Transitions

We usually use terms induction and onboarding in context of new joiners to companies. But these terms do have relevance to even employees transitioning across roles.

What all might be important to look at when we consider employees transitioning across roles?

There needs to be a focus on:

·         Effective transitioning off from current role:

o   There needs to be a focus on effective hand over of responsibilities to new/stand-in incumbent.

o   Every team also needs to re-center itself when there is a change in team member.  

·         Effectively onboarding into new role:

o   There needs to be a focus on role readiness. This will be a combination of learnings required, contributions (early successes) that give a boost to confidence, and establishing networks required for role.

·         Effectively inducting into new team/org sub-cultures – need for team to re-center itself with new team member.

All of these steps can be facilitated through processes.

How is this different from onboarding and inducting a new joiner to company? It is different in sense that in second case one also needs to factor in ‘inducting into company’.

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Sourav

Quality Goal Setting

Performance year has started. As a manager, you need to go about setting goals for your team members.

You think ‘what all are goes into a quality goal setting process? Who are stakeholders and what are their roles?’

A quality goal setting process should ensure alignment of individual, team, and organization goals, SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic/Relevant, and Time Bound) goals, and ownership of goals from employee.

It is important for stakeholders to understand their roles in order to ensure these objectives are achieved.

·        Manager – ensures linkage between organization and team/individual goals; plays a large role in ensuring conditions that enables employees to own their goals; ensures balance in workload across team members; and ensures synchronicity between work of different team members.

·        Employees- play a role in charting out milestone based execution plans for goals, identifying additional individual goals that further team’s work, and understanding how they need to support each other to achieve team’s goals.

What are the conditions that ensure ownership of goals from employees?  A feeling of ‘these are my goals’ might help here. Such a feeling will be an outcome of active participation in entire goal setting process.

So managers also have to ensure platforms that enable active participation of employees in goal setting process – both at a team level and at an individual level.

 

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Sourav

 

Onboarding

Is it an employee’s responsibility to onboard himself/herself on to the role or is the company’s responsibility to ensure that an employee onboards to a role?

 

I will contend both. But I do think that organization has a role to play in ensuring the employee is set up for success.

 

First, both external and internal hires have a need for onboarding.

 

Second, an onboarding plan needs to have defined objectives and a structure.

 

Objectives of onboarding primarily are a) establishing relationships with key stakeholders in/outside organization, b) understanding organization eco-system, c) learning the nuts and bolts to do the job independently, and d) starting to contribute in the role (with quick feedback loops) that in turn leads to increased confidence.

 

How do you want to go about building a structure around these 3 pronged objectives?

First, set a time limit for plan– a fortnight/1 month/2 months.

Second, create a week wise plan with defined objectives.

Third, have a review/check-in mechanism in place with employee’s manager.

 

Finally, a plan is only as good as its execution. So ensure that onboarding plan is executed well.

 

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Sourav

Triad of learning

Is an individual responsible for his/her own learning? Most of us will contend yes.

But then what are responsibilities of other 2 stakeholders in process- manager and HR?

Other day I heard someone delineate succinctly the responsibilities.

'Employee owns, manager supports, and HR enables learning'.

Statement sounds simple and relevant! It resonates with me.

But how might this state manifest at workplace?

Employee will own initial identification of learning need and sharing same with manager.

Manager will explore along with the employee whether the correct need has been identified or not (e.g.- by using evidence procedure), facilitate effective choice of 70/20/10 learning mix, work with stakeholders (including HR) on ensuring relevant 70/20/10 learning opportunities materialize, and provide opportunities for transfer of learning back to workplace (for 20 and 10 percent).

HR supports the manager being  more effective in supporting employee through learning process.

But HR's also plays a role is enabling the process. So HR person needs to have an understanding/independent view on how process is running and intervene if process is stuck somewhere- with employee or manager.

But then HR's role is akin to a tight rope walk- you have to enable the employee and manager to drive the process and not to take over ownership of the process.

I also do feel manager has a role to play in enablement. Manager can clear log jams if s/he finds employee stuck somewhere.

A related point is that employee/manager may be stuck at what, when/where, how, or why of learning. A skill in 'enablement' is to figure out where is block/log jam and accordingly facilitate the process.

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Sourav

 

 

 

Conflicting priorities in Career Management

Career Management, as distinct from succession planning, supposedly takes care of aspirations of employees. Hence it is from the point of view of the employee.

But is an employee the only party involved in the process of shaping his career? There exists a number of ‘lenses’ – organizational lens, lens of the parent hierarchy (as manifested by immediate boss), lens of the ‘receiving’ hierarchy, and lens of the employee himself.

What are the interests of these different lenses and how do they interact to shape the career of an employee?

Organizations might have different definitions of career growth. Vertical as well as horizontal movements might be seen as growth avenues. There also might be an assumption that all individuals want vertical/horizontal career growth.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks to career planning comes from the immediate superior of an individual. The immediate superior has a primary interest –that of ensuring performance of his team. It becomes easier for him to ensure team performance if an individual stays longer. This primary interest at times is at odds with the interest of the individual. Sometimes you will find superiors not sharing details of career opportunities with their subordinates, as they do not want to let go of them. This is where mechanisms like Internal Job Portals come in. But even when you provide visibility of career opportunities to individual employee’s, a boss still wields significant power. He may actively dissuade an employee from applying for certain positions. I wonder whether this kind of behavior is over the board. He may also act very difficult in letting go of an employee who has been selected for another position (‘He is working on important projects. I can’t relieve him from his current role for next 6 months.’)

Even within the same company you find some departments/functions where employees from non-traditional backgrounds do well, and other departments/functions where a non-traditional profile struggles to perform. Career Moves involve making moves outside your own specialization areas. A recipient function plays a large role in setting up a cross-functional mover for success or failure. From an organizational perspective, it is important to recognize which functions are hostile to incoming career movers and work with them to change their behaviors. From an individual employees perspective, it is important to factor in what kind of support systems would be available in a function the employee is considering making a movement into. The recipient function also faces a challenge of figuring out on what basis to select/reject internal candidates – a sensitive issue.

What about the individual employee? Career Management/Planning is meant to take care of his aspirations. What happens if an employee wants to specialize but the company believes in general managerial competence? What happens if an employee wants to work in different functions in a company that believes in specialization? Many a times employees equate growth with promotions – how does a company ensure that even horizontal movements are seen by employees as growth opportunities? Career Management is based on the assumption that employees are aspirational. There are different life stages when an employee may not desire movement. Would such an employee not be considered ‘career oriented’ and subsequently ‘discounted’? For an employee his career is enmeshed with the other roles he plays outside work in his family/society– what happens when there are clashes between these different roles?

Career Management/Planning is necessary but there are multiple and conflicting priorities that tug at the process. At the end of the day, the ‘employee lens’ is what a Career Management/Planning process is supposed to cater to. But this can be done effectively only by identifying and managing the conflicting priorities of all stakeholders.

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Sourav