Two days ago I sent a problem note to Comcast via their website about our recent experience with extremely slow Internet service. And, as usual, got a note telling me that, “We have received your e mail and thank you for using Comcast’s online email support. One of our Comcast customer support representatives will get back to you, yada, yada.”

A few minutes ago, I answered a phone call from Comcast. It quickly became apparent that the caller knew nothing about my service issue, but was intent on selling me a more “valuable” service bundle. About a half minute into her spiel when she came up for air the first time, I politely cut her off and declined the offer. Then, I told the representative about my service problem and asked if perhaps she could help me with that. “Oh, no sir, you have to call 1-800-COMCAST.” You can’t help me, I asked again? “No sir, you have to call 1-800-COMCAST.” Click.

Here’s a suggestion. Maybe it’s my imagination, but it seems of late that most organizations are heavily in “dumbing down mode” and thus hell-bent on communicating  and managing via an ever-increasing number of internal policies and rules. Perhaps we’re just too tired to think.

Though as recently as this morning, in a Fresh Milk article we have pleaded with leaders to avoid the perils of an over-moderated, under-led workforce, here’s a new policy that I think every (repeat, every) organization should adopt: No matter how it comes about, if you become aware of a customer problem, you own it. Translation: You are responsible for telling the customer that you will help them, finding the right person internally to deal with the matter, and then closing the loop with the customer. My guess is that customer service gets a lot better (from the customer’s vantage point) and the greater benefit just might be that everyone is reminded a little more frequently where their paycheck comes from. What do you think?

Now, as for Comcast, I’m still waiting.

*****
A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

Today’s economic environment leaves no room for risk-taking in the talent-acquisition process.  Employers simply cannot afford the costs of re-hiring (estimated to be 2 to 3 times the annual salary of the position).  Conducting limited, perfunctory background checks (e.g., criminal records) is insufficient due diligence for employers, because even in cases of embezzlement, many cases are never pursued through the legal system.  The losses that result from hiring employees without the benefit of checking their references are realized at every level of the organization—from outright employee theft to lost productivity and damaged employee morale and engagement.   Checking references must no longer be limited to senior level positions.

Because employee loyalty is at an all-time low, employers must hire people who stand a greater chance of fully engaging with the organization’s values, style, and strategies.  Will that frontline supervisor be able to effectively deal with the pressures of his/her job?  Will s/he be able to interact with the entry-level staff as well as his/her superiors?  Does s/he have the courage that your organization and the position requires?  History and past performance are still considered strong indicators of future performance, and it is only through a thorough and robust reference-checking process than an employer can gain insight into the critical aspects of what a candidate will bring to their organization.

The thought that references won’t talk is a myth.  When the right reference is contacted, and credibility is quickly established, references will participate in a conversation.  Interviewing references effectively is an art that is supported by clear processes.

Tips to Effective Reference Checks:

1. Maintain control over the references that are called.  YOU—the employer, not the candidate—determines who will be called.  Ask each candidate to provide information for his/her last supervisor or manager at each prior position, as well as their current contact information.  Today’s research tools make it possible for candidates who really want to work for you to locate these individuals.
2. Request email addresses for the references so the conversation can be scheduled in advance and the reference can allow ample time.  (At RefCheck^® it’s not uncommon to spend 20 to 45 minutes with a reference.)
3. Assign the reference-checking process to professional-level staff, so the reference can be engaged in a true conversation.  Particularly at the senior levels, references want to speak with their equals.
4. Do not adhere to a rigid Q&A format, which leads to limited responses.
5. Thoroughly document the conversation. Take notes as the conversation takes place and review the notes for completion at the conclusion.

Ms. Corkerton can be reached at:

P: 614-777-8844, ext. 12

E: zcorkerton@refcheck.com

Ironically, exactly 24 hours after the incident, I recounted it in a speech to a group of 150 HR professionals in Ohio. Most laughed and applauded as if they could well understand and perhaps associate with the desperate act. Hmm.

There is something else going on here, though that’s not as funny. With employment relationships devolving to the point of being totally transactional, trust and loyalty at their nadir, and a jobless economic recovery handcuffing people to jobs they stopped loving a long time ago, we can be virtually assured of decreasing worker engagement and productivity. That doesn’t bode well for an economy that’s still trying to climb out of a ditch.

Here’s a thought… Let’s enjoy the Steven Slater moment and get a few good laughs from it. We need them. Then, for the sake of the health (survival?) of our own businesses, let’s go to work seeking to identify those things in our operating environments that keep our people from doing their best work and make them just as crazy.

*****
A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

While driving on I-75 en route to the ATL, a route that Ms. Sherrod knows well, what I heard on the radio caused me to flash back to a former life as an HR executive at FedEx.  Superimposing the Sherrod affair onto my own career, I could envision myself in the office of FedEx founder and chairman, Fred Smith, along with the operational counterpart to Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack. Even more vividly, I can hear Mr. Smith asking the operating exec, “What were you thinking?” and then, turning to me, “and where the hell were you?”  As one who gives his executives considerable operating latitude, pays them well, and generously funds HR initiatives, he’s well within reason to ask those questions, and to expect good answers. That is no less the case with our senior public servants, and so, I hope that Secretary Vilsack and the head of his agency’s HR function have had a trip to the White House, and been given the opportunity to answer those same questions.

It’s not hard to see how the Sherrod affair came to be. The obvious political maneuverings notwithstanding, we live and work in a sound bite world where speed of thought, communication, and execution (often just execution) reign supreme. Doing it better often gets trumped by doing it faster, resulting in the occasional train wreck. It serves as a vivid reminder of the sound advice given us by our mothers in our youth, with reference to crossing the street: Stop. Look. Listen.

In recent years, most HR professionals have struggled with the objective of becoming more “strategic.” What they are really saying is that they are trying desperately to earn a seat at the table, and to remain relevant in a world where meeting this quarter’s numbers, or just surviving to tomorrow pretty well trumps any and all concern for things humanoid.

With respect to our HR friends, for whom I have profound admiration, and who do a thankless job, one of the ways that we earn (and keep) that seat at the table is by finding a way to keep our clients, folks like Secretary Vilsack, from shooting themselves in the foot. We do it by working as business partners with our management team, adding value, weighing in on difficult issues, doing our homework, and certainly by imposing a business-like process whenever someone’s livelihood is in the crosshairs. We do it each time, every time, whether we think the whole world (and Fox News) is watching, or no one is watching.

With respect to our operating exec friends, the HR profession has grown immeasurably in talent and capability (coinciding too neatly with the time I left the business). You would do well to seek their counsel and to involve them (meaningfully involve them) in all of your critical business decisions. In case of doubt, just take a few minutes and replay the video of Secretary Vilsack humbly apologizing on world-wide television to Ms. Sherrod. Play… rewind… play… rewind… play. Got it?

*****
A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

My first thought was, what on earth was this guy thinking when, rather than quietly reimburse the City for the personal messages, he opted to file suit on grounds of unlawful search?

My second thought was, and is, that, though the Court restricted its ruling to government employees using government-owned devices, the ruling will undoubtedly spill over and have a chilling affect on private enterprise as well, and not necessarily in the expected manner.

Employees have been extensively using employer-owned wireless devices and communications networks for better than a decade. During that time there has been something of an uneasy truce as we have each allowed the line between business and personal time/pursuits to blur. To an ever greater extent, workers (at all levels) have permitted more frequent invasion of what has traditionally been their private, off-duty, personal space. It is no longer unusual at all to have one’s off-duty time peppered with business related messages, queries, and conference calls. Once the sole realm of managers who ostensibly were being paid for such interruptions, today, workers at all levels and pay grades are involved. In turn, employers have seen, and largely acquiesced to a greater co-mingling of personal with professional activities in the workspace.

Though there has been (and always will be) some tension in this arrangement, if we (manager types) are not careful, the Court’s ruling could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, and disrupts what is otherwise a pretty good thing.

Some managers and organizations will use the Court’s ruling as an excuse to more aggressively police and restrict non-sanctioned use of company devices and networks. Doing so would be a mistake. How?

By and large, we have been the beneficiaries of this arrangement, where, within reason, we get free (yes) access to team members, regardless of whether they are technically on or off duty. In a world where speed of thought, response, and execution reigns supreme, this advantage is worth a lot to us. The very second that our workers decide to either turn the device off, or demand compensation for the time when it is turned on, thus making them accessible, we have lost a lot of ground. This is a decision that each of them can make at any time, quietly, and without notice. When you get down to it, we face a simple high school physics problem… There are more of them than us. This is no time to get stupid.

*****
A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

Meanwhile, in the states, 88-year-old Betty White has suddenly become more popular than at any other time in her long career, thanks to a Snickers candy bar commercial that aired during the 2010 Super Bowl, and culminating (so far) in last Saturday’s much-hyped hosting of “Saturday Night Live”.

Whether or not you find either or both of these octogenarians entertaining is beside the point of this blog post. Here are some things I think are the point:

• Both women are clearly talented. And clearly old.
• They’ve each garnered tremendous support from people whose hearts have been lightened not only by their respective performances, but by their willingness to step into (or back into, in Betty’s case) the spotlight. Janey’s singing, and her comments afterward (if you can understand them – I can – I’m married to a Scot) have evoked both laughter and tears (tears of support) from many. I can only imagine the number of times the phrase “you go, girl” has been uttered in the last few weeks, on both sides of the Atlantic.
• These two have highlighted the important realization that, though they’re of mature years, they’re not, to quote Monty Python, “dead yet”.

If you’re in a position to hire, or lead, employees, you’re undoubtedly noticing that the over-60-set is not, in fact, moving out of the way like so many were predicting they would not so long ago. You’re getting more applications from them, and you’re being challenged to lead, manage, and motivate them to work with all their Discretionary Effort. Some thoughts:

• Don’t underestimate older workers. They’re a force to be  reckoned with. And led, and encouraged, and developed. Yes, I said developed. Just as they’re not dead yet, they’re also not done growing and learning.
• Don’t stick them all in the same box. There’s as much diversity among them as there is in any generational cohort.
• Capitalize on what they bring to the job, that younger workers don’t. Experience, perspective, institutional history, and much more.
• Keep performance standards high. To do otherwise perpetrates an injustice on everyone – the older workers, younger workers, your customers, and your shareholders. Janey Cutler and Betty White have shown us they can keep up with the best of ‘em.

Richard Hadden (twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows) is a leadership speaker, author, and consultant who helps organizations improve their business results by creating a great place to work. He and Bill are the authors of the acclaimed business classic Contented Cows Give Better Milk, and the followup Contented Cows MOOve Faster. Learn more about them and their work at ContentedCows.com.

For decades, everyone pretty well understood the de facto standard to be that “work time was for work.” Translation – whatever took place during working hours on the employer’s premises/property, or when conducting business for the employer was expected to be work related, and that there were very few, if any, rights to privacy, or even ownership of one’s thoughts and ideas, if conceived at work. At the same time, one’s off duty hours were their own, and but for an infrequent, quick phone call, if you wanted to interrupt someone’s time off, you were expected to pay for it.

And then along came Jones, ‘er the cellphone, the laptop, globalization, always-on connectivity, and the expectation that workers of every stripe could be reached out to any time, anywhere. And reach out we did (and still do). Though unspoken, until now, the operating premise has been that is generally okay for workers to carry on personal business at work in an amount roughly equivalent to the degree that they are called upon to involve themselves in work activities during their “off hours.” It’s an uneasy truce, but a truce nevertheless.

To date, there have been only two lines in the sandbox: 1) That there should be no appreciable extra cost associated with the cross-over activities, and 2) That the law is still the law, and normal standards of decency still apply. In other words, whereas it’s probably alright to take a few minutes to order a new pair of shoes online at Zappos.com from your employer’s computer, it’s not okay to engage in online gambling or look at salacious images.

So where do we go?

As for the court case, my bet is that, despite a right-leaning bench, the Court will side with the cop, if only for the reason that employees were required to reimburse the city if they exceeded allowable text character limits.

More broadly speaking, I see organizations going in a couple of different directions. Some will undoubtedly take steps to further delineate via policy, what the rights and expectations are. Given the untrusting, transactional nature of the relationship in many workplaces, the new deal could bring about further unbundling of the relationship. In an increasing number of cases, the devices (phones, pagers, pda’s) will be owned by the worker while the voice/data plan will be reimbursed by the employer. With regard to the broader co-mingling of personal and business activities, some of these organizations will prescribe varying time limits that they and their employees can “bother one another” during the course of the day.

Realizing that it’s good for people to regularly unplug from their jobs, some organizations will take a step back and actually encourage workers to just turn the damned thing off when they’re at home and don’t want to be bothered, and instruct their bosses to leave them alone.

*****
A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

There is as much defense for these whack jobs as there is for Congress slipping student loan legislation into the health care bill, which is to say, none…zero…nada. I don’t care how bad the utility’s service is (it sometimes is), how outrageously high people’s bills are (they are), or how frustrated the customers may be. You can’t call up the electric company and threaten to come down there and drown their employees in the Saint Johns River.

HOWEVER… the fact that so many people have, in less than three months, crossed the line from righteous indignation to criminal behavior…is the predictable outcome of a flawed policy.

The Policy: if a customer asks to speak to a supervisor, that customer is told that a supervisor will call them back within 24 hours. In one of the recorded calls broadcast on TV, when the customer objected and demanded to speak to a supervisor immediately, he was told, “I’m sorry. There is no supervisor available.”

(buzzing sound) WRONG ANSWER!

Some pretty basic rules of management, leadership, and common sense are being violated here:
1. Customers don’t care about your policy. They want to be helped.
2. Good leaders, in well-run organizations avoid, whenever possible, putting employees in the direct line of fire of angry customers, especially with no backup. Putting employees – who had nothing to do with the boneheaded policy – on the front line, to suffer the slings and arrows of outraged customers – without reasonable support (hint: a 24-hour callback is not reasonable support) indicates a weakness in leadership. Did a group of JEA executives actually sit around a conference table and say, “Let’s not allow our reps to connect upset customers to a supervisor. That should make things better for everyone – our customers and our employees.” No. Instead they took what seemed, at the time, to be the easy way out. And now they have employees who pray their customers don’t find out where they live.
3. People – whether customers or employees – need a viable process for appealing legitimate complaints to a higher authority. Fail to provide a sympathetic ear, and, on the customer side, you get threats – occasionally rising to a criminal level. And on the employee side, you get unions. But that’s a subject for another day.

But, and this is a big but – they’ve got a bad credit score. So HR tells you no. You can’t hire them.

There are lots of good reasons not to hire someone. Usually – bad credit alone isn’t one of them. And yet, it’s become the reason du jour, in the eyes of many, to disqualify an otherwise highly qualified person to do a job they’re particularly well suited for. And it makes us wonder (although not for very long, really) if some employers might be taking undue advantage of the current imbalance in the labor supply/demand ratio.

A March 2 Associated Press article by Kathleen Miller says, “Sixty percent of employers recently surveyed by the Society for Human Resources Management [SHRM] said they run credit checks on at least some job applicants, compared with 42 percent in a somewhat similar survey in 2006.”

I get the arguments: People with money woes are more tempted to steal from their employer. Bad financial decisions mean bad judgment at work. (Try telling someone “You’ve made too many bad spouse choices, so we’re not hiring you.” See how far that gets you with the judge.) SHRM likes to point to a study by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners that found that the two most common red flags for employees who commit workplace fraud are 1. living beyond their means, and 2. having difficulty meeting financial obligations. Well, no duh. They needed a study to figure that out?

And the counter from the social humanitarian everybody-deserves-a-job bunch is “how can you get out of debt if no one will give you a job?” It’s as if they think employers are somehow obligated to put people on their payrolls to pay some social duty.

And employers who use the practice will point out that it’s perfectly legal (which it is, in most US states), and besides, you can’t run a credit check without the applicant’s permission. Yeah, right. Like the applicant who refuses permission has any hope of being hired.

The real problem with giving too much weight to a job applicant’s credit score is that, in too many cases, it’s simply a faulty filter. OK – I’m not a complete idiot. For most bank jobs, jobs in accounting and finance, those who handle money, C-level positions, and those with greater opportunity to commit fraud – employers have an obligation to be duly diligent in bettering their odds against would-be miscreants. But for the vast majority of jobs that fall outside that realm, credit score is no better a predictor of (honest) job success than are race, gender, marital status, religion, or national origin. And didn’t we outlaw that a long time ago?

Did somebody say outlaw?

Yep. As in so many cases, when organizations (or individuals) can’t be relied upon to behave like grown-ups on their own, the law steps in. Wisconsin, South Carolina, Oregon, and thirteen other states are currently considering bans on most pre-employment credit checks.

What to do?

Employers:

• Beware of using faulty filters…like credit checks, and other sieves that let can let bad hires in, and keep good ones out.
• Start looking at hiring quality for what it is: a competitive issue. These days, the company with the best talent wins. So what if the best talent went through a messy divorce that trashed her credit, or was eaten alive by medical bills from his child’s serious chronic illness? The one with the best talent still wins. This stuff’s too important to rely on arbitrary standards.
• Realize that hiring is one of the most important jobs any manager does. And one of the hardest. It may sound attractive to relegate the hard work of hiring to automated resume scanners, exams and assessments, and credit checks, but in the end, there’s no substitute for taking a hard look at the things that really matter, going eyeball-to-eyeball with the prospect, using judgment and your powers of discernment, and making a well-informed decision.
• If you do check credit, and find something of concern, on someone you think would be good in the job, give them a chance to explain. And then listen.

Applicants:

• As if you needed one more reason to maintain a clean credit record, this is one.
• Unless pre-employment credit checks are prohibited where you live, be prepared for the scrutiny. Just as you would if showing your home to a prospective buyer, tidy up your credit record before you put your career on the market.
• Know your credit score, and examine your credit record. If there’s an error, U.S. residents can visit the Federal Trade Commission’s website to learn step-by-step how to dispute and correct the error.
• This issue underscores the value of investing in networking, long before you may need it. Chances are, if the prospective employer has some history with you, or valued connection to you, your credit score may matter a whole lot less.

Happy hunting…on both sides.

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Richard Hadden (twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows) is a leadership speaker, author, and consultant who helps organizations improve their business results by creating a great place to work. He and Bill are the authors of the acclaimed business classic Contented Cows Give Better Milk, and the followup Contented Cows MOOve Faster.

For some perspective on the issue, I turned to someone who is not only knowledgeable on the subject, but is putting his time and money where his mouth is and trying to improve the situation. Matt Smith is President of The A Game, a school-to-work transition education firm. Their raison d’etre is to prepare (and certify) young people for what in many cases is their first real job. I invited Matt to comment on the subject, and his new business…

by Matt Smith

“Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice, and need.”
-Voltaire

Today, reading Voltaire is viewed as a bit old-fashioned. But then again, his view of work is getting to be old-fashioned, too. Where we once embraced work as the way people earned their place in society and admired those who climbed to the top, we’ve lately come to accept a world view in which those who manage to avoid work are the ones deserving of our admiration. Whether it’s reality TV, get-rich-quick schemes, or the lottery, we see more evidence of this shift of attitudes every day.

And nowhere has this been more obvious than in our young employees – those aged between 15 and 24. Their age group has come to be known for inconsistent performance, bad attitudes, and spotty attendance. And while there are exceptions to the rule, the simple truth is that most young people lack the work ethic that built the infrastructure they now reject.

And that begs the question, where do young people learn work ethic?  From parents, at school, in the backroom of your business?  Until now, the answer has been a resounding no.

There are literally thousands of skills needed to succeed in any given workplace, but only a few fundamental values that underlie those. And they are the same in any workplace – from that first paper route to working in the C-Suite. Values like attitude, attendance, appearance, ambition, acceptance, accountability, and appreciation. These are the foundation of The A Game, and they are what we teach young employees.

We’ve developed a number of different solutions to instill these values in young employees – because you don’t tell someone how to have values – you grow them through experience. By reaching out to classroom educators and top corporate trainers we have built systems to train in any environment, with the ultimate goal for young employees being that they earn their A Game Certification – proof that they possess the values needed to thrive in the workplace.

When young people thrive in the workplace, they are much more likely to grow into contented cows. But to get there, it’s incumbent upon us to start teaching Voltaire’s lesson about work again – even if we don’t plan on ever reading Candide.

Matt Smith (matt@theagame.com) is the President of The A Game, the national workplace initiative aimed at rebuilding the work ethic of America, one teen at a time. To learn more about the A Game, visit http://www.theagame.com or follow @TheAGame on Twitter.

USA Today quotes US Census Bureau Director Robert Groves (not to be confused with Defense Secy Robert Gates or Press Secy Robert Gibbs), as saying “The horrible recession has benefited us in an indirect way — our applicant pool contains a set of people with experience and background and training that is unprecedentedly rich”.

And so does yours… if you’re recruiting. And smart employers are ALWAYS recruiting, whether they’re hiring or not.

Here’s what those same smart employers know, are learning, or will learn from this:

• Just because there are more people in the pool doesn’t mean it’s easier to spot the best swimmers. In fact, in many cases, an oversupply of labor makes the job of hiring – and hiring well – even harder. Whenever you hear the words “inundated” and “applications” in the same sentence, you can be pretty sure of hearing the words “it was just a bad fit” being uttered not too far down the road.
• This is a case where hi-tech has to be paired with hi-touch. If you over-delegate this core leadership function to so-called smart selection systems, or to HR (whose job it is to help, not do it for you) – or if you don’t – you’ll get what you deserve.
• These days, making the right choice is as important as ever, because making the wrong choice shows up more than when the economy is on a firmer footing. Prosperity insulates against lots of bad decisions, including bad hires.
• Relying on (hoping for?) an “any port in a storm” mentality on the part of the unemployed workforce is a great way to miss the recovery. Pre-recovery is precisely the time you don’t want to foul the gene pool with “just anyone”. The best applicants will still discriminate with respect to employer reputation. Don’t let your competitors get the good ones – and they’re out there.

Richard Hadden (twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows) is a leadership speaker, author, and consultant who helps organizations improve their business results by creating a great place to work. He and Bill are the authors of the acclaimed business classic Contented Cows Give Better Milk, and the followup Contented Cows MOOve Faster. Learn more about them and their work at ContentedCows.com.

If these numbers don’t grab business leaders by the throat and compel them to take action, we don’t know what will. On top of a still-anemic economy and a near universal crisis of trust,  the very last thing employers need today is a bunch of disgruntled workers operating at well less than full power. But that’s exactly what most organizations are faced with.

Only 45% of workers in the CB survey say they’re satisfied in their jobs, down from 61% in 1987, the first year the study was conducted. Unlike the economy, this downward trend has been constant, not cyclical. Just like gravity, job satisfaction has gone one way in both good times and bad… down.

So, what’s worker satisfaction at your outfit? And what difference does it make?

Second question first. If you’ve been following us for any part of the last 12 years, you know our research shows that it makes a HUGE difference – to the bottom line. Contented Cows Give Better Milk. Period.

First question: What’s worker satisfaction like  where you work? How do you know? Have you done a survey lately to find out where your company stands with respect to employee satisfaction? If not, why not? If so, what did you do with what you learned from the survey? If you want some help with this, click here.

So, if workers are less satisfied at work now than they once were, what are the reasons? What’s the remedy?

In keeping with the last-in-first-out nature of this article, we’ll start with a remedy:

Manage Yourself First: People aren’t going to follow, let alone be energized and engaged by a leader who is confused, conflicted, or depressed. If you can manage yourself on your own, go to it. If not, find a coach or counselor to help.

Now to the reasons. We’ll offer two in this article, and what to do about them; then a few more next month.

Reason #1:

Author Daniel Pink probably hit on the kernel of rising dissatisfaction when he tweeted last week, “Meager money + Zero meaning = Record low job satisfaction.”  Increase the value of either of the two variables on the left side of Pink’s equation, and satisfaction is likely to rebound.

What to do about it

If you put any more money into the equation, do it in a way that serves to better differentiate (and reward) better performers. If more money’s not in the cards, or even if it is, leaders could substantially improve employee satisfaction and engagement, and thereby organizational results, by investing more meaning in people’s work. That takes two forms:

Make less meaningful work more meaningful.

• Take all the senseless BS out of people’s jobs – unnecessary tasks, paperwork, and CYA-related nonsense.
• When you ask someone to do something, use what they’ve done, or quit asking them to do it.
• Ask people to develop their own best ways to accomplish results, hold them accountable, and reward them for hitting targets.
• On the premise that we all need to see the needle move once in a while, give them some opportunities for quick wins.

Shine a light on the meaning that’s already there. This is the more likely problem, and it’s easier to fix.

• Create a clear line of sight between their work and real paying customers. Bank tellers need to know how processing transactions makes money for the bank. Most don’t have a clue. Dishwashers and prep cooks – how does their work make diners want to come back and spend more money? And every assistant administrator in a state community college needs a firm grasp of how the decisions they make impact the quality of education in their state.
• Here’s an assignment for today. Yes, today. Ask each team member to describe how their work is felt, ultimately, by the people who pay for what you do – customers, clients, patients, taxpayers, students, whatever you call them – the people without whom the organization would not exist. If they can’t do it, see the above bullet point.

Reason #2:

While some leaders run around telling people they’re “empowered” (gag), sadly, most of us are actually micromanaging people into less and less satisfaction.

One way to start doing something about that:

Build in flexibility. If at all possible, let go of your concern with when people show up to do their work, and what they’re doing every minute they’re on the premises. Trust us. No one ever said “I hate my job. It gives me too much control over my life.” This one will get you MAJOR satisfaction points, if you manage it well.

If work times must, by the nature of your business, coincide with customers’ and/or co-workers’ patterns, then ask your workforce to figure out a way to meet the needs of the business while providing people with maximum flexibility.

In fields where customer coverage and colleague coordination matters less, incent people to accomplish results, not punch a clock, real or imaginary. If you employ adults, treat them as such. Hold them accountable – really accountable – for excellent results, and let them figure out the best way to manage their schedules while meeting business needs. If you’ve hired the right people, they’ll LOVE their jobs.

Next month, we’ll look at a few more reasons people aren’t feeling the job love as much these days, and some remedies for each.

Til then, Godspeed.

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A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

Tomorrow (Tuesday December 15th) at 2:30pm EST (GMT -5), we’ll be doing a live webinar with many of the guests in the series including:

• Josh Bersin
• Kris Dunn
• David Creelman
• Lance Haun
• Ed Lawler
• Libby Sartain
• and me

You can register for the webinar here. Join us, and let’s stir things up a little!

Richard Hadden (twitter at http://twitter.com/rehadden) is a leadership speaker, author, and consultant who helps organizations improve their business results by creating a great place to work. He and Bill are the authors of the new book Contented Cows MOOve Faster, as well as the acclaimed business classic Contented Cows Give Better Milk. Learn more about them and their work at ContentedCows.com.

I heard from an old friend Thursday. He was a tennis partner and co-worker from my ADP days, and one of the few people to stand up with me when I married Mrs. Starbucks, which qualifies him on both counts (being old AND a friend). After catching up, he told me about his company, CFO Resources and what they do. Their primary service is to help employers improve cash flow and shareholder returns by reducing federal/state income tax liability.

They do this via a user-friendly process to help employers capture Work Opportunity Tax Credits (“WOTC”) associated with their normal hiring activity.  Employers are entitled to federal income tax credits if they hire and retain individuals from targeted groups as defined by DOL and the IRS. In a nutshell, his firm processes the paperwork, files it on the employer’s behalf, monitors the process, and only gets paid as a function of the employer getting a credit.

I’m told that the credits can range from $300 to $9000 per individual. Unless you’ve got money to throw away, it would be a good idea to investigate Work Opportunity Tax Credits, and unless you just happen to enjoy dealing directly with government bureaucracies, you may want to contact Ken Brice at CFOResources. (KenBrice@CFOResources.com)

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A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

As relates to yesterday’s post, One Button, Under Scrutiny at Home Depot, Bill, whose pedigree in HR goes back 35 years, pointed out, constructively, that in this case, HD really had no choice but to tell Trevor he couldn’t wear his button (although there’s still the problem with the tacit approval of it for more than a year before that, but that only support’s Bill’s point.)

Quoting Bill, “HD’s position is likely based on a ‘no solicitation policy’ that was enacted specifically to keep employees from wearing pro-union buttons/pins during a representation election campaign. The sad reality from a legal perspective is that, if you let people wear a ‘1 Nation Under God’ button, you lose the ability to prevent them from wearing a ‘Vote Teamsters’ button.”

Bill’s right, especially the “sad reality” part. It’s kind of like the story of Zachary Christie, the 6-year-old Newark, Delaware student who was nearly suspended for 45 days for innocently bringing a Boy Scout camping implement to school. Only after a public hue and cry about the absurdity of the district’s zero-tolerance policy did administrators decide that a more reasoned approach was probably more helpful.

You and I can’t do much to change big corporate or government policies, and in some cases, these policies are the unfortunately necessary by-product of the times we’re living in. But – we can sure do something about our own policies, rules, judgments, and decisions. My November resolution is to put a little more thought into the application of some of my own rules – at home and at work – in other words, to do a better job of exercising judgment and discretion, rather than just blindly applying the rules. Want to join me?

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Richard Hadden (twitter at http://twitter.com/rehadden) is a leadership speaker, author, and consultant who helps organizations improve their business results by creating a great place to work. He and Bill are the authors of the new book Contented Cows MOOve Faster, as well as the acclaimed business classic Contented Cows Give Better Milk. Learn more about them and their work at ContentedCows.com.

There is a veritable minefield of issues here. Everyone from HR types to the ACLU to advocates of religious freedom have weighed in on it. HR points out that Trevor’s button is a clear violation of a clearly documented and reasonable policy; the ACLU says Home Depot’s right to specify employee attire standards have been trampled on (isn’t it refreshing to hear the ACLU stand up for the big guy?); and religious advocates claim religious discrimination.

Home Depot (along with every other employer) certainly has the right to ban non-company-issue buttons from employee clothing. Perfectly reasonable. Apparently his managers gave him a couple of options, including that of wearing another patriotic, but non-religious button blessed by the big orange HQ in Atlanta. They gave him ample opportunity to keep his job. Trevor was warned. He chose not to comply. Sounds like insubordination to me.

So, this HR author and speaker says Home Depot was completely within its rights to terminate Trevor.

And utterly, totally stupid.

Just like the company Bill wrote about in this blog last week, Home Depot has a LOT bigger fish to fry than what its few remaining customer service employees are wearing on their ragged orange aprons. Like making their few remaining customers feel valued, like they did once upon a time, along with a host of other issues more strategic in nature than employees’ uniform accessories.

Nevermind the questionable HR practices – supposedly Trevor had worn the button for more than a year before management raised an objection – and that’ll make the company’s position harder to defend – let’s look at the impact of this decision on HD’s business:

What if nobody had said anything and Trevor went on wearing his button and working at Home Depot?  Some customers would have been warmed by the button’s message; some would have been offended; many wouldn’t have noticed, or had any reaction if they had.  It almost certainly had more of a positive effect than a negative one. Does anyone really think that even one person would have stopped shopping at Home Depot because they saw Trevor wearing his button? Had management exercised a little wisdom, a little leadership, and kept “the main thing the main thing”, no one outside the store would have known about it, I wouldn’t be blogging about it, and it wouldn’t have been all over the news.

But in fact, they did ban the button. Trevor hired a lawyer, who alerted the press, and Trevor got on local and national TV. Lots (certainly thousands, maybe more than that) of people will feel that Home Depot is anti-God (it probably isn’t), and many will stop shopping there, some until they get over it, and others indefinitely. Meanwhile, no one’s going to start shopping at Home Depot, or buy more stuff there just because of the ban.

And as Jay Leno pointed out, the name of God is invoked all the time in Home Depot. “For God’s sake, isn’t there anybody working here who can help me find something?!?!”

There’s no evidence that anyone was complaining about Trevor’s button. It’s not likely the company would have had to spend a lot of money in legal fees had Trevor carried on wearing the button and working at Home Depot. But it will now.

So, the net effect on Home Depot’s business (such as it is) is negative. Trevor got his 15 minutes of fame, and will probably get more job offers than he can shake a broomstick at.

Way to go, Home Depot. I’m glad I sold my stock when I did.

I wonder if perhaps we should adopt a color-coded “national civility index” to match the TSA’s threat meter. Think of the fun we could have with that. It would give tennis players and politicians alike something to shoot for. In the meantime, something more important is at stake, the afterwords from these outbursts – the eh hmm ‘apologies’.

Sadly, the ‘apologies’ that accompany these episodes seldom pass the smell test for authenticity. “Party leaders told me to call and say I was sorry” said one apologist. “I apologize to anyone who may have been offended” said another, whose offense involved getting off two f-bombs while describing what she would like to do with a tennis ball. Another issued an apology only after having twice denied the misbehavior. One had his agent issue an apology to his offended peeps. If anything is more offensive than the bad behavior, it just might be the apologies themselves.

This trend is bothersome not just because of its unpleasantness, but because in a lot of cases, impressionable children and young adults are viewing this as a template for acceptable behavior. The payoff isn’t pretty. In a recent survey of teens by the Josephson Institute, 64% admitted cheating on tests, 30% admitted stealing something from a store, 83% copped to lying about something significant to their parents, and, drumroll please… 93% said that they were okay with their own values. The notion that you can get away with pretty much anything as long as you mumble something loosely construed to be an apology puts us way down a slippery slope.

I have gained some experience at making apologies. It’s nothing to brag about, just a by-product of screwing up on a pretty regular basis, and getting more practice. And more importantly, because I had parents who took the hard road and made certain that I got this lesson right. One summer when I was a kid, I subbed for a friend on his paper route. Everything was fine until early one Sunday morning when I launched a tightly rolled Charleston Daily Mail through two layers of glass in a customer’s front door. I quickly learned from my parents that “service recovery” consisted of more than a simple apology. At a reasonable hour when the homeowner was likely to be up and wanting his newspaper, my dad made sure that I returned to the scene to sweep up the broken glass, replace the original paper, and make a sincere apology. Then, I got the chance to “make it right” by paying for the installation of replacement glass in the storm door. As I recall, that wiped out my profits for the month, but left me with a valuable life lesson. Thanks, Dad.

Recovering from one’s mistakes isn’t just the right thing to do. On both a personal and institutional level, it’s also good for business. I was reminded of this recently by a client whose company had shipped some off-spec product to their customers. He remarked that several customers had actually called to commend them for their prompt and thorough handling of the matter. In each case, the customers expressed appreciation that his team had reacted quickly, apologized in person, and then taken action guided not by what was legally required, but what was right. Hmm.

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A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

Amen! Corporations large and small have never never been especially good at managing the various touchpoints in their recruitment processes. Part of that stems from arrogance (We’ve got the job, and you want it). Some of it is due to the fact that applicants enter the corporate universe from hundreds of different sources, each having its own agenda, priorities, and methods for tracking (or not) the event. One thing is for sure – Nobody involved in this chain has a sense of urgency which matches that of either the applicant or the hiring manager.

Rather than grow ever more frustrated and wonder what kind of idiots are managing the recruiting process, smart job candidates make it their business to narrow the odds by:

1. Using multiple channels to enter the organization’s recruiting stream
2. Introducing those channel sources to one another, and
3. Being a remarkable (in a positive way) candidate thru preparation and attitude

I’m reminded me of a woman who many years ago applied for a job at my alma mater, FedEx. In addition to sending a resume to our corporate recruiting office, she forwarded a separate copy to the CEO, along with a brand new size 7 Jimmy Choo dress shoe, and a note that she would do anything to get her foot in the door. It worked.

If you’re on the job hunting side of this equation, be resourceful, keep your wits about you, remember your manners, and above all, do your homework. If you’re on the other side of the fence, try to make your system a little more user-friendly, efficient, and remember that today’s job applicant just might be tomorrow’s customer.

*****

A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

Upon approaching the hotel’s front desk to check in Monday afternoon, I found myself waiting while both front desk employees completed ‘business sounding’ phone conversations. The check-in process  then proceeded smoothly until the person checking me in found it necessary to stop what she was doing and answer another phone call. My recollection is that it was probably a full 60 – 90 seconds before her attention was again focused on completing the check-in process. As a clear signal that my experience was no aberration, the next morning, the process repeated as my partners checked in.

Upon leaving town, we got another dose of the same, this time at the airport. My partners went into an airline club room and one of them asked about changing her flight to something that was at 4-something. The ticketing agent in the club, who was on the phone the whole time, held her hand out for Meredith’s boarding pass, said “That’ll be $50″, and processed the change. They both commented on the agent’s lack of attentiveness.

The two then sat in the club until it was time for Meredith to board her new flight. Upon arriving at the gate, she discovered that the agent had given her a boarding pass for a flight to IND, not IAD, and that the IAD flight (her intended destination) had already departed.

In fairness, both organizations are known for providing some of the better service within their industries, and indeed, both recovered nicely in these incidents. That said, it didn’t need to happen.

Actually, my concern in these cases isn’t so much that a couple of customers were temporarily inconvenienced. Rather, it’s that, by virtue of some poor systems planning, cutting corners, or bad training perhaps, these two companies are regularly putting front-line employees in a position to fail with their customers. Good service is difficult enough to deliver these days. It is impossible to do it with customer-facing employees who realize that they can’t win, ergo they stop trying to.

*****

A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

Health care legislation – The odds are that some kind of health care bill will soon be signed into law. While this is generally a good thing, the devil they say is in the details. Regardless, it seems quite likely that health insurance in some form will be made available to all (most), without prejudice on the basis of pre-existing conditions. One of the unintended consequences of this is that lots of people, millions perhaps, who have stayed in jobs they really don’t like because of the difficulty in replacing their health coverage will bolt for greener pastures when that is remedied.

Economic improvement – By even the most pessimistic of projections, the current recession should wind down sometime in the next year. Here again, as conditions change, a lot of workers who have been biding their time (and biting their tongues) will find it considerably easier to move on to greener pastures.

“EFCA lite” – Though it now appears that the so called “Employee Free Choice Act”  legislation will not be passed in its current configuration, my bet is that congress will succumb to pressure and give unions something that makes the organizing process considerably easier, a change that is justifiably not especially welcomed by the business community.

Taken together or independently, the message for employers couldn’t be clearer. Despite the fact that we currently enjoy an “employer’s market”, we would do well to take steps now to preserve, and where possible enhance our reputations as leaders, employers, and business people. How?

A great place, no, a necessary place to start is in taking steps to rekindle trust in ourselves and our organizations. In our recently completed “Post-AIG Leadership Survey” 95% of the 286 mostly management level respondents indicated that rebuilding trust (internally and externally) is a Significant/Very Significant factor in successfully emerging from the current business and economic crisis.

If nothing else, leadership is the earned consent of followers, consent that begins with the trust that, as leaders, we are who we say we are, and that even in the absence of guidelines, we will do what is right. Make no mistake, that faith has been broken, not bent, and either by our own actions or by presumed association, our institutions and leaders, each of us, has to some degree been painted with the same brush of suspicion.

The implication for those of us who would lead others is that we must re-earn that trust, and in a larger sense, re-qualify for duty. It doesn’t matter whether you were busily approving bushels of crazy, shady loans at Countrywide, or diligently minding your p’s and q’s as an honest, hard working floor manager at Claim Jumper Restaurants, or a Delta Air Lines in-flight leader. We all bear the burden. As Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo put it recently, “Corporate America, after the immediate financial crisis, has now found itself thrown into a far more corrosive and durable crisis – a crisis of trust. The victims of recession may not differentiate between guilty and innocent parties – everyone in corporate America could take a share of the blame, deserved or not.”

Let’s get going!

*****

A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows