Tag Archives: HR

Spring Colds and Business Lethargy

Have you ever battled one of those seasonal colds that seems to set in just as the quarter changes? The kind that start out innocuously and, within a day or two, take over your body are the worst. With a stopped-up head, compounded by the medicine-induced slowdown of brain activity, perhaps a headache…you simply feel immobilized. Try as one might, even simple tasks require Herculean effort. Truly demanding focus–be it mental, emotional, or physical–wears out and leaves us exhausted.

In business settings, we can experience the onset of lethargy similar to the seasonal cold in cycles not unlike the changing of the seasons. Consider: when you finish your busiest season of the year, the week or so following can be extremely slow and unproductive; or a project comes to a close and your team is worn out; or your work group has just added a lot of new staff and some of your job is now done by others. While all of these situations seem to describe events that lead to a lack of work, what else can lead to job boredom?

Underemployment is a huge contributor to work environments in which employees (and management!) is under-motivated. How does this occur? Usually, when we take a position with an organization, we agree to a certain job description, rate of compensation and benefits package. However, we rarely talk about the career path, opportunity for advancement, and milestones that trigger promotion. If these items are discussed, they are discussed on the front end briefly because we read that we should. How can we keep the topic matter “front and center” throughout our relationship with an employer?

Much of it boils down to culture. Does your organization have intentionality/purposefulness about its culture? Is it “tuned in” to the needs of its employees, or only looking out for shareholder interests? While financial and accounting textbooks encourage us to only think about the “bottom line,” we all know that boring workplaces can be a downer and that culturally blase organizations lose talent, customers, and market share in the long term.

Either join a group that has a culture that values the employee, or be a change agent to help it become such! Speak with your supervisor, HR contact, etc about ideas that you have to enhance employee engagement. It has been our experience that, in many cases, executives have not only heard about progressive corporate cultures within their industry, but would like to have a reason to begin migrating in that direction. Keep in mind–“baby steps” are still walking! Perhaps you will be asked to join or facilitate an employee group to explore ways to make your office a better place to work. If so, you can escape the lethargy and begin to enjoy your avocation. Congrats to all who dare to embark on the journey from “medicine head” to lucidity!

The Internal Customer’s Perspective

This week, we are participating in the Capital Associated Industries’ HR Management Conference at the McKimmon Center in Raleigh, NC. The theme is “Crushing Your Competition With Culture & Talent.” Several speakers have spoken about the need to transform the culture within our organizations to become more engaging. Engagement “management” is a huge topic for HR professionals, as we live in a day and time wherein employees’ minds are engaged/distracted by so many other forces. One of the speakers in particular spoke about the metrics for fun companies versus boring places to work.

While “fun,” may be a stretch for your organization, certainly, we can agree that “boring” is to be avoided at all costs. In between the extremes is where most of us live and work. The ultimate challenge is to find a way to treat the workers within our companies as customers–in doing so, we care about the unique interactions we have with each and become intentional in such.

Engagement takes collaboration!

Marketers think about the messaging, form of delivery, and psychographics of customers all the time. As HR professionals, we are challenged to do the same–both in our direct interactions and in the environment we help foster. There are always a zillion things that fall to our charge that distract us from this type of intentional awareness of what we’re doing for establishing culture. Slowing down to think thoughts like those below–and encouraging others to do so–can inject care and engagement into work life.

  • how will she perceive this communication?
  • is email the best way to share this information?
  • am I the best person to bring this topic up?

Treating our supervisors, peers, and subordinates as target markets changes the dynamics of what we do dramatically. We develop strategies per “market segment,” tactics within each strategy, and “solutions” for problems we did not even know existed until we adopted this approach. Bon chance in making this concept work in your organization!

How “professional” is your services firm?

Whether the billable workers are architects, CPAs, engineers, lawyers, or management consultants, there is a certain prestige that comes with being a professional services firm. The credentials on the wall, the exam that had to be passed, and the fees that can be charged for hourly work all distinguish these white collar technicians from those who procure their insights and performance of tasks often related to compliance.

In many of these firms, those without the primary certification–even those working at a director level–are misfits, not considered “professional” in their discharge of duties. In fact, the HR, marketing, management accounting, and similar roles are as accomplished in their respective fields as the billable personnel they serve. A healthy mutual respect would likely ensue and firms would benefit from the same array of expertise disciplines as a more general, “non-professional” services organization.

It is not uncommon for training and development, for instance, to be isolated to continuing education focused on technical skills to the exclusion of the softer, intangible skills that make for better managers, business developers, client relationship nurturers, and the like. When professional development includes fostering the “non-professional” competencies within the suite of requisite skills and roles of “professionals,” then services firms will have evolved.

From talent management and succession planning to emotional intelligence and employee engagement, there’s much to be gained from professional HR. Consultative skills, networking nuances, intentional brand building and thought leadership best practices can be modeled by the business development (or marketing) professional. And so on…

The time has come to either staff for these professional roles in house (which the regional and national firms are doing), or outsource the function on a fractional basis to competent providers (which needs to be done by everyone else.) Often,  the internal resource, regardless of firm size, is overtaxed perpetuating a stream of work tasks that existed before (s)he arrived and cannot carve out the time to address internal growth and development needs.

Find a solution!