Taking a ‘Lean In’ View of Compensation for Women

In her book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg makes a strong case for how women miss opportunities for advancement when they “lean out” — when they fail to take advantage of opportunities early on in their careers.

It’s a perspective that bears serious consideration by anyone responsible for compensation
management.

The argument is especially intriguing for those involved in compensation management in light of recent studies that do in fact conclude that most of the male-female pay gap results from the career decisions women make rather than compensation policies.

Common wisdom and current federal reports put the pay gap between the sexes at 18 to 23 cents per dollar (women, on average, earn between 77 and 82 cents for every dollar a man earns doing the same job). However, as reported in an extensive and well-researched article in the March issue of Time magazine, an estimated two-thirds of the supposed pay gap can be attributed “not to institutional discrimination, but to choices that women make.” This report and others like it bolster Sandberg’s argument.

So, what can compensation management do if the choices women make are more important in closing the pay gap than company policies are? Here are six points to consider:

1. Understand the huge role that compensation management and performance-development strategies can play in creating and promoting career choices throughout your organization.

2. Be sure your pay grades are accurately tied to straightforward, up-to-date job descriptions or salary ranges, and that they’re completely gender-neutral.

3. Actively differentiate your high performers from your high-potential employees and provide the right development strategies for each group throughout your enterprise.

4. Employ 360 degree feedback that truly captures a full and accurate view of each employee’s performance and reviewers, and that gives insight into possibilities for career development.

 5. Be sure you link compensation with performance across the board to motivate and reward the most successful behaviors.

 6. Integrate your learning programs into your development plans — and tie them to compensation incentives and rewards — to be gender-inclusive as you reduce the chance of skills gaps and knowledge drain.

If you want to continue to develop and retain all of your best employees, it’s crucial that you combine the hard-core data and statistics of compensation management with the attitudes and beliefs that drive the choices women make about their careers.

Developing Internal Case Studies: 5 Tips to Market LMS Value

Companies have been putting more money into their learning and development budgets. In fact, Bersin by Deloitte’s 2013 Corporate Learning Factbook shows that U.S. organizations grew their

spending by 12 percent in 2012.

With all those dollars being allocated to training, are your employees taking advantage of the opportunities? It’s easy for employees to forget or even miss that there’s learning management software available to them. Courses that are relevant to their job might be hard to find, lost in a large library of titles.

Instead of sending reminders, take a marketing spin and create internal case studies of what employees learned and how the training applies to the job.

1.     Find people who are your power users. Your LMS or learning content management system should track who’s using what courses or downloading additional resources.

2.     Interview them about the courses they’ve been taking. Approach the power users and ask about their experience. Make sure they’re getting value from the training and would be willing to participate in a promotional case study.

3.     Learn how the training has impacted their performance. Training should help employees do their jobs better, so ask how the training has made a difference. Also ask how the team’s performance might have been improved.

4.     Include insight from their managers. Managers could be encouraging development, or they might not even know employees are going the extra mile to train themselves. Find out what each manager knows, including how improved performance could be changing the way those managers work toward developing the rest of their teams.

5.     Capture the story. You can capture the story in any number of ways — writing an article, taping a Q&A, or even making a video. Make sure you put the story in a format that’s easy for other employees to consume when you share it with the rest of the organization.

Keep tracking use in your LMS so you can find additional power users and see which case studies might have increased usage overall. It’ll be powerful information to share with your executive team, and it can help ensure future budget increases for training.

Focusing Performance Efforts on Midlevel Managers

Middle management has been stuck between a rock and a hard place for the last several years. The tough financial times after 2008 might have stripped many of the jobs in the middle for the sake of a leaner organization. As things perk up, there’s more pressure to attract and retain young millennial workers. A middle manager might one day say, “I’m tired of being stuck in the middle.”

Before that happens, make sure you’re targeting midlevel managers in your performance process. They’re the people who have to bridge the gap between strategic thinking and everyday logistics. They bring experience that millennials haven’t yet acquired. And they’ve learned how to do a lot more with less as organizations pushed lean to a new extreme.

First, set clear performance expectations. When a middle manager has strategic and tactical responsibilities, performance management for his level is likely to be vague. Utilize tools like cascading goals to identify which responsibilities have strategic components and what tactical activities will help accomplish those goals.

Next, communicate frequently. One Huffington Post article noted that digital communication tools are removing some of the good communication habits that make successful managers. These middle managers need to maintain those skills, but executives should be exhibiting the same direct communication behavior. Disseminate information in an effective manner so middle managers are informed. They can then make the right decisions for their teams because they have all the information. Sharing frequent updates will make sure their performance is aligned with executive expectations.  

Finally, be ready to make a shift when necessary. Goals for middle managers can sometimes remain stagnant, especially if they’re not clearly linked to overall strategic initiatives. Instead, when new priorities arise, revisit goals for middle management. Which ones need to be updated, which ones need to be dropped, and which ones need to be added?

Performance management is important for all levels of the organization, but middle management is still where strategic vision comes to life. Make sure you’re setting your organization up for success by creating a targeted performance management plan for this critical group.

Performance Review Automation: Even Innovative Higher Ed Institutions Need the Basics

Today’s universities lead innovative research programs — developing robots, curing diseases, and finding alternate fuel sources. In contrast to these cutting-edge endeavors is the fact that the

university probably runs on antiquated internal management systems.

The danger in an antiquated system, for any business process, is that information accuracy becomes compromised. The system might not have been configured for the higher education environment. Updates might never have been installed. And user adoption could be low, raising the administrative responsibility of system owners and primary users.

Updating system automation doesn’t have to be a massive overhaul. In particular, performance management systems might be one of the easiest to move from manual, paper-based processes to an online system.

Higher education institutions achieve three things with automation:

1.     Increased user adoption: SaaS systems make it easy for individuals to manage their own information, rate their own performance, maintain their goals, and even provide feedback to other employees.

2.     Reduced costs: While the upfront cost of a system upgrade or installation might hurt the budget, over the long run, universities can save money on administration and paper management. Additionally, everyone saves time because it's clear who’s filled out their reviews and who’s behind. System notifications are a faster way to communicate than chasing down every staff and faculty member’s review.

3.     Flexibility: Performance management has to be meaningful for employees in order to really have an impact. Customizing the competencies is another easy way to make sure that, say, an aerodynamics professor and the undergraduate admissions director are getting the same performance management.

Look into systems such as Reviewsnap when it's time to upgrade your performance management solution. Find a provider that understands the challenges of a higher education institution and can help get the most value from the solution.

Too Many Raters in 360 Degree Reviews

“More is better!” Well, that’s not always the case when it comes to 360 degree review raters. In preparing to collect feedback from peers, customers, supervisors, or direct reports, you might want

to hear from everyone.

Unfortunately, too many raters could lead to ratings “averaging out.” That means two things:

1.     There might not be anything different between the third person’s rating and the seventh's. They’ll probably be pretty similar.

2.     More raters bring the average scores to the middle. It’ll be hard to see areas where you exceed or don’t meet expectations.

It’s always good to request feedback, but you’ll miss important feedback or trends because of the averages. Instead, find the right number of raters so the feedback is there with the benefit of multiple perspectives.

So what’s the right number?

·       1-2: With such a low number of raters, the feedback is no longer anonymous. One skewed rating could also be an outlier, but without other raters, you wouldn’t know if that’s typical behavior or someone being severely subjective.

·       3-4: Here’s a good sweet spot because if there is an extreme rater, the others provide the balance. The group doesn’t get too big though, so the feedback is going to better reflect performance.

·       5+: Raters start to blur after five, and you start seeing the averaging effect. Plus, you might also burn out your raters if they’re already filling out a number of 360 degree reviews for other employees.

For each group of raters (peers, direct reports, etc.), shoot to have three to four raters. You’ll get clear feedback, and raters will maintain anonymity. Then, putting together your development plan will be on target to reflect your strengths and needs based on the 360 degree review.

Compensation Audit: Checking Where You’re At

Over the course of a few years, things can dramatically change for employees. They could be in new positions, new departments can be created, and other functions of the business might change or

even be removed.

Does your compensation system reflect those changes?

Information is critical to a company’s success, especially when leaders rely on that information to make decisions. As we see a push to more data-driven decision-making, companies need to perform more audits to ensure that their systems have clean data. Just a few errors could cost millions of dollars.

Whether titles no longer relate to the work employees do or salaries need some calibration, it’s time to take stock of where your company is at with its compensation information.  

First, get employee information up-to-date. Having a SaaS system for employee information is a great way to make sure employees keep their information up-to-date. This can be through your HRIS or an employee portal. Send a reminder to employees to update their information, with managers checking titles and workgroup information of their employees.

Second, check salaries. Even if all of your salaries aren’t eligible for calibration against market rates, you can start with key positions. You then need to make a plan to calibrate all other positions, whether by department, type, or location. Ideally, you perform this as new positions are created, as new employees are hired, and when it’s time for annual rewards.

Third, run reports when you can. Many systems have standard reports, but make sure you’re identifying the information you really need to make good decisions. For example, you might want to compare performance data against compensation information, so that would require further analytics. These reports, though, help give context to compensation information in your company. Context helps you know why something might be happening or what other factors could be modified to get the desired results.

Get into the habit of conducting these audits early so your information is clean and ready to be used to make decisions. You’ll better inform your executives and help them understand what it takes to plan for the future.

Why Learning on the Go Is So Important

As companies try to diversify their learning programs and make training available across a variety of mediums, they’ve been forced to consider how mobile fits into the learning picture. Let’s face it — our phones are an extension of ourselves now:

·       79 percent of users check their phone within the first 15 minutes of waking up

·       70 percent of smartphone users frequently check Facebook

·       78 percent keep up with email on smartphones

Phones keep us connected and help us be productive (and increasingly more social). So when companies begin to update their traditional training programs, mobile has to be a part of the process.

Mobile makes previously irrelevant information relevant. Think about going to a training class that had workbooks and exercises about a product or service you don’t actively use. Sure, the information is helpful, but it’s not retained if it isn’t needed. Then four months down the line, suddenly that training becomes applicable. Is the information still in your brain? Probably not.

Mobile access to just-in-time training gets employees the information they need, when they need it. Salespeople are great examples of employees who are always on the go and need information literally at their fingertips. They can brush up on facts or get updates while sitting in a waiting room, riding a train, or standing around the luggage carousel.

When thinking about adding mobile components to your training, make sure you identify the most important information needed. Transferring a 40-page workbook to a PDF might make access easier, but those 40 pages won’t be helpful on a phone. Instead, identify a quick list of talking points. You can also do a short podcast (and by short, we mean two minutes) of an instructor giving an overview. 

You can always have workbooks, simulations, and additional instructor-led training as part of your learning program. As you think about training with mobile devices in mind, you’ll also start identifying ways to prioritize information for other mediums as well.

Making Performance Management Part of the Daily Routine

We’ve all done it — once a year, we set goals we don’t revisit until the next year rolls around. It’s

why performance management doesn’t seem to work. It also makes it really easy for people to skate along, doing well but perhaps not going above and beyond.

Measuring great performance requires understanding where the baseline is and enforcing that every day. Daily performance management not only encourages the right behaviors, it also helps address any concerns early on, before they become problems. Employees can stick to the right goals, and management can align performance with the business’s needs.

Here are tips on how to make performance management part of the daily interactions you have with employees:

·       Break goals into actionable items: Large goals that require a year to accomplish can be daunting. But if you break the goal into smaller items, you can include how someone could work daily toward accomplishing that goal. Then when you do regular check-ins, it’s much easier to talk about progress.

·       Find ways to recognize good performance: Whether your company has an official recognition program or not, take time to say, “Good job,” when an employee is performing well. Make the recognition as specific as possible, especially if it relates to one of their goals. For example, if an employee built an internal enablement guide that also included engaging messaging and creative design (just like an ad campaign), say, “Good job applying marketing practices to internal training to help us increase adoption.”

·       Adjust as you go: Goals set at the beginning of the year might have to change over time. Making performance management part of a daily routine means it’s much easier to see when a goal might need to be modified or corrected. Check to make sure that adjusting the goal still fits into the company’s strategy. By updating the goal, it’s more likely the employee will succeed than if the goal and the daily work are no longer aligned.

Performance management can be effective if it’s part of daily management practices. It might require managers to be more proactive about goals and define action items with employees if internal performance software or processes aren’t set up for that level of detail. But the results will be worth it if you make the extra effort.

Customizing Performance Reviews for Higher Education

Faculty and staff populations at universities are filled with people who have been doing the same thing for many years, as well as new employees trying to find the best ways to be productive on small budgets. The performance review can seem like an interruption when people have other priorities.

Instead, universities can embrace their learning culture with Reviewsnap and make the performance review an opportunity for development.  

Download “Customizing Performance Reviews for Higher Education: Make Performance ManagementMeaningful for Faculty and Staff” so you can see how universities can get more out of the performance review process.

In this brief, you’ll learn how to customize reviews to make the process more meaningful by:

• Changing the language
• Defining the goals 
• Asking for clarity

Download the brief and see how customizing goals and competencies can make the performance review process worthwhile.

360 Degree Reviews: Mixing Personal and Professional Feedback

If you’re lucky enough to work at a company where your co-workers are also your friends, it’s easy for the lines between personal and professional relationships to blur. Feedback often isn’t as objective as it should be — best friends might pump each other up, or if there is a critique, it can be more about feelings than performance.

A 360 degree review provides the opportunity to get multiple perspectives, but it’s important to put some processes in place so feedback doesn’t get personal. Follow these tips to make performance management meaningful and maintain a friendly culture:

1.     Make the review about balance: Especially if you’ve never had much of a performance management culture, reviews can be scary. People might want to hide areas for improvement and inflate areas of strength. When you kick off the 360 degree review process, discuss how balance is important. Have a discussion around what a high-rating behavior looks like, as well as middle- and low-rating behaviors. Give people examples to work with so they know how to be objective and provide balance when they’re filling out the survey.

2.     Maintain anonymity: It’s important to make it easy for raters to maintain anonymity. If an employee is going to select peer raters, have at least three so it doesn’t become obvious who left what feedback. The employee will get more-rounded feedback and he won’t feel like he has to confront a rater if there is a negative comment.

3.     Keep the feedback meeting objective: The meetings in which managers and employees discuss a feedback report can be filled with anxiety and stress. Acknowledge that there are going to be some personal feelings mixed into the feedback, as well as the employee’s reaction. Then focus on talking about behaviors. Understanding that there’s a personal element means the meeting won’t be cold and detached, but talking about behaviors (which can be changed) will keep things on track. And when there are good things to discuss, talk about how those good behaviors might be used in other situations.

Personal feelings can make the feedback process stressful for people, or make it hard to get at what behaviors really need to be changed. By striking a balance, maintaining anonymity, and keeping things objective, employees can get the feedback they need and the organization can get the change it’s working toward.