“I’d rather kick bricks with my bare feet than do appraisals!” – Anonymous

A survey by the Society for Human Resources Management concluded that over 90% of performance appraisal systems are a failure. Managers and employees alike typically view the impending review process with dread. For most, it is a painful bureaucratic process that rears its ugly head once a year—and once done, retreats into the human resource (HR) department’s archives until roughly the same time the following year. A few companies, however, have broken this mold and use performance management (PM) as a competitive advantage, one facilitating the execution of their business strategy. What separates the typically unsuccessful PM systems from those that help drive the business?

First published in People Management

How many times have you learnt that a talented employee has resigned, only to think: “If only we could have done something to prevent that decision”? It may be too late to save that particular individual, but a well thought-out exit interview process may help you to prevent similar departures.

First published in Human Resources

An exit interview should not only get to the bottom of why valued staff are leaving but form the basis of an action plan to stop them wanting to leave in the first place.

Over the past decade, personality measures have increased in popularity as predictors of performance. There are many reasons for this, including the emergence of the five-factor framework, research showing personality measures can have very useful levels of validity, and the tendency for such measures to demonstrate less adverse impact than measures of cognitive ability. With this increased use have come concerns about the “fakability” of personality inventories. Specifically, because most personality inventories are relatively transparent, concerns have been raised about the extent to which job applicants answer them honestly. Whether conscious or not, research suggests applicants are motivated to present the image most likely to be viewed positively by decision makers. Incumbents, who already have the job and who may be responding under “research-only” instructions, have less motivation to attempt to manage the impressions they make. The result of this “test-taker motivation” may well be exaggerated levels of conscientiousness, agreeableness, and extraversion for many applicants.

Trends in employee survey data over the past nine years reflect a startling, but understandable impact from macro economic conditions. Employee trust in leadership and faith in the future of their organizations has steadily fallen to an all time low. The result: Employees are less committed, loyal, satisfied, and motivated. However, many leaders have thrived through this time, maintaining high levels of engagement.

In a typical test, a group of items are administered to examinees and the number of items each examinee gets right is used to estimate ability. The more items one gets correct, the greater one’s ability is assumed to be. However, since everyone takes every item, all examinees are administered items that are either too easy or too difficult for them. Because they are like adding constants to someone’s score, these items provide relatively little information about the examinee’s ability level.

Members of generation X and Y ( the young-uns) are different from you and me ( the old codgers).

If you believe in the above statement, then you need to develop separate processes for employee recruitment and retention. Who exactly is this group of generation X and Y? First and foremost, they are human beings with the same needs, wants, desires, ambitions and dreams that we all have. What they want from their employer is no different from what you and I want from our employer, namely a place to make a difference, an opportunity to shine, a place where you can be successful and an organization to be proud of.

Today, we receive and transmit more information faster, cheaper, invisibly and internationally than ever. It’s getting cheaper, faster and even more inventive, day by day. The world’s share of and access to information individual by individual is accelerating.

Inevitably experts predict this will globalise many business processes. This includes for example global assessment processes. But will it; truly? Let’s look at some of these opportunities and problems

A recent article in the British business publication, Management Today, highlighted the rapid emergence of employee engagement as a hot topic in company boardrooms and sought to educate its readership on the basics of employee engagement. However, though the author was impressed by the power of employee engagement as a lever for tapping into an organisation’s potential, he was still sceptical and rated employee engagement at 7/10 on their ’Fad Quotient’, and rising. They were right to highlight employee engagement as a hot topic, but was this a justifiable rating?

Many organizations use various partners or vendors to collect data and provide services. Too often, all of this information is maintained in distinct silos where it gathers dust. If it is used at all, the scope is very narrow with limited distribution. Few associates see it, few understand it, and even fewer find it useful. None of the information ever interrelates; thus, the intelligence of gathering all this information with various organizations is never fully realized as to its utility. For instance, by collecting 360 data, employee engagement survey data, and selecting leaders and hourly associates using an assessment tool, the synergy between these valuable sets of information is seldom realized because many companies use different vendors to provide each of these services.

A Japanese test of character poses the question: “When did you last visit your parents?” The more recent the reply, the better your character. In some cultures respect for the older generation is a key element in the formation of positive values concerning personal relationships. But this has not always been the case. In fastchanging organisations where speed of learning is critical the mature employee may even be perceived by potential employers as a liability rather than an asset.

This article looks at how the evolution of multiple intelligence theory now promises much for workplace productivity and organisational competitiveness. With World economic pressures bearing down, could the theory’s links to talent assessment and organisation wide talent audits, carried out through the web, play a role in creating a brighter future?

The debate over the root of human behavior has been rampant for more than a century: Is our behavior the result of nature - the biological forces that precede our birth? Are we born with certain characteristics that are unchangeable and which we cannot control? Or, are we a result of the nurturing derived from our environment? Some psychologists adamantly maintain that our unique identities and individual personalities are mostly, if not solely, the result of biological forces that come first at our birth and, as such, are not influenced by our environments. Conversely, early behaviorists, such as B.F. Skinner, maintained that we come into the world as a blank tablet, capable of taking on an almost unlimited range of possible scripts. He believed that our personalities are determined by the sum total of all the reinforcement schedules that we have been exposed to over the course of our development. In other words, factors in our environment can have a dramatic influence over who we become and how we act. For the behaviorists, the question is not “do people change,” but rather “how do we change them?” In other words, how have people been nurtured from birth, and how can we “nurture” them further?

In the typical situational judgment test (SJT), an applicant is presented with a series of situations s/he could be expected to encounter on the job (these situations are usually determined via a job analysis). In most cases, each situation has four or five possible responses and the applicant is asked to indicate how s/he would handle that situation from the choices available (see example below). While situational judgment tests have been around for many years, they have recently begun to garner much attention in the research literature (e.g., Chan & Schmitt, 1997; Clevenger, Pereira, Wiechmann, Schmitt, & Harvey, 2001; McDaniel, Morgeson, Finnegan, Campion, & Braverman, 2001; Olson-Buchanan, Drasgow, Moberg, Mead, Keenan, & Donovan, 1998; Smith & McDaniel, 1998; Weekley & Jones, 1997; 1999; Weekley & Ployhart, 2002). This increased popularity of SJTs is undoubtedly due to research demonstrating a number of positive features. First, research indicates that SJTs can validly predict performance and do so incrementally over the typical “benchmark” test of mental ability. Second, SJTs produce smaller subgroup differences (less potential for adverse impact) and more favorable applicant reactions than do tests of general mental ability.

The Oxford American Dictionary of Current English defines talent as a “special aptitude or faculty.” If you are ever in a room with ten or more people ask them to take out a piece of paper and a pencil and take a quick pop poll of sorts. Ask them to write the name of the first person that comes to mind when you say the word “talent.” Usually eight or nine of the people will name an athlete, musician, singer, author, or someone with high visibility. Very few people will name a teacher. Now ask that same group to name a person who has had a significant impact on their life. Now chances are good you may get several people who will actually name a teacher. When asked what that teacher did to stand out in his or her mind, the person is likely to describe someone who fits the definition of talent. Wouldn’t it be great if every student who goes through your school systems would list at least one teacher as having a significant impact on their life?

The definition of work or a job has evolved dramatically over the last century. As we have moved from an agrarian, to an industrial, to an informational based society, our definition of “job” has changed. Today, a traditional job is considered to be 40 hours a week, during the day and from Monday to Friday. Look around at the people that you know and ask yourself what percentage of them has this traditional definition? Recent studies show that in California approximately 50% are working in “non-traditional” jobs. This involves shift work, flex time, significant variation from week to week, telecommuting from home and the like.

So what trends are going to be true for the future? While it is always difficult predicting the social, economic and societal influences on any subjects, there are certain trends that are quite clear.

If you asked your employer to take $8,000 of the company’s money to a casino and let it all ride on one wager, how do you think he or she would respond? How do you think they would respond if you came to them with this question weekly? Better yet, how do you think they would respond if you did it without even asking for permission?