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Latest Infogroup Research on Employee Engagement

Submitted by Leslie Allan on August 30th, 2010

Infogroup’s research arm, ORC, recently conducted a survey of employee attitudes and intentions across the globe. The good news (depending on whether you see the glass as half full or as half empty) is that globally 57 per cent of employees are engaged.

Australia lags in terms of employee engagement, finding itself behind many other countries. The main reason for this, the report highlights, is Australian employees’ stated intention to leave their current employer within 12 months. The report goes on to say that human resource practices are not the cause of this itchy feet syndrome.

The cause of our low ranking, the survey reveals, is due to two factors. The first is deficiencies in manager capability. All too many managers do not inspire employees to work more effectively, with over 30 per cent of survey respondents not answering positively to the question about manager inspiration.

In addition, managers still have a long way to go in coaching employees for performance improvement. One quarter of respondents answered negatively to the question asking whether they received regular and constructive feedback from their manager.

The second major factor reducing engagement scores is the perceived lack of career advancement. Well over half of all employees are not satisfied with internal job opportunities within their current organization.

With more that 15 years between us and the tabling of the Karpin Report – the biggest enquiry into business capability in Australia’s history – it seems we still have a long distance to travel in our efforts to retain our best employees and engage them in the quest for superior performance.

Tags: careers, communicate, competency, employee, engagement, feedback, global, human resources, management, manager, motivation, study, survey
Posted in Communication, Performance, Research, Talent, Training | Comments (0)

Pay for Performance – Latest Survey Results

Submitted by Leslie Allan on August 29th, 2010

In their latest annual Kelly Global Workforce Index survey, Kelly Services provide a window into employee attitudes towards performance-based pay.

Their 2010 report shows that 30 per cent of employees are currently included in a pay for performance scheme. Interestingly, Gen X and Gen Y workers are much more likely to be included in such a scheme.

Of those employees not currently in a pay for performance arrangement, 37 per cent indicated that their productivity would increase if their pay was linked to performance results.

Before you rush out to implement a pay for performance scheme in your organization, consider these points:

1. The majority of respondents not currently on performance-based pay did not believe that including them within such a scheme would boost their performance.
2. Of the minority that did believe that their productivity would increase, take care to separate a belief from actuality. Implementing a pay for performance scheme may turn out to be an expensive way of finding out that many people are not in fact motivated by more money.
3. Make sure that your pay for performance scheme balances team rewards with individual rewards. Incentive schemes weighted towards individual rewards can be counterproductive in encouraging selfish, maverick behavior.
4. Ensure that your incentive scheme fires up only once a minimum trigger point is reached. Handing out bonus payments when the company is suffering a loss for that year is a sure fire way to go broke.
5. With your scheme, make sure there is a line of sight between the individual’s and team’s results and the actual reward. If employees cannot see the connection between what they do and the rise and fall of the performance results being paid on, any supposed incentive is diminished.
6. One year’s bonus may become next year’s entitlement. Be mindful that after implementing a pay for performance scheme, employee expectations may increase as their sense of obligation wanes.

Pay for performance may work well in some industries and for some job role types. Conduct thorough research before committing to performance-based pay. Once you commit, design the scheme very carefully, considering all of the different permutations and combinations possible.

Implementing a poorly thought out scheme will markedly increase your organization’s payroll liabilities with no or a marginal increase in productivity. In such cases, when the magnitude of the disaster has set in, withdrawing the bonus scheme will only make matters worse as morale and productivity plummet.

Tags: appraisal, capability, competency, culture, employee, expenditure, feedback, financial, goal, human resources, incentives, motivation, objective, practices, productivity, results, rewards, study, survey
Posted in Performance, Research, Talent | Comments (0)

Employee Passion Hit by Global Financial Crisis

Submitted by Leslie Allan on August 6th, 2010

The RogenSi’s 2010 Global Mindset Index survey reveals that employees may have been hit harder by the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) than first thought.

Key findings from the report reveal the following impacts on employee engagement:

• employee passion for the job has decreased 18% on the previous year
• Gen Y are the worst affected with a 23% drop in passion for their jobs
• one quarter of all employees are displaying indications of depression

The global recession left many organizations scrambling simply to survive. In this pressure cooker atmosphere, we expected employee motivation and well-being to be negatively impacted. Now that global and regional economies are improving, it is time to refocus our efforts on lifting employee engagement. Those organizations that devote time and resources to reengaging their workforce will be ahead of the pack.

Tags: careers, culture, employee, engagement, global, motivation, staff, study, survey, workforce
Posted in Change, Research | Comments (0)

How to Post on Social Media Web Sites Effectively

Submitted by Leslie Allan on July 28th, 2010

Contributing to social networking web sites such as LinkedIn and PartnerUp can bring significant value to your business or organization. Posting on sites like these holds two great benefits. Firstly, it connects you with like minded people. Fellow contributors give you insights and new ways of looking at your world. And, as an added bonus, they may turn out to buy your product or want to form a business partnership with you.

Secondly, your posts give valuable back links to your web site. These are valuable as the major search engines count relevant back links as a vote of confidence in your web site. It is partly through these votes of confidence that the search engines raise your position in search engine queries.

The question is, “How can you improve the effectiveness of your postings?” You spend appreciable amounts of time and energy contributing to on-line discussions and you want to make the most of each posting. Right? Well, here are my tips on how to get the most from your on-line contributions so that you can reap the two key benefits I outlined in my introductory paragraph.

1. Make a meaningful contribution with each post. Do not post spam or useless comments, such as “Great post”. Add value to the discussion, pointing people to additional resources or sharing your experiences. Always, and I mean always, remain respectful of other people’s contributions. Remember, you are on public display. Remain professional at all times. Nothing will put people off you and your business faster than you engaging in a flame war with someone you disagree with. State your disagreement plainly and without emotional undertones.
2. Post regularly as a way of developing relationships and increasing your exposure. As you become better known to the other contributors, they will more likely visit your web site. New business partnerships are sometimes forged after initial contact on a social media site.
3. For web sites that allow you to post a profile, submit as full a profile as possible. Avoid posting highly personal information, such as your birthday and private address, as identity thieves scour social media sites for personalities to steal. Include a professional looking photograph in your profile, as this shows that you are a real person.
4. Include relevant hyperlinks in your profile, such as links to your web site, blog, your other social networking profiles and publications you have authored. Doing so increases your back link count for the search engines and gives other contributors an easy way to find out more about you.
5. Include a well crafted signature line at the end of each post. Include your name, your title and your organization’s name, where appropriate. Hyperlink prominent words in your signature line, such as your organization’s name, tag line or book title.
6. It is very important that you hyperlink your keywords (such as your business name), and not only your urls. Your hyperlinked words are known as anchor text. The words you use in your anchor text signal to the search engines what your web page is about, raising your significance in the search results for those terms.
7. Vary the urls and anchor text in your signature lines. A preponderance of specific urls and anchor text in your hyperlinks looks contrived to the major search engines. Such weight given to a limited number of hyperlinks does not look natural and will devalue your web site in the eyes of the search engines.
8. Add the title attribute to your hyperlink code wherever you can. Some social media sites allow you to edit the HTML of your comment. In the hyperlink code, add a descriptive title, such as title=”life coaching services”. Many web browsers display this text when visitors hover over the hyperlink with their mouse. The major search engines also use this text to figure out what your web site is about.
9. Where possible, do not spend a lot of time and energy on social networking web sites in which your hyperlinks sport the “nofollow” attribute. This attribute is attached to your hyperlink in the HTML code and functions to diminish the value of your hyperlink as a back link to your web site.
10. If you use the Firefox web browser, you can easily see which web sites use the “nofollow” attribute by installing the Quirk SearchStatus add-on. Alternatively, you can look at the web page source code to search for rel=”nofollow”. If a social networking site attaches this attribute to contributor back links, do not immediately discount the site altogether. The web site may still be of great value if the site is active with lots of potential buyers or business partners.

Now that you know what makes for a valuable on-line post, what are you waiting for? Get in there and start posting. See you on-line.

If you need help with your on-line marketing and social media presence, contact us at Business Performance Pty Ltd. Wherever you are in the world, we can assist you in driving your business forward with practical advice and web business coaching.

Tags: advertising, keyword, networking, online, social media
Posted in Communication, Marketing | Comments (1)

Email Communication Blues | Tips for Recovering Your Sanity

Submitted by Leslie Allan on July 27th, 2010

Email is a wonderful tool. Don’t get me wrong. Our business just could not get by without it. It’s quick, it’s flexible with how you want to format the message and with what you want to attach, and it’s accessible.

What bugs me is the lack of instant feedback. When you speak with someone face to face, you can see immediately if they are getting your message. If they are looking the other way or falling asleep as you speak, you know straight away that you aren’t getting through. And then you can take steps to help your message find its target. You can give the person a nudge or offer to speak with them later when they may be more receptive.

You can also gauge how they are feeling about your message. If they are laughing, then that says one thing. If they suddenly start looking distressed, that says another thing. You can then adjust your message to get the outcome you want.

But what if you send your important email and you don’t hear anything back for three days? Did they get your message? Did they get so enraged by it that they immediately hit the delete button? You just don’t know. What can you do about this lack of feedback?

The first thing I do is to make sure that my expected action is clear. If I want someone to call me, I say just that: “Please call me on xxxx xxxx”. Notice that I even spell out my phone number so that they do not need to go searching for it. If I need the response by a certain date or time, I make that clear as well. Are you making your expectations clear in the emails you send? In spite of how direct my message may be, some people do not respond as I expect. To fix this, what I have been doing for quite a while now is to keep an email correspondence list on the office wall closest to me.

When I send an email for which I need a response, I update my list. I check it daily for who has not responded. If someone hasn’t responded, I send them a gentle reminder. That way, important tasks won’t fall into a black hole, never to be seen again. Don’t do this for every email you send out. Do it only for the emails that are important for you to get a response.

Even after sending several reminders, in some cases I don’t get a response. Oh well! I guess that person didn’t want to carry on the conversation. Those cases are usually where someone has committed to an action that I am following up. My only wish is that those people at least pay me the courtesy of telling me that they do not want to do what they promised. Do you deal with people like that from time to time?

Email is both a curse and a blessing. Which aspect dominates for you will depend on how you treat it. Perhaps by making your emails action orientated and by creating and maintaining a correspondence list as I do you will see more of the former than the latter. What tips can you share for making email more productive? I’d love to hear from you.

Tags: communicate, culture, feedback, productivity
Posted in Communication | Comments (2)

Pricing and Marketing Your Book

Submitted by Leslie Allan on July 15th, 2010

I have successfully published a number of works and am sometimes asked for advice on pricing a product for the market. More often than not, the author is asking about a book or an e-book. Although my comments below are in relation to pricing and marketing an e-book, many of the principles apply more generally to any kind of information-type product. Here are my main considerations for pricing an e-book.

Assess the relative levels of supply and demand for the information or resource you are offering. If there are not many publishers distributing similar works to your own and not many people are wanting it, then adjust your price down. If supply is short and demand is high, lift your price.

Consider the amount of value-add you provide with your e-book. Do you include a CDROM or DVD, or customizable templates or workbooks? The more you can include, the more you can command in price.

What is your degree of specialization? If your e-book appeals to the mass market, price it lower compared with a product suitable for a tight niche. Highly technical or specialized works generally command a higher price.

Review your competition. What price are similarly placed resources demanding? This will give you an indication of what people are prepared to pay for your e-book.

What is your reputation in your industry? If you are well-known and respected in your profession, you will be able to demand a higher price compared with the situation where you are relatively unknown.

All other things being equal, the more pages and illustrations contained in your book, the higher the price you can ask. Given a consistent and high quality throughout, the more you provide to your customer, the higher the value.

If the information you provide is cutting-edge, then ask a higher price. On the other hand, if your e-book is simply offering what is generally known already, don’t expect to command a top price.

Some e-book creators allow you restrict the customer copying and printing your work after purchase. If you restrict what a customer can do with your product, they may consider it to be of lesser value to them and will want to pay less accordingly.

In addition to your selling price, the other key determinant of your sales volume is your marketing plan and how you execute it. In your marketing plan, consider these success factors.

Determine your value proposition. Ask yourself what it is that makes your e-book different to other offerings in the market and what value your product provides to your customer.

Obtain an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) for your work. Getting and displaying the ISBN in your e-book will give it respectability and credibility. Find out which organization distributes ISBNs in your country.

Offer a free sample download from your or your distributor’s web site. This could be a complimentary chapter, chart, game or checklist. To give your prospective customers added confidence, let them taste before they buy.

Ask people you know and respected people in your industry to review your book prior to publication. Include these reviews and testimonials on the inside or back cover and on your web site. If your e-book is already published, no matter. It’s never too late to collect and publish reviews and testimonials.

Create an attractive front cover. Choose colors and themes that will stand out on a web site. Consider how your e-book will look as a thumbnail.

Make your e-book easy to purchase on-line with multiple purchasing options. Publish a reasonable returns policy that gives people confidence in parting with their money.

If you are preparing your work for the market or have experience in marketing your product, please share your experiences here. We would love to hear what worked well for you and what learning you gained along the way.

Tags: advertising, customer, market, product, profitability
Posted in Marketing | Comments (0)

Building Employee Trust – What Does It Mean?

Submitted by Leslie Allan on July 14th, 2010

In my earlier post on Employee-Manager Trust: How Do Employers Rate?, I recounted the results of Right Management’s recent survey. That survey put a spotlight on the alarmingly low levels employee trust in today’s organizations? It revealed that three quarters of all employees mistrusted their managers.

The kind of trust the survey authors were researching into was trust in managers’ ability to make the best decisions for their organization. However, that is just one component of the trust equation. When we say that we trust another person, what does that mean? Well, it may mean that we believe that they:

1. have the requisite skills and knowledge
2. accurately judge their own strengths and limitations
3. not act primarily from self-interest
4. maintain confidences
5. follow through on their commitments
6. are being truthful

To round out this definition, we can put each trust component into one of two bundles. The competency bundle includes the first two components. Right Management’s survey touched on this bundle only. The second bundle is the integrity bundle and includes components 3 to 6 above. This bundle is about the person displaying their true character and intentions; being who they say they are. Stephen Covey calls people who fail in this respect “duplicitous”.

In engaging the hearts and minds of our employees, it is this second bundle, the integrity bundle, that is as important, if not more important, that the competency bundle. If a manager is lacking in skills or judgment, but is sincere, his or her employees are more likely to work with them in mutual problem solving and goal attainment. A manager that is highly skilled but seen as manipulative and deceitful by his or her employees will quickly find employees checking out at the gate. And once this kind of trust is lost, it will be difficult for the manager to regain, if not impossible.

What examples can you think of in your work where your manager lost your trust? What aspect of your trust did they lose (look at components 1 to 6 above)? In a future post, I will gather all of your contributions and summarize them into a list of examples of how managers can lose the trust of their employees.

Tags: competency, employee, integrity, manager, organization, survey, trust
Posted in Change, Communication, Performance, Talent | Comments (0)

Learning and Development Practices in USA and UK

Submitted by Leslie Allan on July 5th, 2010

The corporate learning and development landscape has changed radically over the last few years. The latest research by Bersin & Associates draws a picture of how organizations are meeting the dual challenges of rapid market downturns and the imperative to develop outstanding employees. As leading organizations have discovered, developing high-performance people is even more important in times of scarcity. Lose your best people or fail to develop them and you run the risk of being out of business.

In 2009, Bersin & Associates conducted two studies. The United States survey, conducted in August 2009, included 1,400 organizations of all sizes and industry types. The United Kingdom study was similarly varied in respondents and involved 120 organizations.

Notable highlights of the US study include these findings:

• learning and development spending dropped by 11% compared with 2008, dropping a total of 22% over the two years
• average spend per employee was $714
• average employee hours spent in formal training was 12 hours
• median learning and development staff ratio fell to 6.2 per 1,000 employees (from 7.0 in 2008)
• instructor-led training (ILT) dropped to 60% of all training hours (from 67% in 2008)
• Virtual ILT (vILT) rose to 13% of all training hours (from 8% in 2008)
• percentage spend on leadership development rose to 24%, following a fall in 2008
• percentage of organizations using blogs and wikis for learning was 14%
• percentage of organizations using Communities of Practice (CoP) for learning was 24%

In contrast, the UK study revealed the following results:

• learning and development spending dropped by 4% compared with 2008
• learning and development staffing cut by 5% compared with 2008
• average employee hours spent in formal training was 16 hours
• average learning and development staff ratio was 7.1 per 1,000 employees
• e-learning and virtual classroom training was 14% of all training hours
• percentage spend on leadership development was 23%
• percentage of training budget spent on profession and industry-specific training programs was 27%

The following table compares the US and UK survey results for 2009:

	US	UK
No. of employee hours spent in formal training	12	16
No. of L&D staff per 1,000 employees	6.2	7.1
% L&D budget compared with 2008	-11%	-4%
% budget spent on leadership development	24%	23%

In response to the Global Financial Crisis, the United Kingdom market overall appears to have taken a softer approach to training and development compared with that in the United States. In reality, such comparisons are not so simple to draw. US companies may be using their limited funds much more efficiently. Their higher proportionate spend on leadership development may be an indicator of more focused spending on areas of greater need.

The Bersin & Associates report does reveal how organizations in both countries experienced major changes in the way they delivered their learning and development programs in 2009. These new ways of working included the rationalizing of training functions across the organization, more frequent use of online platforms and a greater focus on programs with higher strategic importance. Although companies tightened their belts in 2009, in all they are perhaps now better prepared to meet the challenges ahead.

Tags: budget, development, e-learning, employee, leader, learning, market, online, results, survey, trainer
Posted in Research, Training | Comments (0)

Employee-Manager Trust: How Do Employers Rate?

Submitted by Leslie Allan on July 3rd, 2010

In May 2010, Right Management undertook a survey of over 4,000 employees in the United States to gauge levels of trust within organizations. The results demonstrated a clear gap in employee trust that needs attention if organizations are to remain competitive in the longer term.

When employees were asked in the survey how often they trusted their managers to make the best decisions, this is how they responded:

• 20% always trusted their managers
• 57% occasionally trusted their managers
• 19% rarely trusted their managers

With three quarters of all employees expressing low levels of trust in their managers, managers clearly have a long way to go in forming a collaborative partnership with their workers. If employees do not trust their managers, they are unlikely to give of their best in advancing the interests of the company.

Where should managers focus their efforts in starting to build trust levels in their organization? The survey gives some helpful pointers. Trust levels decline as one moves closer to the front-line. Whilst 31% of senior executives always trust their managers’ decisions, this trust reduces to 22% for non-management employees.

Levels of trust also decline as companies grow larger. At smaller companies, 26% of employees always trust their managers’ decisions, declining to just 20% for larger organizations.

Finally, trust levels decline with age. Of employees aged 18 to 24 years, only 15% said they rarely trusted their managers to make the best decisions. The level of mistrust rises to 27% for employees aged over 55 years.

Every company’s situation is different, so I’m not suggesting you take the above results as indicative of your own company. However, there are some important pointers here on where you might start looking to improve trust levels in your business.

Firstly, spend more time developing trust in your front-line employees. They are the ones dealing with your customers, right! Other studies have shown that poor manager-employee relationships breed poor customer relationships. Get managers to show their employees the big picture and how their role is important to achieving the organization’s objectives. Prompt managers to speak frequently with their direct reports. Communicate, communicate, communicate!

Secondly, as your company grows, don’t overstretch the span of control. Ensure that the number of employees reporting to each manager does not strain the manager’s ability to communicate effectively with his or her direct reports. Also, review how often messages come down from the executive suite to the lower levels of the organization. I’m talking here about messages to do with company strategy, financial results, and so on. And think about what mechanisms you have in place to allow for genuine two-way communication; the sharing of ideas and feelings up the food chain as well as down. When employees feel as if they have a stake in the decisions made, they are more likely to support it as problems surface down the track.

Thirdly, with your more senior employees, make them feel valued. Consider training them up to become trainers and coaches, and assign them younger employees to mentor. Trust levels will grow if they feel they have been brought into the fold and trusted themselves. Trust is a two way street. When you trust your employees to do the right thing, they are more likely to trust your actions as a manager.

How are trust levels in your organization? If you were to run a similar survey, what do you think would be the results? What are you doing to improve trust levels in your organization? I encourage you to put your comments here and share your ideas.

Tags: communicate, company, employee, employer, feedback, manager, organization, survey, trainer, trust, worker
Posted in Communication, Research, Talent, Training | Comments (0)

Thought Leaders Summit for Business Entrepreneurs

Submitted by Leslie Allan on June 30th, 2010

Today I led a discussion around outsourcing and delegation at the Melbourne Thought Leaders Summit. Unlike the usual summit in which you passively go to hear people exude their wisdom, my good friends at this summit used a radically different approach. They used what is called open space technology. With this approach, at the start of the summit, delegates nominate on flip chart paper their most burning issues. Other delegates then vote on which discussions they are interested in attending. On the basis of which subjects get the most interest, the summit organizers make up a schedule of parallel sessions. Delegates are then free to move from session to session as their interests dictate. This is social learning at its best.

The discussion I led on the subject of how to effectively source and delegate work to people outside the business touched a nerve with the audience. Entrepreneurs and small business owners especially grapple with this issue. As the business grows, they find that they can no longer do everything, nor are they an expert on everything. How do you source reliable help at a price you can afford? Please share your experiences here so that we can all learn from each other.

Tags: delegation, intern, leader, melbourne, outsourcing, students, summit, thought, university
Posted in Change, Marketing | Comments (0)

Recent Posts

• Latest Infogroup Research on Employee Engagement
• Pay for Performance – Latest Survey Results
• Employee Passion Hit by Global Financial Crisis
• How to Post on Social Media Web Sites Effectively
• Email Communication Blues | Tips for Recovering Your Sanity

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