Playing the People Game

For this entry, I decided to draw inspiration from the sporting world. Specifically, I drew from an area close to my own heart, football (soccer for those who prefer to use American English). I realize that for those of you who are no sports fans, this might sound particularly dull. However, I will ask you to stick with me as I feel the comparisons I am about to make could be very useful to HR professionals and managers in China.

The football ‘industry’ in England is one of the most fiercely competitive spheres in the world. I am not just referring to what happens on the field here. Teams like Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea are not just fantastic teams; they are also massive businesses, competing for customers and advertising revenue as well as trophies. Another thing they also compete for is talent.

So, how is this relevant to you and to HR? Good question. The comparison I intend to make is simple. The world of football is ultra-competitive and the stakes are unbelievably high. As we all know, competition within the Chinese job-market is also extremely fierce. And, now, with the onset of the global financial crisis, the stakes are growing by the day. I would now like to give two examples that could relate to the Chinese job-market.

PAULO SOUSA – The benefits of patient hiring
The first example actually comes from my own favorite team, Queens Park Rangers. Before the start of the 2008/2009 season, they had a vacancy for the position of head-coach. The board decided to act quickly - some might say too quickly. They appointed Ian Dowie, an experienced, but limited candidate. The speedy appointment allowed Dowie plenty of time to settle in and to prepare the team for the upcoming season. However after three months in the role, results were poor and were getting worse. So, Mr. Dowie was on his way out of the club. The board then had to appoint a new manager mid-season to improve performances. In such a pressing situation, it would have been easy to make another hasty appointment. This time, though, they were in no rush. And, after much deliberation, they appointed the inexperienced but talented Portuguese coach Paolo Sousa. How did this affect results? It appears the patient approach has worked. After 13 games Mr. Sousa has lost just once.

I know, I know, you are now screaming, and “How is this relevant to me?” In the current economic climate, the stakes are just as high as in the cut-throat footballing world. Therefore, it is important you hire right. A wrong move could cost money your company can ill-afford. Therefore, it is vital to stay calm and do not panic when searching for new hires – use QPR’s second hiring model as an example. Even though a quick hire may guarantee limited disruption in the short-term; a wrong hire will guarantee major disruption in the long-term.

GIANFRANCO ZOLA – Avoiding knee-jerk reactions
My second footballing example takes in West Ham United. After their experienced manager decided to quit, they opted to replace him with a young up and coming Italian coach, Gianfranco Zola. Lacking experience and facing an uphill challenge, Zola initially struggled and results were poor. The board quickly fell under pressure from fans to remove Zola and speculation in the media grew quickly. However, they decided to stick by their man. Three months in and Zola began to find his feet, results improved and the pressure abated. In fact, at present, were he to leave the club it would be for bigger and better things.

This example can also translate into Chinese HR terms. Currently, not only is finding talent immensely difficult in China but the fiscal climate means that new hires – particularly in senior management positions - no longer have the luxury of a prolonged settling-in period – all that matters is results. It would have been easy for West Ham to see that results were not as good as they had hoped and to have panicked, with Zola being sent packing. However, they stood by their man and have begun to reap the rewards.

THE MORAL TO OUR STORIES
These two examples teach us two important lessons in regards to recruitment: (i) It is – now more than ever – vital for any organization to ensure they are clear and thorough in their recruitment process. They need to take their time to find the right person. Hiring fast does not mean hiring right. (ii) Once that person is in place, the organization needs to show patience. Chopping and changing personnel is only likely to chaos upheaval and poor results. If an organization has the right person in the right role, it needs to give them time to shine.

Knowledge in the bank - Money in the bank

All too often, when I talk to HR professionals here in Tianjin about the subject of exit interviews, I get the impression that they are treated as something of an afterthought. Too many people seem to view them as a necessary administrative evil rather than a way to add strategic value to their company. This is a crying shame because a well-executed exit interview can help to maintain and improve organizational performance.

I have used the term ‘improving performance’, but this is actually something of a misnomer. It could be better labeled ‘damage limitation’. Let me explain what I mean. Imagine we have a senior manager at a major company here in Tianjin. He has worked there for over five years and, as a consequence, understands his role perfectly. Now, imagine he decides to leave. The upheaval his departure will cause could have a massive impact on organizational performance. It will take time to find and train a replacement, and, whilst he or she is getting up to speed, it is likely that the company’s performance will suffer. This will, of course, cost money. It is as though the manager has a giant dollar – or RMB – sign painted on his back. And, when he walks out the door, the company can wave goodbye to all that cash! In the current fiscal climate, many organizations simply cannot afford for that to happen.

So, how can exit interviews help to save money? Simply put, they need to act as a safety net, capturing knowledge that might otherwise have been lost. Let’s take a look at three areas of knowledge that all organizations must strive to keep:

· Personnel: This factor is particularly useful when dealing with a manager who is leaving a company. If he or she has spent a significant time with the company, they are likely to know the employees who work under them well and may have even made the decision to hire them. Therefore, they will have an intimate knowledge of what makes their department tick.
· Systems: Senior employees are likely to know a company’s internal systems and operations with great intimacy. They may even have created or, at the very least, modified these systems.
· Clients: Just as a manager will have crucial knowledge about the members of his or her team, a top sales person or marketing executive is likely to have a detailed knowledge of a company’s major clients. If the company wants to continue productive relationships with these clients, this knowledge needs to be transferred.

Currently, many organizations undertake brief exit interviews that discuss the reasons why the employee is leaving and his/her thoughts on the company. In itself, this is by no means a bad thing. However, it is merely skimming the surface. To ensure the transition in personnel is a smooth as possible and does not impact on organizational performance, the exit process needs to be expanded. It should kick into action as soon as the employee announces his or her decision to leave and should be as extensive as possible. Here are a few pointers:

· Overlapping: This one is probably of greatest use if an organization intends to promote from within or can find a replacement quickly. Basically, it involves having the replacement in place before the departing employee has left, thus allowing direct knowledge transfer between the two.
· Shadowing: If it is going to be difficult to get someone in place before the departing employee has left the organization, then assigning a member of the HR team to shadow the employee for a week to collect as much information as possible that can then be passed on to the replacement is a possible alternative. The HR professional can put together files to help brief the replacement once he or she is on board.
· Technology: Often when an employee leaves a company he or she will turn-off their PC and then just head home. This certainly should not be the case. As part of the exit process, HR should spend time with the departing employee cataloging files (both hard-copy and soft-copy) so that these can be passed on to the replacement.
· Caretaker: This is a potential tactic for any management roles that become vacant. If the company decides to hire from outside, but cannot get the perfect person straight away, it could make a temporary appointment from within. The caretaker can then glean as much useful information as possible from the outgoing manager and, then, pass it to the new manager once he or she is on board.Discussion: This is probably the simplest, but most effective technique. If a departing employee is full of valuable knowledge, it is vital that HR and management spend as much time discussing their role and asking questions as possible. Lots of open questions are vital here: what, why, where, when, who, which and how.

Gone, but not forgotten ... The importance of exit interviews

Three years ago, whilst I was working for my previous company, one of my team decided that she wanted to leave and go back to university in order to study for a master’s degree. Naturally, I was disappointed to lose a valuable member of my team. However, as she clearly had her heart set on this new direction, I was happy to let her depart with my blessing and best wishes. Once she had officially offered her resignation I presumed everything was complete. Not quite. I soon got a call from HR asking me to undertake an exit interview.

This surprised me a little. In the past, my only experience of this type of process had been on the receiving end. In my mind, the exit interview was the domain of HR rather than the line-manager. So, to get a little help, I called our HR manager in Shanghai:“Hi Amy, I am looking for a little guidance on the exit interview you asked me to do.”“Ok, no problem. What we need you to do is find out why Sally (the employee) quit, and any information that might be useful in helping us attract and retain employees in the future.That seemed simple enough. And, to give me extra help, Amy emailed me a list of potential questions. So, I sat down with Sally and began the interview. Everything went great! She explained her reasons for leaving in great detail and gave some excellent feedback on the company’s corporate culture and on me as a line manager. This was good to hear. However, as she continued, I began to feel that perhaps it was a little too good to hear.

If Sally did have concerns about the company’s culture, opportunities for development, or the way she was treated by management, I was hardly the right person to be asking her.This reminded me of the exit interview at my last job in the UK. It was conducted by my department manager. I had left the company because I felt that the development opportunities I had been promised when I was recruited had not been delivered. This would have been useful information for the company to help them with future recruitment. However, the person responsible for hiring me and subsequently failing to deliver on his promises was sat right in-front of me – we were even in his office! There was no way that I felt comfortable sharing my thoughts with him in that environment. So, I simply told him I was “looking for a new challenge” and headed out of the door. My boss sat back in his chair with no idea why he had lost another employee and no way to stop others following.

These two exit interview experiences taught me that there are two key elements to an exit interview that must be in place before you even ask a question (i) the environment, and (ii) the interviewer.

(i) The environment: The key here is simple – it needs to be somewhere the departing employee feels comfortable. As Amy said, the whole point of an exit interview is to find out why the employee decided to leave and find useful information that might help to attract and retain other employees in the future. If they do not feel comfortable – like me in my manager’s office – they are less likely to share. As a consequence, you will get less useful information and run the risk of losing more employees.
(ii) The interviewer: In both scenarios discussed above, the choice of a manager to conduct the interview was a poor one. Very few departing employees would feel comfortable telling their line-manager that they are leaving because of a personality conflict, because of a lack of opportunity or because of poor organizational culture. Instead, a much more neutral figure is needed – HR being the obvious example.As the old saying goes, “Prevention is better than cure.” A successful exit interview may not help you to cure the problems of the departing employee, but it could certainly help prevent problems amongst others in the future!

The King is Dead ... Long live the King

In ancient imperial times, the right of succession was a relatively simple process. In the majority of cases father was simply replaced by son. This was regardless of such issues as intelligence, talent or competency. Nowadays, any organisation adopting such a simplistic and risky approach would surely be doomed to failure. This is why so many companies invest great amounts of time and money in succession planning.Succession planning is a great way of ensuring organisations can continue to operate smoothly even after an integral team member moves on. However, a function of succession planning that is all too often overlooked is as a retention tool.

Let me offer two examples - one positive and one negative - of the impact succession planning can have on your organisation.The first example comes from back in 2002 at the very start of my own career. I had taken a job working in the marketing department of a major British newspaper company. Both the position and the salary were ok, but not great. However, I had been persuaded to take the role by the promise of rapid advancement through the organisation. Unfortunately, by 2004 this advancement had not taken place and I felt that I was treading water.I was certainly disappointed that I had not been given the chance to advance. However, I was concerned more with the fact that I had no idea how or where any future advancement would happen. My manager had failed to identify any roles he saw me filling in the future and offered no guidance on areas I needed to improve. My only hope was that one of the older employees would retire or get a better offer elsewhere. The problem with that approach was that I did not know how long it would take for my opportunity to arise.

Eventually, after 18 months I grew tired of waiting and decided to go elsewhere.Let's contrast that experience with those of my friend Mike. We graduated from university in the same year and got our first job at around the same time. However, even though he was originally paid less than me, Mike is still with his company. The simple reason for this is that his company communicated to him from day-one the direction in which they wanted him to progress. They gave him a clear career-plan outlining how he could climb their corporate pyramid. This included a timetable for this progression and criteria he needed to meet in order to qualify.The difference between Mike and myself was that he was safe in the knowledge that, if all went well, he would progress within the company. I, on the other hand was left to wait and hope. So, when I got an attractive offer from another company, I was happy to leave.