human-resource-guide

Recently I come across the following scale in a national research report to grade each state’s education performance within numerous areas. Do you see anything questionable about this scale?

Grading Curve: A (93-100), A- (90-92), B+ (87-89), B (83-86), B- (80-82), C+ (77-79), C (73-76), C- (70-72), D+ (67-69), D (63-66), D- (60-62), F (0-59)

If you aren’t scratching your head yet, please allow me ask another question. If you are an employer, a human resource or a quality control manager what expectations do you have toward the performance of your employees? In other words, do you expect your employees to know 50%, 60%, 75%, 80%, 90% or 100% of their job skills or job description? At what level of knowledge and years on the job, would you consider that employee’s performance to be sub-standard and would not entitle her or him to a promotion or a raise and might be within the area of specific discipline strategies from suspension to termination?

Now you might be thinking what is this lady talking about. Common sense dictates that every employee should know at least 75% or 3 out of every 4 requirements of their job and within a certain time frame progress to 100%. Errors are costly in business and employees’ errors are extremely expensive as they have a cascade affect within the organization.

Even though the above scale is for a national research report on education in America, this scale is present in many classrooms throughout this country. What has happened is that the low expectations within the classroom have migrated up and now are affecting research organizations that consider 60% as passing. F is failing and everything above F is passing. From a simple performance perspective, if we don’t fail, we have success because success has been defined at 60%.

These low expectations have contributed to the low results that have been documented through such research as the National Assessment of Educational Progress where for example reading scores collectively for 17 year olds over the course of 33 years have not changed.

The high standards of 40 plus years ago where anything less than 75% was failing are non-existent in the majority (that being over 50%) American schools. NOTE: As a former school board trustee, I continually fought to raise the bar to 75% as passing, but that outraged teachers, parents and students who argued such standards would prevent the students from playing sports. For playing sports was no longer a privilege, but a right.

Many young people experience 12 years of conditioning where doing less than your personal best is OK. And guess what? You even get rewarded by a promotion to the next grade. How cool is that? Now, these same young people go into the workforce with a belief that it is OK to just get by as long as you don’t fail. During my 20 years in management, I saw this on a regular basis with many of our new hires.

If we, as business owners, truly desire to improve the performance of today’s employees, we need to raise the standards within both the schools and the organizations that report on the schools’ and states’ performance. Until we stop this cycle of mediocrity, we will continue to receive employees who expect the world without working hard at acceptable levels of performance. And these employees will continue to view 60% as success.

Leanne helps individuals, small businesses and large organizations to double performance in real time. Click here to learn the Secret of Success and sign up for a free monthly newsletter. Please feel free to contact Leanne at 219.759.5601. If you truly don’t believe doubling your results is possible, read some case studies where individuals and businesses took the risk and experienced unheard of results.

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The commonly held view that the customer comes first is worth a close look. Think about the last time you received less than satisfactory customer service. What caused it? Probably an employee! Either directly, bad manners and a “don’t care” attitude, or by not addressing your needs - “sorry, I can’t handle that order, you’ll have to call another number”.

While most of our focus is rightly on customer needs, it may be useful to first stand back and look at the needs of the employees servicing them. Most customer complaints can probably be traced back to the attitude or competence of an employee. It follows then that if we have the right employees, doing the right things, we should enhance our customer satisfaction.

Asking employees to focus on the customer when they may be unhappy with the company is asking for trouble. I recently had a bank help desk employee agree with me that the Internet banking system was slow and inadequate. He later went on to tell me a lot more about the organization and its management, all of it unflattering!

Why do organizations let disgruntled employees loose on valuable customers? Probably because they don’t know they are disgruntled, and maybe because no one has thought through the consequences.

Addressing the key issues important to staff is a good starting point. Do they feel they belong to a team which is going somewhere? Do they know exactly what is expected of them and receive feedback and appropriate rewards based on performance? Do they have a future and are they growing in the way they want to?

Once you have the basics in place to improve levels of staff satisfaction and retention, you can focus on the customer by ensuring that customer service is a key result area of the jobs that deal with them. With a small investment in time, measures relating to customer satisfaction can be built into the performance management system.

A useful way of looking at this is to use a systems approach, define the inputs and the outputs, and then choose the most useful and practical factors to measure performance against. While measuring outputs is best, many jobs do not necessarily control the end result of customer service or sales, so we need to look at what they can control and measure that.

Typical inputs would be the actions taken by the employee such as calls made, or specific behaviors such as building rapport and handling problems. These inputs can be observed and measured and, depending on the sales environment, you should know whether these generally lead to more sales.

Typical outputs are more closely linked to the main objective, which might be sales, repeat business or profit.
By recruiting, rewarding and developing the right people who can achieve against these types of measures, improved customer satisfaction should follow.

A free diagnostic tool for assessing how well placed your business is for attracting and keeping the right people is available at the website shown below with the author’s details.

Paul Phillips is a Director of Horizon Management Group; a specialist human resource management consulting firm. He has over 30 years experience in HR and, while based in Australia, has worked in a number of overseas locations. http://www.horizonmg.com

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Rick, I have a salesman that does a pretty good job but he is always whining about something. He takes up a tremendous amount of my time, inside sales and anybody else that will listen. I don’t want to fire the guy because he does put up decent numbers. What do you suggest?

Joe, VP of Sales, Building Products Industry

Dear Joe;

Wow! If I used this term with my wife she’d probably take my head off but you have what is typically known as a high maintenance “Cry Baby Salesperson”

This condition is known as “High Affliative Needs”. It can be a sales person’s downfall. We all have affiliative needs but for a sales person, if they become excessive, they can undermine any real talent they have. This type of person is generally a very likable person and can strike up a conversation about anything, anywhere. That is why they seem to achieve relative success in field sales. But remember, if this person is wasting your time due to this condition, chances are, some or most of his customers feel the same way. You need to find out.

The question you need to ask yourself: “Is this sales person maximizing the full potential of his territory in market share, profitability and share of spend at existing accounts?

The answer to that question will determine whether you must coach, mentor or manage this individual.

Mentor

If he is attaining peak territory performance. Become a confidant and be totally honest with him. When his points are valid - acknowledge that. When he is just whining — let him know. Be constructive and supportive. Encourage him. Give him examples and help him come to the same conclusions about each situation as you do.

Coach

Since you stated he put up decent numbers, it sounds like he is worth your investment of time. Start with the numbers. What should peak performance in his territory be? Set some stretch goals. Work with him utilizing your sales expertise in targeting, goal setting and action planning to achieve these stretch goals. During the process, his high maintenance, affiliative needs should be apparent. Demonstrate how they can interfere with the achievement of his goals.

Manage

Some managing is certainly mixed in with the coaching process but if coaching doesn’t do the trick and he is actually performing below territory expectations it may be time to get tough. Stick with objective facts. Stick with the numbers. Clearly define expectations and stick to them.

Dr. Rick Johnson (rick@ceostrategist.com) is the founder of CEO Strategist LLC. an experienced based firm specializing in leadership for wholesale distribution. CEO Strategist LLC. works in an advisory capacity with company executives in board representation, executive coaching, team coaching and education and training to make the changes necessary to create or maintain competitive advantage. You can contact them by calling 352-750-0868, or visit http://www.ceostrategist.com for more information.

Rick received an MBA from Keller Graduate School in Chicago, Illinois and a Bachelor’s degree in Operations Management from Capital University, Columbus Ohio. Rick recently completed his dissertation on Strategic Leadership and received his Ph.D. He’s also a published book author with four titles to his credit: “The Toolkit for Improved Business Performance in Distribution,” the NWFA & NAFCD “Roadmap”, Lone Wolf-Lead WolfThe Evolution of Sales” and a fiction novel “Shattered Innocence.” Rick’s next book due in November is titled; Lone Wolf - LEad Wolf The Evolution of Leadership

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