The post Managing People Well–Kolbe Assessment Overview first appeared on Jireh Enterprises.

This is one of the most difficult tasks a manager must do, and often managers procrastinate taking this step because of its difficulty. Here’s how to do it well, when it must be done.

• First, realize that firing someone is good for the company and often good for the person
  • For the company
    • A team member who is not delivering against expectations usually affects other employees, either by causing them additional work or by lowering the performance standards of the company.
    • They are also costing the company money and impacting the company’s ability to serve customers, grow, and/or be profitable
  • For the person
    • Consciously or unconsciously, most people are stressed when they are in a job that is not right for them
    • Many times, fear of “what’s next” keeps them stuck; firing them frees them and forces them to explore what they should be doing instead
• Next, know that firings should never come as a surprise to the employee.
  • If the manager is doing their job, it will be clear to the employee that he/she is not performing up to expectations and that there are consequences to that shortfall.

Consider that there are two types of “firings”. 

• The first is when a manager has hired the right person—they are a good match with the company’s values—but they are in the wrong seat—they are NOT a good match for the role they are in. The solution is to move them into a role they DO match, following these steps in order:
  • Reach mutual agreement that they are missing some key capability or characteristic that is required to succeed in their current role, and that past efforts to help them improve have not succeeded and are unlikely to succeed.
  • Identify open or new roles that the employee WILL match well, if possible
  • Reach mutual agreement with the employee and the new manager on the details of moving the employee to the new role, including how that move will be communicated to other employees
  • Execute the change
• The second is when the person is not a good fit with the company’s values. 
  • This may or may not reflect a moral failing—someone could be risk-averse and not a creative thinker in a company that values risk-taking and creativity. The solution in this case is to end the person’s employment in a way that honors them and optimizes their chances of future success.
    • Reach mutual agreement that a values mismatch exists and is unlikely to be resolved in a timely way.
    • Reach a mutual agreement with the employee on the timeline of the transition out of the company and the assistance the company will provide to the employee in finding a new job.
  • If there is a moral failing, this may be an immediate departure with no assistance
• Laws and regulations are likely to be a factor; consult with experts as needed
• In all cases, the employee’s manager must assess and manage the impact on the organization
  • Will the org chart change, i.e., will the employee’s responsibilities be handed intact to someone, or will they be parceled out to multiple people?
  • Does the firing create a promotion opportunity? Is a new hire needed, and if so, for what role?
  • How will workflows be impacted? What knowledge needs to be captured before the employee departs?
  • How will other employees be impacted, professionally or emotionally?

Retiring

Because this is not a frequent occurrence, many managers will be novices at this step. Here’s what it looks like to do it well.

• The financial aspects of retirement flow from the company’s policies regarding pay and benefits and should be part of the written employee handbook. 
• When an employee approaches retirement, the manager and employee must prepare together for it.
  • They must agree on the timing, what communications will go out, and what ceremony will happen
    • Timing should be a mutual decision
    • The communications and ceremony should be based largely on the employee’s desire, but must honor both the employee and the company
    • Think carefully about the goals of both and how those goals can be met in an excellent way
  • Like in a firing, the manager must decide how to best manage the impact on the organization
    • Will the org chart change, i.e., will the retiree’s responsibilities be handed intact to someone, or will they be parceled out to multiple people?
    • Does the retirement create a promotion opportunity? Is a new hire needed, and if so, for what role?
    • How will workflows be impacted? What knowledge needs to be captured before the employee departs?
    • How will other employees be impacted, professionally or emotionally?

The post Managing People Well–Firing and Retiring first appeared on Jireh Enterprises.

I’d like to cover these first, as they are more straightforward. A raise is an increase in an employee’s pay without a corresponding increase in their responsibilities or level in the organization. Good looks like this:

• The employee and manager mutually understand the purpose of a raise, e.g.,
  • Is a raise meant to keep the employee whole in the face of inflation?
  • Is a raise meant to retain the employee in a competitive job market?
  • Is the raise meant to reflect an employee’s increased productivity due to training, accumulated experience, or some other factor?
• The employee and manager mutually understand when raises will happen
  • This should be written in the employee handbook, is driven primarily by the needs of the company, and is not usually open for negotiation
• The employee and manager mutually understand how the amount of a raise will be determined. Examples:
  • Cost of living raises will be based on the US CPI index
  • Competitive job market raises will be based on independent survey data re: pay (shared with the employee for transparency) and on performance evaluations
  • Increased productivity pay will be based partly on the employee’s performance, measured by performance evaluations, and partly on company performance. The split should be company policy and will likely vary as an employee’s level in the org chart changes.

Promotions

A promotion is an increase in job responsibilities that may be accompanied by a change in title and should include an increase in pay. In contrast to general employee management, promotions should be done systematically. Exceptions should happen rarely and with abundant, transparent justification—this reduces perceptions of favoritism or any other -ism affecting the decision(s). A good system includes these elements:

• Clear criteria for eligibility 
• Clear, agreed expectations about when promotions will happen
• Clear, objective selection criteria, focused on job performance
  • Do not include “potential” as a criterion, because
    •  Potential is a subjective assessment and humans are notoriously bad at judging it 
    • If you doubt this, consider that NFL scouts are explicitly paid to assess “potential” and usually have decades of experience to back up their judgments. Then consider that Tom Brady was picked dead last in his draft. Are you better at assessing “potential” than the professionals who passed on the greatest quarterback of all time?
• Transparency about who will be involved in the decision and who the final decision-maker is
• Transparency to every candidate on how they scored on the stated criteria

The post Managing People Well–Raises and Promotions first appeared on Jireh Enterprises.

Most companies are frankly poor at onboarding, yet it sets the tone for the new employee’s entire tenure with you. This is where a system really shines because every employee will have a lot of needs in common. Create a template for onboarding that includes all of the common needs, and then challenge your managers to fill in the gaps for the specific new hire. Common needs can include:

• The employee must read the employee handbook and review it with his/her manager; the employee must confirm in writing that he/she has read and understood it.
• Review the organization chart and who is responsible for doing what within the company
• Introduction to anyone they are likely to interact with
• Get them the tools they will need (physical, tech H/W and S/W, access controls, etc) and show them how to get support when they encounter problems
• Ensure HR-related onboarding (pay, perks, policies, etc.) are completed, including how to get support when needed
• Explain how performance management is done at the company

Performance management

This is where the system/personalization paradox is most apparent. The system part:

• Every manager needs to agree with their reports on 
  • What they are responsible to deliver, by when, how often, to what quality level, and with what tools and resources
    • The best practice is to set SMART goals and stretch goals
    • Agree on how delivery will be measured and the consequences of over- or under-delivery
  • Who they will have to support and from whom they can get support
  • How they are expected to work, including cultural expectations and processes
    • When and in what ways can they deviate from company processes
    • How do they submit suggestions for process improvements?
  • It is critical that this is a 2-way conversation, not delivery of an edict from on high; the end result is a contract between the employee and the manager for quarterly and annual results.
    • The contract can be changed, but only by mutual agreement.
• Next, the manager should provide regular feedback to employees on how well they are performing. This is also a 2-way conversation and has to happen more than once a year.
  • Monthly feedback works very well but takes up a lot of time; quarterly feedback is a good compromise
  • If annual goals have not been set, the quarterly feedback session is the time to set goals for the foreseeable future. This is also a good time to update the performance “contract” if needed.
  • A good manager will ask for feedback about themselves; a great manager will require honest feedback and act on it
  • One of many good structures is “more of, less of, the same”
    • What does the manager want to see the employee do more of?
    • What does the manager want to see the employee do less of?
    • What does the manager want the employee to continue doing the same of?

The “adapt to the employee” part:

• Managers need to learn what makes their employees tick and how they like to be recognized & rewarded. 
• Managers need to know what their employees’ goals and aspirations are, and mutually create a plan to reach them
  • Managers need to think about when and how to stretch their employees for their growth, even if the employee is hesitant to be stretched, and how to support them while they are being stretched
• Establish a rhythm (weekly or bi-weekly) to check in with each employee. This is their time to discuss whatever they want with the manager. 

The post Managing Employees Well–Onboarding and Performance Management first appeared on Jireh Enterprises.

Recruiting is to hiring what marketing is to sales. If you don’t have a good recruiting system in place, your hiring process will be hit-and-miss. Just like marketing and sales, recruiting and hiring should flow from your strategic plan. As a business owner, ask yourself:

• What kinds of roles will I need to fill in order to achieve my 1-year goals? 
• My 3-year goals? 
• My 10-year goals? 

The timing of your planned hires will likely vary according to your success in hitting your strategic targets, which in turn is likely to be affected by the economy around you. The important point is that your strategic business planning should guide you as you proactively determine the roles you will need to fill and the timing to fill them.

Systematically, you need a recruiting/hiring funnel in the same way you need a marketing/sales funnel. Just as you should always be selling, you should always be recruiting. Consider:

• Do you need an internship program to develop potential hires? One positive experience for an intern is likely to be shared with their friends and classmates, so the potential ROI as a recruiting tool is large
• When people start looking for a job, they typically turn to LinkedIn and the “rate your job” websites like Glassdoor, Indeed, UpWork, Monster, etc. Start with a company page on LinkedIn, then expand to other sites. Let them passively recruit for you.

Hiring

Before you hire for a role, you need to decide what kind of person would best fill it. (Hint: it likely isn’t the first person available!) Design the role and the larger team by considering:

1. What gap in your company are you trying to fill?
   1. Do you want someone who will primarily work independently, such as a salesperson?
   1. Are you trying to fill out a team roster, where each person does something different but has to contribute to the whole?
   1. What is the growth path for the role—do you want the new hire to grow into a higher-level role, or are you looking for someone who will likely fill the same role for the foreseeable future?
2. What affective characteristics (values, personality types, level of emotional awareness and interaction, etc.) do you want the new hire to have?
   1. Because you know your company values (you do have written company values that you strive to live by every day, don’t you?), you want someone who shares those values. 
   1. A values match is (or should be) non-negotiable, so determining a values match should be upfront in the hiring process.
   1. What other characteristics are required?
   1. What characteristics do you want to avoid?
3. What cognitive (skills, training, experience, ways of thinking) characteristics are needed to fill this role? 
   1. Differentiate between required (must-have) and desired (helpful to have) levels of need
   1. What tradeoffs between experience and formal training/education are acceptable?
   1. How much on-the-job training can you or your team realistically expect to provide, if an otherwise great applicant appears? Over what time frame?
4. What conative (instinctive ways of working) characteristics are needed to fill this role?
   1. This is arguably the most-overlooked aspect of hiring, yet (after a values match) the most important
   1. Examples:
      1. Will the new hire need to follow specific processes and procedures exactly, or do you need them to be adaptable? 
      1. Do you want someone to be innovative and comfortable taking calculated risks, or do you want her/him to minimize risk?
      1. Is this a data-intensive role, or is only a knowledge of the basic facts required?
      1. Will the new hire need to be good at working with his/her hands, or will they need to be good at working with ideas and concepts?
      1. What is the tolerance for each of the above?
5. How open are you to wildcards, i.e., someone who brings strengths and weaknesses you had not thought about? Make this part of your role design process.

When you have designed the role and have answers to the questions above, you are ready to design the selection process. Best practices in this phase include:

• Aim for a positive candidate experience—you want the new hire to be excited about working for your company, and that excitement should be built by the hiring process
• Include testing as needed, e.g., personality/values/ways of working tests. These will give you an objective view of how well they will fit into the role you have designed
  • While potentially stressful to the candidate, most people find learning more about themselves to be a positive experience
  • A test, in and of itself, is not a good basis to reject a candidate (and may not be a legal basis), but it can be used as an indicator of success or struggle in the role
• For a role in which cognitive skills are required, ask the applicant to demonstrate their skills
  • A coder should write code to solve a real problem you face
  • A technical worker should demonstrate competence on the machinery she/he will use
  • Ask a manager to solve people or operational problems relevant to their role
• Assess values, character, and cultural fit through interviews, using job-relevant questions that have been cleared by experts for legality
  • Example: this job requires travel 10% of the time, but those times are not always predictable. Is there anything that would preclude you from traveling when needed, including on short notice?
  • To be human is to have biases, most of which are unconscious. Be as aware as you can of how your biases might lead you to hire a sub-optimum candidate or pass over the optimum candidate
  • Ask for multiple examples of behaviors showing values, character, or cultural fit—most applicants will have one good story prepared, but someone who deeply embodies those things can come up with multiple examples
• Give the candidate an opportunity to ask questions, and evaluate the quality of their questions
  • Are they focused on the benefits to them or their ability to contribute?
  • Do they ask about things they should have researched prior to the interview?
  • Does their level of questioning match their experience and the qualities you are looking for in the role?

Lastly, let them know the next steps in the process and set their timeline expectations.

• Ensure you meet any commitments you have made—if you said they would hear from you within a week, do that, even if the message is “We haven’t made a decision yet.”

The post Managing employees well–recruiting and hiring first appeared on Jireh Enterprises.

Let me start by quoting Ray Dalio, founder of the world’s largest hedge fund: “The ‘who’ is more important than the ‘what’.” The first key to managing employees well is…who does it? For my money, this is an easy answer—the employee’s manager must manage him/her. This may seem self-evident, but many owners fail to understand or implement this, particularly as their business grows.

If your company is small and everyone reports to you, then managing them is obviously one of your (many) responsibilities. However, as the company grows and you hire managers, THEY are responsible for managing their employees—and YOU are responsible for holding them accountable to do it. Of course, they need support to do it well, especially if they are first-time managers, but you cannot and should not do their job for them, any more than you would do any other part of their job.

The second key to managing employees well is to become comfortable with paradox. On the one hand, you need a system, so that you are not just winging it. On the other hand, each employee is different, so you need to treat each one differently—which can feel like winging it. See the paradox? In the rest of this post, I want to look at WHY you need a system. We’ll look at when and why to flex from the system in a future post.

General Eisenhower was in charge of planning what is probably still the most complex operation the world has known, the Normandy invasion. Something so complex had to be meticulously organized, with the movements of hundreds of thousands of men and millions of tons of supplies and equipment carefully synchronized so that the right “stuff” showed up at the right time, in the right order. At the end of it, he observed, “The plan is nothing. Planning is everything.” By that, he meant that the system for planning was far more important than the end result. Similarly, your system for managing people is more important than any particular decision you make.

Taking a systematic approach to the entire employee lifecycle—recruiting, hiring, onboarding, managing, promoting, firing, and retiring—gives you the foundation for making the adjustments and one-off decisions you must inevitably make. Having (and following) a system provides consistency to the employee experience and reduces the number of decisions you must make along the way, which frees time and energy to focus on the key decisions. 

There is a second paradox to consider—a decision about an employee is never just about the employee. In fact, often the impact on the particular employee is the smaller concern. Every action a manager takes, every decision a manager makes, will be observed and assessed by the rest of the team. Their assessment criteria will be some variation of these two questions: Is what just happened just? How would I feel or react if it happened to me?

If the action or decision is perceived by each employee to be aligned with your company’s values and culture and to be for the greater good of the entire company, then it will accomplish several very important things. It will reinforce your company’s values, it will strengthen your company’s culture, and it will increase your employees’ engagement and desire to remain an employee. The opposite is of course true—if the action or decision is not aligned with the company’s values or culture, or is perceived to not be for the greater good of the company, then the company’s values will be seen to be mere window dressing, your culture will be weakened, and employees will start to consider their long-term employment plans.

My hope is that this post was thought-provoking and helpful. In my following posts, I will describe what your system must include. Stay tuned for news!

The post Managing employees well—an overview first appeared on Jireh Enterprises.