The Contented Cow Blog

Building Workplaces That Work

The US Census Bureau is witnessing, firsthand, one of the consequences of the bad economy. Very much unlike the last time it was in heavy recruiting mode (1989-90), the supply of talented, qualified, educated, and eager workers for the decennial project is plentiful.

USA Today quotes US Census Bureau Director Robert Groves (not to be confused with Defense Secy Robert Gates or Press Secy Robert Gibbs), as saying “The horrible recession has benefited us in an indirect way — our applicant pool contains a set of people with experience and background and training that is unprecedentedly rich”.

And so does yours… if you’re recruiting. And smart employers are ALWAYS recruiting, whether they’re hiring or not.

Here’s what those same smart employers know, are learning, or will learn from this:

• Just because there are more people in the pool doesn’t mean it’s easier to spot the best swimmers. In fact, in many cases, an oversupply of labor makes the job of hiring – and hiring well – even harder. Whenever you hear the words “inundated” and “applications” in the same sentence, you can be pretty sure of hearing the words “it was just a bad fit” being uttered not too far down the road.
• This is a case where hi-tech has to be paired with hi-touch. If you over-delegate this core leadership function to so-called smart selection systems, or to HR (whose job it is to help, not do it for you) – or if you don’t – you’ll get what you deserve.
• These days, making the right choice is as important as ever, because making the wrong choice shows up more than when the economy is on a firmer footing. Prosperity insulates against lots of bad decisions, including bad hires.
• Relying on (hoping for?) an “any port in a storm” mentality on the part of the unemployed workforce is a great way to miss the recovery. Pre-recovery is precisely the time you don’t want to foul the gene pool with “just anyone”. The best applicants will still discriminate with respect to employer reputation. Don’t let your competitors get the good ones – and they’re out there.

Richard Hadden (twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows) is a leadership speaker, author, and consultant who helps organizations improve their business results by creating a great place to work. He and Bill are the authors of the acclaimed business classic Contented Cows Give Better Milk, and the followup Contented Cows MOOve Faster. Learn more about them and their work at ContentedCows.com.

Job satisfaction is on a steady decline in the U.S., according to a report released last week by the Conference Board, a non-profit global business research organization.

If these numbers don’t grab business leaders by the throat and compel them to take action, we don’t know what will. On top of a still-anemic economy and a near universal crisis of trust,  the very last thing employers need today is a bunch of disgruntled workers operating at well less than full power. But that’s exactly what most organizations are faced with.

Only 45% of workers in the CB survey say they’re satisfied in their jobs, down from 61% in 1987, the first year the study was conducted. Unlike the economy, this downward trend has been constant, not cyclical. Just like gravity, job satisfaction has gone one way in both good times and bad… down.

So, what’s worker satisfaction at your outfit? And what difference does it make?

Second question first. If you’ve been following us for any part of the last 12 years, you know our research shows that it makes a HUGE difference – to the bottom line. Contented Cows Give Better Milk. Period.

First question: What’s worker satisfaction like  where you work? How do you know? Have you done a survey lately to find out where your company stands with respect to employee satisfaction? If not, why not? If so, what did you do with what you learned from the survey? If you want some help with this, click here.

So, if workers are less satisfied at work now than they once were, what are the reasons? What’s the remedy?

In keeping with the last-in-first-out nature of this article, we’ll start with a remedy:

Manage Yourself First: People aren’t going to follow, let alone be energized and engaged by a leader who is confused, conflicted, or depressed. If you can manage yourself on your own, go to it. If not, find a coach or counselor to help.

Now to the reasons. We’ll offer two in this article, and what to do about them; then a few more next month.

Reason #1:

Author Daniel Pink probably hit on the kernel of rising dissatisfaction when he tweeted last week, “Meager money + Zero meaning = Record low job satisfaction.”  Increase the value of either of the two variables on the left side of Pink’s equation, and satisfaction is likely to rebound.

What to do about it

If you put any more money into the equation, do it in a way that serves to better differentiate (and reward) better performers. If more money’s not in the cards, or even if it is, leaders could substantially improve employee satisfaction and engagement, and thereby organizational results, by investing more meaning in people’s work. That takes two forms:

Make less meaningful work more meaningful.

• Take all the senseless BS out of people’s jobs – unnecessary tasks, paperwork, and CYA-related nonsense.
• When you ask someone to do something, use what they’ve done, or quit asking them to do it.
• Ask people to develop their own best ways to accomplish results, hold them accountable, and reward them for hitting targets.
• On the premise that we all need to see the needle move once in a while, give them some opportunities for quick wins.

Shine a light on the meaning that’s already there. This is the more likely problem, and it’s easier to fix.

• Create a clear line of sight between their work and real paying customers. Bank tellers need to know how processing transactions makes money for the bank. Most don’t have a clue. Dishwashers and prep cooks – how does their work make diners want to come back and spend more money? And every assistant administrator in a state community college needs a firm grasp of how the decisions they make impact the quality of education in their state.
• Here’s an assignment for today. Yes, today. Ask each team member to describe how their work is felt, ultimately, by the people who pay for what you do – customers, clients, patients, taxpayers, students, whatever you call them – the people without whom the organization would not exist. If they can’t do it, see the above bullet point.

Reason #2:

While some leaders run around telling people they’re “empowered” (gag), sadly, most of us are actually micromanaging people into less and less satisfaction.

One way to start doing something about that:

Build in flexibility. If at all possible, let go of your concern with when people show up to do their work, and what they’re doing every minute they’re on the premises. Trust us. No one ever said “I hate my job. It gives me too much control over my life.” This one will get you MAJOR satisfaction points, if you manage it well.

If work times must, by the nature of your business, coincide with customers’ and/or co-workers’ patterns, then ask your workforce to figure out a way to meet the needs of the business while providing people with maximum flexibility.

In fields where customer coverage and colleague coordination matters less, incent people to accomplish results, not punch a clock, real or imaginary. If you employ adults, treat them as such. Hold them accountable – really accountable – for excellent results, and let them figure out the best way to manage their schedules while meeting business needs. If you’ve hired the right people, they’ll LOVE their jobs.

Next month, we’ll look at a few more reasons people aren’t feeling the job love as much these days, and some remedies for each.

Til then, Godspeed.

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A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

A few weeks ago, I mentioned the HR Raging Debates microsite developed by Halogen Software, in which a group of us were privileged to opine on issues like Forced Ranking, Performance Appraisals, and Generational Leadership. It was a huge success! Now we’re taking it live.

Tomorrow (Tuesday December 15th) at 2:30pm EST (GMT -5), we’ll be doing a live webinar with many of the guests in the series including:

• Josh Bersin
• Kris Dunn
• David Creelman
• Lance Haun
• Ed Lawler
• Libby Sartain
• and me

You can register for the webinar here. Join us, and let’s stir things up a little!

Richard Hadden (twitter at http://twitter.com/rehadden) is a leadership speaker, author, and consultant who helps organizations improve their business results by creating a great place to work. He and Bill are the authors of the new book Contented Cows MOOve Faster, as well as the acclaimed business classic Contented Cows Give Better Milk. Learn more about them and their work at ContentedCows.com.

As a rule we don’t use this forum to promote the services of a particular individual or organization, and I wouldn’t be making the exception this time but for the very real potential benefit to our readers. Before reading further, understand that we get no compensation whatsoever from this mention.

I heard from an old friend Thursday. He was a tennis partner and co-worker from my ADP days, and one of the few people to stand up with me when I married Mrs. Starbucks, which qualifies him on both counts (being old AND a friend). After catching up, he told me about his company, CFO Resources and what they do. Their primary service is to help employers improve cash flow and shareholder returns by reducing federal/state income tax liability.

They do this via a user-friendly process to help employers capture Work Opportunity Tax Credits (”WOTC”) associated with their normal hiring activity.  Employers are entitled to federal income tax credits if they hire and retain individuals from targeted groups as defined by DOL and the IRS. In a nutshell, his firm processes the paperwork, files it on the employer’s behalf, monitors the process, and only gets paid as a function of the employer getting a credit.

I’m told that the credits can range from $300 to $9000 per individual. Unless you’ve got money to throw away, it would be a good idea to investigate Work Opportunity Tax Credits, and unless you just happen to enjoy dealing directly with government bureaucracies, you may want to contact Ken Brice at CFOResources. (KenBrice@CFOResources.com)

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A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know that my good friend and business partner, Bill Catlette, and I don’t agree on everything. That’s part of what’s allowed our partnership to endure for going on 14 years.

As relates to yesterday’s post, One Button, Under Scrutiny at Home Depot, Bill, whose pedigree in HR goes back 35 years, pointed out, constructively, that in this case, HD really had no choice but to tell Trevor he couldn’t wear his button (although there’s still the problem with the tacit approval of it for more than a year before that, but that only support’s Bill’s point.)

Quoting Bill, “HD’s position is likely based on a ‘no solicitation policy’ that was enacted specifically to keep employees from wearing pro-union buttons/pins during a representation election campaign. The sad reality from a legal perspective is that, if you let people wear a ‘1 Nation Under God’ button, you lose the ability to prevent them from wearing a ‘Vote Teamsters’ button.”

Bill’s right, especially the “sad reality” part. It’s kind of like the story of Zachary Christie, the 6-year-old Newark, Delaware student who was nearly suspended for 45 days for innocently bringing a Boy Scout camping implement to school. Only after a public hue and cry about the absurdity of the district’s zero-tolerance policy did administrators decide that a more reasoned approach was probably more helpful.

You and I can’t do much to change big corporate or government policies, and in some cases, these policies are the unfortunately necessary by-product of the times we’re living in. But – we can sure do something about our own policies, rules, judgments, and decisions. My November resolution is to put a little more thought into the application of some of my own rules – at home and at work – in other words, to do a better job of exercising judgment and discretion, rather than just blindly applying the rules. Want to join me?

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Richard Hadden (twitter at http://twitter.com/rehadden) is a leadership speaker, author, and consultant who helps organizations improve their business results by creating a great place to work. He and Bill are the authors of the new book Contented Cows MOOve Faster, as well as the acclaimed business classic Contented Cows Give Better Milk. Learn more about them and their work at ContentedCows.com.

Trevor Keezer was fired from his job at Home Depot in Okeechobee, Florida, so says the company’s management, for failure to comply with the store’s dress code; he wore a button with the words “One nation under God…indivisible” on his clothing while at work.

There is a veritable minefield of issues here. Everyone from HR types to the ACLU to advocates of religious freedom have weighed in on it. HR points out that Trevor’s button is a clear violation of a clearly documented and reasonable policy; the ACLU says Home Depot’s right to specify employee attire standards have been trampled on (isn’t it refreshing to hear the ACLU stand up for the big guy?); and religious advocates claim religious discrimination.

Home Depot (along with every other employer) certainly has the right to ban non-company-issue buttons from employee clothing. Perfectly reasonable. Apparently his managers gave him a couple of options, including that of wearing another patriotic, but non-religious button blessed by the big orange HQ in Atlanta. They gave him ample opportunity to keep his job. Trevor was warned. He chose not to comply. Sounds like insubordination to me.

So, this HR author and speaker says Home Depot was completely within its rights to terminate Trevor.

And utterly, totally stupid.

Just like the company Bill wrote about in this blog last week, Home Depot has a LOT bigger fish to fry than what its few remaining customer service employees are wearing on their ragged orange aprons. Like making their few remaining customers feel valued, like they did once upon a time, along with a host of other issues more strategic in nature than employees’ uniform accessories.

Nevermind the questionable HR practices – supposedly Trevor had worn the button for more than a year before management raised an objection – and that’ll make the company’s position harder to defend – let’s look at the impact of this decision on HD’s business:

What if nobody had said anything and Trevor went on wearing his button and working at Home Depot?  Some customers would have been warmed by the button’s message; some would have been offended; many wouldn’t have noticed, or had any reaction if they had.  It almost certainly had more of a positive effect than a negative one. Does anyone really think that even one person would have stopped shopping at Home Depot because they saw Trevor wearing his button? Had management exercised a little wisdom, a little leadership, and kept “the main thing the main thing”, no one outside the store would have known about it, I wouldn’t be blogging about it, and it wouldn’t have been all over the news.

But in fact, they did ban the button. Trevor hired a lawyer, who alerted the press, and Trevor got on local and national TV. Lots (certainly thousands, maybe more than that) of people will feel that Home Depot is anti-God (it probably isn’t), and many will stop shopping there, some until they get over it, and others indefinitely. Meanwhile, no one’s going to start shopping at Home Depot, or buy more stuff there just because of the ban.

And as Jay Leno pointed out, the name of God is invoked all the time in Home Depot. “For God’s sake, isn’t there anybody working here who can help me find something?!?!”

There’s no evidence that anyone was complaining about Trevor’s button. It’s not likely the company would have had to spend a lot of money in legal fees had Trevor carried on wearing the button and working at Home Depot. But it will now.

So, the net effect on Home Depot’s business (such as it is) is negative. Trevor got his 15 minutes of fame, and will probably get more job offers than he can shake a broomstick at.

Way to go, Home Depot. I’m glad I sold my stock when I did.

We’ve recently witnessed a rash of boorish public behavior by people who should know better. Without naming names, let’s just say that athletes, actors, and politicians of every stripe have been well represented. Time will tell whether society is willing to accept this latest ratcheting up of coarse behavior as the new norm.

I wonder if perhaps we should adopt a color-coded “national civility index” to match the TSA’s threat meter. Think of the fun we could have with that. It would give tennis players and politicians alike something to shoot for. In the meantime, something more important is at stake, the afterwords from these outbursts – the eh hmm ‘apologies’.

Sadly, the ‘apologies’ that accompany these episodes seldom pass the smell test for authenticity. “Party leaders told me to call and say I was sorry” said one apologist. “I apologize to anyone who may have been offended” said another, whose offense involved getting off two f-bombs while describing what she would like to do with a tennis ball. Another issued an apology only after having twice denied the misbehavior. One had his agent issue an apology to his offended peeps. If anything is more offensive than the bad behavior, it just might be the apologies themselves.

This trend is bothersome not just because of its unpleasantness, but because in a lot of cases, impressionable children and young adults are viewing this as a template for acceptable behavior. The payoff isn’t pretty. In a recent survey of teens by the Josephson Institute, 64% admitted cheating on tests, 30% admitted stealing something from a store, 83% copped to lying about something significant to their parents, and, drumroll please… 93% said that they were okay with their own values. The notion that you can get away with pretty much anything as long as you mumble something loosely construed to be an apology puts us way down a slippery slope.

I have gained some experience at making apologies. It’s nothing to brag about, just a by-product of screwing up on a pretty regular basis, and getting more practice. And more importantly, because I had parents who took the hard road and made certain that I got this lesson right. One summer when I was a kid, I subbed for a friend on his paper route. Everything was fine until early one Sunday morning when I launched a tightly rolled Charleston Daily Mail through two layers of glass in a customer’s front door. I quickly learned from my parents that “service recovery” consisted of more than a simple apology. At a reasonable hour when the homeowner was likely to be up and wanting his newspaper, my dad made sure that I returned to the scene to sweep up the broken glass, replace the original paper, and make a sincere apology. Then, I got the chance to “make it right” by paying for the installation of replacement glass in the storm door. As I recall, that wiped out my profits for the month, but left me with a valuable life lesson. Thanks, Dad.

Recovering from one’s mistakes isn’t just the right thing to do. On both a personal and institutional level, it’s also good for business. I was reminded of this recently by a client whose company had shipped some off-spec product to their customers. He remarked that several customers had actually called to commend them for their prompt and thorough handling of the matter. In each case, the customers expressed appreciation that his team had reacted quickly, apologized in person, and then taken action guided not by what was legally required, but what was right. Hmm.

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A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

In a piece last week in the WSJ, Alexandra Levit offered some very practical advice for job hunters. As a long-time internal corporate recruiter, much of it really resonated with me, especially one segment on what she termed, “Connecting the Dots.” According to Ms. Levit, “The best job hunters manage the hiring process at the various firms to which they’re applying, and they don’t assume that one hand knows what the other is doing.”

Amen! Corporations large and small have never never been especially good at managing the various touchpoints in their recruitment processes. Part of that stems from arrogance (We’ve got the job, and you want it). Some of it is due to the fact that applicants enter the corporate universe from hundreds of different sources, each having its own agenda, priorities, and methods for tracking (or not) the event. One thing is for sure – Nobody involved in this chain has a sense of urgency which matches that of either the applicant or the hiring manager.

Rather than grow ever more frustrated and wonder what kind of idiots are managing the recruiting process, smart job candidates make it their business to narrow the odds by:

1. Using multiple channels to enter the organization’s recruiting stream
2. Introducing those channel sources to one another, and
3. Being a remarkable (in a positive way) candidate thru preparation and attitude

I’m reminded me of a woman who many years ago applied for a job at my alma mater, FedEx. In addition to sending a resume to our corporate recruiting office, she forwarded a separate copy to the CEO, along with a brand new size 7 Jimmy Choo dress shoe, and a note that she would do anything to get her foot in the door. It worked.

If you’re on the job hunting side of this equation, be resourceful, keep your wits about you, remember your manners, and above all, do your homework. If you’re on the other side of the fence, try to make your system a little more user-friendly, efficient, and remember that today’s job applicant just might be tomorrow’s customer.

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A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

Earlier this week, my writing partners and I holed up in a very nice, new, suburban, high end hotel for two days of concentrated work on our upcoming book, Rebooting Leadership. The trip was a success in every way. That said, while on the trip, we encountered two glaring examples of the utter futility of this thing called multitasking.

Upon approaching the hotel’s front desk to check in Monday afternoon, I found myself waiting while both front desk employees completed ‘business sounding’ phone conversations. The check-in process  then proceeded smoothly until the person checking me in found it necessary to stop what she was doing and answer another phone call. My recollection is that it was probably a full 60 – 90 seconds before her attention was again focused on completing the check-in process. As a clear signal that my experience was no aberration, the next morning, the process repeated as my partners checked in.

Upon leaving town, we got another dose of the same, this time at the airport. My partners went into an airline club room and one of them asked about changing her flight to something that was at 4-something. The ticketing agent in the club, who was on the phone the whole time, held her hand out for Meredith’s boarding pass, said “That’ll be $50″, and processed the change. They both commented on the agent’s lack of attentiveness.

The two then sat in the club until it was time for Meredith to board her new flight. Upon arriving at the gate, she discovered that the agent had given her a boarding pass for a flight to IND, not IAD, and that the IAD flight (her intended destination) had already departed.

In fairness, both organizations are known for providing some of the better service within their industries, and indeed, both recovered nicely in these incidents. That said, it didn’t need to happen.

Actually, my concern in these cases isn’t so much that a couple of customers were temporarily inconvenienced. Rather, it’s that, by virtue of some poor systems planning, cutting corners, or bad training perhaps, these two companies are regularly putting front-line employees in a position to fail with their customers. Good service is difficult enough to deliver these days. It is impossible to do it with customer-facing employees who realize that they can’t win, ergo they stop trying to.

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A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

Within the next year, it seems likely that three things will happen, each of which will put added pressure on employers. In likely order of occurrence they are:

Health care legislation – The odds are that some kind of health care bill will soon be signed into law. While this is generally a good thing, the devil they say is in the details. Regardless, it seems quite likely that health insurance in some form will be made available to all (most), without prejudice on the basis of pre-existing conditions. One of the unintended consequences of this is that lots of people, millions perhaps, who have stayed in jobs they really don’t like because of the difficulty in replacing their health coverage will bolt for greener pastures when that is remedied.

Economic improvement – By even the most pessimistic of projections, the current recession should wind down sometime in the next year. Here again, as conditions change, a lot of workers who have been biding their time (and biting their tongues) will find it considerably easier to move on to greener pastures.

“EFCA lite” – Though it now appears that the so called “Employee Free Choice Act”  legislation will not be passed in its current configuration, my bet is that congress will succumb to pressure and give unions something that makes the organizing process considerably easier, a change that is justifiably not especially welcomed by the business community.

Taken together or independently, the message for employers couldn’t be clearer. Despite the fact that we currently enjoy an “employer’s market”, we would do well to take steps now to preserve, and where possible enhance our reputations as leaders, employers, and business people. How?

A great place, no, a necessary place to start is in taking steps to rekindle trust in ourselves and our organizations. In our recently completed “Post-AIG Leadership Survey” 95% of the 286 mostly management level respondents indicated that rebuilding trust (internally and externally) is a Significant/Very Significant factor in successfully emerging from the current business and economic crisis.

If nothing else, leadership is the earned consent of followers, consent that begins with the trust that, as leaders, we are who we say we are, and that even in the absence of guidelines, we will do what is right. Make no mistake, that faith has been broken, not bent, and either by our own actions or by presumed association, our institutions and leaders, each of us, has to some degree been painted with the same brush of suspicion.

The implication for those of us who would lead others is that we must re-earn that trust, and in a larger sense, re-qualify for duty. It doesn’t matter whether you were busily approving bushels of crazy, shady loans at Countrywide, or diligently minding your p’s and q’s as an honest, hard working floor manager at Claim Jumper Restaurants, or a Delta Air Lines in-flight leader. We all bear the burden. As Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo put it recently, “Corporate America, after the immediate financial crisis, has now found itself thrown into a far more corrosive and durable crisis – a crisis of trust. The victims of recession may not differentiate between guilty and innocent parties – everyone in corporate America could take a share of the blame, deserved or not.”

Let’s get going!

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A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows