That’s why I welcome Bartz’s challenge to a longstanding management task that long ago seemed to outlive its usefulness—the annual performance review.
“If I had my way I wouldn’t do annual reviews,” she told The New York Times, “[especially] if I felt that everybody would be more honest about positive and negative feedback along the way. I think the annual review process is so antiquated. I almost would rather ask each employee to tell us if they’ve had a meaningful conversation with their manager this quarter. Yes or no. And if they say no, they ought to have one. I don’t even need to know what it is. But if you viewed it as meaningful, then that’s all that counts.”
I’m with Bartz on this one. I am not a fan of the annual review process, mainly because of the focus on the “process.” The discussion with the employee isn’t the problem, but rather, what you must go through to get to that stage—the inflexible forms, the manual process and the lack of a good follow-up system that makes the evaluation truly meaningful.
I might feel differently if I had access to some slick software that automates the process—and I’m told by my HR vice president that it is coming in 2010—but in the meantime, it’s more about the process than it is about the communication with the worker.
The solution that Carol Bartz suggests—an ongoing process of discussion, review and coaching with the employee—makes a lot of sense but also takes a lot of time. That’s in short supply for a lot of managers as they cope with the effects of the Big, Bad Recession, but I think that Bartz has the right idea.
A just-in-time system for regular employee feedback might go a long way toward helping keep workers engaged as we all struggle with an economic environment that makes it tough to keep workers’ heads in the game.
“People should understand that they will learn more from a bad manager than a good manager,” she told the Times. “They tend to get into a cycle where they’re so frustrated that they aren’t paying attention actually to what’s happening to them. When you have a good manager things go so well that you don’t even know why it’s going well because it just feels fine. When you have a bad manager you have to look at what’s irritating you and say: ‘Would I do that? Would I make those choices? Would I talk to me that way? How would I do this?’ When people come to me and say, ‘I can’t work for so-and-so anymore,’ I say, ‘Well, what have you learned from so-and-so?’ People want to take a bad situation and say, ‘Oh, it’s bad.’ No, no. You have to deal with what you’re dealt.”
That’s the trick in life, isn’t it—“to deal with what you’re dealt.” Those are words of wisdom that all managers need to live by, in good times and in bad, because they are the very essence of what it takes to be a successful and effective manager.
Here’s yet another example, courtesy of the Los Angeles Times: “Employers increasingly are using credit checks to screen job applicants, a practice critics say is making it tougher for many unemployed workers to find jobs in the midst of a grinding recession. That could change by the end of this week, when a bill that would prohibit companies from pulling credit reports on most job seekers is scheduled to reach Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desk.”
The Times story focuses on a bill in state Assembly that would “narrow the category of jobs for which employers could investigate the financial background of applicants. Those would include positions in which employees would have access to large amounts of cash, valuables or confidential financial information, as well as managerial and law enforcement posts.”
Credit checks aren’t new; I had to agree to be checked and “bonded” when I took a job at Sears many years ago during my college days. I was going to be dealing with money and the company wanted to make sure I didn’t have something in my past that would make me a less-than-stellar risk. At the time, I don’t recall thinking it was a big deal.
It’s probably not a big deal for many now either, but it has become a big industry. As we noted in our Workforce Management Special Report on Background Checking in February, “If employers had screened out applicants based on credit history hits in 2007, they would have eliminated more than 40 percent of all applicants; if they had rejected those with criminal hits, they would have eliminated nearly 10 percent, according to the latest background screening hit report by Kroll.”
But we also said that pre-employment background checks aren’t perfect. “More than half of the organizations victimized by fraud ran an employment-history check on the perpetrator,” contributing editor Fay Hansen reported. “[Some] 40 percent ran a criminal background check and 23 percent ran a credit check. In half of the cases in which the perpetrator had convictions for fraud or had been terminated by an employer for fraud-related conduct, the victim organization had screened the perpetrator’s employment history as part of the hiring process.”
The Times story says companies feel that credit checks are a way to “help verify that candidates are responsible and trustworthy. The California Chamber of Commerce supports credit checks as a way to flag hires with checkered backgrounds that wouldn’t show up in resumes or interviews.” It lists the credit check bill on a list of potential “job killers”—legislation that would hurt California’s economic growth.
The flip side of this, the newspaper points out, is that “some academic studies have found little connection between credit history and job performance. Critics contend that the practice perpetuates a vicious cycle in a rough job market: Candidates with dinged credit have a tougher time landing work that would help them out of their financial bind. Civil rights organizations say the practice is particularly disadvantageous to minorities and women.”
Plus, the Times talks to a woman who had five job offers retracted in the past six years because of her credit report. It was bad, she says, “because of visits she made to the emergency room without medical insurance, including one episode of chest pains that ended up costing her $26,000.”
My problem with all of this is that credit reports are simply one tool in the hiring and screening toolbox.
No credit check should determine who you hire. Any company that blindly uses a pre-employment background screening without looking at any other factors is probably missing the boat on a lot of good job candidates, or, hiring some of those people who end up committing fraud on the job. Both speak to a singular lack of common sense in hiring, and no credit or pre-employment check is going to help with that.
A year ago Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill similar to the current one in the Assembly, and there’s no reason why he won’t do it again. So maybe this won’t be one of those new workforce trends coming out of California, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
My guess is that this issue isn’t going away. It will re-emerge, as so many of these bills do, in some way, shape or form. And maybe the next time it does, there will be a new California governor in place who has a different perspective on the matter.
What can you say about a large, tradition-bound, old-school manufacturing company that decides to shake up its management team by promoting someone with no human resources experience to lead its HR function?
“The retirement of Barclay, 53, who has been vice president of global human resources since 1998, was seen as long overdue,” the story says. “ ‘She is one of the same senior leaders who is responsible for the destruction of the company,’ said Rob Kleinbaum, managing director of auto industry consulting firm Rak & Co. ‘She is responsible for it and should be accountable for it.’ ”
By contrast, here’s a bit about Barra’s HR-free career.
“Barra, 47, is vice president for global manufacturing engineering and has been with GM since 1980,” according to the Workforce Management story. “She has served in a number of engineering, manufacturing, management and communications positions and was plant manager for the Detroit Hamtramck assembly center. Barra was appointed executive director of vehicle manufacturing engineering in 2004 and was named to her current position in 2008, the company said in a release.”
According to auto industry consultant Kleinbaum, appointing an engineer with no HR experience as the department’s head suggests that General Motors is looking to infuse the company and its workforce with a greater sense of the manufacturing principles of continual improvement and operational efficiency.
“It’s a positive sign they want to make deep changes in HR and don’t want to draw from the HR community,” Kleinbaum said in the story.
It depends on how you look at it, of course. Large companies have tried this in the past. We wrote about Wal-Mart’s attempt to do it, without any notable success, back in 2005, but I know of no research that indicates that there is any higher degree of management success for someone with a non-HR background than a more traditional human resources leader.
The question I keep coming back to about this move is this: Does GM’s decision to promote someone from outside HR into the top people management job reflect out-of-the-box thinking, a big slap at traditional HR, or a little of both?
I’m thinking it is more the former than the latter, but only time will tell if this move makes much sense—and if it’s possible to make meaningful change without a grasp of what makes HR tick.
Here’s a question I’d love to have some hiring managers answer: Would you hire (or even consider hiring) an individual with superior talent but a troubled past who might be a game-changer for your organization? Yes, he’s a convicted felon, but he has served his time, expressed remorse on numerous occasions, and seems generally contrite for his past actions.
Would you give this person a chance? Does talent outweigh the negative baggage, especially if the person in question has the ability to really, really help your business?
In other words, would you take a chance and hire former star pro quarterback Michael Vick?
“For Michael Vick to have any prayer of resuming his NFL career, he has to show true remorse for dogfighting, something he now admits doing as young as 8 years old,” writes Sam Farmer in the Los Angeles Times. “He made that confession recently to Wayne Pacelle, chief executive and president of the Humane Society of the United States, when Pacelle visited him at his home in Hampton, Va.”
The details of Michael Vick’s involvement in dogfighting are well-documented and abhorrent to just about anyone. And, Vick has paid a heavy price for his actions: “Although he remains on probation, Vick on Monday completed his federal dogfighting sentence, which included 18 months in prison and two more under home confinement,” the Times story points out.
“He [also] forfeited an estimated $70 million when the Atlanta Falcons released him from his 10-year, $130-million contract, [and] Vick filed for bankruptcy protection a year ago, listing $16 million in assets and $20 million in debt.”
Yes, Vick has paid the price, but his crimes clearly warranted the penalty. Ed Sayres, president and chief executive of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said it was Vick’s “barbarism that sets the crime apart,” and that Vick admitted he electrocuted and beat dogs to death after they lost fights. “This was not a one-time transgression or crime of passion—this was a multi-year pattern of behavior that demonstrates a startling lack of moral character and judgment,” Sayres said.
But whether you decide to hire Vick also comes down to something else—do you believe in redemption? Can people atone and make up for their actions? Do the Michael Vicks of the world deserve a second chance?
I believe Vick deserves another chance, and I think that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell—the guy who ultimately will make the decision—will eventually come to that conclusion too.
However, I also believe the discussion over whether Vick should get another chance is one we wouldn’t be having if he wasn’t a big-time, highly talented athlete. Is there any profession in America other than the performance-driven world of professional athletics that would consider hiring someone who served time for torturing animals?
Although I believe in the power of redemption, of serving your debt to society, and of getting another chance, I also don’t believe there is a hiring manager outside the NFL who would take a chance on a convicted felon like Vick no matter how talented or game-changing he might be.
Pro football writers are split on this.
John DeShazier in the New Orleans Times-Picayune feels that “Vick has paid enough to regain admission to the league if a team will have him,” while Mike Lopresti in USA Todaysays that “the thinking here is [that Vick] probably merits one more year of sanctions, for wanton cruelty, but I could be talked into ending his suspension now. He’s been gone two seasons. That’s forever to a professional athlete.”
For hiring managers and recruiters who like to crow that it’s all about hiring superior talent, that’s only true up to a point, because I don’t believe there is a talent manager outside of the Oakland Raiders willing to go to the boss and make a pitch for hiring a game-changing individual with off-the-board talent who also happens to have a rap sheet that includes torturing animals.
So I ask again: Would you give Michael Vick a second chance?
Here’s a sobering reminder of how things are going in this year of the Big, Bad Economic Downturn: More than 60 percent of the organizations recently surveyed by staffing services provider Veritude say they are “using the recession as an opportunity to replace poor performing employees,” given the abundance of candidates in the current job market.
The report, “The New Normal: Recession Response and Workforce Planning,” can be downloaded at Veritude’s Web site. It’s an interesting look into how HR and procurement professionals across America are dealing with the ongoing recession. The average company size in the survey was around 12,000 employees, and some of the other noteworthy findings include the following:
• Sixty-two percent of companies surveyed say they have laid off employees as a “direct response to the current economic climate.”
• Only 22 percent of the companies have turned to lowered wages as a response to the recession, while 18 percent have reduced benefits and 10 percent have resorted to furloughs.
• Nearly one-third of companies have implemented a variety of other responses, and these include hiring and salary freezes; spending restrictions (“particularly on travel and supplies”); increased scrutiny on contracts and getting more competitive bids; labor relations work; and re-evaluating relationships with partners.
But the survey also offered this ever-so-slight glimmer of hope: “[Although] layoffs and cost-cutting have been dramatic … for many companies that reactive stage has come to an end; they have pruned their expenses and employee base and are now looking to build the foundations of recovery.”
That doesn’t mean a huge increase in staff hiring, however.
The survey found that “the current recession has impacted the manner in which HR professionals operate, as 38 percent shared that their staffing models will not revert to what was used in the past. In fact, in seeking more flexibility in cutting staff when necessary, 33 percent of respondents are considering increased reliance on contingent staff” instead of permanent workers.
“This pronounced economic crisis has pushed many companies into analyzing and reshaping their staffing models. Our study indicated that while layoffs are a knee-jerk first response, to remain competitive it makes far more sense for companies to replace minimal achievers with higher achievers,” said Joe Collins, senior vice president of Veritude, in a press release accompanying the survey result.
The Veritude study is worth reading, especially if you want a realistic view of what has happened and just where things are going with the nation’s workforce. But it’s not light reading. It’s a sobering reminder of the how things are, without any sugar coating.
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