Including Change in Talent Flow Decisions - Article Example

It’s hard to find leaders of the Human Resources function who are active in helping their organization improve the way they work. I asked dozens of people who are in HR or in process improvement to share examples of HR change leaders, and I only found a few. Here’s an example of a story of what is possible, but rare: In 2009 Tony Scibelli, Vice President of Human Resources and Operations at Faxton-St. Luke’s Healthcare, learned that the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Nursing Officer were going to launch “relationship-based care”, a comprehensive cultural change program that was going to focus doctors’ and nurses’ attention on patients and their families. He offered to have HR involved to address the people side. He showed them how HR could weave relationship-based care and continuous improvement into the fabric of this community hospital in central New York, for example by hiring the right people and promoting the right people. Then he was at the table with them as they planned training and communication, and how to reward people who took on improvement projects. When I talk with leaders of process improvement activities about the role of HR in change, I generally hear that HR is administrative in its orientation, bureaucratic, and a brake on innovation. Others say that HR is under-utilized. In most organizations talent management is left up to direct supervisors. Dave Ulrich, a professor at the University of Michigan and recognized as the most influential person in Human Resources, has identified three human resource processes that are critical for embedding a culture such as continuous improvement: (1) talent flow, (2) rewards, and (3) training and development. Each of these processes presents challenges to HR in leading change. Including Change in Talent Flow Decisions Hiring and promoting people who embody an organization’s desired mindset and behaviors—and removing those who don’t—sends messages to those who are not hired, promoted, or removed. They see what is happening and adapt their behaviors accordingly. The problem for continuous improvement is that managers are notorious for hiring only subject matter experts in a particular discipline, not for behaviors, such as improvement. For example, Scott Beaird, director of Talent Management at Tufts Medical Center told me, “We hire what the manager wants. We hire a financial analyst, who is great at working with dollars. We don’t typically challenge managers to look more broadly. We introduced HR business partners twelve months ago and asked them to get out and advocate for HR policies. They struggled. They kept getting mired down in minute details, e.g., writing a requisition for a new job.” Including Change in Rewards Reward systems both change and reinforce behavior. The goal of a reward system is to turn goals into measures of behavior and outcomes, then allocate rewards based on the extent to which employees behave in the right way and deliver the desired outcomes. Sustaining improvement activities demands that people not only execute their job, but improve their work. HR people typically don’t have the operational experience, expectation, or permission to engage line managers in changing rewards to encourage operational improvement. For example, Scott Beaird told me he sees that his hospital needs to reward process improvement due to the impending changes of healthcare reform, but he can’t initiate them from his position; changes to rewards need to come from senior leaders. Including Change in Training and Development Designing and delivering training courses sends messages about what matters. At the same time, it offers leaders skills and tools to act on those messages. An audit of the content of training and development experiences should show that these investments focus on improving work. Few HR organizations are going to promote improvement training unless it’s driven by senior leadership, even though they may see it is what the organization needs. So what are the root causes of the difficulty of HR leading change?  I see two: A Support Relationship: As described above at Faxton-St. Luke’s, HR must be at the table with senior leaders to weave improvement into HR processes. Before HR can offer advice to the organization, they need to be a partner – not support. The CEO and executive team often view HR in a supporting role. Being Inbred: HR hires HR experience. HR historically has been mainly engaged in personnel and compliance and transactions. HR professionals who don’t have operational experience have less credibility and won’t be comfortable in engaging in operational advice. Article link: http://humanresources.about.com/od/managementdevelopment/a/developstrength.htm Help Develop Employee Strengths - Not Weaknesses Deliberately Practice Strengths By Susan M. Heathfield,  A management philosophy, that flies in the face of conventional thinking, compels you to help employees develop their strengths by deliberate practice. This is a substitute for helping employees develop their weaknesses, a concept more traditional in management thinking. This theory was proposed by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman in First, Break All The Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently as a result of the Gallup organization's interviews with 80,000 effective managers. On top of trying to complete their daily work and achieving their annual goals, employees have a finite amount of time for development. Spend the time on what matters. Develop employee strengths - not weaknesses, and in the process, train your management philosophy and company culture. Using myself as an example, I'm good with people and good at conveying common sense, applicable information. I'm not very good with mathematical story problems though I can add columns of numbers like a speed demon. No matter what, I will never be good at solving complex mathematical problems. Could I get better? Probably. But, why not spend my time honing my strengths? I'll bet you have a parallel in your life? Yet, the traditional approach to developing employees, one of the critical factors in employee motivation, has been to identify weaknesses, often during an annual performance appraisal meeting. The employee is then sent to training or just told to "get better" at whatever his or her weak area is. Now, if the area of weakness is critical to the employee's job success, developing the weaker area might make sense. But, more likely, the employee is in the wrong job. Consider matching the employee's best skills to your company needs in a different job. In another personal example, I have always been a good writer. But, strengthening that skill over the past eight years, writing online and for publications, has made me a better writer and a faster writer. Writing is definitely a skill that can be developed if you approach it with deliberate practice. Once I started writing every single day, with hours of practice and a deliberate commitment to growth, I continued to develop the strength. I still work on my writing every day. I'm sure you have a parallel in your life - or you could. What skill should you develop daily for your own career and your employer's needs? Why Develop Employee Strengths With Deliberate Practice Stephen J. Dubner at the Freakonomics blog weighs in with these thoughts: "A while ago, we wrote a New York Times Magazine column about talent — what it is, how it’s acquired, etc. The gist of the column was that 'raw talent,' as it’s often called, is vastly overrated, and that people who become very good at something, whether it’s sports, music, or medicine, generally do so through a great deal of 'deliberate practice,' a phrase used by the Florida State psychologist Anders Ericsson and his merry band of fellow scholars who study expert performers in many fields." In the column cited in the quote above, Anders Ericsson concludes that: "…the trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers — whether in memory or surgery, ballet or computer programming — are nearly always made, not born. And yes, practice does make perfect. These may be the sort of clichés that parents are fond of whispering to their children. But these particular clichés just happen to be true. "Ericsson's research suggests a third cliché as well: when it comes to choosing a life path, you should do what you love — because if you don't love it, you are unlikely to work hard enough to get very good. Most people naturally don't like to do things they aren't 'good' at. So they often give up, telling themselves they simply don't possess the talent for math or skiing or the violin. But what they really lack is the desire to be good and to undertake the deliberate practice that would make them better." So, it seems there is truth to the power of developing your strengths and deliberately practicing the areas you want to improve. I also liked the plug for love your work, a concept I discuss frequently because of it's power to impact your work life. Do you agree? More About Goal Setting and Personal Development Achieve Your Dreams: Six Steps to Accomplishing your Goals. Why You Really Ought to Want to Love Your Work. Ten Days to a Happier, More Successful Career and Life - Free Email Newsletter. Your Tip of the Week for Success in Work and Life - Free Weekly Success Tips. More About Developing Employee Strengths Conduct a Simple Training Needs Assessment Ten Tips to Make Training and Development Work Training: Your Investment in People Development More About Developing Employee Strengths Tips for Weekly Training Training Can Make a Difference Develop Your Leadership Brand: Leadership Training Design Read More