There is a particular, awful feeling you get working in a company
that is sinking. You can tell the minute you walk in the door that the
energy is off. If you pay attention to the vibe you get on a job
interview, you’ll know when a company is broken. People don’t look you
in the eye. No one wants to be there, but you might take the job
regardless if you’re out of other options.
You can tell when an organization’s culture is busted. The signs are there, if you’re paying attention to the air quality in the room. Job interviews in broken companies vacillate between the message “You’d be lucky if we hired you” and “Please take this job,” because misery loves company. Sometimes interviewers apologize for the brokenness of the joint while encouraging you to work there anyway. Sometimes the salaries in sinking organizations are appalling. Sometimes they’re suspiciously high, because money is the only way the company can hang onto people.
I don’t blame you if you take a job in a broken company, because we all have to live. I hope that if you do, you keep your job search going. You can take another job a week or a month later. You can leave the short-term stint off your resume entirely. Don’t settle into a broken culture, whatever you do. Keep your job search going at full steam when you know you’re planning to be a short-timer in a downward-spiraling place.
What kills a company? Incompetence and fear are the two culprits, and they always work hand in hand. Sub-par leadership is afraid to hire people who could make a positive impact, for fear of being shown up or not being the smartest people in the room.
The mediocrity cascades downhill until every supervisor and team lead position is filled by a rhesus monkey and good people start flying out the door. You can spot a dying company very quickly by reading its Employee Handbook, so if you’re on the interview trail, be sure and ask for a copy of the handbook before you get to the job offer stage.
If they won’t hand over a copy, there’s your signal from the gods! Get out of Dodge at that moment and find a place where they get you, and therefore deserve you.
Here are nine HR policies rooted in fear and guaranteed to drive smart and capable people into the arms of competitors. Are any of these talent-repelling policies in place at your employer? If so, leave copies of this article lying around and pin one of them to the bulletin board nearest to HR! You won’t win the talent wars by treating people like children — but that should go without saying.
Nine HR Policies That Drive Good People Away
‘Chain Gang’ Time Off Policies
Time-off policies for salaried employees are easy. I was an HR chief for decades, and saw the the direct correlation between time off policies that assume your employees are adults and 110% effort from the team. For your salaried folks, the best policy is “We will pay you on every payday, and you give your best and come to work unless you can’t.” You don’t need to track one- and two-hour absences and tote them up in columns called Personal Time and Sick Leave. You only need to track vacation (in the U.S.) because the company is liable for unpaid vacation time. You need to know when a person is using Family Medical Leave Act time off. That’s it. Otherwise, you can keep paying your employees and expecting them to show up, and they will not let you down. After all, you hired them, right? Don’t you trust yourself to hire adults?
You’ll need a more detailed attendance policy for hourly and non-exempt employees, but your creative HR team can figure out ways to treat those employees like the professionals they are, as well. Attendance policy development is not rocket science, unless fearful weenies get hold of the project and nickel-and-dime it to death.
No Latitude Policies
Talent-aware employers give their employees room to move, to make decisions and come up with great ideas. Fearful zombie companies quail in fear at the thought of an employee having an independent thought, much less acting on it. When my brother worked for a major chip maker, he got called on the carpet one time for assembling in a conference room with four other guys prior to traveling to a remote location to check on a testing center. Some blowhard manager walked into the conference room and said “Who called this meeting? I don’t see anybody here at a level to authorize a meeting!” That’s a broken company. Policies that require three signatures to make the smallest move will send your best employees packing.
Stack Ranking
Stack ranking, also called forced ranking, is a loathsome practice whereby managers are forced to list their employees in best-to-worst order, as though human beings could be boiled down to one dimension (awesomeness?) and measured against one another like pieces of lumber. This was a popular practice in the Chainsaw Dunlap days. Any organization still hanging on to this turkey HR practice is headed straight downhill. If you’re working for them, bail! If you’re holding stock in a company like this, dump it!
Stealing Miles
It’s always a good idea to save money, but not at the expense of your own employees. When your sales reps and other staff members stand in airport lines, undergo TSA indignities and indulge in those delicious little bags of airline peanuts, they’re earning the frequent flyer miles they accrue. Stealing your employees’ airline miles is the mark of a penny-wise and pound-foolish organization. If you value your employees’ personal time so little that you consider their lost evenings, weekends and other travel hours worthless, you don’t deserve to have them on your team.
Grandma Died? Prove It
HR policies are like bedbugs — once they get a foothold, it’s hard to get rid of them. Sometime in the 1990s it became popular to require your employees to bring in a funeral notice in order to get a few days of paid bereavement leave when a family member passed on. That’s about as low as you can get. If you don’t trust yourself not to hire people who will invent relatives and kill them off for a few days’ pay, you can’t call yourself a leader. When you’ve got an employee in personal distress due to a family member’s death, don’t add insult to injury by requiring them to prove it. This is a shameful practice that will drive any self-respecting employee straight to your competitors, and you will have only yourself to blame.
No References
“So if I understand correctly, I can come and work here, do a great job for twenty years, and then leave — and no one here will give me a reference?” That’s right — lots of large organizations simply won’t allow their managers to vouch for former employees. Why is that? They don’t trust their managers to give ‘safe’ references that will avoid a third-party defamation claim. Can you imagine trusting your managers to run their departments and not trusting them to give out references on former employees? Run away from an organization like this, and if your vendors subscribe to the no-references philosophy, find another vendor who believes in human integrity. Don’t your customers deserve that much?
Bell Curve Performance Reviews
Bell curve performance reviews are programs that allot a fixed number of slots to managers when they review their employees once per year. Only twenty percent of the team can be Excellent, Twenty percent can be Very Good, and so on. Twenty percent of the team must be found to be bad employees, worthy of termination. Why on earth would a leadership team want twenty percent of its employees to do a bad job? Fear is in the mix again. They don’t trust their managers. They fear that managers will be ‘easy graders’ just because it’s hard to give constructive feedback. If you don’t trust yourself to hire great managers and set them free, why do you trust yourself to lead?
Social Media Clampdown
It is prudent and appropriate to teach employees how to use Facebook, LinkedIn LNKD +0.75% and other social media tools with grace and dignity. It is ridiculous to shut down the use of these tools altogether as many organizations have done. In effect, these weenie companies are saying “We can have an online presence, but you can’t.” Run away from employers like that. You need to work among people who can grow your flame, not snuff it out!
Anti-Moonlighting Rule
The last horrendous HR practice on our list is the one that prohibits team members from holding outside employment of any kind. It is reasonable to expect your employees not to compete against you on their off hours. But lots of employers forbid holding a second job of any kind, from spinning disks at weddings to bartending on Friday nights. You are your own person. Insist on employment that lets you put as many oars in the water as you like — after all, it’s not like your employer is guaranteeing your income for any period of time!
This heavy-handed rule is a huge red flag that tells you an organization doesn’t trust the very people it relies on to delight customers and shareholders. Talk them into ditching the anti-moonlighting policy, or start looking for your next job. You deserve to work among people who treat you like the professional you are. They are out there — and the sooner you give a talent-repelling, undeserving organization the boot, the sooner you’ll find them!
You can tell when an organization’s culture is busted. The signs are there, if you’re paying attention to the air quality in the room. Job interviews in broken companies vacillate between the message “You’d be lucky if we hired you” and “Please take this job,” because misery loves company. Sometimes interviewers apologize for the brokenness of the joint while encouraging you to work there anyway. Sometimes the salaries in sinking organizations are appalling. Sometimes they’re suspiciously high, because money is the only way the company can hang onto people.
I don’t blame you if you take a job in a broken company, because we all have to live. I hope that if you do, you keep your job search going. You can take another job a week or a month later. You can leave the short-term stint off your resume entirely. Don’t settle into a broken culture, whatever you do. Keep your job search going at full steam when you know you’re planning to be a short-timer in a downward-spiraling place.
What kills a company? Incompetence and fear are the two culprits, and they always work hand in hand. Sub-par leadership is afraid to hire people who could make a positive impact, for fear of being shown up or not being the smartest people in the room.
The mediocrity cascades downhill until every supervisor and team lead position is filled by a rhesus monkey and good people start flying out the door. You can spot a dying company very quickly by reading its Employee Handbook, so if you’re on the interview trail, be sure and ask for a copy of the handbook before you get to the job offer stage.
If they won’t hand over a copy, there’s your signal from the gods! Get out of Dodge at that moment and find a place where they get you, and therefore deserve you.
Here are nine HR policies rooted in fear and guaranteed to drive smart and capable people into the arms of competitors. Are any of these talent-repelling policies in place at your employer? If so, leave copies of this article lying around and pin one of them to the bulletin board nearest to HR! You won’t win the talent wars by treating people like children — but that should go without saying.
Nine HR Policies That Drive Good People Away
‘Chain Gang’ Time Off Policies
Time-off policies for salaried employees are easy. I was an HR chief for decades, and saw the the direct correlation between time off policies that assume your employees are adults and 110% effort from the team. For your salaried folks, the best policy is “We will pay you on every payday, and you give your best and come to work unless you can’t.” You don’t need to track one- and two-hour absences and tote them up in columns called Personal Time and Sick Leave. You only need to track vacation (in the U.S.) because the company is liable for unpaid vacation time. You need to know when a person is using Family Medical Leave Act time off. That’s it. Otherwise, you can keep paying your employees and expecting them to show up, and they will not let you down. After all, you hired them, right? Don’t you trust yourself to hire adults?
You’ll need a more detailed attendance policy for hourly and non-exempt employees, but your creative HR team can figure out ways to treat those employees like the professionals they are, as well. Attendance policy development is not rocket science, unless fearful weenies get hold of the project and nickel-and-dime it to death.
No Latitude Policies
Talent-aware employers give their employees room to move, to make decisions and come up with great ideas. Fearful zombie companies quail in fear at the thought of an employee having an independent thought, much less acting on it. When my brother worked for a major chip maker, he got called on the carpet one time for assembling in a conference room with four other guys prior to traveling to a remote location to check on a testing center. Some blowhard manager walked into the conference room and said “Who called this meeting? I don’t see anybody here at a level to authorize a meeting!” That’s a broken company. Policies that require three signatures to make the smallest move will send your best employees packing.
Stack Ranking
Stack ranking, also called forced ranking, is a loathsome practice whereby managers are forced to list their employees in best-to-worst order, as though human beings could be boiled down to one dimension (awesomeness?) and measured against one another like pieces of lumber. This was a popular practice in the Chainsaw Dunlap days. Any organization still hanging on to this turkey HR practice is headed straight downhill. If you’re working for them, bail! If you’re holding stock in a company like this, dump it!
Stealing Miles
It’s always a good idea to save money, but not at the expense of your own employees. When your sales reps and other staff members stand in airport lines, undergo TSA indignities and indulge in those delicious little bags of airline peanuts, they’re earning the frequent flyer miles they accrue. Stealing your employees’ airline miles is the mark of a penny-wise and pound-foolish organization. If you value your employees’ personal time so little that you consider their lost evenings, weekends and other travel hours worthless, you don’t deserve to have them on your team.
Grandma Died? Prove It
HR policies are like bedbugs — once they get a foothold, it’s hard to get rid of them. Sometime in the 1990s it became popular to require your employees to bring in a funeral notice in order to get a few days of paid bereavement leave when a family member passed on. That’s about as low as you can get. If you don’t trust yourself not to hire people who will invent relatives and kill them off for a few days’ pay, you can’t call yourself a leader. When you’ve got an employee in personal distress due to a family member’s death, don’t add insult to injury by requiring them to prove it. This is a shameful practice that will drive any self-respecting employee straight to your competitors, and you will have only yourself to blame.
No References
“So if I understand correctly, I can come and work here, do a great job for twenty years, and then leave — and no one here will give me a reference?” That’s right — lots of large organizations simply won’t allow their managers to vouch for former employees. Why is that? They don’t trust their managers to give ‘safe’ references that will avoid a third-party defamation claim. Can you imagine trusting your managers to run their departments and not trusting them to give out references on former employees? Run away from an organization like this, and if your vendors subscribe to the no-references philosophy, find another vendor who believes in human integrity. Don’t your customers deserve that much?
Bell Curve Performance Reviews
Bell curve performance reviews are programs that allot a fixed number of slots to managers when they review their employees once per year. Only twenty percent of the team can be Excellent, Twenty percent can be Very Good, and so on. Twenty percent of the team must be found to be bad employees, worthy of termination. Why on earth would a leadership team want twenty percent of its employees to do a bad job? Fear is in the mix again. They don’t trust their managers. They fear that managers will be ‘easy graders’ just because it’s hard to give constructive feedback. If you don’t trust yourself to hire great managers and set them free, why do you trust yourself to lead?
Social Media Clampdown
It is prudent and appropriate to teach employees how to use Facebook, LinkedIn LNKD +0.75% and other social media tools with grace and dignity. It is ridiculous to shut down the use of these tools altogether as many organizations have done. In effect, these weenie companies are saying “We can have an online presence, but you can’t.” Run away from employers like that. You need to work among people who can grow your flame, not snuff it out!
Anti-Moonlighting Rule
The last horrendous HR practice on our list is the one that prohibits team members from holding outside employment of any kind. It is reasonable to expect your employees not to compete against you on their off hours. But lots of employers forbid holding a second job of any kind, from spinning disks at weddings to bartending on Friday nights. You are your own person. Insist on employment that lets you put as many oars in the water as you like — after all, it’s not like your employer is guaranteeing your income for any period of time!
This heavy-handed rule is a huge red flag that tells you an organization doesn’t trust the very people it relies on to delight customers and shareholders. Talk them into ditching the anti-moonlighting policy, or start looking for your next job. You deserve to work among people who treat you like the professional you are. They are out there — and the sooner you give a talent-repelling, undeserving organization the boot, the sooner you’ll find them!
No comments:
Post a Comment