My wife recently got a new puppy. I guess technically we both got one, but if you came to our house you'd quickly realize it's hers. We're in that stage of teaching the little guy what behaviors are OK and what behaviors are not going to be tolerated.
It's amazing how quickly he has learned behaviors that can be reinforced by rewards. I taught him to sit in just a few minutes. As part of his housebreaking training, we reward him with a treat when he's outside, and we reward him with a treat when we go back inside and he sits on command. Now, every time he crosses a threshold, he sits and looks up for his treat. All-in-all, teaching him positive behaviors through positive reinforcement has been pretty easy.
On the other hand, getting him NOT to do what we don't want him to do has been more challenging. We can't give a treat for not chewing a shoe, for example, and expect the reward to be understood. Correcting shoe chewing, jumping and other violations must be addressed through corrective action. And behavior modification by corrective action just doesn't "take" as quickly nor as solidly as those reinforced by rewards do.
Humans are more like puppies than we care to admit. Give us a treat for something and we'll do it again! Tell us not to do something and we might or might not. Have you ever said, How many times have I told them not to...
When managers learn that behaviors that can be reinforced through rewards should be reinforced through rewards, they discover that rewarded behavior is repeated and repeated and repeated. Carrots beat sticks every time.
The other thing that's frequently misunderstood about carrots is the belief that the reward must be tangible, like cash or a gift card or a lapel pin (or a doggie treat). But recognition and feedback can be motivating without any tangible reward attached at all. For example, if you can incorporate a graphical representation of the performance that's desired and a graphical representation of employees' actual performance that they can compare to, this simple feedback will be motivating even if there is no financial incentive attached to the goal. Achieving the goal is carrot-enough oftentimes.
Unfortunately, too many managers are much more comfortable with the stick than with the carrot. The stick is easy - an employee messes up and I reprimand them. Coming up with appropriate carrots that don't seem hokey or manipulative is harder.
But carrots work...and work better! Organizations that make the investments to develop the proper carrots and managers who recognize how to use carrots will ultimately develop more productive teams. So try to increase your use of carrots by 50% and decrease your use of sticks by 50% and see if you don't get improved results.
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
DOL Delays Important Ruling
We HR folks have been waiting on a ruling that was expected to come late this year or early 2016. The issue is the salary test for most Fair Labor Standards Act exemptions. The Department of Labor proposed some important changes to overtime laws in June and closed its comment period on those proposed changes in September. The new rules were expected to become law in the first quarter of 2016, but fortunately for small and mid-sized employers, the DOL has delayed announcing the final rule until late 2016.
The DOL received approximately 270,000 comments on the topic, giving them pause to consider the impacts of their proposal a little more thoroughly. There is likely an election-year political component to the delay as well.
The DOL is primarily targeting employers who "promote" people into jobs with management titles, but still require them spend the majority of their time performing non-exempt duties. Picture a cook who's making $10/hour working 40 hours per week at a restaurant. He gets "promoted" to assistant manager and gets what he thinks is a nice raise to a salary of $500 per week. But now he finds himself working 60 hours per week, and spends most of them cooking, just like he did before. The employee thinks he got a raise, but his effective hourly rate dropped to $8.33. These are the abuses that the DOL is trying to curb.
Unfortunately, their proposal also affects millions of small company office managers, department managers, and non-profit agency employees who currently earn a salary between $24,000 and $50,000 and work extra hours occasionally because they are engaged employees who are committed to their organizations. The DOL proposal as it stands today will force them into punching a clock rather than allowing them to work a flexible schedule as they are used to now.
It's a shame that the DOL still operates as though our economy is dominated by manufacturing jobs. The current rules work pretty well for people who show up at a plant and are either clearly on the clock or clearly off. But they simply don't work very well for many organizations in a service economy with constant connectivity. Unfortunately, bad employers who abuse employees to improve productivity have created the need for reform. Many HR professionals wish the DOL would revise the entire FLSA to make it work better for service providers, but they've chosen to continue to put band aids on 1930s legislation.
I'm still advising my clients to have a plan in place for the new rules, even though it will be late next year before they are released. The only thing likely to change is the final salary test number.
The DOL received approximately 270,000 comments on the topic, giving them pause to consider the impacts of their proposal a little more thoroughly. There is likely an election-year political component to the delay as well.
The DOL is primarily targeting employers who "promote" people into jobs with management titles, but still require them spend the majority of their time performing non-exempt duties. Picture a cook who's making $10/hour working 40 hours per week at a restaurant. He gets "promoted" to assistant manager and gets what he thinks is a nice raise to a salary of $500 per week. But now he finds himself working 60 hours per week, and spends most of them cooking, just like he did before. The employee thinks he got a raise, but his effective hourly rate dropped to $8.33. These are the abuses that the DOL is trying to curb.
Unfortunately, their proposal also affects millions of small company office managers, department managers, and non-profit agency employees who currently earn a salary between $24,000 and $50,000 and work extra hours occasionally because they are engaged employees who are committed to their organizations. The DOL proposal as it stands today will force them into punching a clock rather than allowing them to work a flexible schedule as they are used to now.
It's a shame that the DOL still operates as though our economy is dominated by manufacturing jobs. The current rules work pretty well for people who show up at a plant and are either clearly on the clock or clearly off. But they simply don't work very well for many organizations in a service economy with constant connectivity. Unfortunately, bad employers who abuse employees to improve productivity have created the need for reform. Many HR professionals wish the DOL would revise the entire FLSA to make it work better for service providers, but they've chosen to continue to put band aids on 1930s legislation.
I'm still advising my clients to have a plan in place for the new rules, even though it will be late next year before they are released. The only thing likely to change is the final salary test number.
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