Defining Diversity

[Cartoon courtesy of Grantland Cartoons]

If your employees aren’t all John or Jennifer (or the classic “Jane”), then you can call yourself a diverse company, right?  Having employees who don’t all look the same, talk the same, and possess the same backgrounds is good enough, I presume. But it shouldn’t be.

It’s great if your workforce doesn’t include hundreds or thousands of walking, talking, interchangeable cogs, but it isn’t enough if you want real diversity. Along with varying races, genders, and ethnic groups, think about varying opinion and professional perspective. Sometimes “minority” can be used to refer to those sad individuals in a Six Sigma organization who prefer a more free-form approach to management, or those who believe another strategy, in addition to the all-virtual one you may have launched, needs to be augmented to include just as much in-person time. Whatever the majority opinion at your organization, there’s a good chance dissenting voices—another form of diversity—have either been silenced or let go.

One view of management is to tell the workforce what the future approach of the organization will be while telling employees in advance that any disagreement will not be tolerated. It’s the “if you don’t like it, then leave” approach. I’ve heard of that one, and don’t think it’s the smartest way to go. Frightening dissenters into silence or departure is good because it keeps management comfortable, but not so good because it blinds those same managers to potential weaknesses of the plan. As ingenious and all-knowing as your company likes to consider its managers and executives, there’s always a (good) chance they’ve failed to consider at least a few angles of any strategy they’re about to implement. Before you roll out said strategy, wouldn’t it be nice to get a heads-up about potential problems from your employees before your customers or competitors have a chance to point it out to you?

Don’t worry, introducing diversity of opinion isn’t one of those feel good-humanistic approaches traditional business management loathes. On the contrary, it’s an intelligent way to formulate a company’s future direction.

There’s a thin line between constructively pointing out potential flaws of a new business strategy and complaining, and I wouldn’t be afraid to cross it. Complaining, even when it crosses the threshold into whining, isn’t a bad thing in business. It’s horrible to listen to (most of us have enough of it at home and from our inner selves), but when it comes from employees, take notice. As I’ve noted in the past on this blog, that cumbersome new work routine you think will reap big rewards for customers and your bottom line won’t go far if it isn’t livable. It may be a terrific idea in theory, but if the human beings you employ aren’t able to tolerate it, they won’t remain a part of your company, and you’ll have that same retention problem with whomever you hire in the future—unless you opt for the half robot/half monkey approach to staffing (half your employees in that “human” resources stratagem would be robotic, the other half, well-trained simians).

Set aside ample time and venues for complaining at your company, and be sure to aid cowardly complaining. Many insightful complaints—also known as diversity of opinion—are held back out of fear. Who says you have to own your complaint?  If management is frighteningly gung-ho about a new system of operations, and you think it’s the closest thing you’ve heard of to purgatory since your mother tried to scare you into doing your homework as a child, why would you want to have a complaint about it attached to you?   The employees you hired are hopefully smart enough to have a sense of self-preservation, so don’t force them to choose between the corporate executioner’s chair and the horror of watching their company face a slow dwindling of profits—or even marketplace death—from a strategy they were savvy enough to notice at the outset wouldn’t work.

The best thing to do is coach your managers and new executives in leadership development programs to encourage dissent, and even whining and complaining, if it means the creation of better business plans. When you think about it, the fear of diverging opinion in the corporate world is a form of paranoia. Watching your back in business makes sense—to a degree—but not when it makes company leaders suffer from the business world parallel of agoraphobia (as afraid to leave their tiny constructs of perspective as agoraphobic people are to leave their homes). 

If you think of dissent at your company as something similar to the bogeyman, look at it this way: Nobody says you have to follow the corporate dissenter/bogeyman back to his or her lair, but it wouldn’t hurt to listen to what this frightening specter has to say, would it?

How do you handle dissenting opinion at your company?  Do you welcome challenges to the prevailing wisdom, or do you shy away from it?  Do you go so far as to punish those of a different mind?

Overseas and Over Your Head?

[Cartoon courtesy of Grantland Cartoons]

As an ardent traveler, nothing could be more exciting to me than the news I'm headed on an African safari to chronicle the movements of the elephant so my company can sell more widgets (in my fantasy, elephants produce the timeless "widgets," and therefore the company needs to spend thousands of dollars to send me on a luxury safari "sourcing" trip).

Most overseas assignments don't have anything to do with sourcing widgets from elephants while boarding in luxury accommodations and shopping for local crafts as another official part of the "sourcing" assignment, but, nevertheless, they're great developmental opportunities. The sad part is many of your employees don’t see it that way.

Some of us assume everyone feels as we do on the topic of travel and temporary living arrangements oceans away from their home, but that’s not so. While living in Africa or Australia for a couple of years sounds like heaven to me, I’m in the minority. Never mind relocating to another hemisphere; many of your employees aren’t even open to relocating across the country or to Europe.

Luckily, advances in technology make it a little easier to convince the weary and anxious that a developmental relocation will work in their favor. Internal corporate social networks in which those on assignment overseas can keep up with their colleagues back home, and vice versa, give nervous potential overseas workers a glimpse of the possibilities. “Oh,” they’ll say to themselves, as they prepare to hyperventilate for the fifth time since you first brought up the topic of overseas assignments, “it’s possible to have fun living in another country. Imagine that!” 

It’s funny, but the truth is those who haven’t traveled much—some of whom have lived in the same metropolitan area their whole lives—need evidence their temporarily relocated work friends are thriving.  International assignment social networks also give the newly assigned access to colleagues who already mastered the overseas work routine and can pass along their wisdom.

Along with interactive connections to peers who are in the field overseas, companies can convince workers to give it try by promising and delivering on-demand technology to help them along in their new location. Since these workers will need help both in the office and at home, it’s worth making the investment of loaning them company laptops for the duration of the assignment. Armed with 24-hour access to technology, on-demand tools such as wikis and online, searchable libraries for work can be complemented with on-demand language and cultural aids for the worker’s home and social life. Be sure to load onto the computer, or make available via the Web, a language tool that includes a semantic decoder, so the employee can familiarize herself with the local vernacular. Also include a searchable repository of information about the foreign city’s culture, such as popular night spots, restaurants, and grocery stores, and parts of the city to avoid.

In these economically-stressed times it also is wise to show the employee how the company will help him manage his finances overseas, maybe by providing a cost-of-living adjustment that suits the place you’ve moved him to. After all, the salary that pays for all the worker’s top indulgences in Missouri probably won’t go as far in Paris. It also goes without saying that you need to help, or even provide, a place to live in the person’s new (albeit temporary) home, and direct him to the services he, as an individual, has a need for. If he has a medical condition (a minor one that wouldn’t interfere with his work abroad) that requires periodic check-ups, provide him with a list of doctors in his new home who can help. On a less minor, though very critical note for animal lovers, find out what the country’s policy is on relocating pets from overseas. As much as I adore travel, I can tell you without hesitation I wouldn’t move anywhere I couldn’t take my Miss Minnie, and a lot of your high-potentials probably feel the same way about their Simba or Tinkerbell.

In addition to technology and information, the most important tool to provide newly-arrived-overseas employees with is a buddy. Most likely your employee is headed to one of your global offices. Be sure to recruit a mentor who’s of local origin—someone born to the culture and language (and yet proficient in the employee’s native tongue)—who can show him the way before he cries into his computer keyboard.

Overseas assignments are enticing and make for a well-rounded, globally-savvy workforce. But if the first word your workers think of when you say “overseas” is drowning, you’ll need a company-built life raft to convince them to give it a try.

How do you prepare your workers for overseas assignments?  Any wisdom—or horrible mistakes you hope no other company suffers—that you could pass along?

Canning Cooperation

[Cartoon courtesy of Grantland Cartoons]

In a recession, the vast wisdom of too many corporate executives is to foster competition rather than cooperation, whether it be between co-workers or between high-level management and employees. Workforces are being asked to do without even cost of living adjustments, so you would think corporate management would feel the urge to be as generous as possible in other ways—such as by creating as pleasant a work environment as is possible under the circumstances.

Alas, my logic must seem awfully illogical to many executive bigwigs.  Instead of extending a hand of cooperation from on high, executive management at many companies appear to view the recession as a time to ask for more than they've ever asked before. The doubled workload is understandable since they couldn't afford to pay the staff that used to share the burdensome tasks, but what about mandates for remaining employees to be judged on harsher terms than they were judged before the recession set in?  On one level, it makes sense. Management doesn't have the resources it previously enjoyed, so it has to be much more selective in which employees to keep and which to discard. But on another level, it doesn't make much sense. They're already asking employees to provide them with free services (that's what it amounts to when you ask people to provide additional services without compensating them for those additional services), and instead of expressing gratitude for the pro bono work, the executives decide to crack the whip ever harder. It's like asking a friend who's done you a favor to scrub your tub instead of buying him or her a gift basket. It's not a perfect metaphor, but you catch the drift of what I'm saying, right?

In addition to it not being a humane way to act towards employees, this approach to workforce management inspires a desire to dissent rather than cooperate, or collaborate, with management. This isn't such a smart strategy for the "strategizers" to adopt. The strategizers, after all, need people to carry out their strategies. If they've only ingratiated themselves to their fellow strategizers (where the promotions and raises often mysteriously continue even in the midst of hiring and salary freezes), who's going to do the work to make the "strategies" a reality? 

You can argue that employees will work no matter what in a recession because if they don't, they'll simply be fired and replaced with another, more eager worker (the Grapes of Wrath principle that in desperate financial times, no matter how little you pay people, and how hard they work, there's someone ready to take their place at lower pay and with more strenuous labor). What's true is they'll do the minimum they need to do to not get fired. They'll do a job that's good enough not to raise eyebrows, and maybe even to make a marginal profit. But for the level of engagement you need to see outstanding results, you'll have to treat them a little better. When you're treated in such a shoddy manner, you don't feel you're working with a partner in good faith. If management isn't seen as a partner in good faith, employees won't provide the level of cooperation and engagement necessary for the kind of mind-bending innovation you need to get you out of your recessionary slump.

Another unfortunate phenomenon that occurs when the whip is tightened in the face of hardship is co-workers begin eying each other suspiciously, eager to catch one another in the act of slipping up. So little is dribbled out that workforce members become one another's enemies. Corporations that create the kind of recessionary culture I've described also succeed in creating a scarcity of resources model in which workers don't cooperate or collaborate—they prey on and fight each other for what little is left. 

To move your business forward, encourage executives to find ways of creating a culture that's generous rather than stingy. Everyone understands the corporate wallet isn't as fat as it once was (it's a little emaciated at the moment, maybe), but there's no reason to encourage added suffering just because you know you can get away with it. Why not offer one Friday a month when employees can take turns working from home?  Or why not stop counting vacation days?  It sounds like a wild idea, but it isn't. Those who are left are your dependable ones. They'll get the work done regardless of whether they take an extra five days for themselves. The important thing to focus on is whether the work is getting done and getting done well; not how late workers stay, whether they prefer working from home, and whether they've already used up their two weeks worth of liberation.

Improving your treatment of workers during the recession makes good financial sense. Who are you more likely to do a favor for (i.e. delivering the products and services you need to survive)?  The friend who took you out to dinner after the last favor you provided?  Or the one who left you at the curb?

What are you doing to encourage cooperation and collaboration during the recession?  Have you created a desperate environment in which good fights have taken the place of good ideas?

The Young and The Resistant

[Cartoon courtesy of Grantland Cartoons]

True, Millennials are better at technology than your Boomer and Veteran employees, but they're something else besides—potentially much less amenable to getting knuckled under. So far, corporate executives have gotten their way enforcing hiring and salary freezes, including those that are selective in nature (if you're in the right internal network, your promotion and raise is labeled "strategic," and worthy of execution), but that may be changing.

I'm not a Millennial, missing that distinction by four years, but I sympathize with and admire their worldview, especially the part that emphasizes the importance of speaking one's mind to power. The research I came across this past week, and published in Training magazine's Inside Training e-newsletter (you can sign up for it on our Website, ManageSmarter.com), reports that Millennials, or Generation Y'ers, are comfortable strolling into the CEO's office to tell him or her exactly what the Generation Y'er in question thinks of the company policy on...just about anything. Don't like the new reporting structure that has you reporting to a man with half of your IQ, speak up. Don't like the company's environmentally destructive practices, and would much rather save the white tiger than make shareholders happy, speak up. Don't like the layoffs and recessionary culture that's given executives the idea it's OK to take advantage of all but their friends at the company, speak up.

Well, you get the gist. So, when you're preparing your future leaders, you've got a new problem. In addition to teaching financial acumen and generic communication skills (like hoping Sally listens to you at least after the third time you ask her where her marketing report is), they'll need to understand how to cope with this new confrontational culture. Granted, it helps that the next rung of leaders will be drawn from the X'ers and the Y'ers themselves, but it's one thing to be a big mouth when you're on the delivering end; and quite another when you're the decision-maker receiving the criticism. After all, haven't we all heard how much Gen Y'ers/Millennials loathe negative feedback? The research I summarized in Inside Training contradicts that somewhat, revealing your youngest workers to be a little hardier than you expected, but, nonetheless, I'm not convinced they're as  ready to be weather-beaten as your workhorse Boomers.

The worst part is there's no way to prepare a person for that big moment when an outspoken underling knocks on their door to tell them how awful they are and exactly how long they've been this awful. You can try role-play exercises (apparently everyone's last-resort training regimen), but that probably won't cut it. The first (and worst) impulse will be to fire the person delivering the critique or put him on your enemy's list (Millennials are enlightened and open-minded, but, as is true of all humans, you never know what will happen when they get into power).

Maybe the trick is to establish a corporate culture in which there is a structured system that provides for Millennial madness, otherwise known as that strange urge to be sincere. With social networking, and collaborative technology hopefully at their fingertips (or soon-to-be at their fingertips), your workers can have access to a platform for constant expression of their corporate likes and dislikes. Instead of conducting your annual employee "climate" survey (or whatever you're calling it these days), workforce managers can have access to a constant stream of feedback, which, if you're efficient, you'll work with executives to use towards the enhancement of the company, propelling it into Great Place to Work status.

The key is providing reciprocal feedback. One thing the research about Gen Y'ers has gotten right, based on my own observation, is the need these young people feel for feedback. They're happy to tell you what they think, whether or not you like it and no matter how badly it affects their future career path, but they expect the same from you. When your forward-thinking, constant feedback platform or portal is up and running inside your company, designate a workforce manager (or take turns) responding to comments that come up time and again. If you're a small company, maybe you could even answer each individual commenter. It's essential that in doing so, you provide honest answers, admitting when you don't know the answer to their question, or—gasp—admitting when a corporate policy isn't as fair as it could be. You could say something like, "Sorry about your disgust with the recent executive promotions we've communicated to the company. In light of the announced "company-wide" salary freeze we enacted last fall, I can see how this news would be very frustrating to you. But our management did what it felt was best awarding this new position and opportunity to Kirk Hamstrung. It's still a competitive job market in his field and this is what we needed to do to keep him a part of our corporate family. We think the investment in his promotion and added salary will pay off for us all, with the million dollar ideas and strategy we expect him to come up with paying dividends to us all."

OK, that was most likely way too candid than you'd have the authority to be, but putting that same sentiment in more conservative words, would be better than repeatedly delivering canned public relations, legal department-approved spiel. The candor will be appreciated, and you'll be rewarded with a loyal Generation Y workforce, just as happy to tell you when you've made their day as they were to inform you your CEO was nominated for new arch villain of the world.

Can you think of any other ways to help your company better communicate with Generation Yer's?  Do you think this youngest workforce generation is the same as all that proceeded it, and all this talk about their unique needs is nonsense?  Make your case.

Are You Twittering—Again—About How Awful I Am?

[Cartoon courtesy of Grantland Cartoons]

It used to be that the ladies room was the prime stage for the office's gossip grapevine. And, if not the ladies room, then the kitchen or the office parking lot. These days, the ladies room is everywhere, not in terms of public sanitation (hopefully), but in terms of stages for gossip. Thanks to social networking, the places where your employees can speak ill of you have multiplied. Did you see that picture Sally posted of you on Facebook from last year's holiday party?  Or the intoxicated photos Fred snapped for his MySpace page of your CEO from that last leadership retreat?

From unflattering pictures of executives to detrimental blog entries about the evil that this employee interprets your company to be, social networking is the prime tool of public relations these days, so you should come up with a strategy for managing, or at least coping, with its company-related use by employees.

First, is it OK for your workers to use social networking tools while on the job as long as it doesn't affect their productivity, or the quality of what they produce for your customers?  If you've shied away from allowing this, think again. For Generation Y'ers, tools like Facebook represent an important way to find new information and connect with other people, including those who may be beneficial to your company. As most of you hopefully know by now, it's common for people to have more than just "friends" as Facebook contacts. Most employees have received "friend requests" from business acquaintances, and even among those who are personal friends the employee socializes with, there could be new recruits for your company, fonts of knowledge of other industries, and potential facilitators of new business partnerships. If the price of gaining these benefits is an hour spent taking quizzes on what kind of dog the employee was in a past life, no big deal, right? 

The best part is in exchange for this open-minded, dare I say, hip, attitude towards their preferred medium of communication you may find a greater chance they'll use the platforms for the benefit rather than the detriment of your company. You've shown good will towards them, and are treating them with respect and trust, so why wouldn't they use Facebook to look up helpful business contacts, and see if their friend Mary knows anyone at IBM, rather than post pictures of you and your managers in a seemingly disoriented state. Granted, the ease with which young people use these new tools to the benefit of their work (in addition to their Friday night agenda) may, indeed, leave you feeling disoriented, but nobody has to know that.

For employees who breach your trust by telling tales of exaggerated woe about your company on blogs, Facebook, and Twitter, what's the proper course of action to take?  Do you have a zero-tolerance policy about such behaviors?  If you do, it might not be the best strategy.  After all, once you've fired the publically complaining employee, won't he be free to complain even more about your company? A smarter course of action is to train someone in your public relations department to search the world of social networking not just for the sake of finding unflattering stories about your company, but to answer those those stories with their own take on it. The beauty of Web 2.0 is it's editable by all. Anyone's free to comment. By calmly answering the criticism with your company's perspective, you counter the argument about the evil oozing from your corporate veins. Whereas if you fire the person, you've proven his point and given him fodder for a thousand more public, and possibly viral, rants.

How about encouraging managers to tell employees they're free to incorporate optimization of social networks as part of their research and follow-through on projects?  This already is commonly done in the marketing and advertising worlds, but even for an engineer or corporate administrative assistant, social networking platforms can come in handy. We all have friends and friends of friends who know more than we do, and some of whom are placed in the exact place you need these employees to go to get the job done for you.

Also feel free to create opportunities for employees to use social networking to help you find new hires, and sustain those new hires past the first year. Think about which work groups in your company might find the creation of a Facebook page for your company, or some division of it, related to their work, and then give them that task as an assignment. You might be amazed at the information, contacts, and business leads they're able to find via their new social networking page. Also see if it would be possible to create a Facebook buddy system for new hires in which veteran employees (those who have been there—happily— for at least a few years) become Facebook friends with new hires, and use the tool to keep in touch and mentor the person so they don't become dispirited and leave you before you're ready. To take it one step further, create a Facebook page especially for your new hire mentoring program. It's an easy, enoyable way to facilitate communication between workplace friends. Sure beats your boring-as-broken-nails intranet portal.

Facebook, MySpace, Twitter,  the blogosphere, and the sundry other ways employees now have to make you look dumb and mean is staggering. But don't let that paralyze your executives into becoming technologically-backwards caracatures that—guess what?—are destined for their own reality series on YouTube.

What's happening on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube that doesn't reflect well on your company?  Can you do anything to stop it, and maybe even optimize the unplanned-for exposure?

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?

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?