Polite Dismissals

Ghost Writer continues to haunt Marti's blog as she returns tan and happy to a busy, big box retail world.

 

Yet again, another underperforming colleague receives the polite dismissal under the cloak of job elimination.  Having been down that road, I understand why companies do it.  It precludes the liability associated with dismissal for cause.  However, it also allows the organization, and specifically the person's boss(es) off on accountable management.  It's one thing if the role really no longer has a place in the organization.  It's quite another if everyone knew the person wasn't performing, and the company just handed over a whopping severance package to avoid being accountable with the person.

Or is it?

If everyone knows the person was underperforming, then everyone would know the job elimination is a sham.  Right? 

Maybe for me, it's a sense of justice and process.  If I want to terminate an employee, I have to do my homework, document the performance, document my actions, and execute the process.  If a middle manager or executive needs terminated, the job is just eliminated.  At least until the company changes its mind again about that role, or a year expires, whichever can be defended should the former employee find out the job has been reinstated.

What are we teaching our HR Leaders when we hand out polite dismissals to people?  That certain people aren't worth due process?  That certain people aren't doing a bad-enough job to be fired for cause, but aren't good enough to stay?  Would we potentially be better off sending a clear signal? 

I think my HR Manager friends would tell me the law doesn't allow us to communicate the truth.  Privacy.  Dignity.  Liability.  All those ity-bitty things.  So instead, we're left with a workforce who rumors a truth and shakes their head at polite dismissals.

Appearances

Ghost Writer discusses compliance while the only compliance Marti's doing is alignment with a beach chair.

 

My dear friend, N, told me the story of she and her high school aged son discussing his homework.  Her son said, "Mom, you can only make it look like I'm doing my homework.  You can't make me do my homework." N replied, "You're right, but as long as you live in this house, we're going to keep up appearances, if nothing else."

 

Every Fixer-of--Broken-Things and HR Manager knows my friend's feeling of resigned acceptance of the fact we can only make people look like they are complying withe the process.  As Marti would say, "We can put air freshener cones around it and put it on a pretty plate, but a turd is still a turd."  Appearance of a process matters.  When I document a new process, many people say how great it is and thank me for the hard work.  However, consistent execution of the process when no one is looking would be the greatest thanks I could get.

 

Today, on one front, I got just that.  An employee who is busy and could easily skip corners without anyone knowing until it's way too late was faithful to the process.  This saved me a lot of points on an important process review and gave the process' appearance real substance. 

 

Thank an HR Manager or Fixer-of-Broken-Things today -- do the process as designed, faithfully.  And for bonus points, suggest a substantive improvement based on your informed use.  We love that stuff!

ICEy Labor Situation

Ghost Writer remains your standard bearer while Marti continues her tequila tourist adventures. In an attempt to provide you the Marti experience, I read her favorite paper and found a thought-provoking article.

In the Wall Street Journal is an article about ICE. For those of you not familiar with ICE, it is the Immigration and Customs Enforcement component of Homeland Security, not the status of Marti's drink. Under the Obama Administration, ICE audits employer records for evidence of illegal laborers in the work force. If illegals are found, ICE fines the company as opposed to the Bush Administration's practice of employer fines and deportation for the laborer.

The article says, "But it has become increasingly clear that the policy is pushing undocumented workers deeper underground, delivering them to the hands of unscrupulous employers, depressing wages and depriving federal, state and local coffers of taxes, according to unions, companies and immigrant advocates." Is this another Easter Bunny government program? We're being "nice" and not deporting, but we're condoning a problem, creating a problem, and failing to address the root cause.

This article left me feeling conflicted. One, there is the very real human pain of those doing real work and earning real money until an audit removes them from those jobs and leaves them looking even further on the periphery for work. However, those people are here illegally. They are breaking the law and should be sent back to wherever they came from without a second thought. Yet, I do a lot of work in Mexico. I know I wouldn't want to live there, and to make a gross understatement, it's a bad place. Why else would people fight so hard to be here and stay here, even illegally?

As the old adage goes, "A problem well-stated is half solved." (Or as Marti is saying right now, "My only problem is not enough sun screen.") The problem here is an impoverished, corrupt nation bordering a very rich nation with jobs available. Yes, in spite of the dire words of the evening news, there are jobs for these people. They are working, or they wouldn't be illegally employed. Right?

So how do we fix a poor nation next to a rich nation? Can't really pick up and move to a better neighborhood can we? The U.S. provides hundreds of millions in aid annually to Mexico, and that's not helping. We spend hundreds of millions to ineffectively patrol the border. Neither nation-building Mexico into prosperity nor isolationism are the answers.

So what is? A means to employ them, have them pay taxes and join the rest of us in this great nation. Let's just accept that we live in a great nation and share it.

Easter Bunnies and Health Care -- Yes, really

Ghost Writer picks up a homework assignment from Marti while she whoops it up living the good life.  Yep, I'm stuck at the helm while Marti goes and celebrates her 20th anniversary.  Indeed, she is taking time off of her obsessive compulsive relationship with her job to enjoy her marriage.  Here's hoping her hubby can stand all that attention.

Before Marti took off, she and I were discussing how the proposed health care plan is like a chocolate Easter Bunny.  You know the kind -- shiny, foil-wrapped yumminess.  The big decision after seeing it is whether to eat the ears first or the tail first.  This is ostensibly how we should feel about the government's proposed changes to health care.  Yay!  We have a shiny new health care plan.  Yay!  Everyone will have health care.  Yay!  No more lifetime limits.  Yay!  No more denied coverage of pre-existing conditions.  Where do we sign up?  We rip open the foil, chomp down on the ears and call ourselves happy.

Alas, though, like every child learned after the first time he or she got tricked, don't get too excited. The shiny, foil-wrapped bunny needs to be picked up and felt, because appearances may not be the full story.  Is the bunny solid or hollow?  It's still chocolate, but is it really good to the core?  As the health care proposal is picked up and weighed, we find it's missing a few things at the center.  Like the ongoing use of Emergency Rooms as primary care providers for the booming illegal immigrant population in the U.S.  Like the cost distribution.  Money is a zero sum game last I checked and you don't get more of something without paying for it.  Michael Cannon wrote, "Government programs do not contain health care costs; they shift, increase, and hide them. Government shifts the cost of my consumption to you. Costs rise overall, as they always do in a commons: nobody spends other people's money as wisely as they spend their own."  Amen, Michael!  Name one program the government has created or problem it has "solved" that it hasn't made worse or eventually corrupted through application of politics.  And just because the government says we're already paying for all of these issues doesn't mean I believe them.  The government has been price fixing the health care system for years in the form of "reasonable and customary" reimbursements for services provided to those covered by Medicare and Medicaid.  That's clearly helped contained cost.

Sure enough.  We've figured out we've got a hollow bunny.  It's still shiny.  It's still chocolate.  Which is probably better than nothing in the Easter basket except unrefrigerated hard-boiled eggs (eew!).  So we unwrap it and we take a bite.  Oh NO!  ICK!  SPIT!  GROSS!  We find out it's last year's hollow bunny, and it's stale and the cocoa butter is separated, and we're pretty sure something is alive in that hollow core.  What's creeping around in it?  The first piece of scum we find is the Middle Man.  Middle Man creeps around in the heart of things, does nothing, and spoils everything.  Does anyone else remember the days when mom wrote a check to the doctor at the time of service for your ear infection?  How much of this situation is the hedge-fund, junk bond system called health insurance?  These are the people who for the last several decades have said they are negotiating health care costs lower for us, but yet, they keep getting higher.  How does that work?  [Insurance is a racket designed by lawyers, executed by lawyers, and foisted on a paranoid population, but that's a rant for another day.]  Ask the Amish.  They negotiate cash payment rates far lower than what any of us, including the government pay.  Why?  Cash now beats fighting insurance companies and the government later for money.  Cash flow is king, even in the world of health care.

The second piece of creeping crud we find under the foil and gnarly chocolate we thought was something good is Middle Man's best friend No Personal Accountability.  The company that generously helps me acquire health insurance (at a nice premium out of my paycheck and their profits, too) put into action a "play or pay" system this year.  If I don't take so many steps to maintain a healthy life, I pay more for my health insurance.  Period.  My participation is evaluated quarterly.  Play that quarter or pay next quarter in higher premiums out of my paycheck.  The government is never going to get this radical.  No Personal Accountability is at the heart of most government programs.  Heck!  Our government is still arguing about whether welfare recipients should be tested for illegal drugs. Really!?  Wow.

For those shouting at your computer, "We've got to do something!  We cannot continue this way."  I agree.  But let's start they way any fixer-of-broken-things would -- using root cause analysis.  This plan doesn't address what's broke.  It just addresses the symptoms far greater issues.

So, welcome to your Health Care Easter Bunny.  Foil-wrapped?  Yes.  Shiny?  Yes.  New?  Maybe.  Better?  No.  Yes, really.

Sustainability

Ghost Writer touches on the periphery of Marti's much-loathed carbon footprint topic discussing sustainability in an HR Leader and Manager context.

So if you haven't been sleeping under a rock, you've heard seemingly endless stream of messages regarding sustainability - the broad term meaning, "How are we going to do this forever without harming the environment?"
However, I think something very big, massive, huge, and overwhelmingly large (dare I say ginormous?) missing from the dialog is sustainability of humans in the workforce. This is the next big thing on two fronts for HR Managers and Leaders.
On front one, this is about the question, "How do we keep enough people employed to buy whatever we're selling?" To protect people, and make more money by avoiding safety issues, many companies automate jobs, and as a fixer of broken stuff, I have no problem with this. We assume people will find work in less strenuous environs or learn to program these robots, but in reality, that means less lucrative service jobs. However, as the self-serve checkout line has shown, even those jobs aren't beyond automation.
On front two, there's the dwindling supply of hard-working knowledge laborers running these ships. No administrative assistants. Slow computers eating valuable minutes. Inefficient, yet necessary for our primitive human selves, travel for face-to-face "show me" follow-up and meetings. Increasingly large responsibilities assigned to an ever-decreasing pool of people with the assumption we will "work smarter" (hate that saying, BTW) or "prioritize" those tasks. Prioritize: secret code word for mindful neglect, strategic procrastination, or in a best case, benign neglect of stuff that should get done (but ain't gonna get done, because I like sleep, but Marti doesn't need it cuz she lives on coffee).
These are the next big questions for HR Management and Leadership. How do we leave people in the process so there is real money circulating to buy things? Secondly, for those in the few jobs left, how do we make those jobs humane? Because, I can tell you, Marti's 16-18 hour days are inhumane, even though she survives them. My Tums habit isn't altogether sustainable either.
Then again, I pull a page from economics class. Will supply and demand take care of this for us? Is our current, unsustainable human resources malaise just a function of shifts in supply and demand that haven't settled into a new normal?

If the President were a Fortune 500 CEO...

I have worked for Fortune 150, Fortune 45 and, yes, Fortune 1. I've even worked for the second larget privatee company in the United States. There is one thing for certain, executives are expected to be the Chief Advocate of their company. It is their responsibility to put the best face forward for the sake of the company's reputation and profitability. The President is the head of the executive branch of our government. This makes him the CEO of the single greatest country in the world, the United States of America. However, the CEO of our company, in which we are compelled to be unpaid shareholders, publicly embarrasses us. He tells the world that we will stop paying our employees, we will default on our debts and our executives can't get along with each other keeping us from making sound decisions. In the real world where a business generates money instead of taking it, that type of behavior would cost a Chief Executive his job. If you doubt we are a business, take a minute to ponder the fact that this Democratic Republic has a credit rating with all of the major agencies. Countries invest in us and expect a positive results. When the face of this business denigrates it and shows our bare behind to the world, the board of directors and shareholders should demand their resignation. It is strange indeed that it is harder to remove an elected official than the head of a major company. When did this particular executive forget that we, well maybe not me(I didn't pick this guy), put him there and he owes us better. Our leader should represent our business with the fierce loyalty and care of an executive receiving millions of dollars in options for his trouble. The pension for a President sounds like a fair trade for that, so now we deserve to be properly represented. Our leader needs to get his mud in a pile and lead us with pride.

Survival

Seth Godin has a book "Only the Paranoid Survive". One of many in his arsenal of experience and advice. I lack the focus of a paranoid, so I needed a different definition of survival. As I was embarking on the typical 5am journey to get to a location and squeeze one more thing out of my day, the emotional toll of long days kicked into overdrive. It is easy to get personally invested in outcomes and I consider parts of my work to be a battlefield. Once I conquer the hill, having to conquer it again because of others really turns a day the wrong direction. Whether a candidate flakes out and doesn't show for their first day or scheduling puts a process back a week, the goal does not shift. It simply is not met on time. As I enjoyed one of the lovely Interstates I could easily call home, it is evident that I am very near obsessive in goal orientation. At this time, my goal is to survive. However, my definition of survival is lofty. It is not enough to get it done. It must be on time or early and before everyone else whenever possible. That is survival. Getting things done before everyone else and early every time is success. This is the battle for the basics. Getting things done only makes way for more things that may be more strategic and helpful to the growth of the team. This still does not improve the sleeping and head clearning time.
Unfortunately for my husband, the same standards don't apply at home. Survival is simpler here. Don't piss off the spouse, don't think too much, and help with the housework. Right now, we both suffer from sleep deprivation due to the introduction of a Siberian puppy into our routine. He screams like an angry seagull when he wants to go out at 5am on any given day. He barks at the cats, chews on the Labrador and generally makes a "hot mess" out of the house. If you don't trap him in a section of the house, he leaves a hot mess as a gift. This too shall pass. I'm not entirely certain the phrenetic pace at work will, though. It is amazing that enough parents instilled some strong sense of loyalty, personal responsibility, sense of pride, or requirement to save face that people continue to push through this crazy work world we imposed on ourselves. Yes, I could do less. Yes, I could change my expectations. However, my goals is survival and my definition of survival is lofty. This is not changing any time soon, so you will have to get used to it.

Biggest Bully on the Block

Ghost Writer considers the question, "When do customers, of any form, go from being demanding to the Biggest Bully on the Block?"

    So I have a customer, a lot of them actually internally and externally, who expect a great deal from me.  That's fine.  That's the world of work, but lately there's a Bully on my playground.  A capital "B" Bully in bold form.  This Bully wants my lunch, my allowance, my homework, and demands exclusive rights to my future lunches, allowances, AND my science fair experiments.  Further, the bully wants to stop by my house, check out how I live today, decide how I should really live and take everything that doesn't fit the Bully's assessment of my needs.  WOW!  Now that's my definition of the Biggest Bully on the Block.

    Unfortunately, this Bully controls Business, big capital "B" business.  Failure to allow this Bully access to my homework, lunch, allowance, science fair project and my home will have far reaching consequences for many people.  However, when does a Bully just get called a Bully?  The hardworking geeks need to rise up and say, "ENOUGH!"  I spent plenty of years subject to playground bullying, and I learned early and often, "Don't go near them.  They don't become less of a bully because you befriend them."

    In the world of business, though, it seems as though we choose to keep doing business with the Bully out of fear of life without the Bully.  These are the moments when I want to say, "Are we credible business people if we let the Bully run our lives?  I'd rather be unemployed than cave to this Bully's demands."  I have been informed that is a personal choice, not a business choice based on the needs of many. 

    So now I have to formulate a strategy based on the Business' choice to allow the Bully to ransack my house.  How do I watch as the Bully decides what's right and wrong in my house?  Maybe that's my problem.  This isn't MY house.  It's the business.  This is just business.  This is just business.  Will I believe it if I say it enough?