David's Employee Performance and Talent Management Blog

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October 2007

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October 31, 2007 1:48 PM

HR Horror Stories

Scary Appraisal Stories

We asked for your scariest employee performance appraisal stories, your worst fears and the things that cause you nightmares. Your answers were truly frightening!

The winner of our contest is...

Michele Zammit, ICAP Service North America LLC

Congratulations Michele!

Here's a selection of some of the best responses. You might feel a haunting shiver or two as you read some of these.

What is your scariest appraisal story?

A manager who just copied his employees' self appraisals and submitted them as his own - for 12 employees!!

As VP of HR at a hospital, there was a nurse who was evaluated on delivering meds, and told her supervisor she "followed what the voices in her head told her to do".

Paper reviews that were due in early November were still being followed up on in May of the following year! Eeek - scary time burglars!

Our old process where feedback from multiple evaluators was typed into a manual form and color-coded by evaluator because they wanted it to be anonymous. Plus all source paper documents were retained causing a huge volume of paper for each evaluator.

An employee who flat-out said that her tardiness was not going to change, and that we might want to start looking for someone else for her position! Talk about having some nerve!

A check off form that rated the following: Attendance, Appearance, Friendliness, Reading, Math. The ratings? "Good" or "Bad"! That was it! Be afraid.....be VERY afraid!

The mother of the 20-something year old that wanted her son's score raised so that he could get a better raise because "he deserved it." She offered to come in and show me reference letters from his teachers and former employers, to reinforce her story.

My HR horror used to be salary review time! Every November the merit process would loom on the horizon like a storm rolling in. Our manual process consisted of sending out individual spreadsheets to each supervisor, manager and director. Our wonderfully creative managers would tweak the spreadsheets by changing the column order, formats, formulas, etc.

When someone wrote "Bob did pretty good for an old guy".

We require individuals to answer a mandatory question inquiring about if they have encountered any situations throughout the past year. We had one individual rehash an issue that occurred 12 year ago... some grudges never go away.

What strikes fear into you most on a daily basis?

I will have to enter data manually.

Changing passwords for all the users who forgot their own passwords!

When the ghosts and goblins regardless of the haunted house they work at are not given the feedback and mentoring necessary to grow.

Paper... too much paper!!!

Business decisions regarding hiring and promotion based on emotional, subjective, anecdotal criteria.

Nothing--I have been in HR for over 10 years--nothing scares me anymore! :)

Managers who don't grasp that their job is to "manage" - not "do".

Seeing myself in the mirror.

When anyone comes into my office... and closes the door.

Spiders... and inexperienced supervisors.

I wake up at 4 a.m. and hear noises in my house.

What future issues do you think will cause you nightmares?

Having bodies but not minds or spirits present each day.

Procrastinators - folks who will wait until the last minute to complete their evaluations.

Succession planning, compensation planning and still the unexpected!

Finding enough talented employees and keeping them.

The number of people due to retire in our company in the next 10 years!

Global/internationalized staff, multiple language needs in the workplace

Succession planning -- yikes. What a concept.

Finding enough talented employees and keeping them!

Employees newer to the workforce expecting frequent promotions and salary increases and their inability to accept anything less as motivational feedback so they'll skip from job to job and the company will have fewer employees staying long enough for the company to have a positive return on investment of their training and development.

Finding qualified ghouls to fill our open positions.

Which of the following Ghouls terrifies you most?:

33.8 % Zombies: Those whose minds and dedication have left long ago leaving just a vacant body behind to do the job.

43.8 % Vampires: Those who hide in the shadows and suck your organization's resources dry.

22.5 % Ghosts: Those who seem to walk through walls and disappear into thin air when called upon

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October 26, 2007 9:06 AM

Making Multi-Rater Feedback Work

Upcoming Webinar

In many organizations, the type of work done and the organizational structure have radically changed. Relationships are no longer limited to those between boss and employee. They have been expanded to include those between project leaders, managers, peers and the employee. This shift makes the "traditional" process of a single boss assessing an employee's performance less and less typical, and changes the rules of employee appraisals in a big way.

The idea of including feedback from multiple sources can be an intimidating one. There's a whole host of concerns from how to manage and administer such a process to anxiety about the quality of the feedback. Hundreds of our customers have successfully overcome these hurdles using the Multi-Rater module along side Halogen eAppraisal™ and they are getting amazing results.

David Creelman, CEO of Creelman Research will be exploring this subject in more detail next week in a webinar on October 30^th at 2:00 p.m. ET. He will discuss the issues, the processes and the role of technology in making multi-rater feedback work for your organization.

To learn more or register click here.

PermaLink | Trackbacks(0) | Add/View Comments(0) Posted by Peter DeRosa

October 19, 2007 6:23 AM

Succession Planning: Making Your Plan for Retaining Knowledge

The Coming Brain Drain

BusinessWeek's Managing IQ blog always has interesting posts on how to "manage smarter". A recent post The Coming Brain Drain talks about the fear that in a matter of a few years, there's going to be no one left with any real experience in corporate North America. It cites a study from Monster that has a number of statistics on knowledge retention - all of which drive home the increasing urgency for succession planning starting today.

One of the most telling findings from the study is that only 12 percent of human resource managers report knowledge retention as a high priority within their organizations, despite the fact that one-third estimate 20 percent or more of their current workforce will be eligible for retirement over the next several years.

Sounds scary, but what does this really mean? It tells me that succession planning isn't really being done by enough organizations. And that companies really need to get it on the agenda now so they can plan for the future, and have adequate time to teach and mentor workers so that knowledge is passed on.

The talent-pool driven model to succession planning enables organizations to build a pool of "promoteable" employees - that is employees that have the necessary knowledge and skills to enable companies to remain competitive. Without a solid and sustainable approach to succession planning today, which includes knowledge retention, companies will be left behind once workers retire.

The good news is that succession planning doesn't have to be complicated or scary. By tightly integrating it into the employee performance and talent management process, it can be done simply and easily on a day-to-day basis so organizations are ready for the future.

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October 11, 2007 6:45 AM

Making the connection between learning and performance

Introducing Halogen eLMS

A few weeks ago, we revealed our new Halogen eLMS at the user conference. The response from our customers was extremely positive. A performance-based LMS is a new direction, but it is really the natural next step for talent management.

While big companies have been using LMS for years, these systems were designed to address the administrative burdens of training departments. Traditional stand-alone LMS offerings were not linked to HR or employee performance programs, not to mention being complex and difficult to implement. Increasingly, the integration of learning and performance management systems is a key priority for learning and development managers.

The vision for Halogen eLMS is simple - to not only automate the learning process, but to properly align employee performance with learning activities. By building on our award-winning Halogen Employee Performance and Talent Management Suite, organizations will now have the industry's first talent management system to include an enterprise-level performance-based LMS. An LMS offering that is simple to implement and manage and is accessible to midmarket organizations.

Andrea Uxa from Epson America, summed up customer response to our newest offering: "By integrating this process with performance management we expect that we will get people performing in their jobs more quickly and more consistently. Halogen has always listened closely to our needs in the areas of performance and development and we are excited about the upcoming release of eLMS."

We're excited about this new phase in our product evolution - and hope that everyone else is too!

PermaLink | Trackbacks(0) | Add/View Comments(0) Posted by Peter DeRosa

October 10, 2007 6:12 AM

Will Money Buy You Love With Employees?

How to keep true high performers happy.

Great article by Kris Dunn on Workforce.com on the role of money in retaining top talent. The article makes some telling observations about what companies can really do to keep true high performers happy.

It cites a poll from BusinessWeek the "Future of Work" which reports that 90 percent of surveyed managers counted themselves among the top 10 percent of performers within their company. The reality is that most employees aren't stars - but as we know - the real stars are hard to retain. While talent management can go a long way in helping to keep your stars, you have to do more than just the minimum. Automating appraisals isn't enough. You need strategy to be driving talent management if you're going to be effective in the long term.

The article does a great job of summing up why money isn't the key to keeping your stars and goes on to talk about how HR doesn't have to accept these limitations. Two great points are made here, that web-based talent management systems can really help with: providing feedback to top performers, and on being flexible on compensation.

Any good talent management system should be able to flexible enough to ensure HR can provide feedback outside of annual employee review processes. For a professional services firm for example, HR should be able to provide an appraisal to the stars at the end of a special project so they get the recognition and feedback they desire.

Pay for performance programs when done properly can give companies the latitude they need to be creative in how they handle compensation. For superstars, HR can be more aggressive and reward their hard work and creative thinking. A well-executed program can maximizes what HR does have to offer, and makes the process of doing so painless.

What are you doing for your superstars? How does your employee performance and talent management system make keeping your stars happy that much easier?

PermaLink | Trackbacks(0) | Add/View Comments(0) Posted by David

October 5, 2007 6:07 AM

HR Executive Awards

Halogen eSuccession Named a Top 10 HR Product

Great news! Halogen has won a Top HR Product Award from HR Executive Magazine for Halogen eSuccession™. You can check out this article for all the details. All the winners will be recognized at next week's HR Tech Conference in Chicago. Stay tuned next week for news and observations from the show.

Competition for HR's most coveted product awards is fierce, so we're pleased to be recognized by our peers and experts in the industry for our best-practices driven approach to succession planning.

This product was really based on our customer feedback, so it is an affirmation of how important our customers really are. So, congratulations to the entire Halogen extended family - employees, partners, and customers!

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June 30, 2008 8:15 AM

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June 26, 2008 9:15 AM

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June 23, 2008 5:15 AM

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