Unorthodox concepts in HR : Part 5 – Training the victim

In this post, we will continue our exploration of Unorthodox concepts in Human Resources/People Management. Here we are exploring concepts that are unlikely to be found in ‘respectable’ text books (and also not taught in ‘premier’ business schools) but are very much real in the paradoxical world of people management (See ‘The attrition principle’,  'In the valley of attrition' , 'Sublimation of vision statements'  and 'Computer-controlled Manager Empowerment' for the previous posts in this series).

Training the victim' is one of the most common 'crimes' committed in the domain of HR/Learning and Development. Often, this 'crime' follows a standard plot. There is a steady deterioration in the performance of a unit. Customers are unhappy. There is a lot of firefighting happening. The unit head is shouting at the senior employees. But nothing seems to be working. The unit head feels that since the situation hasn't improved despite all his efforts, the employees must be incompetent and/or don't have the right attitude (e.g. 'solutions mindset'). So he calls the HR Business Partner demands that the employees should be trained urgently. This leads to things like attitude training, skill-based training and training the managers in the unit on people management (under fancy names like 'engaging and energizing teams'). The employees dutifully attend the training programs, though they feel that they are being blamed (or even 'punished') for no fault of theirs. Even after the training programs have been rolled out, there is no significant improvement in the performance of the unit. 

These kind of situations occur mainly because of wrong diagnosis/wrong need identification. The main problem in these contexts might not necessarily be related to the capability level of the individual employees at all. The problem could mainly be at the strategy, structure, policy, business process or leadership level. However, it is relatively difficult/inconvenient for the organization/unit head to address the issues/make changes at these levels. So there is a temptation to jump to the conclusion that it is an employee capability issue and to attempt a training solution. Since the real issue remains unaddressed (despite the 'training solution'), there can't much improvement in the situation. 

I am not saying that there won't be issues at the individual capability level. Of course, this possibility should also be explored and if there is evidence for the existence of such a need, an appropriate learning solution could be attempted. My point is just that a proper diagnosis needs to be carried out before a solution is attempted (instead of jumping into the most convenient solution) and that when it comes to taking the responsibility for the deterioration in the performance of the unit in such situations, sometimes, the individual employees are 'more sinned against than sinned'.

Often, the way the HR function is structured in the organization increases the possibility of a wrong diagnosis. This happens mostly in those organizations where the Learning function separate from the Organization Development and HR Business Partner functions. In these contexts, when a business leader directly contacts the Learning specialist supporting the unit with a 'capability problem' (or even with the request for a particular training program), it is highly possible that the Learning specialist just carries out the request without spending much effort to check if the problem has been diagnosed correctly and if a training solution is appropriate. Sometimes, this happens because the Learning specialist does not have sufficient understanding of the entire business/people context in the unit or because the training specialist does not have the requisite diagnostic/consulting skills. In these cases, 'training need identification' becomes no more than 'order taking'. Also, if the training specialist is measured mainly on the number of training programs/number of person-days of training, then there might not be much incentive for the training specialist to 'refuse an order' or even to 'question an order'!

Hence, a close partnership between the Learning function and the Organization Development/HR Business Partner functions will help in making the diagnosis/need identification more accurate by bringing in the requisite diagnosis/consulting skills, enhanced understanding of the context and greater credibility/influence with the business leaders (see OD Managers as Court Jesters). This would also make the 'solution' more appropriate and enhance the effectiveness of implementation by being able to manage the change better. Of course, defining the mandate for the Learning function in a more holistic manner and using the correct performance parameters to assess/reward Learning specialists would also be required.

Any comments/ideas?

Note: It is interesting to note that from a psychological point of view, 'training the victim' can be considered to be a variation (or a mild version) of the broader theme of 'blaming the victim'. This involves holding the victims responsible (at least in part) for what happened to them when something bad happens. This enables others (e.g. the unit head in this case) to absolve themselves of any blame/responsibility and also to reduce cognitive dissonance which would have resulted if they had to admit that the 'system' (strategy/structure/policy/process, in this case) that they were responsible in creating/managing might be at fault. This, in turn, helps them to avoid the need for taking the more difficult/painful remedial steps that are required to address the real issue/cause of the problem. 

Sometimes, this can also lead to tragic-comic situations. A few years ago, I heard about a situation where there was a proposal to conduct 'followership training' for the entire staff in a unit. Apparently, the unit head was a very poor leader and he was making the life of his staff miserable, leading to problems in employee engagement and retention (that, in turn, were creating issues for the HR team). Since it was felt that the unit head won't be open to any sort of feedback and/or training, it was being suggested that the staff in the unit be trained in followership (as the leader won't be/can't be trained on leadership)! This might qualify as a classic case of 'trying to solve the wrong problem' !

Unorthodox concepts in HR : Part 2 – In the valley of attrition

In this post, let’s come back to a series that we had started a long time ago : Unorthodox concepts in Human Resources/People Management. In this series, we will explore concepts in HR that are unlikely to be found in ‘respectable’ text books (and also not taught in ‘premier’ business schools) but are very much real in the paradoxical world of people management  (See ‘The attrition principle’ for the first post in this series). 

What exactly is this valley of attrition? An employee is said to be in the valley of attrition when the mind has left the organization, but the body is waiting for an offer letter to arrive!

While this concept might seem unorthodox or even a bit esoteric, this phenomenon is quite common in organizations. In employee engagement surveys, typically there is a question on the ‘intention to leave’ (e.g. “Are you seriously considering leaving the organization?”)*. Now, if we compare the % of employees who answer in the affirmative to the question on ‘intention to leave’ with the actual ‘attrition rate’ we are likely to find a very significant gap (e.g. 55% of the employees express the ‘intention to leave’ but the actual attrition is only 15%  in a particular organization).

The gap (between the intention to leave % and the actual attrition %) indicates the % of employees who are ‘stuck’ or ‘trapped’ in the organization – they want to leave but can’t find a job. This could be because they got so busy with their jobs that they didn’t pay adequate attention to their employability (e.g. they didn’t develop market-relevant skills).  This could be because they haven’t developed job-hunting skills or because they are not sure if they can make a successful transition to another organization. This could also be because, while they want leave, they don’t want to let go of some of the ‘comforts’  they have got used to in the current organization (and hence they are in the 'comfortably miserable' state). By the way, the first reason  mentioned above, might give a hint for developing a ‘sinister’ employee retention strategy – making the employees less employable (or even unemployable) outside the current organization!

While there could be multiple reasons why people are trapped in their current jobs, it has important implications for employee happiness, employee engagement and the consequent business outcomes. 

Feeling trapped is definitely not a pleasant state to be in! If you have never been in 'the valley of attrition' (and hence can't connect to this), imagine yourself having to wait for a long time in the departure lounge of an airport with your flight indefinitely delayed!

The trapped employees are unlikely be to be in the ‘engaged’ category (i.e. putting in discretionary effort). They are likely to be in the ‘not-engaged’ or ‘actively-disengaged’ categories. These can lead to low performance and/or passive resistance! So while the trapped employees are not 'attrition risks' they pose even greater dangers to the organization from performance and morale points of view! If some of these trapped employees have 'identity that is wrapped in their job', this could even lead to workplace violence!

Any comments/ideas?

*Note :  It is a peculiarity of human nature that we are often more clear about what we don't want (I don't want to continue in this organization) as compared to what we really want (I want to join this particular organization)! The 'intention to leave' is somewhat similar to the 'flight' response in the 'fight or flight' basic repose to danger (or pain). This danger or pain can be psychological as well as well as physical. When we are running away from danger or pain, the main focus is to somehow get out of the current (dangerous/painful) situation and not really to get to a predefined better place. This can lead to sub-optimal career (job change) decisions especially in cases of 'intention to leave' triggered by specific events (e.g. being overlooked for a promotion, disrespectful remark by the boss etc.). In the case of intention to leave created by more enduring factors (like lack of person-organization or person-job fit; see 'On what good looks like'), the job changes are likely to be more thought-through/deliberate.   

Of employee engagement and the 'survivor syndrome'

Employee engagement has been one of the key themes that we have been exploring in this blog (see Employee engagement and the story of the Sky Maiden, Passion for work and anasakti, The curious case of the object and subject of employee engagement, Appropriate measures for organizational commitment , The series on salary negotiations and psychological contract , Architects of meaning & Of owning and belonging for some of the examples). In this post, let’s look at employee engagement in the case of survivors of corporate restructuring/downsizing exercises(who often suffer from the so called ‘workplace survivor syndrome’ with symptoms like anxiety, depression, decrease in performance, poor morale and increased propensity to leave)  

At the heart of the survivor syndrome lies two emotions- guilt (“I didn't deserve to survive when my friends didn't”) and fear (“Next time, it could be my turn”). So, when it comes to employee engagement, the organization's best response is to help the survivors to deal with these emotions so that while the scars can't be erased, productivity can be restored to a great extent.

Guilt can be reduced by convincing the survivors that they deserved to survive (e.g. by following a transparent process for restructuring and for identifying the employees to be separated) and by ensuring that the employees who were separated have been well taken care of(e g. by providing a generous separation package & adequate transition support).

Fear can be addressed to some extent by publicly communicating (if possible) that the staff cuts have been completed and there is no such possibility in the foreseeable future. Providing the survivors the opportunity to receive psychological counseling/ stress management training with a focus on coping  strategies can also help. Of course, constant communication with the employees at all levels that addresses the stated and unstated concerns has to be continued. Another type of fear is regarding increased workloads and new skill sets required. This can be addressed through careful work planning and capability building. People managers can be trained to look for signs of stress in the employees and to manage the employees in a supportive manner. Of course, any tendency among the people manages to use the residual fear to drive productivity ('blackmailing' employees to work harder) should be curbed.

What is perhaps irreversible from the employee engagement point of view (especially for the next few years) is that the employer- employee relationship moves to a purely rational plane (whereas most definitions of employee engagement include the aspect of deep emotional connect that the employees have to the organization). This is because, layoffs are often perceived as a breach of the psychological contract. This would be more so in those organizations that have been communicating messages like ‘our company is one big family’ to the employees.

This would mean that, after the restructuring, companies would have to rely more heavily on rational means to retain and motivate employees (e.g. highly competitive salaries & performance-linked incentives, gain sharing schemes etc.) as well as investment in capability building to ensure 'employability'. Yes, the emotional connect can drive discretionary effort and lead to remarkable (business) results. But, organizations should engage the emotions of the employees only if they are willing to look at employee engagement as a relationship (and not as a tool) and are willing to reciprocate (in terms of going out of the way to care for the employees, beyond what the employment contract requires)!

In a way, the way out of the survivor syndrome is through a psychological transition process. So, actions that can facilitate the transition process like clearly explaining the need for restructuring and the process that would be followed, helping the employees to acknowledge and deal with their feelings of fear and guilt (as detailed above), clearly articulating the new vision for the organization and the possibilities it creates for the survivors and getting the survivors actively involved in rebuilding the organization and the social networks within the organization(that would have suffered because of the loss of social capital) are perhaps the highest leverage actions that organizations can focus on!

The curious case of the object and subject of Employee Engagement

"You should join us only if you fall in love with our company”, said the HR Head to a group of summer interns from premier business schools.

“I don’t think my exit should be considered as attrition; the company that I am leaving is very different from the company that I had decided to join”, said the OD Manager during his farewell.

I heard these statements quite some time ago. But they pop up in my mind whenever I think about employee engagement. The first statement (made by the HR Head), makes me think more about the appropriateness (or the lack of it) of the various metaphors used to describe employee engagement. The second statement (made by the OD Manager)  makes me wonder who or what exactly is it that the object of employee engagement and if employee engagement is a one-way street. Let’s explore these in a bit more detail in this post!

Employee engagement is a concept that is very popular these days as there is a significant amount of research that indicates the positive impact that employee engagement can have on business performance. Yes, like many fashionable things, employee engagement often gets trivialized into (‘fun and games’) activities that misses its core (See ‘Employee engagement and the story of the sky maiden’ for more details). While there are many definitions of employee engagement, a ‘strong emotional connect’ that leads to ‘discretionary effort’ is the central theme in most of these definitions. Also,  it is this ‘strong emotional connect’ that is one of the key underlying factors in the two statements that we started this post with!

Let’s start with the statement of the HR Head. He definitely had a point. Any transition to a new organization (especially when it is from campus to corporate) will have its own share of frustrations and if one develops a strong emotional connect to the organization (during the summer training, in this case) it becomes easier to overlook these frustrations.It also helps in not getting distracted at the workplace. The metaphor he used (that of falling in love, in the romantic sense of the term ‘love’) has remarkable similarities with the ‘strong emotional connect’ that we found in the definition of employee engagement sense. Yes, romantic love is a great enabler for 'pair formation' (and for recruiting one into the organization). Yes, this type of love can also lead to the employee putting in discretionary effort. 

The main problem is that people fall out of this kind of love, that too fairly quickly. To put it in another way, while it is a great enabler for pair formation, romantic love is not so effective when it comes to 'pair maintenance'. Also, as we have seen earlier in ‘Appropriate metaphors for organization commitment’, metaphors that are used to talk about the ‘employer-employee’ relationship often create complications because a metaphor is not an exact comparison and hence inaccurate/misleading meanings and assumptions creep in into our understanding of the relationship. Of course, metaphors have tremendous rhetorical value and hence leaders are tempted to use them for ‘motivating’ the employees (Please see ‘The Power of carrot and stick’ for a discussion on if there is any difference between motivation and manipulation)

Falling in love can lead to attachment or even possessiveness which can be counterproductive (see ‘Passion for work and anasakti’). Also, if the employee falls in love with the organization (and the organization doesn’t fall in love with the employee), it can lead to an exploitative relationship. Love that is not reciprocated often turns into hurt and hate very quickly!

Yes, there are other definitions of love, like the one Scott Peck uses in 'The Road Less Traveled' ('extending oneself for the spiritual growth of another') that can lead to discretionary effort without the complications mentioned above. But, those types of love are not something that someone can 'fall into' as it requires aspects like a higher purpose and conscious decision-making. 

This brings us to the interesting discussion on if it makes sense to (re)define engagement as conscious decision that the employees make instead of being an emotional reaction/outcome of emotional connect. While this sounds promising, this type of engagement (which is a deliberate decision) might not so easily lead to discretionary effort if the returns of that discretionary effort (which can very well be in terms of satisfying the higher order needs like esteem or self-actualization in the Maslow's hierarchy in addition to satisfying lower order needs like physiological and safety needs that are usually met by salary and job security). 

Yes, I have heard employees making statements like "I keep myself engaged regardless of what the organization does or doesn't do", though I am not sure if they used the term 'engagement' in the sense of discretionary effort (or just in the sense of keeping oneself focused on one's job). If it is the promised 'magic of employee engagement' (creating something out of nothing, like getting extra work done without paying anything extra for it) that get employers excited about employee engagement, then this definition can create complications! 

Now let’s come to the statement made by the OD Manager. Here the key issue is ‘what exactly is the ‘company’ that the OD manager was referring to when he talked about 'the company he joined' and 'the company that he was leaving'?’’ Is it the legal entity, is it the company brand , is it the products and product brands, is it the immediate manager, is it the team, is it the senior leaders, is it the CEO, is it the some higher purpose (other than making money) served by the company or is it the way get things get done in the company (company culture)? Most of the studies indicate the 'immediate manager' as the most important player in the game of employee engagement. But it could also be because the manager represents the organization for the employee and the organization's 'sins' are often incorrectly attributed to the managers (like when we say 'people leave managers and not organizations'; see 'Blame it on the managers' for more details). So, when it comes to the object of employee engagement, there are many possibilities and also many combinations of these possibilities!

If we examine the above list of possibilities (objects of employee engagement), we will find that most them can change and that some of them do change frequently in many organizations these days. This also indicates that the loss of social capital/breaking of working relationships during reorganizations can have an adverse impact on employee engagement. Again, it is possible that the employee’s preferences/factors that engage the employee changes during his/her tenure in the organization. So there are many moving parts here, on both sides of the equation, and that makes keeping the employee engaged quite challenging. Hence, employee engagement becomes a continuous activity and it requires a deep understanding and careful management of the evolution of the psychological contract!

 At a more fundamental level, the issue here is about the 'reciprocity' aspect of employee engagement. Why is it only about the employees feeling emotional connect to the organization (and putting in discretionary effort)  and not also about the organization reciprocating the feeling (and going out of the way to do something for the employees). Yes, as we have seen in the above paragraph, the 'object' of employee engagement can vary and hence the issue of who or what exactly is the 'organization' that is supposed to reciprocate  can further complicate things. May be, we can just say that all those who benefit from the the discretionary effort put in by the employee should reciprocate. While it is very clear that employee engagement benefits the organization, it is not very clear if it leads  to employee happiness or even employee satisfaction in the long run. 

So what does all this mean? To me, (employee) emotions are precious (or even sacred) and they should not be trifled with. Yes, emotions are also highly powerful in driving discretionary effort and they can lead to remarkable (business) results. So, organizations should engage the emotions of the employees only if they are willing to reciprocate (in terms of going out of the way to care for the employees in various ways depending on the context). If the idea is just to increase performance or to create accountability, there are other ways (that works on rational commitment and are well within the scope of the employment contract without getting into the domain of psychological contract) like goal alignment, performance management, gain sharing plans and performance linked incentives that can align the interests of the employer and the employee and hence address the 'principal -agent problem' (see 'Of owning and belonging' for more details). 

Hence, we should leverage the power of emotional connect (and the discretionary effort that comes from it) only if we are willing to look at employee engagement as a relationship (and hence a two-way street) and are able to consistently respond in a manner that respects and nurtures the relationship! Otherwise, we run the risk of the (perceived) intent of our employee engagement efforts resembling that which is often depicted in the cartoon strips on employee engagement (e.g. tricking the employees into 'gladly putting in extra effort without getting paid anything extra in return')!

Any comments/ideas?