Perceptive HR Technology

I wanted to update you on a post from a number of weeks ago where I was talking with a manager at Lawson about our merit review process.  I challenged this person to think differently about the situation, and we had our monthly mentoring meeting last week and got an update.

As a mentor, I try to influence and suggest, but not push (too much) and in this case, since I admitted I had been preaching a bit, I deliberately didn’t ask for an update.  But in fact, I did get one (I was hoping!) and was delighted with the outcome:

• This manager was fearful of what very senior people would think of a lower increase, and that turned out to be the easy part.  They understood the rationale and were appreciative of the recognition.
• The manager ended up with a range of increases from 2.5%-8%, and prior to our discussion that range was something like 3-4%.  Bonus points towards admission to HR heaven for really making great performance matter!
• One of the people that got 8% was delighted, surprised and very appreciative.  The second person, not so much.  They expected more (and imagine if that 8% had been 4%!) and that discussion proved to be the most challenging.

Shame on me:  I prepared the manager for the (possibly) difficult discussion with the senior people and what to expect from the delighted/surprised person.  But I left my mentee fully unprepared for the top performer who got a great increase relative to any measure and was still dissatisfied.  I guess 2 out of 3 isn’t bad.

Most importantly, I’d influenced the manager to evolve to a new level, and confirmed that the experience was a good one.  On to the next one!

I have spent my career building tools to help HR folks do their best work.  Over the years, I’ve been quick to point out the fact that ‘I live in a vacuum, and I love it!’  With that said, I also consider myself to be a bit more evolved than the average guy as it relates to the practice of HR as a leader.  In other words, I’d like to think that sometimes instead of just telling others what they should be doing, I can occasionally ‘preach what I practice.’

Today I had just such an opportunity.  I was meeting with another manager at Lawson (I suppose you could call it mentorship) and the subject of our annual merit increase allocation process came up.  And this individual manages a fairly large team, so I started asking all kinds of questions — how did performance ratings distribute across the group?  what was the range of increases that you had awarded to people?  and most importantly, when you’re done, how will a person know whether good vs. great performance has any real impact on their salary increase?

To make a long story short, I challenged this individual to get serious about using the process to show people, with crystal clarity, that really great performance results in a really great increase, and good performance results in just an ok one.  It looked like this manager was going to take the easy road — give increases in a very narrow range so that no one got really upset.  The tragedy of that was that it also meant that the few people that exhibited great performance (this manager did a good job doling out high overall ratings to only a select few people) were not going to really feel special (since of course the merit budget is fixed across the whole workgroup).

What was the individual’s greatest obstacle to taking a different approach?  Fear.   Not HR policies, not budgets or bureacuracy, not hard work.  It was, very simply, the fear of how to explain to the people with good performance that they would only get a good increase.  Fear of how to tell someone that the difference between good and great was several percentage points in your raise, not a half-point.  Fear that people would walk away from the experience demoralized rather than energized.

I put it this way — for the people that are good, the message is that if you strive for greatness, the rewards are disproportionately better — by a margin worth striving for!  And for the person that’s great, it’s the kind of reward that will pay dividends in motivation for months, not days (which is how long it lasts for the great employee who only gets a good raise).

So where did the preaching come in?  We’re sitting at Starbucks, and I realize that I am TOTALLY preaching to this person, to the point where I even thought I was laying it on a bit thick.  And now, as I write this post, I’m as convinced as ever that if it’s harder, it’s often worth the effort.  In the case of doling out merit increases, I’m certain that’s the case.

We’ll see what happens — I hope I inspired this person to re-evaluate the approach.  But as a mentor, I can only influence (hey, that was another recent post!).