The CEO was standing in my office steaming mad. I had just sent him a summary of our most recent employee engagement survey results. He wasn't angry at the results. They were excellent - demonstrating that the investments we were making to build a solid employment brand were working. He was upset about one particular comment made by a single employee. He demanded to know who the employee was.
Even though I would have had a difficult time determining who might have made the comment even if I wanted to, I simply said "no." He was a little taken aback, but he continued with his argument, "We can't have someone who feels that way working here, they'll poison their co-workers. We must get rid of them." I said "You're right, but if they truly feel this way, they'll make themselves known through their performance or through other behaviors. If we tell our employees that the survey is anonymous and they begin to suspect it isn't, we will no longer get honest feedback. We can't sacrifice the trust we've built to simply flesh out one disgruntled employee." When he calmed down, he agreed that I was right.
When I think back over my years as an HR leader, protecting business owners and division managers from themselves was one of my more valuable contributions to those organizations. Owners and managers have a lot of pressure on them. They must make difficult decisions, often quickly and without all the data they would prefer to have. When those decisions will impact the workforce, consulting an HR leader who understands the big picture can help the owner frame business challenges and potential solutions in ways that achieve the buiness objectives with the least negative impact on employee engagement and performance. For example:
Company X needed to reduce its workforce due to the loss of a key client. The CEO considered across the board pay cuts and temporarily eliminating the 401k match as ways to protect cash flow and spread the pain evenly. His HR leader pointed out that the big winners with that strategy are the poorest performing employees and the biggest losers are his "A" players. On the HR leader's advice they opted instead to keep the benefits structure in place and lay off 20% of the workforce, carefully chosen to have the least impact on productivity and avoid discriminating against any protected class.
The CEO of Company Z wanted to fire an employee immediately as a result of a mistake. The HR leader saw the potential impacts of that snap decision, including establishing the precedent that a mistake results in immediate termination, the impact the termination might have on the rest of the team, and costs associated with losing the unemployment hearing. The HR leader asked, "Would you fire our top sales rep if they did the same thing?" The CEO admitted it would be difficult. The HR leader suggested the CEO allow him to document the mistake and develop a performance improvement plan for the employee instead.
When Jack Welch was CEO at GE, he had that type of relationship with Bill Conaty, GE's head of HR. Jack often took Bill with him to visit plants around the world to help him think through people and leadership issues. Of course if you happen to be CEO of a Fortune 500 firm, it's easy to drag your trusted advisors along. But what about the CEO of the small and mid-sized organization?
Unfortunately, many small business owners find themselves on an island making decisions such as these without the counsel that the large company CEO enjoys. But the smart ones surround themselves with trusted outside advisors, including a part-time HR leader, who possesses the confidence to help protect them from themselves.
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