The Price of Prejudice

It pays to be prepared if sexual harassment rears its ugly head in your workplace

 

By Elizabeth Ticehurst

 

The term ‘sexual harassment’ has a ring of the 1980s about it. It evokes images of the bad old days of shoulder pads and big hair, when women were treated as workplace ornaments and expected to conveniently resign when they married or fell pregnant.

Three decades since the introduction of the national Sex Discrimination Act (SDA) in 1984, it may be disheartening to realise that sexual harassment still casts a long shadow on Australian workplaces. Yet community and judicial attitudes appear to be changing, requiring greater accountability from organisations and perpetrators.

The 2014 case of Richardson v Oracle Corporation Australia Pty Ltd and Tucker is often cited as marking a turning point in how seriously courts view sexual harassment and its effects on the victim. The complainant was initially awarded only $18,000 for general damages, consistent with a long history of the courts awarding rather small sums for sexual harassment.

However, on appeal this award was considered “manifestly inadequate”. The appeal court took into account general standards in the community and the awards of damages in cases of workplace bullying, and increased the damages to $130,000.

Large awards of damages such as this do more to hurt the employer than the perpetrator however, thanks to a provision in the SDA (and similar provisions in the equivalent state acts) that holds an employer liable for acts done by an employee “in connection with the employment of the employee”, unless the employer has taken all reasonable steps to prevent the acts. The phrase “in connection with employment” has been so widely interpreted that it can extend to an employee’s actions outside working hours, and even outside of the workplace.

In a recent Queensland case, for example, a tribunal ordered damages of more than $300,000 to be paid to a hotel employee who was sexually harassed by a fellow worker. The victim was sleeping in a hotel room provided by the employer, when she woke to find the hotel’s night caretaker naked in her room making unwanted sexual advances.

Neither employee was working at the time of the incident, but the tribunal found there was a sufficient nexus between the conduct of the caretaker and his employment for the hotel to be found vicariously liable for his actions. Importantly, the hotel had also neglected to take many steps which may have prevented the sexual harassment, including implementing a policy prohibiting discrimination and harassment, and training its workers in that policy. All of this is frustrating to employers – many would argue they can’t reasonably be expected to control their employees’ actions when they are not even present at work – but there are also indications of a common sense approach being taken.

In the 2016 case Mrs Linda Smyth v Northern Territory Treasury and Mr Doug Kerr an employer successfully showed it had taken all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment, and thereby avoided liability for its employee’s actions. In this case the complainant argued that a male employee had sexually harassed her at work by touching her inappropriately and sending her offensive e-mails. She alleged that the treasury was vicariously liable for this harassment, as the perpetrator had harassed her at work.

The NT Anti-Discrimination Commission found, however, that the Treasury had taken “all reasonable steps” to prevent the harassment. They had done this by:

  • Having a policy on harassment in the workplace (albeit not a policy that specifically defined sexual harassment).
  • Training employees in the policy.
  • Meeting with the victim and offering support.
  • Giving specific training to the perpetrator in the requirements of the policy, after a complaint was raised by the victim.
  • Monitoring the perpetrator in the workplace and moving him to a different desk.
  • Conducting a mediation.

The Commission noted that Treasury had taken these steps even though the victim insisted she would deal with the matter herself and did not want to make a complaint. They were therefore not vicariously liable for the perpetrator’s actions.

Employers cannot afford to be complacent about sexual harassment. The good news is that being prepared can pay off. Implementing an appropriate policy and taking prompt action to address any issues will be crucial in defending an organisation from liability.

 

  • Elizabeth Ticehurst is Special Counsel – Employment at KPMG

 

 

In Harmony’s Way

Conflict between co-workers needs to be handled delicately and resolved before it brings a business to its knees.

By Fiona Smith

 

Who would think a “good deed for the day” of washing and putting away a colleague’s coffee mug could bring an office to a standstill? But it did. People took sides, stopped talking to each other, work suffered, an official complaint was made and a mediator was brought in to settle the matter.

Crazy stuff can happen in workplaces because people don’t always act rationally and misunderstandings can occur when communication is poor.

“What is normal workplace behaviour? There is no such thing as normal, outside what is legally required,” says Joydeep Hor, managing principal of law firm People + Culture Strategies.

In the case of the coffee mug, the woman who brought the complaint thought the “good deed” was an attempt to annoy her. Her colleague thought she was doing the other woman a favour that might help them get along better.

Of course, there was some history behind the conflict. The complainant tended to keep to herself and was not particularly interested in being social. The other woman, who was outgoing, read her colleague’s reticence as rudeness and hostility and responded in kind.

They had both made complaints over two years to their manager about each other’s attitude, but – and here is the key point to this story – the manager decided this was too petty to act upon. Instead, the manager told each woman that the other would be spoken to, but it never happened. The manager just hoped it would blow over.

The mediator, Catherine Gillespie, says each worker was under the impression the other was ignoring an instruction to change her behaviour.

“The managers couldn’t believe they were complaining over [the coffee mug], but it was because management had ignored all the complaints over two years and hadn’t resolved the actual underlying issues,” says Gillespie, managing director of Workplace Harmony & Conflict Resolution.

Gillespie took all the parties for one-on-one meetings to find out what happened and then asked them to look at it from different perspectives. She then inquired what solutions they wanted and how they were going to work together going forward.

Once the role of the manager’s inaction was clearly understood, the women could shift some of the blame onto their boss, opening the way for better communication with each other.

“They both had the same intention: they wanted a good workplace,” says Gillespie.

In most mediations, Gillespie says she discovers a third person who could have resolved things. “But, because they didn’t, the situation has escalated”.

People don’t speak up because they fear the reaction when they ask someone why they don’t greet them when they pass in the hallway or why they seem to delay responding to their emails.

Speaking of emails, these missives are fuel to the bonfire of bad workplace relationships because the tone of written communications can be easily misconstrued.

“It is because they are overlaying all of their past history and assumptions onto that email that they read it in different ways,” Gillespie says.

“Then, when they don’t talk to each other, they start talking to their colleagues about how horrible the other person is.” Communication between the two people becomes difficult, team meetings are awkward and cliques and divisions form in the workplace.

“The productivity of the whole team is now affected because people feel like they have to take sides,” Gillespie continues.

Gillespie says most situations can be resolved: “They actually do want to have a voice and be able to resolve things. They don’t like being in that uncomfortable state.

“We need to have those difficult conversations – and people want to have them.”

Surveys of executives have shown 85 per cent of them had issues they were afraid to raise at work, according to Margaret Heffernan, a former CEO and author of Wilful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at our Peril.

“[They are] afraid of the conflict that would provoke, afraid to get embroiled in arguments they did not know how to manage and felt they were bound to lose,” she told an audience at a TED Talk in 2012.

This means that leaders, who go out of their way to recruit the best people, fail to get the best out of those people, she said.

Margaret Heffernan delivers her ‘Dare to Disagree’ talk at TEDglobal in 2012.

Joydeep Hor says his firm is increasingly asked to audit the culture of client organisations and mediate when there is conflict. There is often a systemic problem that can be identified behind the conflict and, unless it is analysed, then trouble is likely to reoccur.

“You will be back in the same spot, maybe not with the same people, but very quickly,” he says.

Hor says disputes usually involve people who are reasonably well-regarded by their employer: “But, for whatever reason, some level of conflict has developed in the relationship – whether it’s a personality conflict, ways of working conflict, or a disagreement about operational matters.” This has a flow-on effect to other people.

“The organisation doesn’t see it necessarily as a legal matter, but they see it as a very core productivity and cultural matter,” Hor says.

If organisations want to protect themselves from conflict, they should start by having clear expectations about the kind of communication, respect and behaviour that is accepted, he says.

A sure sign of conflict is a rise in stress leave and complaints, says dispute resolution specialist Shirli Kirschner.

“We are primed to fight, flight or freeze when we feel unsafe and that is why conflict is so unhealthy for humans because, the minute we feel unsafe, we are running huge amounts of adrenaline and negative headspace,” says Kirschner, who is the principal of Resolve Advisors.

Kirschner says a common scenario is when a new person comes into a workplace and tries to change bad behaviour that has previously been tolerated.

That misbehaving person may have been protected because they were regarded as a high performer in other ways, because they had a close relationship with a client or were a favourite of the CEO.

“The new person coming in is operating by a new set of rules and that creates huge problems. The person exhibiting the behaviour may have been doing it for 10 or 20 years and they are completely befuddled about why it is suddenly not OK,” she says.

Conflict also arises when a valuable employee has a “messianic complex” and believes they are the only one who can keep the system running.

If an area becomes understaffed, these people will quietly take on all the extra work and not complain.

“And then, at a point, they snap. They then often feel angry and undervalued. Because of their own huge competence and silence, they are not under-appreciated, but no-one has any visibility about what they have done,” Kirschner says.

“The day they start feeling undervalued, the world starts falling apart on both sides. The organisation can’t understand what is going on and the person can’t understand how they can possibly be under-valued when they have given their heart and soul and hundreds of hours.”

Other common flashpoints are promotion from within, difficult personalities, poor communication or co-ordination (perhaps leaving people out of an information loop), or issues to do with the business that put people under intense pressure, such as downsizing or relocation.

Kirschner says dealing with conflict should start with an assessment. Going straight into an investigation can sometimes make things worse by unearthing bad behaviour on both sides.

She suggests taking each person for a confidential coffee meeting, where they can be asked what result they would like to see out of the situation.

Then a recommendation should be made for mediation, perhaps with an expert mediator, an investigation, complex coaching, or something else.

With any luck, that “something else” may involve something simple like an acknowledgement of the complaint, an agreement that things will change and a determination to “move on”.

Game of Moans

How to get your team to air their grievances and equip them with tools to independently problem-solve

 

By Candice Chung

 

One of the simplest ways to gauge the health of a relationship is by measuring the lag time between identifying a problem and bringing it into the open. In fact, social scientist Joseph Grenny argues the same litmus test can be used to reveal the effectiveness of any team or organisation.

“You can predict with nearly 90 percent accuracy which projects will fail — months or years in advance,” writes Grenny in his book Crucial Conversations. In most cases, the predictor of success or failure is a team’s ability to hold difficult conversations. “For example, could they speak up if they thought the scope and schedule [of a project] was unrealistic? Or do they go silent when [a team member] begins slacking off?”

Good leaders recognise the importance of getting their team to speak up. The reality, however, is that most workers tend to do the opposite — bottling up mid-range, mid-temperature niggles since it often feels like an easier way out.

“The two main reasons employees are wary of airing grievances are ‘I don’t want to get in trouble’ or ‘I don’t want to make trouble,’” says James Carlopio, organisation psychologist and Adjunct Professor of Business at Bond University. This is because opening up about certain grievances tend to involve elements of social or political risk.

Marcus Crow, co-founder of uncertainty management firm 10,000 Hours, calls these everyday gripes ‘the undiscussables’ — they are typically related to personality clashes or battles over resource allocation. In other words, things that involve potential losses for one or more of the parties involved.

“These are things we don’t talk about, but we should. And it’s hard to do because you’re going to risk saying something that could exclude you from the mainstream way of thinking in the organisation,” says Crow.

While there is no overnight solution to get staff to open up— since it takes time to cultivate genuine rapport and trust — the good news, says Crow, is that a team’s communication fitness can be built up over time.

To start, try asking for regular feedback in low-stakes situations. “For instance, at the end of every group meeting, check in and ask, “How did we just do?” and invite some brief commentary from the group — so the group gets a chance to reflect on its work,” says Crow.

Marcus Crow, co-founder of 10,000 Hours

A helpful thing to remember is that when employees have critical feedback, it’s usually a sign that they care, says Zivit Inbar, Director of people and performance consultancy group, Different Thinking. It’s therefore important for managers to reward candour by fostering an open culture and taking negative feedback seriously.

“Culture is all about managers modelling behaviours in a consistent way. To build a culture of honesty and openness means that the managers themselves must be honest, open, accept different opinions…admit their own mistakes and foster learning from errors,” says Inbar.

Once employees feel they can safely air their grievances, the next goal is to set up a framework for the team to independently problem-solve.

“The [short term] focus is to solve the immediate problem so that it does not impact on work productivity. After that, it’s important to show employees exactly how [an issue is] fixed and highlight important information along the way,” says Carlopio.

In the end, Crow believes most teams already possess what’s necessary for successful conflict resolution — what doesn’t happen is the practice.

“There’s no magical call to arms from leaders that will leave the team feeling empowered,” says Crow, “Rather, it’s by experiencing the leader making time, or the practice of sitting together and reflecting on hard-to-tackle issues that you’ll build up your proficiency to work together and problem-solve.”

 

Three Points of View

 

Should investors have a say on what CEOs are paid?

The premise: Those companies which adopt a ‘say on pay approach’ are better led, perform well and have lower costs, so says research from business school INSEAD.

 

Maria Guadalupe
Associate Professor Economics and Political Science, INSEAD

We found that a say on pay does indeed pay off across multiple dimensions (in a paper published in the Review of Finance, ‘Say Pays! Shareholder Voice and Firm Performance’).

Our analysis, which covers 250 cases of proposals to adopt the say-on-pay policy between 2006 and 2010 – before shareholder votes on pay were mandatory in the US – shows that if the policy was adopted, say on pay increased shareholder value by about five per cent. We also show evidence that say on pay has a positive impact on firms’ accounting and operational performance in the years following the vote.

By giving shareholders a channel to express their opinions, it intensifies board monitoring and pressure on the CEO to improve performance. It can also affect the current level and structure of executive pay, making it more closely tied with performance.

 

 

Graeme Bottrill
National president Australian Investors Association

Shareholders have a wide range of investing, corporate and management skills, but I expect that the typical investor most likely has a minimum of these skills.

Since these ‘average’ shareholders have little ability to determine an appropriate remuneration package for a CEO, it’s difficult to imagine a mechanism where shareholders could have a credible input into such matters.

Having said that, it is certainly appropriate to call out the extremes. This is not some formal arrangement for ‘having a say’, but the investing community can certainly recognise an excess when presented with one, and may be active and vocal at annual meetings and the like.

My view therefore is that shareholders should not be given any formal arrangement to control CEO remuneration, but they may have a voice through the annual meeting process.

 

 

Martin Lawrence
Research director Ownership Matters

I think they should have an influence but not the final say. In a large listed company, you have to strike a balance between allowing shareholders to have their views heard and them actually having a final say.

The areas where I think shareholders should have an absolute say is around the allocation of their equity to executives. As a shareholder, you have a fundamental right to a share in the company. We used to have quite good rules in Australia for dealing with insiders’ capacity to get their hands on shares without paying the market price.

Those rules have basically been gutted over the last 10 to 15 years. Now you see the curious thing of large listed companies spending tens of millions of dollars of their shareholders’ money to buy shares for their executives without shareholders having any binding say on it at all.

 

 

Defusing A Time Bomb

 

It takes more than a spot of maturity to manage workplace conflict, writes JANE CARO

 

You need to be a grown-up before you can effectively and calmly manage conflict. By that I don’t mean you have to have reached chronological maturity. I mean you have to be able to control your own emotions and behave in an adult fashion. One of the reasons businesses (and families, parliaments, schools, clubs, sporting teams, etc) have trouble managing conflict is because few people have fully grown up.

Far too many people in positions of power take conflict personally. I think the essence of being a grown-up is knowing where you stop and other people start. Not everything is about you. I remember taking a conflict-based problem to the HR manager of a company where  I once worked, only to be greeted by a response best summed up as “you think you’ve got problems? Wait until you hear about my problems!”

As you can imagine, this was not helpful. Worse, I got the clear message that next time  I had a problem I should keep it to myself. I did and, of course, eventually I left.

Conflict is an inevitable part of life and relationships, including at work. People who work closely together, particularly if the demands are stressful, will have grievances and aggravate each other from time to time. Small irritations are probably best left to those involved to work out but if the problems become chronic then intervention is required, and quickly.

Obviously it is important to have clear policies on dealing with conflict. It is important the lines of communication are open and non-judgmental (this is crucial). If you are a manager and an employee comes to you with a workplace conflict, it is understandable that your heart might sink, but it is also vital you keep that response to yourself.

Remind yourself that an employee will only risk telling you about this stuff if they trust you and if the conflict has gone beyond a joke. Knowing the real emotional temperature of the workplace you manage is much more of an opportunity than a problem, so look at it that way.

Good, confident (aka grown-up) managers want to know about conflicts before they escalate into full-scale warfare and blow up in your face, so encourage people to come to
you early. Managers who subtly (or not so subtly) indicate they don’t want to know are just storing up big trouble for the future. Managing conflict requires you to be calm, scrupulously fair and open-minded.

Listen to both sides of the story. Try to get those involved to listen to each other. If you can’t manage that, there are professional mediators who are skilled in trying to open communication when it has broken down (that is what most conflict is about). When you decide what you will do, you need to explain not just your actions but also the reasons behind them clearly and calmly.

Make sure you have been fully understood. Allow those affected to express how they feel, even if it is negative. You can listen – you can be compassionate – without changing your decision. Try not to apportion or accept blame. Blame is never helpful and can only escalate tensions. Who is to blame is not the issue, what can be done so that everyone can continue working effectively together is the goal. Don’t seek the sympathy of those you are disciplining – this is not about you, it is about your staff.

If you have a difficult staff member, try to remember that however toxic their behaviour, they are human, too. Don’t bully the bullies. If you have to remove someone from their job, do it as kindly and compassionately as you can. If you suspect they are struggling with emotional or mental health issues try to get them the appropriate help. However they behave, you must remain calm. You are then modeling the right way to behave to the rest of your staff. Do not get hooked into their emotional state.

Dealing with conflict is hard and requires self-control and maturity. That’s why – in high-performing workplaces – often senior managers and HR personnel are responsible for conflict resolution as their experience better equips them for the task. The more open, straightforward and fair-minded your management style, the less problems you will have with workplace conflict. To be honest, toxic workplaces are usually created from the top.

 

Jane Caro runs her own communications consultancy. She worked in the advertising industry for 30 years and is now an author, journalist, lecturer and media commentator.

 

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Take Two – Second Sight

Dr Christopher Clarke FIML, manager of corporate safety at Melbourne Water, was inspired to push his career envelope by mentor Ron Skaff FIML, an organisational change practitioner and director at Forma & Associates. They began meeting in Melbourne last year.

 

Why did you join IML’s mentor program?

Christopher Clarke (pictured right): I joined for the opportunity to tap into the knowledge of someone who sits within a senior leadership team and to learn from their experience. Also, I wanted to discuss my long-term goals and how I could reach them. I wanted to have trusted and personal conversations and expand my range of contacts and look at innovative ways of career development.

Ron Skaff (left): I actually saw a tweet the other day where some millennial was saying that mentoring is dead. I didn’t respond but I wanted to. I have been mentoring for a good portion of my adult life. I was coaching CEOs when I first came to Australia [from the US] and I’ve been a Member of IML since 1994. In the last couple of years, I realised that with all my commercial acumen I should be giving back to IML because of all the relationships it has opened up to me.

 

What did you learn from each other?

CC: Within the first five minutes of speaking to Ron, I knew he was the right fit for me. It didn’t take me long to see Ron has a brilliant strategic mind. His was a great mind to tap into. Although we were talking about career development, we’d also dive into life in general.

RS: You need to separate the person from the career. Chris has a strong family values anchor and I believe my family values play the same important role for me. He would tell me the things he was doing with his family and how that made him feel in terms of his personal life and career, and that was helpful for me because my family was following some similar paths. It helped me see where my focus should be, which was with my family.

 

What is the value of a mentoring relationship?

CC: Without the mentoring program I may not have been able to meet someone like Ron. He definitely inspired me to push the envelope in my chosen career field.

RS: Part of my role as a mentor is to develop a roadmap with my mentee about their career. Chris had just finished his PhD in safety and was looking at transformational leadership. I enjoy the personal satisfaction of knowing I played a role in the growth of a protégé.

 

What did you get out of the IML Mentor program?

CC: We workshopped various professional development tools. We did a career SWOT and also looked at my strengths in my personal life, which I hadn’t done before. We were able to correlate the two and I got some great insights. Ron also sent me some reading material to discuss when we caught up.

RS: Sharing my motivation and seeing the motivation of others is enjoyable. Mentoring allows you to see unique perspectives and a diversity of thought.

 

Would you recommend it to others?

CC: If you want to work closely with someone to improve your career and personal progression, absolutely.

RS: Anyone who believes they’d like to mentor should do so. The experience delivers a deeper learning outcome, different than using the internet or reading a book to understand new leadership approaches.

 

Strike Up The Band

Being an evidence-based leader is a double-edged sword. Evidence becomes both a tool in our hand and a rod for our back. It’s how we learn about the true performance of our organisation, so we can manage it and also manage how we’re judged for that performance. We cannot have the former without the latter.

The price for informed decision-making is transparency and accountability, a price that appears too high for many leaders. They keep their heads in the sand and steer by gut feel; they distract with hearsay and anecdote and biased selection of data. But what these leaders don’t realise is that the price of transparency and accountability is much lower than the price of ignorance. Organisations led by such leaders rarely perform well. And if they perform well in something, it’s usually short-lived and at the expense of other important results.

In truth, most of us would like it both ways: to always be right and to have an organisation that is performing well. But we need to decide what’s more important.

One of my earliest teachers in organisational performance was the safety manager in a transport organisation. He invited me to help him improve safety performance reporting, and part of my improvement was to display the safety-performance measures in line charts with about two years of history. This was so we could see how performance changed over time, track the impact of our improvement initiatives and see the potential for further improvement.

This was what I assumed the safety manager was indeed trying to do. But I was wrong. He wanted to know that what he was doing was working. Not if, but that it was working. The graphs I showed him told a different story: they showed nothing had changed over the past two years. Performance was not improving under his leadership. He wanted to be told he was always right, and the price he paid was impotence: the lack of any effect at all on safety performance. And, of course, that was the price his organisation also had to pay.

In contrast, Jon, the CEO of a timber products company and one of my favourite clients, decided to lead his organisation to actually perform well. He was frustrated that he couldn’t see any bottom-line impact from all the investments the company was making in improving processes.

Rather than hiding this from his board, making excuses or looking for data that would paint a positive picture, Jon took ownership of reality. He and his senior leadership team spent the time to learn how to measure the company’s strategic direction, over and above profit. They aligned each operational team with that strategic direction and helped them learn how to measure the operational results that were drivers of the strategic results.

They used the measures as a cornerstone in their evidence-based management. And it became easier to align their process improvement projects to the strategic results, and the bottom line.

Transparency and accountability are demanded of organisations now, and they are needed in order to truly know how an organisation is performing. And, of course, accountability means that the organisation’s leaders will take responsibility for actual performance if it’s below expectation.

Our world needs more courageous leaders who will accept the price of transparency and accountability and pursue high performance. Because that’s really the only way that things get better.

Evidence-based leadership is not about how to lead. It’s about what to give our attention to as we lead. It’s not about how to direct or how to engage. It’s about how to communicate or how to inspire or how to direct or how to engage. It’s about how to apply all these attributes to create a high-performance organisation.

What we give our attention to as we lead is the performance of the organisation. We communicate the results that matter, so everyone understands them. We inspire everyone to reach for higher performance targets, to achieve the results that matter. We set direction and help each team find their contribution to it. We engage everyone so they feel ownership of their contribution. How we lead is important, and what we emphasise through our leadership is just as vital.

To lead an organisation to high performance, a strong emphasis must be given to the role of evidence. Evidence-based leaders pursue high performance by speeding up the cycle of closing performance gaps – those gaps between where performance is right now, and where they want it to be. This is why these leaders give a lot of attention to results-based performance measures.

Without good performance measures, we have no evidence. With no evidence, we can’t know.

 

MAKE IT UNDERSTOOD AND IT WILL BE MEASURABLE

Leading an organisation is much more complex than navigating a ship across vast oceans. There are many more variables and forces interplaying, and we don’t yet have the instruments and charts to detect or predict them all.

But the fundamental principle of direction is the same: if the captain isn’t clear about where to go and how to hold course when the seas get rough and the crew gets worried and confused, the voyage fails. Leaders of organisations need to be clear about the destination, and how to hold course when the pressure is on. This is the habit of articulating a clear direction, which is not about business as usual. It’s about strategy, and strategy is about change, improvement and working on the business and not in it.

A good strategic direction is where evidence-based leadership begins. A good strategic direction is results-based, not action-oriented. Evidence-based leadership makes no sense if there are no results to strive for. If the strategic direction is a simply a list of initiatives or projects or things to get done, then people confuse success with completion. But there is little point in getting stuff done if we’re not aiming that effort at the results we want to achieve.

For example, there’s no point in completing an initiative to set up a customer relationship management system unless everyone is clear that the result is to retain profitable customers. When we know the results we want to achieve, evidence-based leadership has a context. But too often strategy is written as a list of initiatives or projects or things to get done, and there is no result in sight.

 

ALIGNING PROJECTS WITH RESULTS

It isn’t an either/or decision to be project-oriented or results-oriented. We need to be both, but at the right time. We need to be project-oriented when we are managing the activities and initiatives we’ve invested in. And we need to be results-oriented to make sure we choose the right activities and initiatives, and that those investments aren’t a waste of time, effort and money.

There is a clear difference between program management and performance management, which monitors milestones and expenditure to keep projects on track. Performance management monitors performance measures to keep the results on track. Both are part of evidence-based leadership, but the former is only ever going to add value when the latter is defined clearly first.

 

WHEN PEOPLE ARE ONLY PROJECT-ORIENTED, WASTE IS GUARANTEED

Performance does not equate to completing projects on time and on budget. The only reason we invest time and money into projects is to make a needed difference, or have a specific impact, or achieve a particular result. If we don’t know what the objective is then how can we know that we’ve chosen the right project? How can we know if we’ve designed the project in the right way, and implemented it well? If we don’t know, then we’re guessing. And acting on guesses will always cause many times more waste than acting on knowledge.

Of course, not much will change if people are only results-oriented. Being clear about the results we’re striving to achieve is motivating and focusing.

We get everyone’s energy aligned toward the same end goal. Collaboration is easier, and so is decision making when problems or difficult choices arise. But without action, results never become reality. We sit around theorising and visioning and never get anything done. This breeds cynicism and apathy.

We need to marry results-oriented and project-oriented thinking, not choose one over the other, and not mistake one for the other. We’re not focusing on results instead of projects. We’re putting results and projects in the right order. That way, the projects can be celebrated when they successfully get the results that they were intended to create.

 

UNWEASELY WORDS

The easiest way to change a weasel word to something more meaningful and specific is to try to explain it to a 10-year-old. This does not mean dumbing down our goal; it means making it easy to understand, for everyone. For example, in the goal ‘Enhance our protection of our landscape’, almost every word is weasely. It’s too vague to be sure that everyone will share the same understanding of it. A local council in NSW avoided weasel words and wrote this goal in 10-year-old language: “The fragile soils of ridges and escarpments and valuable farming land are protected from unnatural erosion and loss of topsoil.”

Straight away we can visualise what this goal means. We see in our mind’s eye rolling hills and rocky outcrops, the earthy patchwork of crops, vast green pastures with cows or sheep grazing. We see black or red topsoil in some places, and grey and cracked earth in other places. We see what we can measure: the amount of erosion and the amount of topsoil.

In addition to being nearly impossible to measure meaningfully, and hardly ever comprehensible to everyone in the organisation, weasel words also hide another problem: a strategy that is too broad and unfocused.

 

BE RUTHLESS

Peter Drucker is quoted over again for his message that the key to strategy is omission. Good strategy is more about what not to do than what to do. And that’s the product of ruthless prioritisation.

In The 4 Disciplines of Execution, authors Sean Covey, Chris McChesney and Jim Huling suggest the first discipline is to focus on the wildly important.

Achieving goals for change amid the whirlwind of day-to-day work follows the law of diminishing returns.

If we have two or three goals over and above the whirlwind, we can achieve those two or three goals. But if we have four to 10 goals, in addition to our whirlwind, we’ll achieve only one or two of them.

You know how many goals can be achieved when we have 11 or more goals to achieve, as well as our whirlwind? None.

Should, can, will.

To be ruthless, we must only keep goals that can pass the ‘should, can, will’ test.

Before we even consider measuring a goal, we ask three questions of it:

Should the goal be pursued? (Is it important enough, right now?)

Can we pursue it? (Is it inside our circle of influence?)

Will we pursue it? (Do we have the time and resources to improve it?)

 

If we answer yes to all three questions, the goal is measure-worthy. If it’s not, then why is it in the strategy? Why are we aiming to achieve something but not interested in knowing whether it’s achieved or not?

Leaders who take on too much and set many lofty goals should not be held up as the heroes. They won’t achieve those goals and, if they do, the price will be too high.

It’s the leaders who have laser focus and achieve big improvements that can sustain themselves beyond the effort that are the real heroes.

 

Edited extract from Prove It! How to Create a High Performance Culture and Measurable Sucess by Stacey Barr

Take Two – A Firm Guiding Hand

Solicitor Brooke Reardon MIML can’t thank mentor Chris Blair FIML enough for helping her pluck up the courage to start her own business

 

Brooke Reardon MIML, principal practitioner at Your Law Firm Horsham, joined AIM’s mentor program to help steer her through a life-changing career move. She was teamed up with Chris Blair FIML, Enterprise Manager at legal documentation company Topdocs, and credits his guidance with helping her take a leap forward.

 

Why did you join AIM’s mentor program?

BROOKE REARDON: I was at a crossroads in my career. I was working as a solicitor at a law firm and decided to join the mentoring program because I felt like I needed guidance to help make some big decisions. Chris was instrumental in building my confidence to not only start my own business early this year but also to join the Your Law Firm franchise.

CHRIS BLAIR: I’ve been involved in mentoring one way or another for a long time. The first experience was at least 20 years ago when I was working for big global company and they introduced a mentoring program. I loved it. I always had mentors earlier in my career, not that they were probably called mentors in those days!

 

What did you get out of the experience?

BR:  Have you read the book Who Moved My Cheese? It’s an oldie but a goodie. I think Chris was a partner on the journey of looking for the new cheese for me! He helped me explore different options and put me in contact with people who could also help. He never made the choices for me but he helped me uncover different options that may or may not have been suitable for me.

CB: Brooke is a really smart lawyer and a really nice person. I’m a helper by nature and I like coaching and encouraging. Mentoring provides a total support system and it’s the kind of trusted relationship that I thrive on.

 

What did you learn from each other?

BR: Chris was very approachable, very considerate, very knowledgeable and very quickly understood my position and where I was seeking to go. I don’t think I would be where I am now without having Chris’ guidance along the way. He was woven into my career story from the minute he became my mentor, so when I tell people about my journey of how I became a practitioner, the AIM mentoring program and Chris himself are a key part of that story.

CB:  Brooke was really stuck in a difficult position. It was inspiring to see her make a decision for her career that will have life-long positive impacts. It’s not just, “Hey, I got this little promotion”. What Brooke did will change her life forever, and that’s really powerful.

 

Would you recommend the mentor program to others?

BR: Absolutely. Without a mentor, you can live a bit in a vacuum because you’ve got no one to bounce things off. It also increases your confidence when you’ve got someone else giving you feedback on your ideas. The whole experience was exceptionally valuable to me. It was life-changing.

CB:  Definitely. If somebody needs to have an external second opinion, coach, mentor, or whatever you want to call it, so long as they’re matched up well, it can provide a real helping hand. You may also gain a lifelong friend at the end of the day.

 

Creating the right culture for your workplace

All workplaces have a culture – sometimes more than one – that colours employees’ interactions and behaviour, as well as what is considered appropriate or acceptable conduct. The abstract, nebulous nature of culture often means organisations write it off as outside of their control. Nonetheless, the right culture is a crucial to a business’s success.

Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, when asked about the importance of workplace culture in business replied:

“The stronger the culture, the less corporate process a company needs. When the culture is strong, you can trust everyone to do the right thing. People can be independent and autonomous. They can be entrepreneurial…Ever notice how families or tribes don’t require much process? That is because there is such a strong trust and culture that it supersedes any process. In organisations (or even in a society) where culture is weak, you need an abundance of heavy, precise rules and processes.”

A workplace’s culture is the product of each individual, their communication with one another, and the organisation and environment in which they work. No two cultures will be exactly the same, and what is a desirable culture for one workplace may not work for another. Below are some ideas for developing the culture you want for your workplace, whatever that may be.

Hire the right people

At the heart of a workplace’s culture are its people, which means creating the right culture for your workplace must inform your hiring practices. There will be many talented people with the education, experience and skills to match a role, but that won’t make them a good fit for the culture of the broader organisation. During the hiring process be explicit: ask prospective employees to describe the type of culture they have come from and what type of workplace culture they are hoping to move into. Include questions about their broader motivations, passions and values. This will enable you to make hiring choices that will actively contribute to the culture you want to create.

Create the right space

The physical environment that your employees work in will also inform the culture that develops. Substantial structural decisions such as whether the office is open plan and which departments are close to each other play a part, as do smaller decisions such as decor and seating arrangements. Also relevant to the environment’s impact on a workplace’s culture is how the space is used day-to-day: meeting locations and where lunch is eaten for example can all play a part in determining a workplace culture.

Have a clear vision

An organisation’s vision is the foundation of its culture. Although vision is determined at the top of an organisation, it lays the groundwork for determining the type of culture that will develop within the workplace. It will play a role in who applies for jobs within your organisation, who stays for the long-term, and how each employee will understand their role. So make sure that vision is clear, precise and accessible. Ensure every employee knows it, and lets it inform every action they take at work.

Measure it

Culture may seem an impossible concept to measure or quantify, and there will certainly be limits on how it can be presented in a spreadsheet. But with the right metrics and feedback loops, even something as intangible as culture can be measured. Having established the culture you want to facilitate, identify how this might manifest amongst the individual employees. Create surveys that directly address workplace culture and regularly collate the results. Even if you can’t put it into a graph, you will have some empirical data on the type of culture within your workplace.

Recognition and Reward

If you can measure it, you can reward it. Often workplaces will have a mismatch between what is desired behaviour and what is actually rewarded. Make sure you are providing clear and consistent indicators of the type of culture you want to foster and then reward those who follow suit by recognising and celebrating behaviour that creates the desired culture. Furthermore, ensure that instances where behaviour and interactions undermine a positive workplace culture are dealt with promptly.

Lastly, remember that a positive workplace culture needs to be reinforced from the top. As always, leadership is crucial in establishing the type of workplace that you want, so set the example who want to see mirrored by your employees. And never underestimate the value of a strong and positive workplace culture. As Chesky says, “If you break the culture, you break the machine that creates your products.”

 

 

The Proactive Approach To Retention

Kate Jones outlines how a multi-pronged approach to managing staff can reap significant dividends in terms of staff retention.

Put your workers first, your customers second and your shareholders third, says Richard Branson, and the rest will take care of itself.

Prioritising staff ahead of customers bucks the “customer comes first” mantra corporations have held dear for decades. Yet a gradual power shift has seen employee well-being, remuneration and physical health become more vital than ever before.

Research shows better staff retention is better for business. Fostering a workforce of happy and engaged employees lifts productivity levels and drives business growth.

What’s more, an effective retention strategy saves companies time and money. It also means organisations avoid the expenses involved in engaging recruitment firms and the time spent interviewing and training new staff.

A high turnover of employees can place pressure on workers forced to pick up the slack, resulting in a drop in staff morale. It can also expose businesses to a loss of corporate intelligence, which can leave them vulnerable in a competitive marketplace.

Why are employees leaving?

IML has identified the chief reasons for taking on another job role.

New challenge – 81.9%
Limited career advancement opportunities – 56.5%
Insufficient financial reward – 44.4%
Conflict with Staff/Manager – 29.6%
Logistically difficult – 21.8%
Lack of development/training -18.5%
Lack of recognition – 16.7%
Feeling unsupported/overworked – 12.0%
Insufficient non-financial reward – 8.8%
Underutilised – 8.8%
Lack of flexible start-finish times – 4.6%
Unrealistic goals being set – 4.2%
Lack of flexible working arrangements – 3.2%
Other – 11.1%

Source: 2016 National Salary Survey

 

Retention Strategies

 

The latest research into staff retention reveals the smartest strategies are multi-pronged, proactive and sustained.

The 2016 Staff Retention Report by the the Institute of Managers and Leaders shows 54.6% of Australian organisations are concerned about how to keep their employees, compared to 48.8% the previous year. However, an increased focus on ways to improve engagement of in-house talent may be responsible for a falling resignation rate.

Since 2012, resignations have fallen by 13.4% to 10.3%.

To reduce resignation rates businesses used a range of methods including exit interviews, reviewing or updating staff remuneration and conducting job satisfaction surveys.

Local Government Association Queensland (LGAQ) HR manager, Angie Gibson says job satisfaction surveys have helped her keep a pulse on employee engagement. For the past three years the LGAQ has recorded job satisfaction scores of 93%, 85% and 92%.

“If you look after your staff, they will look after you and that’s reflected in our survey, and I’m really proud of that,” Gibson says.

The LGAQ uses various methods to ensure staff retention and chief among them is a program called Well At Work. The program is steered by an eight-person Wellness Committee, which assesses the effectiveness of current practices. The program has been recognised by the Queensland Government’s Happier. Healthier. Workplaces initiative and with an Australian Human Resources Institute award.

Gibson says it includes everything from pedometer challenges to family social days.

“We look after emotional, physical, mental, social and occupational areas of an employee,” she explains. “Some people think its all airy-fairy, but its very physical, emotional, social – all those sort of things. We really support people.”

A new 12-program will be launched at the LGAQ this month to check and encourage employee health and promote inclusion through social activities.

“We’ll do things like ergonomic assessments, healthy heart checks in May, flu vaccinations, our social day at Simpson Falls, Mount Coot-tha, on a weekend so all families can get together,” Gibson says.

“We’ll do a Walk to Work day and have a breakfast here, we’ll have end-of-year functions, a Melbourne Cup function, mental health days. There’s something every month and every second Wednesday is Wellness Wednesday where we have massages and meditation in our rooms.”

In addition to the wellness program, the organisation also has a reward and recognition scheme that acknowledges outstanding work in the form of a presentation and a gift voucher.

As all-encompassing as these initiatives are, they mean little without measurement and assessment. Throughout the year, Gibson conducts job satisfaction surveys that quiz staff on everything from healthy eating at work to the issue of bonuses.

Gibson also performs a thorough remuneration check to ensure they are not falling behind industry rates.

“I do a remuneration benchmarking report every year, so I use the National Salary Survey which is one of my main things for the corporate side of the business,” she says.

“I look through all the State Government public sector wages and federal and always request reviews from the larger agencies like our Hays, Robert Walters and I research particular jobs on Seek. And every three or four years I’ll go out to a specialist company like Mercer who survey say the top six roles in the organisation to make sure their work value’s there, to make sure we’re not getting too far behind the ball.”

 

The Pay Factor

So what’s more important – pay or job satisfaction?

The  2016 National Salary Survey shows the top three reasons for employees taking on another job role are: seeking a new challenge at 81.9%, limited career advancement opportunities at 56.5% and insufficient financial reward at 44.4%.

Charles Go, Research Product Manager at IML, says remuneration should be a top priority for those developing retention strategies.

“No matter how cool your office is, how many benefits they have or how supported they feel at work, at the end of the day, people still need to pay their bills, save for holidays and afford to live the lives they want,” he says.

“At the very least, review and benchmark your employees’ salaries on a yearly basis and provide increases that are in line with inflation.”

Sales staff traditionally receives salary bonuses, but Go says it’s now becoming common for support, technical and finance staff to receive bonuses. He recommends clearly defining expectations, checking performance to make sure that they are on track and ensuring the bonuses are based on the company’s overall targets so the company doesn’t pay them if it is not making any money.

“Go one step further by encouraging and supporting them to reach those stretch targets to get their bonus,” he says.

“You’ll be surprised at the increased level of engagement when people truly feel like they are closer and closer to the finish line.”

Not every company can offer cash incentives or raises. Instead, they should consider giving better benefits, says Go.

“It could translate to long run savings for the employee,” he says.

“For example, if a staff member can work from home one day a week that will save them $100 a week on day care expenses, which will be about $4,800 a year.”

 

Other Benefits

 

Flexible benefits can have a surprising affect. Organisations offering time in lieu to reimburse overtime had resignation rates of just 9.8% compared to 10.9% for those who didn’t compensate staff for extra hours worked.

Additional super contributions also make a difference. Organisations that made extra super contributions had a lower than average resignation rate at 9.5% compared to 10.5%.

Developing a supportive learning environment is key to keeping workers challenged. More than 18% of employees report resigning because of a lack of professional development and training.

Research shows personal interviews are the most effective way of evaluating training, followed by pre and post training surveys and training feedback forms.

Building an effective staff retention plan is about more than just meeting an employee’s needs. It’s about surpassing them.

In today’s disruptive market, staff retention strategies need to take a holistic approach to give employees the support they need to do their job well. A continual, proactive strategy creates a happier, more engaged workforce and safeguards organisations against the eroding effects of continual resignations.

Visit  National Salary Survey and find out how we can help your organisation to attract and retain top talent.