Guidance for Managers

The Undiscovered Country: Striking the Perfect Communication Balance with Your Employees

So much time and energy in business is spent towards improving efficiency. From organizational structure to employee reviews, companies are trying to do more with less and to maximize the output from every employee.

But what many firms need to examine and improve the quality of is the most basic attribute that drives the efficiency and productivity of entire teams, departments, divisions and industries: Communication.

It is a term that means different things to different people. Managers are more likely to see communication in terms of assignments, requirements and goals. Employees will see communication in terms of how accessible they consider their superiors and how freely they can offer input and feedback.

Likewise, every organization's culture determines their communication style and effectiveness. Some err in the direction of too much corporate-speak. Some are mysteriously quiet. And some overload employees with too much communication "data" and not enough information.

Below we offer some explanations and ideas for managers to improve the quality of communication in their units.

Yes, one annoyance of employees is too much communication. Just as most children do not enjoy answering to their parents every day, many employees do not enjoy the hourly e-mail, afternoon check-in or daily touch base. If you saw the movie Office Space, you know what we mean.

Employees want to feel independent and empowered to do their work. A constant stream of communication often leaves them feeling micro-managed and dependent. With a boss always checking over your shoulder, you are not likely to make many independent decisions, nor take many risks. Without independent decisions and appropriate risk-taking, neither the organization nor the employee grows.

Conflicts between irritated employees and overly anxious managers may result, conflict arises and the efficiency that is so prized by the firm erodes.

Of course, the flip side to micromanagement communication is an environment in which the manager is nowhere to be found and in which little communication flows within the hierarchy of the firm.

Surprisingly, the effect is similar to that of an environment of too much communication. Employees become irritated, as they feel abandoned and without guidance. Conflicts may arise that managers are not aware of. Disconnectedness from the absentee manager occurs and he or she is considered as someone who does not "know what it's like" in the "trenches."

Work may be completed and deadlines met for awhile, but eventually the absence of communication catches up. Conflicts tend to arise when a problem surfaces that then goes unaddressed until it severely affects the a project or team; a problem that likely could have been corrected or handled if a clear flow of communication was in place.

Discovering the appropriate amount and type of communication is never easy to determine. Concerning day-to-day operations, the question speaks directly to the balance of guidance and freedom employees need and should be afforded.

Every business, division, and department needs to have a flexible communications plan based on a strategy that meets the needs of the business and the needs of the most employees. We emphasize that a well-thought out strategy is critical on the front end. Otherwise, it is easy to fall into the trap of communicating everywhere, all the time, resulting in "data" overload for employees. The result is "data nuisance." Likewise, failure to develop a strategy may result in "information checklists." While checklists are needed for operational detail, they typically address quantity and not quality of information. A strategy will address the quality issues.

As the organization and its units' operations change, logical adjustments should be made that balance the quality/quantity issue.

As the decades old trend of increasing business complexity and employee span of responsibility continues, the flow and quality of communication must be addressed and adjusted to grow organizational effectiveness. And with that increasing effectiveness comes more satisfied employees, productivity and profitability.

At Henle Management, we focus on issues like communication to help organizations become a better environment for managers and employees and plant the seeds of individual and organizational success.

Realizing the Role of Retention: Uncovering the Costs of Unnecessary Turnover

Today’s managers have quite a bit to worry about. From long-term corporate vision statements to everyday motivation of employees, they are juggling many issues on a daily and even hourly basis.

Unfortunately, despite sizable annual expenditures on recruiting, hiring, training and evaluations, many companies fail to adequately address the key issue of retention. For many it requires a paradigm shift: How to move toward a focused campaign geared at improving and retaining employees at every level.

Senior management typically understands the value in recruiting the best people, offering competitive hiring packages, negotiating flexibly, and emphasizing career growth opportunities during the hiring process. But retention efforts that really work are rarely attained and frequently fail to be developed in depth.

Retention is often the starting point where companies start losing the battle in terms of a quality culture, efficiency, and profitability. The costs go dramatically beyond those just associated with hiring a new employee for the open position. Below are some of these costs; costs that can be offset by aggressive, effective retention programs:

The total of the direct financial expenses and the opportunity costs can range from approximately one to two times the annual salary of the departed employee. For medium and large organizations with extensive turnover, these costs can quickly reach millions of dollars annually, hitting expenses and revenues. Aggressive, effective retention programs can quickly pay for themselves through even a small reduction in turnover.

At HENLE MANAGEMENT, we focus on issues like retention – the core building blocks of your business - that so often go overlooked or cannot be adequately addressed in-house. In helping to repair the fundamentals, we help you make your firm a better environment for managers, employees and plant the seeds of success.

They are three terms that should be at the forefront of any employer's mind: onboarding, acculturation and retention. They intertwine, overlap and are essential to the success of a firm in launching and developing new talent into the organization.

Companies used to throw new hires into the water to see if they could swim. But in today's competitive, fast-paced business environment, helping employees integrate into the workplace is critical.

Onboarding is, ideally, a systematic and complete program of integration—going much further than a simple orientation to the organization and geared at improving this introductory process to ensure a proper fit for new employees.

Both a process and a desired outcome of onboarding programs, acculturation is the progression through which new hires become accustomed to a work environment until they fully relate to its people and culture.

Acculturation is the stage that forms the necessary foundation for productive and satisfied employees for the long run. It is also frequently overlooked, neglected or assumed by organizations, thereby planting the seeds of reduced productivity and higher turnover.

In past articles, we discussed the opposite of good employee retention, namely the high costs of employee turnover including termination, recruitment and training. Better onboarding of employees results in several benefits for employers: (1) lower turnover costs; (2) greater employee satisfaction; and (3) faster productivity from new employees.

To see the two terms side-by-side might seem bewildering but they are linked in their origin: To eliminate the costs of turnover. Increasingly, more and more companies are focusing on strategies of onboarding to increase their level of retention.

To learn more about the complete onboarding process, the value of retention and the challenges of acculturation, contact Henle Management, LLC today.

For recent college graduates the world of work is not just a new challenge, it is an entirely new world. The skills and behaviors that made them successful at school are rarely the ones that will make them successful at work.

Most companies know they have to work their new employee into their processes, systems and culture. But they usually don't realize the size of the challenge in reorienting college graduates who have spent 16 or more years in the education industry. To believe they can immediately adjust and adapt to an entirely different industry with a different success formula is just too much.

When the inevitable stumbles occur, it should be no surprise that both employers and young employees are both frustrated; they are just frustrated from different directions.

Here are four of the biggest culture clashes for these employees, upon entering the corporate culture:

At Henle Management, we know the difficulties of acclimating college graduates to the workplace. Contact us for more information.

Bridging the Generational Divide

Presumably, if someone's a manager, it took them a while to get there. And, presumably, they are managing people a decade or two or three younger than themselves.

It's probably safe to say that age differences and generational "misunderstandings" are inherent to being a manager in almost any industry. At worst, these generational misunderstanding may become generational conflict.

But as these conflicts affect productivity and the work environment, some managers are trying to better understand and connect with their younger employees, to provide a more supportive and productive office.

Now we are not saying a 50 year-old manager start piping in Eminem or the Backstreet Boys through a CD player. Instead, the starting point for forging more productive work relationships with younger employees is to understand where they're coming from. Really, it's a matter of the manager putting himself/herself in their shoes. The younger employees were born in a different time and thus have a different world experience. Additionally, their younger age puts them at a different life stage, not unlike the manager 10, 20 or 30 years earlier. The young employee brings a different world view perspective intermingled with a life stage that a manager might identify with from his/her past. Clearly, this is a mix of differences and similarities that managers should tap into for positive effect at work.

At Henle Management our specialty is helping organizations address generational differences. As a manager, consider how you are addressing some of these difference and similarities you may have with your Generation X and the Millennial employees:

Supervision—Millennial generation employees especially crave feedback and improving their skills through coaching and mentoring. Does your management style and organization's philosophy promote this? If not, are you willing to risk the loss of these employees by failing to coach and mentor?

Technology—Are you promoting the use of technology in your unit and tapping the strong technology skills of your younger employees?

Informality—Are you using classic, "Dilbert-like" meeting structures, agendas, and information-flow? Could you more often communicate better and more concisely in the informal pattern preferred by younger employees?

Training—Is your training old school? Could you develop training programs that are interactive, fast-paced, and concise, mixing the high-tech, high-touch, that younger employees prefer? Do you back group training with individual coaching and training that young employees crave?

Diversity—Does your organization reflect the diverse world younger employees assume and expect? If not, will your HR hiring initiatives focus on developing a diverse workforce?

Work/life balance—Is your organization a "nose to the grindstone" all the time with marginal reward? How is your organization addressing the work/life balance desired by younger employees? If your organization is not addressing this, is it willing to lose younger employees to more work/life friendly companies?

At Henle Management, we know the difficulties of acclimating college graduates to the workplace. Contact us for more information

Coaching Your Employees

Remember that coaching differs from managing or consulting. When seeking to be an efficient and effective coach for your employees, keep the distinctions in mind.

Here are some do’s and don’ts to remember if you are interested in becoming a better internal coach for your staff:

Do’s:

Motivate! A key difference between coaching and consulting is instilling motivation. This does not mean motivating them to feel better about themselves or about their performance, but motivating them into ACTION, whether it is to advance strengths or improve weaknesses.

Prioritize. One of the main ways to help motivate people into action is to give them another’s perspective on how to prioritize their projects and goals. Sometimes individuals are so busy and so caught up in their personal bubble that they lose sight of what priorities should be. Help them to see what you see, and what you or other managers view as the most important priorities.

Help them "plan their work and work their plan." Once you’ve helped the individual identify priorities, then help him/her develop a plan to achieve what he/she wants to achieve. Help them on a daily basis in sticking to that plan. It’s easy to talk, but it’s quite another to do.

Don’ts:

Be Impatient. Sometimes it takes a person a while to be receptive to coaching and to do exactly what even they agree is needed. In the coaching vernacular, this is known as resistance and it is part of every coaching situation. Be patient and help someone to move — if even by inches — towards their ultimate goal.

Strategize for them. It’s so tempting, from an outsider’s perspective, to design a plan FOR someone, rather than WITH someone. Remember that as a coach, you’re there for them, to assist them and not to impose your ideas or your philosophy on them. Be open-minded, flexible, and adaptive to their needs while giving them advice for their development.

Fail to monitor. Once you help someone develop a plan and are in the mode of helping them to "work their plan," be persistent. Don’t let them off the hook, but stick with it and ensure that they’re doing what needs to get done to be successful.

Coaching Questions

Do you have the time and desire to coach your employees?
Will internal coaching address the key issues and problems your area needs to resolve?
What resources will you need to provide effective coaching to your employees?

Every month check out this series of articles aimed at helping managers develop their employees