Nobody wants to be a bad Manager

Its been busy on the personal & professional front like it always 'appears' to be , in most of our cases :-)

HR teams are busier these days , most of them trying to ensure that the Managers complete the 'task' of sending out the Annual appraisal scores of all the team members .
Don't you wonder why this gets done only with several reminders , and in the very last minute or even after the deadline. Why do Managers find it tough to complete this process and why don't they enjoy it . I mean shouldn't it be an exciting thing to do. An opportunity to mentor, groom, advice and lend a shoulder for all the team members who need support in some form or the other .

The problem is that the whole appraisal discussion is perceived as a pain as Managers don't want to give bad news, don't want to take ownership of the salary hike the employees would get and just don't want to be accountable. Then why be Managers ??

Nobody wants to be a bad Manager but unfortunately in today's environment Manager's are being set up for failure as they are not provided with the required levels of coaching & development.

After reading thousands of Exit interview and Employee satisfactions survey verbatim, we have enough data that suggests that to assist Managers become better Managers there are 9 values and 3 communications skills they need to be coached on :

9 Values:
-Ownership and accountability of situations
-Fair play
-Identifying coaching and counseling needs
-Keeping promises
-Company before the team and team before the individual
-Disagree and commit
-Asking for help
-Attention to details
-Need to know

3 Techniques in Communication Skills:
-Setting expectation
-Appreciating and praising
-Reprimanding

It may not be simple but we have to start somewhere and its only logical that the best place to start is, by grooming Managers to become better Managers

Better Feedback, Better Decisions

Most of you would have read about how US president Obama managed to get the US health reforms bill passed. Definitely a feather in his cap as it will benefit millions of Americans across the society. The most important part is that he is reported to have taken the opinion of the citizen while drafting the bill. Now how cool is that ??!!

Now why can’t we in our own little spaces do exactly that? Why do we try and solve problems without involving people who are facing it?

So in a typical BPO set up when the Ops guys complains about the quality of hires, instead of finding why this happens and addressing the root cause most organisations get the Ops person involved in recruitment. (so at least he will stop complaining since now they have made him ,partner in crime) But the bigger question is if the Ops person is busy doing recruitment who is taking care of Ops?

My ex colleague returned my call after 4 hours today and explained that she was in a day long meeting on building retention strategies. My obvious question (since I am very passionate about the subject) was “Do you know why people are leaving?” and she said “No”. So what were they doing? , deciding on a compensation structure for new recruits to get them to stay for longer. “Will it work?””  “No one knows”. “Shouldn’t you be instead focussing your energies on understanding why people are leaving before building action plans?” No answer.

The fundamental solution to solving any problem is to gather more feedback, the more feedback you have, the better decisions you will be able to take.

Appraisal Satisfaction Survey - The Need of the Hour

It is appraisal time and everyone is running behind deadlines and trying to complete the process within the stipulated time. Something I have never understood considering that appraisals & feedback should be a continuous process.

One thing that you hear the most during this season is the dreaded word ' Bell Curve'. No one knows what it means and the ones who do , cant seem to care to explain.

One of the best practices given my experience of working with several companies is to conduct an Appraisal Satisfaction Survey, to understand the effectiveness of the entire process.

Its is important to understand an employees expectations and experience based on which the Organisation can ensure that the overall experience improves and thereby enhance employee engagement.

The question is how many companies want to ?