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Honesty is the Best Employee Relations Policy
By Bill Catlette and Richard Hadden
You'd be surprised. Your employees will forgive you a host of sins. They'll suffer stupidity, bad forecasting, errors in judgment, ergonomically incorrect furniture, and even downright ineptitude. They know that none of us is perfect and that despite our best efforts, we all sometimes make mistakes.
What they won't tolerate is lying.
And yet, few things are more prevalent in the employment arena, or more poisonous, than insincerities, half-truths, insidious omissions, and yes, just plain lies.
If you don't believe me, go look at your company's annual report. Somewhere in the first few pages will be a picture of a smiling employee (or an actor portraying one) with the caption “Our employees are our most valuable asset."
One reason the truly great companies find themselves atop the summit of success year after year is that they go to great lengths to avoid lying, especially to their employees. They don't lay out a bunch of "Dilbert-type" platitudes which they either can't or don't intend to live up to.
In some companies (maybe even yours), the lying starts before the employee is even on the payroll. Witness this dialogue that takes place daily from coast to coast.
Applicant: [with several options, looking for the best employer] So what's it like working around here?
Manager: [desperate to fill positions] It's a great place to work...it's almost like family. [Yeah, the dysfunctional sort.]
Applicant: How will I learn the job?
Manager: Oh, we've got an extensive orientation and training program. [Right, it probably lasts all morning.]
Applicant: What are the big bosses like?
Manager: They're very caring people. They really believe in putting our employees ahead of management. [What he means is that when it comes to layoffs, the employees are the first to go...ahead of management.]
But it doesn't stop there. How open and honest are you with the financial condition of your company?
Some managers and business owners (mainly those with something to hide) feel the company's condition is none of their employees' business. But making it their business is the whole point. Without accurate information about where the ship is headed, your crew can't possibly help steer you on the right course.
Jack Stack, who brought diesel engine maker Springfield Remanufacturing back from the brink of disaster, is a pioneer in ``Open Book Management". At Missouri-based Springfield, any employee who wants to know has access to the most intimate financial details on the business. According to CEO Stack, ``When you show people the big picture, you define winning."
When Rollin King founded Southwest Airlines in the 1970's, he adopted a philosophy, in his words, ``that we wouldn't hide anything, not any of our problems, from the employees". And we see the same unquestioned forthrightness today. When Southwest had the first accident in its history, a non-fatal bad landing in Burbank in March, 2000, CEO Herb Kelleher stunned NBC's Today Show host Katie Couric during the morning-after interview. He answered all of her questions honestly and completely, without insulting her or her audience with less than the truth. Accustomed to the usual posturing and pablum from corporate PR, poor Katie didn't know quite how to respond.
Good leaders make it a point to tell employees the truth, even when (and especially when) it hurts. As Dennis LeStrange, formerly of IKON Office Solutions put it, ``People need to hear the bad news directly, from the person who made that decision, rather than read it in a memo; and they deserve to hear it early."
It was a mixture of good news and bad when America Online decided to keep its Jacksonville operations center in Florida's most populous city, but to relocate from existing facilities on the city's northside to new digs far away on the sprawling southside. All 1,600 current employees will have jobs in the new location, if they like. Because of distance and traffic, not all will make the move. What impressed me was that the employees were all told first, in a meeting, before the press, before the public.
One of management's favorite places to lie is on performance reviews.
Seeking to avoid the shackles imposed by unions and our judicial system over the past decades, American industry--largely at the urging of human resource practitioners and labor attorneys--has adopted an overly conservative (some might call it "mealy-mouthed") approach to dealing with employee performance issues. The atmosphere of caution is so pervasive, in fact, that in the course of tip-toeing around possible charges of discrimination, favoritism, wrongful discharge, and the like, managers have in many cases completely lost sight of the mission at hand, namely fixing performance errors! And yet we wonder why it's so difficult to improve things like quality and productivity, and why people get so upset with us when we finally do tell them there's a problem with their performance.
We consulted for a time with a 40,000-employee company that had terminated 986 people in an 18-month period, for doing a crummy job. Incredibly, only three of the performance reviews dutifully conducted on the group in the six months immediately preceding their termination bore any evidence of poor performance. In fact, roughly two-thirds had received merit increases shortly before being shown the door. Before you fall out of your chair in disbelief, I submit this is probably more the rule than the exception. In fact, it's probably going on right now in your company...go find out!
When it comes to communicating with your workforce, PR should take a distant back seat to honesty. If your company is a tough place to work, don't apologize for it - say so, and be very explicit in explaining why and how. If your business is in trouble, say so. And for Pete's sake, if an employee is doing a lousy job, say so. That's what managers get paid for!
When legendary football coach Don Shula was asked what he'd like to be remembered for, it wasn't for the makeover of the floundering Miami Dolphins, or even his record as the NFL's winningest coach. When asked what he wanted to be remembered for, Don Shula said, ``That I didn't lie to anyone."
What do you want to be remembered for?
Please print the following attribution for this article: Bill Catlette and Richard Hadden, co-authors of Contented Cows Give Better Milk, help clients clobber the competition by having a focused, fired up, and capably led workforce. They deliver powerful conference keynotes and leadership training. They can be reached at 800-940-7006 (+1-904-720-0870 from outside North America) or www.ContentedCows.com.