Horizon Point Consulting

Author: Lorrie Coffey

  • What’s on Your Career Bucket List?

    What’s on Your Career Bucket List?

    The end of the school year brings final exams, award ceremonies, parties, and best of all, summer. My boys have been counting down the days. And with their countdown comes the usual question I face every year.

    “What are we doing this summer?”

    I always try to do fun things with them throughout the summer that they will each enjoy. But with three boys ranging from 9 to 15, that’s not always easy. Their interests don’t always match up. What my nine-year-old finds thrilling, my fifteen-year-old finds more boring than watching paint dry.

    So this year, I’m putting the decision making in their hands. I’ve tasked each of them with creating a summer bucket list. The parameters are:

    • Something we can all do together.
    • Nothing really over the top cost wise.
    • Things that can be done in a day (no more than a two-hour drive one way).
    • At least four items on each of their lists needs to be educational.

    I’ve also asked each of them to give me at least three longer trips they’d like to take. Together we’ll pick one.

    Our Leaders as Career Agents training helps employees create a career bucket list. Participants are asked where they want to be in their careers in one, three, five, and ten years. Then they are asked to set goals that will help them get there.

    Goals need to be SMART. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-based.

    A Harvard Business study showed that only 17% of participants set goals, and only 3% of those actually wrote down their goals. The 14% who had goals in mind were ten times more likely to be successful than those who didn’t set goals. And the 3% who wrote down their goals were even more successful.

    Setting goals is only the first step in succeeding. I recently read an article about goal setting that made a great point. View your goals in terms of “I am” instead of “I will.” Focus on how am I going to start taking action to achieve the goal now versus I’ll work on achieving the goal at some point.

    Find ways to keep your goals front and center. A few years ago my sister-in-law decided to lose some weight. To keep her goal in mind and help keep her from cheating on her diet, she found a picture of herself before she gained the extra weight and stuck it on her refrigerator door to remind herself what she was working towards. In the context of your career, it may mean having regular performance meetings with your manager or finding a mentor in your organization that can help you achieve your goals. It may mean blocking out time on your calendar each week to work on your goals.

    So where do you see yourself in a year, or ten? And how are you going to get there?

  • Are We Taking the Human Out of Human Resources?

    Are We Taking the Human Out of Human Resources?

    My first job in HR was with a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) in Virginia. It was a great opportunity for me to learn about the HR field very quickly and I loved it. But there was one thing I absolutely hated about my job, and that was having to terminate employees over the phone. We managed clients in the 48 continental states and whenever a client needed to terminate an employee, that task fell to me. Imagine a manager half way across the country pulling an employee into an office and saying “I have HR on the phone to speak with you” and then me sitting in Virginia saying “I’m sorry but we’ve got to let you go.”

    There was no personal connection there. It was a very sterile way of conducting those terminations, and I dreaded it every time, regardless of whether it was related to their performance or something else.

    I recently read an article about Amazon’s employee tracking system. It tracks productivity, automatically creates and issues warnings, and determines when an employee should be terminated for performance issues. In one facility alone the system led to the termination of 300 employees in one year! Granted the manager makes the final termination decision, but does so without having been present for the events that led up to that termination recommendation.

    AI in HR is a huge topic these days. And I definitely believe that HR needs help in automating some of our processes. But it needs to be used in a way that compliments the HR function, not one in which it eliminates it.

    Take for example recruiting. Many applicant tracking systems now have the functionality to scan resumes for key words in order to weed out those candidates who do not meet the skills requirements of the job. A candidate has six seconds to impress a recruiter and convince them to dig deeper into their qualifications. That doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but when you have 300 applicants for a job that time adds up. Being able to eliminate those candidates who don’t meet the basic qualifications without even having to review their resume can be a huge time saver. It can also help you determine those candidates who are the best match and allow you to focus on their applications first.

    But what if AI in recruiting went a step further and an automated system conducted prescreens or took the candidate through the entire hiring process and made the hiring decision for the organization? Think it couldn’t happen? Well, let me introduce you to Tengai, the robot interviewer.  

    So at what point does AI become a hindrance to HR instead of a help? When it takes the human out of human resources, as in the examples with Amazon and Tengai.

    Amazon’s performance management system doesn’t account for human factors. What led that person to perform below the standards? Do they have something going on in their personal life, do they have an undisclosed illness or disability, or maybe they are struggling to learn the job. You find these things out by speaking with the employee, not by producing an automated warning or write up.

    Tengai conducts the interview then creates a text of that interview for a human to review. That human bases their hiring decision solely on the text provided to them. But hiring decisions aren’t based solely on what a candidate says, they are also based on those non-verbal signals an interviewer provides during the process. If you’re hiring someone for a sales role, you watch them during the interview to see if they appear confident, make eye contact, cross their arms, or even fidget a lot. Tengai isn’t picking up on these non-verbal cues, only what the candidate says. It’s also not picking up on how it is said, which can also be an indicator to an interviewer.

    Limited AI can be very helpful to HR, but as with technology in general, it easily has the potential to eliminate the human aspect. How many times have you seen or heard people complain about self-check out lanes at retailers (personally I LOVE self-check out) or the self-order kiosks at McDonalds. AI in HR has the potential to have that same effect for organizations. People want, and need, human interaction and AI unchecked can easily take that away.

  • Why Attendance Occurrence Programs are Bad for Business

    Why Attendance Occurrence Programs are Bad for Business

    In 2003 I got one of those calls every child dreads. My mother was in the hospital and being rushed into emergency surgery. Turned out she had an allergic reaction to a medication and it almost killed her. She was at work when she started to notice something wasn’t right and within a matter of a couple of hours, her hands swelled up so much that she had to have emergency surgery to cut her hands open to relieve the pressure. She ended up with Stevens-Johnson Syndrome and was in the Intensive Cardiac Care Unit for almost a week.

    Her employer, a nationally known retailer, gave her an occurrence against her attendance record for leaving work early.

    A co-worker of hers received an occurrence a few weeks before for leaving work early as well. In her case, she had a heart attack during her shift and was carted out of the building on a gurney and into an ambulance.

    While these are two extreme cases, attendance occurrence programs are bad for business. Here’s why:

    1. Occurrence programs discourage employees from taking sick days. If you get an occurrence for calling out sick, you’re more likely to go to work sick and suffer through. As a result, you’re less productive while at work, it takes you longer to recover from an illness, and you end up passing your germs on to everyone else you work with. And if you offer sick leave, but punish employees for using it, what message are you really sending?
    2. They penalize employees for things outside of their control. Life happens. You get sick, your kids get sick, you get stuck in traffic because of an accident. Whatever the case, sometimes life just happens. And occurrence programs penalize you for those things that may be completely out of your control.
    3. They’re counter-intuitive to a culture of work-life balance. Most companies today promote a culture of work-life balance. But if you punish employees when life does happen, you’re showing your employees that while you talk the talk you don’t really walk the walk.
    4. Occurrence programs punish all for the actions of a few. While I fully believe in addressing attendance issues, many companies that implement an occurrence program have done so as a result of the actions of just a few employees. Attendance issues should be addressed individually. Occurrence programs punish good, productive employees just the same as it does those poor performers. Which then leaves those good performers wondering why they try so hard.
    5. If you’re concerned about lost productivity as a result of absenteeism, why aren’t you worried about the cost of turnover that results from an occurrence system? If you analyze the data of lost productivity due to absenteeism and compare that to the lost productivity as a result of termination due to that occurrence system (also add in there the cost of replacing a termed employee), what you may find is that it’s costing you more in turnover than it is in absenteeism.

    Again, I’m not saying let attendance issues go. I fully believe in addressing attendance problems individually with those employees who abuse the system, and it’s usually pretty easy to determine when the system is being abused. However, attendance policies need to be flexible, they need to allow for the unexpected. They need to show employees that while they are expected to be at work and be productive, the organization understands that life happens and that when life does happen they can go and take care of it without the added stress of wondering if their job is in jeopardy as a result.

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  • Is Your Organization Prepared for the Future?

    Is Your Organization Prepared for the Future?

    “Before companies can start to think about their succession plans, they have to understand their jobs.” – Sharlyn Lauby, President of ITM Group, Inc.

    For the past few weeks I’ve been focused on helping a client complete a People Review of their top talent and outline their succession plan. Each April they complete the People Review, evaluating their top talent on the areas of performance and potential, risk of leaving the organization, and mobility within the organization.

    In working through this process with them, I’ve discovered that for most of their key employees, they don’t have a good succession plan in place. Both in regards to what would be the next step for the employee as well as who could step into the role should the employee leave the organization. Given the tight talent market right now, this is very concerning to them, and to me.

    So how can companies evaluate their employees for succession planning and what steps do they need to take to ensure they have options?

    1. Conduct an assessment annually of your key positions. Notice I said positions and not employees. What positions within your organization are critical to the success and sustainability of your organization? What are the responsibilities of those positions? Is there a logical promotion track from one key position to another?
    2. Evaluate your current staff. Once you’ve identified those key positions, then take a look at the employees who currently fill those roles. Assess them on their current performance and their potential. As I’ve told each of the managers I’ve met with, just because someone ranks lower on performance and potential doesn’t mean they are a bad employee, it may just mean that they haven’t been in their current role long enough to gain the full scope of knowledge needed to be a high performer or have high potential.
    3. Communicate. Once you’ve assessed your key employees and determined those who could move up within your key positions if needed, have a conversation with them. There is nothing worse than creating a succession plan only to find out when the time comes that the employee doesn’t want to move up into the position you’ve designated them for. Find out where they see themselves going in the organization and make sure it aligns with the plan you created. If it doesn’t, you may need to reevaluate your plan.
    4. Provide training and support. After you assess the key employee’s current performance and potential and ensured that your vision and theirs match, you need to create an action plan to help them get to that next level. What areas of performance or potential do they need to strengthen in order to be successful in a new role if and when the time comes? The client I’m working with conducts Individual Development Reviews each September, but they do not tie those IDRs back to the information they gleaned through their People Review, so they are not creating an action plan or setting goals that are aimed at helping those key employees be prepared for the next level.

    “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” -Benjamin Franklin

    If your organization were to lose a key employee tomorrow, do you have a plan in place to respond and minimize the impact to the organization?

  • Are Your Top Employees Also Your Most Toxic?

    Are Your Top Employees Also Your Most Toxic?

    Picture this: There is an employee at your company that you’ve had multiple complaints against. They treat other employees with a total lack of respect and maybe even the treat customers the same way. They have created a hostile work environment in which other employees dread having to work with them, go out of their way to avoid them both in their tasks and just around the office in general, and customers refuse to deal with them. But they are one of your company’s top performers or they have a knowledge base that no one else in your company has. They exceed every performance expectation, get the job done faster than anyone else, and they are a subject matter expert.

    You go to leadership and voice the concerns you have and the complaints you have received regarding this employee and their toxic behavior and the response you get is “we can’t lose them, they are one of our top performing employees and we couldn’t possibly lose their expertise.” And so nothing is done. Maybe your told to have a conversation with them regarding the feedback you’ve received, but if they fail to change their behavior, it is allowed to continue and expected to be tolerated.

    I recently came across a video from Gary Vaynerchuk, Chairman of VaynerX and CEO of VaynerMedia, in which he talked about why you might need to fire your top employees (warning: he uses very colorful language to get his point across!) I found myself nodding my head repeatedly during the three and a half-minute clip.

    According to Vaynerchuck, “If you tell your people that you care about them, but you ‘look the other way’ when certain employees are mean to everyone else, you’re sending a very clear message.”

    In today’s world, company’s are built on their culture. If your actions or the actions of your employees do not match your core values, your company culture will suffer and in turn so will your bottom line. Employees will spend more time lamenting over how unhappy they are in their jobs or the company and less time being productive.

    Retaining an employee because they are a key performer or a subject matter expert may seem like the right decision, but the consequences of doing so may cost the organization more than that one individual is worth.

    According to SHRM, the cost to replace an employee is between 90-200% of their annual salary. Imagine how much it would cost your organization if five employees resigned as a result of your decision to keep one toxic employee. In addition to the cost of replacing them there is also the cost of lost productivity caused by their departures.

    Do you have a top employee that is toxic? Are they single-handedly destroying your company’s culture?