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Engaging Individual Employees
HR leaders too often rely on group research that falsely assumes people share common qualities that are governed by certain discoverable principles. But to ensure employees are well suited to their jobs, fully engaged and highly productive, HR leaders need to instead focus on workers as individuals. Here are some thoughts -- and some suggested assessment questions -- that will help HR to do a better job of making sure there is good fit between employees and their work.
The only way HR leaders can understand their workforce is to understand them as individuals. Unfortunately, surveys indicate there is a lot of misunderstanding going on. A recent Conference Board survey on job unhappiness reported 55 percent of workers are unhappy with their jobs. John Gibbons, a senior research adviser for the Conference Board, who has been studying the confusion called "employee engagement," cites a survey the organization conducted that found "45 distinctly separate questions to define engagement" and "25 different drivers" that enable engagement. At the same time, a study by Anova Communications Group finds that "two out of three employees would rather work somewhere else," and a similar ratio of new hires were disappointed in their first year on the job. The Henley-on-Thames, UK-based group, which provides psychometric testing, goes on to cite studies that reveal that firms hire one good employee in every seven hires -- and only one out of four, if background checks are made. Adding to the symphony are the conclusions presented by authors Ilke Inceoglu and Peter Warr to a 2009 conference of the Society of Industrial Occupational Psychologists, Person-Oriented Aspects of Job Design: Predicting Engagement from Person-Job Fit. In it, they write the clearest and most significant observation I have ever heard from the lips of a psychologist of any stripe: " 'Getting what you want' is central to engagement and job satisfaction but it's almost always ignored by researchers and practitioners." At the core of this conundrum about human nature is this maddening question about what people, like you and me, want from life; want from our efforts; want in order to be engaged and fully committed. Human resource leaders and the company executives are unable to answer that question about any worker, manager or executive with a reliable certainty. They can't answer because they inherit their knowledge of workforce psychology from researchers who don't know how to track down the answer. They have relied on psychologists and researchers who have an interminable list of theories and who have pursued research strategies that falsely assume people share common qualities that are governed by certain discoverable principles -- none of which have been found, at least to date. Relying on psychometrics, research strategy requires such commonality because science can't measure the innate uniqueness with which individuals are born. This is why operating management continue to wonder why the HR function survives when it can't really provide the certainty needed to help executives and hiring managers in their decisions to hire, promote, organize, manage conflict, form teams, appraise performance, discuss careers, develop people and on and on. People are not Putty The abject failure of psychology to get specific about the make-up of individuals has led to a pervasive bias among employers that people are like putty and can be shaped into what we need them to be. You may recall Steven Pinker's book, The Blank Slate, that asserted our entire intellectual society believes falsely that individuals are born without any innate make-up; that individuals are like a blank slate and can be written on, erased and rewritten on, or shaped like putty to become whatever the current need or goals require. Assessment methods based on that premise -- methods that many companies use to select, promote, appraise and develop employees -- are by their nature unable to access hearts and minds (aka the innate uniqueness) of employees. Such methods are designed to discover the answer to the question of "what people want," but the answer isn't the common qualities we share with one another. Because so little is known about the actual make-up of individuals, an obscene 50 percent, 60 percent, even 70 percent of hiring-and-placement decisions result in horrific job mismatches. Half -- or more -- of the workforce at all levels and functions occupy jobs for which the employees are not competent or motivated to perform. This highlights the inability of HR to fulfill its reason for being. The mission of HR should be to assure corporation leaders and stakeholders that employees are well suited to their jobs, fully engaged and highly productive. HR leaders should be making sure that what employees want from their work matches the critical requirements of their jobs. They can argue that there are other pressing requirements for HR to fulfill -- which is probably true -- but everything takes second place to the core issue of knowing what the person whose future is being weighed wants from HR and the company. If HR can't find the answer to that question for each employee, those in operating management saying they should look elsewhere for a solution are right. They should. The answer to the question about "what people want," is that it's the wrong question. The right question is, "What does each person want?" Studying the uniqueness of each person will yield the answer. And these truths about each person will lead HR in the right direction for the employees and the organization. The search for innate uniqueness has been ongoing through the ages. Some highly respected thinkers throughout the ages have insisted that each of us comes into the world graced with the power, focus and desire to pursue a particular way in life, such as Soren Kierkegaard ("But this, I do believe ... that at each man's birth, there comes into being an eternal vocation for him, expressly for him."), Friedrich Nietzche ("Within each person at his birth ... Unique...Unalterable.") and William James ("In every concrete individual, there's a uniqueness that defies all formulation ... We can feel the touch of it and recognize its tasks, so to speak ... . But we can give no ultimate account of it, and we have in the end simply to admire the creator"). To understand the nature and behavior of individuals requires accessing their mind and heart by eliciting what they have done in their lives of personal significance. Few conventional assessment methods, especially those considered valid psychometrically, can answer with assurance and certainty any of these questions, which require an understanding of what is motivationally significant to the person.
In most cases, conventional assessment data: * Can't reveal an employee's motivational dynamics; * Can't reliably predict job performance; * Can't be used by a supervisor to solve problems involving the employee, including ways to manage weaknesses or stress; * Can't be used by a supervisor or the employee to secure greater productivity or work quality; and * Can't be used by a supervisor to determine why the employee does or does not do what the supervisor requires.
Questions to Ask HR leaders should work with employees and supervisors to pull together data that will clearly relate to the way the employee functions on the job. Determine whether the employee is customer-focused, proactive, creative, cost-minded, a quick study, able to influence others or make timely, risky decisions? Determine the employee's weaknesses or areas that are avoided or resisted. Determine how best to train the employee and how the employee functions as a member of a team. What kind of supervisor would have a positive/negative effect on the employee's performance? Is the employee motivated to manage others? What kind of manager would the employee make? What type of position would cause the employee stress? What is his or her need for organizational structure and job definition; the need for a tangible outcome; and compatible work environment? What causes conflicts between the employee and his or her supervisor or co-worker? HR leaders should also attempt to discover how the employee fits in with the organization's future needs: What is the employee's potential -- executive or otherwise? What would be suitable stretch assignments for a development plan? How much development does the employee need to move up in the organization's succession plan? Will the employee be able to adapt to changing job requirements? What technical, professional skills are needed in determining which career ladder to climb? What is necessary to help a plateaued employee build his or her career in a new direction? Art Miller is founder of a network of human resource consulting organizations (SIMA International) that provide acquisition, management and career development services based on the identification of innate, unique, gifted, motivated and purposed behavior patterns resident within every person. Information on his theories can be found here
. Author of several related books: The Truth About You, Finding A Job You Can Love, and Why You Can't Be Anything You Want To Be, Miller has served in human resource management for Argonne Laboratory (University of Chicago) and Raytheon, and general management with Combustion Engineering. His corporate consulting experience includes assignments for NASA, IBM, DuPont, Merck, New York Life, General Foods, McDonnell Douglas, Disney, Kodak and many other organizations.
July 1, 2010 Copyright 2010© LRP Publications |
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