The Best Employers

Last month Wayne Vanwyck, owner and president of The Achievement Centre International, participated in a conference entitled the 50 Best Employers in Canada. While it wasn't rocket science, the research, the reports and the speeches from the winning companies reinforced everything we do, which was a nice affirmation.

Here are some of the highlights:
 

1. The best employers have a high degree of "engaged employees." This is no surprise. Engagement means "the intellectual and emotional state of mind employees have in their organization - the extent to which the employer has captured the hearts and minds of their employees."

2. Engaged employees consistently speak positively about the company, really want to continue to work for the organization, and exert extra effort to make the company successful.

One of the most important messages that came out was the statement from Dr. Linda Duxbury that within the next 10 years, 50% of today's workforce will be retired. Think of the implications of that statistic:

1. A high percentage of senior managers and executives are 'boomers,' so there is going to be a mass exodus of experienced, knowledgeable managers. Does your company have a succession plan? Do you have a plan for capturing the intellectual property and experience of those retiring so it doesn't leave a huge knowledge gap in your company?

2. The workforce is going to be dominated by Generation X and Generation Y cohorts as well as immigrants. This isn't necessarily good or bad, but it will be different. Does your company have a strategy for capitalizing on rather than being blindsided by those changes? Do you know and understand how these cohorts are motivated, what's important to them and how to keep them engaged?

3. Management and leadership training and development will be even more critical as young, inexperienced employees are quickly promoted into management to replace their golfing-addicted previous managers. Does your company provide leadership skills and learning opportunities for the next generation of managers?

4. There is going to be an out and out war for talented employees because there will be many more jobs than people capable of taking those jobs. As a result, companies will have to focus more time, energy and resources into recruiting, selecting, hiring, training and retaining good employees. Does your company actively recruit, carefully select and train new employees to succeed in their new role? Do you have a retention strategy? Are your managers skilled at doing those things that keep employees engaged?

5. Part of a good retention strategy is to strive to be an attractive, fun, interesting place to work. Do you know how your employees feel about working for your company? Do you know the areas that need to be improved? Are your employees having fun? Do they like the people they work with? Do they like and respect their managers? Are they proud of their company?

Richard Worzell wrote in his book The Next Twenty Years of Your Life, "The future will be characterized by more opportunity, less security." The survey of best practices of the top 50 Employers in Canada bears this out. Employees in the near future will have lots of jobs to choose from and employers will be clamoring to hire the brightest and best and then doing everything in their power to keep them.

SHARDA PRASHAD
BUSINESS REPORTER

A bad boss can do more than just pass you over for a promotion or give you a minuscule pay raise. He or she can also raise your risk of depression, heart disease and stroke, some experts say.

An article in the November issue of Psychology Today and a current research study at the University of Toronto show a correlation between poor rapport with a supervisor and bad health.

A bad boss who causes stronger anger, anxiety, headaches and backaches is most likely to be doing so by giving unclear directions and orders, said Scott Schieman, a sociology professor at the University of Toronto.

 Schieman surveyed 1,800 employees across the United States from February to August to determine correlations between workplace conditions and mental, emotional and physical health. The professor is still compiling data, but preliminary findings show a distinct trend: a boss who nags an employee and/or casts blame for something that is not an employee's fault erodes emotional well-being and causes more stress and depression.

 Separately, a study titled The Contribution of Supervisor Behaviour to Employee Psychological Well-Being provides further support for the idea that a bad boss leads to poor emotional health.

When an employee rated a supervisor's behaviour above average, there was a 63 per cent probability the employee's psychological-well-being score would also be above average, according to the study by Brad Gilbreath and Philip Benson of the Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.

 But a bad relationship with the boss can lead to more than psychological ailments.

Nadia Wager, a psychologist at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University in the United Kingdom, found in a 2003 study of health-care workers that a bad boss is associated with high blood pressure and higher risk of stroke. Nurses working for managers who showed little respect, fairness or sensitivity had higher blood pressure than those who worked for managers assessed as considerate and empathetic.

 Wager found the risk of heart disease increased 16 per cent; and stroke 38 per cent. Now she's studying the link between bad bosses and depressed workers.

 The supervisor-employee relationship is crucial to good health, agreed Mel Borins, a Toronto physician and author of Go Away Just for the Health of It. Sometimes leaving the job is necessary to get physically better, he said. An employee who does resign may have legal options, said Howard Levitt, labour and employment counsel at Lang Michener LLP.

 An employee can:  

·        Sue on the grounds of constructive dismissal, saying the resignation was forced by poor health caused by bad treatment.

·        Allege negligence if the employer should have known the treatment would cause poor health.

·        Allege the stress was inflicted intentionally if there is evidence the employer was deliberately trying to harm the worker.

 Levitt said he has noticed more cases against employers over the past five years. He isn't sure whether relationships have become worse or more employees are simply willing to sue their bosses. Changing the work relationship is better than hospital visits and courtroom drama, according to Richard Boyatzis, professor of psychology and organizational behaviour at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, who has been studying effective management behaviour for 35 years.

 Managers who are threatening, defensive or disengaged must understand they are spreading a contagious toxin.

He suggested three strategies for creating a positive workplace:  

·       Provide an environment where employees can contribute and create a better environment.  

·        Treat employees like people.

·        Be aware of what's happening around you.

Jack and Suzy Welch, in the July 17 edition of Business Week, took on the issue of what HR must do to retain the line-item overhead category on most business balance sheets. Any HR professional who has experienced cuts in HR budgets, reductions in staff and outright elimination of HR departments will understand the importance of this move. Every HR professional should read the article, or stop pretending to want a strategic role in the company.

Welch says that HR must first become a functional part of corporate financial management. Quantify. Dollarize. Given the very large, real and documentable costs of vacancies, turnover and legal problems, this is relatively easy. The real payoff, though, is on the positive side of the coin, when HR can track and document the dollars associated with productivity increases, longer tenure, better managers and employee satisfaction. In assuming this role, HR professionals have two major obstacles:

1) Lack of training in finance, numerical reasoning and communication of financial impacts (and worse);

2) Lack of interest in any of these things.

Traditionally, people go into HR because of the warm and fuzzy, intuitive, "health-and-happiness" approach. Welch even counsels, "Drop the socialist & treat-them-all-the-same' mentality." In the words of cartoon character Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

If you're still not convinced you can (and must) take this route, answer the Welches' challenge: "What could possibly be more important than who gets hired, developed, promoted or moved out the door?"

If you're having trouble with the numerical side of this challenge, make the CFO your ally. As John Sullivan noted in his Workforce Week review of the Welch position, "The CFO is the undisputed king of placing valuations on activities that are difficult to enumerate." By the way, your CFO is probably as uncomfortable with your warm and fuzzies as you are with the financial reports. But together, you can make things happen.

Look at a specific example of this way of thinking: Talent retention - As far back as most of us care to remember, HR has tracked "turnover" as one of our few consistent metrics. As commonly used, however, turnover is at best a hodgepodge statistic, lumping together the results of current hiring practice, past practice, management change or failure to change, the winds of the economy and goodness knows what else!

Talent retention, on the other hand, is more focused on current practice. According to Leslie Stevens-Huffman, writing for Workforce Week, "Nearly 70 percent of executives say that they view talent retention as important or extremely important." Identify the costs (both direct and indirect) of replacing talented individuals in your company, learn when new hires are most likely to leave and identify the factors causing them to leave.

Design a program to extend the average life of talent in your company by even a few months and calculate the direct dollar impact. You will find you have reduced the costs of hiring, training, unemployment insurance, workers' compensation, management time and negative impacts on coworkers. Simultaneously, you will have improved productivity, job satisfaction and leadership, while holding on to valuable company knowledge and loyalty. The total positive financial impact of your talent retention initiative alone may well pay for your entire HR operation!