It's was all about coaching last week here at the HR Capitalist, so what better way to end the session than with a little video?  Our guest coach in the workplace today - a VP named Bill Lumburgh...  Take a look at the clip, then we'll critique him using the 6-Step Coaching Tool after the jump....

Here's my breakdown of Bill Lumburgh as Coach using the 6-Step Coaching Tool:

Step 1 - State Your Observation - B+- Lumburgh doesn't do bad in this area, but frames it as negative when he says "we've got a little problem here" before stating his observation....

Step 2 - Wait For a Response - B - Does OK, but Peter is such an eager beaver to get him off his back about the TPS reports, you wonder if Lumburgh could have waited for the response if Peter tried to stonewall him....

Step 3 - Remind him of the Goals - F+ - Lumburgh tells him that the goal is to put the cover sheet on all TPS reports, but fails to link it to an actual reason why.... or any type of organizational tie-in.... Talks a lot about the memo on the cover sheet, but no goals as to why it's important....

Step 4 - Ask Questions - Not good - not even close to a "what will you do differently type of statement" with Peter....

Step 5 - Agree Together - F - not much of this going on... Lumburgh makes the closing statement to include the cover sheet, and commits to getting him another copy of the memo....

Step 6 - Close Upbeat - F - Neutral at best... Does Lumburgh really believe in Peter?  Or is it all about Bill?

As another installment to our series on the 6-Step Coaching Tool, we follow up on the post outlining the first three steps of the tool (state your observation, stop talking and reminding the employee of their/your goals) with a deeper dive into steps #4-#6. 

Like the Therapist on the Sopranos (see picture at right), the final steps of the coaching tool is all about letting the patient employee come up with the solutions.  With this in mind, once you have made your observation (Step 1), Stopped talking and let the employee respond (Step 2) and reminded them of the goals (Step #3), here's your next steps:

Step 4 - Ask Questions. Not just any questions, but questions that put the accountability on the employee for how they are going to improve/fix the area of concern.  My favorite - "What will you do differently moving forward to improve in this area?" - puts the burden the employee to find the solutions, then makes them an owner of the improvement moving forward.  Much more effective than you telling them what to do.  Be ready in this step to prompt them if they don't hit the areas you need them to hit.  Example - "Since we are talking about combative responses to email, what will you do differently the next time you get an email that angers you?"

Step 5 - Agree Together - On what you have heard the employee say they could do to fix the area of concern.  This involves you providing a summary of what the employee has agreed to.  This stage is all the manager - no participation by the employee with the exception of you asking them if the summary is correct at the end of your statement to ensure buy-in.  Feel free to include dates/deliverables as appropriate.

Step 6 - Close Upbeat!  Remember - this is informal coaching, not corrective action.  Studies show that employees are much more likely to improve in a performance area if they believe you have confidence in them.  Put it in your own words, but always close positive to ensure they get this feedback and warm fuzzy...

So that's it for the tool - use it today, including making silence work for you - and see how it feels.  It's part of your role as "Manager/Thespian".... After all, management is an art, not a science.....

Earlier this week, I pitched a simple 6-Step Coaching Tool to assist your managers with the informal coaching they need to do on a daily basis to truly drive performance in your organization.   Several emails and comments came in with in the first couple of hours, all identifying the elephant in the room regarding the use of this tool - managers aren't used to making an observation and letting the employee respond.  Instead, our traditional views of authority (Bob Knight as role model for corporate coaches, anyone?) push us to let employees know what is wrong, then tell them what they need to do - all without the employee saying a word...

My take is that true coaches need to engage the employee, at times by using silence as their primary tool.  With that in mind, here's my cliff notes regarding Steps #1-#3 of the 6 Step Coaching Tool:

1.  State What You Have Observed - In this step, you are making an observation, and it needs to be quick.  Remember, this is coaching on the fly, so no more that 30 seconds max for this step.  If you are making a general observation ("I notice you have a tendency to get into battles via email"), you'll need to reinforce it with at least one example of when it happened, preferably a very recent one.  Don't judge or tell the employee what to do, just make the observation, then....

2.  Stop Talking And Let the Employee Respond - Employees are trained in many organizations that you are going to tell them what to do after you make your observation.  Don't... Instead, use silence as your guide... Role play the tool and see what 10-15 seconds of pure silence feels like, and put the burden on the employee to be accountable for the performance/conduct you have seen... You'll be amazed what you will hear, most of it helping you throughout the rest of the tool to refine the performance/conduct...

3.  Remind the Employees of the Goals (For their position and how those are linked to company goals) - once you hear what the employee has to say, remind them of the objectives for their position and link those objectives to the overall company goals.  Once you remind them of that linkage, explain to them why you need them to modify their performance/conduct to align with those goals...

That's it for today - we'll tackle the last 3 steps of the tool tomorrow.  Try the tool today - make an observations and stop talking - it's amazing what you will hear.....

If you follow CNN or Fox News, you know that universal health care is again the buzz, looming on the horizon like an albatross for any presidential candidate who tackles it.  Some states, like Connecticut, have their own initiatives going to open up the current health care system to all.    Joe Paduda of Managed Care Matters reports that the initiative isn't going very well, in part because the legislators were shocked of what the cost was:

"An effort in Connecticut to implement a single payer, universal coverage program is just about dead, after the state's Office of Fiscal Analysis determined it would cost as much as the entire state budget.

Politicians were shocked by the estimated total cost, which ranged from $12 billion to $18 billion.

I'm shocked that they were shocked.

My home state has just over 3 million citizens. At $4000 per person, that's $12 billion; at $6000 per person, it's $18 billion. I don't know what's more troubling - for politicians to not know that health care costs between $4000 and $6000 per person, or that we have about 3 million folks living here."

To give you, the HR Generalist and/or savvy manager, a price tag on what to expect if you take your company the self insured route, expect anywhere from $3,000 to $6,000 per covered individual.  While that's a wide range, my experience suggests that it moves up and down that scale based on age and the also the blue/white collar nature of the workforce (and their families) you are covering.

Hat tip to Tom O'Brien for the original link to Joe site, check out Tom's blog for a good Human Capital rundown....

As a HR professional, I like to rant a little bit about Performance Management - see my takes on Self-Assessments here and Rating Inflation here.   However, the biggest Performance Management issue facing your managers and supervisors - especially the ones with limited experience - is how to coach on a daily basis for enhanced performance.  

Coaching for improved performance in your organization isn't directing traffic or simply telling your employees what to do.   If it were that simple, everyone would be doing it, right?  No, my friend, Coaching for Improved Performance requires engagement in a couple of different ways.  First up, the manager has to be engaged enough to spend the time to coach - not many do.  Secondly, managers need access to a process/tool that allows for employee participation and engagement.

What kind of tools do you provide your managers to coach their employees on any issue?   In the spirit of sharing best practices, here's a brief, six step coaching process that managers can use to engage individual employees on any issue.  When your manager wants to engage an employee on a performance/conduct issue, they should:

1.  State What They Have Observed (Or What Technology Has Observed)

2.  WAIT For a Response...

3.  Remind them of the goals for their position and how they are linked to the company's goals...

4.  Ask questions on how the employee thinks they can improve in the area in question.

5.  Agree Together on what the employee has committed to do (make sure they agree)

6.  Close Upbeat and show that you believe the employee can improve and get it done...

The strength of this informal coaching tool is that it provides managers with a framework regarding "how" they are going to say what they need to say, freeing them after some skill practice to focus on the content of the area of concern.   Additionally, it can be used on a daily, informal basis to coach for improvement on the fly, without using formal processes like corrective action as a crutch.

We'll explore the steps of this coaching tool and some of the common obstacles to use in the entries to follow...

Ever wonder if the endless birthday parties and video/photo montages are setting the wrong expectations for your kids in the workplace they'll soon enter?  The Wall Street Journal did last week, pondering if the trend of celebrating the young ones in every way possible could end up costing us in the long run:

Katie Lynch is the Scooter Store's celebrations assistant. It is her job to throw confetti--about 25  pounds a week--and hand out celebratory helium balloons. She also gives a lot of high fives. Universal Studios in Florida has its "Applause Notes" program to praise employees for jobs well done. Bronson Healthcare Group in Kalamazoo requires its managers to write at least 48 praise notes or thank you notes to the troops every year. Employers are dishing out all these kudos to keep the latest generation of workers happy.

Employees entering the workforce these days are used to being praised and used to being told they are extra special--by their parents, by their teachers, by their coaches, etc. They are not just beautiful, they are gorgeous. They are not just smart, they are geniuses. They are not comfortable if they are not complimented on a regular basis. Employers hoping to retain these new generation employees are going to have to do some heavy stroking.

What can I say?  As a kid, I used to be satisfied by throwing a tennis ball against a shed about 100 times a day and using my imagination to pretend I was up against the Yankees the the seventh game of the World Series - no organized ball until I was at least 10 or 11.  My son?  6 years old and is in an organized league with uniforms mimicking that of the pros, and we give out a couple of game balls after each game to celebrate success.  Don't even get me started about what society spends on Birthday parties (disclosure - I am part of the problem as well).

When my 6 year old grows up, it's going to take some bells and whistles to retain him - especially with the pending labor shortage that will hit just around the time of his arrival into the workplace.  Hope he is good enough to deserve it... 

OK - This week at the HR Capitalist has been a little bit heavy - talking about Good vs. Bad Turnover, giving you Excel Formulas to calculate Annualized Turnover, talking about the link between retaining poor performers and shoddy Performance Management, and wrapping the series up with the cost of litigation chart yesterday.   I need a nap after talking about all these issues....

Leave it to Jamie Kennedy to keep us on theme but lighten this series up a little bit.  If you aren't aware of Jamie Kennedy, he's an actor/comedian (see his role as B-Rad in Malibu's Most Wanted for a gem) and the creator of a show called the Jamie Kennedy Experiment.   JME is a show similar to Candid Camera - and in the episode below Jamie poses as a business owner who runs an employment ad, then hires a manager after a minute long interview.  The manager's first task?  Fire five employees because Kennedy doesn't want to.  Enjoy the fun and have a great weekend....

From the BW series on Fear of Firing, here's a chart I had to share.  Great funnel view of the costs associated with each step of litigation in the Employment Law realm:

Back in mid-March, I cut a post waxing poetic on the expectations of managers to fire employees for real or perceived performance issues without ever having a series of coaching conversations with them.  Sound familiar?  This week's issue of Business Week chimed in on the issue with a great piece on "Fear of Firing", citing the growing unwillingness on the part of companies to terminate low performers due to litigation risk.

From the BW article:

Indeed, at most companies HR is essentially a support function that gets called in only when a personnel problem has reached the crisis stage. At that point, the best they may be able to do is suggest the kind of risk-avoidance measures that drive managers crazy—such as requiring that an employee's deficiencies actually be documented in writing for an extended period before he or she is fired. This can be avoided, says Amy Rasner, a former HR manager in the fashion industry, if human resources personnel are teamed with line managers, working with them on an ongoing basis to develop and communicate specific, measurable performance objectives to employees.

In interview after interview, attorneys and HR execs say the biggest problem they confront in terminations is the failure of managers to have these kinds of conversations. In a 2005 Hewitt Associates (HEW ) survey of 129 major U.S. corporations, 72% said managers' ability to carry out performance management discussions and decisions effectively was the part of their personnel evaluation process most in need of improvement.

The reasons for this, of course, are varied. Some managers simply see the whole review process as a bureaucratic waste of time. It's also not easy to do. Many supervisors have been promoted into their jobs because they excelled in operations, not because they are skilled as managers. What's more, they've often spent a lot of time working alongside the very people they now oversee, so giving candid feedback to friends and former peers may be awkward. Managers in this position are "the biggest chickens on earth," says Fred Kiel, an executive-development consultant at KRW International Inc. in Minneapolis.

So there you have it - the issues you see as a HR Pro on a day-to-day basis - new managers who are technically strong but managerially weak, conflict avoidance in delivering the real message from a performance management standpoint, etc. - all contribute to make your workplace less productive than it could be.

What's a bootstrap HR Pro to do?  Focus on the stat in bold - 72% of the companies said managers' ability to carry out performance management discussions and decisions effectively was the part of their personnel evaluation process most in need of improvement.  Figure out your format on how managers should have these conversations and deliver training and skill practice to improve these skills.  In doing this, you'll give them the tools to focus on the performance message they need to deliver, rather than figuring out how to deliver it.

The result will be a healthier workplace - and fewer frustrated managers who blame HR for being the barrier to removing non-productive associates from your company. 

Dear HR Capitalist -

We have some confusion at my company around how to calculate an annualized turnover rate. I would appreciate any help in this area.

Thoughts? - Xavier, West Coast HR

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Dear Xavier -

Annualized Turnover reporting can be confusing and is often disputed in companies large and small because it flares up emotion.  By calculating Annualized Turnover, you are taking actual turnover numbers for a month or multiple months and "projecting" them out to an annualized rate.  In doing this, you are saying words to the effect of "you had 2 terms this month, so your annualized turnover would assume you'll have 24 terms for the year".    That kind of assumption projecting is at the heart of calculating Annualized Turnover, and it can drive the managers you serve crazy, especially if their department has a rash of terms early in the year.

To run a simple spreadsheet for Annualized Turnover, create the following: 

Legend - (Column Number, Title of Column, Contents of Cells in Column)

Column A - Department/Location - List the entities in your org you want to track turnover for
Column B - FTE - List the number of Full Time Equivalents (employees) in each entity
Column C - YTD Terms - List the total number of terms for year to date
Column D -  YTD Voluntary Terms - List the total number of voluntary terms for year to date
Column E -  YTD Involuntary Terms - List the total number of involuntary terms for for year to date
Column F - YTD Annualized Turnover - **Formula of 'C4/(number of months to date in year)*12/B4'
Column G - YTD Annualized Voluntary Turnover - **Formula of 'D4/(number of months to date in year)*12/B4'
Column H - YTD Involuntary Annualized Turnover - **Formula of 'E4/(number of months to date in year)*12/B4'

**Columns F, G and H should be formated to show percentages with two decimal points

So that's the easy formula for Annualized Turnover.  As you add months, you can do some simply modifications to your spreadsheet to add those in and alter slightly the formulas in Columns F, G and H to calculate the Annualized Turnover based on the number of months in your analysis.   Most importantly, remember that you can get some heat from departmental leaders with high turnover early who think this method is less than accurate since you can't predict the future regarding turnover.  Counter this objection early and often in your communications by noting that while some departments may take a lot of turnover early in the year, as things stabilize the number will gradually come down and arrive at the true number for the calendar year come December.    On the other hand, those that sit at 0% turnover for 9 months may get a rash of terms in the 4Q.

Annualized Turnover metrics are useful, but not a cause for panic.  That's why you have to be the communicator on the front end.

If anyone wants a template to work off of, shoot me an email and I'll send you a live one....

KD