The article was titled, “Square One – Preparing Your
Recession Survivors for the Economic Reset.”

The article describes efforts that companies are making to
prevent the expected resignations of valued employees who
begin seeking other opportunities as the economy improves.

The article also notes 4 talent-winning tactics from a
Deloitte study that can help companies retain great
employees.

I have received an advance copy of the article and I have
posted it as a download on my website.  The title of the
download on my website is
“APICS Article – High-Performance Work Environments.”

You can download the article from the white papers section
of our website or by clicking the link below
http://www.hrcontrarian.com/white_papers/

The seminar identified 3 types of employees:
1. Absent-Averse – 95%+ of the workforce.
2. Borderline Absent-Prone – +/- 3% of the workforce.
3. Absent-Prone Employees – +/- 2% of the workforce.

HR CONTRARIAN POINTER: The biggest issue with lateness and
absenteeism is that an employee can be late or take a day
off and slip back into work without anyone confronting the
employee about his/her actions. 

THE CURE:
Establish a company policy that a supervisor must meet
with every employee who was late or absent and record on a
simple form (A) the date of the incident and (B) the
reason for the lateness or absence.  This cannot be a
“sometime” policy.  It must be done EVERY time a person
returns to work following a lateness or absence.

In addition to recording the lateness or absence, the
supervisor should have a short script that describes the
alternate arrangements that needed to be made or the
problems that were caused by the lateness or absence. 
This little awareness script will work wonders on any
employee who may be leaning toward being absent-prone.

This program:
A. Provides a consistent message to absent-prone people,
B. Is a wake-up call to the borderline absent-prone
individuals, and
C. Is welcomed by the absent-averse employees who are
happy to see management finally doing something about the
abusers.

ADDED BENEFIT:
In the 1970’s, businesses didn’t have to worry about the
Americans with Disability Act (ADA), Genetic Information
Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), and the Family & Medical
Leave Act (FMLA).  In today’s environment, a lateness or
absence is more that a production problem as it may be
part of an ADA and/or a FMLA issue that can require a
company to make an accommodation.

This process of proactively addressing EVERY lateness and
absence and engaging an employee in a conversation about
the incident will allow a manager to stay on top of any
potential ADA or FMLA issues. 

CAUTION: After asking for the reason for the lateness or
absence, DO NOT drill-down into the issue by asking, “What
specifically is wrong?”  Questions such as this can
violate GINA.

The close of summer also means that your employees will
start getting serious about improving their own financial
goals as they look forward to the next calendar year.

HR CONTRARIAN POINTER: Salary is the yardstick by which we
measure our success and compare ourselves to others. 
Keeping employees’ salaries competitive with the market is
one of the keys to retaining employees.

We know times have been tough and most businesses have
been unable to provide salary increases, but now is the
time to do a “Pay Scale Checkup” or at least begin
planning for compensation changes in 2011.

We offer our clients a $95.00 Pay Scale Checkup that
includes:

1) A Pay Scale Checkup Worksheet for you to complete at
your leisure and return to us for analysis, AND

2) A one (1) hour consultation to discuss our analysis and
address specific issues in your distribution of salaries
related to:
*Equal Pay Issues
*Anchor vs. Non-Anchor Jobs
*Market Availability of Anchor Jobs
*Strategies for Rewarding A-Players
*Market Rates and Benchmarks for Anchor Jobs
*Compensating B-Players While Maintaining Motivation
*Pay Grade Differentiation between Managers and Employees.

If you are interested in learning more about our Pay Scale
Checkup, please email us your contact information and we
will call you to discuss the process that we use.

Please note, all information provided to us either on the
Pay Scale Checkup Worksheet or through direct
communication will be held in strictest confidence.

Considering all the time and money a manager invests in
hiring someone, he/she certainly does not want to
terminate an employee before the person has achieved
his/her potential.

So instead of cutting losses and moving on, the manager
begins playing the “Potential Game” of waiting, prodding,
and hoping for the employee to meet expectations.

HR CONTRARIAN POINTER: We need to recognize early the
time-wasting trap of trying to “fix” or turn around a poor
performer.

Here are some definitions to keep in mind:
*Potential is what we see in the other person.
*Performance is what we expect from the other person.

When potential does match performance, we need to act and
act quickly.

We have had great success in training managers in our
approach to performance improvement and behavior change
that we call Open-Heart Conversations.  For a white paper
about our process click on the link below:
http://www.hrcontrarian.com/white_papers/

However, at some point, whether you use our process or
some other approach, the employee must either meet
expectations or he/she needs to leave.

When we conduct sales training programs, we use a little
story that we heard some years ago called “Riding A Dead
Horse” to drive home the fact to salespeople that at some
point they need to move on to other viable prospects.  We
have found that managers make the same mistake as
salespeople when it comes to potential.

Here are the strategies for “Riding a Dead Horse:”
1. Declare “No horse is too dead to ride.”
2. Buy a bigger whip to get the horse moving.
3. Spend more money to increase the horse’s performance.
4. Get a training program to increase your riding ability.
5. Get other people involved to help get the horse moving.
6. Harness together several dead horses to increase speed.

As difficult as it may be, at some point, we need to
declare our “horse” dead and move on, regardless of the
potential we see.

The reality is that fixing weaknesses will not produce
excellence, but rather just an average performer.

I read a great article from a Harvard professor, who
decided to give her students a mid-term evaluation as a
way to motivate her students.  She rated the students
against the class average on 5 attributes:
1. Analytical Thinking
2. Theoretical Contributions
3. Creative Contributions
4. Use of Empirical Evidence
5. Presentation Skills.

Within a few days of presenting her students with the
evaluations, she noticed the following:

A. Every student wanted to know what he/she could do to
improve the lowest rated attributes because nobody want to
have weaknesses in their performance.

B. The students spent more time trying to improve their
weaknesses and ignored their strengths.

C. The overall quality of discussions in class diminished
dramatically as students stopped playing to their
strengths.

The same thing happens in business.  Managers often engage
in a misguided attempt to correct weaknesses and create a
“well-rounded employee,” which diminishes the employee’s
overall contribution.

HR CONTRARIAN POINTER: The weaknesses trap states, “Fix
what’s wrong and let the strengths take care of
themselves.”  The reality is that strengths will diminish
as a person works on weaknesses.

I recommend trying something new in management.  Let’s try
to maximize the strengths of an employee to the point that
the strengths overwhelm any relative weaknesses.

If you would like to read a great book on managing
weaknesses and enhancing strengths, I recommend the book,
“Soar with Your Strengths,” by Donald O. Clifton and Paula
Nelson.

SPECIAL OFFER: I often write-up a summary of important
points of books that I like.  I have written a 4-page
summary of the book, “Soar with Your Strengths.”  If you
would like to receive a free copy of my summary, send me
an email with the subject line: Soar With Your Strengths
and I’ll email the summary to you.