"If X, they will leave"

In my experience managers worry too much about what would cause employees to out-and-out leave, and too little about what slowly causes employees to remain but become disenchanted and disengaged. (AC if you are reading this, no it is not personal commentary, came up recently comparing notes with a friend. :) )

Some Recruiting Ideas for HR To Work With

HR departments at companies I have worked at typically like to remind employees of the referral program. So far so good--I am a big fan of referrals. I have had some real success stories, as a referrer of talent, but other times, I have been rather disappointed by the reception I have gotten from Recruiting.

Don't get me wrong--I don't expect, or even want, anybody to be hired just because I said they were good. I want every candidate to be thoroughly vetted, and a HIRE decision only to be made if they are top-notch. What I do hope is that their resume will be given a very careful look, and if there is any promise at all (which there almost certainly is, or I would not be referring them), that they be given a phone interview. From there, it is all in the hands of the recruiter and hiring manager.

So here is an idea. HR needs to apply some statistics to the case of referrals. Treat all internal referrals with the respect they are due, but treat some more seriously than others. Specifically, keep stats on your referrers. For those with a good track record, treat the referral with even more gravity. You can share this factor with the hiring manager, too.

Theories of Employee Evaluation, Motivation and Recognition

You should at least skim this, it is really good:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000070.html

There are (at least) 2 distinct theories of employee evaluation. One is the hard-core GE / Jack Welch--rank people, tell them where they stand in the rank. That will fire up people's competitive spirits, and cause them to work harder to move up.

Another school of thought says that the Jack Welch theory is counter-productive, for several reasons. One, it motivates internal competition, which often takes destructive forms. So if your enterprise requires a high-degree of collaboration (and what modern corporation doesn't?), then you may get some very bad side-effects from over-emphasizing internal competition. Second, it idealizes human behavior. That idealization may work for the ultra-competitive types that find themselves in the Olympian Jack Welch-like position of establishing company norms. But for the rest of us, it may be that we do our best when positively encouraged, and we are all allowed to feel like we are doing good work and are a little bit above average. Obviously you can't allow gross distortions, it is a subtle thing. Does the 11th player on the basketball team constantly get reminded that they are at the bottom of the list, or do they receive some encouragement for working hard, and staying prepared, even when game after game they never see action?

That example is not perfectly analogous to the workplace, but it's something to think about. Joel on Software also has written insightfully along these lines.

Closing Helpdesk Tickets Too Early

Every organization that logs "tickets" or cases (e.g.., corporate helpdesks, should include a survey option--in the email they send 3 days after they log the ticket, telling you they are unilaterally closing the ticket--"In your opinion, was this ticket closed prematurely?"

I'm pretty sure that all these functions are measured on time-to-close tickets, and since we all know, in mangement, that you get what you measure, what you get is tickets closed on the flimsiest of pretexts.

Why Is A Degree So Important, If the Employer Couldn't Tell?

This NYT article tells the story of a high-profile MIT Dean of Admissions who resigned because she had claimed she had college degrees when she in fact had not even a BS degree. She had worked her way up into her present position over the course of 28 years at M.IT., and apparently was extremely well-respected and liked at M.I.T. and elsewhere (she recently published a book on admissions). While it is hard to condone her gross resume padding, lost in the discussion seems to be the fact that her employer couldn't distinguish, objectively, that she lacked a college degree. It does beg the question, just a little bit--is it dumb for employers to treat a degree as the sina qua non of generic credentialing for knowledge workers? Shouldn't a degree be a "plus", one of many things that employers weigh when deciding to hire someone? And once hired--does it matter at all?

From a strategic-HR perspective, I have thought that it would be really smart to be open to non-degreed people. You would of course have to have a good, rigorous hiring process, rather than relying on the crutch of assessing their degree and grades, but if done right, you would be able to exploit a niche and attract good people for, say, the lower half of the market rate. And they would also be much more likely to stick around, since you would be one of few employers who would give them a shot even though they lack that precious college degree.