Tag: HR

Engage Better!

For the real leaders of engagement, our next Engagement Unconference will be on 27 June 2012.

Our first Engagement Unconference in November 2011 surpassed our highest hopes, and having listened to and acted on the feedback from you, this time we’re making it even better!

Leaders from Aviva, Barclays, Redgate, Rio Tinto, Sky and more came together for a day full of ideas and stories about how to use technology, structure and strategy, but most of all authentic leadership to engage people and purpose.

Yell’s Kayleigh Quelch described the first Unconference as, “A real inspiration!….I left with so many fresh ideas, so much future hope!”

We are restricting numbers to just 80 places to protect real dialogue, and 11 of those have already been booked by people who came last time. If you believe in people as much as we think you do, you’ll be one of the next 69 engaging leaders to join us.

  • We will keep the world café and the multiple conversations that everyone valued so much.
  • We will keep the art minutes record of the day, the twitterfall and the live blogging
  • We will add input in 7-minute, expert talks about what’s new to generate fresh dialogue.
  • We will have a debate to add more excitement, “Is HR good for engagement?” Yes, no or maybe? You’ll hear strong views and strong challenges because debate can often be an entertaining form of dialogue.

Why come?

Not just because you will learn things to make your business more money, though you will.

Not just because you will learn things to make your business more efficient, though you will.

Not just because you you will learn how to keep your customers longer, though you will.

Come because you know that engaging people, colleagues, customers and community, is the right thing to do, the right way to run your business, the right way to be and because you want to learn with other engaging thinkers.

Come because you want to really engage your people; not just some of your people, some of the time, but all of all of your people, all of the time.

Can you imagine how good work is when all your colleagues engage all of their energy, empathy and attention to achieve great things together? When you are all together on a mission! It is the most wonderful feeling. You’ll feel that on the day!

“An outstanding experience!” Peter Burton, ROTA-UK

We are Doug Shaw of What Goes Around, Peter Massey of Budd-UK and Jonathan Wilson of Humap UK and we look forward to welcoming you at the Second Engagement Unconference at The Spring on 27 June 2012.

 

Serious About Performance

Gareth and I have recently started working with an interesting company called Careergro. They are in the field of employee owned career development and as part of our initial working together, we’ve been discussing the similarities and differences between career development and performance appraisals.

So I’m grateful to Felix Wetzel for sharing a great talk from TEDxPortsmouth over on Google Plus. It’s called Serious About Performance, by the sports and business coach Dr Chris Shambrook. I’ve embedded the talk down below so you can take a look if the following observations from it interest you. And even if they don’t, it’s worth a watch for a fantastic sporting analogy (around five minutes into the film).

Defining Performance

Dr Chris says that in most companies, people wrongly think that performance = results. Wrong! Results are output, they are goals (usually set for you) and how you are doing against those goals. Performance is about doing the things you need to do to get out what you want. Performance is input and output. It is about understanding your potential and developing it so that you achieve the best results you can.

Balance

In the workplace, performance improvement is almost universally seen as a bad thing, as a problem. Dr Chris thinks everyone should have a performance improvement plan – that we should seek it out, demand it and use it as a way of helping us fulfil our potential. I think that’s a much healthier attitude and when practiced, quickly integrates performance and career development.

Static versus Flow

Usually, performance is appraised annually. I feel sick just writing that last sentence, performance needs evaluating all the time. The annual appraisal sucks – I know no one who looks forward to giving or receiving one. Feedback needs to be regular – and seek it out. Otherwise, Dr Chris says it’s just a euphemism for criticism.

Weakness versus Strength

Most people leave their performance reviews with a clear understanding of their inadequacies. To achieve high performance you must focus on strengths. How can I deliberately and consistently make strong into stronger. Then, and only then, should I address my weaknesses.

Money as a Motivator

Dr Chris says ‘we start incentivising people to do behaviours and start manipulating them by introducing money’. When money is used as a motivator for results in sport, it’s when corruption is present. He uses cricket and match fixing to illustrate this, and I’m reminded of Robin Schooling’s excellent blog post about the New Orleans Saints on the same subject.

Choose Your Attitude

Choosing your attitude towards high performance is critical. Choose to be the best you can be and show that attitude as a role model to others. Readers who have been with me for the long haul may recall a post I wrote back in September 2009 after meeting with Chris Boardman. He saw this as vital too.

Does your company confuse performance with results? And who is responsible for your performance?

I’d love to hear your views.

photo c/o Bertron8

The Death of Service

dance of death

photo c/o Zaqarbal

Following Dad’s death, I’m starting to tidy up some loose ends. I’m not used to dealing with the vagaries of quite so many companies at once, and I’m having some interesting customer experiences. Here are just a few:

I contacted EDF Energy because I wanted to take over the electricity supply payments at Dad’s place. After long waits on the phone I told EDF their existing bank mandate from Dad’s account would stop and I’d like to start to pick up the tab. And I gave them a meter reading. Two days later – they sent me a final bill into which they’d inserted a piece of marketing titled ‘How Will You Celebrate?’ Now I’m all for celebrating the life of dead friends and family, but come on EDF, that’s a marketing #fail. And they also sent me a sniffy letter saying I was now moved onto a crap (my word), higher priced (their words) tariff because I cancelled the bank mandate. #fail

I wrote a note to Credit Suisse advising them Dad has died and that in due course, I’ll be closing his deposit account. I sent them a certified copy of the death certificate and asked for it back as I need to show it to plenty of other companies too. Today I got a letter from Credit Suisse acknowledging receipt of the certificate and enclosing a bunch of claim forms. No certificate though. I called them up and was told ‘we don’t normally return those’. OK smarty pants, so how the hell else am I supposed to prove the fact of death to all the other companies then? I’m placed on hold for a while before being told ‘we’ll return it to you’. I should coco! #fail

BT has cancelled the phone line and broadband at Dad’s place promptly, I appreciate that. Then they send me a refund cheque made payable to a mystery character, neither me nor my father. So I called them up and after a ten minute wait I get told ‘sorry we made the cheque payable to the wrong person, please return it’. ‘How about I just shred it and you send me another one?’ I ask. But no. BT doesn’t trust me to destroy a cheque for £24 and furthermore because I want it to be made payable to me they now want to see a copy of Dad’s death certificate. BT are now wasting my time, and my money thanks to their mistake. #fail

It’s not all bad. British Gas have been fabulous. They have a dedicated bereavement team and every thing was switched over to me with no fuss and they have kindly offered to hold all the bills and keep the supply going while I sort probate of Dad’s estate. How thoughtful of you, Thanks! And Sutton and East Surrey Water have been simply fab. Easy to deal with, correct about everything. Spot on.

I don’t believe that any of these companies set out to deliver such a poor experience, and at the same time, in order to have front line service people doing such a poor job, something is wrong. It’s not just me taking hassle on board to manage this crap service, all these companies are incurring costs and wasted time too.

I’m not interested in blaming anyone, I have no interest in a departmental finger wagging contest. What I’d really like to see is closer links between HR and customer service and the customer so that we can have better conversations about how to make these things easier. For all of us, in all circumstances. Is that too much to ask do you think?