3 Blocks to Performance Improvement

Welcome to Discuss HR, the HR blog written by Human Resources UK. 

Following on from her take on HR and fire fighting, today Una Doyle looks at the 3 common barriers to improving your performance.  Furthermore, in a first for Discuss HR this is discussed in the form of a video blog. (Ed Scrivener)

3 Blocks to Performance Improvement

Read about Una and our other authors here

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Discuss HR is the HR blog written by members of Human Resources UK, the 10,000 member strong LinkedIn group dedicated to the HR professionals in the UK.  Discuss HR is published twice weekly and looks to take an insightful, informative and sometimes irreverent view on the world of HR – all with the purpose of generating a discussion.

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If you would like to be a guest writer for Discuss HR, you can find more information here.  Our next guest writer week is the week commencing 26^th August.

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Have you got the guts to have the tough conversations?

Welcome to Discuss HR, the HR blog written by Human Resources UK. 

Sharon Clews’ debut post for Discuss HR was entitled “All we can do is give advice”, today she follows that up with an excellent post about the joys and pains of management. (Ed Scrivener)

Have you got the guts to have the tough conversations?

It has been a long time now since I had any staff to manage. If you listen closely, you can hear the angels sing. Whilst I did enjoy it and all the challenges it threw my way, it was nothing short of the most difficult thing I ever did. I chose not to have children, so I managed people instead. God works in mysterious ways.

It is true that I will have stories to dine out on for the rest of my days.

Anyone who knows me lived this example of managing poor performance, painstakingly! One of my staff used to take the company car to drive to the shop to get coffee for everyone (of course he walked around the building and took orders before he left). He returned, delivered said coffees, chatting to all along the way, then took time to drink his own coffee and eventually got back to work. He thought this took 15 minutes; his tea break. In fact it took 40 minutes, on a good day. He conveniently forgot that he traded off that tea break when he signed the last Workplace Agreement giving him a 13% pay increase over three years. Not entirely his fault, no one had the guts to tell him that he couldn’t do that anymore.

If you are let get away with something for long enough, it can become the norm.

This very same guy did a less than sterling performance for 27 years. He was an absolute under-achiever of the highest order. When challenged on his work ethic, his work contribution and his general performance, he quite rightly produced his HR file and showed me that no one had ever challenged him on this before and there was nothing in his file about his poor performance. I highlighted to him the very sad fact that no-one had ever told him he had done a good job either. That meant it must be me, the new Bossy Boots who had a problem with him and the way he worked.

Well hidden potential

That was without doubt one of the toughest challenges of my career. It took me a year of setting targets, measuring performance, reviewing targets, adjusting targets, sending him on more learning and development than was good for him and basically devising every strategy I could find to get him to reach his potential. He had the most well hidden potential of anyone I had ever met.

Lots of very tough conversations and nine months later, he was dismissed for his consistent abysmal performance, including mistakes costing the company thousands; ruining the reputation of the business and creating ill will amongst his colleagues (unlike anything I have ever seen.) Dismissing someone in a Government run institution was a tough gig, and it can be done.

Your staff may just thank you for it

There are thousands of employees out there just like him. It is tough having to have conversations with people about the way they work, or rather the way they don’t work. I doubt to this day that he thanks me for it, but I have had other staff who have. I have had people return to thank me after I have made them redundant, cancel their contract or just plain old tell them off for bad behaviour. Some of them gloat, and that is OK. Some realise it is the best thing they could have done, or could have had happen to them. And in some cases, it takes a while.

To leave an environment that doesn’t stretch you or your creativity and is a lovely deep, well grooved rut can be a liberating experience, regardless of how it happens.

It is never a pleasant job to have to tell someone that they are going to lose theirs. People are human at the core of all that shockingly poor performance. They have lives to lead and children to feed, husbands, wives and parents to entertain and ignore just like the rest of us. Pity they don’t think of them when taking their employer for granted.

I have had to have tough conversations, not just about performance, but about stealing, bullying, racism, sexism and inappropriate swearing. I have had to tell someone it is not appropriate to call the company you work for a euphemism for a female body part. I have had direct and uncomfortable chats with people about bad body odour, inappropriate clothing, smoking in a non-smoking flammable confined space; coming in late, leaving early, excessive private phone calls – you name it. Were any of them nice? NO! Not for me and especially not for the staff concerned.

However, every single one of them knew exactly where they stood after those conversations.

To refuse to tell a person that they are under-performing, is not only poor management practice, it is poor leadership. It’s unfair and in fact, it’s just plain old bad human skills. Most of us just want to do a good job. Some of us think we do, and some of us know it, even though we aren’t always told (when will people get that? Can you just say “thank you for your work”, or “You’re doing a good job”. Is it really that hard?). I digress…..and OK, yes I was channelling a few of my previous bosses just then, sorry.

If you don’t provide feedback to people, good or bad, they will keep doing what they have always done, whether it is right or wrong. Having the tough conversations can drive you mad if you are not prepared and if you don’t have the skills to do it well and to protect yourself in the process.

Six tips for having the tough conversation

• If you witness the bad behaviour, ask the person into your office. Nicely, quietly and privately.
• If you don’t see it for yourself, then ask them to come and see you. Ask them for their version of the story. Perhaps: “I heard something unpleasant about xyz….can you tell me what happened?”
• Whatever the situation, start the discussion immediately. Do not make small talk or make them feel like they are going to be having a friendly chat with you. This is business and it is serious.
• Address the issue. “I just noticed {or I heard} that you did……(insert appropriate disaster here). I wonder why that happened, can you tell me about it please?”
• Give them enough time to provide you with an answer. Let’s be honest here, no excuse is acceptable when someone has used bad behaviour in an office, so the next tip is not negotiable!
• Say this, clearly, precisely and succinctly. “I just want to make it clear to you that that type of behaviour is not acceptable here in this office, nor in this business. Do you understand?”

Then stop talking.

My experience is that people listen, tell the truth and respond. They are usually embarrassed to be called on bad behaviour and who isn’t? Ask them if they are clear on it. Never underestimate the power of re-stating your point, over and over again if you have to. If they start to give an excuse, remind them in the nicest possible way that they are adults; that they have a responsibility to work well with others and to just do their job.

If there are serious reasons why their job can’t be done, they can be discussed later. Make a note of them, then make another time to review workload, or do whatever you have to do to support them (yep, bad behaviour still requires support…much like parenting!). But make those two meetings separate so they are clear on the performance message, and that they are also clear on who is the leader.

The “…how dare you?” tantrum

Seriously, if ever anyone says those words to me, I walk away. They may as well ask me if I know who they are. As a manager I recover from my shock and then take the person in question for a very strict, very sotto voce conversation (strange phenomenon that, the angrier I get the softer my voice becomes!)  I have had staff attempt to throw a tantrum after they have left my office. I followed them and suggested that they go for a walk, or take a break or go work the guillotine (OK, that was a dream, I worked in printing!). Keep your resolve and make sure they are aware that you will not accept that behaviour under any circumstances.

Feedback is a wonderful thing and I have been known as the Feedback Queen all my life. I love it. I have learned to accept it and I give both positive and negative feedback graciously. It is difficult to manage people because they are people. Some will hate your guts till the cows come home (but what are you doing with livestock in your living room?) and some will adore you for it.

I know some of you reading this will be wondering if I worked in a prison, or even dealt with small children and farm animals. Not so, just an environment where staff had been let do what they wanted; one with no authority, no leadership and certainly no one there who had the guts to have tough conversations.

Read about Sharon and our other authors here

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Discuss HR is the HR blog written by members of Human Resources UK, the 10,000 member strong LinkedIn group dedicated to the HR professionals in the UK.  Discuss HR is published twice weekly and looks to take an insightful, informative and sometimes irreverent view on the world of HR – all with the purpose of generating a discussion.

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If you would like to be a guest writer for Discuss HR, you can find more information here.  Our next guest writer week is the week commencing 29^th April.

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Eliminate Silos, Increase Results

Welcome to this week’s Discuss HR, the HR blog written for and by members of Human Resources UK.

Firstly a bit of group news, today we have the final networking event of May.  After a lot of hard work by a number of group members, we will be hosting the Newcastle event tonight, so well done Antoinette and everyone else.  If you would like to attend you can find the details here http://bit.ly/HKjYZl

One thing I am particularly good at is finding extremely tenuous links! Our Newcastle event is satellite of our country-wide events, you could even call it a silo... And today our regular writer Una Doyle looks at how you can remove organisational silos and improve performance... I did say it was a tenuous link!!

Finally, I hope you all have a very enjoyable Jubilee weekend. (Ed Scrivener)

Eliminate Silos, Increase Results

Too literal?!

Something that I’m always focused on in one way or another is alignment within organisations, or in many cases, the lack thereof.

I believe that this is the underlying cause for so many complaints from managers and employees. Think about what you may hear around the water cooler such as to how various teams are preventing them from doing their work, that senior management don’t get what really needs to happen and that cross-functional teams are anything but functional!

Think of an iceberg and how much of it is beneath the water. A hairline crack barely visible on the surface is probably a gaping chasm below the water line. All it takes is a little pressure for it to break apart.

Apply this to a leadership team and you’ll understand how even subtle misalignment or gaps at the top could cause chaos among the rest of the organisation.

“By failing to eliminate even those small gaps, they are leaving employees below them to fight bloody, unwinnable battles with their peers in other departments.”

Patrick Lencioni, The Advantage

When there is enough clarity and alignment at the top on the key issues and that is communicated well to the whole organisation then it makes all the difference in the world.

So what are the key things that require such clarity and alignment?

• The number one organisational priority over the next 3-12 months
• The key activities required to achieve that one priority
• The ‘business as usual’ objectives (which mustn’t clash with the top priority in terms of direction)
• Who is responsible for what

Gaining alignment on the top three is something that I think a lot of organisations think they do, yet don’t to the extent that it eliminates or at least massively reduces silos and negative politics.

Something that really helps in this process is when people throughout the organisation understand that it’s only by helping others to be more effective, can they themselves get into flow. You see in addition to the leadership team being aligned on these four points above, there also needs to be alignment between the talent in the organisation, responsibilities and accountabilities and the company’s objectives.

When this happens too, then you eliminate wasted time and other resources and get to leverage the value offered at individual, team, departmental and organisational levels effectively. This itself leads to further alignment between the systems and processes, people and the organisational objectives.

Not only does all this result in incredible (yet sustainable) increases in turnover and profit, it leads to a workforce that is more motivated and engaged. Why wouldn’t they be? They get to use their strengths to work on priorities and objectives that they and their peers are clear on and are all working towards.

So the next time you see something not functioning in or between teams, or hear somebody moaning ask yourself, what is not in alignment here? What can I and/or they do to help this? How can I add more value to the organisation in my HR capacity by helping to increase the alignment in my team and the teams that I work with?

About the author

Una Doyle is an accredited Talent Dynamics Performance Consultant and an award-winning speaker, coach and consultant. Una has worked with organisations such as Argos, Asda, Yorkshire Forward, Kodak and local authorities from a one-to-one basis, to groups as large as 2,000.   She is passionate about helping to create intrapreneur teams; getting the right people, in the right place, doing the right things with ownership and commercial acumen. Una has learned how to apply many of the world’s top-thinkers’ ideas in a way that is simple, profound, gets massive bottom-line results and a more empowered, motivated and engaged workforce.

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Discuss HR is the blog for Human Resources UK, the leading LinkedIn group for those involved with HR in the UK.  Next week’s Discuss HR will be published on Thursday 7th June and will be written by HR recruitment specialist Ed Scrivener. 

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The past is no guide future performance

Welcome to this week’s Discuss HR, the blog written for and by members of Human Resources UK.

You’ll be pleased to know there is no long winded intro today, but I will use this opportunity to tell you that all the technical issues with LinkedIn are now fixed.  Similarly I have confirmed venues for the next round of networking for London, Reading, Swindon, Bristol, Manchester and Gateshead – so we just need Birmingham to step up to the plate!  Without further ado, here’s Annabel Kaye’s latest excellent article. (Ed Scrivener)

The past is no guide future performance

Mary is an established member of her team with good social and professional relationships with her co-workers.  Her boss has managed the unit with a fair degree of success (neither perfect nor imperfect) and everyone knows where the boundaries are and what is expected of them.

Boss moves on with fond farewells as a new boss Sarah arrives with her own way of doing things.  Mary feels put out by the changes and wants to carry on working the way she had.  She complains to colleagues about the changes and starts to campaign with them that they should not implement them.     She tells her colleagues that many of the changes are pointless and will not work and she will not participate in them.   When a colleague told her “Sarah’s the boss why not just do what she says?” she turned on her heel and laughed.  She is a valued member of the team but her campaigning is making life very difficult for her new boss and the team is dividing into ‘pro boss’ and ‘pro Mary’ camps.  She talks about “I was here first” and “it worked well before”

Sarah is a very popular boss with her old team, and some of the new team.  She is very approachable, regularly buys drinks for everyone in the pub, and is willing to bend the rules to help her team members, letting them go home early if needed.    Standards are slipping a bit – the old boss was a stickler for detail whereas Sarah is more of an overview person.   No-one from outside would notice the difference, but old team members shrug their shoulders and pick up the slack.  Sarah doesn’t seem to know.

Why is it we are so bad at change? 

Planning for change, or accepting changes that are not planned is something few us are willing or able to do.

Sarah went into a new team without a clear plan for how she would evaluate whether change was needed, communicate that change, implement it and monitor it.  She just did what worked well in her old team.

Mary did not expect any change except for the name of her boss.   When faced with change she resisted it all.  

If the team is lucky there will be a natural mediation on the team – one of those wonderful people who are the glue that really make the workplace work.    We need someone to say to Mary “the boss is the boss, unless it is dangerous, or illegal it is her job to say what we do.  If you think it is inefficient or there are better ways, have a quiet word with her and let her know, otherwise you need to do it.”   We need someone to feedback to Sarah that she is changing how things are done (she may not be aware of it) and that she needs a process for bringing people along with her and for dealing with Mary.

How many HR specialists does it take to change a light bulb?

That depends on whether you want to keep the light bulb.

Sarah can have a useful learning experience that will enhance her skills and make her next promotion easier, or she can struggle with Mary and slowly begin to fail and get stuck here.  Mary may even accuse her of bullying as Sarah repeats the same instructions over and over again and Mary gets progressively more isolated from her team.

Mary can learn how to handle change and difficult situations or she can campaign against her boss and sooner or later she will find herself with no promotion prospects, or no job.   Mary can feel bitter that her lovely job was ‘stolen’ from her by this awful manager and that may affect her life at home as well as work.

It’s not a big deal to help new managers put together a system of ‘raising the bar’ so that they can change the way a team works.   It’s not such a big deal to help Mary (at an early stage) to work out the difference between changes she needs to give feedback on and those that are not really something to worry about.

Where was HR when all this was happening?   They were busy with other important things.  They had not touched base to see how this team functioned.  Of course, when Mary claimed she was being bullied, and Sarah claimed she was totally unsupported by management, HR was all over the investigations like a rash.  The hours of note taking and decision making meant they were too busy to touch base with any of their other teams.

Is there a happy ending to this tale?  Not really, Mary spent years resenting Sarah and then transferred to another team.  She is not regarded as a popular or successful team member since she has kept up the habit of complaining about the boss and resisting all change.  Sarah never got another promotion in the organisation.  She stayed in post for a few years and then got a job outside.  She joined her new team in the same way and is now convinced that people are just awkward and you have to push them harder to get what you want.   HR are still doing a lot of paperwork and taking a lot of notes at meetings with unhappy people.  No change there then.

Employment law is where the metal hits the road – where people problems become legal problems and the law intervenes.  It can’t make Sarah a better manager, or Mary a more realistic employee.  It can’t make an organisation have the small interventions that prevent this type of problem  What it does do is penalise and sanction those organisations who get to tribunal, where they haven’t done their part and a legal issue arises.

Of course if there are any ‘equality’ or ‘discrimination’ issues here this turns into a nightmare scenario.  Sarah picked on me because I am white, transsexual,..   Even in unfair dismissal terms, the process of performance management (if started this late and from here it can be a long haul).  If there were no employment law and the organisation was free to act in any way, would it really solve the problem?  To what extent is the very existence of employment law the problem?

To my thinking employment law, if incorrectly applied, can be a complicating factor, but not the problem itself.   Giving long serving employees three warnings and an opportunity to change their behaviour doesn’t seem unreasonable.   Would you really want to walk in and just sack Sarah or Mary (or both)?

There is another complicating factor that both performance management programmes and warnings are often seen as the death knell for individuals in the organisation – and we need to do something about that.  But that is not an employment law issue, it’s a cultural one.

We often blame employment law for giving us difficult problems.  This is a problem we get every day.  It has a relatively easy prevention plan – and more painful remedy.

About the author

Annabel Kaye has been specialising in employment law since the seventies.  She founded Irenicon in 1980 and has spent the last thirty years helping HR, line managers and everyone else look at employment law in a way that gets some organisational gain. She likes to think about things from a different angle and making the complex simple – despite the government’s best efforts.   She has traded through three recessions and advised clients from multi-national corporations to the smallest organisation. The toughest thing has always been to balance the competing needs of staff and organisation and that never goes away whatever the legal details.

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Discuss HR is the blog for Human Resources UK, the leading LinkedIn group for those involved with HR in the UK.  Next week’s Discuss HR will be published on Thursday 17^th November and will the debut of Susan Popoola.

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