Do You Give Problem Employees Action Plans?
Watkins Ludlam Winter & Stennis, P.A.
July 3, 2008
In the following case, an employer gave an employee an action plan to improve her performance. Unfortunately, it ended in her termination and a lawsuit. Let's take a look.
Facts
Tatanisha Pickens, who is African American, worked for the Vaiden Community Living Center as a social services director and admissions director. Kelly Faulkner, the facility's administrator, and a regional director, Billy Daves, assigned Pickens an action plan that required her to meet certain performance goals. If she didn't meet them, she would be disciplined or terminated. The action plan was supposed to last a month, but Pickens was terminated after 23 days. She was replaced by Melissa Acy, who is white.
Pickens argued that Vaiden unfairly evaluated her work performance and didn't give her the full 30 days to complete the action plan. The court found that since it wasn't involved in the day-to-day management, it was difficult for it to determine whether Vaiden or Pickens was correct about the necessity of the action plan or whether Pickens had sufficient time to meet the plan's requirements.
The court did note that while the termination occurred 23 days into a 30-day action plan, Pickens didn't come forward with any evidence that her race, rather than Vaiden's concerns regarding her work performance, was a motivating factor in the termination. She admitted that the company had tried to get her to agree to take on fewer responsibilities, but that she had refused. She also admitted that before the action plan, Faulkner had discussed deficiencies in her work performance.
Favoritism Allegation
Pickens made unsubstantiated allegations that Daves had a "preference for white women," which motivated his decision to fire her. She had no proof, however. She did allege that Daves wanted to terminate her so he could hire Acy because she felt they had a "social relationship." The court noted that even if that was true, such a claim wouldn't be sex discrimination because favoritism, while unfair, disadvantages both sexes alike for reasons other than gender. Finally, the court noted that the supposed evidence of favoritism Pickens was to present was extraordinarily weak and that her attempt to make such a claim lost her credibility with the court. Pickens v. CLC of Vaiden, LLC, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Mississippi, 2008 WL 480008.
Bottom Line
While this case discusses other issues, the issue of action plans is a troubling one for many employers. Some employers simply don't use them. But they're valuable in that they memorialize employee issues and problems and can be very useful in defending a case should the employment relationship not work out. Of course, from an HR standpoint, the preference is for the employee to improve her performance and perform at a high level. That saves you the trouble, and possible litigation, of terminating an employee and then going out into the market to find a new one. In this day and age, you have to create a "paper trail" because an ex-employee and her lawyers will attach great weight to your failure to document any shortcomings.
This article was published in the Mississippi Employment Law Letter, which does not attempt to offer solutions to individual problems but rather to provide information about current developments in Mississippi employment law. Questions about individual problems should be addressed to the employment law attorney of your choice. Note: The Mississippi Bar requires the following statement: Listing of the previously mentioned areas of practice does not indicate any certificate of expertise therein. Copyright 2008 by M. Lee Smith Publishers LLC and reprinted with permission.
Teamwork: Are You “In” or “Out”?
Bonnie Mattick, Credit Union Magazine
June 23, 2008
A recent article in the CUNA Human Resource/Training and Development Council newsletter praised the benefits of using the team-building concepts from the book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, by Patrick Lencioni. The article was titled "Building Teams: Why You Need Trust, Conflict, Commitment, Accountability, and Attention to Detail" by Mary Herrmann. She followed the Patrick Lencioni model, but didn't expand on how or why "great teams make clear and timely decisions and move forward with complete buy-in from every member of the team.”
How or why does a group commit or completely buy in to the team's goals? In my experience, all other factors fail without full and complete commitment by all team members and their senior-level management. Here's an example below.
A Dysfunction Case Study
While working with a small, growing credit union, I developed an established business relationship with the CEO. As we discussed workplace issues, he told me about wanting to expand his management team's capabilities. He explained the issues they were facing, and that he felt they needed "team building." He failed to say they had tried this before.
During our meeting, we talked about the "five dysfunctions" of teams and how his group might overcome them to get better results. I agreed to present a program based on Lencioni's concepts. He was most intrigued with "focusing on results" and said they recently had increased trust within the team.
At the start of the team-building exercise, we talked about key concepts of trust. Participants agreed it's about being "vulnerable," which takes time to develop. After working with the group a short while, I could see they were reticent about being open and honest, and that being vulnerable would take some work.
Fear, concern, and intimidation are very real feelings that sometimes develop in work groups. It's not unique or unnatural. In any group, striving and scratching (metaphorically speaking) align the pecking order with needs and desires.
Puppeteers and Pawns
My role as group facilitator for the credit union was to navigate through a trust-challenged environment, involving diverse personality styles. At least some people were interested in becoming more open and perhaps vulnerable.
However, many seemed influenced by a "puppeteer" on the team who was pulling everyone's strings. She often overshadowed her boss. She wanted to make sure nothing changed. She had control and wanted to maintain it. Even activities during our workshop were threatening to her.
In retrospect, some difficulties during the session could have been avoided:
- I should have collected more information from the CEO prior to embarking on team building.
- I could have been more effective if he had told me about the previous failed team building.
- We could have agreed to try a different approach and deal directly with the person who needed so much control.
Prior to my presentation, the credit union had tried many team-building techniques—some more than once. I found this out much later.
Ultimately, it came down to one basic problem: no commitment to change. The "puppeteer" influenced the team and she had trained everyone to respond to her demands and "string-pulling" efforts. This permeated the organization. Although the CEO bought into the team-building process, not everyone was on board with it.
You can have the best design and the most creative presentation, but the process can be slowed and disrupted if you don't have buy-in from the group and complete participation of people at the top.
Actions that Build Teams
Based on this experience, I discovered actions that bring useful change to groups:
- Ask good questions at the start—before a team-building project. For example: What other team-building programs were instituted, and what were the results?
- Work with the group to establish rapport with individuals prior to administering profile tools.
- Review the group's previous behavior profile tools. What tools did they use, and what were the results? Posting previous results shows behavior patterns and a picture for the group.
- Gain individual commitment from each participant prior to the start of the team-building sessions. What goals do they want to achieve, or what desired work behaviors do they want to change?
- Get full commitment for follow-through from the CEO. Lencioni's model may help build more effective teams, but unless your group commits to implementation and follow-through, it won't be successful.
Total Trust and Full Commitment
To successfully implement the Lencioni model or any other, you must build trust and define how it applies to your group. Individuals may feel vulnerable, but that's normal to the process.
After building trust, the group's next steps are to master conflict and leverage the trust they've established. To reinforce this, use team-building activities that demonstrate how finding the "ideal" conflict point ensures more effective meetings and benefits the group. Gain buy-in from team members to ensure success of team goals and principles.
Achieving commitment at this point means more than just getting people to communicate better. It means being "on the same page" with how the team fits into the business goals.
The last phases of team building are easier than the initial stages. Once all team members have committed to the process, they see how the team may leave a more favorable, rather than unfavorable, impression on others in the organization. The focus is on benefiting the bottom line—getting results for the team means getting results for the credit union.
Team commitment to decisions and processes brings clarity. Commitment means taking ownership and responsibility for timelines. Goals become more important. According to the famous basketball coach, Pat Riley, "There are only two options regarding commitment. You're either in or you're out. There's no such thing as life in-between."
What's your group's commitment to collaboration and achieving goals?
Bonnie Mattick is a speaker, performance consultant, and author. Contact her at 602-993-6691. This story first appeared at www.creditunionmagazine.com and is reprinted with permission.
A Blueprint for Getting the Maximum Impact from Your Talent Management Planning Process
Amy Armitage
June 18, 2008
Talent management planning, an integrated process for aligning business strategy with people systems, can have a powerful impact on business performance and the effectiveness of the HR function. When done correctly, it can leverage the investment in your talent supply chain. If used incorrectly, without a focused methodology and the active engagement of employees and managers, talent management (TM) initiatives can drain time, energy, enthusiasm and productivity.
To get the most impact from TM planning, senior executives, including HR, must align a business' core value drivers with the day-to-day activity of how business gets done. Your company's value drivers are the foundation for how you achieve strategic objectives and a means to ensure continuous improvement through people. For HR to be successful, these value drivers must align with HR system architecture, HR functions, and employee behaviors.
Follow the ten steps below to get the maximum impact out of the TM planning process.
1. Identify the value drivers of your organization.
Strategic HR begins with understanding and building a consensus among your senior team about what really drives your business success. Before you can develop HR performance drivers, senior managers need to agree upon the value drivers of the entire business. Typically, consensus-building consists of tightly orchestrated and focused brainstorming exercises based upon the customer value proposition.
2. Prioritize value drivers.
As a second step, a senior team needs to develop and prioritize the key value drivers. These may include, for example, innovation, speed to market/cycle time, recruiting and retaining top talent, effective use of resources (cost control), and customer service and support. One very important deliverable of this step is constructing a "strategy map” or visual blueprint, linking the interconnectedness of the value drivers.
3. Specify top-level metrics.
Once the value drivers have been identified and prioritized, senior management needs to appoint work teams to identify the "top-level" metrics ( typically one work team per value driver ). Work teams then employ a score-carding process to develop the "vital few" three to five critical outcome metrics for each value driver. While traditional scorecards include financial, customer, operations, and learning and growth categories, many variations exist. (For more information see Kaplan and Norton's The Balanced Scorecard or The HR Scorecard Linking People Strategy and Performance by Becker, Huselid, and Ulrich.)
An HR focused scorecard, for example, may begin with the identification of the "vital few" or acid test measures that truly define success for the HR related value driver. For example, for "Recruiting and Retaining Top Talent" such measures may include "Retention Rate" or "Employee Survey Index" or "Percent of Offers Accepted." The "vital few" metrics are identified and, where needed, better defined for effective communication and reliability across the organization. Other common high-level HR and people productivity metrics at this stage might include:
- Revenue factor or pretax income per person. Sometimes called the revenue factor, revenue per employee is a good basic indicator that can be used against industry benchmarks to measure historical performance.
- Voluntary or involuntary separation rate/retention ratios. This calculation reflects the turnover of people you need to run your business and is especially critical if your value driver is retaining and motivating high-level talent. It's a good window into the power of senior leadership to motivate and engage.
- Return on human capital. Revenue returned for every dollar invested in employee compensation and benefits.
- High performance work system metrics or CEO oerformance audits. Composite indices of HR system functions and business practices that drive performance. May include such areas as clarity of strategy, goal alignment, feedback processes, coaching and development, hiring and selection, rewards, communication, learning systems, etc.
- Employee engagement/satisfaction index . These composite measures are useful—especially where statistical links to financial, customer and operational performance can be demonstrated.
The real trick, for just about every company, is narrowing the list to the "vital few." Coming up with the initial list, in fact, is often easier than prioritizing it. Several cost ratios may also make it to the list of "vital few" measures and be tracked. However, unless they are out of line with industry benchmarks, and therefore indicate that HR outsourcing may be a viable path, these cost ratios may offer limited insight into the effectiveness of the HR function. HR outsourcing, on the other hand, is often driven by cost considerations and the need to target limited investment capital to core business functions. (Administrative functions in particular are more likely to be outsourced.) A sampling of cost-efficiency metrics includes:
- HR expense per head—dollars spent per full-time employee (FTE)
- Cost per hire
- HR expense as a percent of total operating expense
4. Define specific objectives.
As a next step, senior managers should set targets—usually both long-range and short-term targets—for each of the "vital few" measures. Benchmarking ("look around"), historical data ("look back") and forecasting ("look ahead") data are used to establish numerical targets.
Typically, senior executives set long- term targets and, later, short-term targets in a facilitated process. In larger company environments, numerical targets may differ, while the critical outcome measure stays the same. So, for example, retention rate targets may take into account local job market conditions, but the issue is still of critical importance as a "top agenda" concern.
One concept that's been used very effectively is establishing a "Point of Arrival" target (POA). This is a target that is not time-bound, but defines the end game or perfect state. For instance, the POA target for "Retention Rate" may be 90 percent. The organization may never get there, but it puts a stake in the ground and makes it easier to establish short-term and long-term targets in relation to it.
HR outsourcing discussions should begin at this level—typically where cost, quality (the need for system upgrades) and reliability of HR services are issues of concern. Where the senior team requires lower target or fixed costs from the HR function or enhanced levels of service (integrated web self-service delivery portals, for example), target setting may promote the exploration of outsourcing.
5. Develop strategic initiatives.
A senior management or functional team next develops a list of strategic initiatives or process changes based on the value drivers in order to meet the target objectives.
Strategic initiatives in the HR function may involve organizational restructuring (such as the move to shared service models), new functions (web-based self-service or manager self-service), program enhancements/integration (new rewards plans, talent management programs, talent acquisition processes, business literacy programs, etc).
Value drivers such as "customer service and support" or "speed to market" may require new goal alignment, performance management, or communications initiatives. Turnover issues might lead to "on-boarding" initiatives and training coordination.
6. Estimate impact/return on talent investment (ROTI).
A next step is to determine the business case for various interventions and the requirements for change management. Focus in HR is typically on balancing value creation (measures that can be linked to ROI and adding value) and cost control.
7. Create performance action plans.
The next critical item is to develop a process for getting commitment to follow through. Performance action plans link strategic initiatives with the daily tasks that people need to do—at all levels—to get the job done. These plans define outcomes, activities, tasks, milestones and resource requirements. They address, for example, what needs to be done differently to improve customer service or quality. What type of communication and feedback are needed? What measures and support are needed at the line level to get people's attention.
8. Allocate resources.
After that, links to budgeting and staffing processes need to be established to ensure that resources match strategic imperatives and the overall value planning blueprint. The importance of this step can't be stressed enough. If strategic initiatives and performance action plans do not have resources allocated to them through the formal budgeting process, they won't be implemented.
9. Align rewards and accountability.
HR executives have a clear requirement to align rewards (broadly defined as pay, non-financial rewards, recognition, benefits, learning and development, and work environment) programs with the value planning system. Personal accountability systems and development plans may also need clarification and definition through performance management processes.
10. Monitor, review, report, and reinforce progress.
The need for ongoing monitoring and review of progress is critical. Systematic reporting and review of progress, problems, and plans ("the 3 Ps") should occur monthly—and in some cases even more often! Monthly scorecards ought to be used to maintain focus on the "vital few" measures.
Reporting and feedback systems—especially at the line level—don't have to be boring. Some of the best we've seen include themes, contests (structured correctly), highly visual graphics and fun. Increasingly, web and software based enterprise-wide business planning systems are establishing new standards for planning, data consolidation, reporting, and review.
And remember: People resist measurement when they associate it with punitive consequences. Monitoring and reporting requires that managers also reinforce and recognize progress—as often as possible!
Proper talent management planning can offer a powerful way to impact your business performance and truly fine-tune how you run your HR function. As we all recognize, this is especially critical during challenging economic times. However, the effort put into step "A" in the outline above will result in greater organizational efficiency, greater employee engagement and a framework for continuous improvement.
Amy Armitage is an HR specialist with Capital H Group, an HR consulting firm based in Chicago, Illinois. Contact Capital H Group at info@capitalhgroup.com.
