Individual Contributors Are Ready to Walk * Can You Afford to Let Them?

It’s no surprise that employees, for the most part, continue to be disheartened in their workplaces. Why? They at least have a job, don’t they?

That’s precisely the argument lending to employee disengagement. The “survivors” of the actions taken during the recession – layoffs, cuts in pay, pay freezes – also took on much more work, likely in tasks or roles they’re not particularly good at or fond of. But they did it to help the company make it through the recession.

And what kind of thanks do they get? Very little. Talent Management magazine recently examined the current state among an oft ignored but vital group of employees – individual contributors. Here’s the story in a nutshell”

The Problem – No growth opportunities mean a desire to change jobs.

“The study found a high number of individual contributors feel their roles are stagnant. What's more, they reported they will leave their organizations as soon as they feel the time is right. … When DDI asked respondents if they would move to another company if given the opportunity, 55 percent of the sample said yes. Among stagnant workers, that number jumped to 77 percent.”

The Impact – Customers will notice.

“In most organizations, this would lead to massive, costly and disruptive turnover. Individual contributors far outnumber leaders, and these workers usually comprise the majority of any organization's population. When individual contributors begin to leave, it's likely that customers will notice.”

The Contributing Factors – Managers skipping the “soft skills.”

“Additionally, individual contributors are disappointed in their bosses and managers, furthering dissatisfaction with their own roles. Stagnant workers were twice as likely to cite their boss as the one thing they'd change about their workplaces. And when asked about the inferior skills of their managers, individual contributors overwhelmingly chose soft skills, with communication and listening next in line.”

A Solution – Empower managers to recognize their teams.

“One final option to optimize the engagement of individual contributors and to ensure they stay is to evaluate leaders. Do leaders have the skills to develop their teams and provide recognition? Are they focusing too much on problems while ignoring their people? Do leaders have the authority to act?”

Are you acknowledging the disengagement of the largest body of your workforce – your individual contributors? Are you taking even the basic steps to alleviate that disengagement – teaching and encouraging managers to recognize employee contributions and behaviors, showing the employees how much they are valued?

The Best Tool for Employee Behavior Change: Strategic Recognition

In my posts this  week, I’ve written about the critical necessity of the CEO’s personal values reflecting the company’s values and living up to both consistently. At the individual level, that’s the entire point of strategic employee recognition – bringing your company’s values to life in the day-to-day work of employees.

Let’s be perfectly clear. The point of implementing a strategic employee recognition program is not the “stuff” – the rewards employees choose. Sure the “stuff” is great as a reminder to the employee of the company’s appreciation of their efforts, extending the good feeling of the recognition moment endlessly. But that’s not the point.

The main point of a truly strategic recognition program lies in changing employee behavior – in proactively managing your company culture. As we explain in our book, Winning with a Culture of Recognition:

“Social architecture is to culture what a foundation, beams, and joists are to a building. Social architecture is the scaffolding of a company: communication, traditions, authority, privileges, and “ways of doing things.” It includes behavior cues like how people dress and how they talk to one another. It includes how excellence is recognized and rewarded because it’s a way of talking about the implementation of culture. …

“Three components of social architecture deserve special mention here. They are shared values, engaged employees, and united execution. Shared values, employee engagement, and united execution create a high-performance culture. Strategic recognition is the link connecting all three. …

“Strategic recognition adds the ultimate layer of value, which is culture management. Strategic recognition is linked to strategic goals such as engagement, employee satisfaction, or culture change. But also, because you have those tools, you get to then use strategic recognition to manage the culture. In other words, you can emphasize a single value that you feel doesn’t have the traction you need to meet your strategic objectives.”

It all comes back to your values. Are your company values just a plaque on the wall, or are they something your employees truly understand, living and demonstrating them in their daily work? If you want your values to come alive – if you want your employees to actually demonstrate those values in their everyday tasks – then you must recognize your employees, regularly and frequently, when they demonstrate those values. “Joe, great job dealing with Customer X yesterday. You were put into a tough situation with elements, like the product launch timing, out of your control. But you helped the customer understand our timelines and how we could help him in the meantime. The customer left happy and you fully demonstrated what we mean by Respect for Customer.’ Well done.”

If you can do this successfully – if you can bring your values to life – you will fundamentally change the behavior of your employees so they are in alignment with your company values, allowing you to manipulate your social architecture.

Leveraging Internal Social Networks * Thanks HR Ringleader!

Our CEO, Eric Mosley, had the privilege earlier this week of speaking at The Conference Board's 2010 Senior HR Executive Conference on "Leveraging Social Media."

We were honored that Trish McFarlane, author of the outstanding HR Ringleader blog, live-tweeted from the session and then wrote a post on "The How and Why of Leveraging Internal Social Networks."

The power of social in the workplace isn't just finding ways to use Facebook or LinkedIn to your advantage with your employees. Rather, the power lies in learning from these (and other) networks and applying the best strategies and tactics to uncover your internal social networks, tracking those relationships and, critically, feeding and building them through recognition.

A couple of quick excerpts from Trish's post, but I encourage you to click over, read the full post, and join the discussion there.

Eric Mosley, Chief Executive Officer of Globoforce presented one of the finest sessions I’ve seen all year.  I’d like to share some of the items he covered regarding the internal social networks in organizations and the impact of tracking the relationships.

Globoforce sees the benefit of tracking and identifying the internal social network and are doing so through social graphing.  It allows the leaders to see who the influencers are and which employees are breaking down the silo barriers. 

Eric talked about how the size of the organization can impact these relationships.  Imagine you have 3,000 employees or even 30,000.  It is not possible to share information easily among this number of employees in an efficient manner.

If you believe like I do that influence does not come from holding a specific title and that organizations need to do a better job of identifying their influencers, I encourage you to connect with Globoforce.  They are also doing amazing things with regard to identifying recognition via social graphing.

How are you using (or wish you could use) social to your advantage in the workplace.

CEO Sponsorship of Recognition Necessary for Success

In my last post, I discussed the critical importance of the CEO living and demonstrating the same values he or she is encouraging for the company. The Conference Board took this a step further in an article on “Leadership as Performance Art.”

“At some point, leaders of growing midsize companies realize that they are shapers of a corporate culture in which their every decision, every word and gesture are carefully scrutinized for meaning – and consistency with corporate values. Darden Restaurants’ [CEO Clarence] Otis told The New York Times that what surprised him most about his rise through a series of leadership posts was ‘how amplified everything you say or do is.’ You have to be very intentional about what you say and do, he added. Otherwise, it becomes a ‘directive,’ even when you don’t mean it to be.”

Of course employees, at all levels, look to the CEO for guidance, even if in just what kinds of behavior are acceptable. One would hope the CEO in question is more like Warren Buffet and less like Dennis Kozlowski. It’s incumbent on the CEO to set the tone of expectation throughout the organization.

That’s why one of our tenets of strategic recognition is to ensure executive sponsorship of the program. If you’re goal is to create a culture of recognition through which you can actively manage the social architecture of your organization, then the CEO must be fully on board with the effort – to the point where he or she is also actively and frequently recognizing employees for demonstrating company values in their daily work.

What example is your CEO setting in your organization? Do you see employees across the company emulating the CEO, for better or for worse?