Horizon Point Consulting

Search results for: “productivity”

  • 4 Reasons to Outsource

    4 Reasons to Outsource

    I came across a post on a Facebook group a few weeks ago.  The mom participant posted a question to the group asking how people simplified their lives.  She has three young children, and I took her post to mean she wanted to spend more meaningful time with her kids but didn’t know which direction to take or have the ability to do as a working mom. 

    Most of the responses to her question came down to two types of responses 1) limit your kids (and your) extracurricular activities 2) outsource.  People recommended outsourcing laundry, grocery shopping, ironing, and clothes shopping among other things. Get rid of spending time on the things that don’t add value and meaning the responses seemed to suggest.

    In business, outsourcing is also an option that provides an opportunity to focus on meaningful things while at the same time often reducing costs. This New York Times article acknowledges this and also indicates that outsourcing human resource functions is on the rise.  At Horizon Point most of the work we do, when it comes down to it is outsourcing human resource work.

    So when and why should you outsource?

    I would suggest that there are four key reasons or situations to outsource in business:

    1. When things are non-essential or don’t create value.  Just like the responses to the mom post, saying no to something is saying yes to something else.  If you have the resources to hire someone to do your laundry you can spend that time on a Saturday at the park with your kids when you would normally be doing laundry. Or you could hire a nanny to take your kids to the park while you do laundry- which is more meaningful and value-added?  Same with grocery delivery. 

    Likewise if you outsource, let’s say payroll as an HR function, you can focus more on employee engagement as a more value-added activity than processing payroll (Let me just caveat this by saying, both having clean laundry and payroll being right are essential, they just aren’t differentiators in life and in business- it’s gotta be done, but it’s really no fun to do it and it is a time suck.) Many of these things that don’t add value are also being are automated, which is similar to outsourcing for this reason. 

     

    2. When you don’t have the expertise.  I’ve got a big hole in my den ceiling right now because apparently something is leaking from upstairs.  I have no idea what is leaking, why, and how it is ending up in my den. I could try to fix it, but I would most likely create more of a mess and it would take countless hours for me to learn how to fix it.  It is much more effective and efficient for me to hire someone that has expertise in this area to stop water from dripping out of my ceiling. In the same way, outsourcing things that you don’t have in-house resources for is a good reason to call in some experts.  For example, you may need to outsource leadership training because you don’t have a person that is trained and experienced enough to do this. Often this makes sense for project-based work, not ongoing needs. 

     

    3. When you need someone that doesn’t have a dog in that fight.  Another reason to bring in expertise is that you need an objective third party to facilitate whatever activity that needs to be done.  We see this a lot in outsourcing 360 evaluations, engagement surveys, and anything where anonymity is needed to ensure the integrity and participation in the activity.  Other types of activities where I see more people bringing in experts is for organizational design and development activities such as looking at how an organization is structured and making recommendations on how to improve it or in coaching someone to better performance.  The main value the outsourcing brings in these cases is objectivity that obviously needs to be tempered with outsourcing to an expert that knows what he/she is doing. 

     

    4. When you are in transition.  The mom who posted on the message board is in a phase in her life where many things require her undivided time and attention. She has lots of competing priorities and is trying to sort through managing them.  

     

    Likewise, businesses are often in this place.  At Horizon Point, we have found living all of our company values (people first, passion, productivity, continuous learning and improvement, and give back) by helping companies that are in this type of growth transition.  It usually presents itself as a company that has grown past 50 people, where the office manager or a similar role has been doing “HR” and the owners/leaders of the company realize this isn’t going to work long term. They need an expert to help them be successful at all things people -to give them a competitive advantage- but they don’t have one in house.  They are like the mom with three young kids who still have two that can’t tie their shoes without help. Eventually, her kids will learn to tie their shoes and she won’t have to devote time to this every morning, but not without her teaching them to tie their shoes.  

    We come in and help the company identify internal (and on occasion, external) talent that can be the people leaders they need with some guided help and practice.  They outsource their HR to us temporarily, but the key piece of this outsourcing is teaching someone else to be their HR leader. We are working ourselves out of the job and we want to, just like the mom tying the shoes is doing.  She doesn’t want to tie her kids’ shoes forever.  

    We’ve worked through a few engagements like this at Horizon Point over the last four to five years, and there is nothing more rewarding that seeing a company continue to grow and thrive because you’ve helped them pick the right person to lead their HR function and helped them learn how to do it. 

     

    What do you find is best to outsource in life and in business?

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  • 4 Ways to Abide in Order to Learn

    4 Ways to Abide in Order to Learn

    Note: This is the second of a two-part post on the value of abiding in patience in order to achieve the best kind of learning. The previous post focuses on the value of this practice, whereas this post focuses on how to actually do it. 

    As leaders, we are often called to help others learn.  To grow people in ways that lead to positive outcomes for themselves and for those they impact is our job. Leaders make more leaders. 

    And this need to facilitate learning is sometimes hard to figure out how to do because we often have a hard time engaging in it ourselves.  This challenge is often exasperated by the need to check the box of learning. Get it done, now you’ve learned. Check. 

    But learning, or continuous learning, that actually leads to the best of results isn’t a check the box kind of thing. It isn’t a one and done activity.  

    Once the desire or realization of the need to learn is established, some seemingly counter-intuitive things help our learning and are more often fueled through abiding in a patient process: 

     

    1. First, set right expectations. 

    I found this question from In His Image telling of this necessity: “Think of the person that is most likely to try your patience. What wrong expectations might be contributing to your lack of patience with him or her?”

    When we are trying to help ourselves or others learn, often our lack of patience sets us up for failure due to unrealistic expectations about the time and commitment needed in order to effectively learn.   

    When leading yourself or others in learning, discuss the expectations of time and commitment around that learning before beginning.  Write these down and refer back to them throughout the learning process. 

    If you’ve read the previous post connected to this one, for example when reading with my son we establish before we start how much we are going to read (usually a chapter). He then goes and looks at the table of contents in the book to see how many pages there are.  He knows we won’t get up until that chapter is completed, lessening his frustration with unknown and or unclear expectations.

     

    2. Establish routine practice of something that is novel, or you aren’t good at.

    Setting up a routine to do something that needs to be learned by doing something hard (you don’t know how to do or you aren’t good at doing) can aid in learning not only in your chosen arena but in others.   

    In keeping with my running example, this leads to my son alternating between reading something that is on the level he is reading currently (or even something slightly easier) and reading something that is above his reading level.  The challenge frustrates him, but novel vocabulary helps him in the long run. In addition, he is also charged with writing about the story he reads and using words (even if he misspells them). Writing is not yet easy or routine for him but helps his learning. 

     

    3. Do something that exercises another part of your brain different from where you are actually trying to learn. 

    In general, the left side of the brain controls things that deal with logic and order.  Math and science processing, as well as language processing, take place on this side of the brain, but in different places within the left hemisphere. The right side of the brain controls things that have to do with creativity, emotion and artistic expression.  

    Before or after doing an activity that taxes the left side of the brain, some research points to exercising the right side of the brain in some way in order to sensitize that learning, process any emotion that comes with it, and use it in a more holistic way. 

    My son draws pictures a lot (we are currently on a kick of drawing houses) and he has started to label the picture with words to indicate things that are in the picture.  Like “roof”, “slide” (yes his houses have slides coming out of them), etc. I believe this helps him encode and use language learning. In addition, he rides his bike to and from his reading teachers house in the summer for reading lessons, and I think this act of movement helps him focus on his lessons better. 

     

    4. Do “nothing”. 

    I love this Winnie the Pooh quote: “Doing nothing often leads to the very best of something.”  

    When we give our brain time to rest and reflect it leads to optimal synthesis of our learning.  

    Getting enough sleep is a major part of this. Our brain forms neural connections while we sleep based on what we learned during the day so we can apply in other ways.  As our son’s neurologist explained to us in simple terms, if you learn the sounds in “cat” yesterday, your sleep helps you process that learning and today you wake up and are better able to connect that the same short “a” sound in cat is also the same in “bat”.  

    If we don’t rest and reflect, we can’t maximize the benefits of learning efforts. 

     

    How do you best maximize your learning? 

  • Who Is Your Successor?

    Who Is Your Successor?

    How many people do you know that have left a job or stepped down from a volunteer leadership position, regardless of the reason? Have you ever been that person? I have. Let’s talk about it. 

    Every day, organizations find themselves with a newly empty desk chair. Responsibilities unassigned. Balls dropped. Projects unfinished. On average, that chair sits empty for 40-60 days, depending on which report you read. Think about your own organization. Do you know your “time to fill”? With the talent market like it is right now, your time to fill may be even longer. Think about all that lost productivity a.k.a. lost revenue + cost of recruitment + myriad of other expenses we know fall into the total cost of hiring one person. Whew! 

    We can be proactive and cut the time to fill significantly. We need to talk about succession planning (even if you don’t want to). Sharlyn Lauby talks about this on the ADP Spark blog in her article “5 Reasons You Should Have a Succession Plan (Even If You Don’t Want To)”. Another iteration of something I hear myself saying at least once a week, Lauby states, “It’s absolutely essential for organizations to think about the “what ifs” associated with an employee not being able or available to do their job.” We have to be prepared if we want to maintain long-term success. 

    I recently left a job that I loved for the job that I was made for. It wasn’t easy, but it was right for me. As the first domino fell, so did the next one, and the next one. I had to tell two volunteer-led organizations that are dear to me that I could not finish out my term on the board of directors. I was, of course, willing to help train my successor…who I realized did not exist. Not for my job, nor for my volunteer roles. It was a shock to these systems for me to leave suddenly. But it didn’t have to be. 

    Sharlyn Lauby said something else I hear myself saying constantly: “Succession planning isn’t as hard as it sounds”. It’s as simple as paying attention to the talent already within your organization. Forbes contributor, Stuart Levine, describes strategic talent management and successful succession planning as a system where “People are identified for their potential to guide the organization in the future as much as for their current strengths”. The wisest talent managers think in the future and live in the present. When executed well, succession plans can be the lifeblood of an organization. 

    Remember that job I loved and left? I was teaching at a university, focusing on professional and career development of business students. We frequently invited industry partners to visit classrooms and speak to students about their successes and their challenges, sometimes in a recruiting capacity, sometimes purely educational. Sherwin-Williams was one of my favorite companies I invited to participate – let me acknowledge my bias as their former HR intern – because I think they do many, many things extraordinarily well, including talent management and succession planning. Did you know upwards of 85% of their hires are internal? Did you know some of their current top leaders started with the company as management trainees decades ago? Here’s what that looks like. Sherwin-Williams is a shining example of an organization that thinks in the future and lives in the present. They have extensive training and development that is specifically designed to capitalize on the existing strengths of potential leaders in preparation for their inevitable opportunity for internal promotion. They pay attention to every single potential leader and how he or she can be strategically developed to lead in a way that is best for him or her individually and best for the company. It’s really an incredible system. 

    So how do you get started? SHRM has excellent resources to help any organization create succession plans. Here are two reads I recommend:

     

    If you have more time and are ready for a deep dive, check out Developing Leadership Talent, part of the SHRM Foundation’s Effective Practice Guidelines Series. 

    Succession planning is important. I have experienced the stress of having no plan in place when someone left, and I have been the cause of that stress for others. The proof is in the successful organization pudding: pay attention to and develop your talent now. Who is your successor? Don’t wait until you’re leaving to figure it out. 

     

    Have questions about how to incorporate strategic talent management and succession planning in your organization? Horizon Point can help. Call us at 256-227-9075 or email us at info@horizonpointconsulting.com.

  • 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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