Today’s post comes to us from The Workforce Institute advisory board member Sharlyn Lauby, also known as the HR Bartender. This article is the second in a two-part series about 1:1 meetings, and the value they bring to working relationships and performance. Today’s post focuses on the employee’s role. Before proceeding below, read the first article in the series, on the manager’s role in 1:1 meetings.

One-on-one meetings are only as good as the conversation. Meetings where managers just tell employees what to do doesn’t bring the same level of value.

That’s why two-way communication is essential. Employees need to come to the conversation prepared to talk about their performance. In last month’s article about 1:1 meetings, I talked about the manager’s role in preparation and participation. Today, I’ll focus on the employee’s role during 1:1 meetings.

A big reason that employees should want to be an active part of a 1:1 meeting is because they want regular performance feedback — both positive and not-so-positive. This is not a generational thing. Everyone wants to know how they’re doing. Performance plays a huge role in career goals and compensation. Regardless of how often the organization does performance reviews, no one wants their performance review to be a surprise. So, a regular 1:1 meeting brings value.

Employees not only share responsibility for participating in the conversation, but they should share the responsibility for making sure the meetings happen. When it comes to scheduling, employees are sometimes at a disadvantage because typically a manager will initiate scheduling the meeting. But there are a couple of things that employees can do to make sure the meeting remains a priority:

Employees don’t have to wait for a meeting to show up on their calendars to start getting prepared. Here are five things an employee can do in the meantime.

1) Spend some time thinking about performance. First ask: what have you done well? Don’t undervalue your performance. There are plenty of things you’ve done well, and they should be noted. Then ask: what could you have done differently? Please note: I didn’t say wrong. Ask yourself, “Are there things that could have been completed a better way?” Be prepared to have specific responses to both questions. It demonstrates that you’ve spent time thinking about it.

2) Provide an update on goals. Be prepared to discuss which goals are on track and which might need revising. The goal in this conversation isn’t to assign blame. It’s to discuss what actions need to take place to get a goal back on track. Keep in mind, it’s possible that goals could need to be reprioritized and some might need to be canceled. If by chance your recommendation is to eliminate a goal, come to the meeting prepared to present another goal. It’s possible you won’t need it, but come prepared anyway.

3) Give the manager feedback too. This is so important. Tell your manager what support you need from them. Honestly, they might not know and that’s not a reflection on their abilities. You’re in the trenches and the manager might not be. They rely on you to share that perspective. In addition to sharing what you need in terms of support, also consider telling the manager what they do really well. We’re not suggesting false flattery. I’m sure you can think of something that helps the manager understand their strengths.

4) Ask questions during the meeting. This is the time to follow up on any questions that have not yet been answered. Maybe it’s personal, such as a time-off request or authorization to attend a conference. It could also be a good time to ask about company projects or policies. If the manager doesn’t bring it up, ask “Are there any new projects I should know about?” Again, this isn’t necessarily a reflection that the manager is trying to keep information a secret. Sometimes, we simply forget.

5) Recap what you plan to do. Before concluding the meeting, quickly review your to-do list and deadlines. If you need to ask some clarifying question, do it. Also, ask about a follow-up meeting and agenda items that will be brought up. It’s possible that a goal set during the meeting will need to be completed by the next meeting. Discuss transferring any meeting notes in a technology solution so they can be tracked over time.

Employees need to know that they are half of the 1:1 meeting and take responsibility for their portion of the conversation. Managers and HR should discuss the importance of 1:1 meetings during orientation and onboarding. Give employees the tools to be a good meeting participant.

Organizations could consider using these two articles to develop a manager and employee meeting checklist. The checklist can reside online or in hard copy. The important part is that people use it to make their 1:1 meetings valuable.

Today’s post comes to us from The Workforce Institute advisory board member David Creelman, chief executive officer of Creelman Research.

There are several ways HR can help managers make good judgement calls on nuanced issues such as flex work, dress code, or how they distribute their bonus budgets. However, many of these approaches can easily backfire. Let’s consider three attractive (but risky) approaches:

1) Embrace bureaucracy. Many leaders, especially in staff roles like HR, want consistency. They say, let’s create clear, detailed policies that managers are required to follow.

2) Avoid bureaucracy. Many leaders want to avoid bureaucracy. They say let’s just let managers make a judgement call on the issue (e.g., how much flex work is allowed in their team).

3) Build rigorous processes. Some leaders recognize situations that require judgement are varied and subtle. They want those decisions made not by following a rule book but by following a process that engages a wide range of stakeholders with due time for deliberation to ensure a high-quality judgement.

All of these can easily go wrong. Avoiding bureaucracy can lead to a Wild West of inconsistent and, too often, poor decisions. Embracing bureaucracy can lead to stifling policy manuals that get ever-more complex without becoming more useful. Rigorous processes can be so slow and expensive that they satisfy no one, even though they do lead to good judgements in the end.

The trick for HR leaders is to recognize there is another approach that can navigate into an optimal space for supporting sound, consistent managerial judgement:

4) Flexible guardrails. Use a mix of policy, process, and training to enhance managerial judgement.

Let’s consider enforcing a dress code. What is appropriate will vary a lot from IT to sales, from Toledo to Tokyo, and from the day the media is on a tour to the typical casual Friday. We want managers to have a good deal of flexibility in applying their judgement on what is appropriate while reducing the risk of bad choices.

We can achieve this with some general policy guidelines that provide direction without undue detail, a little training just to be sure they understand the principles, and perhaps a process where they don’t make a decision — such as telling an employee their attire is inappropriate — without following a simple process such as talking it through with their own manager first.

When it comes to an area like deciding on bonuses, the policies, training, and processes are likely to be more rigorous and constraining, while still leaving a good deal of judgement with the manager.

Key Takeaway

When you lay out the logic this way, it seems so self-evident that it hardly needs to be said. However, how often have you seen companies embrace bureaucracy to the point it becomes stifling; then in response, avoid bureaucracy and end up in the Wild West; or in a well-meaning attempt to make things right, design impractical rigorous processes?

Leaders often adopt the wrong approaches because they require less thought than the flexible guardrail approach. Putting a label on these things helps remind us which approaches will get us into trouble down the road and point us toward a wider range of options that will support the need to make nuanced judgements.

Today’s post comes to us from Workforce Institute board member David Creelman.

Jodie Foster is a famous American actor who became a famous film director. In other words, she got a management job. So how does one prepare to go from being a specialist individual contributor to being a manager? What do you need to learn before making the jump?

Foster says that the one thing she wished she had known was that all she really needed was confidence and a pen and paper. She had thought she’d need a whole lot of relevant knowledge about camera lenses, lighting, and so on. She says that didn’t turn out to be the case. She says the truth is that everything you need to know is inside of you, every decision-making process is instinctual and as long as you have a pen and paper to write it down then you’re in good shape.

Implications for management development

It should be noted that you or I, jumping into the role of a movie director, might find it a little more taxing than Foster did. She’d been in movies her whole life, she started acting on a television show when she was six years old. She’d had decades to learn the nature of directing by osmosis.

Yet, there is still something profound in her insistence that the skills of management come from the heart. To be a bit more neurosciency about it, we might say that the skills of management come from the right side of the brain, the side concerned with looking for patterns and understanding things holistically rather than doing analysis.

As an aside, we know that the brain doesn’t neatly divide activities between the left and right hemispheres, nevertheless psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist argues that the clinical evidence suggests it is reasonable to think of the right hemisphere as holistic and the left as analytical.

If our management training programs emphasize an analytical approach, then we may be misdirecting where managers should focus their attention. Rather than saying, "listen to see if there is clarity about roles and milestones", we might be better off saying, “just listen”.  Instead of saying, "pay attention to budget variances", we might say “just pay attention.”

The role of reflection, conversation, and immersion

The natural approach to management development is to focus on telling people stuff in a classroom. That leans towards teaching managers an analytical approach. Perhaps management development should focus more on immersing employees in managerial situations and having them pay attention. Find ways for high potential employees to sit in on management meetings, give them opportunities to talk to senior managers, and encourage them to reflect on what they heard. Give them a chance to talk to others about what they’ve observed.

It reminds me of an answer I got from a senior executive at a large manufacturing firm. I’d asked him how he’d learned to become a good manager, he said it was by working for a lot of bad managers. Those bad managers hadn’t taught him useful techniques, but he’d paid close attention all those years. He learned in his heart what good management was. After that, I suspect he could get by just with confidence and a pen and paper.

(Shout out to Masterclass.com for the course on directing by Jodie Foster)

Today's post comes to us from Workforce Institute board member Dennis Miller. Here he shares his insights about the how of working smarter.

We've all heard the expression “Work smarter, not harder” over the years. And while no one can disagree with the concept, the “how to” part can be a bit trickier.

So how, exactly, does one go about working smarter? 

I suggest starting the process by taking a lesson from Dr. Stephen Covey who authored a well-known book titled “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. In his book, his second Habit is to “Begin with the end in mind”. And while all 7 of his Habits are definitely highly useful toward becoming more effective, starting with Habit #2 seems to be the very best starting point for any endeavor toward working smarter.

It would also make sense to understand where you are today, where you want to go, and then decide the action steps on how you will get to that new point of working smarter.

Astronaut John Glenn once stated there were two main problems with space travel to the moon: you first need to figure out how to get to the moon and then you need to figure out how to get back [to Earth]. In this case, the “end in mind” is the successful round trip to the moon and back.  

Instead of going into an example of space travel, which I know little about, a more down to earth example is one in which my company, Cal Poly Pomona Foundation, has experienced.

Our environment is on a college campus and we employ a high number of students on our campus. Student workers are primarily on campus to attend college and therefore their employee lifecycle is not typical. Most work 10 -15 hours a week often in 2-3 hour shifts to make sure they can attend all of the classes they need to get their college degree. Overall, they have an exceptionally short working lifespan compared to a more conventional worker (if there is such a thing these days), resulting in very high employee turnover for this group of workers.

There was a time when our employees, upon being hired, were issued badges for clocking in and out of special clocks for timekeeping purposes. Using badges for timekeeping purposes seemed to be a good idea when they first came out and the timeclocks they “swiped” with their badges were centrally located in the workplaces. Over time, it became a bit of a challenge to issue, track, replace, and retrieve the volume of badges related to the volume of student. In fact, we ended up hiring student workers to help with the administration of student-issued timekeeping badges! 

Fortunately, instead of trying to improve the processes related to badge administration, better technology became available and affordable thereby rendering the methodology of using timekeeping badges obsolete in our environment.

Our first step in this endeavor toward working smarter? We started with the end in mind! 

We researched options and decided upon the methodology we wanted to use to replace the timekeeping badges. We evaluated the pros and cons of the new tools for the system administrators in HR and Payroll as well as all employees. We developed a cost-benefit analysis to sell the change effort to the finance folks. From this point, we created and executed an action plan to replace the timekeeping badges with biometric devices and mobile devices. As it turned out, employing these tools allowed for more functionality than just timekeeping - they also permitted employees to submit time off requests and allowed managers to approve those requests, among other functionality. This added functionality turned out to be a huge benefit to employees, managers, and system administrators, and we ended up with no badges to administer!

Starting with the end in mind helped us find a way for all involved to work smarter in a truly impactful way.

What is a “working smarter” tip or strategy that you have found useful? 

Today's post comes to us from Workforce Institute board member and Cal Poly Pomona Chief Employment Officer Dennis Miller.  Generation Z leaders are coming up.  What is your organization doing to develop them?

A recent report from Workforce 2020 titled “The Leadership Cliff”, seems especially useful when contemplating how to start the process of leadership development for any demographic and perhaps most especially for Generation Z leaders.

In the report, in response to a question asking, “How well does your manager deliver on the following expectations?”, 53% of employees responded “well” or “very well” to “Leadership”, 49% to “Regular performance reviews”, 43% to “Regular feedback on my performance”, 42% to “Acknowledging superior performance”, 41% to “Mentoring”, 38% to “Availability/approachability”, and 30% to a “Well-defined career path”.

Further, research conducted by New York Times best-selling author and fellow Workforce Institute board member Dan Schawbel, shows that Generation Z employees prefer face-to-face communications with their manager when compared to technology-based communications, and I suspect this preference is similar among all generations of workers. Among the many data points in Schawbel's research, 81% of Generation Z employees aspire to be leaders, and 52% indicate that honesty is the most important quality for a leader to possess.

So, where does a manager start the process of developing a leader? I suggest to start by focusing on a core tenet for any good relationship, which is developing a trust-based relationship.

This is true for all employees, even if you might not feel a given employee will be in a leadership role. After all, one never really knows who will become a leader, and having a trust-based relationship with all of your employees should be the cornerstone of the employment relationship, regardless of a specific chronological generation.

What actions can managers take to develop a trust-based relationship? One technique is to start with routinely scheduled individual meetings, such as weekly one-on-one meetings. These meetings are informal and provide an ideal opportunity for the manager and employee to interact with one another, clarify the work expectations of both parties, remove obstacles toward goal achievement, allow feedback from both parties, and a long list of other mutual benefits. Still, this is the beginning of the journey where the trust between the manager and employee begins to take shape, not the destination.

A key outcome in all communications between a manager and employee is to communicate the intended message in a way that the employee understands. Being “clear” in communications may seem like the goal, but being “understood” is the true end-game.

Trust is often developed by actions that are in direct support of spoken words. For example, when a manager schedules and keeps a routinely scheduled meeting with their employee, the employee will begin to trust the manager, since the manager is following through on their commitment to meet at a specific time. Conversely, frequently changing or cancelling that same routinely scheduled meeting will have an opposite effect, and the employee will have no good reason to trust their manager. We know if a manager cannot be trusted on small things, it is difficult to expect that manager to be trusted on business issues with greater complexity.

What are your thoughts on where to begin the process of developing Generation Z leaders?

Today's post comes to us courtesy of Workforce Institute Board member and HR Bartender Sharlyn Lauby.  To learn more about this topic, check out Sharlyn's book, Manager Onboarding: 5 Steps for Setting New Leaders Up for Success. 

Managers have one job - to find and train their replacement.

When managers are focused on that one job, they hire the best employees, train them for success, coach them for high performance, and make retention a priority. Because of that, they can take a vacation or attend a conference with confidence, knowing that the department isn't going to fall apart in their absence. Managers who are focused on their one job can participate in the CEO's super-secret special project that will allow them to learn new skills and collaborate with new colleagues. They can do cool stuff that will enhance their careers.

Managers who focus on finding and training their replacement aren't dispensable. In fact, they're promotable. And, organizations that want managers who will hire, train, and retain the best talent need to set those managers up for success. Starting on day number one.

Unfortunately, many organizations tend to hire or promote the most technically competent person into management. The new manager gets training on-the-job, which isn't bad. On-the-job training can be very valuable. But too often, on-the-job training happens after the new manager makes a mistake. A mistake that could have been avoided if the new manager had received proper training and guidance in the first place.

One way to give a new manager the tools they need for success is with onboarding. Think about it - companies currently provide onboarding to new hire employees. Why not onboard new managers?

And this isn't the same as management training or leadership development. Those programs offer skills that employees can use immediately like communication skills, decision-making, and problem-solving. Manager onboarding programs include skills that managers need the minute they become a manager such as workforce management and employment law. There's a place for all of these programs.

Here are three steps to get started with creating a manager onboarding program:

  1. Interview the current management team. Talk with managers about their experience of becoming a manager. Did they receive enough training and support? What was missing? Not only will you get valuable information, but you can start creating buy-in for the program.
  2. Assess what knowledge and skills are being offered. And when. Once you've collected information from current managers, compare that to what the organization is offering in terms of training and development. Also look at when it's being offered. Is it too late OR too early (and managers forget it)?
  3. Start creating programs that address the gaps. It's possible that companies can shift when managers are receiving information, so they are trained at just the right time. If a topic isn't being offered, companies can consider setting up training programs or mentoring to help the new manager.

According to Gallup, seventy percent (70%) of the variance in employee engagement is attributed to managers. Organizations concerned about productivity and retention will want to make sure that managers are well equipped to handle their role. Because it impacts the bottom-line.

Today's post comes to us from Workforce Institute board member Chris Mullen. Chris is the Director of Human Resources for Housing & Dining Services at the University of Colorado Boulder.

As summer comes to a close, it's time to think about finishing the year on a strong note. During summer, it is not unheard of for people to take their foot off the gas when it comes to work. But with the temperatures cooling off and the leaves beginning to change color, it's time to get over the summer slump and reengage your workforce to reach the goals that were set at the beginning of the year.

Gallup reports that 70% of a team's engagement start with the manager. So, why not you start with your direct reports? Meet with them. Take them for a cup of coffee or have a walking meeting - something to get out of the office and out of the normal work environment. The purpose of these meetings is to get to know them a little better, start or continue to develop a relationship, and build trust.

Ask your direct reports about themselves. If you don't know anything about your employees, then now is the perfect time to start. Ask questions like:

Next, transition the conversation into work. Ask questions like:

A significant theme that arose from my doctoral research on work-life balance and the use of mobile technology, is that employees feel more empowered and satisfied when they are supported by their supervisors. One easy way you can support your employees is to get to know them.

AN IMPORTANT NOTE - you need to be sincere in getting to know your employees better. If you are just “checking a box” with each question, then they will see right through it and you.

By knowing your employees, you will be more in-tune to their needs. For instance, if you have a group of employees working on an important and labor-intensive project (which you are aware of because of your information gathering), it might go a long way after a milestone is reached to give them a Friday afternoon off and have them go home early. Or have them pick a day in the current month they would like a free day off. It may not seem like much, but it can go a long way for the employee.

What about you? How do you reengage with employees to finish the year strong? Let us know in the comments!

Today's post comes to us courtesy of board member John Frehse, senior managing director at Ankura Consulting Group.

If you ask any Human Resources professional what they pay their employees, they will respond with a dollar amount. If you ask them how they compensate their employees, they may also include things like medical benefits and paid time off. While salary figures and standard benefits are indeed critical components of compensation, it is important to understand that many other currencies are not only accepted by today's workforce, they are demanded.

“Currencies” are varied and certainly not just limited to financial reward.

A few examples:

  1. Investments in training: Very simply - does your company invest in its people?
  2. Visibility: Do employees have visibility into performance, productivity, and what is required of them? Can they see fellow employees' availability to gain flexibility by swapping shifts and requesting time off?
  3. Structured mentoring: Companies often like to talk about mentoring, but does it really take place? Without a proper structure where employees are matched with appropriate leaders, mentoring becomes a “nice to have” but not an actual program.
  4. Public recognition for performance: Are employees who go above-and-beyond required performance and provide discretionary effort publicly recognized for their contributions?
  5. Leadership-enabled Success: Do leaders and administrative tasks slow down or block success? Are employees discouraged from making improvements because “management will never support it?”
  6. Merit-based promotions: How often is your firm looking outside of the company to find leaders? If this is common, dedicated employees are being passed over for outsiders and this can crush morale.

Frankly, when discussing culture and employee engagement as a byproduct, money is rarely the key driver. It's other “softer” currencies - like the ones above - that drive positive behaviors, and therefore results.

When a wide range of currencies is not available to the workforce, the demand for cash goes up. In an environment with little or no chance of advancement, recognition, or mentoring, employees will demand larger amounts of the only currency available. And when cash becomes the single driver, morale and performance are traditionally very low. The more employees are starved of a wide range of currencies, the more financial compensation is needed to satisfy them, and this does not translate into better performance.

So, what currency is most important to you as an employee? How well - or poorly - does your organization score when it comes to providing compensation beyond just salary and benefits? Tell me in the comments!

As we enter a new year, it's always interesting to reflect on what we accomplished and what mattered most to us in the prior year so we can change course as needed in the year to come. Here at the Workforce Institute @Kronos, we saw some significant changes in 2017.   We launched The Workforce Institute in Europe,  redesigned and relaunched our website, and welcomed new board members who'll help us expand our perspective. 

Throughout 2017, we continued to publish articles and podcasts to share those perspectives.  Some of the topics you found most interesting this year included implementing an unlimited vacation policy, the future of workplace technology, and manager effectiveness.  Whether you're currently snowed in or just need a break from being back to the grind, we hope you'll take a few minutes to read through the top 10 most popular posts we published here at The Workforce Institute in 2017.  And if you have topics you'd like us to write about in 2018 - or even better, if you're interested in contributing to this blog yourself - please let us know by commenting on this post.

Thank you to all of our guest authors in 2017, and Happy New Year!

Today's post comes to us courtesy of board member Dennis Miller, the Chief Employment Officer at Cal Poly Pomona Foundation.

For several years now, many in the HR world have been predicting the death of the annual performance review. However, it seems that reports of its death, with apologies to Mark Twain, have indeed been greatly exaggerated, as more than half of all organizations still conduct them.

And yet, according to corporate research and advisory firm CEB, only 4 percent of HR managers think their system of assessing employees is effective at measuring performance, while 83 percent say their systems need an overhaul.

Whether your organization does or does not have annual reviews, two fundamental things have not changed over time: employers need to communicate to their employees the expectations of their roles, and managers need to provide timely and accurate feedback to their employees on how closely they are meeting the core expectations of these roles.

Regardless of the system used, the most important aspect of any performance management process - and the most difficult - is the communications phase. This is nearly always the weakest point in any performance management process. Employee communications is where the work of managing for performance is actually achieved, and also happens to be the most time consuming portion of nearly any performance management process.

There are many good tools available to help with the processes of performance management. Obviously, a well-designed and easy-to-use performance management system in many HMC platforms can help measurably in this area. However, the system is the enabler of the performance management process, and in order to really achieve an improvement in performance management, one must master the basics of employee communications, or the system will simply not yield the intended results.

Here are 5 suggestions for how you can begin to enable good employee performance communications at your organization:

1. Empower employees with information: Let employees know what to expect before scheduling and holding performance-based meetings. Let each employee know how his or her exact role fits into the bigger picture of what the company is striving to achieve and how they contribute to the greater good. Stating this linkage in an understandable way is crucial to any progress toward improving performance.

2. Put it on your calendar: Commit to regular performance feedback “touch bases” with each employee you manage. For example, bi-weekly 1-1 meetings. These need not be lengthy - 30 minutes is often adequate, although scheduling 60 minutes every two weeks can be even better. Do not change the meeting schedule unless there is a genuine emergency, and in those rare instances, communicate the nature of the emergency to the employee impacted.

3. Let the employee take the lead: In preparation for 1-1 meetings, ask the employee to come prepared with agenda items they want to discuss, and let the employee work through their list first. A key focus of the manager during 1-1s is to listen for barriers that prevent the employee from being successful in his or her role, and then help remove those barriers. Ask your employee what you can do to help them achieve better outcomes - and if they need help with anything.

4. Focus on the big picture: While 1-1 meetings tend to focus on the immediate work and day-to-day issues, always take the opportunity to remind the employee how their contributions are directly linked to the mission of the company and how their work contributes to the larger picture. Showing how their work relates directly to keeping or adding new customers is always a great example to offer.

5. Adhere to the no surprises rule: A hallmark of a good annual performance review is that there are no surprises. To help to ensure you follow this rule, use the notes from your 1-1 meetings to create a picture of the annual performance for each employee - this should ensure you capture all major achievements and don't introduce anything new into the picture that may catch the employee by surprise.

Bottom line: if you want to improve employee and organizational performance significantly, ensure your managers are dedicated to communicating timely, accurate, and regular feedback to their employees, in a manner employees truly understand. Achieve this as a first step in your effort to improve employee performance and you will then be able to show measurable results in this area. Overlook the communications phase, or provide it with less than the time required for effective communications, and you're likely to experience low to no improvements in performance management, regardless of the system used.

I particularly like Dennis's recommendation about weekly touch base meetings - a practice I've used for the 25 years I've been a people manager.  Nothing beats a steady cadence of feedback that is part of an ongoing collaboration and conversation between manager and employee. - Joyce Maroney, Executive Director of the Workforce Institute.

Today's post comes to us courtesy of board member John Frehse, senior managing director at Ankura Consulting Group.

Does your company provide employees with access to information in a useful format? You may think the answer to this question is “yes”, but, at the risk of sounding harsh, I'm guessing it's actually “no”.

Here's why: Google. Your employees have grown accustomed to having access to any information they may want at any time, from anyplace thanks to our friends at Google. Whether it is through Google Search, Gmail, YouTube, or any other platform they own, Google does one thing better than anyone else: they provide access to information in a breathtakingly simple, fast and useful format.

Need to fix something? Watch a tutorial on YouTube. Need to know how many kilometers are in a mile? Google it (the answer is 1.6, FYI). Need to find the closest gas station that is open 24 hours on your way home from that concert that went until midnight? You know the drill. And so do your employees.

In short, Google is enabling your employees to win on a daily basis.
So, with that in mind, back to my first question: are you providing your employees with access to information in a useful format? Compared to you-know-who?

Now that you have answered “no”, understand: you are not alone.

Unfortunately, this super search mentality has just not transferred to many workplaces. Rather than Googling information in milliseconds (for example, I recently Googled “analytics” and got 683,000,000 results in .79 seconds and Google's algorithms put the most relevant results on the first page for me - thank you, Google!), massive data requests arrive days late and then hours are spent using pivot tables and other processes to find the answer. By the time results are tabulated, the information is old and worth very little, leaving your employees in the dark with zero access to relevant information to enable success.

Does this make Google your enemy? I don't think so. Instead, I think we all need to see Google as our coach on Team Analytics.

Analytical tools are one way to enable winning in the workplace. Instead of crunching data in Excel for hours and hours or even days and weeks, analytical tools can act like Google, organizing large data sets into useful tables and charts, allowing everyone to make better decisions faster.

Whether you are an hourly employee or salaried, everyone wants to win. At the end of each day, it is not just the money that drives satisfaction but one's ability to have an impact, make a difference, and drive results. Without access to information in a useful format, employees struggle to be effective, have visibility into results, and feel genuine satisfaction.

So keep Coach Google in mind as you develop your analytics strategy. Google may be known for self-driving cars, crazy-looking glasses, cat videos and the best cafeterias in town, but what they are really known for, what they do better than anyone else is one thing: they empower employees with useful data quickly and in a simple format that they can use to make smarter decisions faster.

So whatever it is your organization is known for, don't lose sight of the fact that without access to good information quickly, your employees are losing. With better analytics, we all win big.

One of our Board members, Kronos Chief People Officer David Almeda, has just published an article on the Great Place to Work website titled “5 Tips to Improve Manager Effectiveness at Your Company”.

The piece looks at Dave and his team's commitment at Kronos to the mantra that every employee deserves a great manager. Saying this is one thing, but Dave and his team are providing more than just lip service. They have launched a Manager Effectiveness Index, or MEI, using data to validate the powerful link between manager behavior, employee engagement, performance and retention.

Check out Dave's article here.

It also goes without saying that great HR programs like these don't happen in a vacuum. As I've blogged and podcasted about in the past, a commitment to great managers comes from the very top at Kronos and you can read more about our CEO's commitment to this idea in this New York Times column from a year ago.

What do you think makes a great manager? How about a terrible one? Let us know in the comments…

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