Welcome to the Birchtree Quarterly, a quarterly publication of Birchtree-HR, LLC. Here you will find articles by Birchtree-HR, LLC employees and contributing authors. This quarter you’ll hear from OD Expert, Karen Tracy on improving the performance of your employees, Birchtree Western Region Consultant, Brenda Fulkrod talks about her experiences as a shipboard human resources manager in the hospitality industry; and the Birchtree-HR Staff Report on how to leverage state paid training programs to increase financial performance.

If you’d like to contribute to the Birchtree Quarterly, please contact, Admin@birchtreehr.com for additional information.

by Karen A. Tracy

March 2007
Sounds simple enough…After hiring talent to produce results for the organization, you let them loose to perform! Business results are achieved and everyone is happy (both the organization leadership and the new hire). All the leader has to do to get the return on his/her investment is leverage the employee’s expertise to ensure that the business results are achieved. To do this, requires that the leader execute performance management. Performance management involves the following three steps: 1) set goals/objectives (establish the target) for the employee, 2) manage the employee’s day/day performance through direction, coaching, feedback (keep their focus on the target and redirect their behavior as necessary) and 3) evaluate their performance (tell them if they hit the target and if not, explain what they could do differently next time). While these steps seem fundamental and most leaders are aware of them, many do not execute them because it takes time or they don’t feel comfortable doing it. There in lies the opportunity. Business results are achieved by not only knowing what to do but also executing all three steps in a clear and consistent manner with your people at all levels in the organization. This article uses a case example to illustrate what happens when well meaning leaders hire the experts and then do not execute performance management. As a result, they leave their return on their talent investment to chance

The Case
A new employee, Todd, was hired for his twenty years experience in a real estate management company. He is located in the new regional office in the East coast; the corporate office is located on the West coast. At the East coast office, there are several managers with expertise to support the business model. However, no one person is accountable for the region’s success and communication flow from corporate. Therefore, communication flows to everyone, after all, corporate wants to keep everyone informed. Meanwhile, Todd has yet to meet the President of the company. He receives a barrage of emails with questions about the various real estate day-day activities and a weekly conference call that challenges the events of the prior week. While the environment is not hostile, it lends itself to a lot confusion re roles and excessive emails to avoid the proverbial finger pointing. Todd does not have a position description to date. He asked for a position description during the interview process, did not receive one. He was assured that his experience would be valued and leveraged. So Todd continues to perform doing what has always worked well for him in past companies, after all, that is why he was hired, right?

The Case continued…
After a couple of weeks on the job, Todd’s expertise was leveraged. Corporate adds more projects to his portfolio. Now he has conflicting priorities re what he thought he was hired to do and the new duties assigned. He has requested clarification many times from the corporate office and has yet to receive a clear and consistent response. Meanwhile the work mounts along with Todd’s frustration. Todd continues doing what he knows best with very little feedback, except when one of his decisions is being questioned or challenged by corporate. Others in the region office have experienced the same thing, where they requested clarification and have received a conflicting or vague response. Now their approach is heads down, do not ask do not tell. They feel that if they do not ruffle feathers, corporate will leave them alone to do their job. Meanwhile, success for the East coast region has yet to be defined, other than to make it profitable.

Observations
Clear performance expectations have not been set and communicated. (Step 1 in Performance Management process is missing.) “Goals direct attention, increase persistence, and motivate development of strategies or plans to attain those goals” (Findley and Amsler, 2003). Without goals/objectives, Todd’s likelihood of hitting the target is left to chance. Being an expert, he performs doing what he thinks is best for the portfolio, only to find that others in the regional office may have other priorities based on their roles, and they do not necessarily align with his. Without the Region’s key goals and objectives, each team member continues to perform individually, not as a team that can leverage their expertise towards a common goal and company mission. This individual effort, a common spray and pray approach, results in a lot of wheel spinning, rework, miscommunication and finger pointing when things go wrong. Clearly identified and communicated goals/objectives that align with the company’s vision, mission and strategy will create a focus for individuals and the East coast office so their expertise can translate into results for the company. Without Step 1, Setting Goals/Objectives, Step 2 and 3 are very difficult to do. For example, Step 2, (day-day coaching/feedback) …while coaching and feedback can be given based on observation (even from a distance), it is not purposeful towards a common goal. Remember the childhood game, pin the tail on the donkey. Partial feedback is like telling the blindfolded participant that he/she missed the donkey but not telling them how to focus their aim towards the appropriate spot on the donkey’s body. Eventually the tail may land on the donkey, but the chance of it landing at the appropriate end is unlikely, unless specific feedback is given along the way.

Observations continued…
Again, in Todd’s case, he has received feedback when his actions are off target but has yet to receive feedback or coaching on how to redirect his actions that can assist him in being successful and increase his productivity in the process. In addition, when he thinks he is performing well, no feedback is given, leaving the positive behavior to chance, and possibly not repeated. As a result, Todd’s job satisfaction is low, and he begins to question why he joined this company. Job satisfaction is one of the key factors in determining whether an employee chooses to stay with a company (Lockwood). As for the rest of the team, they quit asking and use the heads down approach to avoid the fear of looking bad. Their saving grace in the East coast office is that most of team members are seasoned professionals. Unfortunately, conflict arises when the well-meaning professionals, trying to perform their job, create unintended obstacles for others who are trying to get their job done. To add to the complexity, you have a remote location with the leaders of the company at corporate who are having trouble letting go of the day/day activities. From the leaders’ perspective, I suspect they are not sure what results they are getting from their East office. To maintain a sense of control, they flow misdirected communication in a barrage of emails; this leads to frustration on both ends.

Step 3, Evaluating performance, if done without Steps 1 and 2, it is subjective at best. Evaluating performance when the success criteria is not well defined and not clearly communicated (step 1) and feedback given (step 2) is likely to lead to a disconnect in performance expectations and a disappointed leader and employee.

Last, the new talent is working from a remote location. Leaders and employees do not communicate face-face on a frequent basis. Because of this, they have not had the opportunity to establish a relationship of trust and mutual respect. Many people work from remote locations successfully but the priority for the leadership team is that your people know where you are coming from, understand where you are going and trust you (Derven, 2007). “Leaders who treat remote employees as valuable assets will be rewarded with higher performance and productivity and more enjoyable working relationships” (Derven, 2007).

The Conclusion:
Unfortunately, this scenario happens all too often. Many well-meaning business leaders hire expert employees to produce business results. They pay top dollar to acquire key talent, get them in the door and set them loose to perform, only to wonder what happened when the results are not achieved as they expected. Re the case above, among organization structure and process issues, they are missing all three steps of the performance management process. In addition, the remote location exacerbates the problems and a result, puts the success (profitability) of the East coast office at risk.

Leaders, help to ensure a return on your talent investment by having your leadership team clearly and consistently executing performance management with all employees. The returns on productivity, employee satisfaction, retention and business results will be worth it.

Please refer all questions/comments re the article to Karen Tracy,trac1005@yahoo.com

References
Findley, H.M. and Amsler, G. (March 2003). Setting Performance Expectations: Return To The Basics. SHRM Whitepaper

Lockwood, N. Finding and Keeping the Right Talent: A Strategic View
SHRM Survey

Derven, M. (March 2007). The Remote Connection: Leading Others From A Distance Requires Expectations, Trust and Unique Methods of Evaluation.
HR Magazine, 111-115.

by Brenda Fulkrod © 2007


The saying goes that the only two things that are for certain in this life are death and taxes. I think, and I believe Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist and author of “The World is Flat”, would agree, that we must add a third: this world is becoming and will forever become more flat, or I rather I could say globalization is here to stay. We continue to see the effects of globalization in our worlds, in our communities, at work and even in our personal lives. We can now date someone from another country thousands of miles away just by going onto the internet. How does this impact your company? As we see competition increase in our global market we now must find ways use the international asset of our companies and create value propositions for our customers. We can do this by continually increasing the organizational effectiveness and efficiency of these teams to create a competitive advantage for your company.

The globalization of our work lives has been very apparent to me in all of my positions as a Human Resource professional, but none more so than when I worked as a Shipboard Human Resource Manager on board an American cruise ship company. This company employed folks from over 73 different countries and on any one ship we could have employees from as many as 55 different countries working, living, eating and socializing together, all on one big floating hotel and entertainment vessel. This posed a higher degree of international management than I had experienced in other HR positions. Never before had I been in a situation where I worked with an Executive (or in my case a Captain) from Norway, a Hotel Director from Belgium, an Executive Chef from India as well as with a whole staff from places such as Nepal, Trinidad/Tobago and even some from the Eastern Block countries. The biggest lesson I learned and I learned it quickly was that tolerance of diversity was significantly more important for the entire staff on board these ships than I had experience in any other work setting. In a 24/7 operation it was crucial to create effective and efficient international team dynamics in order to have a successful operation. One step in establishing this was to create the best living/working environment that we could for the crew. This is a strategy that we see many companies employing; taking care of employee daily needs and satisfying simple needs is an easy strategy that companies can use to start the creation of a successful international environment.

As I continued to work on the ships and rotated to different ships with different crew, one management aspect that I established as almost the most important for international synergy in this global community was the leadership style of the executive team and management of this ships. The staff on these ships had such different backgrounds that they needed a common goal and their motivation was strongly influenced by the leadership of each individual ship. The more hands on and involved the executive team and management was with the crew the motivation and willingness to work effectively as a team increased. Another major component to this international organization was respect. This again, was something that as the crew connected with a management team that respected each other and the crew the same would happen “throughout the ranks”.

On ships time is a valuable asset and as the staff worked 70 plus hours per week, every week, establishing training time was always a challenge, but a necessary component in this dynamically international organization. Creating time away from the staff’s daily work in order for them to participate in team building exercises proved to be an effective way to get our employees to think differently about how to work together. The ship environment did have its added benefits of having the ability to do team building training in the Caribbean, but any company can find resources to provide this type of training in fun and entertaining environments.

Continuous work with team building, establishing mutual respect among all levels of employees and having an executive team that exemplifies a positive international collaborative team are just a few examples of ways to create an effective and efficient international staff. As companies continue to be more global and compete in our global arena this “creation of value through leadership” as Thomas Friedman states in “The World is Flat” continues to prove to have a significant impact in creating valuable international teams, which will give your company the competitive advantage it needs to compete in the ever flattening global marketplace.

Eligible retraining programs include on-line, off-line, in house or off site programs that provide job skills. Examples include:

The maximum recoverable per person per training module varies but commonly includes ½ of all direct training costs. Direct costs include the time of the person taking the course, course costs, instructor salaries, materials, supplies, textbooks, manuals, videos, on-and off line resources among others. For materials created in-house hours worked on creating in house materials are may also be eligible.

These programs are competitive and it is critical to apply early for these programs. In some cases companies must apply two or three months in advance. In more competitive locations, funding is limited so applying early is suggested.

Although some states allow you to go back three years to recover tax credits, most states require companies obtain advanced approval for tax credit programs. Getting a training program approved in advance helps to guarantee the submitting company can receive the full benefit from its training efforts.

Employees who can be included in these programs must generally work at least 25 hours per week AND must have been continuously employed by the employer for at least 16 weeks prior to the training-sometimes longer.

The documentation for the program includes both easy to provide information as well as more specialized material. For example, the training objectives, training outlines and criteria for employee performance evaluation, may be difficult to provide. Many training providers, internal and external to a company, do not have their training materials customized to easily fit into state retraining tax credit guidelines. Birchtree will format your training materials to meet state qualifications.

Birchtree specializes in identifying and organizing training programs to qualify for state incentive recapture programs. We consult with the company to identify qualified programs, evaluate the curriculum and format it to fit state requirements, identify all relevant training costs, complete the required program and obtain approval from approving authorities.

We provide a turn key process to obtain the maximum recoverable for the firm. As an outsourced provider that specializes in this work product, we don’t tie up your internal resources in non-strategic business activities. You will have access to state specific best practice documentation which will both reduce your time and effort but will position your firm to receive state funds when available. Our fees are based on a percentage of what we recover, so if we don’t perform, we don’t get paid. For a free consultation and estimate, please contact the Birchtree-HR, LLC staff.