Lessons from Catbert: Downsizing

If you are downsizing do your best to ensure everyone's dignity and pride is intact. They will certainly appreciate it.

Lessons from Catbert: Employee Surveys

Create an open environment where employees are free and comfortable offering feedback on how to improve the organization.

The Purpose of Social Media Policies [INFOGRAPHICS]

63% of companies with a social media policy believe they are effective in maintaining productivity.

(via Granite Consulting)

Lessons from Catbert: Align policy with culture

Do your company policies match your organizational culture? If not, employees will find it hard to buy into the culture and in turn, .your company.

Talent Wars: An Arms Race in Tech [INFOGRAPHIC]

By 2015, 60% of the new jobs being created will require special skills held by only 20% of the population. In contrast, in 1991 less than half of U.S. jobs required special workers.

Lessons from Catbert: Employee complaints

Create an open system where employees can vent their frustrations or deal with their grievances with other employees.

Lessons from Catbert: Employee Potential

It is your job to see the potential in every employee and work tirelessly to help each and every one of them fulfill that potential.

The Ins and Outs of a Social Media Policy

Whether you like it or not, users online are talking about your brand - postively and negatively. More and more organizations are realizing that they need to be proactive with handling their brand online by establishing a social media policy. Your corporate social media policy is a set of guidelines that employees will be able to turn to when they are unsure about how to approach social media.

However, this does not mean that you should write a social media policy as a first step before venturing into social media. "It might be beneficial not to create some arbitrary rules without first seeing where the opportunities and risks really are” says Chad Houghton, the director of e-media and business development at the Society for Human Resource Management. The social media policy should be tailored to your organization's unique culture and presence on social media and address company-specific issues.

Many companies already have communications policies that provide guidelines for how employees use the phone or e-mail. A social media policy can simply be an extension of the communications policy, adapted for the online world. Scott Monty, the head of social media at Ford Motor Company, agrees that if there are existing policies in place, "amending them to include the changes to communications platforms and anticipating future changes should occur ASAP” Eric B. Meyer, an Associate in the Labor and Employment Group of Dilworth Paxson LLP, emphasizes that employees “should be made aware that company policies on anti-harassment, ethics and company loyalty extend to all forms of communication both inside and outside the workplace.”

Writing a Social Media Policy
Like most rules, an effective social media policy should focus on what employees can do as opposed to what they can not. Shannon Seery Gude, VP of Digital for Bernard HODES Group, believes that they key to a successful social media  policy is for authenticity to exist "without the need for what may be perceived as forced company morality” You want to provide a guide to best practices rather than a list of punishable offenses.

The policy should set boundaries for personal content, especially with corporate accounts. Your employees should understand that although they have the right to freedom of speech, companies have the right to monitor employee use of social media, even if it occurs outside of the office. The Internet expression "dooced" is used to describe when an employee loses his or her job because of something that was said online. One of the most recent and well-known examples of someone getting dooced is comedian Gilbert Gottfried, who was fired from his job as the Aflac spokesduck after tweeting a joke about the devastating earthquake in Japan.

Although a goal of social media is to establish transparency, Meyer states that organizations need to "make employees aware of any obligation they may have to protect confidential or proprietary information.” Although this can be accomplished with good judgment on the employees part, it is much easier to simply state what information is confidential in the social media policy.


Below is an example of a social media policy from Headset Bros. Most organizations post their social media guidelines online such as Canada Post, IBM, and Intel.
HEADSET BROS – SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY

Sources:
Mashable ^{1 2}

Lessons from Catbert: Compensation

You can do everything you can to keep employees motivated but the bottom line is to keep employees satisfied with their compensation.

5 Human Resource Lessons from the World's Most Admired Companies

Fortune Magazine's World's Most Admired Companies (WMAC) issue is out and once again, the top five seems like a familiar bunch: Apple, Google, Berkshire Hathaway, Southwest Airlines, and Proctor & Gamble. This is the third year that Apple has topped the prestigious list, two appearances shy of General Electric's record for most times as the "World's Most Admired Company". For the past ten years, the Hay Group has performed supplemental research to discover the best practices that make these companies so consistently successful.

Their 2010 study found that top organizations leverage their goodwill and give their employees the conditions needed to contribute and succeed. Here are ways ways that the WMAC achieves these objectives.

1) INVOLVE EMPLOYEES AT ALL LEVELS

Companies on the WMAC list are more likely to engage employees and ask for their feedback. In fact, 91% of the WMAC regularly reach out to employees for ideas on how to improve organizational efficiency, comapred to 76% of all companies. Not only does this generate great ideas for the company but it keeps employees motivated and aligned with the organization's goals. The vast majority of respondents from the WMAC (94 percent) believe employee engagement efforts reduced employee turnover, and 85 percent believe employee engagement efforts reduced employee performance problems, compared to 67 percent and 72 percent at peer companies respectively.

2)WORK/LIFE BALANCE

Half of the WMAC said that intend to focus on improving work/life balance over the next two years to avoid burning out and to retain top talent. This is compared to only 30% of peer companies who has the same focus. Successful managers recognize that people's lives are more holistic and that beng respectful of this fact leads to happier and more productive employees.

3)KEEPING SKILLS CURRENT

The WMAC make efforts to ensure that employee skills are updated to keep up with changing job demands. Employees benefit from personal and professional development while the WMAC benefits from greater employee productivity and effectiveness. Hay Group Vice-President Mel Stark notes that the WMAC "actually manage to pay less for talent than their peers – about 5% less; they tend to have less of a need to hire expensive outside talent for jobs, because they are better at grooming people internally and retaining employees. The lower costs of recruiting and training new people have a ripple effect across an organization"

4) MANAGING PERFORMANCE

Managers are encouraged to coach employees on an on-going basis, providing feedback and solutions. Employees have clear expectations and understand their role in the organization's broader objectives. Managers must be aware of employees' activities so they can provide advice and counsel as well as ensure employees are engaged and on the correct path. However, it is important to make the distinction between managing performance and smothering it with too much attention. While managers need to be there to guide employees in the right direction the employees need to be in the drivers seat.

5) LINKING REWARD AND CONTRIBUTION

The WMAC tend to attract and retain top talent in the long-term and many of their top management were developed internally.  

Mel Stark believes this is because "these companies do a better job of rewarding top performers – delivering the best pay increases to those who are truly deserving and holding the line on pay for marginal performers. Over time, this results in a compounded effect of top performers earning appreciably more than others.”

The WMAC have systems and processes that offer significantly higher rewards for their high-performing employees than peer companies. Although this is an incurred cost in the short-term, the long-term benefits far outweigh to increased compensation paid to employees.

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To arrive at the top 50 Most Admired Companies overall, the Hay Group asked 4,100 executives, directors, and securities analysts who had responded to the industry surveys to select the 10 companies they admired most. They chose from a list made up of the companies that ranked in the top 25% in last year's surveys, plus those that finished in the top 20% of their industry.

(via Talent Management with quotes from Hay Group)