How The Internet Is Revealing The Effectiveness of Your People Strategy or Lack Thereof

I was reading this morning about Google Doc Employment Activism in"Your colleagues are probably sharing a secret Google doc right now" by Lila MacLellan. The concept of what a Google Doc is or does is not important news. HOW and WHY it is being used in this case is the important news with implications for management and HR in a growing number of industries and organizations.

In itself a Google Doc is a pretty simple non-threatening idea. What is happening with them is a little more complex. Employees with real or perceived grievance are creating documents and publically volunteering information about pay, management practices, behavior of managers and other colleagues in the open in order to get like information back to identify patterns and provide support to one another, which they hope will collectively help them gain some power back over issues deeply affecting their professional and personal lives.

What is going on with Google Docs is somewhat like other employment crowdsource concepts like Glassdoor but with the important distinction that the Google Docs are independent creative efforts beginning in their own ways, for their own reasons, and with no explicit profit agent or benefactor other than the participants themselves. These are non-hierarchical insurgencies : there is no leader, no one person to squash, no way to delete this thing and no way to manage it.

An employee leaves one friday and wonders, "Have I been gaslighted here?" Next step : "I don't know, let me throw up a Google Doc and ask around." By the middle of the next week they have an answer. While it may be nice that now you may have means to learn the answer to your question, what is more profound thing about this is now everyone else can too.

The concept of using a Google Doc for comparing notes is not new. I don't have the entire history (maybe someone else on thread can fill in) but I recall first hearing about this type of thing when Software Engineers at Google, Facebook and other companies in Silicon Valley put together a Google Spreadsheet to try to find out for themselves the simple answer to the question, "Hey, am I being paid fairly relative to my peers?". Maybe this kind of note sharing has always taken place in some way among close circles of friends but it seems to have picked up breadth and momentum as gender wage disparity and harassment claims achieved national attention and consistently remained in the headlines.

What is New?

According MacLellan the use of Google sheets to share personal stories to identify bad situations and bad guys is increasing and spreading into industries outside of Silicon Valley.

Having a background in Human Resources, Industrial Relations and People Analytics I probably look at this issue differently than most other people. Here is what I see ...

1.) Where there is smoke there is probably fire.

There is a high probability that activity of this sort indicates some lack of trust in company leadership. My point of view is that activism of this nature indicates a need that has been not been effectively served through other channels. You fix these things first or they will on their own and you might not like the implications. It doesn't look that much different to me than the activities that started the labor movements of 1900s, however those just occurred long ago in a time and place that didn't have the luxury of the internet. They are necessarily different in form, not function. Executive level HR professionals promote the idea that management should do the right thing first if they don't want unions to organize and question their authority. A significant movement towards employee organization of any type means something. The Google Doc addresses a fundamental need to be heard and/or a fundamental questions that apparently nobody has been able to definitively answer for them before, "Am I being given accurate information by my employer?", "Hello, is my voice heard?", and "Am I being treated equitably?"

2.) This probably indicates HR has failed in some way.

All of the things discussed in the Google Docs (pay equity, discrimination, harassment, leadership, management, fairness, transparency, culture , etc...) are all intended to be addressed by Human Resource people and their packages of programs, processes and practices. The Google Doc Activism suggests that at best HR's efforts to address these issues are not widely understood and at worst the efforts are a complete failure. It is possible the companies effort to apply internal and external pay equity is working but no one knows and is also possible this a once a year check the box activity, a formality lacking substantive impact. How do we know? The fact that nobody knows how or why we make the pay decisions we do or where we stand in it may also suggest the question, then why do you bother in the first place?

HR is supposed to be a neutral advocate for employees. If you have to go to HR (God forbid you ever have to) you want to know they will give you accurate, clear information and know that someone has your corner. Unfortunately, what people find is a cloudy message. The concern is that at best the HR professionals are an employee advocate that suffer from some mysterious niceness syndrome and at worst they are secret agents of management. Remember anything you say can be and will be used against you in NO COURT AT ALL. Management is the last functioning monarchy on earth. Management decides. End of story. Is there an appeal process? No. Is your pleasant HR partner really equipped to stand up under these conditions?

Here is the real inside scoop on HR. You will find a mixed bag of intentions, courage and competence in the HR profession but if you think about it, don't they report into management too? Just let the implications of this settle in for a minute. HR has no explicit professional oath to advocate on individual's behalf and in most cases almost certainly will not do this when they perceive it puts them into personal jeopardy. There is no governing body, there is no statutes requiring selfless advocacy and there is no license. They can't be barred or de-licensed because there is no bar or license! This is the Wild West and the sheriff was given a badge by the owner of the factory. That's who you are dealing with here.

3.) Google Doc and Glassdoor Activism is an inferior second or third best option for proactive measurement and communication.

As much as I truly stand for the objectives and enabling distributed power of the Google Doc and Glassdoor Activism, as a behavioral science guy I have grave concerns about the lack of scientific control and mathematical rigor that is necessary to result in valid, reliable defensible answers through this outlet. If this where a scientific laboratory, this is a Frankenstein laboratory. These tools suffer from obvious deficiencies in scientific control, sampling technique, data quality and rigor. They are also disconnected from other sources of data, information or the debate about a balance of objectives that must be addressed with limited resources. I could go on for hours about the data problems in the google sheet and glassdoor approaches and it would just bore the tears out of you. So I'll just make the argument simple. Who is to say that someone couldn't use this effort to maliciously pursue a personal objective against an individual or company unnecessarily damaging the lives of innocent people or organizations (which by nature affect a lot more lives) for personal profit or gain?

Where To From Here?

So we can either see these as things as threats, something condemn and to squash or we can stand back and applaud. To be clear I am not for or against the Google Doc and Glassdoor Activism. I think the solution is to get out in front and do it better. If not that then get out behind and do it better. Maybe they have a point or maybe they don't - o.k. then let's collect our own data, do it better and open it up!

Everything collected in these documents can be collected systematically in professional and scientifically defensible ways using tested devices, broad samples and anonymity protected by third parties. These actions actively monitored and supported by both management and employee interest groups and the summary findings distributed transparently. Problem solved.

The beauty found in increasing transparency, the real reward, is that we are more likely to arrive at more effective people strategies, practices, programs and processes to achieve environments that people want to work in, produce positive attitudes about our organizations and create more sustainable and effective organizations. While transparency may seem a threat, it actually equips management and HR professionals to do their jobs better. There is no threat. Hard as we make look for an enemy, the enemy is ourself.

After nearly 20 years in the people data business I can tell you with a certainty I seldom have about anything - employer and employee needs are always aligned when viewed through a long-term perspective. Also, no matter what problem you are working on you are always better off with deliberately collected data then with no data or wrong data.

You cannot hide from the truth; the truth will always find you. Now, with Google Doc Activism the world just finds out faster and more effectively. Do you have an answer?

This is my simple pitch. Creating transparent feedback loops to address these and other issues is not a new or difficult task for an experienced People Analytics professional. You should have a few of those, you should put data together, you should listen very carefully, you should communicate what you learned and you should take action where appropriate. Go this way and the truth will set you free.