? Is their rest being damaged by increased job pressure, economic stress and family responsibilities? If you think this is a problem, you might consider adding sleep therapy to your wellness program.

Dave Clemens
Editor
HR Café Newsletter

UPCOMING AUDIO CONFERENCE: Don't miss B21’s upcoming audio conference , "Goal-Setting for Supervisors: Why It's the Key to Getting Results, and How to Do It Right."  On Wednesday, July 15, our speaker, Gary Ryan Blair will challenge you to rethink the way you go about setting, measuring, obtaining buy in, and achieving your organizational goals. Blair will focus on specific strategies to maximize your results with a fast-moving series of methods, ideas and techniques each participant can apply in every area of life and work. Learn the keys to personal effectiveness, maximum achievement and unlimited success in your field.

Surviving a layoff: How to stay lean but not mean

Dear HR Executive,

After surviving a layoff, do your remaining employees have the skills to work effectively in a leaner organization?

It’s a reasonable question, given the number of workplaces that have experienced layoffs in recent months. And the answer, for many organizations, appears to be “not really.”

That’s what emerges from a new CareerBuilder survey of 4,435 workers across the country. Fully 47% of them said new duties had been laid on them because of a layoff, and 37% said their workload had doubled as they tried to cope with tasks previously done by two people.

Not surprisingly, employees are feeling they have work more hours to get their tasks done. Some 34% of workers who survived a layoff said they’re spending more time at the office. And some are taking it to extremes – 17% are working 10 hours a day and more, while 22% are working more weekends.

As a result of all this, almost one-third of those employees surviving a layoff feel burnt out.

HR’s role
What can HR do about all this? After all, you can’t unilaterally reduce the workload or tell top management to back off goals that may entail the organization’s very survival.

What you can do, though, is help both employees and line managers build the flexibility and negotiating skills of those employees who survive a layoff.  Those skills are necessary to get through this rough patch with mental and physical health intact – and still complete the work that needs to get done.

Remember, employees and managers may have all the good will in the world about meeting increased job demands, but it won’t help if they don’t know how to organize their response to these demands.

Coping techniques
Here are three techniques to help employees and managers cope:

• Managers mustn’t expect employees to do everything at once, and employees mustn’t try. Employees shouldn’t overpromise and managers should be aware of when they may be doing so. If an employee’s task list is growing out of control, she needs to feel comfortable asking the manager to help identify the most important tasks and establish reasonable timelines.
• Employees and managers need to reserve time to “sharpen the saw.” Working without respite is a false economy – the person’s efficiency will eventually suffer.  Managers should be encouraging, not discouraging, employees from taking full meal breaks, tension-defusing walks and even personal days when the job appears just too daunting.
• Employees and managers shouldn’t be in touch all the time. With the proliferation of electronic devices like laptop computers, Blackberries, I-pods, and the like, employees too easily overdose on contact with the base. Managers who send midnight e-mails contribute to a feeling of paranoia, leading employees to conclude that if they’re not in touch 24/7, they’re not doing their duty. Instead, managers can explicitly state that communication ends with the work day except for emergencies.

To sum up: You can’t make the demands of this challenging period go away. But you can help your people meet them in a way that won’t promote burnout and its accompanying bitterness and alienation.

We’d love to hear what some of you are already doing along these lines, and we hope that if you’ve done something that works, you’ll post a comment explaining what it is.

Dave Clemens
Editor-in-chief
The HR Café Newsletter

UPCOMING AUDIO CONFERENCE: Don't miss B21’s upcoming audio conference , "Measuring Employee Attitudes: Find Out What Employees Really Think and Manage by Fact."  On Thursday, June 25, our speaker, Hay Group Insight senior consultant Mark Royal, will discuss best practices for designing successful survey systems and using survey results to drive organizational improvements. He will share examples of companies that have used employee surveys strategically to attract and retain talent, improve operating efficiency, manage change more effectively, enhance customer satisfaction, and boost bottom-line performance.

Employee productivity: Web surfers get more done, study says

Dear HR Executive:

You’ve no doubt seen reports on how Web surfing at work is killing employee productivity. When people spend time checking their favorite sites on company time, business results have to suffer, right?

Not so, says researchers at the University of Melbourne. Surfing the net at work for pleasure actually increases concentration levels and helps improve employee productivity, according to a new study.

'Reasonable' Web surfing boosts employee productivity

Dr. Brent Coker, from the Department of Management and Marketing, says that workers who engage in ‘Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing’ (WILB) are more productive than those who don’t.

“People who do surf the Internet for fun at work -- within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office -- are more productive by about 9% than those who don’t,” he says. “Firms spend millions on software to block their employees from watching videos on YouTube, using social networking sites like Facebook or shopping online under the pretense that it costs millions in lost productivity.”
 
According to the study of 300 workers, 70% of people who use the Internet at work engage in WILB. Among the most popular WILB activities are searching for information about products, reading online news sites. Playing online games was the fifth most popular, while watching YouTube movies was seventh.

The attraction of WILB, according to Dr. Coker, can be attributed to people’s imperfect concentration. “People need to zone out for a bit to get back their concentration. Think back to when you were in class listening to a lecture – after about 20 minutes your concentration probably went right down, yet after a break your concentration was restored.” Coker says that short Web breaks help the mind rest itself, boosting employee productivity.

Interested in more details? You can download an interview with the researchers at media.marcom.unimelb.edu.au/pub/newsroom/Coker/cokerb_mr_20090401.mp3

Michael Boyette
Editor, HR Cafe Training Center

UPCOMING AUDIO CONFERENCE: Don't miss B21’s upcoming audio conference, "Personal Accountability: How Supervisors Can Get Workers to “Own” Their Jobs and Their Results." Why are some supervisors better than others at achieving goals? They all have the same motivational tools at their disposal: They can give employees raises, promotions and nonmonetary rewards when deserved. They can all use the performance review process to provide positive feedback and fire people up. But why do the best managers dramatically outperform the rest? What’s their secret? Two words – personal accountability.  Great supervisors have a unique talent for tapping in to an employee’s sense of personal accountability to achieve goals.  On Thursday, April 9, our speaker, Valerie Grubb, will lay out six steps successful supervisors can use to instill personal accountability in their direct reports.

Employee motivation: Trailing by a point

Dear HR Executive,

You and your line managers are always looking for that extra edge to boost performance.

A new study of college basketball games, of all things, provides some insight into how you can best motivate your people to push themselves harder.

Comebacks
The study, published by professors at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, found that teams trailing by a small margin -- one or two points -- at halftime were surprisingly likely to win the game.

In fact, the slightly trailing team won 51.3% of the time, whereas with other performance influences factored out they should have won only 46% of the games.

'We're close'
What's this mean for your motivational efforts? A couple of things, according to the Wharton profs.

• First, it may help to tell your people that you're slightly behind a selected competitor in some aspect of business -- sales, customer service, production efficiency, whatever you want to emphasize. This leads people to exert more effort -- and is more effective than telling them they're slightly ahead, dead even with the competition, or way behind.
• Second, you can use the research to help you set goals, personal and/or organizational, for your employees. The idea is that straining to reach overly ambitious goals -- the mental equivalent of being way behind at halftime -- actually can demotivate people. Trying for realistic, close-at-hand objectives, though -- the equivalent of being a point or two behind -- tends to being out their best.

You can see more on the Wharton study here.

Dave Clemens
Editor-in-Chief
The HR Cafe Newsletter 

UPCOMING AUDIO CONFERENCE: Don't miss B21’s upcoming audio conference, "Advanced Morale Boosting: How to Keep Employees Up when Everything Else is Down"   On Tuesday, April 7, our speaker, Valerie Grubb, will explain why line managers must understand THEIR critical role. They’re in a better position than anyone at the company to pick up on gossip and misinformation that fuels fears, poisons morale and hurts productivity. And they’re well-positioned to apply  “Advanced morale boosting” skills that can keep your workforce engaged, productive and upbeat even in bad times.  She will lay out the five most common mistakes companies make that kill employee morale in difficult financial times. And will give you a blueprint for how to realign employees and get them back on track to focusing on company goals.

Boost employee morale: one simple step you can take today

Dear HR Executive:

A new survey from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) suggests that workers are spending a good part of their time worrying about their jobs instead of doing them – and managers may be promoting those fears unintentionally.

Worry is one of the hidden costs of this recession. Companies are already struggling to get more work done with fewer people. Now, it turns out, workers are spending up to three hours a day worrying about work, according to a telephone survey of approximately 1,000 U.S. workers commissioned by the firm Lynn Taylor Consulting.

Open doors improve employee morale
Sure, there’s plenty to worry about. But the study found that companies may be unintentionally sending out signals that are pushing employees to the brink.

In fact, there’s one thing you can recommend to reduce worker anxiety and improve employee morale right now: Urge managers to keep the office doors open.

In the survey, 76 percent of workers said that when they see closed doors at work, they think one thing: Layoffs.

“In today’s economic environment, employees are searching for every clue to determine their job fate,” said Lynn Taylor, a nationally known expert and author on workplace issues. “Too often, not enough direct input is given to employees, and so nonverbal cues are heavily relied upon. Managers working behind closed doors may be shutting out more than noise—they may be shutting down productivity.”

Michael Boyette
Editor, HR Café Training Center

UPCOMING AUDIO CONFERENCE: Don't miss B21’s upcoming audio conference, "Advanced Morale Boosting: How to Keep Employees Up when Everything Else is Down"   On Tuesday, April 7, our speaker, Valerie Grubb, will explain why line managers must understand THEIR critical role. They’re in a better position than anyone at the company to pick up on gossip and misinformation that fuels fears, poisons morale and hurts productivity. And they’re well-positioned to apply  “Advanced morale boosting” skills that can keep your workforce engaged, productive and upbeat even in bad times.  She will lay out the five most common mistakes companies make that kill employee morale in difficult financial times. And will give you a blueprint for how to realign employees and get them back on track to focusing on company goals.

Employee responsibility (or lack thereof): It’s driving co-workers crazy

What’s the thing that gets employees most angry and frustrated at work? Lousy pay? Long hours?

Nope. A new Australian study found that workers’ number-one irritant is lack of employee responsibility among their co-workers. Specifically, they say lazy and underperforming colleagues drive them nuts.
 
And all those issues that managers worry about? Not such a big deal. Workers ranked compensation 32nd on their list of concerns. Work/life balance didn’t make the top 50.

Undoubtedly things are different Down Under.  But perhaps not so different. Take a look at the top 10 gripes and see if any ring true for your organization: 

• Lazy and underperforming co-workers
• Being unappreciated and unrecognized
• Communication issues
• Lack of accountability and employee responsibility
• Negativity in the workplace
• Customers
• Annoying and inconsiderate co-workers
• Lack of teamwork
• Gossip and backstabbing
• Unrealistic deadlines and time restrictions

These issues touch on a range of HR issues – productivity, retention, recruitment, communication.  But they suggest that we may not be focusing on the right priorities to keep employees motivated and productive.

Here are some specific implications to consider:

First, don’t underestimate the impact of keeping marginal workers on the payroll. It’s easy to assume that firings and layoffs hurt the morale of workers left behind. Cutting underperformers loose may actually improve morale.

Second, take a hard look at accountabilities. Workers cited “lack of accountability” as a big turnoff. It’s not clear from this survey whether they meant their own accountabilities or their colleagues’. Either way, they’re seeking clarity. Consider whether job descriptions and performance evaluations are giving people the specific feedback they’re craving.  

Perhaps most important, consider what your organization is doing to foster respect and cooperation in the workplace. These kinds of initiatives sometimes earn HR a bad rap from hard-nosed line managers who think they’re too touchy-feely. But if this survey is any indication, these “soft” issues are taking a big toll on productivity and morale.

Michael Boyette
Editor, HR Café Training Center 

UPCOMING AUDIO CONFERENCE: Don't miss B21’s upcoming audio conference, "Personal Accountability: How Supervisors Can Get Workers to “Own” Their Jobs and Their Results"  On Thursday, April 9, our speaker, Valerie Grubb, will show you why some supervisors are better than others at achieving goals? They all have the same motivational tools at their disposal: They can give employees raises, promotions and nonmonetary rewards when deserved. They can all use the performance review process to provide positive feedback and fire people up. But why do the best managers dramatically outperform the rest? What’s their secret? Two words – personal accountability. 

Forced ranking

Dear HR Executive:

How much do you really know about forced ranking? Most of us know it's a performance evaluation system that:

• Is often maligned
• Is used by General Electric, one of the most successful and admired companies in the world
• Assesses employee performance relative to peers rather than pre-determined goals
• Identifies three tiers of employees:
  
  1. The top 20%, who must be fawned over;
  2. The next 70% of middle performers, who should be encouraged and retained; and
  3. The bottom 10%, who must be fired

That last aspect of FR is very controversial. All managers at GE, for example, must fire 10% of their people in any given year. Many find that too brutal.

Former GE chief Jack Welch is obviously a big believer in forced ranking, and we recently published a short article in our newsletter Human Resources 21 that sums up why he thinks it's such a good idea. Please read the article, but before you do, please take just a moment to answer a quick survey on forced ranking. I'll report our findings next week.

Here's the article, about a Jack Welch event at Wharton. He has a particularly interesting perspective on managers who hit their numbers but don't share the company's values. Read on!

The value of candor

Too many managers avoid making hard choices and hurt not only their companies, but in the long run the employees they are trying to protect.

That candid advice came from Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, at a recent roundtable event sponsored by The Wharton School.

“I would call lack of candor the biggest dirty little secret in business,” Welch said. “It blocks smart ideas, fast action and good people contributing all the stuff they’ve got.”

Lack of candor is particularly heinous, he says, when it stops supervisors from providing accurate feedback to their subordinates in a misguided effort to be “nice to them.”

‘Rank and yank’
At GE, managers adhere to a “rank & yank” philosophy – culling the bottom 10% of the workforce every year. In school, everyone gets grades and ranked, some flunk or drop out. “Why do we only give grades to kids and not to adults?” Welch asked, noting that, in order to be fair, such a system must be built on candor.

Employees must receive frank, comprehensive and regular performance reviews, he said. That way people will know where they stand, and what is expected of them.

Culture matters, too
Building a strong culture and developing leaders are key roles for any C-level executive, Welch said.
He divides managers into distinct groups. Some show they have the right values and meet their profit goals. Some do neither and get fired. Some have the right values but miss their numbers. They get a second chance.

But perhaps the most corrosive managers are those who make their goals but don’t share the values. Maybe they are loudmouths in a culture that prizes collegiality. “Those are the ones who kill companies,” Welch said.

Although it’s tough, bosses need to remove them because failing to do so can corrode a company’s culture. “In the long run, that’s worse than seeing the results of one division drop,” said Welch.
Source: knowledge@wharton.

Stephen Meyer
Publisher

RISK-FREE TRIAL -- ONLINE TRAINING LIBRARY FOR HR AND MANAGERS: Want to learn about an amazingly effective and affordable way to train yourself, your HR staff and your managers and supervisors? Sign up for a risk-free trial to the HR Cafe Training Center Online. It's a powerful resource that allows HR executives to deploy high-impact training modules effortlessly throughout their organizations. Want to see what it's about before you sign up for a trial? Check out just one program from the huge library of content in the HR Cafe. It's a six-minute "Quick Take" training module called "Why 95% of Training Doesn't Stick."

Don’t let bad apples spread their rot

Dear HR Executive:

Fifteen years ago I made the worst management mistake of my career.

I hired a guy to join my marketing department and soon discovered that I’d made a bad decision. He had the background and skills that the team needed, but he was a troublemaker. Within weeks of his start date it became clear that he was a malcontent. He openly discussed how much he was getting paid (and how unhappy he was about it), and told anyone who would listen that the company was making a huge profit without rewarding employees -- which, for the record, wasn’t the case.

Being an eager young manager, I was determined to salvage my new hire. Maybe I saw some potential in the guy … or maybe I just didn’t want to admit I’d made a bad hire. Whatever the reason, I didn’t fire him. That was the real mistake.

Six months later my “project employee” was still toxic and the poisonous attitude was beginning to spread. I finally stepped up and got rid of him.

Unfortunately, the damage was done. Productivity was down, I’d wasted six months and the team lost respect for me because I let the problem fester. I learned the hard way that you need to remove bad apples from the barrel as soon as you find them.

Trying to save an employee may be worth it at times … but only up to a certain point. Eventually, you have to move on.

I hope this life-lesson and the ideas in the following article will help you prevent toxic employees from infecting your workplace.

Brian McCallum
VP of Marketing

Don’t let bad apples poison workplace morale
How to keep them from dragging everybody down

You did the whole due diligence bit – verified the resume, made a background check, called the references. And yet, six months later, the person turns out to be a bad apple, and is rotting away everybody’s morale and performance.

Sound like an all-too-familiar scenario? 

If so, consider these two simple rules: 1) Just don’t hire bad apples. (Let’s call them “spoilers,” because that’s what they do.) 2) If you already have spoilers in the organization, neutralize them. They’re rarely worth it, no matter what exceptional talents they possess.

How can you go about this? We’ll make some suggestions in a minute. But first let’s review how spoilers poison the well, and how serious this can be.

New research from the University of Washington Business School points out that bad apples can destroy a team or an entire office.

Example: A study of 50 manufacturing teams found that just one disagreeable or irresponsible member among as many as 15 teammates wrecked communication and cooperation.

The power of toxic attitudes
The worst part was, putting good people in with the bad apples didn’t dilute the toxin. Instead, the poison affected the good people. So spoiling power appears, unfortunately, to exceed that of consideration and respect.

One of three things tends to happen when spoilers are dropped into a previously functional environment, the U of W study concluded. These are:

• The group tries to get the spoiler to change. This may work occasionally, but don’t count on it.
• The group rejects the spoiler. People may come to you and say, “Please get this person out of here.” But then where do you put him?
• The group lapses into defensiveness. This scenario is the most common. The team or office falls into withdrawal, anger and/or anxiety. Productivity plummets. closing the door

What’s the cure? Spoilers aren’t going to disappear. When they come knocking for a job, they don’t wear a sign on their chest. Task one is making sure they don’t get in the door. Here are guidelines to detect and avoid bringing spoilers into your workforce:

• Check for warning signs. If you don’t already administer personality tests to job applicants, think about starting. Focus on measures of agreeableness, emotional stability and conscientiousness. 
• Doubt the interview. Sure, you have to interview candidates, and we don’t suggest you stop. But interviews are notoriously bad at teasing out real personality traits the candidate is trying to hide. Don’t let the “feel” of an interview influence you too much.
• Dig behind the references. This may seem like a lot of work. But if you can find people who know the applicant professionally, and promise them confidentiality, you’ll learn more than hand-picked references will tell you. 
• Round up the usual suspects. The best way to avoid hiring a spoiler is to rehire someone you know isn’t! Keep tabs on ex-employees who left on good terms. They may want to come back.

Neutralize ’em
OK, but what if you, or your predecessor, forgot your string of garlic and opened the door to Dracula? Short of termination, you can:

• Isolate the spoiler. You may have jobs where the person works alone or has few contacts with others.
• Put the spoiler with like-minded people. God forbid, you may have a department known for its crotchetiness. Throw the person in there. 

A final word: What if, in fending off spoilers who happen to be in a protected class, you appear to be discriminating? This is where the job description comes in. Among the qualifications, include cooperativeness, ability to work in a team and a constructive, respectful attitude.

RISK-FREE TRIAL -- ONLINE TRAINING LIBRARY FOR HR AND MANAGERS: Want to learn about an amazingly effective and affordable way to train yourself, your HR staff and your managers and supervisors? Sign up for a risk-free trial to the HR Cafe Training Center Online. It's a powerful resource that allows HR executives to deploy high-impact training modules effortlessly throughout their organizations. Want to see what it's about before you sign up for a trial? Check out just one program from the huge library of content in the HR Cafe. It's a six-minute "Quick Take" training module called "Why 95% of Training Doesn't Stick."