Category: Performance Management

We all try harder when there’s a prize at stake, no matter how small. The desire to win is in all of us to a greater or lesser extent and even those who wouldn’t be described as ‘competitive’ still enjoy playing.

In business, sales teams have included competitive measurement and reward to drive productivity for generations with such great effect that very few sales roles exist that don’t have some form of prize built into the remuneration package. So it’s strange that other departments haven’t created their own ways to combine play with productive working. Continue reading “Engaging your team and improving productivity”

A question I frequently get from those individuals outside of HR is, “What is it like to work in HR?” Well, the answer to that question can vary greatly by HR professional and organization. Human Resources (HR) can include a broad spectrum of specialties within organizations. Some examples of specialties include recruiting, payroll, policy, safety, training and development, and performance management. In smaller organizations, the HR professional may handle all of those specialties and in larger organizations, each specialty is most likely its own department. The roles within HR can vary greatly as well as with many departments from the purely administrative to the executive. Another related and perhaps more important question that is often discussed is, “what should HR be doing?” For me, HR’s primary purpose is to ensure that the right people are working in the right places to accomplish the organization’s goal. In other words, HR is responsible to develop programs that will attract, select, develop, and retain the talent needed to meet the organizational mission. So whether you are an HR department of one or a combination of multiple departments that include hundreds of employees, your primary responsibility is talent management. Here’s a quick test to see if your programs are aligned and focused on the primary purpose of HR. See if you can answer the following questions.

1. What is the primary mission of the organization?

2. What talent is needed to meet the mission?

3. Which programs do you have in the following areas:

Identifying and Attracting Talent?

Selecting and Hiring Talent?

On boarding Talent?

Developing Talent?

Retaining Talent?

4. How is program success measured?

5. In what areas do we need to improve?

If you can’t answer these questions, you have some work to do.

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For more resources, See the Human Resources library.

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Sheri Mazurek is a training and human resource professional with over 16 years of management experience, and is skilled in all areas of employee management and human resource functions, with a specialty in learning and development. She is available to help you with your Human Resources and Training needs on a contract basis. For more information send an email to smazurek0615@gmail.com or visit www.sherimazurek.com. Follow me on twitter @Sherimaz.

At the Fresh Tracks office we recently got together as a team look at the issue of trust. It made me realise how much we take trust for granted when it’s there, and how much extra work a lack of trust can create.

Although our session included event managers, admin staff and senior managers, it was fairly informal and allowed participants to look at their own views on trust – how and why trust is important at work and at home; what does trust mean to the individual and to the team; what would happen if there was little or no trust in colleagues.

In our team, it soon became apparent that there is quite a huge amount of trust; everyone seemed to take it for granted that they would be trusted and that they would in turn trust their colleagues. For us that makes for an easy and friendly work environment, part of the reason we choose to work here at Fresh Tracks. But it also made me realise that trust is ultimately at the heart of this office culture. Continue reading “Trust in your team – how important is it?”

The recession may not be feel like it’s over yet but most managers appreciate that Christmas needn’t be cancelled again this year.

Boozy parties are probably not the best way to mark the end of a tough year but that doesn’t mean there’s not value in gathering everyone together.

As we enter an era when return on investment is at the forefront of our minds the annual celebration needs to deliver more than just a few laughs and sore heads the next day. Why not think of your Christmas event as a chance to do some team building.

So, while everyone is together in celabratory mood here are a few suggestions that will turn a turkey dinner into a turning point: Continue reading “6 Ways To Get The Most Out Of Your Christmas party”

Travel budgets slashed, bonuses unlikely and the prospect of redundancies. Now is probably not the time to ask for cash to fund the annual team building day but it might be the precisely the right time for some team development.

The phrase team building has risen in prominence in recent years as employers realised the value of a happy workforce where, despite their differences, team members are able to get along. For many, team building is simply about getting away from the office for a celebratory meal, drink or day out and there is some value in this. It creates a social context and allows colleagues space to become friends.

In the same way that a builder differs from a developer in the property world, team development is similar but distinctly different. Builders will turn up and build a wall, whereas a developer sees the potential for that wall to become a terrace of houses. Team development is a process in which a team takes time to explore its potential – how it can become greater than it’s been before. Continue reading “Team Building vs Team Development”

In our 19 years of helping teams develop ‘communication’ has always been listed as one of the areas team members would most like to improve. In the case of the crew on US Airways Flight 1549 which successfully ditched into the Hudson River in 2009, it was the difference between life and death.

Despite all our high tech gadgetry it seems we could all be more productive if only we could communicate more effectively. Here are a five techniques we’ve discovered: Continue reading “5 Tips To Improving Team Communication”

In a previous post, I discussed motivation from the perspective of who owns the responsibility. In a recent article in Chief Learning Officer magazine, Graham Jones discusses the motivation of leaders. Jones describes two types of motivation and the effect each type has on a leader. The article purports that leaders who are positively motivated toward realistic goals achieve greater success than those who are negatively motivated by avoiding a set of circumstances. The suggestion made in the article is that those who are motivated by fear of failure or fear of making mistakes often behave in such a way as to avoid situations where failure and mistake making is possible. This behavior can often limit their own success and increase levels of stress and anxiety further making success more difficult to achieve.

Consider how the culture of your organization and the HR programs in your organization drive motivation. Do the HR programs focus on the stance that it is a manager’s job to motivate their staff? If this is the case, do your managers use negative consequences as a method of motivation. If so, then the very program or culture might be driving underperformance. If the only response to a performance gap is some kind of warning being given to an employee, how does that impact their motivation? What if the employee was internally motivated already? Could this actually change their motivation from positive to negative (avoidance) resulting in more of a performance gap?

What do you think? Your thoughts are always encouraged!

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For more resources, See the Human Resources library.

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Sheri Mazurek is a training and human resource professional with over 16 years of management experience, and is skilled in all areas of employee management and human resource functions, with a specialty in learning and development. She is available to help you with your Human Resources and Training needs on a contract basis. For more information send an email to smazurek0615@gmail.com or visit www.sherimazurek.com.

When Southwest Airlines said that it’s important to them that staff have fun at work did anybody believe them or did it just sound like more corporate mission statement jargon?

It’s easier to put a mission statement on the wall than it is to put it into action. We know of organisations who have spent months of meetings carefully crafting and re-wording their corporate mission statements, only to find the life sapped from them soon after they’re finished. Or sometimes mission statements work for a while, but then turnover takes a toll and the new people never seem to really get on board.

It’s great to see the video, above, of David, a Southwest Airlines flight attendant, keeping some of their mission statement alive. He and his colleagues make a great team because they’re committed to the same vision and they support each other. There is no doubt that team work benefits everybody – customers and colleagues alike. But sometimes people within an organisation forget they’re part of a team. One department regards another as a thorn in its side and sometimes colleagues just don’t like each other.

A key factor to success during these hard economic times was summed up by Gary Kelly, CEO of Southwest Airlines, when he said “Our people are our single greatest strength and our most enduring longterm competitive advantage.” Long may it last.

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For more resources, see our Library topic Team Building.

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Blog by Fresh Tracks: Experts in Team Building, Team Development and Staff Conferences
Website: www.freshtracks.co.uk

How concerned are you about employee retention? If you are a HR pro, you should always be concerned about the retention of your high performing employees. And if you have allowed the job market of the past two years to sway your focus on this, then you might expect some trouble ahead. According to a recent survey conducted by Kelton Research, The Cornerstone OnDemand “Employee Attitude Survey”, you may not be alone. The survey reveals a look at the perceptions employees currently have about their workplace. If we were to use the survey as a scorecard, then we would see that many organizations are failing in some very critical retention areas. Using the familiar grading scale of where a 70% get you a C, let’s take a look at the areas with a failing grade.

			GRADE
Showing appreciation	54% say their colleagues show them appreciation	Only 30% say their managers; 16% say executives	F
Receiving Feedback on Performance	58% say NO	71% say “they haven’t gotten any reaction from their supervisors in the last six months.”	F
Establish Career Goals with Employees	82% say during the past six months that they haven’t		F
Show alignment with company goals and objectives	53% say they don’t have a clear understanding of how their role fits within the organization		F

Study after study continues to a direct link to these behaviors and the retention of talented employees. Despite the research, many company leaders seem baffled by the retention dilemma that is projected to get tougher on companies as the job market shifts and opportunities for top talent increase.

How would you rate your company and yourself on these critical retention driver? By the way, many of them are a lot more cost effective than expensive reward and incentive programs.

Your comments are always welcomed and encouraged!

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For more resources, See the Human Resources library.

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Sheri Mazurek is a training and human resource professional with over 16 years of management experience, and is skilled in all areas of employee management and human resource functions, with a specialty in learning and development. She is currently employed as the Human Resource Manager at EmployeeScreenIQ, a global leader in pre-employment background screening. Follow her on twitter @sherimaz!

An article in The Wall Street Journal* suggested that while team building exercises may be fun (for some people), they really don’t do much to solve workplace issues.

For example, sales executive Paul Garvey claimed that the most insightful team-building exercise he ever participated in involved paintball, which in no way helped to resolve the relationship issues back at the office. Speaking of his former company, he said that colleagues would poach each other’s deals while their manager played favourites. Someone decided a paintball exercise would help. It didn’t, and merely reinforced the divisions and favouritism already present.

Another instance of completely inappropriate team building involved the team from a contractor on an Apollo space project. They were asked by their HR department to participate in a role-playing exercise where they had to return safely from the North Pole. Their day-to-day job involved helping astronauts return safely from space. What additional insights into teamwork did HR think this role play could teach them? Continue reading “Does “team building” actually work?”