Why Aren't You Listening To Me?

[Cartoon courtesy of Grantland Cartoons]

Granted, I may not be the most charming or interesting person in the world, but you really prefer the ramblings of avatars, your dog, and imaginary friends to my reflections?  How insulting!

That's the likely response of your employees were they to read the thoughts of the average manager at your company on the topic of listening to staffers. It's not that they don't value these workers' ingenuity and flashes of insight; it's just that many of these managers doubt the meaning behind their employees' words contain anything as positive as that. Too often, probably, the first thing that comes to mind when a staffer opens his mouth is the dread of fielding new complaints and crises.

Do you have any way to gauge how well managers listen to the employees working under them (not counting said employees reading back the bosses' lunch order)?  Maybe you could circulate a workplace communication/mis-communication survey. Make it more fun than your usual surveys by putting aside multiple choice options in favor of free-form responses encouraged via incentives. Ask work groups to come up with together (to avoid strife) the funniest/at-the-time-saddest problem they ever experienced due to failure to listen to one another. The group with the most entertaining (and true) story gets three lunches at a favorite local restaurant, or whatever other prize you think might motivate, and which you can afford.

Until you take the discomfort away from admitting that failures in listening occur, and sometimes lead to big blunders, your employees won't be honest with you about it, and, therefore, presumably, won't improve.

Managers are fun to tag as villains, but we all know listening failures also are rampant among co-workers at the same level. Actually, it might even be worse with co-workers because these employees know ignoring Fred in the next door cubicle (who seems some days to be unaware of anything other than the Little League feats of his son) is not nearly as bad as ignoring Sally The Manager who has carefully mapped out a business strategy for the next two years, the progress of which she diligently tracks on a map filled with multicolored tacks.

As an experiment, suggest that managers at their next staff meeting perform an experiment with their work group. Have managers ask staffers, including themselves, to remember the last work-related conversation they had with each peer seated around the table, and then ask the staffers to share these memories with one another. It'll be like a workplace version of the telephone game. Employees (and their manager) may be shocked at how much they missed or misunderstood. It could be due to semantic mix-ups, but I'd wager most of these mis-communications are the result of not bothering to listen attentively.

At the same time, you have to wonder if the missed and misunderstood are entirely without blame. Could it be that some of your employees and managers are tuned out more than others because they're hard to understand, or so verbose they put the listener to sleep?  Hand-in-hand with the need for tuned-up listening, is the importance of clear communication that doesn't burden the listener. In the recession, do you still offer communication training?  If you do, what kind of exercises do you ask learners to participate in? What about asking them to take turns explaining the same situation or a variety of situations to each other to see how understandable and engaging they are?  It's not enough to be understandable; a good manager and efficient team member needs to hold the attention of other employees. The experience of talking to them shouldn't resemble everyone's least favorite lecture class in college.

Can you teach employees to be charming and engaging in their communications?  The charm part is tough since it seems to be one of those qualities you either have or you don't. The engaging part is a skill that can be acquired. As a person given to long rambling monologues about the health and well being of my cat to uninterested people (innocent bystanders), I know you can learn to self-edit before speaking. "Oh, maybe my collaborators on this project don't need to know about Miss Minnie's victory over a bladder infection three years ago. Maybe what they'd really like to hear about are my ideas for getting our work done faster." 

To aid your company's spacey ramblers, make communication competency an important part of performance reviews. Self-editing starts with self-awareness, so ask managers to be aware of their own communication weaknesses, and those of their staff, and to point out in non-hurtful ways (may need some role-play exercises here) how staff can communicate with greater clarity and interest.

It does no professional good, after all, learning to listen to managers and co-workers if learning to listen means knowing what they ate for lunch for the past 10 days, and why they now hate pastrami.

How do you hone the listening and communication skills of managers and employees?  Any tips for companies with employees who listen to but don't understand one another, and those with employees who would understand each other perfectly if only they would learn to listen?

Another Episode of Corporate Survivor

[Cartoon courtesy of Grantland Cartoons]

Television network executives eager to launch the next hit reality series need look no further than the average American company composed of average, non-famous employees and average, non-famous bosses and executives. With the close of each quarter promising additional "reduction in force" cuts at many companies, guessing who the ax will fall on next can become a dark entertainment for those who appreciate gallows humor.

With your own private reality "survivor" series in full swing in the cubicles and offices around you, workforce managers have to decide how to create work plans that work for "survivors."  If your company is like many today, you've boxed yourself into a management hole because you've asked the remaining employees to take on the work of departing peers without offering additional compensation. Too often you've asked these workers—presumably your winners—to also go without the customary cost of living adjustment. The first step to creating a livable post-reduction in force work environment is asking your executives to reconsider. Is it really too much of a burden on the company to at least provide these survivors with an additional one to three thousand dollars spread out over the course of a year?  And, what about those who were promised promotions and raises as part of their development plan?  If you can't award them the promotion and the money, how about finding a way to at least provide them with the new title? 

If your company has internal regulations in place that stipulate a pay range for each position on your payroll, consider relaxing those rules as an emergency measure to cope with the recession. If you're worried about the promoted employees demanding back-pay once the economy turns around, guard against it beforehand with an agreement they could sign in which it is documented they agreed to the title without the pay until the company can afford to award it to them, and that, under no circumstances, are they entitled to back-pay. Would something like that be legally feasible?  Surely, your "high-potential" executives are smart enough to come up with some way to award the gratification of a higher title to an employee you've asked to do twice as much with no additional compensation. Come, on, it's the least you can do for them, right?

Also, think about who's left behind in each work group. Is there a work group for which there are two allocated employees, and the one who is ranked lower by title and pay is doing more, and with greater enthusiasm and competency, than the other?  Well, your bosses seemingly love cutting jobs, so how about getting rid of the lackluster producer and diverting the title and money to your budding star?  It's mean, but it also isn't kind to ask the employee working harder and better than her higher-titled and -salaried colleague to endure that situation.

If your bosses are still unconvinced, ask them if they've considered the cost of not finding a way to recognize or (gasp) compensate remaining employees who have taken on added responsibilities. Not only will a good many of them leave as soon as the economy turns around; what's worse, they may become demoralized and decide they'll do the minimum amount of work to get by, losing the enthusiasm and ingenuity your managers (and company executives) love about them. How much will your customers or clients enjoy receiving services or product from disengaged providers?  If they notice, and take their business elsewhere, you'll be in even worse shape than you're already in.

Next, see if your managers are all approaching management of your survivors the same way. Was one manager sharp enough to spot an empty office his high-performing survivor might enjoy, and award him with it?  Was another savvy enough to create her own flex-time for workers, letting them know it's OK if they want to work from home on Fridays or choose a couple days per week to leave at 4, and work the balance of the day from home?  Some of your managers may be more brave and adept than others at finding no-cost ways to reward survivors. As a workforce manager, it's your job to pave the way for all, not just the brave, independent-minded ones, to find creative, non-monetary ways to reward the hardy individuals pulling the weight your executives' lay-offs dropped on their shoulders. With all those reductions in force, there must be a lot of empty offices. Who among your survivors deserves one of them, since you can't award them with anything else?  Are you just going to let the offices remain empty?  Seems kind of a waste when enjoyable resources are so scarce.

Are all your managers good about encouraging survivors to think of no- or -low cost projects that pique their curiosity and passion?  Many of your survivors are still there because their engagement in their work sustains them. The worst thing you could do is squash that engagement with daily work plans composed of nothing but drudgery. The recession can be used as a way to spur innovation in survivors, encouraging them to think of news ways of pursuing what most interests them. You may be surprised at what some of the truly enthusiastic ones come up with—corporate partnerships or sponsorships to launch events or activities they've always wanted to lead or participate in, or maybe something as simple as your company's or brand's first Facebook group page. Encourage them to find something work-related to play with.

On the topic of engagement, it's also essential that managers tasked with finding people to cut look beyond pay grade to level of enthusiasm. On the surface, it makes sense, given the option of cutting two people, to cut the one who makes more money. But look deeper, and you'll see the smarter option is to keep the more engaged worker, and, if necessary, ask her to try her hand at a more promising project, or move staff around so she can switch places with another worker at another brand who lacks her guiding passion. Put the dis-engaged one referenced earlier, for instance, on the brand you're worried about, and see what happens. Give him three months (a new probationary period) to show you what he's got. Kicked into corporate survivor island mode, he may finally show signs of waking up. It's risky, but you'd be amazed what workers will do once they have a new challenge before them that their future employment depends on.

If absolutely necessary, ask the engaged, but maybe too-highly-paid-to-afford employee to take a temporary pay cut. One way or another, work it out so the most engaged, happiest workers don't slip through your company's twitching, sweaty fingers. Long-term corporate survival boils down to more than a mathematical calculation. For those of you in trouble, your company may be in the dire circumstances it finds itself in partly because workforce management decisions are being made on the basis of numbers alone. Success in a recession is more complicated than a simple math problem. If it were that easy, every company would be led by a college math professor.

Your survivors don't have to eat bugs to maintain their place on your payroll, but is what you're asking of them only slightly better than that?

What's your strategy for managing your company's "survivors?"  What non-monetary rewards are you using to maintain their engagement and commitment to your company beyond the recession?

Fiddling with Flex-Time

[Cartoon courtesy of Grantland Cartoons]

By definition, flex-time should be easy to fiddle with. It's "flexible," after all, so that implies it can be twisted and turned as needed by employees to suit their comfort—so long as they continue to meet their job responsibilities. But, unfortunately, it usually doesn't work that way. The employer has the need (or the perceived need) to protect itself against charging (or slowly walking) brigades of lazy workers.

I've noticed a compulsion to force employees to choose either a traditional work schedule or a mobility plan as black and white options, so that if an employee who usually works from home suddenly has a need or desire to work for three weeks, from 9 to 5, at the office, a problem arises.  Or, conversely, colleagues often are put-off by a co-worker who asks to work from home for a month or a few weeks, even if their output is the same. As long as supervisors and colleagues can reach the employee, whether at home or at work, and the employee's obligations are met with no inconvenience to anyone else, why should it matter if they're here, there, or sitting at the local bar all day sipping tequila? 

One of the sick things I've noticed is the tendency of companies to give the best seats in the house to workers who are rarely at the office. In one workplace, for instance, the choicest cubicles, roomy and with a view overlooking the city, belong to "mobility plan" employees and interns. Since environment is a known motivator, where's the logic?  Unless the company is trying to send a not-so-subtle message that the mobility option is preferred, and will be rewarded, it's a huge oversight. But it also brings to mind the question of how you encourage workers to choose one option versus the other, and whether it's necessary to make it a black or white decision. Do you have to know exactly where employees are physically at all times during the work week?  In the age of the virtual workplace, such questions are outdated, right? 

Monotony is mind-deadening, so to allow employees to come and go as they please, wherever and whenever they like, might keep them on their toes and more alert to their tasks. They never know who's strolling around the corner, so they better stop looking for new outfits for their Second Life character long enough to finish their marketing report.  Or they never know who's in the office that day, so it might not be a good idea to engage the office in a dance marathon contest instead of brainstorming ideas for that new line of product the manager told them to work on.  If you know your bosses' and colleagues' schedules ahead of time, and those schedules are fairly set in stone, you know when you can tune out from your tasks. If you're not sure of their routine, you have to constantly be at the ready to respond to their requests.

More significantly, seeing different people every time you go to the office keeps work relationships fresh, and may help you appreciate colleagues more. Instead feeling about some of them the way you feel about a sibling on a long car ride, you can appreciate their quirks as endearing because they haven't grown tiresome yet from over-exposure. Plus, it's exciting thinking the night before about the possibilities of the next day's interludes. Aside from the excitement of seeing friends and potential love interests (shocking, but still happens), workers may find themselves wondering which manager they'll run into the next day to speak to about new ideas or opportunities for advancement. In other words, it keeps the work environment fresh by not seeing the same people at the same time every day.

For those of you with offices around the world, how easy is it for workers to glide in and out of your various locations?  Would it be okay to spend January through March in your Sydney, Australia office, then move onto your San Diego headquarters from April through the middle of June, and then sashay back to New York City for the summer?  If the work is getting done, and customers and clients are happy, is it okay with you?

In the age of not only the virtual, but global workplace, what does "flex-time" mean anyway?  Is it synonymous with flex-location?  Actually, with shrinking workforces, it's more economical to encourage interested employees to spend parts of the year in different locations. Global companies have a great Generation Y recruiting tool available to them in offering flex-location along with flex-time. How many young people in your employ would like to live part of the year in Europe or Asia?  And how much money could you save in human resources by allowing—maybe even encouraging—them to do so?  This is an ideal plan for companies with busy seasons that vary by location. Instead of hiring part-time, seasonal workers, you can just optimize those already on your payroll by asking them if they'd like to spend the summer in France. Sounds good to me. If you have enough workers participating in the Global-Mobile program, your human resources department can organize housing swaps to make it easy.

If you're really creative and daring, you'll combine the flex-location plan with job rotation. As long as they're pitching in at a faraway location, why not have them try out some of the tasks based at that office that they would never have confronted in their home location?  You might as well try it. If they like it, they can stay there permanently, or head a new work group at your home office to do the task they learned abroad, bringing a new capability to that location.

Don't be too stuck in the mud about where employees are now, where they'll be at 2, and where they'll be the day after tomorrow. The next thing you know, the place they'll be is out the door.

Do you offer flex-time at your company?  How flexible is it?  Could the program use a little loosening up?

Outplacement Outhouse

[Cartoon courtesy of Grantland Cartoons]

It's not easy getting "out-placed."  Come to think of it, it's no easier than getting fired or laid off. Oh, whoops, are those all the same thing?  There are a lot of euphemisms for ending someone's career at your company, but my favorite approach (which I still haven't heard of yet for some reason) is asking an unwanted employee if they'd like to choose between two new Profit Seekers International employment plans: they can come to the office and continue doing their jobs without getting paid or they can stop coming to the office and doing their jobs and stop getting paid. Who cares if they, and you, end up with the same result. It just sounds kinder to give a person options, like telling a motorist he can go either left or right directly under a sign that clearly says "dead end."

I'm thinking of all this not just because my brain has a side of it that likes to go to grim places. I'm thinking about it because I'm starting to hear about companies offering their employees outplacement services as a consolation to getting fired, and, presumably, for public relations purposes. I've never participated in an outplacement service, so I have no first hand understanding of what goes on there, and whether it's usually the real deal or whether it truly is nothing more than a nice-sounding consolation prize. One thing I've heard is they're pricey, which begs the question of why a company would want to make an expensive investment on behalf of the very people it just got rid of to save money?   How many of you offer outplacement, and, for those of you that do, why do you do it?

Hopefully your rationale is mostly philanthropic, and equally hopefully the outplacement service is a genuine help, meaning there are ample resources there to aid the "out-placed" with resume-building and job search strategies. It also would be great if there could be psychologically-trained career counselors on hand; not just to profile what the out-placed would be best at in a new job, but to help the out-placed talk through the trauma of becoming ( or getting?) out-placed. It must be very traumatic (I have worked under a sociopath before but have yet to be "out-placed," knock wood), and in a way, it must resemble the impact a bad romantic relationship has on a person. Just as you wouldn't be keen on jumping back into the dating scene after a horrific relationship and break-up; you also wouldn't be excited about taking on another employer after the one you were so good to for so many years just dumped you.  The difference, of course, is when it comes to jobs, you need a new one for the sake of your livelihood, so you don't have much choice.

But that doesn't mean the out-placed won't suffer significant workplace trust issues in their next in-placement. Once this recession is over (whatever decade that happens in), companies will have to contend with employees suffering post traumatic outplacement syndrome. How do you ever make workers trust you enough to be engaged in your company's goals when their last employer pulled the fraying (though still usable) workforce rug out from under them?  Maybe if the out-placed have access to psychological help in whatever outplacement service you invest in for them, they'll be more productive members of the business community, wherever they happen to end up.  With return engagements at the same company common (despite the trust issues I suspect exist), and with a what-goes-around-comes-around business philosophy wise to adopt (a variation on the old mantra about not burning bridges), helping your out-placed weed through the emotional side of getting thrown overboard by you is worthwhile.

Is there anything you can do in tandem with the outplacement service's work?  If the worker you were forced to lay off for financial, not performance, reasons is interested, could you place them into a pool of possible recruits for new or vacated positions at your company?  With the recession in full swing and your company, like many, likely experiencing a hiring and salary freeze, it won't help them in the immediate future, but when the recession eventually recedes, building such a pool of applicants (who've already been put to the test on-the-job and approved) by your company will come in handy.  Could your human resources department work with the various business functions they serve to put together a list of vendors and suppliers your company does business with that might be looking for new employees?  Even if they're not currently looking, could you at least ask these business partners to put your out-placed into a pool of potential applicants?  Even in a recession, after all, there is a need to replace certain positions should they get vacated unexpectedly.

I have another idea, but it's more than a little kooky, though fun. What about bringing in a psychic to read the fortunes of the out-placed?  At the very least it'll make them laugh, and depending on how shoddy an outplacement service you invested in (money's tight after all), they may be just as useful. Maybe the outplacement service of the 21st century is the palm and Tarot card reader.

What kinds of outplacement services do you invest in for those you've "out-placed?"  If you don't do anything for laid off workers except give them until 5 p.m. to clean out their desks, what's the rationale for your austere (kind of nasty) approach?