Don’t Slam the Door on Exit Interviews

Performance reviews and exit interviews might seem like very different animals but they share an important quality: both are opportunities to gather essential information for the future success of our people and our organizations.

Performance reviews accomplish this when managers ask the right questions—e.g., how their reports feel about their own contributions, their interactions with coworkers, and the growth and development the company is providing. (If you’re interested, you can read more on this topic in past posts, “The Art of Effective Performance Reviews,” and “Meeting Employees’ Needs: Culture Management, Engagement, and Preventable Turnover.”)

Exit interviews, on the other hand, require similar but specialized questions—questions that are appropriate to the fact that an individual is leaving the organization. This type of questioning can pose a significant challenge due to the unique dynamics and emotions involved. For instance, the information we receive can depend heavily on whether or not employees are leaving on good terms, their willingness to share honest opinions (i.e., fear of burning bridges), the specific reasons behind their exit, and the like. How the interviewer goes about her or his work makes all the difference.

The challenges and benefits of exit interviews are highlighted by an article on TLNT.com, “You Need to Stop Going Through the Motions on Exit Interviews,” and by another on the StaffMasters website, “The Importance of an Exit Interview.”

In the TLNT.com article, HR Acuity CEO Deborah Muller urges us to remember that the biggest reason exit interviews end up being ineffective is that most HR people who conduct them don’t really know what they’re doing. “An untrained interviewer might not know how to configure the interview in order to make it relevant to the employee’s role, level and functional area,” she writes. That’s why trained professionals and specialized technology are so crucial to maximizing the value of exit interviews. Muller points out that many companies are outsourcing their exit interviews or training their HR teams to conduct these interviews properly. Others are using secure links to interview modules that enable departing employees to answer questions in relative anonymity (a key to getting honest feedback).

The StaffMasters post offers interviewers a list of helpful questions that range from the basic (What made you decide to leave the company? and What did you find most/least satisfying about working here?) to the complex and potentially touchy (How would you rate the level of support you received to perform your job duties? and What qualities do you think a person should have to succeed in this organization?). The post encourages employers to be consistent in the questions they ask of exiting employees, to maintain an objective listening attitude, and to document all responses so that the feedback can be leveraged to the organization’s benefit.

Interestingly, Jeffrey Sharlach wrote about a different kind of issue in his recent Huffington Post piece, “Are You Learning Too Much at Exit Interviews?” Sharlach is CEO of the international communications firm, JeffreyGroup, and has taught in the MBA Management Communication program at the NYU Stern School of Business. He noted that many organizations only learn about crucial employee experiences and opinions during exit interviews rather than during regular performance reviews when the information could do far greater good. Sharlach remedied this situation at his own organization by retooling the performance review process, making it more of a two-way communication experience.

“We were amazed at what we started to learn from our staff once given the opportunity to talk about themselves,” Sharlach writes. “We began to treat each review session as an interview with a new employee, learning more about the friction points in their current conditions and their goals for future growth.”

Performance reviews and exit interviews may indeed be different animals but the two share a connection that shouldn’t be overlooked. And, as the articles referenced above remind us, both performance reviews and exit interviews can be powerful tools for improving the performance of our people and our companies.

We just need to conduct them properly.

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Connect with the individuals and sources highlighted in this post by clicking the links below:
@TLNT_com  

@HRAcuity 

@StaffMasters

@HuffingtonPost

@JeffreyGroup

@NYUStern

Inclusive Leaders Turn Performance Reviews into Gold Mines

Attention managers and team leaders! Here’s great advice from Great Place to Work (Gulf) CEO, Ron Thomas:

“Our workforces have the ability to be a percolator of ideas and solutions if we would just turn the spigots on. Letting our employees know that we are dependent upon their ideas and thoughts has the potential for any organization to break out of the pack and shift power to the people who are closest to the issues. It’s simple: Turn them loose, unleash their powers, and watch things happen.”

Thomas shared this wisdom in a July blog post on TLNT.com, “Leaders Get More Out of People When They Don’t Wear the Crown.” He cautions leaders against buying into the notion that they’re “the ones with all the gold-plated ideas” simply by virtue of the titles and senior roles they hold. Instead, he says, leaders should remember that they’re in a position to provide useful support, guidance, mentoring and coaching—but only by treating others as their equals.

This is inclusive leadership at its finest. (See Karen Higginbottom’s interesting Forbes article on inclusive leadership here.) Indeed, the vast majority (85%) of business executives agree that inclusive leadership is an effective way to improve performance, as reported by Ernst & Young.

One way to be an inclusive leader and unleash the power of your people is to turn performance reviews into gold-mining operations. Ask individuals to bring their “gold-plated ideas” to the table at review time, and don’t end a review without asking what you can do personally to support and ensure the success of your employees’ ideas. Again, this style of leadership is about embracing the notion that you, despite your title and role, don’t have to have all the ideas and answers all the time. Remember, great leaders are great facilitators. Help your people put their knowledge, experience and ideas to good use and they’ll love you for it.

Inclusive leaders also often practice behavior modeling (showing by personal example the actions and behaviors you want from employees). This isn’t done merely to set an example. Behavior modeling delivers actual business results. As we noted in a prior post, research from Catalyst illustrates that employees who observe selfless behavior in their managers are more likely to report feeling included and engaged in their work and their teams. They also report feeling more innovative, suggesting new product ideas, and going beyond the call of duty, among other benefits.

One of the greatest advantages of inclusive leadership is that it unleashes the intelligence and creativity of your entire team. This means you no longer have to be the sole source of great ideas 24/7. And when you’re no longer trying to shoulder that heavy burden alone, you just might find yourself becoming a happier, more effective leader.

Recognizing the Difficult Dual Role Managers Play—Coach and Mentor

“All leaders do some coaching. If nothing else, they offer input through performance reviews. But providing feedback once a year just doesn’t cut it. Quarterly formal evaluations work better, but you’ll have greater success with even more frequent feedback, assessment, and mentoring." -- Laura Stack, “The 7 Keys to Great Coaching – and Boosting Employee Productivity;” 6/6/14; TLNT.com.

We agree wholeheartedly, Ms. Stack! Frequent reviews, feedback, assessments and mentoring are all essential to good performance management and boosting employee productivity.

Interestingly, Stack offers ideas on both coaching and mentoring in her astute article but never directly addresses the difference between the two. So … what is the difference? Just Google the phrase “the difference between coaching and mentoring” and you’ll be treated to a dizzying spectrum of opinions, some varying widely and some only by degrees. Generally speaking, though, coaching is concerned with an individual’s performance while mentoring is focused more on a person’s development.

In today’s organizations, a variety of individuals may serve as coaches and mentors to an employee but these individuals typically play just one role—either coach or mentor. Only an employee’s direct manager is expected to play both roles, helping the employee to perform well (coaching) while also helping to nurture her/his development (mentoring). This is one of the demands that make being a good manager so challenging.

The difficulty of playing this dual role can become a little overwhelming at times. In an effort to provide adequate guidance and support, managers sometimes go too far and slip into micromanagement mode. It’s a “classic workplace dilemma that can be difficult to navigate,” as Marcus Erb writes in his recent Entrepreneur article, “How to Stop Micromanaging Your Team.” For managers facing this dilemma, Erb serves up five strategies to overcome it that are well worth considering.

When you think about it, micromanagement is the antithesis of good coaching and mentoring. What’s more, it doesn’t help anyone—not employees and certainly not the managers perpetrating it. Micromanagement actually erodes employees’ self-confidence, motivation and productivity. It also stifles innovation and creativity, two qualities that are proven to drive the success of high-performance organizations. In addition, micromanagement robs leaders of precious time and energy they could be spending on more strategic matters.

Yes, employees want to be managed, coached and mentored. Yes, they want clear direction at the outset of the projects and roles they take on. And yes, they also want a bit of guidance at ongoing intervals to help them stay on course and engaged in their work.

But providing this delicate mix of direction and supervision is no easy feat, not even for seasoned leaders. That’s why coaching and mentoring shouldn’t be reserved for employees alone. Given the difficult dual role managers play, they must be coached and mentored as much as anyone.

Stress Test: What Are You Doing To Combat the Number One Workforce Risk?

A 2014 study by Monster found that nearly half of the U.S. workers they surveyed left a job due to an overly stressful environment, according to a worrisome article on TLNT.com.

The study discovered that 42 percent of the participants “purposely changed jobs” due to an overly stressful work environment. And another 35 percent have thought about changing jobs for the same reason. The article then poses the million-dollar question: What are U.S. organizations doing to change such stressful work environments?

Actually, that’s not a million-dollar question. It’s a billion-dollar question. Stress is costing America’s employers billions of dollars every year, with some estimates putting the total as high as $300 billion.

In the 2013/2014 Towers Watson Staying@Work Survey, Towers Watson and the National Business Group on Health report that stress is the number one workforce risk issue. Despite this, only 15 percent of employers identify lessening the stress and anxiety of their employees as a top priority of their health and productivity programs. So the answer to the question, “What are U.S. organizations doing to change such stressful work environments?” seems to be … not nearly enough.

That’s a shame—and it’s self-defeating. Stress has a measurable, bottom-line impact on our employee engagement and productivity levels. And it ravages our revenues in the form of absenteeism, presenteeism and higher health care costs.

We wouldn’t presume to tell employers how to go about reducing stress in their organizations. Truly appropriate and meaningful solutions are unique to each company and highly dependent upon culture, work environment and the specific problems employees are experiencing. However, we are diligent about reminding employers that performance reviews offer them a golden opportunity to create a strategy and action plans that address stress in their organizations.

Of course, this golden opportunity can’t be leveraged if you’re simply going through the motions during your performance appraisals—offering a quick critique of an employee’s performance, doling out new goals and targets, reviewing their salary increase or lack of one, etc. These one-way information dumps simply don’t qualify as genuine performance reviews, and they do nothing to help managers gain insight into how much work-related stress their employees are under, the causes of this stress, and even what they would like the company to do about it.

As we’ve written in the past, it’s unfortunate that a significant number of employers still use an outdated approach for their performance reviews. And with the causes and effects of stress continuing to mount and to erode the wellbeing of our companies, it’s more important than ever that we make performance reviews a two-way discussion and information-gathering tool.

By doing so, we’ll not only better understand how we can combat stress but we’ll also keep our best people from purposely jumping ship to seek a better work life.

Do You Know Who Your "Top Guns" Are?

Not long ago, the TLNT website posted an article titled, “Just What Really Is ‘Top Talent,’ Anyway?” As the author, Crystal Spraggins, noted, the answer to that question is somewhat subjective and depends on an organization’s particular needs, leadership and culture.

“To a larger degree, however, the answer isn’t subjective at all,” Spraggins wrote. “When top talent is in action, most of us have no trouble recognizing it.” She then went on to offer a list of characteristics shared by the top talent she has encountered. Her list includes commitment, creativity, curiosity and emotional maturity, among others.

What’s striking about Spraggins’ topic is how few employers actually bother to define what “top talent” means to them. You think it would be common practice, especially given the fact talent issues are among the most urgent for our nation’s employers. Last year, TLNT itself published research showing that HR professionals’ top three concerns are: 1) engaging and retaining employees, 2) developing leaders and managing skills gaps, and 3) recruiting the best employees.

A big part of solving all of these talent issues is knowing precisely who your top talent is and what sets them apart. Once you have clarity on these matters, you know what to look for when recruiting new talent and developing current employees.

Performance reviews are among the most effective tools we have for identifying our top performers—and for nurturing and reinforcing the qualities that make these individuals so valuable. But, as Spraggins points out in her article, there’s a certain dgree of subjectivity in identifying top performers. For instance, some managers will value particular behaviors and characteristics more highly than their peers. Employers who want to gain greater clarity regarding their top talent—and then hire more individuals like them—will want to strip away some of this subjectivity, perhaps by establishing companywide consensus on a handful of indispensable qualities that are consistent across the organization’s top talent.

Clearly, this isn’t a shoot-from-the-hip initiative. It takes the combined effort and active support of senior leadership, hiring mangers and front-line supervisors. And it requires HR to drive it—gaining buy-in from all of the stakeholders and then leading the process until it becomes engrained in the organization and its talent management practices.

But the work required to instill a process like this is a small price to pay, especially if it helps our organizations evolve from the outdated, shotgun approach of simply attracting job candidates to actually engaging and winning top talent.