Category Archives: Talent

Are Your Employees Disengaged or Frazzled?

A recent article in Industry Week on “putting brain science to work in your company” that reviews Daniel Goleman’s The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New Insights, which addresses the question of how you get the most from your people, is right when it notes that disengaged and frazzled employees aren’t really contributing to your organization.

Disengagement, where an employee is in a low-motivation state where they are distracted and inattentive to the task at hand, occurs when an employee is not inspired, motivated or engaged in the work they do. A disengaged employee performs well enough to keep his job, but no better.

Frazzled, where an employee is flooded with a cascade of stress hormones that causes the employee to focus on the problem bothering him rather than his job, occurs when the employee is upset with something. A frazzled employee can only address the problem, not the solution.

Only an employee in the flow, a state of neural harmony, where only what is relevant to the task at hand is what is activated, can be truly productive. The flow maximizes cognitive abilities and puts people are at their best. An employee in the “flow” isn’t the problem.

Moreover, not only will disengaged or frazzled employees not be productive, but their disengagement and frazzledness can spread to their coworkers. It’s hard to give a cr@p when no one around you does. And if everyone is stressed out, chances are you will get stressed out to.

Thus, if an organization wants to be productive, and take it to the next level, the first thing it should do is identify those employees who are disengaged or frazzled and figure out why. If an employee is disengaged because tasks, in an effort to become lean or efficient, have been broken up to the point where they are monotonous, then the organization should address its processes and procedures. Sometimes assembly-lining tasks is a good idea, sometimes it isn’t. If all a person does is check totals on reports, that’s not a good procedure. And if a group of employees who are always frazzled have the same boss, chances are that the boss is the problem. Shape him up (with training) or ship him out (with a pink slip). Next level requires productivity, productivity requires engagement, and engagement requires being in the flow. Make sure your employees are there before trying to knock it up a notch.

Talent Development: A Litmus Test

A recent post on the SCMR blogs by Robert Rudzki on “Talent Development” provided a great litmus test for determining whether or not your organization has what it takes to achieve the next level, which requires top-notch talent.

Bob provides an 8-point litmus test which includes the following key points:

  • Has the company’s strategy and objectives been translated into the required skills and competencies for the supply management organization?
    Talent cannot be developed appropriately if the organization does not even know what skills and competencies its talent needs to have.
  • Has a curriculum of development opportunities being created and made available to all personnel?
    It’s going to be hard to get talent interested in development if they are not even aware of the opportunities available to them.
  • Has a time budget been established?
    Talent development takes time. Time must be allocated for talent to train and develop, and such training and development must be mandatory, not optional.
  • Has a career ladder been established and communicated?
    If the organization wants talent to apply themselves and reach the next level, the talent must see a reason for doing so. If talent does not think they will get a reward for their effort, they will not see a reason for doing it.

Beware the Perils of Hyperspecialization

A recent article over on the Harvard Business Review on the age of hyperspecialization said that we are entering an era of hyperspecialization and that it will convey a pulsating, world-spanning flow of knowledge work. Heraliding it as the continuation of Adam’s Smith division of labour, it notes that hyperspecialization reduces costs most dramatically when a company can turn to an expert instead of having to reinvent the wheel and alow the company to achieve a better utilization of their own employees’ time.

However, there can be just as many perils, if not more. The article, which clocks in at seven pages, briefly passes over these five perils:

  • Digital Sweatshops
    In developing economies, enterprising industrialists might use hyperspecialization to create “digital sweatshops” where workers, sets of whom specialize in specific tasks, are exploited for low wages by those who have the means to do so.
  • Astroturfing
    If work is divided into small enough parts, it is possible that a worker may not know what they are working on and may be contributing to something counter to their personal beliefs, or even the law. For example, a mathematician could design a new lottery game or a “greeting card writer” could be creating text for e-mail spam.
  • Electronic Surveillance
    Not only can every aspect of the work be monitored, but it may even reach the point where the work in progress, and the person doing the work, is monitored from start to finish.
  • Dull & Meaningless Work
    Even Adam Smith noted the deleterious results when a person’s work was reduced to “a few very simple operations” back in 1776. If tasks become so refined that they become monotonous, there surely will be ill psychological effects.
  • No Guarantee of Payment
    While spec work is not new, today, most spec work is confined to proposals. In hyperspecialization, workers will actually be doing the work and whether or not they get paid could be at the whim of the company that issues the task.

But misses the most important peril of all:

  • Loss of Vision
    If everyone works on a tiny little piece of a puzzle, over time there will be fewer and fewer people who understand how a puzzle is to be put together. This will seriously stifle innovation as the creativity that results from exploring beyond your horizons diminishes as horizons shrink.

How Do You Build a High Performance Supply Management Organization?

A recent study by Dr. Andre de Waal of the HPO Center that involved more than 3,500 organizations across 60 countries confirmed what leaders already know:

  • Leadership
    In High Performance Supply Management organizations, leaders lead with exemplary behaviour, make decisions, adopt a results focus, act with integrity, and coach staff. They don’t micromanage and do the work of their staff.
  • Talent
    Leading organizations have top talent that is diverse, complementary, and able to work well together. The talent is also flexible and resilient and committed to making the organization successful.
  • Openness and Action Orientation
    Everyone is involved in important processes through shared dialogue, change (for the better) is encouraged, and actions are taken to improve performance.
  • Continuous Improvement and Innovation
    There is an eternal focus on improvement and innovation.
  • Long Term Focus
    Long term success take precedence over short term profit. Management and employees are in it for the long haul and act that way.

Want a Skilled Workforce? Train It!

I thoroughly enjoyed this recent article in Industry Week on “Crafting a Skilled Workforce” that describes Blum Inc’s Apprenticeship 2000 program that develops many of the skilled manufacturing technicians that Blum may otherwise be unable to find. While the four-year program costs Blum $100,000 per apprentice on average, 80% of graduates, who are guaranteed a job with a minimum salary of $34,000 a year on graduation, stay with Blum. In otherwords, for ony $125,000, Blum obtains a highly capable manufacturing technician, with journeyman certification from the North Carolina Department of Labour, who will provide the company with years of valuable service. Given that recruitment of even an entry-level technologist can easily exceed $10K to $15K, and that training of a new recruit can take 6 months or more and tens of thousands of dollars of time of a senior mentor, and that there’s no guarantee that the technologist will have the skills, work out, or stay with the company any length of time, investing $125K to produce a highly skilled employee with company loyalty is a small, and brilliant investment.

As SI has said before, Apprenticeship is the Answer.