What's Really Happening with Spending on Training

Training spending hasn’t budged since 1986, according to an analysis of Training Magazine’s Annual Industry Report from 1982-2008. Ingy Bakir and I compiled the statistics, adjusted all expenditures for inflation, and report our results in the February 2010 issue of Training magazine. See http://tinyurl.com/yz7t44m for details.

Caught!

Earlier this month, a video clip of a Toronto subway worker sleeping on the job that had been uploaded to YouTube was a major news story. Some called it an invasion of privacy. The union defended the worker. But others—including the editorial in the Montreal Gazette at http://www.montrealgazette.com/opinion/Commuters+revenge+service/2558860/story.html see the situation as nothing more than “commuters getting revenge for bad service.”

In our field, we talk about Web 2.0 technologies (ones that users post information at will) as important to our work.

But as a manager, how would you respond if the result of a Web 2.0 user was something that disparaged your staff?

How would you respond?

And what is the likelihood of this happening in your group?

Looking forward to seeing your responses.

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Saul

Next Section of the Technical Communication Manager Certificate

For those of you who are interested (or who have colleagues who might be interested), the next scheduled class of the Technical Communication Manager Certificate program offered by the Society for Technical Communication is scheduled:

May 1-2, 2010

Before the Annual Summit of the Society for Technical Communication

Course will be taught in a classroom format.

For a course description and registration information, visit http://conference.stc.org

Disclosure: I am teaching the course.

The Challenges of Managing Performance

In this Entry: Do Performance Appraisals Work? / But That Won’t Stop Efforts to Improve Them / But Maybe Performance Doesn’t Tell Us Much / Questions for Discussion

One of the primary responsibilities of a manager is coordinating the performance planning, coaching, and evaluation process (the point that I’ll address at more length in this entry). Formal evaluation processes of one sort or another exist in a number of organizations. But do they work? And even if they do—how can they be made more effective? And does excellent performance in a current position really predict more of the same following a promotion?

Do Performance Appraisals Work? Not really, according to a survey conducted among managers in Sri Lanka (HR managers doubt accuracy of evaluation process – study, Sunday Times, December 20, 2009, http://www.sundaytimes.lk/091220/BusinessTimes/bt31.html). The survey, conducted by MTI Consulting, found that

“HR managers expressed doubts regarding the ability of evaluations to act as true performance indicators. As such, a lot of the time, evaluations are considered mere formalities, done for compliance sake or other superficial reasons, rather than with the intent to improve.”

On the more mundane matter of how frequently organizations assessed their employees, the survey found that 60 percent of organizations in that environment evaluated employees once a year, and 33 percent evaluated them twice a year.

But That Won’t Stop Efforts to Improve Them. On the other side of the globe, the U.S. civil service is trying to revamp its performance appraisal process to make it more transparent, to better link employee performance to organizational goals, and to upgrade pay practices so that civil servants are paid for performance (4 lessons on changing employee performance metrics, By Mary Mosquera, Federal Computer Week, March 27, 2009, http://fcw.com/articles/2009/03/30/agency-employee-performance.aspx).

That’s no small order, because an early effort to do so in the Department of Defense did was stalled in response to what appears to have been some confusion and pushback.

Part of the effort for revamping the process involves upgrading performance management software and making more effective use of it. But part of the effort involves changing the traditional performance appraisal process from “an ingrained yet sometimes uncomfortable meeting between supervisor and employee” to a “new approach with ongoing and regular dialogue between the two,” in which progress is tracked in the software, and all of the parties have access to the information.

(Maybe it’s me, but I always thought that the original design of these systems—once called management-by-objectives—included regular conversations between the two parties so that the end-of-year appraisal wouldn’t be a surprise.)

But Maybe Performance Doesn’t Tell Us Much. Wondering how to avoid the Peter Principle. According to the New York Times (Random Promotions, December 13, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/projects/magazine/ideas/2009/?ex=1276059600&en=3315a37210ca3555&ei=5087&WT.mc_id=GN-D-I-NYT-MOD-MOD-M127-ROS-1209-HDR&WT.mc_ev=click#business-1):

Promot[e] people at random. That's what a trio of Italian scientists discovered this year. They created a computer model of a 160-person corporation and programmed it with Peter Principle-like logic: the best performers were promoted, but they had only a random likelihood of being good at their new jobs. Sure enough, the firm was soon cluttered with incompetents, and its efficiency plunged. But then the researchers tried something different: they reprogrammed the firm so that promoted people entirely randomly, and the overall efficiency of the firm improved.

They also tried alternately promoting the absolute best and absolute worst performers. That, too, worked out better than promoting on merit. The scientists say these strategies work because they harness "Parrondo's Paradox," a piece of game theory in which you win by alternating between two losing strategies. "In physics or game theory, this isn't new," says Andrea Rapisarda, a physicist at the University of Catania in Italy and a co-author of the study, which was recently published in the journal Physica A.

Questions for Discussion:

• What do you find effective about the idealized performance planning and evaluation process?
• What do you find most challenging about implementing it in practice?

Hiring Remains a Challenge

In this Post: Hiring / Maybe Hiring? / Maybe Not Hiring? / And Getting Paid? / Questions for Discussion

Hiring, maybe hiring, hot hiring, and starting salaries. Lots of interesting stuff from the recent news.

Hiring

Although the most recent jobs picture wasn’t too pretty (the US economy unexpectedly shed 85,000 jobs in December), one group of workers might be in demand: Human Resources executives. Apparently, they’re suddenly “hot” (HR Executives Suddenly Get Hot, Joann S. Lublin, Wall Street Journal, December 14, 2009. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704201404574590393758936648.html?mod=googlenews_wsj).

Well, sort of. Openings for HR executives haven’t really changed; but some corporations are actively seeking HR executives to serve on their boards.

Maybe Hiring?

When workers do find jobs, they’re most likely to be temporary ones. The “Labor Data Show[s} Surge in Hiring of Temp Workers” (Louis Uchitelle, New York Times, December 20, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/business/economy/21temps.html?_r=1. Visited December 22, 2009.

According to the conventional thinking,

“The hiring of temporary workers has surged, suggesting that the nation’s employers might soon take the next step, bringing on permanent workers, if they can just convince themselves that the upturn in the economy will be sustained.”

At least, that’s the way things worked in the recovery following the last two recessions. So it could be a sign of hope.

Maybe Not Hiring?

One group that faces a particularly challenging road to re-employment are older workers (“older” varies among experts, but can start as young as late 30s according to some). Among the many gripes with older workers: they use too much sick leave (more than average, yes—but too much, perhaps not); they cost too much (though that doesn’t stop many employers from offering salaries that do not reflect experience), they’re resistant to training (not really true, although some different teaching and practice techniques might be in order), and that younger workers are more effective decision makers.

Studying the last assumption (The Myth of the Deficient Older Employee, New York Times 9th Annual Year in Ideas Supplement, December 13, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/projects/magazine/ideas/2009/?ex=1276059600&en=3315a37210ca3555&ei=5087&WT.mc_id=GN-D-I-NYT-MOD-MOD-M127-ROS-1209-HDR&WT.mc_ev=click#business-1):

In The American Economic Review in June, Gary Charness, an economics professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Marie Claire Villeval, a colleague from the University of Lyon, published the results of a study in which they pitted "seniors" (those over 50) against "juniors" (those under 30) in three different decision-making tasks. These were formulated to test risk taking, competitiveness and cooperation.

As it turns out, the "seniors" more than hold their own.

Charness and Villeval also found that heterogenous teams—older and younger workers—performed better than homogenous ones. According to the New York Times piece, “Charness says. ‘Older workers . . . don't suffer from the deficiencies that a lot of people think they do.’"

And Getting Paid?

Perhaps because of the hard times, some people think that people should just feel lucky to have a job—whether or not it pays a living wage. At least, the Montreal Gazette editorial board feels that way. In their editorial, “Raising minimum wage carries a cost, December 17, 2009, http://www.montrealgazette.com/opinion/Raising+minimum+wage+carries+cost/2350441/story.html), the editors argue that the 50-cent rise in Quebec’s minimum wage that goes into effect May 1, will cause massive unemployment for students seeking minimum wage summer jobs. I’m not saying it won’t.

Hey, with Tim’s and Starbuck’s recently raising their coffee prices, shouldn’t the employees benefit a little bit.

Seriously—the minimum wage isn’t just for students seeking summer and part-time employment; it’s also for people who work. I’m the partner of someone who had to live on minimum wage from a real job—one of those highly educated immigrants who’s under-employed because credentials aren’t recognized.

The Gazette’s editorial page often writes in sympathy of these people—but apparently that sympathy does not extend to their pay. The editors argue, too, that anyone with a minimum level of experience can get better than minimum wage. But $10/hour (about $20k/year) isn’t exactly living high off the hog. Every $.50/hour makes a difference,. Raising the minimum wage might benefit them, too.

Even at higher ends, wage disparities prevail. According to an article Canada’s National Post, October 2009, touting the good job prospects in high tech despite the poor economy, the goodness of those prospects seemed to extend more to some categories of workers than others. Technical writers had the lowest starting salaries on the list—14 percent lower than the second-lowest paid job.

Questions for Discussion:

• What assumptions have you seen drive hiring practices?
• Do you feel that wages in technical communication and training are representative of the skills we offer? Why or why not?