Why we Continue to Produce Mediocre Results?

“HR, please come up with a new policy on this.” You heard this phrase countless times at boardroom meetings. HR will then disappear and reappear with a policy to steer the workforce to conform to a certain level of uniformity.??

Whenever we want to fix a workforce management issue, we inadvertently think of another layer of policy (process). We come to an unconscious shared understanding that some minority of the people will never like the idea. We accept that we cannot please everyone as long as we please the majority.??When we adopt this belief, we have not made much progress in our understanding of diversity and inclusion.

What is wrong with this picture?

Although we are in the information age, much of the best practices came from the industrial age. Henry Ford sums it nicely in the industrial age, “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants, so long as it is black”.?

An old proverb says, ‘do not throw the baby out with the bathwater”. What are some of the deeply held management beliefs and theories that have proven to work in the last twenty to thirty years that might not be applicable in the age of consciousness?

When it comes to giving solutions to workforce management, thousands of books are available on the shelves. There is probably one new book published every hour, providing another panacea to workforce management. Companies have spent millions of training hours on leadership, management, supervisory skills, coaching, etc.?

Touch our hearts and ask ourselves an honest question, “how have we progressed in terms of workforce management”? With the thousands of solutions out there, we should see the number of companies in every country reaching a six-sigma level in workforce management! Why are we still struggling today? Why are companies still looking for the holy grail?

The root cause of the problem may lie in the way we look at workforce management from the desire to achieve uniformity with the belief that this is the best approach.

Thirty-five years ago (Boy! That was a long time ago!), I graduated with a Management Science (or Operations Research) degree.?I spent the first ten years involved in total quality management and total productive maintenance. I was swimming in data and applying statistics to reduce variation. There was a time in my career I aspired to be a Six Sigma Black Belt. I even took a post-graduate degree in Total Quality Management as well.

My world for the first ten years was looking at uniformity.?I was relentless in continuous improvement and forever looking at ways of finding faster, cheaper and better ways of getting things done. The world of six sigma is forever looking at ways of ultimately ending up with making sure that getting things done every time is done in the same way with zero variation.?

Ten years later, I stumbled into HR. I was hired to be a Regional Best Practices Director and was asked to take up the additional role of the Director of HR the week before starting work! I quickly realized that the world of HR can be the opposite end of the continuum compared to the world of six sigma.?

That said, we are still applying process (policy) improvement to try to horde people to conform to what we perceived as the right standards.

Most of the time, the HR leader is in a room filled with people from the world of six sigma. A team that looks at data, applies statistics and comes up with a solution to reduce variation. In most organizations, the poor HR is the only “lone ranger” in the room sitting with a group of people bend at looking at uniformity!

We are heading into a new world where people are working longer, getting healthier and with improved healthcare, we will end up with four or five generations working under one roof.??We now live in a world where people feel comfortable expressing themselves, i.e., their lifestyles, aspirations, etc.

We need to rethink crafting another HR policy whenever we hit a snag. Instead of coming up with another policy, should we not look at relaxing what we have created in the past?

We need to have a deep understanding of having a mindset of “different strokes for different folks”. We talked a lot about diversity and inclusion. The true test of whether an organization truly walks the talk in embracing diversity and inclusion is how we have crafted the policies to govern our workforce.

For the past twenty-five years of my career in senior-level human resources, I will say that I am also a culprit in coming up with my fair share of HR policies. As a firm believer in six-sigma, it was easy for me to understand why most leaders would prefer HR to create another policy. That is the world of non-HR leaders, forever looking to another process or rule to reduce variation.

If we truly embrace diversity and inclusion and are aligned to the age of consciousness, we need to start looking at how we manage our workforce. We need to move to a more flexible approach rather than the traditional rigid way of “boxing” up people.??

Most people will accept that when we pool everyone together, you will likely get some form of bell curve distribution. A bell curve that will show a normal distribution of low, average and high performers. Whenever we come up with a rigid HR policy, we potentially target a specific band of people on the bell curve.??

I know that most leaders do not want to have high turnover in their team. It is painful and tiring to look for another replacement. Worse, HR might come after you with a report asking you whether this is an issue with your leadership, i.e., why are you losing people??

The unintended consequences are leaders then try their best to retain their people for the wrong reasons.??What they will do is to reduce variation in their team.?They try to find people who will have the “best fit” that will stay committed and loyal to the company.?We will then try to come up with HR policies that will only cater to the type of people who want to work in our environment.??

What is happening is we are narrowing down to just a few bands on the bell curve. When then happens, we inadvertently breed a mediocre team that produces within that narrow band. Some of the greatest innovators of our time often do not fit such criteria!

In the age of consciousness, where organizations will be in a Lean + mode, every talent in the team counts. Uniformity should give way to a healthy environment where people will give their best but may eventually leave the organization. HR should stop looking at purely attrition rate but whether you are losing the right people.??Leaders must come to accept that it is far more important to have a team that produces results “here and now” rather than taking pride in your retention numbers.

Similarly, when it comes to managing people, more than ever, it is all about different strokes for different folks. Some leaders have been questioned by HR when they conduct counseling on their employees. We failed to see how they have supported the rest of the team. Did they treat every individual the same way? There are times we penalize leaders the wrong way. As a result, most leaders will then retreat to a narrow band and leave it to HR to manage people.

When you look at controlling people in a defined way, leaders will always want to set control limits. That is how we have applied excellence to our operations. We set limits. When you set boundaries, you will only attract a narrow band of people. That is a sure recipe for producing mediocre results.?

A good litmus test is to look at your team in the last twenty-four months. Were there any extraordinary breakthrough ideas, or is everyone operating on “safe mode” in the narrow band that we have unintentionally created? When it comes to managing the workforce in the age of consciousness, it is all about diversity and inclusion.

Some people are so committed to work that they prefer to work and not take time off. On the other hand, there are others who would want to take breaks to recharge themselves. In the last twenty-four months, Covid has forced the entire world to rethink the notion that you have to be in the office during office hours to be productive.??

The whole world has now accepted that work can be carried out remotely. People have also awakened to enjoy their new form of work arrangement and may not look forward to the day they have to return to the office. They will start to look for another employer that allows them to work remotely or some level of hybrid arrangement between the office and home.

Both HR and Business Leaders will need to start embracing more flexibility in how we manage our workforce. Flexibility is nothing new. For years, some companies have been offering flexible benefits (or cafeteria-menu type benefits). Organizations should start to deep dive to look at their current HR policies, e.g., flexible paid-time-off, no limits to sick leave, etc.??

Your valuable talents will not wait for you if you are a follower. The clock is ticking, and today's organizations must quickly make that change or risk losing some of their key talents. Organizations should not fear that this will lead to chaos in the organization. It still boils down to applying best practices in people management.

Organizations that have invested in people and performance management for their supervisors will be the ones that will adapt better than most. Just a caution when we apply HR digital/AI solutions to “box” people that the codes are written to appreciate diversity and inclusion and not with uniformity in mind!