Tag Archives: performance management

Best friends forever: HR and Marketing

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Frank "The Proposalnator" Lynn (author of this recent post) points me to an article in Fortune called "For Happier Customers, Call HR." It echoes something I heard recently at a talk given by the legendary Jac Fitz-Enz – namely that unless marketing backs up its taglines with some customer service people who drink the kool-aid, what you get is a load of customer experiences that don’t match with customer expectations.

The article tells the tale of customers of T-Mobile who were told they would "Get More," but instead got long hold times and clueless reps. So guess how you solve the problem? Put HR and Marketing together to make sure the people being hired match the values being promoted.

From the article:

Sounds like common sense, doesn’t it? But surprisingly few companies do it. "We call the gap between HR and marketing the ‘white space’ in organizations," says Don Schultz, founder of a think tank at Northwestern University called the Forum for People and Performance Management. "The customer-contact people don’t report to anyone in marketing or have any contact with them." Neither does anyone in HR, so HR isn’t able to put customer-service people in place who can deliver on the marketers’ message. Northwestern’s latest research (see ROI of Integrated Marketing at www.performanceforum.org) shows that both HR and marketing managers are well aware of the white space: "We started studying this because people from 40-odd big companies like Honeywell, GE, and AT&T asked us how to fix it." 

Read more for how T-Mobile addressed the problem. 

Frank Lynn guest posts: It’s a trust issue

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One of my favorite 80’s TV shows was Sledge Hammer.  Hammer was an offbeat cop in the Get Smart/Monk tradition who had a great tagline: “Trust me.  I know what I’m doing.”  This was the ultimate ironic statement because his wacky, unconventional methods didn’t exactly reinforce to the viewer that he knew what he was doing, nor that he should be trusted.  To organizations looking for Workforce Performance Management software, vendors sound like Sledge Hammer.  They all claim to be trustworthy, but the proof is in the pudding.

As SuccessFactors’ Proposal Manager, I deal with trust issues on a daily basis.  Many RFPs and Technical Questionnaires have questions that center around data security.  In today’s post-HIPAA, post-Sarbanes-Oxley environment, safeguarding data and implementing comprehensive controls has become a top priority.  Risk Managers and IT Directors are under a lot of stress.          

In addition to developing a comprehensive suite of Workforce Performance Management software solutions, SuccessFactors has taken steps to ensure that your organization’s Risk Management professionals can sleep better at night, including:

·        A fully redundant, secure network infrastructure with backup and failover capabilities
·        Intrusion Detection and Vulnerability scanning
·        24x7x365 Live operator monitoring
·        Configurable user group and data access permissions that allow you to comply with data privacy laws

Additionally, we are Safe Harbor Certified by the US Department of Commerce.

As a Software as a Service provider with an industry-leading 98% renewal rate, we recognize the importance of earning and keeping the trust of our customers.  That’s why we allow them to perform infrastructure and application vulnerability testing – to have every assurance that their data is safe in our system.

SuccessFactors’ is the industry leading Trusted Advisor that supports organizations in achieving their objectives of rapidly aligning, developing, motivating, and maintaining their high-performance workforces.

Trust us.  We know what we’re doing.

More on forced ranking

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As a followup to a previous post on forced ranking, I thought you’d like to see this article at workforce.com. It reprints an appendix from Dick Grote’s new book called Forced Ranking: Making Performance Management Work.

It’s a memo from a CEO to his company explaining the benefits of an upcoming forced ranking process and how it will work. It’s easy to see how communicating this well can remove some of the fear from the process and highlight the win-win aspects of the initiative.

The HR Tech Shootout Redux

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DubDubs from systematicHR (Previously Known As The HR Technology Discussion board – so update your links) has some new thoughts on the performance management shootout from the HR Tech show in Chicago.  Although he wasn’t there, his (very educated and experienced) feeling is that Authoria won becuase of a spiffy user interface and solid integration between the modules they’ve acquired (as opposed to built). For a play by play of the shootout, you can see my post from that day.

I agree in part. I was there, and I felt that in the short time each company had to present, just about the only takeaway one could have was a general impression having to do with the UI. That’s not a fault of the shootout itself. The shootout is a great idea, and the execution was flawless. It’s just that each company is only given a few minutes to demonstrate its application and therefore the demos move so quickly they can be hard to follow.

What gets lost in all this is the functionality and overall usability of the application (versus the usablity of any one module). Dubs asks "So what happened to WorkStream and SuccessFactors? Clearly we can’t say that they didn’t have the functionality, integration, or UI." And he’s right, there’s just no time for the audience to fully digest those aspects of the presentations.

The point I think may get lost in all this relates to other aspects of comparison between vendors like customer retention, customer service, customer satisfaction, customer recommendations and so on. To be clear, we think our UI and overall user experience are the best in the business, but we believe that it’s our relentless focus on our customers that sets us apart.

By way of further reading, Dubs says he considers "Authoria, SuccessFactors, WorkStream, and Recruitmax to be the leaders in the field," and he’s reviewed all four vendors here and here.

 

Implementation is Key

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Watson Wyatt released a study today which shows that while employers are leveraging best practices when designing their performance management programs, they are falling short in the implementation of those programs.

From the study’s summary:

In designing their performance management programs, most employers have adopted best practices — including providing a formal yearly review (98 percent), helping poor performers improve (96 percent) and offering coaching and feedback (91 percent) — but they have been less successful in implementing them. For example, while 92 percent of programs are designed to link pay to performance, only 79 percent of employers say that managers at their organization are moderately or greatly effective at it. Employees see even more room for improvement with only 52 percent indicating that their managers tie pay to performance.

The best program in the world can’t reach it’s potential if it’s not intelligently put into place. It’s software’s achilles heel and another reason why you’ve got to be really careful when choosing a performance management partner. The best package will not mean anything if people don’t understand it, have a hard time using it, or it simply doesn’t work right. At SuccessFactors, we have an entire professional services team dedicated only to implementing our applications and ensuring our customer’s success.

One suggested remedy from Watson Wyatt: training.

Only 36 percent of organizations have a formal training program to enhance managers’ ability to manage rewards. However, managers at companies that offer such a program are more effective at providing coaching and feedback, providing formal periodic performance discussions and helping poor performers improve.

 

 

 

Motivating the Troops (and paying them for their performance)

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BusinessWeek highlights "Electronic Scorecards" used in the banking industry. The article tells the tale of a Kansas City based bank called UMD Financial that’s using performance management to align goals and pay for performance.

From the article:

In the past the bank paid people based primarily on seniority and cost-of-living adjustments. Now a substantial part of compensation for managers depends on how they perform against scorecard goals.

It’s interesting that the article doesn’t tell what processes or which software the company is using to do this. I know I’d be interested – and from the comments, so are other readers.

All About Forced Ranking (AKA the Dreaded Curve)

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HBS’s Working Knowledge recently published an article on using Forced Ranking in performance management. I’ll get into the conclusions of the article, but first – what is Forced Ranking? Well, Forced Ranking is a method by which managers evaluate employees relative to the performance of other employees. It’s a little like the curve I had in college.

With the dreaded curve, all test scores for a particular exam were plotted along a pre-determined curve of how many people should get A’s, B’s and so on and then adjusted to fit. This way, no more than say, 20% of people could get As and no more than 20% could get B’s and 20% were, in fact, forced to get C’s, D’s and F’s so as to fit the pre-determined curve (In all fairness to my alma mater, NYU, I’m not sure if this was exactly the curve they used, but as an example, it suffices).

The thinking goes that people will be motivated to work as hard as possible because small differences in scores can lead to large differences in grades. Likewise, in performance management, Forced Ranking ensures that managers will differentiate between talent and eliminates the possibility of review inflation becuase employees cannot all recieve excellent or even good reviews. If, for example, a company used a 1-5 rating scale and we followed the curve cited above, 20% of employees would get a 1, 20% would get a 2 and so on.

What follows is that now that the top 20% (relative to the rest of employees) and the bottom 20% (again, relatively) have been identified, they can be so dealt with. The top performing employees can be amply rewarded so as to make sure they stay with the company and are motivated to continue to perform. The worst performing employees can be… fired. This is commensurate with the whole idea of Forced Ranking. By removing the worst performing employees and replacing them with the best potential replacements from some applicant pool, the overall performance of the organization can be elevated.

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The Deal with HR-XML (and Podcast)

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There have been some annoucements recently about the HR-XML standard so I thought I’d inquire about what was happening on that front within SuccessFactors. So, I had a conversation with Doug Ito who has been doing some work on it from our side.

First – what is this thing? Well, it’s an attempt to make it easier for HR systems to communicate and share information with one another by using a common standard for identifying information. That basically means you can do stuff like have your Recruiting system feed data on new hires directly into your  HRIS system, or your Performance Management system automatically grab data out of your HRIS to do performance reviews and then put the compensation decisions back in.

Are we compliant? Yes and No. Not compliant directly with the standard, but because our system already supports XML interfaces – we can effectively interact with any HR-XML standards compliant system without a problem. Our approach can be effectively categorized as "wait and see." While we believe the standard has a future, our ability to interoperate with it using current technology means we don’t have to adopt it wholesale -at least not just yet.

I recorded my conversation with Doug on the topic and you’re welcome to listen in. We talked about the history of simiar standards, why we haven’t yet fully embraced this one and what we’re hearing from the market. Doug does a great job of explaining the technology, and the idea behind HR-XML – so if you’re looking to catch up on the concept, here’s a good place to start.

Have We Forgotten About the Employee?

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Our own Rob Bernshteyn published an article with the above title in the most recent edition of IHRIM.link.  It discusses the complex issue of how workforce performance management systems actually treat the employees and managers that are expected to use them. While terms like "human capital supply" are bandied about pretty freely, can we really treat people like supplies? Obivously, the answer is no – and Rob discusses the implications of this and alternative approaches in the article.

The complete version can be found after the jump.

 

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In Response to Recent Criticism

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A comment was made on the blog recently by a well known industry journalist who is also one of programmers of HR Tech. He was unhappy with some of my posts on the conference, specifically   my post on the Pay for Performance breakout session. I want to respond to the criticism publicly, because I think it is both valuable and important.

This journalist felt I was remiss in not mentioning that Authoria, the vendor involved in the presentation, is a direct competitor of SuccessFactors and that they beat us in the Performance Management Shootout. He felt this lack of context was misleading.  Let me say very clearly that if anyone was misled by this post, I apologize. I did, in fact, mention that we were beat in the shootout in this post about the shootout, but not directly in my post about the pay for performance session. I have now updated the post to reflect this.

I do not want my opinion on this one session to represent my opinions on the conference as a whole. I thought the conference was very worthwhile in general – well executed and, as tradeshows go, quite excellent. You can see my actual conference review form here.

Now switching gears – let me also be clear about this: I am not a journalist, and I do not intend to be. Journalists have a responsibility to be fair and factual and to provide context and background. And, while I personally strive toward that, Bloggers as a group do not have this responsibility. That is the strength and the weakness of this or any blog.  This blog is a single perspective, just one opinion, one view, one side of the story on what is happening in the HR Technology space. There are other perspectives (here are one and two), and I encourage everyone to see what they have to say as well.

The beauty of this format, however, as opposed to a magazine or newspaper, is that people can talk back in real time.  If you don’t like what I said about this conference or if I got something wrong, please feel free to share your opinion by posting a comment. Correct me in public. It’s okay! I have never filtered a comment (except for language). You can occupy the same space as I do and I want to encourage that as much as possible. The value for this blog is in the sharing of opinions and information – SuccessFactors the company and Max Goldman the guy want to know what you have to say – so get to it!