Employee Morale and Uncertainty

The other day I was visiting a client site and was struck by how recent financial difficulties experienced by the client had impacted the workforce. As part of my job, I had to interview personnel at different levels, and as a result was able to get some great insight into the morale level of the employee group.

While not the purpose of the visit, it certainly gave me food for thought for my weekly article here. The specifics of the corporate problems aren’t important for my discussion, but what is important is that the difficulties created a very specific environment of uncertainty for the employee group. They literally didn’t know from one day to another if they would be working for this company, another company, or not at all.

Now, I know something about this kind of uncertainty. Before the great PwC Human Capital diaspora, uncertainty was the watchword around the office. For those who don’t know, in the 2000 – 2002 timeframe, the human Capital practice at PwC was to be spun off for a new IPO called Unifi. That didn’t quite work out as planned, and eventually Unifi was purchased by Mellon Bank. The interim wasn’t pretty, however. The personnel who were part of the practice began dropping like flies.

What was once a great practice ended up splitting into multiple factions: part of the practice to the MCS practice later sold to IBM, part spun to Mellon Bank, part left inside of PwC, and many, many more leaving the firm to for other job opportunities.

During this change, employee morale couldn’t have been lower. Talk about engagement - we didn’t know what we were engaged in! Engagement teams were comprised of people who were ultimately going to different companies. Teammates became engaged in recruiting discussions on a regular basis.

There is no doubt that productivity declined at PwC during this time, just as it has at my client. The uncertainty becomes like a weight on people’s shoulders as they go to work every day.

In the cases I talk about here, there is little management can do to mitigate the negative impact of uncertainty. Any communication will have little impact, as resolution and closure to the causes of uncertainty is the only solution.

However, this is very instructive for us in situations of perceived uncertainty that actually have a lot of certainty. I think specifically of the situation of a company going through the process of large scale outsourcing. For employees going through this, some will lose jobs, others will change roles, and still others will change employers. This doesn’t have to be a time of uncertainty for them. Change management becomes critical. Clear and frequent communication and contact with employees throughout the process will keep them engaged, involved and ultimately more productive.

Where uncertainty pervades the workforce, morale will suffer. While some uncertainty is unavoidable, much can be avoided through communication and planning.

About the author – Donald Glade is President and Founder of Sourcing Analytics, Inc., an independent consulting firm specializing in helping companies optimize their HR / benefits / payroll service partnerships through relationship management, financial analysis, and process improvement.

More Changes at Hewitt

In case you missed it, HRO Today recently reported the following:
“A former president of national accounts at competitor ADP, Jay C. Rising, 50, has been named president of Hewitt’s HRO business. Additionally, former acting president Julie Gordon has been named president of client and market leadership, a newly created position.”

The announcement isn’t surprising as Russ Fradin, Hewitt Chairman, is reaching out to a long trusted associate of his at ADP. Jay joined ADP as Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing while Fradin was at the Helm. Eventually, Fradin promoted Rising to President of ADP’s National Accounts Division.

Clearly, Fradin is looking to add known quantities to his organization:
“Jay is a proven leader with an impressive track record of building businesses and delivering client-focused results. He excels at sales and marketing, and brings a wealth of industry experience to Hewitt,” said Fradin. “I am confident that under his direction, we will advance the meaningful progress we’ve made in strengthening our HR outsourcing business.”
There is no doubt that Rising has the skills and experience to help Hewitt build the business. He was an integral part of ADP’s rapid growth and expansion into new business for 10 years. As noted previously, however, Hewitt’s well documented problems have not been growth based, but rather delivery and operations based.

Fradin notes in the release:
“We are making important changes that will enable Hewitt to realize its full potential for the future.”

For this to truly be the case, I would expect future announcements to be about some operational heavy-hitters joining Hewitt to help right the ship.
Time will tell the story.

About the author – Donald Glade is President and Founder of Sourcing Analytics, Inc., an independent consulting firm specializing in helping companies optimize their HR / benefits / payroll service partnerships through relationship management, financial analysis, and process improvement.

Equifax to buy top payroll-service firm

That was the headline that greeted me when I opened up my Atlanta Journal Constitution Business section last Thursday. Right there below the fold. Plain as day. My heart began to race a bit. Who could it be? Equifax is big, certainly. With a $5 billion market capitalization they could probably make a run at quite a few companies; but a “top firm?”

ADP is THE top firm, but with a $28 billion market cap that would be impossible, right? I mean, I’ve heard of leveraged buyouts, but this is ridiculous. Besides, the 80’s are over. Milliken went to jail, and Gordon Gecko is a fictional character.

No, it wasn’t ADP (“P’shah – as if” as my daughter would say). Well Ceridian might be the one. They are smaller than Equifax at a 4.7 billion market cap. It’s be like a merger of equals. Just like Price Waterhouse and C&L were back when they merged. Of course there was that C & L partner who told me “You’ve been acquired!” – but that’s a different story and he might be reading. Ceridian had also just announced, two days earlier the “Exploration Of Alternatives To Enhance Shareholder Value.” Could they move that fast? I doubt it. But no, it wasn’t Ceridian.
Isn’t it amazing how much the mind can go through between reading the headline and the lead in a story? And to think I had instant recall of all these market cap figures. Jason Corsello, eat your heart out!

So it wasn’t ADP or Ceridian. Who’s left? Paychex? No offense, but do people refer to Paychex as a “top firm?” I know, I know..I’m showing my ignorance of the small business market. Paychex is a major player. With market capitalization of close to 16 billion, Paychex is over 3 times the size of Ceridian. But it wasn’t Paychex either.

So who is this “top payroll-service firm” being acquired by Equifax? TALX. That’s right: TALX. Now I knew TALX provides some payroll services in the areas of employment and income verification, pay reporting, hiring and employment tax management. But top payroll services firm? I wish headline writers would read the stories fist.

But seriously, what does this mean? This Equifax press release states the acquisition is aligned with Equifax’s “long-term growth strategy of expanding into new markets and acquiring proprietary data sources.” So Equifax wants the data that TALX has access to. Data like employment history, income information, tax records and the like. Maybe this is a portend of consolidation activity to come in the “payroll services industry”. Maybe Equifax just likes the business model. Maybe Big Brother is alive and well.

I for one am going to keep an eye out to see where this goes.

Employee Morale and Stress

A lot has been written about the connection between low employee morale and stress. In fact, Melissa Bushman even claims it to be “The most common cause of low employee morale.”
On the face of it, this sounds reasonable. If I’m stressed at work, I’m probably not happy at work. Take a deeper dive on this statement, however, and different conclusions will be realized. We must start by defining stress. I believe stress to be the internal response to external stimuli. Because we are all different, individuals exposed to the same external stimuli will react differently. I’m sure everyone reading can think of someone in the office who seems to be constantly stressed while others always appear calm and at peace. So stress is a very individualized phenomenon. If this is true, then stress is a symptom, not a root cause of low employee morale.

What might stress be symptomatic of? This website gives a good overview of the events that cause stress in people’s lives. What becomes striking, is that most stress that people experience in their lives has little or nothing to do with what takes place in the workplace. Perhaps we need a list of workplace stressors. We could list items such as having a bad boss, a bully for a co-worker, bad air conditioning, lousy chairs or other elements of a bad working environment. All of these elements are very subjective. The fact remains that while brain surgeons hold someone’s life in their hands and it would seem to be one of the most stressful jobs there is; the surgeon’s hand is steady and seemingly stress free. Meanwhile, no one ever died from bad plumbing (presumably), yet there are stressed plumbers in our world.

So, are companies wasting time and money when they offer stress reduction programs? Does treating the symptom (stress) that is more than likely caused by either non-work related events or a worker’s individual propensity to experience stress from seemingly minor events actually have the ability to improve employee morale? Certainly, workplace stress reduction programs show the company cares about its employees. The programs may make the workplace more tolerable. And for an individual, some of the stress reduction programs could lower absenteeism. Just look at some of these ideas:

On-site Massage Therapy
Allowing dogs in the workplace
Weight reduction programs
Promote telecommuting
And don’t forget this life-affirming course in conscious living

The fact is, these approaches and more will make it more likely that your employees will want to come to work. They will feel appreciated and valued. But recognize it for what it is: the treatment of a symptom. Stress reduction programs will not help supervisors learn more effective management techniques; it won’t make them better bosses! These programs won’t solve the problem of the office bully, harassment that might be taking place or underlying racial or cultural tensions that may exist. They won’t improve the heating and air conditioning, provide better chairs, or reduce the amount of mold in your bldg.

Bottom line for me is that to effectively address low employee morale, you must absolutely understand the causes. Treating the symptoms might seem effective at first, but sooner or later you’ll be asking why aren’t those massage chairs working any more and why isn’t Fido wagging his tail?

About the author – Donald Glade is President and Founder of Sourcing Analytics, Inc., an independent consulting firm specializing in helping companies optimize their HR / benefits / payroll service partnerships through relationship management, financial analysis, and process improvement.

Employee Morale and the Company Car

Do a Google search on “employee morale” and you will get “about 1,020,000 hits”. Evidently, it’s a pretty hot topic! Actually, after I went through all the million plus hits, I found that there are actually 748,639 non-duplicative hits. Still quite a few, and definitely a hot topic.

I found out all kinds of things about employee morale by reading through all these hits. For instance, I found that to improve morale, “A job well done might be rewarded with a gift card or a cash bonus,” but it would be a mistake to give someone a company car. You see, that would be “missing the point….a transparent manipulation.” The employee doesn’t really “want an expensive gift. He/she wants to spend time together!”

I’m unclear as to whether they want to spend more time with the boss or the hottie in the next cubicle. But I guess that’s not important; just don’t give them a car.

I learned that “professional Coaches can establish methods by which employee and management morale will be permanently boosted and profitability assured”. That’s right: boosting employee morale can ASSURE profitability!!! That really does deserve multiple exclamation points in bold. I mean, didn’t anyone tell Ford? They lost billions this past quarter. What do you suppose is the biggest perk of working at a car company? Coincidence? I think not.

Wait, I guess that must also mean that the atmosphere at ExxonMobil must be positively euphoric! After the record profits they had, there can’t be any problem with employee morale. After all, I’m sure all the employees are equally sharing in the record profits. How gasoline figures into the company car picture is something I haven’t quite figured out yet, but I’m working on it.

I am learning so much, my head will explode!

This must be the secret that ExxonMobil discovered: “Boosting employee morale means that people will take more pride in their work, call in sick less often and be more productive.” ExxonMobil figured this one out. A recent study revealed that during the last quarter, not one employee missed any work time. No paid time off was taken: not sick or vacation! This assured the record profits seen.

There was a corresponding up tick in accrued liability for PTO at Exxon, but Exxon’s auditors are petitioning the AICPA, FASB and SEC to be allowed to take the accrued liability to zero, noting that “Our employees are so happy; they plan to never take any more time off and donate accrued PTO back to the company as their gift to the company.” And as a side note, Exxon began giving gift cards to senior execs in lieu of company cars. As a result, Harry & David had a record Christmas season.

So as promised last week, I am providing the secret to boosting employee morale: take away the company cars and give gift cards! Next thing you know, all your employees will show up for work (even on their days off), and profits will soar!

About the author – Donald Glade is President and Founder of Sourcing Analytics, Inc., an independent consulting firm specializing in helping companies optimize their HR / benefits / payroll service partnerships through relationship management, financial analysis, and process improvement.

Employee Morale and the Boss

The other day, I came across an interesting graph a client of mine had copied from a BusinessWeek article. I’ve been trying to find it online, to no avail. I found reference to it here, on another blog, NumericLife.

Everyone has a boss to deal with

When employees were polled to pick New Year’s resolution for their managers,
- 18% say ‘deal with workplace conflicts faster’.
- 14% say ‘be less of a micromanager’.
- 12% say ‘recognize work well done’.-
- 0% say ‘plan events for building office morale’.

Source: Businessweek, Jan 3rd, 2007.

I also found an online version of the survey here, at Badbossology.

At first it would seem just another funny piece of trivia: a source of amusement as we think of the HR professional rounding up people for the monthly group birthday cake.

But as HR professionals ourselves, we realize it goes deeper than that. This is a living lesson in what has come to be known as Employee Engagement. While I’m no big fan of morale building events, when people ask me what I miss most as a result of leaving a large consulting company environment to start a consulting firm of my own, I have to say that I miss most the sense of belonging that comes with being part of something bigger.

Clearly, it wasn’t enough to keep me engaged, just as it isn’t something indicated in these survey results as something people are looking for.

But foretold is forewarned: Employee morale and sense of belonging is a critical piece of employee engagement. Address morale issues quickly and effectively: just not with a “moral boosting event.”

Next week I’ll talk about what I believe to be some of the specific things you can do to impact morale for the better.

About the author – Donald Glade is President and Founder of Sourcing Analytics, Inc., an independent consulting firm specializing in helping companies optimize their HR / benefits / payroll service partnerships through relationship management, financial analysis, and process improvement.