The problem with people

I attended the annual CCNZ Conference in Rotorua last week, and listened to a great range of speakers, did the obligatory networking and chit-chat and saw some great people and projects be awarded recognition for the hard work they have put into their companies and the industry as a whole over the past year.

Once again, one of the main themes to come out of both the presentations and awards was the fact that people are the biggest asset to any business. Anyone will agree to this fact, that smart, personable, engaged and motivated staff are what sets one company apart from its competitors.

The issue is though, that people are also often quite annoying and frustrating. They change their mind, do the unexpected and have bad days. They are also difficult to figure out and understand, and as Mike King made an excellent point of in his keynote at the conference, most people struggle with mental health to varying degrees, at different times, but most of us wouldn’t probably realise it in our colleagues.

How a lot of companies deal with people issues is by creating rules and processes in order to manage their unruly and unpredictable employees. They put in place performance review programs, to ensure that their managers don’t forget to manage. They implement sign-off approval processes, so that a Senior Manager has to look at every spending decision. They often appear to defer requests for promotion, relocation or training in the supposed hope that the employee will stop asking.

I’m pretty sure most businesses understand these simple concepts surrounding their people, and how to look after them. I think if you asked most managers and human resource professionals about staff retention and what it means, they could give you a fairly robust explanation of the concepts. So why do so many organisations find it so difficult to put the concepts into practice?

The problem with people in large part, are the people responsible for the people. When you work for a company, you place trust in the staff with the responsibility for your welfare to give you the tools, autonomy, and support to ensure your work is valued and meaningful. When that trust is broken, this value diminishes. Trust in a company can be broken right from the beginning of the relationship – the recruitment process, and I have seen and heard countless examples of organisations breaking promises to new recruits, under-delivering on expectations, making the recruitment process harder than it should be, and generally acting poorly. What basis do the people responsible for this function have to act in this way?

Not all companies are like this, obviously. I work with firms in the civil contracting industry that demonstrate what good practice looks like. These are some of the things that make their organisations successful, with engaged employees and low staff turnover rates:

• The senior leaders or directors genuinely care about their people and have good, open communication channels throughout their organisation
• Training and development is well resourced and not budgeted on an outcomes basis
• Managers have autonomy in delegated authority and budget decisions
• Decisions are made quickly
• Human Resources is a respected support and advisory function, not the company police force
• All potential new recruits are valued, communicated with effectively and treated with the utmost respect

The problem with people, is that they have freedom of choice. Particularly in a candidate-short market. I heard a story recently of an HR Manager working for a contracting firm who was musing over the fact that a number of their Engineers had resigned to go and work for another contractor. ‘I wonder what they have got going on over there’? This person was heard to say. The issue here is obviously, that its not about what’s going on – over there, it’s what’s going on in your own organisation that is the issue.

I run into senior leaders from the civil contracting industry on a regular basis and have worked closely with a number also. They are, for the most part very genuine and engaging people, very astute and self-aware, which are some of the traits that got them into leadership positions. I find it hard to believe that these leaders would tolerate some of the behaviours that happen on the ground within their companies, if they knew what was going on.

At the CCNZ Conference I talked with a company director who told me that one of his major difficulties with growing an organisation, was the fact that it was becoming too difficult for him to get around all his staff. Too many people, spread out over large distances and not enough time. I don’t envy the people who have to make decisions like that about their priorities, but I will say that if you become far removed from people in your company, you place a great deal of trust in the staff that sit between you and the them, and in my experience not all these people will be completely honest with you, but often paint a nice picture that will frame themselves in the best light.

In this day and time, things are changing rapidly and unless companies devote more time and resources into their staff than ever before, people will always be a source of organisational problems. Not only do you have to attract , develop and retain the best people possible, you have to attract, develop and retain the best managers of people possible, as when it comes to freedom of choice in today's job market – there have never been as many options for employees.

For senior leaders, keep your finger on the pulse of your organisation. Build and maintain communication lines at all levels of your company. Mystery-shop different departments. Stress-test your management structure. Ensure that the quality of your all your processes are in line with the values that your organisation has on the wall of the foyer.

Because while there are many problems that the people in our organisations can throw at us, through dealing with challenges such as mental health, staff turnover, engagement, health and safety, training and development and communication, we should come out the other side as stronger and more people-centric companies. And since people are our biggest asset – let’s all bloody act like it!