Performance Management

Are You a Good Performance Manager?

Posted: 23 May 2013 01:56 AM PDT

Posted by: Reena Jamnadas, Consulting Psychologist, Capp

“People leave managers not companies” – You have more than likely heard this said before, but the statistics behind it are quite staggering.

A Gallup poll of more 1 million employees concluded that the number one reason people quit their jobs is a poor manager or immediate supervisor. The results also showed that poorly managed teams are on average 50% less productive and 44% less profitable than well-managed teams.

The results of a recent national survey also showed that 80% of employees who were very dissatisfied with their immediate supervisor were disengaged, and that 62% of engaged employees say their manager sets a good example, compared to 25% of people who are not fully engaged.

What are the reasons for these dismally low levels of engaged employees?

People Have Changed

Employee expectations have changed. It’s not just Gen Y – employees everywhere and of every generation expect more: more involvement, more accountability, and more recognition. When it comes to managing their performance, employees have shifted from being passive recipients to active agents.

Managers have changed too. Command and control is no longer cutting it – managers are expected to guide and coach, provide balanced, constructive feedback, and inspire people to achieve great things, rather than just to enforce performance standards.

Reassuringly, research by CIPD shows that when managers do get it right, many good results follow:

• 25% increase in employee performance
• 40% higher employee engagement
• 18% growth in customer loyalty
• 25% decrease in employee turnover
• In the NHS, 1090 fewer deaths per 100,000 patient admissions.

Is Your Organisation Managing Performance in the Right Ways?
 
So how can your organisation develop the kind of managers that engage and inspire employees?

Through Capp’s 2012 Ideal Manager Survey and our work with highly engaged employees, we have identified 8 core questions to help you identify whether managers in your organisation are driving high performance in the right ways:
 
1. Are managers in your organisation skilled at identifying the strengths of their team members and managing high performance through these strengths?

Research by the Corporate Leadership Council in 2002 revealed that when managers focus on the strengths of employees, performance is likely to increase by 36%. Whereas when they focused on their weaknesses, performance decreased by 26%.

2. Are managers effective at building trusting, open and two-way relationships with their direct reports?

Research by the CIPD in 2012 showed that trust in a line manager is more important than trust in senior leaders or the organisation during times of difficulty and change.

3. Do managers develop better solutions through harnessing the diversity of their teams?

90% of respondents to Capp’s Ideal Manager Survey disagreed that all managers should manage in the same way, and instead, would develop better outcomes through harnessing the diversity of their teams.

4. Do managers in your organisation lead others with a sense of meaning and purpose?

99% of Capp’s Ideal Manager Survey respondents rated Mission as the most important and desired strength in their managers – managers that would engage them with a compelling vision, meaning and purpose, and authenticity.

5. Do managers in your organisation use effective delegation in order to play to the strengths of their team members?

Strengths-based delegation has become known to be a manager’s core tool for translating organisational strategy first into team goals, and then into each individual’s objectives, in a way that engages and plays to each individual’s strengths.

6. Do managers in your organisation provide regular positive and constructive feedback to their team members?

When researchers investigated the drivers of high performance amongst 19,187 employees in 34 organisations, they discovered that the top driver of performance was giving fair, informal, and accurate feedback – and not waiting for the dreaded annual performance review.

7. Do managers in your organisation coach their team to encourage daily progress and longer term career development?

The evidence shows that the crux of motivation is actually day-to-day productivity, as well as being able to see a path for career progression. As such, job satisfaction typically results from being productive towards one’s day-to-day goals, as well as one’s intrinsic goals for the future.

8. Do your managers build resilience and manage change and uncertainty effectively?

Capp’s recent research with leaders nominated as being ‘wise’ across dozens of blue-chip companies revealed that employees develop change readiness, agility and resilience when their leaders and managers manage change and uncertainty effectively and with confidence.
 
We know that many people are first promoted into management for their strong “technical skills” – solid knowledge of their own business. But that’s only part of the managerial equation; everyone has his or her strengths and weaknesses. It’s worth reflecting on the way that you use these to engage your people.

What other skills do you think are important to engage employees for high performance? Share your thoughts using the Comment function below.

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Ongoing Performance Management

Checkout this great blog post by CAPP! Are you making sure your employees are utilizing their strengths for success?       We’ve Recruited for Strengths. What Next? Posted: 28 May 2013 12:37 AM PDT Posted by: Emma Trenier, Senior Psychologist, & Celine Jacques, Managing Psychologist, Capp So you’ve recruited round pegs for round holes, and square pegs for square holes – you should give yourself a big pat on the back! You have given your organisation the most powerful ammunition to succeed – the right people in the right roles for the business. But does the work stop there? If only! As HR professionals, line managers and colleagues, you now have an ongoing responsibility to help these people maximise their potential. This could take a number of forms: Ongoing Performance Management On an ongoing basis, people need to be supported to understand and manage their motivations, use their strengths to reach objectives, and to minimise the impact of their weaknesses. The reference to strengths, and discussion around them, should not finish when the job offer is made. Instead, weave it into onboarding, performance reviews, appraisals and day to day management conversations. Champion the use of the strengths language. Help people to take control of their own performance, and their own career. Strengths-focused Career Development To enable really meaningful and effective career progression, and to genuinely encourage retention, you can map strengths for roles across your organisation and then support people to understand which career pathways would suit them and play to their strengths. Don’t just think about what someone is good at, consider also what energises them. Which part of your business would suit their motivational needs? Which role would really bring out the best in them? Talent Pipelines that Recognise Multiple Pathways Finally,  as organisations seek to promote flexibility and agility, we see an increasing focus on working cross departmentally and internationally. Take a strengths- based approach for identifying the right talent for these important roles. As many organisations are familiar with developing ‘talent pools’ for the identification and development of emerging leaders, identify those people with the strengths to be future top change agents. Or innovators. Or international collaborators. In fact, whatever the business needs… We would love to hear your stories on what you have done to embed a strengths-based approach after recruiting for strengths. What difference has it made to you and your organisation’s performance? Share and Enjoy • LinkedIn • Facebook • Twitter • Delicious • Digg • StumbleUpon • Add to favorites • Email • RSS

Can you relate to the next generation?

Check out the recent TIME Magazine article about the Millennial generation. They are entering the workforce and making the generations above say: "We never behaved that way, when we were that age...". But, is that true?  Every generation thinks the next one is lazy, disrespectful, or worse...but is every generation worse? This article was a very interesting perspective as to the next generation...take a look!

Millennials: The Me Me Me Generation

By Joel Stein Monday, May 20, 2013

 

Andrew B. Myers for TIME

 

I am about to do what old people have done throughout history: call those younger than me lazy, entitled, selfish and shallow. But I have studies! I have statistics! I have quotes from respected academics! Unlike my parents, my grandparents and my great-grandparents, I have proof.
Here's the cold, hard data: The incidence of narcissistic personality disorder is nearly three times as high for people in their 20s as for the generation that's now 65 or older, according to the National Institutes of Health; 58% more college students scored higher on a narcissism scale in...

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2143001,00.html#ixzz2TTHJmtoR

New Report Shows Staggering Differences in the Cost of Medical Treatments

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/05/new-report-shows-staggering-differences-in-the-cost-of-medical-treatments.html

health -- May 8, 2013 at 5:26 PM EDT

New Report Shows Staggering Differences in the Cost of Medical Treatments

BY: JAYWON CHOE

A new report released by the federal government raises questions about how exactly hospitals determine the cost of treatment, after it revealed that facilities across the country are charging wildly different amounts for the same medical procedures.

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) compiled a report that examines the costs of 100 of the most common inpatient procedures from 3,300 hospitals nationwide. What it revealed was that in many cases, hospitals -- sometimes in the same city -- price treatments up to twice as much as they would in another location.

For instance, in one Miami hospital, the average cost to insert a permanent pacemaker ran a little more than $60,000 in 2011. Meanwhile, in another facility, which is less than a third of a mile away, the same procedure costs more than $127,000. The Washington Post has compiled an interactive graphic looking at these discrepancies.

Yet despite the often staggering differences in costs, experts today questioned what impact these prices really have on the average consumer -- roughly 84 percent of whom had either public or private health insurance in 2011.

In theory, hospitals determine the costs of their procedures using what they call a chargemaster, which is essentially a database containing the costs of every item and procedure required at the facility. These prices vary depending on the location of the hospital and are adjusted for specific factors, including whether the hospital services low-income patients, is located in densely populated areas or is designed to be a teaching center.

Medicare payments, however, are not based on this data, but rather on a set of rates determined by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which are considerably lower. Additionally, private insurers will directly negotiate with hospitals to lower these costs for their clients. Ultimately, this means that insured patients will pay significantly less than what is being asked by these hospitals.

Based on the data from CMS, on average Medicare paid roughly 27 percent of the charges hospitals were requesting in these specific cases.

"The chargemaster can be confusing because it's highly variable and generally not what a consumer would pay," Carol Steinberg, vice president at the American Hospital Association, told the Washington Post.

Still, there is some disagreement as to whether this actually occurs in practice or not. Steven Brill, who wrote extensively about ballooning medical costs for Time Magazine, explained on the PBS NewsHour how hospitals often pad the costs in their chargemasters.

"They're typically five to 10 times what it costs the hospital to buy those items or provide those items," he said. "And insurance companies get big discounts off of the chargemaster, but the discounts that they get are still not enough to keep these hospitals from making very high profit margins and from all the non-doctor administrators at these hospitals from making exorbitant salaries."

Meanwhile, Jonathan Blum, the deputy administrator and director for the Center of Medicare, stressed that it is not the insured but rather the uninsured and underinsured who are most at risk, as they are the ones most likely to be faced with these charges.

"While the vast majority of patients in our country have public or private insurance there is a significant number of patients who are subject to these charges," Blum said. "We do not see any business reason why there is so much variation in the data. We want to have that conversation, but today we have not heard a logical business reason. While we can appreciate that there are variations due to the teaching status or the health status of patients, that cannot explain 5-to-1, 10-to-1, 30-to-1, 40-to-1 variations."

Ultimately, Blum added, the goal of the release is to better educate consumers of their options regardless of their insurance status. In addition, he said consumers can expect further releases in the future which may include more procedures.

"This is a two-goal effort," he said. "First to help those consumers who are navigating a very complicated pricing market and second to continue and elevate conversation as to why there's so much variation."

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Are you providing the best atmosphere for your employees?

We all know that obesity is an epidemic in the USA. But, are employers doing their best to ensure that their workers are getting enough physical activity throughout the day? What could your organization be doing differently to encourage healthy living on the job?

• Do you have a gym at the office?
• Do you have a access to a walking path, walking trails, or a safe environment for your employees to go outside and get some fresh air (no-smoking trails)?
• Do you offer wellness programs?
• online or as part of medical benefits programs?
• Do you encourage support groups - walking groups, quit smoking groups, encourage participation in local marathons, 5k, 10k events?
• support charitable organizations which incorporate healthy nutrition or fitness into the volunteering: Girls on the Run - http://www.girlsontherun.org/
• Do you encourage healthy menu options at your work place vs. vending machine food only?
• If your employees are stuck to their desk (call centers) - do you have the treadmill/desk option?
• some companies use this as a reward or incentive for employees who do well on performance measures. They get to go walk at the treadmill desk for a period or time (15-30 minutes) to break up some of the monotony and routine of their day.

 Ask yourself - what can we do better for our employees. Our physical health is directly related to performance outcomes at work. Health employees have less sick days, take less breaks (i.e., smoke breaks) and cost companies less than unhealthy workers. We can't always tell our workers what to eat and when to exercise, but we can create environments to support them and encourage them. Many studies have shown that women really benefit from walking groups (support systems). 

Challenge your organization and your workers to be healthy!!!  If you don't know where to begin:  there are plenty of Exercise Science majors graduating from universities right now!!! Hire one of them to help you create a healthy work environment for all of your employees!!  This small investment in a recent personal training graduate will help pay dividends in the future by helping you to increase productivity of your staff.  Their "bottom lines" will be healthier and happier and so will your company's!!

May 8, 2013

For U.S. Workers, Lack of Exercise Most Linked to Obesity

Other behavioral predictors include not eating healthy, depression

by Alyssa Brown and Kyley McGeeney

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WASHINGTON, D.C. -- For U.S. workers, exercising fewer than three days a week is more closely linked being obese -- defined as having a Body Mass Index of 30 or higher-- than any of 26 other behavioral and emotional factors, including healthy eating and having health insurance. This Gallup analysis of the correlates of obesity is based on interviews with more than 139,000 American workers. It also finds that not eating healthy, not having enough money to buy food, not having a safe place to exercise, having a history of depression, and not visiting a dentist annually are all linked to U.S. workers being obese.

The analysis shows that not smoking and having a personal doctor were also moderate predictors of obesity among U.S. workers. Studies have shown that nicotine is an appetite suppressant, which is one explanation for why workers who smoke are less likely to be obese. Still, the negative health effects from smoking arguably outweigh any healthy weight benefits. Having a personal doctor may be positively related to obesity among workers because obese individuals are more likely than non-obese individuals to suffer from chronic conditions that would require them to have a personal doctor.

The findings are based on data collected as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index from Jan. 2-Sept. 10, 2012. Gallup calculates respondents' BMI using the standard formula based on their self-reported height and weight. The analysis estimated the relationship between workers' obesity and each of 27 behavioral and emotional factors while controlling for age, ethnicity, race, marital status, gender, income, education, region, and religiosity.

The analysis finds that other behavioral and emotional factors, including high life ratings; feeling well-rested; and emotions including worry, sadness, stress, anger, and happiness, were not strongly or moderately related to obesity among U.S. workers after controlling for demographic variables. In addition, job satisfaction; using one's strengths at work; having health insurance; having enough money for healthcare; and having easy access to clean water, fruits, and vegetables were not strongly or moderately related to obesity among the U.S. workforce. These findings are consistent with Gallup's previous research on the factors most related to having a low or high BMI among national adults.

Transportation workers have the highest obesity rate among the 14 occupation groups measured, followed by manufacturing and production workers. Physicians have, by far, the lowest level of obesity, with business owners coming in second-lowest. These findings are consistent with what Gallup has previously found.

Physicians Do Best on Most Predictors of Obesity; Service Workers Do Worst

Highlights from how the 14 occupation groups perform on the strongest behavioral predictors of obesity among U.S. workers include:

• Physicians: This group boasts the lowest obesity rate and is in the best shape of all job types on three of the major predictors of obesity -- having a safe place to exercise, the ability to afford food, and depression.
• Service workers: These workers perform worst on two of the predictors of obesity: struggling to afford food and depression, and tie with farmers as the worst job type for having a safe place to exercise.
• Farming, fishing, and forestry workers: This group performs best on two of the top predictors of obesity -- healthy eating and exercise, which is likely due to the physical nature of their work. At the same time, they are tied with service workers as the worst job type for having easy access to a safe place to exercise, which may be due to having an outdoor work environment that could be dangerous.
• Other worst performers: Clerical or office workers are the least likely to exercise frequently, sales workers are the least likely to eat healthy, and construction or mining workers are the least likely to visit the dentist annually.

See full results for how all occupation groups perform on the predictors of obesity on page 2.

Implications

One in four U.S. workers is obese, which has tremendous costs for employers due to increased healthcare costs, higher absenteeism, and lower productivity. The medical costs in 2008 for obese individuals were $1,429 higher than for those of normal weight, according to the CDC. Gallup found that the annual cost for lost productivity due to workers being above normal weight or having a history of chronic conditions ranges from $160 million among agricultural workers to $24.2 billion among professionals.

Employers can cut their healthcare costs and improve their bottom line by developing targeted interventions, particularly by focusing on improving the behaviors linked to obesity that their occupation group struggles with most. To reduce the costs associated with obesity, employers can start by helping employees improve on the behavior with the strongest link to obesity -- infrequent exercise. Employers can consider opening an office gym or offering gym membership discounts to incentivize frequent exercise and provide a safe place for employees to work out. Gallup research also finds that engaged employees exercise more frequently and also eat healthier than those who are not engaged or are actively disengaged. Therefore, employers who prioritize employee engagement may see a double benefit of healthier and happier workers.

There are plenty of other ways employers in specific industries can improve their employees' health. For example, employers in the service industry -- the group which struggles most with affording food and with diagnoses of depression -- could develop discount programs to make healthy food more affordable for their employees and could make confidential depression screenings and resources readily available. Construction and mining industry employers could design an outreach campaign to encourage their workers to visit the dentist annually, offering incentives to those who do so.

These targeted, occupation-specific interventions have the potential to lead to tremendous cost-savings for workers, employers, and the U.S. economy.

About the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index tracks wellbeing in the U.S. and provides best-in-class solutions for a healthier world. To learn more, please visit well-beingindex.com.

Survey Methods

 

Results are based on telephone interviews conducted as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index survey with a random sample of 138,438 workers, aged 18 or over, from Jan. 2-Sept. 10, 2012.

For results based on the total sample of employed adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the margin of sampling error is less than ±1 percentage point. For the smallest group (physicians) the margin of sampling error is ±3.7 percentage points but less than ±1 for larger groups such as professionals and service workers.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones and cellular phones, with interviews conducted in Spanish for respondents who are primarily Spanish-speaking. Each sample includes a minimum quota of 400 cellphone respondents and 600 landline respondents per 1,000 national adults, with additional minimum quotas among landline respondents by region. Landline telephone numbers are chosen at random among listed telephone numbers. Cellphone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods. Landline respondents are chosen at random within each household on the basis of which member had the most recent birthday.

Samples are weighted by gender, age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, education, region, adults in the household, and phone status (cell phone only/landline only/both, cell phone mostly, and having an unlisted landline number). Demographic weighting targets are based on the March 2011 Current Population Survey figures for the aged 18 and older non-institutionalized population living in U.S. telephone households. All reported margins of sampling error include the computed design effects for weighting.

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

For more details on Gallup's polling methodology, visit www.gallup.com.