Category: Human Resources

Dear Consultant, 

I am a small business owner with four full-time and three part-time employees.  As the boss, I’ve always been approachable and we all have a great relationship.  Lately though I think that my employees have been taking advantage of me by showing up to work late unapologetically, and not cleaning up their trucks after a service call, which they are very clearly supposed to do.  When I approach the team about these issues, should I threaten punishment or offer rewards?

 Using a carrot or a stick depends on the situation as well as the number of times that you’ve tried to correct this behaviour.  The problem may simply be a lack of communication or a lack of managerial follow-up to ensure compliance of your rules.  If this is a repeated problem that occurs even after you’ve all talked about it and are on the same page about work expectations, then you’ll want to think about institute a reward or punishment scheme to encourage compliance.

The general rule of thumb is to avoid punishment where possible.  Punishment may encourage your employees to want to leave your company, or to subvert you and your company in other, more subtle ways.  It is fear-based and utilizes coercive power which can create stress and a negative organizational culture.  While it may be necessary, it should be used as a last resort. Rewards may initially be considered more costly than punitive measures, but in the long run I’d suggest that the opposite is true. 

Losing an employee and hiring a new one is a very expensive process, similarly lack of productivity due to low moral/motivation, which is frequently associated with punishment can also affect your bottom line.

Here are some tips for using rewards as a motivator to promote certain behaviours, these are based partially on industry best practices and on Yukl (2013).

1)      Make sure that the rewards you offer are ones that they actually want.  Ask them!

2)      Whatever rewards you offer, make sure that they are fair and equal between employees and that the rewards are ethical in nature.

3)      Don’t offer a reward if you’re not able to fully deliver on what you’ve offered.

4)      Make very clear and simple rules for when rewards are given and when they aren’t.  Make sure that everyone understands.

5)      It is up to you to give out the rewards if the rules are met. Don’t expect the employee to come asking for the rewards.

6)      Try not to be manipulative with rewards, these should be an expression of gratitude for good behaviour.

If on the other hand you feel the need provide punishment for poor behaviour, here are some suggestions, based partially on industry best practices and also on Yukl (2013).

1)      Make sure everyone understands the rules and that punishment is the consequence of not following the rules.

2)      Always provide the same punishment for everyone consistently when rules are broken.

3)      Take your time before using punishment, get all of the facts and make sure that you’re being quick to judge.  Don’t make emotional decisions.

4)      Offer warnings before punishment, but be clear about when warnings will turn into punishment.  Put the warnings into writing.

5)      Making an example of employees may be tempting, but it is a bad idea for employee morale. Always offer warnings/reprimands and punishments in private.

6)      Always be calm, don’t let the employee perceive a personal attack.

7)      Make sure that you’re supportive and it is clear that you want to help them avoid this next time.

8)      Ask the person how to avoid this in the future, make a plan together and follow it.

9)      Do what you say.  If you warn of punishment, make sure that you follow through.

10)   Make sure that the punishment is equal to the bad behaviour.  Don’t over or under do it.

Dear Consultant,

I work in the Operations Department of a company that doesn’t usually have a lot of turn-over.  This week a long time technical staff member left the company and I need to write a job description to back-fill for her position.  I know what she did, but not the technical details.  How should I go about writing a good job description to bring in the right candidate?

Writing a job description can be a very involved process depending on how thorough you would like to be.  There are many ways to go about this, but the following suggestion is based on industry best practices and partly on the work done by Catano, Weisner and Hackett (2013).  The following steps can be used or adapted to your situation to help you write a job description.

Step 1:

Determine the job tasks and competencies Don’t focus immediately on the education and experience related requirements for the position.  A good starting point is to do some research about what tasks and competencies are associated with the position.  That is, what do people in the job do and how should they behave in situations that they are likely to encounter when working in the position? These are some of the pieces of information that are necessary to be able to write a job description:

  1. A list of tasks that an employee will do in this position.
  2. A list of the competencies, or the types of behaviours that you’d like to see the person working in this position exhibit.  These could be things like “build rapport quickly”, “defuse tension in a high conflict situation”, “exhibits leadership in team situations”, etc.

If you don’t already know much about the job, then there are many ways to gather this information, but the most common ways are to work with the subject matter experts (SME) who either currently occupy the position or are in the same department/team.  Some of these methods include:

  1. Interviews with the SMEs.  Schedule some time with someone who knows the role that you’re trying fill, perhaps the hiring manager.  Ideally speak with someone who is in a similar role to the one you’re hiring for.
  2. You can learn about the tasks and the competencies necessary for the job by creating a questionnaire and sending it out to multiple people on the team.  This is less resource intensive for all parties and allows you to aggregate opinions from multiple people in a relatively short time period.
  3. Observation of other people who are doing the job currently.  This is time consuming, but it can be useful in situations when the SMEs don’t have the time or inclination to help.  It can also help to draw out some of the tacit, or unspoken, aspects of the job.

Step 2:

Determine what Knowledge, Skills, Abilities and Other Attributes (KSAO) are necessary Once you have collected all of the tasks and competencies that are associated with the job, list the KSAOs necessary to successfully do each task and fulfill all of the competencies.  As an example, if a job task is to “maintain a close relationship with a broad client base”, then the skills necessary to accomplish this could be “knowledge of customer relationship management software” and “good communication skills.”  By actually listing each KSAO, and linking it to a job task or competency, you have a strong and transparent justification for the items listed in your job description.  This is helpful in cases where hiring decisions are disputed internally or in human rights litigation.

Step 3:

Determine the proficiency level of each KSAO How proficient will an applicant need to be in each KSAO for them to be able to successfully do each job task or competency?  You can keep this as simple as “fair”, “good” or “excellent”, or provide a scale of one to ten, or some other way of ranking proficiency.  Once you understand the proficiency necessary for each KSAO you can start to talk with SMEs about what actual requirements such as degrees, professional designations or years of experience in particular roles, etc.

Step 4:

Understand what requirements are “must-haves” and what are “would-be-nice” The perfect candidate isn’t always going to present themselves.  It is important to recognize that and be clear in your mind about which requirements are necessary and which ones are not entirely necessary.  Being explicit about which requirements are absolute “must-haves” in the job description helps potential applicants to self-screen, so that they won’t bother applying if they don’t have the “must-have” requirements.  This saves everyone a lot of time and effort.

Step 5:

Determine how you would like to “sell” the position to outstanding candidates Realize that you’re trying to sell a “product” to a “customer”, that is you’re trying to convince qualified applicants to apply to your job rather than the jobs posted by your competitor.  Get into the head of candidates who would excel in the position that you’re hiring for, and list out a few points that you can include in your job description to attract those outstanding candidates.  These  points could include things like the image your organization, non-monetary compensation (benefits), office location, job title, flexible hours, opportunities for growth, organizational culture, etc.

Step 6:

Write the description Keep it reasonably short, but still descriptive.  The more specificity you provide, the more self-selecting will occur with unsuitable candidates.  Start with information about the organization, then provide information about the team, then finally the position itself.  Explicitly list the “must-have” requirements for the position as well as the “desired” or “would-be-nice” requirements.  It is also helpful to describe the immediacy of when the position needs to be filled.  If there is flexibility in starting, that may encourage good candidates who are currently employed and need some time to end their current obligations.  Remember that frequently the best candidates are already in a job!

I hope this helps you write your job description.

Dear Consultant,

We’ve recently lost someone on our team, and my manager has tasked me with bringing in a new employee who can do the job as well as, or better than the last person.  Any suggestions about how I should do it?

Hiring a new employee is not as easy as it might seem initially.  Remember that there are a lot of things to think about, not only about writing a job description, but also about marketing the job to the right audience is also important attracting a good pool of applicants. Here is a process that you can follow that is partially based on industry best practices as well as information from Catano, Weisner and Hackett (2013).  Depending on your organization, and the position that you’re hiring for you can adapt this as you deem appropriate.  A more in-depth explanation of each step is also linked below.

  1. If you have a Human Resources Department, consult with them to follow your organization’s procedures for hiring a new employee.
  2. Learn about the job that you’re hiring for if you don’t already know a lot about it.  This is sometimes called “job analysis” and it will help you understand what knowledge, skills, abilities and other attributes (KSAOs) are necessary to perform this job well.  A job analysis involves interviews with subject matter experts who know the job well, or even direct observation of people who are doing the job currently.  It also requires that you itemize the tasks will need to be accomplished in the job and the competencies necessary to excel in the position.
  3. Write a “Job Description” that explains what an employee doing this job will be required to do and how they are supposed to do it.  The job description should also include the minimum necessary KSAOs required for the job, and the desired KSAOs.  Usually the minimum and desired KSAO sections are where you specify previous work experience, education, professional designations, motivations, etc.
  4. Come up with a “Recruitment Strategy” that can either be formal or informal.  This strategy should include some thinking around your budget for marketing the position, what mediums you have available to post your job as well as what “selling points” you’re willing to share in your job description.
  5. Develop a “Screening Process” that will help to save you time.  Depending on the number of applicants, you may not be able to interview everyone who applies to the job.  In this case, an initial screening process can help.  Screening can include looking for minimum qualification and cut-off scores for grades or test, years of experience, professional designations, etc.  These minimum qualifications and cut-offs should be carefully thought through, it is at this stage that you can easily disregard a wonderful candidate because they have one year less experience than you’ve specified in your cut-off.
  6. Next you’ll need to “Create a short list of applicants”.  This list will be used to determine who you’d like to spend more time with and interview. As best as you can, try to come up with objective criteria for evaluating each application against the KSAOs that you’ve already defined in your job analysis.  Be transparent about this, because it will offer insight into your decision making in the case of disputes later on.
  7. Once you’ve created your short list of applicants, you’ll want to reach out to them to “Conduct Interviews”.  The main goal of interviews are to fill in the blanks that are not specified on their resumes/CVs and applications.  They are also useful to determine soft skills not easily articulated on applications as well as organizational fit.  Some things you’ll want to keep in mind:
    • Be careful not to think that someone is a good fit for the job just because you like them, or that they are similar to you.
    • To keep things fair, make sure that you have a standard set of interview questions that are asked to each applicant.
    • Conduct the interviews in a similar manner for each applicant.  Similar room, similar questions (ideally, identical), everyone offered refreshments, etc.
    • All interviewers fill out a standard form that evaluates as objectively as possible, all of the KSAOs required for the job.
    • Ask for contact information for two or three references and get the applicant to sign a document giving you permission to contact and ask questions of the people they’ve specified
    • Keep the standard forms that were filled out during and after interviews on file in case of hiring disputes down the road.  You need to have transparency into your decision making at every point in the hiring process.

8.    The next step is to “Do Reference Checks”.  Once you have signed permission to contact references, you can begin setting up times to talk on the phone.  Only check references on applicants whom you’re seriously considering for the position.  Make sure that you follow a similar set of questions for each reference and fill out a standard form based on the answers provided by each reference.

9.    The most important part is the final “Selection Process” in choosing the top two or three candidates, and the order in which you’d like to send out offers.  Even if you don’t have a lot of objective measures in your evaluation process, you can sometime apply a score to each of the KSAOs developed in the job analysis.  This provides a transparent and objective way to rank applicants and provide insight into why one applicant was selected over another.  Avoid “gutt-feel” or “intuition” that is not backed up with further thought and objective justification.  Then send out an offer to your top candidate and await their approval before telling the next candidate that they have not been selected for the position.  If negotiations with the top candidate are not successful, send a letter of offer to your second highest candidate.

I hope that this process helps with your new hire.  Each stage described above can be quite detailed, please click on the links for each stage for further information.

References: http://www.amazon.ca/Recruitment-Selection-Canada-Victor-Catano/dp/0176504370

Dear Consultant,

Our organization has just over 30 people and we find that we’re spending an inordinate amount of time hiring and dealing with HR issues. Would it make sense for us to hire a full time Human Resources Manager?

The question that you’re grappling with is a common issue faced by small to medium sized enterprises (SME).  Full time human resources managers are frequently the last position to be hired, and the first to be fired in SMEs during financial difficulty.  This is mainly because of a lack of understanding of the importance of the HR function within organizations. It is common for managers to say, “Our company is not actively growing, so our management team can handle the HR functions associated with regular attrition. We’ll hire and HR consultant when we can’t handle it.”  This viewpoint assumes that HR is only about hiring new employees.  In fact, progressive organizations recognize the strategic importance of a significantly broader range of functions that a professional HR manager can offer an organization.  Some of which can be fulfilled by professional HR consultants, some of which are best suited for an on-staff HR Manager. Schwind, Das and Wagner (2010) talk about a number of value-adding tasks that HR managers provide.  Some of them include:

  1. Understand can educate the rest of the organization about the legal landscape with respect to management functions like hiring, firing, human rights, pay equity, labor laws, background checks, etc.
  2. Help to maintain harmony in working relationships with employees and managers, including acting as a neutral broker in work-related disputes.
  3. Help to create a work environment that facilitates high employee performance.
  4. Create processes for managers to follow related to discipline and counselling of employees.
  5. Understanding how to attract the right talent to your organization.
  6. Build standard new employee selection processes to ensure equity in employee selection.
  7. Educate and advocate for processes that maintain a positive and productive culture within the organization.
  8. Create standard methods for creating job descriptions that accurately attract the right candidates for your positions.
  9. Help establish equitable compensation strategies to retain talent.
  10. Maintain safety metrics and ensure safety compliance throughout the organization.

HR Managers provide significant value beyond simply hiring and firing.  Many of the value-added functions of an HR Manager are intangible and add to the organization’s bottom line indirectly through improved moral, decreased turn-over, improved employee and manager productivity and through risk mitigation related to labor litigation and human rights complaints.

Dear Consultant,

I am a Development Manager for a small software company.  My team is growing and one of my challenges is recruiting qualified software developers who fit into our culture.  Do you have any guidance on how to create a recruitment process for our team?

Never assume your job is attractive to candidates, ensure that you communicate just how attractive it is

Recruiting for your organization requires thought beyond simply screening applicants and selecting the most appropriate candidate, it also requires a marketing and competitive strategy.  The pool of talent that exists for a skill job is often sought after, so organizations vying for appropriate candidates are in competition with each other.  Never assume your job is attractive to candidates, ensure that you communicate just how attractive it is; sell your job and organization just like a business would sell a product or service.

 

Your recruitment strategy should have answers for the following:

1)      What is your budget for promoting this job?

It is not always free to promote your position.  If you have a particular talent pool (target market) in mind, communicating to this group may require a marketing budget.

2)      What promotional mediums do you have available to you? 

Depending on the particular talent pool that you’re targeting, you may already know how you will promote the job posting, but think about expanding upon the traditional modes of promoting a job posting.  Some examples for promoting a job posting include:

  • Your company website’s “Career” section
  • LinkedIn
  • Other job posting websites
  • Newspapers
  • Headhunters and recruitment agencies
  • Internal referrals from existing employees
  • Word-of-mouth from partners
  • A nomination process from important stakeholders
  • Etc.

 

3)      How can you best reach the target audience from which you’d like to create a pool of applicants, where are they likely to be looking?

Be thoughtful about what type of candidates you will be excluding by only using one or two marketing mediums for your job posting

Think about “selection bias,” that is, some marketing mediums such as news papers, LinkedIn or your company website will attract a particular type of candidate.  Be thoughtful about what type of candidates you will be excluding by only using one or two marketing mediums for your job posting.  Similarly, word-of-mouth referrals and nomination processes may exclude candidates who may bring different perspectives and add complementary skillets.  People tend to refer people that are similar to them; this may be beneficial or harmful depending on your situation.

 

4)      What type of an image do you want to send about your organization and the position you’re hiring for? 

The way that your organization is perceived by the talent pool that you’re trying to attract will greatly affect the number of applications you receive.  Brand management is something that is a broader topic than can be covered here, but in your job posting you can be thoughtful about how you can position your organization in a positive light to either amplify existing beliefs about your organization or counter negative ones.

5)      Selling points, non-monetary compensation, flexible hours, location, organizational culture, etc.

highlight intangible things like flexible work hours, a great location of your office, and organizational culture

Along the lines of “selling” the position, it is important to highlight the non-monetary compensation that employees enjoy at your organization.  These can go beyond things like health and wellness benefits, highlight intangible things like flexible work hours, a great location of your office, and organizational culture, proximity to coffee shops and restaurants, positive and supportive colleagues, opportunities for career advancement, etc.

 

6)      Are there “Employment Equity” or “Human Rights” considerations for this position?

In your job posting, it is important to think about whether your organization has an existing employee equity program that you should incorporate into your recruitment strategy.  Similarly, unconscious and non-obvious phrases may actively dissuade applicants from some protected groups under human rights law.  The perception of any type of systematic avoidance of protected groups, even if unintentional, can still be deemed a human rights violation and may be subject to litigation.  Be thoughtful about how different groups may perceive your wording, follow strategies laid out in your employee equity plan if you have one.

7)      Are there internal candidates we should be looking at?

Sometimes it may be beneficial to post job opportunities internally before posting them to candidates outside of the organization.  This offers existing employees the opportunity to progress in their career without having to change companies.  This helps to maintain institutional knowledge within your organization and keeps your employees motivated.

There are many other aspects of a recruitment strategy, but these are some of the broader topics that should be thought of when coming up with a process to recruit top talent.

References:

 http://www.amazon.ca/Recruitment-Selection-Canada-Victor-Catano/dp/0176504370