Developing Employee Expectations

Typically, there are two levels of employee expectations in an organisation. The first level is set out in the employee contract, rules, procedures and job descriptions. The second level of employee expectations is less concrete. These are the implicit expectations that are part of the psychological contract between employer and employee. Examples are loyalty, respect and job security. It is these often unspoken expectations that when breached can cause an employee to be demotivated and, even worse, go work for the competitor.

Unpspoken employee expectations can cause havoc in organizations because they create fuzzy expectations. In his The Coach Is In column in the Washington Post, Marshall Brown aptly refers to this practice as managing by "mental telepathy." The result, says Brown, is "hesitation, indecision and uncertainty," which ultimately negatively impacts productivity and performance.
Brown provides some good pointers on how to set clear expectations. Notably, expectation setting is a two-way communication process between employer and employee, notes Brown—when developing the vision, deciding on how to get there and giving feedback. Equally important is for an employee to be able to make and see progress. This requires setting benchmarks and performance measurements.

There is a darker side to employees under performing due to a lack of clear expectations, and that is employees working over capacity to fulfill undefined expectations. A disconcerting trend mentioned in previous blogs is Americans who are not taking refreshing and productivity enhancing vacations. Now the Randstad reports that 40 percent of UK workers believe that their workloads do not allow them to take a break. Sixty seven percent of these workers report increasing workloads.

High Returns for Investing in People

Rationalisation is becoming business as usual for many organisations. There is one expense that is increasing for the world's most productive companies — training and development. Investing in people seems even braver when the forecasts for employee turnover are considered. Survey after survey is reporting that up to one third of employees — reporting low grades in trust and communication in the workplace — plan to look for another job when the economy picks up.

Before slashing the training and development budget, consider the productivity advantage of investing in employees. The world's best companies for leaders also are some of the most productive and sustainable businesses of the last century — GE, Procter & Gamble, IBM, 3M, and Nestle — and fastest growing — Infosys, Cisco, according to the Bloomberg BusinessWeek/Haye Group's 2010 Best Companies for Leadership. What do they have in common? They all invest in training and development in good times and bad.

In more challenging economic times, the temptation to curtail the training budget is all too tempting. The evidence, however, clearly makes the case for increasing investment in people. All tallied, the return on investing in people pays off. Some of the gains are harder to quantify but the benefits of investing in training and development are apparent:

· More knowledgeable employees to share new knowledge and techniques with other employees
· More qualified leaders to train and mentor the next generation of leaders
· More competent employees liaising with customers, partners and suppliers
· More confident employees: An employee's perception of self-efficacy, which is strongly influenced by training and development, is positively correlated with performance

There's more evidence. Companies that invest more resources in training and development enjoy higher retention rates. As a restless and demotivated workforce dusts off its resumes and prepares to job hunt as the economy rebounds, there is no better time to make a strong commitment to the personal development of your workforce.

Human Capital Magazine - Australia - Savvy HR practices breathe life into not for profit organisations

Fantastic Article about the challenges of recruiting and retaining staff in the not for profit sector. With challenges competing on the salary front these organisations need to get creative and smart about how they position their Employee Value Proposition through internal Employer Branding.

Human Capital Magazine - Australia - Savvy HR practices breathe life into not for profit organisations

Upholding the Psychological Contract

Has the psychological contract between employers and employees been broken?

The psychological contract is made up of those implicit agreements between employers and workers that do not make it onto paper and are seldom even verbalized. Tenants of the psychological contract include the "mutual beliefs, perceptions and obligations" between the employer and worker.An example of an implicit agreement is the employee's expectation of job security in exchange for hard work and loyalty. For many workers today, that psychological contract has been broken.

For others, the psychological contract has been rewritten. For years, organizational scholars have been preparing us for a shift from relational-based to transactional-based psychological contracts. The transactional contract is based on monetary remuneration in exchange for agreed upon performance standards over a period of time. This working arrangement is more familiar to the contract worker, or portfolio careerist.

For people managers, the evolving role of the psychological contract underscores the need for clearer communications on the nature of employment. When the tenants of the psychological contract are broken trust is broken. The betrayal of trust in the workplace is contributing to higher employee turnover. Deloitte LLP’s fourth annual Ethics & Workplace Survey has found that one-third of employed Americans plan to move on when the economy picks up. The top reasons cited for looking for a new job include a loss of trust (48 percent) and a lack of transparent communications (46 percent).

Whether or not employees have the luxury of changing jobs, the large negative effect of a breach in the psychological contract on productivity is evident. Based on the Deloitte study, due contract breaches, at least one sixth of the workforce is demoralized enough to not want to work for their present employer. Negative outcomes of a breach include lack of work satisfaction and motivation and an increase in stress, according to presentations by psychological contract expert David Guest of King's College, University of London. Other behavioural consequences include a decrease in attendance and job performance.

To uphold the psychological contract, Dr. Guest recommends that employees provide:
"•reasonable demands/manageable workload,
•some personal control over work,
•support from supervisors and colleagues,
•positive relationships at work,
•a reasonably clear role, and
•involvement in changes affecting you."