Tag Archives: performance

Part 1: HR Principles Guiding Workplace Violence Prevention

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Workplace shootings covered in the news remind human resource professionals that monitoring potential violence and unsafe behavior in the workplace is crucial. Planning for any performance intervention or termination conference must include an evaluation of the risk for dangerous behavior. This article includes a comprehensive series of questions to support such an evaluation.

Introduction

Section 5(a)(1) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, states that employers have a duty to protect employees from recognized hazards that are likely to cause death or serious harm to employees. Emotionally unsafe employees often react strongly to negative information or changes in the workplace. Physical harm to human resource staff, supervisors or company employees are an immediate consequence but there are long-term human effects such as: emotional toll – grieving employees, trauma for those who witness violence. Finally, the business will suffer as folks struggle to regain some form of normalcy.

24-hour factor

When employees are counseled about poor performance or turned down for a position, they may not act out at first. There may be an apparent honey-moon period in which the unsafe employee is unable to respond at first, followed by a strong reaction that builds as the reality of the situation becomes clear days later. I call this the “24 hour” factor.

Attorneys and security can help

Workplace violence prevention strategies can help to manage the risks associated with unsafe, unstable employees. The greatest point of risk is during or after an intervention aimed some negative situation: poor performance, being passed over, or probation and termination. Human Resource professionals often have feelings of apprehension during this preparation. They consult their attorney on the HR legalities and make plans that involve security personnel or the police. Attorney’s can comment on the legality of an employer’s action and the likelihood that an employee action might be successful in court. The police can contain certain situations once erupted, but neither may be able to assess the psychological potential for violence in advance. Sometimes visible security dampens the risk of violence.  In some cases, a visible police or security presence may actually incite a greater reaction. A good assessment of psychologically-based risk and sound intervention planning can make a significant difference in the outcome. Using information that management and HR already possess regarding the individual’s behavior in some or all of the following areas can yield a psychological profile that can inform successful planning.

 HIPAA vs Assessing the risk

When consulted on potentially violent employees, questions arise about private/medical matters that employers are charged with protecting – has the employee been diagnosed mental illness or medical condition that might alter mood? Does the employee take a medication that alters mood? Often this information is familiar to coworkers.  If the employer is unaware of these employee mental health issues, you move to observable behavior and other employee disclosures. Has the employee had violent outbursts, over-reacted to minor issues, broken tools, etc? Does the employee talk about violence in their home?

Workplace safety goals:

The following are the ultimate goals of violence prevention policies

  • Keeping company employees safe from aggression, threats of violence and assault;
  • Keeping company property safe from damage or theft and company operations safe from sabotage; and
  • Keeping an employee safe from self-harm at work or immediately after HR action
  • Keeping the community safe when you suspect imminent harm to people outside the company.

Guiding principles for violence prevention policies

It is important to know what ethical principles should guide decision-making in this kind of situation. Here are some examples:

  • Prevention of violent or unsafe incidents at work is a priority;
  • Company responses must be legal, ethical, professional and respectful;
  • Employees must be treated equally with respect to mental illness so attention must be focused on employee performance measures and observable behavior;
  • Responses must be consistent with company policies;
  • Company employees must be free from abuse, intimidation and physical harm at work;
  • Continuous, smooth and orderly business operations must be maintained;
  • Employee relations for the unit, peers and supervisor is important;
  • Planning and approach should consider professional risk assessment when there is a history of violence, threat of violence, discussion of firearms or presence of a chronic mental illness.

Companies can always add safety measures to written policies as long as they are focused on legitimate safety issues at hand and do not disproportionately affect a protected class. Some policies that might contain references to potentially violent conduct in the workplace:

  • Employee Termination
  • Medical Benefits
  • Conditions for Continued Employment
  • Progressive Discipline
  • Workplace Violence
  • Workplace Harassment
  • Performance Management and Feedback
  • Employee Requests for Disability Accommodations

Part 2: Checklist for planning interventions – coming next.

(c) Copyright BCSPublishing 2012 All rights reserved

Retention, Long Tenure and Employee Weaknesses

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Years of the same strengths and weaknesses

A hidden challenge results from long service employees’ strengths and weaknesses.  I have, more than once, been appointed nonprofit interim Executive Director where the former director had very long service.  Say that an individual in a leadership position has weak performance areas and he/she works for 15 years.  This means there have been 15 years with this particular weakness. Here’s an example.  Maybe the director is strong in finance and fundraising but not so strong managing and dealing with people. Funding and finances are probably in good shape. But after 15 years of less than positive attention to the matters of managing people, human resource strategies and policies are probably lacking.  Perhaps the organization never hired anyone with professional HR skills.  Perhaps they did, but the professional HR person was frustrated by a leader that didn’t want to grow and improve HR practices through the years.   I’ve learned to gather information about strengths and weaknesses of the person I am replacing as a means to assess how to approach the assignment.

Productivity

Long employee tenure is generally considered to be of great value. The logic is that employers invest time and money to train new employees.  There are technical matters, getting to know fellow employees to form a good team and then corporate values and philosophies to master.  The greater a position’s complexity, the longer it takes for an employee to learn the position and ramp up to competency. Reaching competency is the level where the employee’s real contribution can be realized. In the beginning the new employee is actually a drain on productivity.  At some point, they begin to add value by producing results at an acceptable level.  From a financial standpoint, the key is to keep employees after they reach the productive-results level long enough to return the original investment. All things considered, a company would be better off to keep these productive employees until their retirement.

Change is the new normal

The faster the world changes the more obsolete a given employee’s experience can become. In addition, nobody’s perfect.  Even your best long service employee comes to the job with weaknesses that may continue through their tenure. Read below for a discussion of the some of the hidden problems with long service employees.

Companies change their products, programs and services to remain competitive and to maintain profit margins.  Some lines are sold off and new ones are developed or acquired.  Even with one product line, the changes and advancements over a 25 year period would require significant re-tooling and process improvements.

In addition,  the external world changes around the company. Technologies change. Equipment and processes advance and improve. Consumer needs change and evolve. Accordingly, companies must adapt, retrain and develop employees skills to keep current.

Employees who grow along with the company, develop new/emerging skills  and perform well should be rewarded with opportunities, money or continued employment regardless of age, gender, race, etc. This is the main concept of an end-result oriented performance-based evaluation system. In addition, companies need to maintain good dialogue with all employees, particularly those who are falling behind.  Maybe they need more time to learn, maybe they don’t want to learn and change, or maybe they want to move into a more comfortable area of the company.

Status quo vs. let’s change everything

During this process of change and evolution, dynamics develop inside the company. As new employees join the company over time they come in and begin to make their own observations and changes.  This can cause conflicts between experienced, longer service staff who have built their ways of doing things and less experienced employees who have little loyalty to the way things have been done in the past.  Though it is not always so, long service employees can take offense and develop distrust.  Newer workers are seen to have new fangled ways to do things; they don’t know “how it is.”  It is not necessarily an age thing.  Plenty of young workers resist change and plenty of older workers adopt technology faster than young people. This dynamic is easily addressed with communication and attention.  The problem is that many companies are oblivious to the “camps,” choosing up sides and negative social issues that distract employees.

The key is to develop the kind of positive work culture that encourages communication among various employee groups, encourage everyone’s focus on company goals and make sure training and staff development keeps up with the times.

Living Right and Doing Well at Work

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There is an expression, “right living” that means roughly being ethical in your behavior and truthful with yourself. Being happier at work is within your control and can result from “living right” at work. As an employee for over twenty years I have made all the mistakes noted in this material. Some, more than once. These mistakes combined with my human resource training, clinical background and an Al-anon program of recovery have led me to some suggestions that might help you.

It is assumed you generally perform well enough and pick the right jobs over time. This post won’t apply to someone in an abusive workplace or who are working for an abusive boss. It’s meant to help the majority of folks who work for someone else and perform reasonably well. It is certainly easier to try these principles if the workplace is healthy but ironically, they are actually more useful to reduce stress in a less-than-ideal work situation. It is in those times that one needs to monitor his/her own behavior at work. These strategies will work. You will be happier and will feel less stressed in the place where you spend the majority of your waking hours – at work.

Ten Principles to Living Right and Doing Well at Work

1. Turn in your best performance
2. Put out the energy that you want back
3. Accept what you can and can’t control
4. Take responsibility for what you do and think and say
5. Compliment others when they do well
6. Don’t take responsibility for what others do wrong
7. Accept that the owner runs the business
8. Read the political landscape – eyes wide open
9. Make suggestions to improve workplace effectiveness
10. Stay long enough to make a contribution

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

1. Turn in your best performance

Your paycheck is compensation/exchange for helping the company. It’s an implied agreement. Working within your framework come to work everyday doing your best to understand your job, know what you are accountable for and work toward the company’s goals. Stay knowledgeable about your industry. Read the news, research techniques and ask questions. Learn about what your coworkers are responsible for so you can see how your work fits into the bigger picture. This may also include helping others do well at their jobs too, when you can.

2. Put out the energy you want back

The golden rule is cheesy but it does apply. Put out the positive perspective you would want if you owned the company. When everything around you is going to hell in a hand basket, focus on the little things that went well for you. Don’t get involved in gossip. Don’t talk negatively about co-workers or the boss. You don’t have to avoid co-workers who do gossip and you don’t have to get them to stop (I know it’s tempting). Try acknowledging the struggles they talk about, be sympathetic but stop short of agreeing, and say you have things to get back to. I have experienced toxic coworkers who read my silence as agreement so I simply indicate that my experience has been different but I understand they are struggling. “Great boots (scarf, suit, hat, sweater, etc.), gotta go” and move on, smiling.

3. Accept what you can and can’t control

You can control literally: what you do and think and say, period. People burn out when they try to control the uncontrollable. If you are working harder to get someone to change their behavior than they are working themselves, that’s the signal. Wait, “Am I in charge of what this person says, does, or thinks?” The answer is no, no, no. You are not the boss of the world. Your judgments about what others should do (unless you get paid to do this-coaches, etc.) are YOUR vision, YOUR ideas, YOUR life plan, not theirs. Leave others to the natural consequences of their choices. When they ask or if the opportunity presents itself provide observations, suggest available choices and give them encouragement to find their own way. This does not apply to supervisors who must judge and evaluate the performance of others. That’s a whole different article.

4. Take responsibility for what you do and think and say

When you do or say things that hurt others or that put up barriers to achieving business goals (i.e., offending a customer), admit it, apologize if necessary and move on. You can choose to acknowledge the event, learn from it and improve or you can choose a less effective course, say: A., Pretend it didn’t happen, B., Blame others, or C., Go on and on about your shame, humiliation and worthlessness. Your co-workers will quickly see which style represents your ongoing approach. If taking a reasonable perspective on your own mistakes is difficult for you (it is for many) you might need either an AA or Al-anon meeting. Those who are familiar with these models will understand my point.

5. Compliment others when they do well

People naturally gravitate to those who support them to feel good about themselves. In addition, when a person (meaning you) feel good about yourself, it’s not threatening to give credit to others when it is deserved. This is both fair and right. Never take credit for what others do right. If you are living right and doing well, others will notice and even if they don’t, you’ll be a better, happier person.

6. Don’t take responsibility for what others do wrong

While you don’t have to shame others you can allow others to sit with or in situations they create for themselves. This is how we learn to change. If you touch the hot stove and get burned, you learn. If someone puts their hand between yours and the burner, they get burned and you get off scot-free. If you rescue others too often, they will not learn and you will quickly fatigue. We all know people who blame themselves for everything that goes wrong. It’s tedious and it’s not helpful to a well-run workplace. What I do when a co-worker is feeling badly about a mistake is acknowledge they made a mistake and tell share when I’ve made mistakes too. Help them focus on the future and encourage them to move on.

7. Accept that the owner runs the business

Everyone thinks they know better than the real boss. The owner is the owner, not you. An employer has a right to run his/her business as they please. It may not be “fair,” or “right,” but it’s life. I’m not saying you should work for a jerk but over time, owners who respect employees and run a healthy workplace will do better. This is the natural consequence. Conversely, those who are abusive to employees or allow employees to intimidate one another will suffer unproductive turnover. It is not your responsibility to speed things up or to change the outcome. Your job is to decide if you want to work there. You might be able to achieve small improvements by giving professional feedback but be realistic. If things are very negative look for work elsewhere and let the owner suffer his/her own natural consequences.

8. Read the political landscape – eyes wide open

If there is one mean person in the office that no one seems to “take on,” watch and listen to see why that is. Maybe this employee is someone’s romantic partner. Maybe this person is a toxic ringleader with mad retaliation skills. Don’t get hung up on how this is so wrong or unfair. Yes, it’s unfair but this is the reality. Work within your frame-work to turn in your best performance. If this dynamic prevents you from do well in this job, start looking for work elsewhere. You can certainly confront these individuals and it is possible that something might change for the better but it is more likely that you will make yourself a target. AND you are not responsible for rescuing coworkers from this behavior or saving the business from it’s own poor lack of attention to negative employee behavior. That is a lot of heavy lifting. Chances are many other people have tried and failed. Identify the informal power leaders.

9. Make suggestions to improve workplace effectiveness.

If the business does better, everyone benefits. Providing feedback at work is a part of every person’s job. The trick is to know when to speak up, with the right motives. If you constantly complain about the things you can’t control or the things that make it hard for you, people will stop listening. If you provide professional, well-timed (and not too often) suggestions that will improve things for everyone or a whole department, people start viewing you as a valuable asset with good ideas.

10. Stay long enough to make a contribution

Human resource professionals do not like job hoppers. Yes, you can explain that you had a personality conflict with your boss if this happens at one out of five of your last jobs. If there is a personality conflict with every boss in the last three jobs perhaps you are in the wrong field OR you need to do some personal improvement work.

HR Response to Mental Health in the Workplace

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I wanted to make a Human Resource oriented addendum to this wonderful article

Responding To Mental Illness in Your Workforce: Leading a Culture Change 

tweeted by @psychcentral 8/3/2011. The author, Carol A. Kivler, MS, CSP takes an enlightened and sensitive approach to individuals suffering with mental illness in the workplace. The article is aimed as helping leaders understand the issue of mental illness in the workplace.  I appreciate this because I have found my HR friends can benefit from increased comfort with this topic.  There are times when my HR training and clinical experience collide.  This is one of them.

A unique perspective

I came to the practice of HR from a business background and then Clinical Social Work.  My views on mental illness and HR arise from a very different place than my HR peers mostly because of my exposure to severe and chronic mental illness.  The sigma Ms. Kivler discusses is very powerful indeed.  Because of my experience, I am not afraid of individuals with mental illness.  I know that these are fellow human beings with a variety of personal values and styles.  I know that only a very small percentage of people with mental illness are violent.  It’s just that when a person with mental illness commits a violent crime, the media, especially fringe media, bombard the general public with disturbing images and sensationalized information.  I also know that most mental health issues in the workplace are mood disorders such as depression and bipolar disorders which respond well to medical intervention.

Finally, I know that the mentally ill were not all raised in chaotic or abusive homes. I was raised in a lovely family by good parents (not perfect, but good enough) and had a brother who suffered from bipolar mood swings and psychoses from the age of 20 until his death at 48.  The voices he heard told him that he, and not others around him, were bad. I know first hand that the essence of who he was as a person, was not the paranoid, odd behavior and religiosity my brother expressed, but it was the sweet, creative and sensitive individual who worked part-time while well on medication. He would never have harmed anyone.

The American workplace is in need of good information like the tips covered in Ms. Kivler’s article, particularly making information on mental health a part of wellness programs.  If only employers could take this information and adopt it freely.  I think it is possible but HIPAA presents a psychological and legal barrier to some of the actions suggested in the article.  The discipline of HR tends to be generally risk averse.  It doesnt’ make them mean or uncaring, just cautious.  Let me explain this.

HR is naturally cautious

Employers are responsible for removing the appearance or fact of ADA discrimination.  In addition, employers are required to protect the privacy of employee personal health information.  To do this perfectly, employers would never want to know if someone has a mental illness.  Once you know, you are open to accusations of misusing it in order to keep people from promotions or other employment opportunities.  For this reason, medical benefits information or other employee-employer correspondence regarding the diagnosis of mental illness are kept in separate “medical files” and not in the personnel file to which supervisor’s have regular access.  Employers must also try to prevent this information from being casually released and discussed amongst co-workers.  As such, they may ask employees to refrain from discussing their conditions with their peers.

What is the right balance?

I believe that the answer is to emphasize compassion and inclusion a bit and loosen the mentality of “eliminating” risk to more a risk management posture.  Ms. Kivler’s article is timely because presenteeism is an emerging HR issue.  It’s like absenteeism in that productivity is negatively impacted. However in presenteeism, the employee is at work but distracted by stress and other matters.  Mental illness appears to be one of the growing reasons for this distraction. I would conduct training as Ms. Kivler suggests –  fold this into the wellness program. I would make sure that the HR department is a safe and informed place for any employee to go if he/she needed support for time off or accessing counseling benefits.  This requires that HR staff be held to a high standard of listening, seeing this in the same nonjudmental way that they see say, diabetes, and well versed in the ways in which mental illness can affect employee performance. 

I would make sure my performance evaluation system focuses strictly on what and how the employee performs the essential functions of the job and NOT extraneous and irrelevant information like: age, race or disability. I would encourage the company to sensitively approach employees whose performance seems to be impaired by a personal issue in the same way whether it is divorce, an ill relative or their own mental illness.  I would ensure that these individuals receive referrals for EAP or mental health counseling.  And finally, I would ensure that my HR staff are comfortable responding lawfully and respectfully to requests for accommodations for a bona fide disability whether it represents a physical or mental impairment.

Staff training and stereotypes

Part of the role of sexual harassment statutes is to prevent harassment in the workplace.  The practical effect however, is staff training and development.  Employers are comfortable conducting training about how employees should behave when they encounter harassment in the workplace.  This means no sexual innuendo jokes, slang, etc. Ms. Kivler suggests that use of the word “mental” should be more comfortable (I agree 100%). I would add that we could also support employees to be more sensitive about comments that could be harmful: crazy, loony or even worse “lazy” as applied to those suffering from depression when they can’t get out of bed. 

I am grateful to Carol A. Kivler for writing about this topic.  It is timely and very important.  I also look forward to @psychcentral’s thoughtful tweets each day on topics of individual mental health.