How often to re-survey employees

Today I was asked an interesting question about staff surveys:

I have recently conducted a Global Employee Survey with my current organisation. There is a lot of discussion around when we should repeat this exercise, this ranges from 6 months to 24 months.

Do you have any advice?

My reply:
This all depends what you want to and are willing to do with the results of the employee survey.

I suspect that the organisation you are in now is very different from the one you knew 2 years ago (assuming you have been there that time). The currency of the results is limited to impacts of change by culture, goals, market place % of manager changes etc...

The question I would want to ask is; how would staff react to a repeat survey?

1. Great - a lot changed last time or ...
2. Not again - they did not listen last time so why this time?
   

How often do you do your employee surveys?

How do employees react?


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Mike Morrison is director of RapidBI, an organizational effectiveness consultancy. He has been involved in HR, OD and strategic development for over 20 years. He can be contacted via www.rapidbi.com/

© This article is copyright RapidBI 2006, 2008 – it may be copied providing the authors are credited, and direct links maintained

Resources for business

The RapidBI Team have been busy writing new free content covering strategic and tactical business theories, tools, thechiques and methods appropriate for people involved in the development of organizations or themselves. below are some of the newer pages.

Key Pages:

Holistic Diagnostic Tools - Find out what using a holistic approach can offer you and your organization Scanning the Business Environment - Why do this - is it just a waste of time or the critical factor? Management Models - 100+ Management Models - a page full of graphical management models, covering organizational growth, leadership, coaching, change management etc. Porters five forces - Michael Porter's five forces is a model used to explore the environment in which a product or company operates. The PESTLE Analysis - The PESTLE analysis - a powerful tool for exploring the external environment of an organzation Force Field Analysis - The Force Field analysis is a valuable tool in any decisionmaking process SWOT analysis - The SWOT analysis - a powerful tool for exploring the strengths of an organzation Personal Development Plans - Need to develop a Personal Development Plan - all you need is here PRIMO-F_- Business_Growth_Model - The PRIMO-F business growth model, a holistic approach Continuing Professional Development or CPD - CPD has been around for some years, now the need for personal responsibility is ever increasing. Write SMART objectives - Description on how to write SMART and SMARTER objectives for individual and business performance Learning Logs - We have had requests for material to complement our PDP and CPD pages... here it is Critical Success Factors - What are Critical Success Factors and how to use them Corporate Social Responsibility CSR - How does Corporate Social Responsibility impact smaller businesses Learning Styles - Want to be a more effective learner? hers is a summary of the main learning style theories and applicationWrite a Mission Statement - How to write a mission statement for your business. more coming soon...Psychometric_Personality_Testing - What psychometric testing is and how to use it Career Anchors - A powerful tool to help individuals understand their career strengths Business Values -how to use values to create an effective organizationChange Management - Understanding the impact of psychology on change

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Mike Morrison is director of RapidBI, an organizational effectiveness consultancy. He has been involved in HR, OD and strategic development for over 20 years. He can be contacted via www.rapidbi.com/

© This article is copyright RapidBI 2006, 2008 – it may be copied providing the authors are credited, and direct links maintained

Strategic development: Are we missing the point?

We often talk about strategic programmes and actions, but are we taking the appropriate first steps?

This article looks at the steps we take and explores if we can be more strategic and add more value.

Introduction

Often we know where we want to get to, or at least have a good idea, but often as the old saying goes: "If I was going there, I would not start from here."

That is a very logical reply, even if it is not advice that is of much immediate practical value to the questioner. If you don't know where you are going, you are not likely to get there.

It is sound advice to know where you are and where you want to end up before starting the journey. Is this why many of the tourist maps have a 'you are here' marker?

Where are we now? Where do we want to be?

This is a simple yet basic step in any intervention, at any level within our respective organisations. Yet what is the extent to which we really do it? Where is the 'you are here' marker in our organisations? Sure, some of us have tools like customer satisfaction and staff engagement data (as well as the basic business financial measures), but holistic, strategic data?

In the 2007 survey, Develop the Developers (by Morrison & Ritchie), responders to the survey provided the following answers in response to development activities:

• Use of diagnostic approaches:
  Always (8%); usually (33%); sometimes (46%); rarely (10%); never (4%).


• Use of evaluation approaches:
  Always (37%); usually (43%); sometimes (15%); rarely (2%); never (2%).

This highlights why much of what we do in organisational development (OD) and human resource development (HRD) fails, on a regular basis, to make the desired (and recognised) strategic impact.

"How can we ever hope to evaluate any intervention effectively if we do not know where we started from?"

We have read many threads on community forums such as HRZone.co.uk and TrainingZone.co.uk about the difficulties of evaluating activity. How to calculate a return on investment (ROI) or show value for money is a commonly recurring theme.

How can we ever hope to evaluate any intervention effectively if we do not know where we started from? We will only know this by having the same measures at the beginning of an intervention as we want to use for measuring success after the event.

In business we do it – we look at the financial position (profit, turnover etc), we set a plan to achieve it and then we measure after an agreed period of time. In medicine, before a person starts treatment we have some measures – pulse, respiration, blood pressure and so on - we measure before and after (often on going) treatment. Why, in HR and HRD, do we not do the same? Often we do for things like retention, sickness and attendance – but not for the more strategic elements.

What is a diagnostic process?

It is often simpler than it sounds. It is a tool that identifies 'where you are now', the dot or arrow on the map if you like. Tools like SWOT and PESTLE are OK to start with, but often these tools are not used as effectively (or broadly) as they were originally intended.

Diagnostic tools that only look at the area of the business you are interested in, for example culture surveys, have their place, but how do you know that culture is the issue – where is the diagnosis to show that a specific tool like a culture survey is the right one? There may be a need with a higher priority.

"A regular, yet effective organisational diagnostic process not only evaluates previous actions but the same data can be used to identify future needs"

It's like going to your doctor - they will not send you for a special test or scan, until they have undertaken a more general diagnosis. In HR and OD we need to do the same. We need to use holistic diagnostic tools to help us orientate to real needs – often we react to the symptoms. It is easy to treat the cut to the hand from a fall, but if we miss the reason for the person falling – for instance, a minor stroke - sure the hand will get better, but in the mean time the stroke can do more damage.

Making evaluation easier

The more robust the diagnostic process, the easier the evaluation. Some would argue than an evaluation is just a repeat of the diagnostic but with different analysis on the results. The diagnostic is looking for an action plan; an evaluation is looking for change since the last measure. So a regular, yet effective organisational diagnostic process not only evaluates previous actions but the same data can be used (in association with a business plan) to identify future needs. Here is a simple strategic cycle:

• Holistic diagnosis


• Analysis


• Plan


• Action


• Diagnosis

Insanity in our world?

As the saying goes, the first sign of madness is doing the same thing as before and expecting different results. It can be a bit like watching a replay of a race and expecting someone else to win. Obvious when we think about it, but why do we do this with our business activity?

Looking back at the results from the Develop the Developer survey, I wonder why many interventions are evaluated, but with little or no formal diagnostic processes undertaken at all; then we wonder why evaluation is so difficult.

Do we, as professionals, not learn? Do we keep doing the same things (evaluation but no initial diagnosis) and wonder why we do not add as much value as we expect? Are we 'mad'? Maybe we are just reluctant learners?

Mike Morrison is director of RapidBI Ltd, a consultancy specialising in helping individuals and organisations improve their business performance through people and organisation effectiveness.

This version first published: - HR Zone, 1st April 2008
Categories: HR Strategy



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Mike Morrison is director of RapidBI, an organizational effectiveness consultancy. He has been involved in HR, OD and strategic development for over 20 years. He can be contacted via www.rapidbi.com/

© This article is copyright RapidBI 2006, 2008 – it may be copied providing the authors are credited, and direct links maintained

Develop the Developer - who is the typical developer?

Develop the Developer was a survey run in the summer of 2007.

Slowly we are unpacking the results. The summary is nearly complete but in the mean time as we discover key elements they will be posted here.

The typical developer in 2007 is:

• Female, aged 36-56 (mostly 36-46), employed in a developer role, a member of the CIPD. They have been in a development role for five or more years and to date completed at least 30 days of CPD - many over 100.

For more information and background on Develop the developer visit the project site - www.developthedeveloper.com

Mike Morrison - January 2008

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Mike Morrison is director of RapidBI, an organisational effectiveness consultancy. He has been involved in HR, OD and strategic development for over 20 years. He can be contacted via www.rapidbi.com © This article is copyright RapidBI 2006, 2008 – it may be copied providing the authors are credited, and direct links maintained

Marketing OD & HRD: From tactical to strategy

Summary

With the need for internal marketing activities increasing, Mike Morrison offers some tips and advice on how to develop your skills in branding and promotion, so as to meet the specific needs of the business.

Introduction
As the business environment changes, so does the potential contribution of HR and organisational development (OD) teams. As the day to day workload increases, often the profile of these functions diminishes.

Increasingly, the challenge of HR and OD is to undertake marketing activities internally. This is a need which is increasing and often requires a skill set not readily available within the function.
Why do it?

Many of us say that as a function we are not strategic enough. To a great extent that is true, since the business does not want us to be strategic most of the time.What we need to do is to avoid re-branding the whole function, and concentrate on re-branding offers and services. For example, an organisational development function may have the following services:

• OD strategy
• HR strategy
• Recruitment
• Compensation and benefits
• Employee relations
• Development
• Talent management
• Training
• Learning

We need to recognise that all elements have their place, and many, if not most, of these are operational and tactical in nature. Let’s not try to make something operational look strategic – it just does not work.
This is a big jump from the direction many HR-related functions have been making in recent years.

Changing Mindsets

This is a double challenge. Firstly we need to recognise the need to communicate what we do to the wider world. Secondly we need to be prepared to start advertising our services and celebrating our successes. It is about seeing things from the perception of others.

Available resources to help

There are some books and publications to help HR undertake this role; however more has been published under the umbrella of marketing training. The principles and audiences are the same, so we can use these resources as well as ones aimed at promoting professional services in a wider context. That said, we can also use some of the excellent materials available in the general marketing arena.

Making it happen

When I have done this in corporate life, it’s about spending time with your customers. How much of your week do you spend building relationships? If it is less than two days a week then you are not doing enough. The better we understand our clients and their specific needs, the stronger our position is to offer a customised service. For many HR teams now involved in business partnering, leaving behind the (standard) menu driven offers is an increasing fact of life. Don’t get me wrong, our clients want and often demand a menu – what is different is that we will have a menu specifically for them.

Each customer is unique

It’s also not about advertising or promoting all of your services to everyone - identify a given group or audience and promote relevant services to them.
For example,there is no point promoting talent management services or recruitment strategies to front line staff - they are just not interested. Equally, hard selling career development to managers is not effective - many managers will want to keep their best people and (wrongly) believe that by not encouraging them to develop, they will stay in the team longer. I know this is not best for the business, but if we are trying to raise the profile we need to see things from our customers’ perspective.
From a professional and holistic point of view we want to tell the world about what we do, yet the reality is they (the public, our customers etc) are just not interested. We need to frame our offer for each audience.
As HR or OD professionals, we need to learn from how companies market to their diverse audience. As a function, do you use your internal communication or marketing team to help communicate key messages?
You would not use a training consultant to design your comp and benefits systems would you? So why look at marketing any differently? As the saying goes – different strokes for different folks.
Who is the audience?Whilst that is for you to work out, the following is a useful guide:

• Directors
• Senior managers
• Middle management
• Team leaders/ supervisors
• Front line / operational staff
• Professionals

While there may be overlap - there is nothing to say that any given person does not receive two or more different messages – it’s a language thing, not a conflicting message. We must ensure that we do not communicate conflicting messages as this can undermine the whole communication strategy.

The step up to strategic interventions

By driving HR and OD services to meet the specific needs of each part of the business, we are in effect taking HR from policy driven methodology to strategy driven, thus enabling the business to achieve its goals effectively.

Summary

Identify your audience, Build relationships, Promote only relevant offers, Get to know your customers, Build brands or labels for each discrete offer, Promote services directly to your clients needs

Did I mention – build relationships and position offers to the client’s needs?

Footnote - This article is not intended to encourage HR departments to re-brand to OD; indeed the challenge is to celebrate what you do and tell people in an appropriate way for them. Any department or function that calls themselves an OD function, I would ask them, “what business diagnostic tools do you use to identify business needs and to position your offer?” OD requires a completely different positioning from inside the organisation, and this positioning needs to be driven from the top; not from within a function.

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Mike Morrison is director of RapidBI, an organisational effectiveness consultancy. He has been involved in HR, OD and strategic development for over 20 years. He can be contacted via www.rapidbi.com © This article is copyright RapidBI 2006, 2008 – it may be copied providing the authors are credited, and direct links maintained

Creating an organisational wide innovation culture

Ever heard people say...

“What we need in this organisation is innovation”, “Creativity will give us the edge”.

Leaders often utter these words with little realisation of the difficulties of bringing about a fundamental shift in the behaviour necessary to create an innovation culture across the enterprise. “We can empower people to bring new ideas, we’ll run some workshops on creativity” if only it were that simple. But alas this Procrustean approach is unlikely to reap rich rewards.

You remember Procrustes of course, the famous innkeeper of greek mythology? According to legend he was single-minded in his approach to hospitality, he kept an inn on the road to Athens and what distinguished this inn from any other was that it had only one room containing only one bed. Procrustes believed that all travellers who stayed in his hostel should fit in the bed, and this is where he was single-minded, those who were too tall swiftly had their feet cut off whilst those too short were stretched to fit. An unfortunate side effect of this unwarranted attention to detail meant that by the time he had executed the necessary adjustments many of his guests were, well, dead!

A one size fits all approach denies the reality that people are different and in developing an approach towards encouraging innovation these differences need to be surfaced and reconciled.

One organisation has devised a more enlightened strategy. Recognising early on that building a culture of innovation requires some foresight and hard graft in building a critical mass of people who understand their own, and others innovation style they targeted successive intakes of graduates to build new ways of thinking and acting to realise their innovation potential.

Around 40 graduates a year participate in the graduate development programme, after successfully completing an assessment centre. Critical reasoning tests are part of the selection process but interestingly, so too is a creative thinking test that explores, fluency – the number of ideas generated, originality – how original are the ideas and lateral flexibility – how diverse these ideas are. Candidates are chosen according to their strengths either in critical reasoning or creativity – some even have strengths in both domains! Importantly, whatever their strengths each have a vital role in the innovation process.

At the very first module of their development programme they are introduced to two important topics - learning and innovation. Each individual learns about their own preferences for learning which involves a combination of thinking and action (after Kolb) and understand the strengths and limitations of each preference. Prior to the module they are asked to complete a Creatrix™ inventory and when attending are introduced to the underlying concepts that describe innovation capacity – creativity and risk taking. The blend of these constructs gives unique profiles that describe typical approaches and attitudes towards the behaviours associated with innovation. Through an understanding of their own approach and strengths towards innovation the groups develop awareness of the need to balance innovation teams, too many innovators and a surfeit of ideas but no action, too many sustainers and no ideas will see the light of day. Appreciating their own and others styles helps in several ways; they recognise their own unique contribution to the innovation process; they identify potential barriers and possible levers that can help navigate from ideas to action; they develop a language for describing and understanding innovation; they identify ways of making things happen by circumventing the organisational “permafrost” that kill possibilities prematurely; they develop individual action plans for switching on their own capacity for innovation; and build a network across the organisation to act on those thorny cross functional problems.

This fresh approach of seeding the organisation with new entrants untainted by the inevitable cynicism seasoned campaigners in the organisation is beginning to bear fruit. Hungry to make a mark many of the graduates are pushing new ideas and making a succession of small wins from streamlining processes to developing new products – and what’s more getting the support of the person at the top. As this population grows with each successive stream a critical mass of young innovators is being formed who want to push the boundaries even further.

For this group in the organisation, change and innovation is not a threat, they feel empowered to drive it and, for them, it is the opportunity for more learning.

With innovation, as in other aspects of life, diversity brings real advantages, a concept that was lost on poor Procrustes.

By Mike Morrison & Vince Whittle

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For more information on creating an innovative culture see: www.rapidbi.com/creatrix & www.rapidbi.com/bir

For more management articles see www.rapidbi.com/articles

© This article is copyright RapidBI 2006, 2008 – it may be copied providing the authors are credited, and links maintained

Managing Change in Organizations

Welcome to our page on change management. For organizational development to be effective, change needs to be managed. Many organizational focus on the project management aspects of change. While this is an important factor - it is not the critical factor. People are.

Often when undertaking change processes in organizations we focus on the process, the project management. Often when change fails it fails because we have not taken into account the impact change has on the individuals concerned from a psychological perspective.

Not all people react in a negative way and change agents must take this into account when using any of the psychlogical based change models.

Some Change Models

To see more of these models visit www.rapidbi.com/created/managementmodels.html

Habits and the impact on Change
As people we learn habits. Habits are formed when we do repetitive tasks, they are formed to help us cope with the wide variety of data (information) presented to us on a daily basis. It is too much to cope with at a conscious level. To cope with the variety over time we form habits. These habits may be simple routines like the order we get dressed in the mornings, the first few minutes in the work place - coffee, tea etc. It may even be the order in which we talk to people. When this structure or order is changed - it impacts us in many ways. It is often the simple changes to routines like this that cause individuals them most problems. It is not the fact that a desk may be now facing a different direction or on another floor in the building that is the issue - it is the break in the pattern that has been enforced on an individual. It is the little things that take time to resolve. As humans we can often deal with the big changes easily - it is the little things that cause us more difficulty! When change is 'imposed' on people, that is they feel they have little ownership in the decision, they often feel out of control. As organizational development or change agents we need to help this process.

Please note that as humans we all have a choice - we can engage with the change or we can leave. As Organisational Development professionals we need to recognize this as a legitimate strategy.

We cannot and should not force change on people, our role should be to enable change and to encourage people to mage a choice or decision.

The models shown on this page can help individuals recognize that what they are experiencing is 'normal' and that this is often a process that they need to go through. Some people will go through the process quickly - others more slowly.

Many Change Models There are many change models, the most common one is the Kubler Ross transition (grief) cycle. Originally titled 'The 5 Stages of Receiving Catastrophic News' these stages are:

• Denial
• Anger
• Bargaining
• Depression
  

AcceptanceAs an example, apply the 5 stages to a traumatic event most all of us have experienced:

The Dead Battery!

You're going to be late to work so you rush out to your car, place the key in the ignition and turn it on. You hear nothing; the battery is dead.
Denial - What's the first thing you do? You try to start it again! And again. You may check to make sure the radio, heater, lights, etc. are off and then..., try again.
Anger - !$%&*@~$! car!, I should have junked you years ago. Did you slam your hand on the steering wheel?
Bargaining - (realizing that you're going to be late for work)..., Oh please car, if you will just start one more time I promise I'll buy you a brand new battery, get a tune up, new tires, clean you, and keep you in perfect working condition.
Depression - Oh God, what am I going to do. I'm going to be late for work. I give up. My job is at risk and I don't really care any more. What's the use.
Acceptance - Ok. It's dead. Guess I had better call the breakdown service or find another way to work. Time to get on with things; I'll deal with this later.This is not a trivial example. In fact, we all go through this process numerous times a day. A dead battery, the loss of a parking space, a wrong number, the loss of a pet, a job, a move to another city, an overdrawn bank account, etc.Most write ups of this model in recent years has focused on grief, while this is great for doctors and councilors, it is not helpful in business.In business I have found that while this is a valuable model, staff and managers find it 'difficult' to understand, so I use a simplified version:

• Denial
• Resistance
• Exploration
• Acceptance/ Commitment

The graphical version is listed below. I occasionally change the last one from acceptance to commitment depending on the 'depth' of change. I let the 'users' of the model create their own words. When they own the model they are more likely to use it.

Personal Change Model
Encouraging people to create their own labels for each of the four stages helps them to own the model. If they own the model they are more likely to use it.Remind them that these types of reactions to change are common. In fact we all react like this to a greater or lesser extent. It is normal. Understanding the fact that they are/ might be having an emotional reaction to a logical proposal is a big step for many people. Some times we will go through the stages quickly, other times more slowly. Sometimes we may be going through several change processes at one time, so will be in different places on the curve depending on the change. Often at the same time!

Other change management models include:
The ADKAR model for individual change management was developed by Prosci. This model describes five required building blocks for change to be realized successfully on an individual level. The building blocks of the ADKAR Model include:

• Awareness – of why the change is needed
• Desire – to support and participate in the change
• Knowledge – of how to change
• Ability – to implement new skills and behaviors
• Reinforcement – to sustain the change
  

John Kotter has set out an eight-step strategy:

1. Establish a sense of urgency.
2. Create the guiding coalition.
3. Develop a vision and strategy.
4. Communicate the change vision.
5. Empower employees for broad-based action.
6. Generate short-term wins.
7. Consolidate gains and produce more change.
8. Anchor new approaches in the culture.
   

If you would like any more information on the use of the model or how we have integrated it into our organizational and culture change products please contact us or visit our diagnostics page.

Other change models and adaptations
There are many ways of graphically representing a 'change curve'. below are a few variations.
When working with individuals and teams undergoing change, it is not the actual model used that is important, but that the individuals see it is relevant to them. The best change facilitators use the one which best matches the culture of the organization they are working with.

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If you would like any more information on the use of the model or how we have integrated it into our organizational and culture change products please contact us or visit our diagnostics page.

Please note the models here are provided for educational purposes only. No copyright is assumed. © Mike Morrison, RapidBI 2007 http://www.rapidbi.com