Not Going Over the Waterfall After All?

[Cartoon courtesy of Grantland Cartoons]

We're settled in our barrels and ready to accept our doom, and, as luck would have it,  the waterfall we've been riding towards has morphed into a placid lake with the sun glinting off it. Could it be true?  It's too soon to tell whether the waterfall our economy has turned into is in the process of smoothing out into a peaceful current fit for a pleasant ride. But in the event this miracle has occurred, is your company ready for life outside the-ready-for-a-plummet barrel?

First, many of you will notice a mass exodus of employees you've decided to ask to do everything you've been afraid to ask them until they were an audience held captive by a deathly economy. With new opportunities available, it's payback time. That means leaving with little-to-no notice, and leaving your managers with mountains of unfinished tasks. Since the economic turnaround is probably at least a few months away, it might be a good idea to start your retention efforts now. You still can't afford to pay them as much as you should, but is there anything else you can do to make work life more rewarding?  Are they still doing what you hired them to do, or, due to the economy, does their work role now include five to nine to fifteen additional tasks they have no affinity for?  With summer approaching, how about recruiting a team of interns to take some of the burden off of them?  If your company is based near a college, you could even consider making an intern program a permanent part of your workforce management. To make it the most worthwhile, arrange for placements to be non-paying, and in exchange for academic credit. In addition to being more financially prudent for your company this way, establishing a relationship with colleges is good public relations for your company and provides a vibrant pool of future new hires.

What are your plans for the summer?  We hear your CEO is off to Tuscany (the tortuous million dollar pay cut notwithstanding, he still has another multimillion to fall back on), and several of your chief so-and-so's are heading to the South of France and the Greek Isles. For some reason they've decided not to finance vacations for staff, but how about getting out a few hours early on Fridays between Memorial Day and Labor Day?  Do you already offer summer hours?  If you don't, it's time to get with the (lazy people's) program. Times are tough, but I'm betting your company won't sink or float dependent on whether workers are at the office until 5 p.m. versus 3 p.m. on Fridays for a few months.

Do you have any plans for fun surprises to go along with the return of the sun?  Not to sound too primordial, but after a literally and figuratively dark winter, an ice cream social outside might be in order, an old fashioned potluck picnic (at little to no expense to your company), or maybe even a cocktail party outside at an inexpensive location or a pavilion at a public park. If you're smart, you'll find a few low-cost outdoor activities you can tie to leadership development or team building. There are outdoor charities that your workforce can participate in together like beach cleanups and building houses for Habitat for Humanity, but there also are activities you can generate yourself. For an especially low maintenance approach, you could give your instructors the option of holding live classes at an outdoor location anywhere within a 15-minute drive from the office, including the beach. There will be (or should be) an assessment at the end so it's not like learners can get away with not paying attention, no matter who is walking by in a Speedo.

One of the best brain exercises is to teach another person a skill. To exercise your learners' intellects, and help them get to know their co-workers a little better, ask them to pick an outdoor skill, from bike riding to wind surfing, to teach a colleague. They have all summer to do so to each—both teacher and learner—earn an extra vacation day. They just have to show evidence that the lesson took place such as photos or a receipt of some kind.

On a more serious note, what professional skills can one worker teach another as a desirable development opportunity?  Do some of your employees speak Spanish while others wish they did?  Could you offer bilingual workers a chance to earn a few days of extra vacation time or a gift certificate or two by teaching their colleagues this skill?  What other skills do some of your workers know and others lack, but would like to learn to expand their career opportunities?  I bet some of your employees are great amateur Website developers and computer graphic artists. Maybe some of them would like to sign up for a brief stint as teachers. In addition to whatever material compensation they are provided with, the biggest lure will be an agreement to add their participation as teachers in this program to their official record with your company, as an achievement that will be looked on favorably for future advancement and as an experience they can put on their resume.

What else are you doing to keep employees even if (or when) the waterfall disappears?  If you don't have any fallback plan I suppose you'll have to come up with ways to keep them desperate. I guess you could continuously ask them to take pay cuts until they're so in need of regular pay that when you finally offer them a regular paycheck (following waterfall disappearance), they jump at the chance.

One of the dark things about this financial calamity, and all that your workers have endured, is it won't take much for professional offers to seem like found gold after this. "You mean I, too, can work for a company where hard work is rewarded with higher pay and promotions?  No kidding!" you may hear some of your workers remark to themselves when other opportunities open up.

Be conscious of what you're offering employees, both in a time of cornered economic desperation and in a time of financial abundance. However many dollars you can provide them with, you never want to come across or be remembered as a corporate workforce snake oil representative.

If you're not careful, not only will they leave your employ before you're ready. Worse yet, they may have a surprise or two for you at your next bonding event. I think somebody has just volunteered you as the target of a pie throwing contest.

You've prepared your company for the worst. But what about preparations for a better-than-expected outcome to these financial straits? What are you doing as workforce managers to ensure your company cashes in on the eventual economic recovery?

I Don't Want To Talk About It

[Cartoon courtesy of Grantland Cartoons]

The most crucial conversations in the workplace are those you're not allowed to have because it would be impolitic.

For instance, have you ever had a person thrust on you via unwelcome introduction into your work group?  Sometimes a boss will allow a job candidate's soon-to-be colleagues to interview him or her prior to making the new hire. Other times the new co-worker becomes part of the team through internal consolidation. One division gets folded into another, say, or company executives decide to combine two projects into one.

You—and those of your workforce who have experienced a similar fate—would love to tell their bosses everything they loathe about their new co-worker, but know speaking up wouldn't be a wise move. The manager doesn't sit side-by-side with the new team member, and so can't relate to the daily annoyances of this person. More importantly, speaking up and complaining about a colleague the boss hasn't yet been offended by reflects badly on the complainer, who comes across as petty and a poor "team player."  Unless you have an urgent issue to bring to the boss's attention, such as errors cropping up in the new employee's work that will get the company in trouble, you're better off letting the boss find out for her or himself the grating qualities you've noticed. How do you put into words, without sounding like a whiner, the new colleague's tendency to let others carry the burden of the workload, his tendency to do the least work possible, and his seeming professional disengagement?  Unless there is a concrete slip-up you can point to, it won't be taken seriously, no matter how aggravating it is to work alongside.

With these nebulous, no-smoking-gun workplace issues in mind, I propose an any-time-of-year Secret Santa grab bag of whining. It would be anonymous, a great catharsis, and what a way to let the boss know about all the stuff that gets on yours, or your workforce's nerves, but can't be explained face-to-face without office political repercussions for the explainer!  Best of all, it'll make better managers for the benefit of your company. The more information—substantive or not—supervisors have about those they manage, the better off they'll be. If a subordinate isn't liked by his or her peers, but none of those peers feels comfortable speaking up about it, it's good for the boss to know that. Not being likable in the workplace is a big deal in terms of promotion. Why promote a competent, but widely disliked, subordinate?  Also, do you want this unlikable person interacting with your customers? To be fair, keep him or her on board, doing the tasks he or she has proven competent at, but otherwise limit this employee's trajectory at your company.

In addition, there is the efficiency of your workforce to consider. It isn't fair to punish an employee because nobody can stand his passive, insecure nature that causes him to shy away from volunteering for assignments, but it's good information to have when formulating that employee's development plan. He has confidence issues that need to be addressed through assignments that force him to reach outside his "comfort (or lazy) zone," and if his hesitancy to step up without being pulled is nothing more than a result of a do-nothing nature, that's good to know, too. Perhaps raises and rewards would best be distributed in ways that don't benefit this person who hasn't yet gotten the company into trouble, but also isn't pleasing his peers.

Of course there also are the interpersonal issues affecting productivity that an employee feels uncomfortable telling the boss about because it would make them sound like a goody two shoes snitch. How many of us have sat through hours of listening to a co-worker's irritating personal conversation on the phone with a spouse or child?  What if it happens at least a few times a week?  The offending employee is meeting her work obligations but may be making it harder for her colleagues to do the same.

The worst is the co-worker who uses child care requirements as an excuse to come late and leave early every day. Nobody doubts the existence of this child or the fact that he or she can't just be dropped off at the curb every morning to be guarded until 5 p.m. by the neighborhood stray cat, but couldn't this colleague try a little harder to be at the office during the same time frame as the rest of his or her work group? Maybe he or she, for instance, needs to find a daycare center with a more flexible schedule, or maybe he or she needs to put an ad on Craig's List for a relatively low-cost babysitter who can stay with the child all day in place of costly daycare. A cruel measure to ask an employee to take, but sometimes a necessity if the late arrival/early departures schedule is aggravating peers who routinely get to the office early and stay late. I suppose in that situation a manager could be trained to make it fair by allowing non-child-possessing workers to use their pets or imaginary children as excuses. "Oh, I'd love to stay late tonight, and see how it's important given the deadline we're up against, but unfortunately my imaginary pre-adolescent needs to go to the orthodontist to get her braces rewired."  Or there's this one: "Well, it's a shame because you know how I love staying late to help my peers, but fluffy needs to be picked up from claw grooming."

Nobody wants to be the office Scrooge who begrudges "family friendly" colleagues time to take care of their personal business, but—just query your company's childless employees—the "needs" of these co-workers can be such an annoyance it becomes a distraction and de-motivator.

Similarly, how do you have a "crucial conversation" about the obsessive compulsive holistic over-eater you sit next to who appears to come to the office for the sole purpose of munching all day on "healthy snacks?"  The first agenda of their day is settling down with their breakfast of yogurt and mixed berries, an hour later they're on to pretzels, another hour after that they're into tofu, and another hour after that, wouldn't you know it, it's time for a big, smelly (though healthy) salad for lunch. It makes you long for the days when people just ate three large, filling meals (only one of which occurred at the office) a day.  Who wants to complain about the eating habits of a co-worker to the boss?  But isn't it just a little grating to listen (and smell) a person eating from the moment he arrives at work to the minute he leaves early to pick up the child from daycare?

The thing about the workplace's crucial conversations is the most crucial ones that impact day-to-day tolerance (and maybe even enjoyment) of the workplace aren't about do-or-die financial emergencies; they're about petty nonsense that's not so petty, actually, because it interferes with the engagement and productivity of your workforce. Is there room in your office culture for conversations about both revenue-producing market strategy and the lazy and the piggish?

How do you create opportunities for employees to discuss openly, or via anonymous means, issues large and small in your workplace?

Wishing You Were Only Temporary

[Cartoon courtesy of Grantland Cartoons]

It's hard knowing who to hire full-time, and who to invest in only on a temporary basis, but I have some ideas.

IT people, the ones you call when close to tears (the ones who also should be trained as mental health therapists), often are used on a temporary basis as outsourced "employees."  Well, as we all know, that's a terrible idea!  Why is it not a good idea to have a few IT workers on staff on every floor of a large company, who can be called directly with urgent technological (and a few mental) breakdowns?  They should be kind, patient, and should be as proficient with the English language as they are with technology. That sounds like the kind of list the children in Mary Poppins made for their ideal nanny, and I wish I could do the same with a handy in-house IT man or woman miraculously materializing tomorrow morning. They don't even have to fly via umbrella. Just understanding both computers and English would be a mystical feat.

Some companies offer an unbalanced hybrid model for IT, with about three in-house IT workers for every 500 employees. To make matters worse, employees aren't allowed to call these few people directly with "issues," but instead must route calls through an IT "solutions" center in India. No one's allowed to take the elevator up a few floors to visit the IT specialists in person because, since they're only a team of three, they quickly would become overwhelmed by the requests for emergency IT aid. So, they need the "solutions" team to solve issues over the phone, and then prepare a list of those who require in-person assistance. It seems logical, though not efficient, and aggravating-inducing at time your employees can't afford to waste aggravation on a malfunctioning computer.

Thus, IT workers are a prime example of who not to outsource or skimp on. Logic dictates the more urgently you need a particular job role, and the more demanding that job role is when it's optimally executed (speaks English, is patient and kind, and understands computers and how to fix them), the more important it is your company fill that role (and keep) yourselves through a selective recruiting (and retention) process.

Those you can outsource are those nobody except a select circle (and maybe not even them) has any use for. I'm wondering, can we outsource the CEO and executive suite?  I'm not being facetious, I'm really wondering. Most employees at your company don't see these individuals on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis, and once the orders (or "initiatives") have been communicated, what to do they do?  They go to meetings, but couldn't your outsourced CEO go to meetings for you?  Companies worry about outsourcing IT because internal IT is too expensive to keep on staff. With that logic in mind, aren't CEOs and top-level executives at large companies also too expensive?  Who's more expensive to keep on staff, an IT worker who makes $60,000 or less a year, or a CEO who's raking in $10 million or more?  And who provides the most bang for the company's buck?  The classic wisdom is the CEO and high-level executives, but is that really so?

Strategy is important, but what's more important is the day-to-day delivery of urgently needed products and services. It's only when your products and services aren't urgently needed that the focus turns to strategy. We've all been conditioned to believe without reconsidering it that strategy is a must, but is it?  What would a company be like with no "high-level strategy?"  A company with a winning business proposition actually doesn't need one. It just needs involved-in-the-execution-of-daily-minutia managers and subordinates to deliver what buyers or clients are demanding on a day-to-day basis. You might plan a few months in advance, but in this turbulent economy, who, in reality, knows what will be wanted or needed a year from now?  Instead of planning for the "big picture," a company with no more than an outsourced CEO, or no CEO at all, could focus on day-to-day survival, or the immediate, most wanted requests of those you serve. What could be more useful in a do-or-die economy?

If the idea of an "outsourced" CEO is too outlandish, consider the possibility of a world where there are no multimillion or billion-dollar in-house CEOs but third-party consultants who set the strategy for the business (for a competitive, though not onerous, fee) and then quietly go away before becoming a nuisance or dappling in corruption. Not a bad idea in an era when too many CEOs and executive boards have conducted business in ways their employees and customers wouldn't approve of. When times are hard, who can afford to keep strategic loafers on the payroll?

Other than CEOs, think of all the people you see in your office every day who you wish were only temporary. Maybe there could be a program for managers to sign up unpleasant, though, efficient workers for the Temporary Plan rather than firing them. Or does it still count as firing if you ask an employee if they would be interested in transitioning from permanent to long-term temporary status?  That way you benefit from their efficiency while not having to absorb the idea that these awful people are never going away. You could, of course, just put efficient-though-unpleasant workers on an out-of-the-office-please-don't come near-anytime-soon "workforce mobility" plan, but it's better to also not have to think of these people as permanent fixtures in your life.

Then, of course, there are those your company could hire with dollars saved by an outsourced CEO and executive suite. How about an in-house janitorial staff that everyone could get to know and treat more kindly, and what about taking some of the newly found cash to invest in a pastry and snack cart that would be rolled up and down the cubicle aisles every afternoon at 3 p.m. with complementary refreshments?  Does it sound wasteful?  It's actually not because, as is universally-acknowledged, but unbelieved, happy, appreciated workers are more productive.

When considering the question of who to keep full-time and who to outsource or keep on a contingent basis, think first about who makes your workforce happiest. If it's been a while (or never) since high-level strategy made their lives happier and more useful to you and your customers, it may be time to reconsider your staffing priorities.

I believe I speak for many in your workforce when I say I'll take a French pastry chef over a CEO any day.

How does your company determine its staffing needs?  Are the right people permanent?  Are there people who are permanent whom you wish were temporary?

My Employee, My Cheese-Less Mouse

[Courtesy of Grantland Cartoons]

As readers of my e-newsletter, Inside Training, will note, there's apparently a "Cold War for Talent" brewing. With most employees just happy to be employed (never mind promoted or given so much as a cost-of-living salary adjustment), I find it hard to believe. As Inside Training readers saw, I diligently recorded the StepStone-commissioned/Economist Intelligence-unit written study, but its findings don't jive with my own observations.

Essentially (hopefully by saying "essentially" I won't be as offensive in the following comparison) the state of the average employee in our current economic downturn is the humanoid form of a mouse in a laboratory maze. And to make it even more potentially insulting, the lab rat is in a more honored position because he's suffering for the advancement of science. The maze workforce which mice are running this way and that within has no glorious vision to justify it. Employees of the average company today are stuck in their current state (the maze your company's leaders have created) because it at least appears that there's nowhere for them to escape to. As I understand it, the idea behind some laboratory mouse mazes is to study if, and how well, the mouse can find his way out given the right incentive, such as cheese, at the end of the maze. In the case of your workers, there is an incentive to get out of the maze to escape misery, but you've provided nothing for them to run towards. In other words, where is their cheese? 

Granted, your worker-mice (a ratty take on worker bees) shouldn't be toiling in a maze in the first place, but now that many of them find themselves in one, shouldn't you at least provide them with a positive incentive to make it through the ordeal?  The current economy set the stage for the maze, but what made your employees' maze a maze was your treatment of them. Are you using their captive audience status (nowhere to run in an abysmal economy) as a way to exploit them?  "Now is the time to dump as much work and hardship their way as possible because now we finally have them where we want them," your CEO may have said to himself or aloud to a room of acolytes.

Wondering if you fall into the I've-created-a-rat-maze-for-my-loyal-workers category?  Are you currently piloting any laborious, widely-hated programs?  Do you think now is the best time for trying new, troublesome things?  Now is the time to work as hard as necessary to survive, but it's most definitely not the time to push employees towards new rituals that many of them say make their lives more difficult. Are you coming up with maniacal plans to thin your workforce herd so you don't have to lay any more of them off?  Maybe your unreasonable pilot program (each employee, regardless of job function, must report at the end of each day at 4:50 p.m. how much money, down to the cent, they made today and outline/gauge their money-earning potential for tomorrow) is related to your effort to "separate the wheat from the chaff."  Your leaders think to themselves, "We'll load them up with daunting tasks because that's just the way to find out which ones we want to keep and which we can dispense with."  Is that too dark to be true, or am I getting close to the reality of your closed-door conference room discussions?

You can't hire any of your workers (the deserving ones who are doing the ground work) assistants, but you can try making their lives easier rather than harder during this depression/recession. True, you have a captive mouse-like audience (all the more mouse-like for their fear of losing their job at the worst possible time), but do you want happy or hostile mice reporting to their maze-cubicles? 

You can't show them the money, but you can show them the cheese. What cheese do you have to offer them these days if you can't promote them or raise their salary, and you're simultaneously asking them to work harder than they've ever worked before?  Can you at least offer them eventual escape from their current circumstances?  One way to do this is by outlining post-recession career progression plans with employees. In these meetings, managers can explain to deserving workers that documented plans (in the form of traceable, company records) guarantee that if they're still with the company when the company regains it's financial footing (defined any way you like, but defined nonetheless), they are entitled to a promotion and raise of at least a certain amount or specified development activities and opportunities. You also could take it one step further and promise high-performers that they have a job with your company as long as their business unit (and the company for that matter) is in existence and owned by the current owners. I realize it's legally risky to make guarantees and promises to employees, but you owe them that, and it will make them more productive knowing there's light—or cheese—at the end of the tunnel.

The only "pilot" programs you should be launching in a time of economic crisis are those that make your workers happier. What about a mentoring program, so instead of being a mouse-alone-in-corporate America, they can be pairs of mice, ratty paw-in-paw, rolling down the Autobahn Highway to Cheese?

Are you using the current recession/depression to find ways of making your workers' lives more efficient and easy, or are you exploiting their desperation via the launch of unreasonable projects?