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.

Customer Service Conundrums 2

Ok, so I am back again with more thoughts on customer service and the desperate need for improved training here in China. And, for this entry, I want to keep things simple, to focus on the basics.

As I write this blog, I am watching an LCD screen on subway line 10 in Beijing. The video that is playing is of an Olympic volunteer helping a disabled spectator to visit the Bird's Nest stadium. The sentiment in the video is wonderful. The volunteer helps the man into a specially modified vehicle using a state of the art chair-lift. She then helps him out of the vehicle again at the stadium and directs him to a wheelchair accessible entrance. The video then closes with the disabled man sat waving a mini Chinese flag. It all sounds lovely doesn't it? However, I have to doubt its realism.

Let me recount my own Olympic customer service experience. And, then let's contrast the two. During the recent National Day holiday, my girlfriend and I took a short trip to Beijing. One of our aims was to visit the Bird's Nest and Water Cube. The plan was simple. We wanted to arrive late in the afternoon so that we could see the stadia both in daylight and then illuminated at night. To me, this did not seem like an outrageous expectation. Unfortunately, I could not have been more wrong.

Our problems started when we tried to transfer from line 10 to line 8, which would supposedly take us straight to the Olympic arena. However, security in the station would not let us change trains without tickets for the center. As we did not have tickets, we asked where we could obtain them The guard said that he did not know, but that we could not transfer lines.

Unable to find any help, we moved outside in an effort to locate some tickets. We found several Olympic volunteers bedecked in their now famous blue shirts, but still no solution. Enquiring in both Chinese and English, we were not told where we could find the tickets, only that they did not have any. It took trips to three booths and conversations with nine separate volunteers to finally discover that tickets were limited and there were none remaining. In the end, the closest we got to the stadia was snapping pictures from across the fence.

Our experience was frustrating. Primarily, this was because we could not see the the two arenas. However, I must admit that I was also irked by the fact even though there was a large display of customer service, lots of smiles and plenty of enthusiasm, there was not actually that much help.

Personally, I believe this to be a major trend in customer service here in China. Many organisations seem to be keen to invest in customer service, but on a slightly more superficial rather than practical level. They want to show they care, they want to show they have the staff to help, but they do not provide the practical training to make their staff effective. Let me give you two examples I have encountered in Tianjin in which an organisation made an effort, but where their training - or lack of - had rendered this useless.

The first is my local Wal-Mart, a place that continuously seems to push customer service boundaries .... in a bad way! Let me paint you a typical scenario. After filling my trolley with shopping, I move to the cashier. Unfortunately, there is a huge line of people and only a few open checkouts. However, standing around holding walkie-talkies and taking inventory are scores of other employees. When I ask what they are doing or if they could open some more checkouts, they stare at me and tell me that is not their job or they are not trained to do that. This situation always leaves me perplexed and incredibly frustrated. Wal-Mart is clearly making an investment in customer service, but not at the most basic, most critical level. There are posters around the store advertising various services, there are staff waiting at the entrance to welcome shoppers and there are staff giving away free samples. All of this is nice, but none of it is necessary. Yet, having enough people at the checkout is vital, but ignored.

The second example is the Tianjin BMT (Binhai Mass Transit) - a light rail system that operates between Tianjin and TEDA. Last week, I was on my way back downtown after training in TEDA, and, I was in a hurry. I rushed into the station, bought my ticket and headed to the entrance. The next train was about to leave. I pushed my ticket into the slot. However, instead of the small gates opening, it spat my ticket back out, remaining firmly closed. I tried again, but got the same result. So, I moved to the next entrance, still no luck. All the while I was doing this, an attendant looked on passively. After my third failure, I turned to her for help. She stood, stared and shrugged. As I glared at her and began to shout, she eventually sprang into life, taking my ticket and exchanging it for one that worked. Much to my dismay, this took some time and, before I had a new working ticket my train left. I was fuming.

This was poor service, which, on its one, was not unusual. It was the events that followed which grabbed my attention. The next train left 15 minutes later. When it did, one of the attendants - in full dress uniform - saluted as though it were a visiting foreign dignitary. This then happened at every station along the route back to Tianjin. I began to wonder, if Binhai Mass Transit was prepared to go to such lengths to create a good impression, surely they could have spent a few moments training their staff how to operate an essential piece of machinery.

The BMT's slogan is "Speed Brings Efficiency". As I read it, I wanted to find a staff member and yell at them, "No! Training your staff in the basic skills of their job brings efficiency." It does not matter how fast the train is, if the staff cannot help the passengers.

Mr Turnover

As I am not a HR manager, I do not encounter the rampant turnover that characterises China's 'war for talent'. So, how do I know it exists, how do I know the war is raging. Well, first, by talking to HR managers across northern China and asking about their challenges. Second, by following the media and by reading surveys from major organisations like Hudson and McKinsey to understand major employment trends. Just recently though, I encountered a third way - I met Mr Turnover.

Obviously, Mr Turnover was not actually his name. He was actually called Mr Zhang. I met him at an event in Tianjin. It was just that he epitomised everything about the 'war for talent'. He graduated in 2003 and in the time since, he had got through six different roles. That's it count them, six! When he told me, I was dumbfounded. 2003 was one year after I graduated. In the same period, I have had three major roles, which I would actually consider a little excessive.

I must admit, I had read countless surveys and spoken hundreds of HR managers, all of which told me turnover in China is rampant. Yet, I had never seen a living breathing example quite like Mr Zhang. Because of this, I was keen to pick his brains.

My first question was a simple one, "Why?". Was there some fundamental underlying reason that he moved between roles? Was he so greedy that he whenever he caught a sniff of more money he could not jump ship fast enough? Did he have one particular skill that no-one else in China possesses that makes him a unbelievably hot commodity? Were the organisations he worked previously so bad at engaging their employees that he felt compelled to leave?

As always, the situation was not as simple as any one basic reason. It was as though Mr Zhang was a microcosm for China as a whole. His reasons for moving were a mixture of push and pull factors. He was well-qualified in a highly sought after field, which meant that organisations were keen to tempt him away. "Headhunters are always on the phone offering more money", he pointed out. He was, though, quick to add, "It's not just about the money. At two of the companies I only lasted around three months. This was not financial, I just did not like the atmosphere or environment."

And, what of his current job? Was he ready to make it number 7? "No, not at all. The salary is good, I feel very comfortable with my colleagues and they offer great training."

My conversation with Mr Turnover was fascinating. It certainly confirmed that China's 'war for talent' is a complex issue for which there is no quick fix.

Higher Education Inflation

For this blog entry, I would like to tell you about the start of my career. Specifically, I would like to tell you the story of my first full-time role after graduating from university.

It was 2002 and I had just graduated from the University of Hull. After spending four years in academia, I was keen to cut my teeth in the real world. Having finished with a good degree I was expecting to find a well-paid challenging job within a prestigious organisation. I figured this would be no problem. Unfortunately, I was wrong. You see in the late 1990s and early 2000s university enrolment in the UK increased dramatically, just as it has in China in the past 5 years. This meant the UK began to experience something we could term 'higher education inflation'. Suddenly, a degree was no longer worth quite as much as before and, crucially, it no longer guaranteed a great job and a higher starting salary.

This was the situation that confronted me and many of my classmates. We were all expecting to find great jobs, but alas, there were just not enough of these for everyone. The situation was so bad that many of my friends were forced to take low-paying temporary jobs whilst they searched for the perfect role. Eventually, I was lucky enough to find something. However, it was far from being my dream job. It was a role in the sales and marketing division of a major British newspaper company. The position was not quite as senior as I was hoping and the pay was good, but not great. Therefore, I was unsure whether to take the position, but eventually, I was swayed by desire to finally end my job-search and also by the offer of a shiny company car.

The manager who hired me was named Mick Butcher. If I were to describe Mick, I would use the term 'old school'. He had been in the business for many years. Even though this meant that many of his methods were rooted in the 20th rather than the 21st century, he had quickly grasped the changes in the British job-market. He realised that for a job which previously demanded just A-Levels (qualifications taken in the UK prior to attending university), suddenly could require a degree. Mick took full advantage of this, using the shiny company cars to lure myself and two other graduates to his team.

In terms of pure recruitment, this was a master stroke. However, in the longer-term, the plan was found wanting. Fast-forward 18months and all of us had left. Why? The key reason behind this - and a fact that Mick failed to realise - was that with graduate qualifications come graduate expectations. My colleagues and I wanted training, we wanted development opportunities and we wanted the chance to earn more money. None of which we got.

So, how does my story apply to China? The clearest link is higher education inflation, which in China might better be termed better as "higher education hyper inflation". The number of graduates in China is mushrooming. This year, literally hundreds of thousands of graduates will leave university and face the prospect of not finding a job. Possibly the best example of this took place in Zhengzhou in late 2006 when a recruitment fare descended into chaos as hundreds of students stampeded in an effort to get a lead on the best roles on offer. In many respects, this situation is fantastic news. It means that (a) you will be able to fill more roles with highly-educated young people, and (b) you will have a far wider choice of candidate. However, this is only fantastic news if you manage the situation correctly. Getting your graduates aboard should be just be the beginning!

The danger for many organisations is that, because the graduate recruitment market is weighted so much in favour of employers, many companies grow complacent. After all, if there are so many graduates out there, they should be grateful for any opportunity they receive, right? Wrong! Once you have the best possible graduates on board, you need to keep them and, more importantly, you need to develop them. The crux of China's hyper inflation is that you must use it as a way of planning for the future. Currently, we have a situation where experienced talent is scarce, but determined and highly educated young potentials are plentiful. In China as a whole, this situation will not change quickly. However, for your organisation, you could speed things up.

I recently completed two different sets of training at multinationals in Tianjin, which had adopted fantastic approaches to their graduate recruitment. Both had decided to aim high, very high. They had hand-picked their graduates from some of China's top universities. As I began training these graduates, it did not take me long to realise that not only were they well-educated, but their communication skills and English levels were also fantastic. I must admit, I was surprised to meet such young employees with such ability, and I explained as much to the HR manager at one of the organisations. She replied:

"Oh yes, I know. We filtered out hundreds of candidates to find them."

"Oh, really? So you must have high hopes for them."

"Absolutely! We envisage them playing a major role in our organisation over the next ten years. I truly believe some of them will take senior management roles."

"10 years? Wow! That really is long term planning. But, with all the turnover in China right now, aren't you worried about losing them."

"Not really. We are giving them a fantastic opportunity. We plan to provide extensive training, to give the opportunity to work overseas and to enjoy very competitive financial rewards."

It was fantastic to see such a clear vision. The two organisations had certainly not fallen into the same trap as my first employer. They understood the opportunity presented to them and realised that by offering great development opportunities, they could nurture their new graduates to become future leaders. I did, though, have one final question for the HR manager:"Training, good salary and overseas travel - wont that be expensive.""Of course, but only in the short-term. To recruit senior managers is becoming outrageously expensive. In the long-run, if we can grow our own talent, this process will actually save us money!