Tag: Employee Relations

Fundamentals of Corporate Training – Learning to Learn Prepares to Teach

Bobblehead DollOrganizational design (OD) hinges upon a caveat posed by Myron Tribus, “what does the business organization [leaders] desire?”  Business organizations can be designed in a myriad of ways and possess a plethora of leadership styles.  Tribus remains correct; the entire design can be simplified into a single decision about the organization’s makeup and summed as the business is either a money tap or a socially involved mechanism trying to improve society and culture.  If money taps, there is not much left to say.  The organizational design, culture, and climate will reflect the owner’s desire to collect as much money as possible until the tap runs dry and the business is cast off by industry.  If socially involved, the decisions are obvious, and further delineation is superfluous.

For several years now, I have researched corporate training; from the start of recorded history, corporate training has protected business knowledge as much as it is screening people out for not being the “right fit” for a business and as a means of controlling behavior.  Originally an untrained youth would be indentured to a master, who agreed to do work in exchange for knowledge and ultimately be trained to become a journeyman, then master of a trade, craft, or business.  Your options were controlled long before interest was gaged and contracts for services were purchased.

Schools sprang up, and indentured servitude was expected to fall away.  Instead, only the indenturing of people went slowly away, but the servitude remains and is as healthy today as it was in the 1600s.  Currently, servitude is cloaked in terms of culture, competitive stance, and corporate knowledge, and the corporate trainer remains the arbiter of entry into a business, trade, craft, etc.  The trainer does not impart knowledge but exemplifies behaviors, attitudes, and mannerisms that the business leaders consider tenets of competition.

Finally, let’s name the 800# gorilla in the room, servitude is captivity, and captivity is how a person is described who changes into what the company desires of its long-term employees.  Thus the phrase “Captured by the system” indicates this phenomenon.  What does it mean to “Play the game?” the same thing, change your attitude, behaviors, and ideals, and become one of us, doing what we tell you to do.

By naming this phenomenon, I am not being cynical.  Multiple researchers of peer-reviewed research have discussed this phenomenon in their research and called it key to business success, placing the onus onto trainers and training to expound and exhort compliance of the human element.  Trainers are considered mentors, managers, job coaches, HR representatives, supervisors, etc.; if you fill a leadership position and trust, it is because you exemplify the business’s manners, attitudes, behaviors, and culture.  Understand compliance is neither good nor bad.  Non-compliance leads to ostracization and eventual unemployment.  However, submission does not guarantee long-term employment either, as those businesses relying most heavily upon human compliance tend to burn out fast and bankrupt themselves.

All operational processes and procedures rely upon changing behaviors, not necessarily upon gaining new knowledge.  In making this statement, I am not discounting gaining new knowledge, as new knowledge can arrive in many shapes, sizes, and encounters, but the primary role of a trainer in corporate offices is not new knowledge imparting but behavioral controls.  The indentured servant model of a Master training Journeymen and Journeymen training Novices has not changed these many centuries and remains firmly set in the “modern” principles of organizational learning.Question 2

Why is this important to know?

Not understanding the model and putting into place a person who does not comply is as dangerous to the health of a business as a thief, a liar, or a con man.  ENRON did not fail only because of the action of the leadership team.  ENRON failed because the model of behaviors exemplified by the leadership team and taught to employees poisoned the organizational body.  Hence the corporate trainers led the failure of ENRON, for the corporate training model follows GIGO (Garbage In equals Garbage Out!).  Understanding that the trainers were responsible for ENRON’s collapse does not excuse any person’s conduct.  Instead, it more fully places the blame on the leadership team who exemplified behaviors anathema to good organizational health.

Take any business, successful or collapsed, military organization, or non-profit; these distinctions do not matter.  Review them closely, and you will find Tribus’s choice personified in the employees’ actions, cultures, desired attitudes, behaviors, dress styles, mannerisms, etc.  Suppose a learner is preparing to train others, and doesn’t understand these fundamental aspects of corporate training and organizational design.  In that case, that trainer will teach poorly, and those employees will have short careers in the business.

Hence the most extraordinary aspect of controlling costs does not arrive in cutting people but in training them for compliance, improving the understanding of the role of behavioral adaptation, and improving the incentives to adopt the culture of the business.  A client of mine is facing this exact scenario; the economic downturns have hit them hard.  Instead of focusing on improving costs through behavioral adaptation, they have begun cutting people, leaving in place the trainers that are fundamental to the problems the company is facing.  Proving the maxim, “You cannot correct the problems with the same thinking that spawned the problems.”

Leadership CartoonWhat is needed?

Unfortunately, what is needed is not what is currently wanted, but the path forward will require pieces of the following solution.  What is needed is a new model for corporate training, and the model has been historically proven to be successful.  Joseph Smith Jr., an early American religious leader, founded several highly successful communities and launched a leadership revolution and a religious organization.  His leadership style was based upon the following principle, “Teach them (people) correct principles and let them govern themselves.”

Technology has removed the brick stick to beat compliance into employees.  Technology has also leveled a lot of playing fields, putting employees into a position where they must act for themselves, guided more by self-interest and self-preservation than any generation of workers previously.  Add in COVID lockdowns that spurred the rise in remote workers, and technology has released a lot of employees to work outside the accepted strictures of an office.  The release of employees has done two things, changed the behaviors compliance spectrum and removed the front-line supervisor as a primary trainer in monitoring and controlling cultural acceptance.

Several years ago, a researcher was told by front-line supervisors, job coaches, and mentors of a company that communication and training were not in the specific job roles of these people.  Thus, they could not be held accountable for poor communication on their teams.  Remote working has eliminated these aspects on the part of the front-line supervisor.  Therefore, if the supervisor is not teaching independence, allowing for self-preservation, and promoting the freedom of thought and action in employees, those employees are now acting outside the company culture and operations, and disaster is looming.  To their horror, the New York Times just discovered that company-forced cultures are being called into question when employees are not in the office, and demanding employees return hurts bottom lines.

Thus, the front-line supervisors must adapt.  Adaptation in managers nullifies a manager’s power and authority, sparking fear of downsizing into these mid-level managers.  Fear mixed with self-preservation leads to more problems for a company’s leadership (C-Level Suite) to consider.  The self-interested but not free mid-level manager will crave their benefits, perks, and powers, like any drug, and the withdrawal process is never pretty.  Again as recently exhibited by the New  York Times, their trainers are proving that they do not understand people and technology and do not know the role of the trainer in corporate training.Behavior-Change

Since the mid-1990s, technology has risen, coinciding with the need to provide front-line employees more freedom to make decisions and take rapid action.  Mostly, this freedom has clashed with “traditional” models of behavior demanded of by what is considered novice servants.  Yet, technological growth was not considered a fundamental threat to tradition until the COVID-lockdowns.  Regardless of the politics in the lockdowns, the truth remains, the traditional roles have fundamentally shifted, and the businesses that embrace this new role for the trainer, including a new model for operation, will reap success in the whirlwind.

Hence, while not wanted, the model suggested is what is needed.  Employees must be taught correct business principles and fully granted the freedom to govern themselves.  Thus, the role of the trainer shifts from behavioral compliance to knowledge instruction and behavioral exemplar.  More to the point, all levels of a business need to conduct themselves differently.  Relying less upon behavioral and attitude adoption and more upon individuality, expression, and thinking to complete business tasks.

Front-line and mid-level managers are, by necessity, going to have to decrease in the new model.  Relying upon layers of managerial oversight is not going to work, and honestly has never worked, and the costs of this oversight have proven too expensive.  The gap between C-Suite Level decision-makers and the front line has grown too large and too expensive, and until this is acknowledged, the role of the trainer will continue to be hindered by old-model thinking.  The 1960-1980s saw the exponential rise of middle managers, coinciding with significant cost increases and a tripling in government influence, all in the name of controlling behaviors, dictating attitudes, and demanding compliance.

The growth of the middle manager was considered “new thinking,” and history has proven this idea is as false as fools’ gold and as worthwhile.  Middle management restricted freedoms, and while employment laws have granted, since the 1940s, employers the ability to take these controlling actions, these actions remain fundamentally unfair.  The employees have slowly gotten more freedom back from their employers.  Each business will find a balance between the extremes of absolute liberty and the oppressive regime of stolen freedom.  The proposed model helps strike a balance as nothing else will, but caution is needed here; there is no one-size-fits-most solution in this balancing act.Fishbone Diagram

Since the industrial revolution began, businesses have competed upon their employees’ skills and influence to serve customers, which is the fundamental truth that cannot be ignored any longer.  By the C-Level Suite, the skills, freedoms, liberties, behaviors, attitudes, and investment of the employee dictates the company’s ability to compete for market share.  While much lip service has been undertaken to this fundamental truth, action has lagged considerably, and this trend can no longer survive in the global markets.  The front-line employee must be taught to understand this truth that they currently grasp like a fish in a stream, and they must become empowered more to act in this role.  Requiring the trainers to know, prepare, and teach these principles to power action by the front-line employee.

Teaching correct principles and allowing employees to govern themselves is cyclical.  The employee will rely more heavily upon trainers to teach the correct principles.  Increasing the need for value-added, timely trainers who support individual liberty and freedom in employees to generate customer-centric solutions.  These trainers will need to be taught so that they can teach more perfectly, and the cyclical process will continue.  Needs for training will drive new training, producing more freedom to act and driving more demand for training.

Knowledge Check!Returning to the decision posed by Tribus, regardless of whether to be a money tap or a community-building organization, embracing a new model for the role of the trainer will prove beneficial.  Reducing mid-level managers will produce direct bottom-line cost reduction.  Increasing the freedom of front-line employees while also training them to generate customer-centric solutions will open new lines of business and new opportunities.  There are no downside consequences to adopting these changes earlier than your competition and proving the concept.  As a business leader, are you brave enough to embrace these truths, or will you watch what you have built be destroyed by those who are?  The choice, as always, is yours, and if you would like help, please feel free to reach out.

© Copyright 2023 – M. Dave Salisbury
The author holds no claims for the art used herein, the pictures were obtained in the public domain, and the intellectual property belongs to those who created the images.  Quoted materials remain the property of the original author.

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Quality in a Warehouse – Reimagining the Process

Working DollarOver the last 20+ years in and out of warehouses, it never ceases to amaze and horrify the quality department operations and the waste of resources spent in either making up for failed quality or haphazardly running quality programs, thinking they are a waste of time.  Even those companies who focus resources on quality never seem to understand the trifecta of operational integrity (Product in, Quality, Product Ship) that quality could bring to an organization.  The reality is simple, quality is either your focus, your company is growing, or quality is a nothing burger, and your company will eventually be purchased or bankrupted.  There is no third option; we need to be clear on this point; quality is this important!

In quality and part of many compliance requirements are counting to ensure inventory is correct.  The counts break down into three types:

  • The Hunt – goes by many names but generally requires a person to count everything in a specific inventory location, e.g., shelf, rack, drawer, bin, etc.
  • Cleaning Inventory – is almost always called a cycle count, and its main job is to take the errors found in the hunt and clean them up, resolving specific issues.
  • Correcting Inventory – goes by many names but is generally used as a specific action where research is required, combining the hunt and the cleaning to find particular errors, lost product, and specific SKU issues.

If the counts were ordered by a financial institution instead of the quality department, the processes for clearing the errors might differ; the names often vary.  Yet the categories are pretty generalized to cross industries and remain applicable to a general discussion on operational improvement and excellence.  Specific companies will change names and processes, but I affirm the categories are sufficiently described to be practical and applicable.

Money

A fact of life, inventory is expensive, counting that inventory burns blue money, and those funds are generally not recoupable!  When speaking about money, colors of money are critical to a discussion.  Unfortunately, too many business leaders are either too concerned with green money or not cognizant sufficiently of the other colors to see how they all play roles on the bottom line’s performance.

  • Blue Money: Potential Money.  For example, buy a hammer with green money and invest $20.00.  But, in the hands of an experienced tradesperson, that hammer is worth thousands of times this amount of money over the life of the hammer.  The inverse is also true; in the hands of an inexperienced tradesperson, the potential for loss of money is incalculable!
  • Red Money:   Specifically, debt where interest is owed, on top of the principal, and other cash outlays.
  • Black Money: Dead Money!  Dead money cannot earn interest, cannot be spent due to fear, and cannot be used anywhere.  For example, drop a $10.00 bill into the sofa, and that money is as dead as yesterday’s fish!  Worse, once found that capital is usually in someone else’s hands.
  • Green Money: Cash!  Plain ol’ greenbacks.  Be those digital dollars, actual paper money, change, etc.; this is money that can still be invested, spent, and transferred for products.  Generally representing the bottom line.

While other colors exist, the focus is on these four types specifically.  Let’s use an analogy here for a moment.  A warehouse company hires a person to count inventory (green money outlay).  That inventory person invests time to count inventory (blue money) errors in stock could be red, black, green money errors, based upon how the inventory problems are resolved.  If no inventory problems exist, only the blue money was spent potentially finding the mistakes.  However, if errors were made and inventory errors exist but were not found by the inventory counter, more potential money has been lost than green money.  There is a blue, green, red, or black money loss on top of the original investment to have the inventory counted.

There is an axiom pertinent to quality in every industry, “Burn enough blue money, and green money evaporates with no trace.”  Hence, if the quality people are burning too much potential money to find defects in inventory, green money (cash) will disappear off the bottom line without anyone ever knowing or tracking the loss.  This brings the conversation back to types of counts and the problems in quality operations.

Fundamentals of Reconnaissance

Anyone who has ever conducted reconnaissance will know and understand the connection between quality and inventory in a warehouse and reconnaissance.  For those not familiar, here are the fundamentals of reconnaissance.  Reconnaissance is all about observations and reporting, communicating and making decisions about intentions, forecasting, and deciphering to make the best decisions while passing relevant information to leaders.  Guess what; The same is true of quality departments, especially in warehouse inventory.  The seven fundamentals of reconnaissance are:

  1. Ensure continuous reconnaissance occurs
  2. Do not keep reconnaissance assets in reserve
  3. Orient on the reconnaissance objective
  4. Report information rapidly and accurately
  5. Retain freedom of maneuver
  6. Gain and maintain enemy contact
  7. Develop the situation rapidly

Essentially, in civilian speak, the fundamentals of reconnaissance boil down to initial observation, data collection, data analysis, response to data, and response assessment (evaluate actions with an eye to the improvement of response).  Repeating only for emphasis, every employee in a manufacturing or warehouse environment is part of the quality chain of events.  They need to know how their actions individually lead to group (business) success.  Case in point, a stock person stocks a bin with a product; if that bin is crammed full, the product is going to fall out, become damaged, and create problems for the next person to look at that inventory location.  If in a manufacturing environment, if stock feeding machines are not uniformly loaded into the machines, damage, injury, and death potential are maximized.Inventory Quotes Humor. QuotesGram

It is important to remember that this is part of the first step in reconnaissance, observing what is currently happening.  Observation is also part of the most basic type of count, the hunt.  Knowing what the inventory looks like, how to access that inventory, maneuvering on a production floor, personal safety, and equipment knowledge and safety are all part of properly observing, collecting, and reporting data.  A person I know once told me, “Keep throwing spaghetti at the wall until something sticks.”  What is not mentioned is the need to prepare the spaghetti so it will stick when thrown.  Observation is where preparation occurs, and the business skipping preparation will always fail to capture the data for analysis accurately.

Counting Inventory

The hunt represents the counts with the least return on investment and a need.  Hunting inventory errors is akin to hunting game only with a camera.  You might get good pictures, but hunting with a camera will not fill your belly if you are hungry.  Personally, I despise the hunt and have long advocated for these counts to be removed from the quality department’s count types or be redesigned to become more valuable.  Simply counting inventory for the sake of hoping to find an error is anathema to good business sense and propriety.Inventory Quotes Humor. QuotesGram

Remember, a paradox occurs when two items are compared, and at first glance, they are opposites, when in reality, and with consideration, the truth is revealed they are more closely related than they are opposing.  The same is true to counts that hunt for inventory defects and proper observation, providing why I despise the hunt counting.  Preparation is a prerequisite to revelation, knowing where the inventory is, how to maneuver in a warehouse, and reach the stock; all this and more are essential.  Yet, when counting inventory, I affirm there must be a better way than endlessly sending people out to count, hoping to find defects.

Some companies have mixed inventory hunting counts with shelf maintenance and bin cleaning defects.  Warehouse rash, trash, litter, dirt, and debris in a warehouse remain a significant safety issue and should be cleaned regularly.  However, if the stock person is not already cleaning and stocking bins and shelves properly, the quality assurance person sent out to hunt for defects will become demoralized and stop cleaning up after the stock handlers.  Whether those stock handlers are pickers, packers, pullers, stockers, etc., the title is less important than the role they play in quality for handling the inventory, keeping a steady strain on the cleanliness of the shelves, bins, and storage locations, and correctly placing the stock into the inventory locations.

Several colleagues who are part of the quality control group in warehouses express similar sentiments to the following: “My job in quality would be a lot easier if those stocking shelves and those pulling stock to ship would pay more attention to how they handle the stock and the inventory locations.”  To which my answer is always the same, “Are all your people aware of the role they play in quality?”  By the comments answering my question, it is fundamentally clear that there is a Grand Canyon-like chasm between those not officially in quality and those in other roles, and fixing the problem, and eliminating the useless hunt counts, is all part of bridging this chasm!The Crazy Work Related Moments (51 pics) - Izismile.com

Hunt counts do one thing valuably, they provide an innocuous way for quality people to learn the inventory and observe conditions generally, which sounds like two separate actions, but in reality, they are the same action.  That’s the entire value in hunt counts; these counts cannot clean inventory defects; they can only take a picture and report that picture to begin another warehouse process.  The frequency of errors in the inventory hunt process forms a view that reports how clean or dirty a warehouse’s inventory process is; but, this report can be related with greater accuracy without the hunt counts.  Unfortunately, because the data reported is shared in numerical values, individual bias in the statistical reporting tools can be manipulated and often is misrepresented by conscious or unconscious bias.

Hence, we can conclude that the hunt count by itself has little to no value (green money), is expensive (blue money), and will heavily influence the acquisition and maintenance of red, green, and black money.  What is a person to do?[2020's] Top 11 FAR CPA Exam Study Tips - Pass on Your 1st ...

Possible Solutions

Possible solutions are aptly named because no warehouse is exactly the same, no company is exactly the same, and the quality department mission will always differ from one business unit to another and between businesses that compete.  I admit I am heavily biased against hunt counts in the warehouse and manufacturing industries.  However, I am also heavily biased about removing something that works for something untried in the hopes it will replace a flawed system.  Thus, the solutions proposed remain possible solutions to initiate the spark to a future conversation and obtain input from smarter minds.

  1. Since the hunt counts are basic, and the roles of stockers and pullers are very similar to an initial role in quality where learning and observing inventory is a prerequisite, make the entry-level job for stockers/pullers/quality all the same position—cementing the need for everyone to play an active role in quality while also removing lines that separate.
  2. Fundamentally change the hunt count to focus not on inventory locations that appear clean but those in chaos. Chaos in an inventory location should be the primary focus for correction, not simply a mindset that everything will eventually be counted, so invest in useless counts to make work.  Hence a stocker or puller would approach an inventory location with problems and count that full location while cleaning and straightening that location and reporting that location as problematic for corrective remediation with the last person who visited that inventory location.
  3. Stocker/pullers will not be able to correct defective inventory; this is a Sarbanes-Oxley headache for compliance, but this is a good thing. A level two quality associate could then be dispatched to that newly cleaned, organized inventory location to perform inventory correcting actions, thus speeding the corrective inventory action and providing better data on associate activities.
  4. Part of reconnaissance is using data more wisely; this includes capturing data details, improving training, promoting quality as a mindset for every employee, and analyzing the data for specific corrective actions the business can initiate in inventory locations, shapes of packaging, and handling stock more efficiently to prevent damage. Follow the data path to root causes and act on correcting root causes.

Final Thoughts

Knowledge Check!Qualitative data is almost useless by itself.  Quantitative data is practically meaningless by itself.  Thus, operational reports must contain both types of data to provide a clear picture of events and be the most useful in improving decision-making.  More to the point, mixing both types of data individual bias and subconscious manipulation of the data is more difficult, thus mitigated.  Reconnaissance is all about communicating and capturing data for analysis.  Why should a business leader only have quantitative data to base decisions upon; hence the need to understand data and use data more wisely.  Never settle for only one type of data in a report, never settle for what has always worked in the past, and never allow business processes and procedures to live longer than 18 consecutive months without a full review and torture testing to check for better ways and means.  It cannot be emphasized enough, “If you do not try the impossible, you will never achieve the possible.”

© Copyright 2021 – M. Dave Salisbury
The author holds no claims for the art used herein, the pictures were obtained in the public domain, and the intellectual property belongs to those who created the images.  Quoted materials remain the property of the original author.

Circling Back:  Going the Extra Mile in Customer Service

Bobblehead DollIt is no secret; I am a doctoral candidate.  On Facebook, I advertised my dissertation to find participants to engage in my dissertation data collection.  My dissertation is all about the role of the trainer in call center training.  I am looking to answer some specific questions about what a trainer does, their role in training, and flush out details about the role of the call center trainer in establishing genetic memory.  My first ad on Facebook, believe it or not, received more direct respondents than my second or third attempts.  That the respondents accused me of being fake, a troll, and committing several bodily functions on their timelines bothered me greatly.

When mentioned to representatives from Facebook, who could see the comments and the original ad, the representatives reflected less care than I would have ever imagined.  Yet, Facebook claims to be “customer-centric,” “customer-driven,” and “customer-obsessed.”  LinkedIn, AT&T, Sprint/T-Mobile, Bank of America, Navy Federal Credit Union, and many other companies make similar claims and act similarly, where the professed policies are disconnected from reality, and the only person who suffers is oddly the customer.  Then, the agents representing these companies are then asked to “go the extra mile for the customer.”Pin by N D on Jokes | Dilbert comics, Work humor, Funny picture quotes

When going the extra mile was first addressed, leadership, training, business processes, and organizational communication all were aspects to the foundation to helping an agent “go the extra mile.”  More needs to be discussed on “going the extra mile” and delivering upon the promises made by leadership.  However, the discussion is useless unless followed swiftly by concerted action; thus, this article asks for and directly inspires action.

Compounded Leadership Failure

Let’s begin with reality and address the 300# gorilla.  To the leaders of companies, customers are listening, and they are not stupid!  Whether you believe this or not, your customers do, and they do not like what they see.  AT&T, LinkedIn, and Facebook regularly inundate me with the voice of the customer surveys, new products, performance surveys, surveys, surveys, surveys.  These are not the only companies demanding answers and resources from customers, but these companies are especially egregious at this practice.  Tell me, why does nothing ever change in customer approach, customer service, customer care, and the voice-of-the-customer always appears to fall on deaf ears?Colin Powell quote: Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you...

Leadership never collects qualitative and quantitative data and then uses this information to make change, drive visible customer affecting policy shifts, or even act like the customer is worthy of being listened to.  How do we, the customers know we are not being heard; the agents do not have the ability to affect change.  I called Xfinity/Comcast; I have an issue, I get nowhere with the agents, but I am still expected and offered multiple times the voice-of-the-customer survey to help improve customer relations.  I invest my time in completing the survey; I even indicate a return call to discuss the scores is acceptable, only later do I discover that the voice-of-the-customer data is never worked, customers are not called, and the company does not care.

Poor Leadership #inspirational #motivational #quotes | Bad leadership quotes, Leadership quotes ...If you are sending a survey out, you need to address the survey results.  Publicly with your agents, transparently with your shareholders and investors, and clearly and openly with your customers.  By refusing to do these things, the leadership failures in demanding customer resources to complete surveys are wasted, compounded, and the customer is listening!  Worse, the customer is sharing this information with other customers and is openly looking for options to replace you and your company!  By publicly claiming “customer-obsession,” “customer-centricity,” and “customer-first” propaganda (e.g., marketing promises), you are making a commitment.  Failure to honor that commitment delivers a “Used Car Sales” pitch, and lawyers and politicians become more trustworthy than you and your company.  Customers are tired of “Lemons” when paying for cherries; is this clear enough?

Who is your first customer?

To every person claiming the first customer is a service or product purchaser, you are WRONG!  Your first customer is your employees.  Yet, employee abuse remains central to employee churn.  Asking your employees to “go the extra mile” for an external customer and not seeing the business first go the extra mile for them is disheartening at best to your employees.

I am intimately familiar with a well-known company, its operations, and its customer commitment.  The company does an excellent job in employee relations, which leads to year-over-year success with external customers.  But the company has some deep-seated problems they are working on, and because they are honestly working on these issues, I am willing to give them anonymity for their efforts.  One of the most fundamental issues this company has is in product delivery; the operations in the warehouse prioritize outbound (customer shipping of products ordered) to the exclusion of quality.  The products are more important than the people, which is a growing pain for this company.Tiger Team

By forgetting that the first customer is the employees, this group churns at phenomenal rates compared to other business units.  Why?  Because of the insanity of being left out of customer service.  Company benefits, time-off, vacation policies, “swag,” free merchandise, etc., none of this compensates for irrational operations that fundamentally treat the employee poorly and in a confused manner.  If your company is “customer-focused,” then employees are top priority, and in making them top priority, they look after your external customers more efficiently, more expertly, and they will build a fatter bottom-line through “going the extra mile.”

When was the last time your employees were honestly engaged in voice-of-the-customer surveys and results?  When was the last time the employees knew they were the top priority in your business?  When was the last time operational policies and procedures were adjusted to remove confusion about employee worth and value?  Tell me, are your shareholders and investors treated better than your number one investor, your employees?  If so, your shareholders should be raking the current leadership over the coals for robbery and theft.  Reduced bottom lines because of employee treatment should be a significant issue of discussion by the shareholders and investors, for this is nothing short of robbery. You are compounding another leadership failure through employee abuse, which increases costs and lowers bottom-line performance, e.g., robbing the investor and shareholder because you have refused to provide your first customer simple customer recognition, let alone service.

Going the Extra Mile

Before a supervisor, team leader, director, or other leaders in your business organization asks for an employee to “go the extra mile,” rate that leader on this question, “Have they already walked two miles with the employee?”  If not, that person is asking for the impossible.  No extra efforts can or ought to be sought when leadership fails to first show and do what it takes to walk two miles with an employee.

Call Center BeansWant to know a secret?  When the leader first walks two miles with the employee, that leader never has to ask anyone to “go the extra mile,” EVER!  Your best leaders, your followers, are the people who, instead of looking forward first, make it a priority to look sideways.  These leaders are experts at lifting the talent needed to look forward to a higher level.  Looking sideways includes value-added training programs, professional paths to progression, recognizing and praising efforts honestly and frequently, delegating assignments and tasks, and being actively engaged in delivering “customer-centricity” to the employees.  As a supervisor, team lead, director, etc., your first customer is those who follow you; what have you done lately to prove customer obsession to them?

By the way, your first customer is listening, awake, and actively engaged in either growing or leaving, all based upon how you treat your first customer.  I suggest taking heed of them.?u=http3.bp.blogspot.com-CIl2VSm-mmgTZ0wMvH5UGIAAAAAAAAB20QA9_IiyVhYss1600showme_board3.jpg&f=1&nofb=1

If you want to be part of my dissertation research, please reach out to me using the following email address: msalisbury1@my.gcu.edu.  Please help me help you and your company through value-added research.

© Copyright 2021 – M. Dave Salisbury
The author holds no claims for the photos or images used herein, the pictures were obtained in the public domain, and the intellectual property belongs to those who created the images.  Quoted materials remain the property of the original author.

Shifting the Employment Paradigm – I Still DO NOT want to be an Employee!

November 2012, I wrote the first in a series of articles on shifting the employee paradigms.  These articles discussed the freelance or consultant versus the employee in the structure of the organizational design.  Multiple times, the right to control has been addressed as part of the “rights” granted by the Internal Revenue Service to Employers, so the employers will continue to play the Federal Government’s game of control and heavy-handed authoritarian thuggishness.  These topics and more continue to surface on this blog in an attempt to help the employee understand the problem and issues, the loss of freedoms and rights, in becoming an employee.

Today, Joey, the blundering president, has published the 400+ page OSHA abomination that forces you to lose the rest of your privacy to your employer—ending HIPAA, foreclosing your rights to your liberty not to vaccinate, and shaming you into wearing a mask and discriminating if you do not.  While the OSHA regulation is unconstitutional and a clear governmental overreach, Congress remains silent in its scrutiny of the executive branch of the government.  Worse, the citizens of America think that the judicial branch can be trusted to “save them” from the executive branch of government, which is always a BAD IDEA!

OSHA and Joey have declared that employers with over 100 employees have to comply.  After this is accepted, then employers over 50-employees, then 10- employees, and so forth will be targeted until nobody who employees anyone can escape.  This is how the government works, and this is why we need a different structure to operate under.

Employers, employees, I have a better idea than trusting the government to act responsibly.  It is past time to revisit the structure wars and redesign the employee/employer relationship in America.  What is the answer; knowledge vending instead of the employer/employee relationship.  Please, allow me a moment of your precious time to explain.

The idea is simple.  You have employees who know your business cold, know your customers, understand your processes, procedures, workflows, products, and services.  How many of your employees would love to brand themselves to your organization as knowledge vendors?  Ask them!  Then offer them the choice to become independent contractors using the IRS publications as a guide.  The knowledge vendor provides their tools, you provide them access, and they brand themselves and contract to serve your organization, with autonomy to work for you on their terms and schedule.

Please note, this is critical; the IRS continues to change the rules on an almost fluid and whimsical basis.  The link takes you to the designation between an employee and a contractor.  Lawyers will need to help design the necessary contracts to control the relationship.  Some assistance will be required to help those transitioning to ensure they are not killed financially in the tax tsunami the IRS likes to launch.  However, taking this step forces the Federal Government hand over OSHA and allows you and your now independent contractor workforce to return to business instead of compliance. Everyone retains their liberty, plus your privacy and medical records remain your business, not your employer’s or the Federal Governments’.

It cannot be stressed enough; the IRS should never have been placed in control over the employee/employer relationship controls.  Worse, these controls should never have been assumed by the government in the first place.  Since the Federal Government has assumed these powers, everyone needs to understand the fundamental categories that differentiate an employee from a knowledge vendor/contractor.

These topics are covered in-depth on the links, and I have covered them in various articles previously.  Until Congress removes these rights from the IRS, the contracts covering those knowledge vendors must spell out succinctly these controls to avoid the IRS meddling and penalizing the vendor and the employer maliciously.  More to the point, the IRS has, in the past, gone backward and retroactively changed its rules to penalize employers and vendors through “clarifying,” which the courts upheld.

Risky path to take; potentially!  However, all life is risk, and I cannot think of anything more perilous than capitulating to Joey and his merry band of authoritarian thugs!  Plus, America needs to join the rest of the industrialized nations in offering choices to the employer/employee relationship.  Tax laws, generally, and the IRS specifically, are choking the lifeblood out of American ingenuity and increasing the cost of compliance year-over-year.  We need real solutions to these problems and freeing the American worker is the best solution.

© Copyright 2021 – M. Dave Salisbury
The author holds no claims for the art used herein, the pictures were obtained in the public domain, and the intellectual property belongs to those who created the images.  Quoted materials remain the property of the original author.

Employee Engagement

Knowledge Check!Recently this topic was raised in a town hall style meeting, and the comments from the leadership raised several concerns.  It appears that employee engagement is attempting to become a “buzzword” instead of an action item, and this bothers me greatly.  Worse, many people lead teams with vague ideas about what employee engagement means and then shape their own biases into the employee engagement program, making a pogrom of inanity and suffering out of a tool for benefiting and improving employee relations.

When discussing employee engagement, we must first begin with a fundamental truth; employees do not work for a company, do not work for a brand; they work for a manager.  An employee might like a company; they might enjoy having their professional brand aligned with a known branded organization. The employee might feel pride in associating with other employees under that brand.  When the road gets difficult at the end of the day, an employee works for a manager.  The relationship between a manager and an employee is one of trust operationalized and honed through shared experiences.

Employee Engagement – Defined

ProblemsAccording to several online sources, the definition of employee engagement is, “Employee engagement is a fundamental concept in the effort to understand and describe, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the nature of the relationship between an organization and its employees.”  If you believe this definition, you will miss the forest for the bark you are fixated upon!  Employee engagement is fundamental; it is not a concept, a theory, or a buzzword.  Employee engagement is a relationship between organizational leaders and the employees, but employee engagement is not about collecting qualitative or quantitative data for decision-making policy-based relationship guidance.  At the most basic level, employee engagement is the impetus an employee chooses to onboard because of the motivational actions of the manager they report to.

Employees must choose to engage; when they choose not to engage, there is no enthusiasm in the employee, and this can be heard in every action taken by the employees on the company’s behalf.  Is this clear; employee engagement is an individual action, where impetus leads to motivated and enthused action.  While organizational leaders can and do influence motivation, they cannot force the employee to engage!  Thus, revealing another aspect of why the definition found online is NOT acceptable for use in any employee engagement effort!Leadership Cartoon

Employee engagement is the actions an employee is willing to take, indicating their motivation to perform their duties and extra-duties for a manager they like.  Employee engagement is the epitome of operational trust realized in daily attitudes, behaviors, and mannerisms of employees who choose to be engaged in solving problems for their employer.  While incentive programs can improve employee engagement, if the employee does not first choose to enjoy the incentive, the incentive program is wasted leadership efforts.  The same can be said for every single “employee benefit.”  If an employee cannot afford the employer’s benefits, those benefits are wasted money the employer needs elsewhere.  Hence, the final point in defining employee engagement is the individualization of incentives and the individual relationship between managers and employees.  Stop the one-size-fits-most offerings, and let’s get back to talking to people.Anton Ego 4

Reflective Listening

Listening has four distinct levels; currently, these are:

      • Inactive listening – Hearing words, seeing written communication, zero impact mentally. Mainly because your internal voices drown out the possibility of communication.
      • Selective listening – Hearing only that which confirms your own voices, opinions, and biases. While others are speaking, you are already forming your response.
      • Active listening – Show the other person you are paying attention to, engage with meaning in a reply. You are focused on removing barriers to get your point across.
      • Reflective listening – Paying attention to intent and content, reducing emotion, two-directional as both parties are engaged in achieving mutual understanding.

Chinese CrisisInactive and selective listening can be heard through phone lines, instant messaging, text messaging, and easily observed during face-to-face communication.  Worse, active listening launches trust, and when faked, destroys credibility, ruining relationships.  Reflective listening can only achieve mutual understanding when both parties are choosing to listen intently and with the purpose of reaching mutual understanding.  The most powerful tool in an organizational leader’s toolbox for quickly rectifying employee engagement is reflectively listening.

Communication occurs in two different modalities, verbal and non-verbal.  Good communicators adapt their message to the audience using reflective listening and careful observation.  Adapting the message requires first choosing, determining who the primary and secondary audience is, and then focusing the message on the primary audience.  Next, adaptation requires prior planning, which includes mental preparation, practice, and channels for feedback.  Finally, adaptation requires listening to achieve mutual understanding, careful observation, asking questions designed to lead to mutual understanding, and clarifying what is being said to achieve mutual understanding.  The pattern described can be the tool that begins employee engagement but is not an end-all solution all by itself.Anton Ego

Appreciative Inquiry

Appreciative inquiry is a growth mechanism that states that what a business organization needs, they already have enough of, provided they listen to their employees.  Appreciative inquiry and common sense tell leaders who want to know and change their organization and how and where to begin.  Appreciative inquiry-based leadership is 6-continuous steps that start small and cycle to more significant problems as momentum for excellence permeates through an organization.  But the first step, just like in defeating a disabling addiction, is admitting there is a problem.

Here are the six operational steps for appreciative inquiry:

      1. Admit there is a problem and commit to change.
      2. Define the problem.
      3. Discover the variables and stay focused on the positive.
      4. Dream BIG!
      5. Design the future and outline the steps to that future.
      6. Destiny, create the destination you desire.

Bait & SwitchFollow the instructions on a shampoo bottle, “Wash, Rinse, Repeat.”  The appreciative inquiry model can be scaled, repeated, implemented into small or large teams, and produce motivated members who become the force to create change.  Allow yourself and your team to learn, this takes time, but through building motivation for excellence, time can be captured to perform.

Of all the steps in appreciative inquiry, it must be stressed that focusing on the positive is the only way to improve people.  Even if you must make careful observations to catch people doing good, do it!  Focusing on the positive provides the proper culture for engaging as many people as possible.  Criticism, negativity, aspersions, and insults all feed a culture of “Not my problem,” and when the employee claims, “not my problem,” they will never engage until the culture changes.

Organization

Andragogy - LEARNEmployee engagement requires structural changes to the organizational design.  Employee engagement is going to bring immediate change to the organization.  If the leaders, directors, managers, supervisors, team leaders, etc., are not prepared for and willing to change, employee engagement will die as an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.  As a business consultant, I have witnessed the death of employee engagement, and the death is long, protracted, and disastrous to the entire business.  Worse, individuals refusing to change stand out like red dots on a white cloth as employee engagement dies.

Thus, the first step in employee engagement belongs not to the employee, but the employer, who must answer this question: “Are we a learning organization willing to change, or are we a knowing organization who does not need to change?”  How the leadership answers this question will speak volumes to the employees closely observing and making their decisions accordingly.  Depending upon how that question is answered will depend upon whether the business can move onto the second step or remain stuck on the first step.

Andragogy - The PuzzleThe second step in employee engagement is training the organization to accept change and failure as tools for learning, growing, and developing.  A toddler learning to walk will fall more than they stay up before they can run.  The same is true when initiating employee engagement.  Guess what; you are going to fail; can you as an organizational leader accept failing?  Are you willing to admit you failed, made a mistake, and publicly acknowledge the blame and consequences?  Are you willing to allow others to accept the praise for doing the right thing?  Will you as an organizational leader accept change?  How you answer these questions also speaks volumes to the employees you are trying to engage.  Depending upon how you individually and collectively as a team answer these leadership questions will decide if you fall back to step one or advance to step three.

The third step in organizing employee engagement is total commitment.  Are you onboard?  Are all the leaders onboard?  Being onboard means 100% commitment to the organization dreamed in the operational steps to appreciative inquiry.  If not, do not launch an employee engagement program, for it will fail spectacularly!  Never forget the cartoons where a character has one foot on a boat leaving the pier and one foot on the dock; they get wet and left behind!

Have FUN!

Semper GumbyEngaging with employees should be fun, it should be an enjoyable experience, and it should bring out the best in you!  All because you want to see others engage, grow professionally, learn, develop, and become.  Your efforts to teach engagement lead you to learn how to engage better.  Seize these learning opportunities, choose to grow, but never forget to have fun.  My best tool for engaging with employees, dad jokes!  Really, really, really, bad dad jokes!  For example, when Forrest Gump came to Amazon, what was his computer password?

1F@rr3st1

When you get that joke, laugh; but wait for others to get it as well!  Employee engagement is fun, exciting, and can be the best job you ever had as a professional.  Just believe in yourself, believe in and invest the time in appreciative inquiry, organize yourself and your business, and always reflectively listen.Never Give Up!

© 2021 M. Dave Salisbury
All Rights Reserved
The images used herein were obtained in the public domain; this author holds no copyright to the images displayed.

 

Customer Service Begins with Employees – Knowing the Paradigm

During the last 60 days, I have had the ability to see two different companies and their training programs up close and personal.  Both companies provide call center employees, and currently, both companies are employing a home shored or remote agent to conduct call center operations.  Neither company is handling remote agents very well; and, while both companies have excellent credentials for providing exterior customers with excellent customer service, both companies fail the first customer, the employee.

ProblemsCompany A thinks that games, contests, prizes, swag, and commissions adequately cover their inherent lack of customer service to employees.  Company B does not offer its employees any type of added compensation to its employees and treats their employees like cattle in a slaughterhouse yard.  Both companies talk an excellent game regarding treating their employees in a manner that promotes healthy exterior customer relations, but there is no substance, no action, no commitment to the employee.  Company B has an exceedingly high employee churn rate, and discounts that rate because of employees working from home and not being able to take the loneliness of an office atmosphere.  Company A has several large sites and is looking forward to having employees back on the call center campus.

When the conclusions for employee dissatisfaction were shared, the question was raised, “How does the leadership team know when the employees are not feeling served by their employer?”  The answer can be found in the same manner that the voice of the customer is found, mainly by asking the employees.  Neither company has an employee feedback process to capture the employee’s thoughts, ideas, feelings, and suggestions; relying solely upon the leadership team to provide these items.  Neither company overtly treats its employees poorly, Company A does have a mechanism to capture why employees leave the organization.  Company A was asked what they do with this information and refused to disclose, which is an acceptable answer.

Consider an example from Company A, a new hire has been in the hiring process since January, was informed they were hired around the first of April but was also told the next start date/new hire training class has not been scheduled due to COVID-19.  The employee is finally scheduled for a new hire class starting the first week of June.  Between the time of being hired and the start date, the employee begins taking classes Mon thru Fri, 1800-2100 (6:00pm to 9:pm).  The employee is scheduled to begin work at 1030 in the morning and work until 1900 (7:00pm).  The new hire asks for help with the schedule, the classes being taken will improve the employee’s skills upon graduation on the first of August.  Training is six weeks long, but the overlap is only 9 working days.  Company A’s response, either drop the classes or quit the job.

Internal-CS-Attitude-Low-ResThus, the attitude towards employee customer service is exposed to sunshine, and regardless of the games, prizes, food, swag, commissions, etc., the employee-customer service fails to keep highly talented employees.  This example is not new, and is not a one-off, unfortunately.  The example is regular business for employee treatment, and as the trainer stated, there are always more people for positions than positions open, so why should we change operations?  Since January Company A has been working unlimited overtime to fill the gap in open positions.

Company B informed all new hires that training is four-days long, and upon completion on the job training commences.  On day 3, training is extended to five days, on day 4 training is extended, and on Saturday, training is extended to a mandatory Sunday.  No excuses, no time off, no notice, and no reasonable accommodation is provided to make other accommodations for children, medical appointments, etc., and by the time Sunday arrives, the new hire class has already logged 60-hours in a week that began on Tuesday.  Several employees are unable to make Sunday and as such are now kicked out of training, and will lose their jobs once HR gets around to giving them the ax.

Neither employer offers reasonable accommodation to employees working from home, as working from home is an accommodation already.  Marking the first area of risk; if an employee works for your organization, regardless of the attitude of employee treatment, reasonable accommodation is the law in America, and similar laws are on the books across the world.  Yet, both companies were able to eschew the law and deny reasonable accommodation.  Company B did it by never responding to the employees after they missed a day of work during training.  Company A did it by forcing the employee to decide without the aid of HR, claiming HR does not have any power in the decisions of training.

Now, many people will advise the employees hindered in their job search that the company does not serve them.  That fit into a new organization is more important than money.  That if an employer does not serve their employees, that employer has no value and the ex-employee is better off.  Yet, the companies hired these people, went to great expense to onboard these people, and now must spend more money to hire more people to fill the gap.  Both companies will have to pay overtime and other incentives to get the newest new hires through training.  All because of the disconnect between serving internal customers and external customers.  Many business writers have said, the only customer business has, are the employees.

Leadership CartoonMyron Tribus used a water spigot to help explain the choices of business leaders where employees are concerned.  A business is either a money spigot and customers, employees, vendors, stakeholders, do not matter, so long as the money keeps rolling in to pay off the shareholders.  Or business is a spigot with a hose on it to direct the efforts of the business through the relationships with employees, customers, vendors, stakeholders, and shareholders, to a productive and community-building long-term goal of improvement.  Either a business is a money spigot or a community building operation, the business cannot do both.

With this analogy in mind, the following four suggestions are provided for businesses that either want to change spigots or need help building the only customer relationship with value.

  1.  Decide what type of business you want to be, and then act accordingly.  No judgment about the decision is being made.  Just remember, the greatest sin a business can commit is to fail to show a profit.  Employee costs can make and break employers and profits.
  2. Provide a feedback loop. Employees are a business’s greatest asset, the greatest source for new products, new procedures, new methods of performing the work, and new modes of operation, and until the leadership team decides the employees have value, the business cannot change to meet market demands.  In fact, that business that does not value employees, cannot change at all, ever!
  3. Be “Tank Man.” As a child, I remember watching the Tiananmen Square incident unfold in China.  I remember watching a man, stand in front of a tank and bring that tank, and several more behind it, to a standstill.  Nobody knows this man’s name, but many remember his stand.  Be the example of world-changing customer service, even if no one will ever know your name.Tank Man - Tiananmen Square
  4. Many parents have told their children, “Actions speak louder than words.” At no other time has these words been truer.  Act; do not talk!  Show your employees’ customer service and they will conquer the world for you.  Actions to take might not mean expending any money.  Showing someone you care is as simple as listening, and then helping.  LinkedIn daily has examples of hero employees who do more, serve better, and act all because their leader acted on the employee’s behalf.
    • Blue Money BurningConsider Company A for a moment, the time of class overlap was 1-hour. The number of days the overlap was going to affect that employee, 9.  Thus, for the cost of nine hours at $17.00 per hour, or $153.00 USD total, an employee was lost.  How much blue and green money was lost getting that employee hired, just to see that employee leave within two days of starting?  How much more blue and green money will be lost to replace that lost employee?

No longer can employer hope to treat employees poorly and still achieve financial success, between social media and modern communication, the word gets out that an employer does not care about their employees.  No longer can labor unions abuse non-union members autonomously.  No longer can a business walk away from social and community abuses with impunity.  The choice to treat people as valuable assets is an easy choice to make, choose wisely!

© Copyright 2020 – M. Dave Salisbury

The author holds no claims for the art used herein, the pictures were obtained in the public domain, and the intellectual property belongs to those who created the pictures.

All rights reserved.  For copies, reprints, or sharing, please contact through LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/davesalisbury/

Chapter 4: Staffing and the Mission Act – Shifting the Paradigm at the VA

On 25 June 2019, the following came from the Office of Inspector General (OIG), “Staffing and Vacancy Reporting under the MISSION Act of 2018.” Under the Mission Act, the VA has to report on steps being taken to correct the “chronic healthcare professional shortages since at least 2015.”  “The OIG found [the] VA partially complied with the law’s requirements, reporting current personnel, and time-to-hire data as prescribed. However, VA’s initial reporting of staff vacancies and employee gains and losses was not transparent enough to allow stakeholders to track VA’s progress toward full staffing.”

After having been terminated without cause, justification, or reason 51.5-weeks into my 52-week probationary period of employment, reading this OIG report was infuriating. Thus, I sent Secretary Wilkie an email. Apparently, my email was insufficiently clear, and additional information is needed.  I am not trying to get my job back; I am trying to help the VA to improve. With this purpose in mind, the following information is being suggested to the VA.

As a veteran, I am excited about the power of the Mission Act and the focus being placed upon the service member by I CARE. I CARE is a customer-focused approach to VA services combining WE CARE and SALUTE, and is intended to promote effectiveness, ease, and emotion into the patient/customer experience. Except, the VA has only rolled out the I CARE approach to management as the Union has not ratified this approach for non-supervisory staff. The disconnection between actions to improve and those thwarting improvements astounds and mystifies.

Let me tell you about my experience in the New Mexico Veterans Health Care System (NMVAHCS), to elaborate upon disconnections and point out where fundamental changes can begin to transpire for the entire VA System where staffing is concerned. Please note specific names have been scrubbed to protect privacy.

First, let’s talk about animosity and hostility. My director, while employed from June 10, 2018, to June 05, 2019, never wrote anything down as a way of avoiding her responsibilities, shirking her job, and allowing her underlings to act in a manner consistent with the worst dregs of humanity. The director would not look at you while talking with you, but would type an email or perform other work on her computer during the discussion, blaming she was “super busy.” The supervisor would offer platitudes, “plastic words from plastic lips,” and then blame you for not notifying him of problems, concerns, or issues experienced. From February 2019 to my unjustified termination, I was subject to daily abuses by fellow employees.  Nothing was ever done by the supervisor or the director, and the assistant director was off-site.  The women abusing me were promoted and moved, or transferred to a different department during my termination (quid-pro-quo, or a hatchet job, both come to mind).  Bringing the first three areas needing change to address the staffing shortages:

1. Clear, concise, written policies and procedures. The NMVAHCS is supposed to have three levels of governing documents to provide a metric to measure performance, to complete duties as prescribed, and to explain why things are done the way they are done. The overall document is an MCM (I do not remember what this acronym stands for), then policies governing, then work procedures. The MCM library, at the time I was discharged, was only about one-fourth updated and held only about 10% of the MCM’s it had displayed as available. When repeatedly asked for policies and procedures that spring from the MCM to govern my job, I was told they do not exist, “because that’s the way we do things here,” or “I have a verbal agreement with that department, and nothing further is needed.”  Lacking these guidelines, how can you measure performance? Lacking these guidelines, how can any employee hope to know they are performing the jobs they were hired to perform? Lacking these guidelines, how does a supervisor explain what happens, why things work the way they do, or for a process review to improve performance to commence?

2. The use and abuse of the probation periods to play favorites, pick winners and losers, and act in a manner that, while technically legal, is pitifully unethical, immoral, and demoralizing to the entire workforce. The private sector remains strictly controlled where probationary employees are concerned; why can the VA act in a manner inconsistent to the private sector, where probationary employees are affected?

3.  The probationary employee needs an appeal system, a justification for termination, and a mandated two-week notification unless separation is occurring due to behavioral or criminal action.  If an employee is promoted, they must give two-weeks to their current duty station before transitioning to the new role; why is a probationary employee terminated without this two-week notification? How can a probationary employee be documented as a top-notch performer all the way up to the end of their probation, and be discharged for failure to qualify?

Second, I was physically attacked, my medical records were regularly reviewed until Jan 2019 due to the supervisor refusing to protect my medical files, and the details made known to many other employees. I was discriminated against due to my injuries, by the same employee who physically assaulted me, made jokes about my injuries to nurses, the other MSA’s, security staff, and housekeeping staff.  The NMVAHCS, specifically the Hospital Emergency Department, has a horrible problem with record surfing and then violating HIPAA by telling details of the medical records to other nurses and staff not directly caring for the patient. Providing the next four areas of staffing improvement:

1. Get the tracking system working to validate unauthorized access by insisting that every single person pulling up a medical record needs to leave a note justifying why that record was pulled; this will require a written policy and procedure, and IT improvements to track and report everyone, and every file. Why this has not been done previously remains a mystery, but does not matter. Fix the problem!

2.  Regardless of whether a complaint is filed on a Report of Incident (ROI) form or only emailed to the chain of command, the investigation process must be both similar, timely, and action producing. For the same senior employee to stalk me in the hallways trying to attempt further intimidation, for the security cameras to have witnessed her attack and no officers to arrive, and for this incident to be hushed up and covered over remains inexcusable! Management does not believe a female can harass and be the aggressor party, and this thought process must cease!

3. See or hear something, say something. Multiple nurses listened to the jokes in the ED about my injuries but never said anything to their boss, even though they knew it was a HIPAA violation.  MSA’s in clinics throughout the hospital knew about this employee’s abuse towards me, and she abused many others; HR (when I arrived there for help) knew about this aggressor party but could not provide any assistance. The Union knew about the problem employee, but because I was a probationary employee claimed they were bound and couldn’t help. People knew, but said nothing! The director, assistant director, and the supervisor knew and did nothing; this is a significant organization issue and needs to be addressed. I took the complaint to ORM, nothing; EEOC, nothing; OSC, nothing. As a victim of harassment and discrimination, male, service-connected disabled veteran, where should I go for help? I was not the only male being attacked in the hospital, several male employees I know quit their jobs over harassment and to my knowledge received the same treatment by the EEOC, ORM, OSC, and so forth.

4. There is a difference between following the law and using the law; the difference is a moral center. I stress the actions taken to terminate are legal, but not ethical or moral. The moral and ethical obedience to the law would improve the employee experience greatly.

Third, cultures of corruption are killing employee morale, and the intransigence of senior leadership is mimicked down to the lowest level employee in the VA organizational hierarchy.  The local labor union president claimed the following, “The HAS Director has been a HAS director for three years and served in three different VA systems.  She has two supervisors that are known for getting rid of employees before their probation period concludes costing the VA Hospital $10,000 per employee to onboard.” Again, technically legal, but the probationary employee process is wide open to the “legal” abuse of employees. Helping us to arrive at the next three issues for correcting employee morale and turnover problems.

1. When malfeasance is known, senior leaders should be providing extra scrutiny.  Put a formal appeal process into the probationary employee rules and regulations. This way, the fact-finding would have to have documentation over-time to reflect employee performance. Track probationary employee dismissals by the department, sex, veteran status, time remaining in the probationary period, and so forth, and track this data over time. NMVAHCS is known for getting rid of probationary employees within their last 10-days of probation; thus, it is apparent that the process is abused by senior leaders throughout the hospital.  The employee was a proper, functioning, and active employee, but suddenly within sight of the probationary employment period concluding that employee is magically unacceptable; I don’t think so! Nurses have this problem, but their probationary period is two years. I have heard of doctors having this problem in the Phoenix, AZ., VA Hospital. I have witnessed many staff having the same problem in the NMVAHCS. As a point of interest, I was warned by non-VA hospital workers in the Albuquerque Community that the VA Hospital is known for getting rid of probationary employees and to watch my back. The community is watching and cares about what happens at the VA Hospital and CBOC’s. Fix the probationary employee rules, regulations, and processes.

2. Training should be maximized for all employees, but shift the focus to train and develop, not merely to check a box annually. I taught other MSA’s. At the request of the assistant director, with full knowledge of the director, I wrote a training packet of how to perform computer tasks, and can tell you as an adult education professional, the focus at the NMVAHCS is not on training people! When I mentioned this, I was told training is controlled at the national level, which is why the training is so inadequate. Training philosophies govern attitudes surrounding training value.

3. Organizational trust starts with the leadership team and requires time, engagement, and experiences. The leadership team I was subject to did not try to build trust, actively abused employees, and generally aided and abetted the miscreants to the detriment of all. Hence to correct staffing problems, there must be changes to the mindset and examples of the senior leaders first and foremost.

I reported how to fix the problems mentioned above to my chain of command first, to the sound of crickets and platitudes. I made suggestions on hardware and software to reduce fraud, waste, and abuse in the ED. I openly discussed options and made process suggestions for the entire 51.5-weeks of my employment.  I stand in amazement that my reporting these issues to the VISN head, the hospital director’s office, regularly to my chain of command did not make me a whistleblower according to OAWP and the OSC. To have whistleblower protection, you need to be employed. If a probationary employee does not qualify for whistleblower protection, why all the training on whistleblower protections? Why is the caveat about being employed not mentioned in the whistleblower protection training materials? What else is missing from the training materials on whistleblowers that would improve the employee experience? Is one of the ways the VA defends itself from change by terminating employees before whistleblower protections can be applied? If so, how does the VA leadership expect to change the mid-level managers, supervisors, and directors?

My termination was initiated by a letter written by one MSA who blamed me for the actions of another male MSA in the ED. The letter was co-authored by an MSA who was incompetent in her duties, lackadaisical in following her schedule, and who preferred to be a social butterfly than manning her post; all issues raised to the supervisor and chain of command, which were dismissed without review, who was a probationary employee until early 2019.  These authors actively solicited for signatures to the letter, what was promised to the signatories? When all this was mentioned to the HAS director, the supervisor, the OSC, the EEOC, ORM, etc.; I was advised that there is no case here because I was a probationary employee and the HAS director can exercise her right to terminate without cause anytime during probation. Is the legal abuse of the probationary employee clearer? If all new hire employees of the VA, and all those employees being promoted, are considered a probationary employee for their first year then the probationary employee abuses are the central problem in correcting staffing issues at the VA.

One Emergency Room doctor is a perfect example of biased leadership and how underlings were influenced. The doctor treated people according to their political leanings. A patient came into the ER for help wearing a MAGA (Make America Great Again) hat and proudly wearing his support for President Trump, his treatment in the emergency room under this doctor was deplorable, delayed, and detrimental; I was ashamed to witness this travesty. Another time, a patient comes in proudly wearing his support for previous President Obama, and his treatment by the same doctor was 180-degrees different. The political leanings of nurses on his staff determined if the doctor was friendly or not. The health technicians’ political leanings determined the attitude the doctor showed toward them. Is the problem apparent; biased leadership caused tremendous problems in staffing treatment, patient services, and employee morale. Because this doctor only works day shifts, several nurses and health technicians shifted to nights to have a higher level of professionalism in the doctor’s they worked with, the other nurses and health technicians either quit the VA or found work in different departments or jobs. One nurse left her profession entirely and took a significant pay cut to escape harassment by this doctor. She was a probationary nursing employee who used the stress affecting her health to change jobs.

I spent 51.5-weeks without reasonable accommodation because my chain of command was not interested in my health, but used my missed days as an excuse to seal my termination. Not having the proper reasonable accommodation equipment meant every day was painful, challenging, and detrimental to my health. I had to drive, follow-up, track, and push for the material that was provided; yet, according to ORM, EEOC, OSC, etc. there is nothing to see here, probationary employee. Another example of the legal abuse of the probationary employee.

I advocate for veterans and thought I had found employment where I could make a career, I followed the rules, and I worked hard. I would see the VA succeed, and the staffing problems become more manageable. The majority of the staffing problems have their root cause in poor or biased leadership; hence, to address these problems and begin to rectify the staffing issues, the administration must change. Policies and procedures need to be written down, communicated and trained, then staff can be held accountable, and transparency in the employment staffing process is available. Accountability and transparency are both missing in the staffing process to the detriment of all veterans, taxpayers, employees, and the communities housing a VA Hospital system.

 © 2019 M. Dave Salisbury

All Rights Reserved

The images used herein were obtained in the public domain, this author holds no copyright to any photos displayed.

An Open Missive to our Federal Elected Officials: Who Polices the Federal Government in Following Hiring Practices?

As a dual-service, disabled veteran, possessing two master-level degrees from accredited colleges and engaged in the pursuit of a Ph.D., I am finding, from personal experience and in speaking to others pursuing employment with disabilities, discrimination is alive and well.  I can understand the discrimination in private sector hiring; I do not like it but understand it.  Risk, costs of health insurance, and costs of doing business increase when hiring those with disabilities.  I do not see government as a “jobs program” in any way; however, the government has taken it upon themselves to enact rules specifically to hire those with disabilities.  Thus, the government should be more open to hiring those of us with disabilities.

People ProcessesFederal Government hiring procedures provide two hiring paths, competitive and non-competitive.  Under competitive, there are several ways of being placed ahead of others and points are awarded for certain hiring preferences, of which being a veteran is but one.  In non-competitive hiring, Schedule A provides for disabled people to sidestep the traditional, or competitive, practices of hiring to have an opportunity of obtaining employment without having to compete with candidates not experiencing the special conditions caused by disability

Disabled people are supposed to be able to employ Schedule A hiring practices for Federal Hiring because disabled people know how difficult it is to be hired for the private sector, city, county, and state government hiring.  Here is where those in hiring positions for the Federal Government are able to bypass the system and not hire disabled people:  no one is policing hiring.  I was informed, very politely, by the Inspector General’s Office that they do not inquire or investigate compliance with regulations for hiring.  The question to you, elected Federal Officials: who polices and ensures compliance with written protocols established by OPM for hiring?

As a disabled veteran, hiring in the private sector has become more difficult as my injuries have become more noticeable, from fall 2010 to present.  Having a disability that is nerve based, causing tics/twitches/spasms, hiring officials acknowledge directly or indirectly that since my cost to employer-based health care will come with a pre-existing condition and higher overall costs in ADA compliance and loss of potential (blue) money, I become the “candidate to beat,” and finally will be told, “you are overqualified,” “you are over-educated,” or my personal favorite “you are not a good fit.”  Thus, after four consecutive years of seeing my ability to be hired in the private sector diminish, I began more heavily pursuing employment with the Federal Government.

In June 2016, I was, finally, awarded a Schedule A letter to add to my documents in Federal Hiring.  With the Schedule A letter, I was provided OPM training on how to be “Direct Hired” and walked through the OPM website governing the policies that govern Schedule A hiring and disability hiring for the Federal Government.  Since the award of the Schedule A letter, I have had a VA hiring official refuse to use the letter claiming VRA and VEOA are both more efficient, and then not hire me for being “overqualified.”  I have experienced hiring managers tell me that “Direct Hire” authority lies with managers, and you need to know those managers to employ Schedule A preference, but the hiring managers cannot tell you who else to speak with to receive Schedule A hiring.  The absolute best excuse has been a hiring manager’s claim that there is no such thing as non-competitive hiring, that all applicants must be hired under competitive hiring standards, and then proceeded to tell me I am not qualified for the position because my degrees were not specifically those desired in the advertisement, even though the advertisement did not specify a specific degree, other than master-level.  Most recently I have been offered positions so far below minimum pay levels only because the government knows that desperation often breeds compliance, even if compliance creates actual harm, all in the name of some future date of possibly being hired for the wages qualified for at the time of hire.

Hence, I emailed the Inspector General’s office regarding these circumstances and received the following reply, “The Inspector General’s Office does not monitor compliance with hiring in the Federal Government.”  Thus, Elected Officials, I ask you, “Who regulates and ensures compliance in hiring for Federal Government positions?”  “Who is accountable for OPM regulations being adhered to by local hiring decision-makers?”  “Where can those who are disabled and trying to work turn for a reconciliation of just grievances?”  You, the elected officials, created this hiring system with preferences for disabled people to find work with the Federal Government, so who is policing the hiring for you?

I have now contacted elected officials in four separate states while living and voting in those areas, Ohio, Arizona, Utah, and Michigan, asking the representatives of elected officials directly the same questions posed in this missive.  Senator McCain’s office was the most oblique and obtuse claiming that if hiring practices are not being followed it is due to a lack of training somewhere, but the issue is not important enough for the senator’s time.  Upon arrival in New Mexico, I asked about hiring at the VA Hospital in Albuquerque and was told by several officials at the VA Hospital that the HR Department was under extra scrutiny due to a significant lack of following the hiring guidelines for Federal Government hiring; but, none of those people could tell me who polices the hiring practices and ensures compliance.

Why is this important; because disabled people are not receiving the kind of hiring support they need.  With the current costs to business operation in the private sector, I can understand, I do not like it, but I can understand, that hiring those with disabilities is going to be a major cash outlay upfront with increased risk.  As a business professional, I understand the risk/cost structure, and I understand that the speed of business dictates finding the lowest cost/risk, candidate.  For the city, county, state, and Federal Government positions, I cannot fathom why disabled people are dragged through such egregious hiring practices.  I did an unofficial survey of 25 Federal Government, NM State, Bernalillo County, and City of Albuquerque employees asking them one simple question, how long did it take for you to be hired initially.  The answers ranged from multiple months to 5 years of constant applying.  If the employee had been promoted, I asked how long did the employee wait for the promotion, and the answers ranged from 3-months in the initial position to 15-years.  As a business professional, I can confidently say this is where enormous amounts of blue (potential) money are being wasted, and as the axiom goes, burn enough blue money and green money, in this case, taxpayer funds, evaporate!

Ways to fix the hiring issue:

  • USAJobs.govEach Federal Government office needs to have a single person solely responsible for Schedule A and all other direct hire authority programs that non-employees can communicate with to apply directly to that organization. All open positions would run through this office first providing the option to request Schedule A preference, and upon that selection, USAJobs.gov would automatically drive the applications to the single person responsible for direct hiring and provide this person’s name and contact information to the applicant.
  • Stop the redundant efforts. Once a background and reference check has completed for one office, make this information available to all offices for 365-days.  With applicants making multiple applications to several different offices, this alleviates contacting those references multiple times, duplicating work, and wasting resources.  The technology to share is already available, and this is a low-cost, high-return option to invoke.
  • Every worker in government expects everything to take an inordinate amount of time to complete work. The longer the waiting game takes, the more potential (Blue) money is wasted exponentially.  Start shaving unproductive hiring practices, processes, and procedures.  Streamlining the hiring process overall is needed!

Blue Money BurningConsider the following as a general guide.  For every five dollars of blue money wasted, fifteen to fifty green taxpayer dollars evaporate.  Thus, when a position is open, the lost potential is the annual salary of the new hire for every month the position remains open and unfilled, and the green money loss is the annual salary of the position open every two months.  Between others having to work harder to cover the open position (Blue), the added strain and stress of working shorthanded (Blue), and the lost productivity of the entire team including the costs of long-term planning (Blue), along with other factors, are “hidden costs” of conducting business.  In the blue money loss, the green money evaporation is found in less time for maintenance, tools, and people are used harder and longer, overtime for important deadlines, and commitments lost are all, but not a complete list, of green money evaporation pits.

  • While not directly a hiring practice, reducing employee churn, training, and promoting more quickly is a best business practice. The people in government make the government, and I am not the only customer service professional pointing to government offices as the epitome of incompetent people wasting resources and destroying morale and customer relationships.

Case in point, at the Regional VA Office in Phoenix, AZ, three people regularly man the front desk and are the face of this VA facility.  Of these three, one person is incompetent and intentionally mean, remarking in demeaning and insulting tones to questions and speaking ill of the veteran they just “helped.”  One is trying and means well.  The third could not be hired to clean road kill off streets and is completely and utterly a drone, for example saying they are working on a task but never accomplishing anything productive.  Several times while being harassed assisted by these individuals, I witnessed the third person asking for help from another employee to staple forms together, asking “where does the staple go in the form again?”  Hence, I was not surprised when Phoenix became the face of incompetent and heartless government workers literally killing veterans.  Clean house of the deadwood, replace with hard-working people and streamline the process of work to reduce the opportunity for drones and hacks to manipulate the system.  Of the 10-15 people that regularly float through the Phoenix VA Regional Office Front-Desk/Waiting Area, I think two might actually be working.  The rest seem to have an amorphous purpose doing ambiguous work in a cloud of confusion taking taxpayer wages for no productivity.

  • Customer service improvement begins internally, employee to employee. Want to slow churn, improve how employees serve each other.  Want to reduce churn significantly, get the supervisors, team leaders, and other organizational leaders out of the office, onto the production floor, and actively exemplifying customer service and professionalism.  Improve employee to employee customer service and departments like the VA and DMV will immediately begin to change their horrendous reputations.

I am not the only person in this country paying taxes and angry about the drones and dregs hired to conduct government business.  It is past time to demand accountability for the taxpayer money waste at all levels of government.  Decreasing waste begins with improved hiring, respect for the government they work for by being honest in their employment, and increased regard for the people they serve.

When an employee commits a crime, they should be able to be fired and never re-hired by the government, then held accountable in a court of law for their crimes.  When an employee does not pay their taxes while working for the government, they should be fired and never re-hired, then held accountable like every other citizen not paying their taxes.  To hear about government computers full of porn, child porn, and online gambling, tells me there are workers that are not being supervised properly, work is not being done, and the supervisor and the offending employee need to be fired and never re-hired, then held accountable in a court of law for their crimes.  Being paid to work and not working is theft!  Child porn is a crime!  Watching porn on a computer while being paid is both sexual harassment and theft, both of which are crimes!

The taxpayer receives a slap to the face when federal, state and county government employees are caught gaming the system for personal profit, are not required to remit the monies ill-gotten, and are not fired, or worse are fired and an obscure union regulation returns them to work at the same salary and position of authority, or worse are promoted after being returned to work.  These are failures in treating people properly, honoring the tax dollars invested, and reflecting a failure of elected officials to supervise government workers needed to run the government.  When will our elected officials become the leaders we are paying them to be, holding those malfeasant characters legally and morally accountable and removing them from employment in government?

Your'e HiredWe hired you, the elected officials, to run the government for us, not to enrich yourselves at our expense, and not to allow nefarious and untrustworthy people to lie, cheat, and steal our tax monies and keep being paid with our tax money!  More egregious still is allowing those who have abused the power of government to cause harm, then allow those abusers to quietly leave the government with their pensions, and no criminal charges are ever pursued, e.g., Lois Lerner among many others.  When you want to know why the approval rating for elected officials is so low, look no further than the issues raised in this missive.  Fix the problems!

Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s): Shifting the Paradigm and Bringing Balance to Measuring Employees

kpi

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Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) continue to be a “buzz phrase” and a measuring tool, a flavor of the month managerial concern, and a disastrous issue in employee relations.  Why is this a disastrous issue in employee relations?   KPI’s have no meaning, no value, and are not grounded in reality.  For all the resources invested, KPI’s continue to reflect a bad investment at best.  Yet, hope remains for KPI’s if the paradigm is shifted and new thinking on an old topic is undertaken.

KPI’s are to reflect what is needed for an employee to be adequately measured for performing the role of the position hired.  This KPI definition is the simplest statement on this topic and forms the backbone of the discussion herein.  Since KPI’s are all about measurement, knowing what is being measured, and why this particular aspect is being measured, the specific actions required to improve must be clear, concise, and easily discussed.  Please consider a common thought:  when was the last time KPI’s were reviewed for accuracy and the information being produced evaluated for veracity and actionable application?  If the answer is “I don’t know” or longer than 24-months previous, this is the first problem.

KPI’s should be producing actionable data.  For example, Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a KPI in which a baseline is established.   What is the baseline?  What are the parameters for high/low?  What specific actions can an employee take to improve NPS to meet the parameters?  Does the KPI standard make sense to the new employee?  Can a seasoned employee easily explain improvement to a new employee?  Actionable data is crucial in KPI discussion.  If the KPI is not directly tied to actions, why is this a measurable KPI?

Here is another point regarding actionable data in measuring KPI’s. Active Issues (AI) is a general KPI in many service related call centers.  Can an employee receive a zero (0) as a measurement?  The most frustrating conversation I ever had on a project was being charged an AI because the measurement system could not accept a zero in this category, even though the company preached zero-AI to all employees.  Obtaining the desired KPI meant the employees had to be charged an issue and, in being charged the issue, were then held accountable for not reaching the desired AI goal of zero.  Actionable data must be able to accept the performance desired and achieved to meet the employee performance.

KPI veracity is found in the usefulness of the data to the individual employee and direct supervisor.  KPI actionable application is found in being able to specifically identify actions the employee can take to improve performance on a single indicator.  This actionable application hinges upon the need to understand what is being measured and being able to explain why it is being measured along with the value of that measurement to the overall organization.

For example, Average Handle Time (AHT) is a common call center KPI measurement.  Is AHT being measured because you do not want employees on the phone too long or what about too short handle time?  What value is AHT measuring and how does AHT benefit the company overall?  Can the direct supervisor specifically speak to actions the employee is making to improve performance?  All of these questions must be addressed to empower the employee in how to improve based upon KPI measurement.

During my first performance interview in a call center, I asked about KPI’s, specific actions to take, what the numbers meant and what did improvement look like for each of the 40 KPI’s being discussed.  The answer on the majority of the KPI’s, from my front-line supervisor, was “I don’t know.”  More egregious was the insistence that “it works” and to not “rock the boat.”  The supervisor refused to find out what the KPI’s meant because the supervisor had no idea where the measurements came from, who was responsible for the KPI’s, and did not want to “rock the boat.”

Another issue regarding actionable application and veracity is the power of surpassing expectations.  Should an employee surpass the expectation, is the employee harmed because of being better than the KPI dictates?  An example of this is found in another common call center KPI, After Call Work (ACW).  If the standard for ACW is 10 seconds and the diligent employee drives their ACW to zero (0), per the published company desired goals, can the KPI measurement accurately reflect the employee’s performance?  If not, the KPI process is having significant issues in delivering actionable and truthful data to organizational leaders.

Here is another real world example on KPI failure.  While working a project in a call center, I discovered how to obtain KPI excellence in ACW and taught managers and other employees how to obtain KPI excellence in ACW.  At the end-of-the-month meeting for KPI adherence, I won an award for obtaining 0 ACW, but the bonus check was based upon 1-second ACW because the KPI measurement system could not accept a 0.  More to the point, I also received a counseling statement for having time in ACW.  The award and counseling statement were delivered the same day, and the manager did not see the irony or problem with the KPI issue.  The insult to injury came when pointing out this error and being told by the VP of Customer Service that the business will not change to accommodate.

When working with KPI’s, the data must be able to be tied to specific actions of those being measured.  The actions are being measured and weighed, and the actions need to make sense by providing logic to the employee.  The KPI might make sense to an organizational leader or a high-level manager, but if the employee being measured cannot logically understand the KPI, the measurement cannot accurately reflect actionable data.

For example, “Voice-of-the-Customer” (VOC) remains a favorite call center KPI, but many times, the VOC score does not make sense as the actions the employee is told to take often do not impact a VOC because the customer survey is all about the perception of the customer, not the work of the employee.  If the customer does not like the data presented and with spite and envy fills out the VOC survey with malice and vindication, how is the customer agent expected to make improvement inVOC?  The customer service representative cannot influence the customer after the call and before the survey is completed; the customer is making choices; providing the best service is irrelevant and the employee is punished for a low VOC.  If the agent delivering service does not control the actions, the KPI is both inaccurate and ineffective!

ACW and AHT bring up an excellent auxiliary topic, baselines.  Baselines are averages and beg the questions as to when and who established the basic data being averaged to measure performance?  How were the baselines established originally?  Have the baselines been reviewed for application in the current business environment?  Do the baselines still make sense?  More specifically, if the baselines and averages do not reflect current reality, why are they still a KPI?  If training to meet the KPI is insufficient, how can an employee meet the rigors the KPI demands?

On a call center project, I asked when the AHT/NPS/ACW/VOC and other KPI’s were established.  The front-line supervisor was part of the project in their first year of employment to establish KPI baselines.  The supervisor was a 15-year veteran of the company and I asked when the baselines would be reviewed due to new technology, new processes, new procedures, and business changes since inception of the original baselines.  The response remains classic, “Why should the baselines change.  This is why they are called baselines.”  Baselines should change as the KPI’s are reviewed.  When products and services change, the baselines need to be reviewed to ensure veracity and applicability.  More specifically, actionable data takes a downturn when baselines are insufficient to proper measurement of performance.

What does this mean for the paradigm?

  1. Plan to review the KPI as a process at a minimum of every 18 months and sooner if products and services change. Review sooner if technology shifts and every time a trigger in the company processes occurs, e.g., back office changes, legislation, etc.  Regardless, set in place plans to maintain KPI shelf life and allow the KPI process to live, change, and become a tool to improve people.
  1. Make a single person responsible for each KPI being measured. For example, if there are 15 KPI’s in an employee’s performance review, then 15 different people should have a collateral duty to be responsible for the life of that KPI.  These people should be approachable, knowledgeable, and have an in-depth knowledge of the job being done to adequately measure the performance of others and how this influences the company’s goals and objectives overall.  More specifically, if those in charge have not performed the job, why are they in charge of the KPI to measure the job?

I worked on a project where the senior leaders, team leaders, directors, etc., were required to spend 8-hours a month on the phone as a front-line customer-facing representative in an effort to keep the leaders knowledgeable of the front-line tasks, current customer environment, and to gage process and procedure application in a real-world.  The customers and the customer-facing employees appreciated seeing this, and it made the leaders more cognizant of what is happening in the business from a front-line perspective.

  1. Never allow the KPI to be a punishment tool. Training, yes; development, absolutely; punishment, never.  Should actions have consequences, yes; but these consequences must be separated from the KPI measuring system.  Triggers for front-line supervisors from the KPI’s need to be removed and placed into the hands of human resource managers and non-frontline superiors/directors.  This allows for the relationship of training to remain with the front-line supervisor and places the control for KPI consequences at a level where the employee can receive a neutral assessment of performance.
  1. Never allow a KPI to be measured if the employee does not have 100% control over how to improve that KPI. While NPS is a fine item to measure, do not allow NPS to be a performance item, use this as a bonus item at best or a team item for judging team performance, but individuals must have 100% control over their own performance for a KPI to be actionable.
  1. Simplify KPI’s. Remember the elevator speech.  Can the KPI measurement be discussed in an elevator speech?  If not, the KPI’s need to be simplified, honed, and focused.  Imperative to effective KPI’s remains actions the individual can control.
  1. Drop the canned phrases, key words, and other “flavor-of-the-month” managerial gimmick. KPI’s should never be based upon word adaptation.  Every person does not successfully use terms someone else uses to succeed.  Personalization helps the customer feel their problem is original.  Canned responses rob the customer of this feeling and the customer feels “shoehorned” into the one-size-fits-all answer.
  1. Remember the individuality of the employee when choosing which KPI is to be measured and how that measurement is created. For example, once a baseline is established, does the employee retain the freedom to control their own destiny in meeting the KPI or is the employee “shoe-horned” into one-size fits most measurement device?
  1. Action plans need KPI’s; KPI’s need action plans. As a measurement tool, gauging actions and placing a statistical variable onto that tangible, a non-static atmosphere enveloping the KPI conversation is needed.  If the plan needs measuring, there must be a KPI.  If the KPI is to achieve the most use, an implemented action plan to be measured must exist.
  1. Don’t settle for what every other business measures in the industry. If AHT does not fit your call center, remove it.  If a manufacturing employee cannot control cycle time, do not use it to gauge employee performance.  KPI’s should be a hybrid solution to measuring employee actions and not represent KPI measuring to an e3-direectional-balancentire industry.  Allow the KPI measuring system to be individual, explainable, and conducive to all employees being able to detail the “why” and the “what” in measurement.
  2. Do not forget to include the “how.” How does an employee improve?  How do the numbers directly represent actions?  How easy is the KPI measurement system explained to another person?  Once the “why” and the “what” are known, the “how” should be a simple extension of the logic in the KPI process.

 © 2016 M. Dave Salisbury
All Rights Reserved – Note: I do not own the rights to the images used.