Study shows little impact of age on managerial style

The Department of Management at Monash University and the Australian Institute of Management (QLD/NT) have released a study looking at a range of hypotheses on the correlation of age and managerial styles. What they found however, was that there were in fact very little differences between age groups.

Contrary to all expectations, our study shows that the opposite applies. Australian leaders, be they young or older and more experienced, record similar levels of leadership and have a similar impact on employee morale and performance. That is, while older managers do not add significantly more to the organization as measured by specific employee outcomes (employee well-being and psychological capital (PsyCap)), nor do they compromise these outcomes. Nonetheless, there are subtle indicators that older managers do contribute different skills to the organization.

Other interesting findings were that there was no statistically significant difference between the amount of transformational and transactional managers in age groups or the emotional intelligence between age groups.

Another hypothesis the research looked at was whether older managers possessed higher crystalized intelligence with younger managers possessing higher fluid intelligence. According to the paper:

• Crystalized intelligence refers to an individual's mental abilities learned through applying skills to certain situations. Generally, something that increases during an individual's life.
• Fluid intelligence on the other hand is refers to an inherited basic reasoning ability in solving novel or unusual problems which tends to decrease with time.  

The research showed no significant differences in age groups in regards to crystalized intelligence for managers over 31. The only difference being managers under 31 tended to show less. There was however a decline in fluid intelligence through age groups. The authors importantly note however that the differences in both of these findings are still statistically insignificant.

Either way it doesn't really matter because the research also showed there was no statistically significant association between fluid/crystalized intelligence and actual managerial competencies i.e managerial effectiveness.

So over all it's pretty safe to say 'statistically insignificant' is the word of the day with this paper. The authors find this surprising and tend to relate this to their sample size of about 55 managers (give or take a few as not all managers completed all parts of the survey). Sample size aside they also suggest the findings could be indicative of Australian business culture but regardless, state further research is needed to either support or reject the findings of the paper.

Bully screening?

HC Magazine recently posted about a new trial screening scheme for employers called BullyCheck. Basically young applicants aged between 17-22 consent to a character reference check from their current or former high school.

It would be great if this helps solve the ongoing issue of high school bullying but it could have interesting ramifications if it becomes mainstream practice. The article mentions "If a student voluntarily raises their bullying history and demonstrates remorse and a high level of community service then their application for a job may be considered on its merits" However I find it hard to see how a confessed bully would pass a typical comapany's culture fit test, remorseful or not..

Update:

Some comments are pouring in on the article and so far they're all negative. I've posted some below:


Bree Vreedenburgh

No, no, no. This is an awful idea. You marginalise these kids for their behaviour, without giving them (a) opportunity to demonstrate they have changed and (b) assistance to overcome their bullying...??? What if the kid is a bully because his dad is an idiot? Shouldn't that kid be educated and nurtured instead of marginalised?? Do you really think bullies are going to stop bullying if you refuse them the advantage of stepping into a workplace where they are required to behave like an adult?
Also, why would jobseekers not be told why their application was refused?? Doesn't it defeat the purpose of the exercise - being to make bullies understand that their actions have consequences - if you don't tell them that their bullying led to them being excluded from consideration for a particular job???
I am thoroughly confused by this scheme. 

Deborah

And what happens to these jobseekers if they get refused a job? They go on the dole? That's NOT an acceptable solution. Bullying should be addressed at the coalface - not x number of years later when applying for a position.

Dean Turner

A truly terrifying move!


Natural justice takes a back seat, conspiracy and deception now stand tall front and centre. Having children at school I am aware of this issue, it is now being highlighted ad nauseum to everyone. The issue is this, do school properly investigate an allegation, I know for a fact that 2 or more years ago these issues were being swept under the rug. How does the accused defend themselves? Where are the processes? Under 18 and you criminal record is sealed, yet for this we will happily tell any employer who comes along.

It may be 2011, but it feels much more like "1984"!

Reference checks are an important part of the recruitment process and for many young professionals entering the workforce, a reference from high school might be all they have. Treating this like a Criminal Check is probably the wrong way to go however especially if they can demonstrate solid character references from employment post high school. I guess we will just have to see how the trial plays out and what the results are.

The Talent Pipeline - Engaging High Potentials

I came across an interesting whitepaper titled "Is Your Talent Pipeline at Risk? Engaging High Potentials"

For those of you already familiar with career development and organisational engagement, the information in this paper may not come as much of a surprise to you. However the paper does make some important distinctions on terms and discusses common pitfalls that managers can make when planning to engage high potentials.

I'll post some of the more interesting observations I gained below:

Firstly, there is a big difference between performance and potential. It makes a lot of sense once you think of it but before I saw this table I would have often placed them in the same 'mental pool' of thought. It is entirely possible for someone to a high performer with low potential, visa-versa and everything in between.

One quote I particularly like from the paper, probably because it sounds like it was pulled from an episode of Yes Prime Minister, was from one of the contributors, Abgeka Scapello “If you have aspiration without ability, then you are an incompetent dreamer.”

As a follow on from this chart (however in the actual document the chart is at the end) the paper outlines three key pitfalls or traps to avoid. The paper already does quite a good job of summarising end expanding on these points so I'll quote them below.

1.     Don’t assume high potentials are engaged. It is vital that employers understand what drives engagement for this key group. High potentials generally have higher expectations for how they should be treated – starting with simply being identified as a high potential. Senior leaders should double or triple their efforts in keeping young stars engaged by:

·         Recognizing them early and often

·         Linking individual goals to corporate goals

·         Giving them opportunities to help solve the company’s biggest problems

·         Regularly taking the pulse of valued employees

While it’s important to acknowledge high potentials, you must be cautious not to disenfranchise the rest of your organisation. Consider how you recognise and reward other members of your workforce, including offering career development opportunities to other key segments of your employee population.

2.     Don’t confuse high performance with future potential. More than 70% of today’s top performers lack critical attributes essential to their success in future roles. The bulk of talent investments are being wasted on individuals whose potential may not be that high.

There are three attributes that best define stars: Ability + Engagement + Aspiration.

·         Ability:

Intellectual, technical and emotional skills to handle increasingly complex challenges

·         Engagement:

Level of personal connection and commitment the employee feels toward his or her role and to the firm and its mission

·         Aspiration:

Desire for recognition, advancement and future rewards

3.     Avoid delegating down management of top talent. Top talent is everyone’s responsibility. It is a long-term company asset. Responsibility for high potentials’ development must be shared by general managers. There is often an assumption that line managers know their people best, but they should not have the sole responsibility of managing top talent. What happens when management of top talent is not shared?

·         Candidates are selected solely on the basis of recent performance.

·         Candidates are offered narrow development opportunities limited to their own business units. Managers focus mostly on skills required now rather than tomorrow.

·         Employees are hoarded by line managers and not shared throughout the organisation.

Pivot Tables don't need to be intimidating

Ever wanted to learn the basics about pivot tables without someone drowning you in technical jargon or throwing a book at you?

There is a big difference between data and information. Anyone can produce data, but its information that allow Managers to make the informed decisions they need to drive business objectives with confidence. Pivot Tables are simply another tool in the HR Practitioner's box to provide just that - information.

In this excellent four part series on YouTube, SimonSezIT provides and easy to understand and well paced introduction to Pivot Tables. If you've thought about using Pivot Tables but didn't know where to start, or are already using them but not sure if you're getting the most out of it then I highly recommend you check out these videos below.

Can 360-degree feedback run the risk of being divisive and disengaging?

I've always quite liked the concept of 360 degree feedback however having yet to coordinate my own 360-degree survey I will reserve professional judgement. On a personal note, the idea of feedback being a multidimensional process is appealing to me and I believe it can be used as a catalyst for moving people from positions of ignorance to power in regards of self-assessment - Something along the lines of the Johari Window is what I have in mind. (The Johari Window model itself can be a discussion for another day!)

Lanning Bennet the founder and CEO of COI group appears to hold a differing opinion however in this article on HR Daily. He raises a number of points about the potential disadvantages of using 360 surveys and claims they can easily create more problems than they solve. Some of his key points are below:

• Many staff are reluctant to be totally honest and open with their assessment of a colleague. Responses are likely to be softer than what reality would tell you.
• Issues of what staff think of each other personally can colour feedback on how they actually perform the job. 
• Responses can be awfully confrontational and demotivating for leaders especially if it is from colleagues they have worked with for a long period. Leaders may take it on board and address issues, they may go into denial or even worse disengage with the organisation. 
• As a sub point to this Bennett notes that careful, sensitive and often expensive debriefing needs to occur with a 360. (I would be interested to know how many organisations properly invest in a 360's back end to address this.)
• A 360-degree survey tends to focus on negativity, not because it is an inherently negative process but that because "human nature being what it is, we easily dismiss the positives and things we're good at and we fixate on the things that people say we're not so good at." Bennett admits 360's does achieve both positive and negative feedback but the negatives do damage.

In my opinion, while Bennett makes some valid points he seems to be giving 360-degree surveys a bit of a bad wrap. Also his opinions seem to flow from an assumption that the responses are not confidential, something which in my experience should be the case. I've heard arguments that 360-degree surveys often simply confirm what many organisations already know. Consequently, if a leader in your organisation gets bombarded with negative feedback with on a 360, the 360 itself is probably the least of your problems. Although to be fair, part of Bennett's argument is the way in which a 360-degree survey can deliver this feedback does in itself has the potential to be damaging. 

To keep things interesting a discussion had taken place in the comments section of the article where Tim Baker challenged Bennett's advice: 

Bennett makes some false and inaccurate claims about 360 degree feedback. Firstly, it is not an assessment; it is supposed to be a developmental tool. Although based on perceptions, people's perceptions are reality in their eyes. Bennett states that "it creates more problems than it solves" which from my experience is untrue. My experience is that if people's feeback is confidential, which it should be, then people largely treat the exercise with respect and give accurate observations. It is the case that managers are often pleasantly surprised by the feedback in areas they least expect. I argue with the claim that feedback needs to be presented "carefully and sensitively". Most good managers go not believe they are "considered a real star". Another false claim is the assumption that feedback is often consistent from all three sources. It is not always the case. For instance, some team members may have conflicting perspectives about the manager. I think the article demonstrates a profound lack of understanding about management and the 360 degree process and outcomes. After all, the 360 report is simply a convenient way to communicate what people surrounding the leader are thinking. Surely that is useful data to build upon.

Lanning Bennett responded to Tim:

Hi Tim,
Thank you for your feedback.
There is plenty of evidence that 360's require careful and often professional feedback - half the coaching profession make their living out of doing just that.
I don't know any 360 tools that have any other components to them other than assessment. Where are the development tools that are provided with them? Development is left to either to coaches or the manager. This is a major problem with 360 tools. All they do is assess and leave the manager to deal with the development side or to get professional support. Finally lets look at alignment. What the leader needs to know is how can I best spend my time and use my skills to help my team perform at its best yet 360 tools never ask this simple but critical question.
That is all the leader needs to know and you don't need a 360 for that.

Bennett does offer an alternative to 360-degree surveys in the article however to be honest, I'm not exactly sure what he is referring to. He describes assessing leaders on outcomes rather than doing a personal assessment. Essentially he seems to shift the focus from an individual to a group KPI. A list of Bennett's example questions are below:

• How clear is the strategy of your team?
• Does the team have the resources it needs to do its job to the best of its ability?
• How well are values and behaviours of the team enacted in the workplace?
• How well trained and empowered is the team?
• How effective are its systems and processes, and the software and hardware that we use?

If you have a better idea of the process Bennett is describing please elaborate in the comments below. Being the first genuinely negative opinion of 360-degree surveys I've come across, I find Bennett's arguments interesting however I wouldn't say I'm convinced, particularly given the amount positive information I've seen regarding the surveys when done properly.

I look forward to conducting my own 360-degree survey in the future so I can come back to this subject with more personal experience to draw on.

Don't Strain Your Brian - Mind bending puzzles and curly questions riddle today's interview landscape

This post is about an article posted in the Weekend Australian, 14/4/2012 by William Poundstone titled “Don’t Strain Your Brian” which is actually an edited extract from his book titled “Are You Smart Enough To Work At Google?” Due to copyright restrictions I don’t believe I am able to post a copy online. However, if you are interested in reading the article, it can be found here.

Since we sometimes get asked to sit in on interview panels and assist with selection criteria you may already have come across some of the more bizarre interview questions out there. For those that have not, this recent article in the weekend Australian should give an interesting insight into what gets asked.

Personally I’m still on the fence with some of these “left field/creative” questions discussed in the article. “How would you weigh an elephant without using a scale?” “Why are all manhole covers round?” “If you were a cartoon character, which one would you be and why?” (Apparently Yogi Bear is the right answer for that one if you’re at a Bank of America interview.)

Surely if you wanted to test someone’s creative problem solving skills you could provide them a case study more grounded in reality or at least the position they are applying for? Could you really use someone’s favourite cartoon character to help justify a decision on a selection committee report? ...Unless they are applying for Disney, I would hope not.

There are some better left field questions in the article however, most of them coming from Google. These tend to be lateral thinking mathematical problems, probably well suited for software engineers. I would argue a move outside the set standard behavioural questioning can certainly have its advantages, but you need to provide a sound justification for the question, (beyond your own amusement) tied to the selection criteria. Otherwise you’re simply identifying people who are good a talking off the top of their head rather than people which demonstrable skills, key to the position.

Email Blunders - Response to HC Online article

You may have heard about the recent mishap which affected an unfortunate HR team at Aviva, Britain's second-biggest insurer by market value. Basically the stuff of HR nightmares they accidentally sent out a termination letter to all 1,300 staff instead of one.

Human Capital Online wrote an article in response to this, however I actually disagree with most of their points. I will summarise their tips here (my comments are in green). I'd be interested to know your thoughts in the comments below. I am assuming this article is referring to more serious email breaches rather than typos or small non-confidential leaks etc.


1. Forget about retrieving it; you can’t “unsend mail”. – An IT Administrator could theoretically retrieve emails but even then it’s probably not an option.

You can retrieve emails from outlook. If you open the email and click on actions in the toolbar. It gives you the option to either delete sent mail from the person’s inbox or replace it with a new email. If the person has already opened it, outlook will show that the sender tried to retrieve it.


2. Ignore it – most people don’t read all their emails anyway.


I find this quite unprofessional. HR often sends formal communication and advice and thus if it goes to the wrong recipient we need to rectify the situation.


3. Apologise – but only to your boss.

May depend on the seriousness of the error and the amount of people it was sent to but I think recipients need to know if they received something that was not intended for them. This follows on from my issue with point two.


4. Do the full letterman – face-to-face apology is a must to someone you offended.

This one I actually agree with – obviously not in the case of a reply all but if it’s clear the outlook retrieval did not work (it will tell you) then a phone conversation can have much more tact than a further email. This may of course follow up with an apology in writing.

"Best-in-class" Human Capital Management Trends

I came across a free whitepaper titled "Human Capital Management Trends 2012: Managing Talent to Lead Organizational Growth". This study of nearly 300 organisations from November and December 2011 investigates "key strategies, technologies, and capabilities deployed by Best-in-Class HR and talent management practitioners, and the positive impact of those activities on business performance."

I'll post a few interesting points and tables I took from the white paper here but to get the full picture, I recommend you download the paper. Business lingo aside, the report essentially breaks the 300 organisations interviewed into 3 categories: Best-in-Class, Average and Laggards. These categories are made by looking at employee engagement, successor risk management and hiring manager satisfaction.

The report then expands on all the other data surveyed, categorising and linking the results into these three categories. It also references some other models and gives tips at the end for how Average and Laggard companies can move into the next category. One table I particularly liked as it gave quite a lot of information was the one below:

At the end of the paper, as mentioned earlier, it provides notes on how organisations which are not defined as Best-in-Class can lift their game. Additionally the paper also provides a similar 3 key points for Best-in-Class organisations to make sure they keep their top position.  I'll summarise these steps below:

For Laggard Organisations:

• Involve the business in setting HCM (Human Capital Management) Strategy - HR strategy needs to coordinate itself with business strategy this includes stakeholder buy in from the get-go. 
• Define what success looks like - Determine how process will be measured and ensure the organisation has tools in place to actually do so. Only 20% of Laggard organisations had clearly defined metrics for HCM effectiveness. 
• Automate to reduce tactical burden - Free up HR from the tactical activities and allow it to become more strategic by automating workforce management solutions, employee performance management and employee data management/payroll. Laggards clearly lack in these areas vs. Best-in-Class organisations. I for one can vouch for the importance of a versatile and capable HRMIS/Payroll  system in opening up new strategic discussions through powerful HR metrics.

For Average Organisations:

• Set the data free - Make sure the right people have access to the right data. Managers need information to make informed and better decisions - employee profiles, development plans, skill assessments etc. 
• Know what drives the business - Ensure succession management systems are in place and identify the critical roles to the business. If HR doesn't understand how revenue is generated it can build plans to support it. 
• Use assessment data throughout the lifecycle - Pre-hire assessments remain a key identifier of success in this survey but post-hire assessments are just as important as an indicator of which category your organisation will fall into. Plan beyond an employee's first role in the organisation. 

For Best-in-Class Organisations:

• Know your (external) customers - Once you connect HR initiatives to business priorities the next step is to understand the organisation's industry and customers. Use customer feedback to inform HCM decision making. 
• Measure early, measure often - Evaluating HCM plans just one year after implementation is not enough. Develop evaluations into the long term and adjust plans accordingly. 
• Apply analytics to make the case - Even in Best-in-Class organisations only 48% of them use workforce analytics and or reporting tools, even fewer (25%) use predictive/forecasting analytics. Use analytics to provide valuable insight for the organisation. 

Myself... In profile

I appeared in the Autumn Navitas English company newsletter for their in profile section. Apparently I got a bit too excited when filling in their questionnaire and they had to edit me down to fit in! That aside, if you wanted to know a little bit more about me or what I do - the feature below should give you a better idea.

Complaints - Separating facts from labels

I came across a worthwhile article in HR daily from a few weeks ago. "Handle complaints based on facts rather than labels." Check it out here.

The article focuses on a bullying complaint scenario but the ideas discussed can be expanded upon and used more generally; particularly when you're looking at solid communication techniques or being involved in any type of company investigation. Two points in particular I took from the article were:

1. Call out inappropriate behaviour straight away, when it is small. That way it is much less of an issue for an employee to acknowledge their behaviour and for them to apologise if required. It also helps create a culture where issues can resolve themselves rather than escalate and become much more serious.

2. When 'bullying' complaints to arise, move past the labels and work on the issue. Someone can claim that their being bullied and HR goes into serious formal investigation mode however when you dig down into the core issues of the complaint, it may just be a misunderstanding. The article gives a good example of annual leave being rejected. Jumping straight onto the bullying label can cause things to fester unnecessarily and can potentially sabotage a speedy resolution.

Unless you stay focused, it can be very easy to slip into accepting labels rather than facts, even if you ask clear and concise questions. Take for instance this example below:

Say to the employee: "When you say the person is being inappropriate; what are they saying? What are they doing? How often? How are they saying it?"

"If they say, 'They're rude to me. They always demean me', a lot of those things are labels. Ask, 'What do they do? When did they do it? Can you give me an example?'"

A personal example I can refer to is a complaint against an employee who was allegedly intoxicated. The labels thrown around in this instance were ones like drunk, alcoholic etc. However these were not facts and couldn’t form the basis of an investigation or decision. What could however was the behaviour of the employee, i.e. the facts. How was the employee acting? What did they do? What did they say? As long as you stay focused on the facts, and move past the labels you can be confident you will be making a decision on sound footing.

Changing the language around flexible work

I came across an interesting article in my HR Daily feed regarding flexible work options and the terminology used to describe them. Essentially it argues that "Work-life support" and "Flexible working arrangements" gives the impression that it is for staff receiving special treatment and reserved for the select few.

I tend to agree. Bar the new-age companies known for pushing the boundaries on flexibility such as Google, many other workplaces can have an unspoken stigma attached to flexibility. Even now I am working on a transition to retirement project specifically aimed at flexibility but only for those nearing retirement. The idea of pushing flexibility for staff throughout the organisation regardless of age is still a controversial idea. The term flexible careers, not to be confused transitional ones in the career path sense, is one that the article likes to use instead along with "flexible work" to help buck the stigma.

See the whole article here.

11 Key points from the article around flexibility are:

1. Incorporate flexibility into workplace design. - This includes job design. treat flexibility as a management deliverable
2. Create a culture of flexibility. - Remove the stigma of flexibility, make it part of the accepted culture.
3. Improve leadership around flexibility. - Make sure senior leaders can lead by example and are genuinely committed.
4. Talk about flexibility. - Illustrate success stories and detail examples.
5. Strategise around flexibility. - Include flexibility measurements in standard reporting and identify flexibility as a business need.
6. Make flexibility universal. - Make sure flexibility is truly open to all levels and job types within the business.
7. Provide resources to support flexibility. - Be sure to equip people with the tools they need (i.e IT resources).
8. Measure ROI on flexibility. - Engage in risk analysis and show financial returns.
9. Proactively Seek flexibility. - Try focusing on 'why not flexibility' as opposed to looking for reason to 'block' it.
10. Support team flexibility. - Remember to consider flexibility impacts within and across teams. Welcome feedback. 
11. Promote career flexibility. - Create flexible career opportunities and integrate them into senior roles.  

Building Assertive and Confident Statements

I came across a useful structure for building assertive and confident statements given to me at a professional development session. There were four key templates for delivering these statements. When communicating, following this structure should help you clearly package ideas and make them more powerful.

1. Make a point, support it with a reason, back it up with an example, reiterate the point.

• Point
• Reason
• Example (make it specific)
• Point

2. Make a point, support it with three reasons, reiterate the point.

• Point
• Reason
• Reason
• Reason
• Point

3. Make a point, acknowledge the counter view to this point, provide a reason supporting your point, reiterate your point.

• Point
• Counter (acknowledge counter view)
• Reason
• Point

4. Make a point, note a past example, present actions and then future goal/direction, reiterate your point.

• Point
• Past
• Present
• Future

The final point does not need to be big or forced. It is simply a way to notify your audience that you have finished your statement by rounding it off, keeping your communication clear and focused.

Quotes to ponder

Every week or so I come across an interesting quote which causes me to reflect on my own profession and wonder how things could be done, structured or viewed differently to change results.

I'll start uploading these quotes as I come across them. Today I will be uploading quotes from a Donnington Report. The report itself is a few years old now (2008) but I find its content still particularly relevant. I came across it attending one of Donnington's professional development seminars.

I feel these quotes really speak for themselves and I particularly like the last one:

A lot of seemingly very important talk about culture, but the one question I always ask is: how aligned is the culture that we're talking about to the stuff that makes the business actually perform? Or is it really just an interesting theoretical chat about what happens to motivate people or how things are done in an organisation at a particular point in time? Unless the talk about culture is linked to what makes the business perform, then the only people who will be talking about it are people in HR who are probably surveying it.

I think in the professionalising of HR, the professional training has become incredibly narrow and, without being too derogatory, is a bit "pop psychology". In my opinion, really good HR people should know how to write a decent business case, not make it up or hope they can find someone who could help them do it. HR professionals need to demonstrate a greater awareness that the world is a complex place and that the issues they deal with are amongst the most complex. This means that they shouldn't rush to find solutions that they can package up nearly, tie bows around - which is why I think HR people love policies.

For all the rhetoric about people being the most important asset in our businesses, we haven't done the work that makes sense of that; we are just stating a truism. You know, like saying the world is round, so what! People are important, so what!

What we have ended up doing in our businesses is professionalise HR so people go zip up the ladder in HR and never touch anything else. It's the same with risk functions where you have people who only know how to do the technical analysis, they actually don't get how it interacts with the business. And yet we are looking for leadership and capacity to drive across functions of our organisations.   

I don't think many of us in the HR function are anywhere near enough engaged in the business of business. Rather than finding the courage to solve complex business problems we have instead tended to drape ourselves in moral authority and hope people notice us as we swan through organisations.

We need the courage as a profession to stop doing the stuff that doesn't make any difference. We need to do the things we know are right in our organisations and something that will make a fundamental difference. HR needs to measure the right things so they can have the debate differently. They then need to find the people they can align within the business to take it forward.

Restructuring Tips

I attended an FCB Seminar yesterday, check out their website below.

http://www.fcbgroup.com.au/

These breakfast seminars have been of a continuous high quality and I would highly recommend you attend one in the future if you get the chance. If only for the opportunity to engage in the roundtable discussions with professionals from varying industries on ideas/plans you might have for your own business units – you may find someone who had been in your situation only a few months ago. Often presented by lawyers, you will also find they back up nearly every piece of advice with an actual case study.

The session was on "Optimising Business Efficiencies During an Economic Downturn" and the roundtable I attended was "Change Management and optimising workplace culture in difficult economic times". However there were other roundtables on Industrial Disputes and OHS.
Two notable points I took from the session were:

1. During a restructure be careful with your terminology. When communicating with employees you should refer to the structure as a “proposed” one. This is to ensure you allow employees the chance to comment and communicate on the restructure. If the restructure was to result in the redundancy of a position, the potentially to be retrenched employee should have the opportunity to present a business case to challenge the change. If you communicate restructures as stated fact from the get go you could be at risk of appearing to not have a genuine consolation with staff.

2. Something I had not thought of before – incentivising handovers. Sometimes handovers, particularly if the result of a restructure and or redundancies can increase the risk of poor information transfer if the leaving employee is disgruntled. Incentivising handovers linked to KPI’s could alleviate this by giving the employee a clear benefit to conducting a proper handover. A secondary effect of this is it formalises the handover process, something that particularly important to help avoid knowledge loss. A handover process does not need to be incentivized to make it formalised obviously, it is just a bi-product.

The six competencies to inspire HR professionals for 2012

This material was passed on to my by a colleague of mine.


http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/hr/features/1020649/exclusive-the-competencies-inspire-hr-professionals-2012


It's an interesting piece on the six key competencies needed for HR Professionals. 

1. Strategic Positioner
2. Credible Activist
3. Capability Builder
4. Change Champion
5. Human Resource Innovator and Integrator
6. Technology Proponent
   

These are the themes driving the above competencies. They are intended with to align with the above competencies - the Strategic positioner for example needs to think and act form the outside/in in order to coordinate strategic solutions.

1. outside/in: HR must turn outside business trends and stakeholder expectations into internal actions
2. business/people: HR should focus on both business results and human capital improvement
3. individual/organisational: HR should target both individual ability and organisation capabilities
4. event/sustainability: HR is not about an isolated activity (a training, communication, staffing, or compensation programme) but sustainable and integrated solutions
5. past/future: respect HR's heritage, but shape a future
6. administrative/strategic: HR must attend to both day-to-day administrative processes and long-term strategic practices.

I may discuss this in more detail in further posts. In the mean time, the above link should give you plenty to think about.

I'm back!

Well it's been a long time since posts...

I'm excited to say however that this blog will be resurrected! I will be making posts fortnightly to begin with and we will see how we go from there.

The topics will be related to HR in some way and over the coming weeks I will begin to make edits to the blog and side documents as it searches for a new identity.

Jack