It's Friday morning. After a short walk I headed to the gym for a yoga and breathing session. However, this session didn’t conform to its usual flow. I was too distracted by last night’s conversation with a friend, the managing partner of a private company. His continuous dilemma? How to balance the need to massively increase workforce performance with his passion for employee retention.
Modern day management forms a gap between Employer and Employee with the lack of visibility.
From across the gym, I (and everyone else for that matter) hear a man on a treadmill screaming into his phone. He repeats the same sentences like a mantra. “Why can’t you guys follow simple instructions? You’re causing a problem for me, and none of you are taking responsibility!
My focus now gone, I opted to do some boxing whilst mulling over my friend’s challenge.
Punching the boxing bag helps to center me until a lady approached to ask if she could have a turn. The lady didn’t look like a boxer, nor did she seem to have even the basic knowledge of boxing. She didn't wrap her hands and simply wore gloves that she picked up from the gym. My curiosity was piqued as she looked so angry.
The lady started hitting the bag - not boxing – just hitting and naming the hits as a means to relieve her stress. Whack! She was naming her manager. Whack, whack! And the management team at her company.... I started smiling and suggested she relax and think of a solution, rather than hitting the bag.
She started to talk about her problems at work. As she talked, it occurred to me that I might have an answer, not only to her and my friend’s dilemma, but maybe even for the screaming guy on the treadmill!
Her story. She works as a talent acquisition officer in an automobile company. She likes what she's doing despite almost daily frustrations with management and hangs in at her company as she needs the job to secure her future.
I decide to drill down a little and asked her about her targets, team size and whether she is finding the right candidates. She immediately confirmed that she finds the right candidates, has no set targets, but that the company expects her to do more on very limited resources.
“They don't understand the circumstances and the time needed to find the right hire.”
“Annual hiring numbers are based on request, but their requests are coming in thick and fast and becoming unfeasible. They are trying to grow the company on my efforts and time.” On suggesting she increase her team, she smiled, shook her head and said, “They will never approve that request. If I send 100 candidates to them for every vacancy they need to hire for, they will tell me I should send less candidates to make everyone’s job easier. They think I am not efficient and I am negatively affecting the team performance. I work day and night but they never appreciate it.”
Finally, I ask about her evaluation score, to which she answered, “If you mean the year-end appraisal meeting, yes we have it, but it's so subjective and neither my manager nor I like this meeting, so we usually skip it and avoid talking about it”.
I liked her feedback as it gives at least half of the story. A nagging manager who wants to keep employees and a frustrated employee who would like to keep her job. They both have a common goal, but aren’t able to form the right agreement, so I asked if I can email her some recommendations within the coming days.
I founded a company which I grew to over 16 countries with hundreds of employees, but we never faced such problems. I have had some challenges with the employees but I don't remember having such big gap. Our company is mainly based on key results and measures. Every employee has a score which is calculated monthly.
Although we have different key results that might be changed from year to year, the below three have always been a constant:
Purposes of Hire (Deliverables): when you hire any employee, you state clearly why you're hiring that employee. We call this the Purpose of Hire and we build a key result that we call Purpose of Hire Key Result. It's easy to set, you just need to quantify what the employee should achieve within a certain time frame. We also name these results the Employee Main Deliverables.
Financial Control (Budget): just like any deliverable that you purchase, you should set a budget for what you're buying. We always set a fee for the Purpose of Hire Deliverables to establish whether the department is within budget or not.
Team Goal (Quality): In companies the output of one team will be the input of another team. To ensure the quality of the deliverables, we set a new key result called Team Goal. This will measure if the output of the first team is successfully converted by the next team and on to the third team.
As I promised the lady, I emailed her the KPIs and after a period of time I got her feedback. She has achieved better results, her management is happy, and there's no more conflicts and dissatisfaction for either party.
In the coming blog I will explain the value of each of these key results in improving the work environment, how it will help employer and employees to benefit, and most importantly how this will create a more equitable environment for all parties. As to my friend’s company challenges, I will detail the methodology to creating these measures on an organizational level within just few hours and without the need of an expensive consultant. Please either visit this blog weekly to check for updates or provide us with your email address to notify you about new posts.
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