Well, this is one of those headlines it is quite easy to misread.
"Three quarters of employers regret recruitment decisions" sort of sounds like 3 out of every 4 new hires are a mistake.
Of course, that's not at all what this survey's finding means. Rather, the survey sought to know if a particular manager had ever regretted a hiring decision. That might mean one bad hire in a career dozens or hundreds of hires.
So really the remarkable thing about this survey's result is that the number is not higher. That is, I find it very suspicious that we don't have close to 100% of all managers admitting that at some point in their career they made a bad hire.
There are two likely explanations, and I suspect both work together to give us the stated results:
1) Some of the people surveyed are very new managers, who have made very few hires.
2) Some of the people surveyed are not being intellectually honest about their hires. I'd guess that the nearly 22% of "unsure" respondents fall into this bucket. We could call that the "yes, but I'm not ready to admit it" answer.
Me? I'd say anyone I hired, who falls into category two, is a hire I probably regret.
Source
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Generation Gap or Workforce Age?
Journalists love to take anecdotal evidence of changing workforce habits and apply generalizations about secular trends in the workplace. Now it's Gen "Y" who is taking center stage.
But Gen Y is really bringing little new to the mix. Similar revolutions in the workplace were attributed to Gen "X" a decade ago, and the "Boomers" two decades ago. It would appear that these workplace attitudes, while shifting a little over time, are really reflective of cyclical trends -- and that each new generation entering the workforce has similarly "radical" ideas about changing what work means. That is, it's not the Gen Y is bringing something new, but that people entering the workforce (regardless of the year on the calendar) inevitably have (the same) "fresh" ideas that other people of the same age, but in other years on the calendar, have fostered.
It's not so much that any particular generation is re-inventing the rules of work, but that people in their 20s typically have a different perspective than people in their 50s. Or as the French say, plus ça change.
(It is also ironic, or perhaps a telling Freudian slip, that a Gen X song title forms the basis for the "witty" headline of this article.... meaning one could have seen this same set of values attributed to Gen X more than a decade ago -- with the same headline.)
Source
But Gen Y is really bringing little new to the mix. Similar revolutions in the workplace were attributed to Gen "X" a decade ago, and the "Boomers" two decades ago. It would appear that these workplace attitudes, while shifting a little over time, are really reflective of cyclical trends -- and that each new generation entering the workforce has similarly "radical" ideas about changing what work means. That is, it's not the Gen Y is bringing something new, but that people entering the workforce (regardless of the year on the calendar) inevitably have (the same) "fresh" ideas that other people of the same age, but in other years on the calendar, have fostered.
It's not so much that any particular generation is re-inventing the rules of work, but that people in their 20s typically have a different perspective than people in their 50s. Or as the French say, plus ça change.
(It is also ironic, or perhaps a telling Freudian slip, that a Gen X song title forms the basis for the "witty" headline of this article.... meaning one could have seen this same set of values attributed to Gen X more than a decade ago -- with the same headline.)
Source
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Managers Matter More Than Innovators?
"Even in a young industry that rewards creative and innovative products, innovative roles explain far less variation in firm performance than do managers. This is surprising for two reasons. First, we would expect that individual variation in innovative roles would be greater than that of more standardized managerial roles. Second, given the research tradition on the importance of organizational factors to facilitate the success of middle managers..., the finding that individual managers account for more variation in performance than firm-level factors in some occasions is particularly intriguing. These two results – that individuals explain much of the performance difference between firms and that managerial roles have more impact on performance than innovative ones – challenge long-held assumptions about firm performance," notes this study ("People and Process, Suits and Innovators: The Role of Individuals in Firm Performance," Ethan R. Mollick, University of Pennsylvania - Wharton School, June 27, 2010) after examining video game companies.
In other words, great processes, and organizational structures, are important. And talented, creative innovators are key. But expert middle managers are the thing that correlates most strongly to the success or failure of the enterprise.
That's right, the so-called "suits" and the decisions, coaching, and culture they perpetuate are, at the very least, the outwardly identifiable thing in successful creative tech companies that indicates a high performing business is in play.
This study offers various hypotheses about why this might be the case, but doesn't actually dive into testing these hypotheses. Here is the food for thought:
"It suggests that high-performing innovators alone are not enough to generate performance variation; rather, it is the role of individual managers to integrate and coordinate the innovative work of others.... For example, good managers will be able to whittle down a designer’s product ideas into a realistic project plan, while a less capable manager working with a more capable designer may be unable to translate a better design into reality. Or, it may be that certain managers are good at facilitating the sort of collective creativity that results in high-quality products..., while others are less capable of making their teams more than the sum of their parts."
As I indicate, this study demonstrates the correlation, but before acting on this data, I would suggest we need more than guesses about possible mechanisms of causation. These findings do mean that when evaluating a firm's potential for future success, a hard look at middle management will tell one a lot. But it doesn't prove that bolstering middle management will produce great results. It is still possible that some other factor(s) lead to both excellent middle management *and* excellent company results.
Source
In other words, great processes, and organizational structures, are important. And talented, creative innovators are key. But expert middle managers are the thing that correlates most strongly to the success or failure of the enterprise.
That's right, the so-called "suits" and the decisions, coaching, and culture they perpetuate are, at the very least, the outwardly identifiable thing in successful creative tech companies that indicates a high performing business is in play.
This study offers various hypotheses about why this might be the case, but doesn't actually dive into testing these hypotheses. Here is the food for thought:
"It suggests that high-performing innovators alone are not enough to generate performance variation; rather, it is the role of individual managers to integrate and coordinate the innovative work of others.... For example, good managers will be able to whittle down a designer’s product ideas into a realistic project plan, while a less capable manager working with a more capable designer may be unable to translate a better design into reality. Or, it may be that certain managers are good at facilitating the sort of collective creativity that results in high-quality products..., while others are less capable of making their teams more than the sum of their parts."
As I indicate, this study demonstrates the correlation, but before acting on this data, I would suggest we need more than guesses about possible mechanisms of causation. These findings do mean that when evaluating a firm's potential for future success, a hard look at middle management will tell one a lot. But it doesn't prove that bolstering middle management will produce great results. It is still possible that some other factor(s) lead to both excellent middle management *and* excellent company results.
Source
Thursday, May 19, 2011
The Purpose Motive
For "white collar" work, employee engagement matters more than just about anything else a company can control.
Yet people aren't horses who respond to a carrot and a stick -- unless they are actually doing manual work, like a horse.
This video nicely summarizes what it calls the "Purpose Motive" (a variation of, or addition to, the "Profit Motive"). It explores why, after a basic level of economic security, the things that motivate people become Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose -- not a bigger bonus or a promotion or a kingdom. Foster Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose in an organization, and you'll get high performance, loyalty, and (all other things being equal) profit.
Source
Yet people aren't horses who respond to a carrot and a stick -- unless they are actually doing manual work, like a horse.
This video nicely summarizes what it calls the "Purpose Motive" (a variation of, or addition to, the "Profit Motive"). It explores why, after a basic level of economic security, the things that motivate people become Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose -- not a bigger bonus or a promotion or a kingdom. Foster Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose in an organization, and you'll get high performance, loyalty, and (all other things being equal) profit.
Source
Monday, May 16, 2011
"Permanent" Workers?
I'm going to guess that this Fortune article is a somewhat geographic-specific piece. And while I cannot comment on the legal nuances of the concepts, I can describe what I hear when I speak with people in high tech companies. It's not quite what Fortune is describing.
In Silicon Valley, we don't have permanent workers anymore. Sure, there are people on company payroll (which one used to call "permanent") and there are people on third party payrolls (which this article calls "temps").
But it's pretty much all "at will" employment, and increasingly both workers and companies are making that a reality -- with many "permanent" positions lasting no longer than "temporary" ones.
At the same time, many "temporary" positions contain some "permanent" employment benefits (eg, medical insurance) via the third party "agency", and sometimes make up for not offering others (eg, employee stock purchase plans) via higher base wages.
Source
In Silicon Valley, we don't have permanent workers anymore. Sure, there are people on company payroll (which one used to call "permanent") and there are people on third party payrolls (which this article calls "temps").
But it's pretty much all "at will" employment, and increasingly both workers and companies are making that a reality -- with many "permanent" positions lasting no longer than "temporary" ones.
At the same time, many "temporary" positions contain some "permanent" employment benefits (eg, medical insurance) via the third party "agency", and sometimes make up for not offering others (eg, employee stock purchase plans) via higher base wages.
Source
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Does Employee Satisfaction about Work-Life Balance Translate Into Business Success?
I don't know, but one would suspect it can be related, perhaps depending on the business, industry, and workforce type.
The first step in the process of answering the question definitively would be to find a statistically significant correlation between satisfaction with work-life balance and company performance. And the first piece of data you could use might be this new report from Glassdoor.com -- an outfit whose data set has gotten large enough to be a useful representation of the companies profiled.
Correlation does not mean causation, of course, and we could perhaps find a different "driver" of both company performance and satisfaction with work-life balance.
For now, if you are not looking to write a paper on the topic, you can consider this new list to be a "non-exhaustive list of places to consider working" -- if you are looking for a corporate gig where the staff report higher than normal satisfaction levels regarding work-life balance.
Source
The first step in the process of answering the question definitively would be to find a statistically significant correlation between satisfaction with work-life balance and company performance. And the first piece of data you could use might be this new report from Glassdoor.com -- an outfit whose data set has gotten large enough to be a useful representation of the companies profiled.
Correlation does not mean causation, of course, and we could perhaps find a different "driver" of both company performance and satisfaction with work-life balance.
For now, if you are not looking to write a paper on the topic, you can consider this new list to be a "non-exhaustive list of places to consider working" -- if you are looking for a corporate gig where the staff report higher than normal satisfaction levels regarding work-life balance.
Source
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
What's So New About Social Media?
Rather than a specific social media policy, an interpretation of how a company's existing code of conduct, performance measures, etc, apply in the social media space is more scalable.
For example: spending 15 minutes on the phone making a doctor's appointment is generally considered okay. Spending all day making social calls is not. The corollary with social media is that if it takes an inordinate amount of time away from work, or otherwise impacts performance, that's not acceptable. That's not an explicit social media policy, but an application of existing rules to the social media space.
Similarly, rules about insider information put constraints on what employees can post, even without explicitly calling out rules about posting on social media sites/services.
A final example: one is unlikely to reprimand an employee for making the occasional personal photocopy on a company copy machine. But if one is self publishing a book, and using significant company resources to do so, that's an issue. Similarly, if one makes extensive use of company resources for personal social media activity, that's likely covered by existing rules about misuse of company resources.
I do like the first recommendation in the linked article the most: If there are positive uses of social media that contribute to an employee's ability to complete job responsibilities, it is worthwhile encouraging employees to make use of this new tool. But that's not a policy, per se, any more than encouraging employees to make use of a video conference room to conduct meetings with remote colleagues is a "policy."
http://socialmediatoday.com/ballywho/289271/three-must-haves-social-media-policy
For example: spending 15 minutes on the phone making a doctor's appointment is generally considered okay. Spending all day making social calls is not. The corollary with social media is that if it takes an inordinate amount of time away from work, or otherwise impacts performance, that's not acceptable. That's not an explicit social media policy, but an application of existing rules to the social media space.
Similarly, rules about insider information put constraints on what employees can post, even without explicitly calling out rules about posting on social media sites/services.
A final example: one is unlikely to reprimand an employee for making the occasional personal photocopy on a company copy machine. But if one is self publishing a book, and using significant company resources to do so, that's an issue. Similarly, if one makes extensive use of company resources for personal social media activity, that's likely covered by existing rules about misuse of company resources.
I do like the first recommendation in the linked article the most: If there are positive uses of social media that contribute to an employee's ability to complete job responsibilities, it is worthwhile encouraging employees to make use of this new tool. But that's not a policy, per se, any more than encouraging employees to make use of a video conference room to conduct meetings with remote colleagues is a "policy."
http://socialmediatoday.com/ballywho/289271/three-must-haves-social-media-policy
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