QSR reports that McDonald’s Corporation and its CEO Jim Skinner were honored last month during the 12th Higginbotham Corporate Leadership Award gala.  This award follows similar recognition from other award-giving bodies and magazines for the corporation’s “leadership in advancing equal opportunity and diversity “.   McDonald’s is now serving 64 million in 118 countries and is known for providing equal opportunity for its workforce composed of people of all races.

McDonald’s Corporation and vice chairman and CEO Jim Skinner were selected as the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law’s 12th Annual A. Leon Higginbotham Corporate Leadership Award Honorees for exemplary corporate leadership in advancing equal opportunity and diversity.

McDonald’s Corporation is the leading global foodservice retailer with more than 33,000 local restaurants serving more than 64 million people in 118 countries each day. Around the world, inclusion and diversity at McDonald’s means providing equal opportunities for everyone to succeed and contribute. McDonald’s accomplishes this in a number of ways, such as the integration of diversity initiatives into their daily business practices, a strong diversity education curriculum, employee business networks, and external partnerships with diverse national organizations.

“At McDonald’s, we celebrate, embrace, and advance diversity as part of our legacy. We’re honored to receive the prestigious Higginbotham Award recognizing our work in this area,” Skinner says. “Having a purposeful diversity strategy helps McDonald’s meet the needs of our broad base of customers.

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A survey of human resources professionals recently found a surprisingly high number of them lacked confidence in the effectiveness of their company’s performance-management system. Though 91% of respondents said their organization evaluates performance, only 47% said the process is effective.

It gets worse. Only 47% of respondents said their appraisal system helps their organization achieve strategic objectives, while 30% said employees do not trust the system. An even smaller number – 28% – said their managers regarded the appraisal process primarily as an administrative headache.

Numbers like these from Sibson Consulting help explain why performance appraisal is at a train wreck at so many companies around the world. The study, conducted in mid-2010 with the HR association WorldatWork, queried executives at hundreds of companies of all sizes from every corner of the planet. No place on Earth is immune from performance-evaluation angst.

Let’s explore the reasons why and start at the top – with senior management. The survey found widespread support for performance evaluations from senior management. In fact, 74% said executives at their organization support the system. Still, that leaves 26% of all organizations with non-supportive top-level executives. Those, however, do not fully explain all the problems with performance-management systems today.

Something is getting in the way of the widespread support of senior management. The answer, it turns out, may very well be the performance-management system itself. According to the survey, a full third of senior executives “strongly” or “mostly consider” the evaluation system to be business-critical. And a third of the respondents reported their leadership viewed employee appraisals as an exercise in pencil-pushing.

We’re now at the heart of the problem.

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Are you planning to teach an audio conference training session? Delivering training to attendees via telephone communication is very different from teaching in a face-to face setting or via a webinar. When you are leading an audio conference, you must engage and educate the participants whether they are listening in on the live session or they’ll be utilizing a recording of the class at some point in the future. Because of the unique nature of this type of training, there are several tips that anyone who teaches audio conferences should keep in mind when developing training that will be delivered in this manner.

3 Audio Conference Facilitator Tips

1. Create and Use Comprehensive Training Materials

Prepare a comprehensive outline for the material that you will be covering during the audio conference. Send it to the people, who are participating in the training session, prior to the event so they can review it ahead of time if they desire and so they’ll be able to use it to take notes and jot down questions while you are speaking. Be sure to follow the outline while you are teaching so that the participants can follow along easily and so you can be certain to cover everything.

2. Practice Your Presentation

Practice ahead of time so you are comfortable with the material and are certain that you can finish within the time allotment. You may want to record your practice session so that you can identify any pronunciation challenges or other factors associated with your ability to clearly communicate the information via telephone. Remember that the participants won’t be able to see you, so your voice will play a significant role in how effective the audio conference seminar is likely to be.

3. Set the Ground Rules Early

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Creating successful change today in any organization is getting more difficult. However, making change successful is not a choice that we have. How is your organization going about changing systems and people? IBM’s Global Business Services survey, Making Change Work Study, asked more than 1,500 people involved with change management projects about their change management practices. Organizations consulted in the study ranged from small to very large.

The IBM research looked at a representative sample of small to large programs implementing a range of strategic, operational, organization wide and technological changes. Projects surveyed covered sales, customers, revenue, innovation, technology and market segmentation.

The predominant learning from the IBM research is its support of the key notion that organizations need to respond decisively and effectively in today’s volatile business environment. Bringing about change is now a “must have” skill in every organization’s armory. Unfortunately, many organizations have not got this core requirement right. In fact, the increasing volatility and uncertainty of the current business environment has only served to widen the gap between the skills possessed and the skills needed. Businesses are now in a crisis situation and must meet the challenges if they are to survive.

The IBM survey demonstrates that the proportion of CEOs anticipating sizable change has increased from 65% in 2006 to 83% in 2008. However, CEOs saying that they had handled change well in the past has risen from 57% in 2006 to only 61% in 2008. The size of the gap between actual and needed competencies has more than tripled in the intervening short period. Why should this matter? Well, for the very important reason that botched change programs leave behind budget blowouts and disheartened and burned out employees.

How well do organizations bring about change?

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Is it time to update your employee handbook or manual? Are you wondering if you should handle the task internally or hire a human resource management consultant to work with you on the project? While the matter of how much help you might need is a function of how much time and expertise that you have within your organization, it’s a fact that working with an outside consultant to some extent is something that can benefit virtually every organization dealing with an employee handbook update.

Four Benefits of Hiring an HR Consultant to Update Your Employee Handbook

1. Separating Policies from Practices

When updating or finalizing policies and procedures, it’s always beneficial to get the perspective of someone with expertise specific to both state and federal laws who doesn’t operate under the influence of how things are carried out on a day-to-day basis within your organization. Bringing in someone with an unbiased point of view to review or help with the development your company’s policies can be a great way to make sure that your organization isn’t burdening itself with unnecessary restrictions in some areas while establishing standards that are too lax in others simply because that’s how things have “always been done”.

2. Third Party Perspective

A consultant can provide feedback and insight regarding how policy wording comes across to an “outsider”, which can be invaluable when evaluating your policies for clarity. Those within your organization, particularly individuals who are involved with enforcing policies and who were involved in writing the policies originally, know how the policies were intended and how they are interpreted and applied on an ongoing basis.

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Are you thinking about enlisting the services of an HR consultant? Whether you need professional assistance creating an employee manual, if you are seeking guidance regarding how to handle the difficult employee issues that arise from time to time or if you are in need of some other type of employee relations assistance, it’s important to choose a skilled professional with the expertise and knowledge necessary to provide you with the help that you need. While there is not a licensure requirement for human resource consultants, there are steps you can take to ensure that any individual or company you are considering hiring has the expertise required to provide you with the guidance you are seeking.

5 Tips for Selecting an HR Consultant

1. Look for Senior-Level Certification

If you are bringing in an outside consultant to provide issues or guidance on matters of significance, look for someone who holds a Senior Professional in Human Resource Management (SPHR) certification. When you select a consultant with this credential, you can be sure that the person you are hiring has knowledge on all key aspects of HR at an executive decision-making level, and that the individual stays current with what is going on in the field by keeping up with continuing education requirements. You can verify that an individual holds a valid certification at HRCI.org, the official website of the HR Certification Institute.

2. Verify Significant Work Experience

To have the skills necessary to provide high-quality human resource consulting services, an individual should have significant work experience with increasing levels of responsibility demonstrated over time.

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Employment law, let’s face it, is a minefield – an ever-changing tangle of legislation covering all aspects of human resources; it’s hard to keep up if you don’t have an in-house HR team. This is particularly true of the recruitment process. You need to be mindful of where you advertise any job vacancies, be careful about reason for rejecting candidates, ensure your interview questions are consistent and relevant; and treat all applicants the same, fair way – appointing only on the basis of skill, not because of their relationship with the boss.

Is it any wonder that so many businesses these days have decided to leave their recruitment to the professionals, freeing up their own staff to do other, more productive things? Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) is fast gaining popularity. Consider this: the maximum payment at an employment tribunal is now £236,000 and it’s possible for rejected applicants to claim for discrimination on the grounds of gender, age, race, marital status and sexual orientation. Even when you thought you’d been so careful.

RPO can take all of this worry out of your hands by managing the entire recruitment process for you. It can assist in putting together job descriptions and advertisements, then recommend the best channels through which to publicise your vacancy. RPO also takes care of the screening process for you, rejecting candidates based on legally-acceptable specifics defined between you, i.e. a minimum grade C in Maths. If assessment is necessary, the RPO Company will administer tests and revert back with the results. They will always be on hand for guidance and, depending on the level of responsibility you wish to relinquish you will be consulted as and when necessary.

RPO representatives can hold interviews for you or wish you, should you wish and relay decisions to all candidates.

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In a meeting recently, a client made a comment to the effect that they were very concerned that “Talent Management” has become just another fad word. Sadly in many circumstances this is already the case. One of the main contributors to this demise is the fact that many limit “Talent” to “professional” occupations or positions usually associated with big offices and salaries to match. While it may included those falling into this description this is not the complete truth.

Talent Management can and does take on a broader interpretation, which includes succession planning at all levels across the organization. Many organizations face issues with aging work forces, once again at all levels within the organization. The consequence of an aging staff compliment is that, when such people do retire, much of your corporate capability (skill) leaves the building, and the gap left in its wake is more like a vacuum. This is not always immediately visible, but over time, as skill sets reduce and tacit knowledge flows out of the organization, eventually business continuity is threatened.

For many organizations dealing with Talent Management takes on what can best be described as the “mercenary approach”.  This “instant” approach to Talent… “We will just go and buy (poach) the skills we need”, hugely perverts ones approach to hiring the best people for the job. The up-side to this approach is one doesn’t need to train up the talent and skills your organization requires (provided that these skills are available). The downside to this approach is that skills begin to attract premium salaries out of kilter with their intrinsic value. Never mind the fact that one never really gets to instil any corporate culture with any level of consistency. That is another whole kettle of fish for another time.

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Experienced trainers use a variety of training aids throughout their training programs. These include models, simulations, diagrams, mnemonics, reminder cards, templates, and so on. All of these are designed to assist trainees in the learning process. However, learning does not finish at the conclusion of the training program. In fact, for some training programs, work quality and efficiency will actually worsen immediately after the training. This is normal as employees stumble in their first applications of the newly learned skills.

Unfortunately, at this point, many managers give up and either overtly or covertly discourage further employee practice and experimentation. By providing and encouraging the use of job aids, you can help ease the anxiety felt by employees and get them up and running more quickly. Many training aids that are used during training are ideal for replication in the work environment. Think of these job aids as a way of extending the training room into the workplace.

Implementing job aids is especially useful when the task is complex, performed infrequently, carries high risk or uses an extensive or changing knowledge base. On the other hand, do not implement an on-the-job aid if the employee is required to perform the task automatically, without conscious deliberation or assistance.

Below, I have categorized ten types of training aid that you can usefully export from your training program. I have also included examples from previous programs that I have conducted or have seen others use successfully. If you see a job aid that you feel could be useful and it is not currently used in your training program, then make it so. You could even turn the creation of the job aid into a learning experience itself. At a suitable juncture in your program (following a theory session, for example), lead participants into an exercise in which they create the aid that they will use in their own workplaces.

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In 2002 I wrote an article entitled The New Rules of Mentoring for The Wall Street Journal. Nine years later the Millennials have changed the playing field and now we have “the newer rules of mentoring”.

The Millennial Generation, born between 1977 and 1998, are the latest generation to enter the workplace. They are 75 million strong in size and are characterized as being self-confident, focused on learning and moving up quickly, team-oriented, well networked, technologically savvy, and desirous of continual feedback.

Millennials have one other thing in common: no matter how smart and confident they are, because they are new to the professional workplace, they need and want mentoring. In addition, the timeline for leadership development is ramping up. Millennials may be thrust into leadership roles faster than any other leaders in the last thirty years, as there are not nearly enough Gen X workers to fill the ranks of the departing Baby Boomers. The good news is that they want to be leaders.

Traditional mentoring, long renowned for its success is developing leaders, is typically a relationship between someone more experienced with someone less experienced. “Mentoring,” says author Gordon Shea, “is a fundamental form of human development where one person invests time, energy and personal know-how in assisting the growth and ability of another person.”

According to Bob Canalosi, chief learning officer of General Electric Health Care, one of the top leadership competencies needed in the 2020 workplace is to be a “legendary builder of people and teams.” Canalosi explains this as “coaching and mentoring both face-to-face and virtually; challenging people to achieve more than they believed they could.” Marshall Goldsmith, leading executive educator and coach, also predicts that a top new competency for leaders of the future is “sharing leadership.”

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The class on improving time management looked as if it would be a smart idea at first. You had every employee attend, and now months down the line schedule slippages are worse than ever. What is the problem? Could it be because your concept of how training works is outdated? According to this oversimplified view, training works like a magic potion. With this uncomplicated perspective, by attending training classes, desirable results for your company will come about automatically. Similarly, on this view, by enrolling workers in an online class and giving them access to computers for learning, it is thought that you will see gains in your workplace.

How training leads to a great business outcome on this view can be shown like this:

Trainee Attendance >> Business Results

The arrows show this idea of how an employee attending a well-designed and implemented training event creates the improved business results. Some possible outcomes for the business could be less time for a product or service to make it to market, a decrease in customer complaints, or an increase in customer loyalty, to name a few examples.

This is your preferred perspective if you view training as primarily telling workers “what and how.” Managers that behave from this viewpoint are mainly concerned with the “content” of the program. As they choose a program, they concentrate solely on the information that their workers will be provided.

You can compare this approach to seeing your trainees as pieces of hardware or robots. With this approach, training people works the same way as with programming a machine: an employee is led to the programming area, the brand new instructions are “programmed” for the employee, and the employee then returns to their task at hand.

You may not even realize that you view your employees as machinery, waiting to be instructed.

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The Case for Investing in Employee Training During an Economic Recession

When companies struggle through economic downturns, much like the one we are experiencing now, the first instinct is to start slashing the operating budget. Managers and employees are asked to do more with fewer resources.The economic outlook for the foreseeable future in our country shows businesses will continue to cut costs and make tough choices in order to survive and stay competitive. While the belt tightening continues, so too will the temptation to cut training budgets or eliminate them all together.It’s been my experience that one of the areas hit hardest by budget cuts is the training function. Training, in some instances, is often thought of at times as a luxury or “nice to have” in organizations. It is an expense worth paying for when times are good, but an easy target for elimination when times are bad.Companies who have established formal training departments, however, see the benefit to operating an education arm of their organization because they understand how training maintains or increases performance in their employees. They understand there is a science behind training and adult earning. In order for it to be effective, training must be built on sound instructional design and administered accordingly. After all, it is the employees that help make the organization run. Poor performance on their part could mean poor performance for the organization as a whole.I’m here to argue that if you are thinking of cutting back on your training budget just to save money and ride out our current economic storm, you are actually doing more harm than good to your organization’s bottom line.

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Purpose of Team Building

Team building is necessary to support change in organizations. It is a collaborative effort between the employees who will carry out change initiatives and the managers and executives who provide leadership, guidance and vision for the proposed change.Team building is conducted for a number of reasons in organizations. It serves many purposes such as:

• Improve communications
• Motivation
• Creating a shared vision
• Goal setting
• Establishing rules and procedures
• Identifying strengths and weaknesses and how to overcome them
• Improve productivity
• Practice collaboration

Despite the intent behind team building, the effort is meaningless unless it is fully understood.Team building is often mis-characterized and leaders in organizations are only partially successful in implementing it. The reason is there are actually two objectives to team building:

1. The attitude or sense of teamwork – camaraderie and collaboration. This is the popular definition for team building. Although necessary, it does nothing more than to establish that everyone who is a member of a team is friendly and gets along with one another.
2. The formation of people based on skills and ability aligned with an organizations business objectives. This is the more measurable form of team building based on defined goals linked to specific people in an organization who can carry out the tasks to create real change

Team building to support change in organizations can happen as long as there is purpose and objectives illustrated here are built in it.

How a Business Process Management Consultant Can Help With Team Building

Business process management (BPM) consultants can help executives and managers build teams in organization in a number of ways once a team is established.

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Economists predict that recovery is unlikely until 2011. As the economy continues struggle, what should HR professionals expect to see through 2011? 

Because of the number of recent layoffs, workers are anxious about job security. Companies will have to find ways to maintain morale and build employee involvement and commitment to the organization amid the uncertainty. And, HR will need to find and keep leaders with a vision, who can tie employees to the company by keeping them aligned to a common goal. It also requires HR to hold on to top performers, who may jump ship for stable companies that have a track record of weathering tough economic times.

Although training budgets may be compromised, eliminating employee development might lead to an ill-prepared workforce when the economy picks up. Also inexperienced new workers will replace retiring baby boomers, requiring more investment in on-boarding and talent management.

Top performers will be invaluable as organizations try to manage through the economic downturn so HR will need to keep up with succession planning. In addition, businesses will attempt to get a grasp on and drive employee skills and competencies through performance management and development … for instance, to fast-track high performers and weed out low performers.

Many mediocre performers might be inclined to jump ship before they have to walk the plank … causing turnover.

Although recruitment will generally decrease, the number of applicants for each job opening will increase, allowing HR to choose the best. However, the amount of time to fill an opening will expand as hiring managers go through numerous resumes and interviews.

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Creating a Successful Workplace
One of the keys to being an effective manager is to have an approach and philosophy that is consistent and visible to your employees. In fact, every business should take the time to establish a management philosophy for all supervisors and managers to follow that will foster a productive and successful working environment.A successful workplace will incorporate the following:

1. Have goals for management and employees to strive for: Define the desired outcomes for your business/department/workgroup. Ensure the outcomes are measurable and the justification is clear.
2. Reward results: Try not to focus on the time spent on a project. Instead, reward an employee or team that produces excellent results in a normal workday.
3. Encourage balance: Many businesses want to be the number one priority of their employees. However, if an employee gives up family, friends or hobbies just to be at work they will burn out quickly. If you encourage balance during normal workloads, your staff will be more likely to put work first when it is really necessary.
4. Hold your teams accountable: It goes without saying, but treat your employees like adults. Excuses and complacency should never be tolerated. By holding workers accountable, most people will do what is expected of them and either meet or exceed outcomes.
5. Provide continuous feedback: Many companies function based on annual reviews. However, this is a long period for an employee to go through without knowing how they are doing. Mix positive feedback with areas of improvement all throughout the year. This will give them guidance to continually improve.

Let’s take a look at each of the five elements for a successful workplace to gain further insight.

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No matter how long we have been training employees, it helps occasionally to go back to the basics. We all tend towards repeating what has worked for us before, and sometimes we forget the wider organizational context of our training efforts. By focusing solely on what goes on in our training room or what we put into our e-learning content, we can miss appreciating our trainees as people who will go back to their jobs with the purpose of winning goals for the organization.

I have cemented what I see as the basic principles underlying effective instruction as the five “rights” of training. These five “rights” are:

1. Right Trainees
2. Right Learning
3. Right Time
4. Right Method
5. Right Environment

Let me explain below each of these five “rights” and illustrate with examples how easy it is to ignore them. I want to stress at the outset that none of what I say here is new or astounding. What is surprising is how quickly we can forget the basics to the detriment of the organizations we work for and their employees.

1. Right Trainees
-employees genuinely requiring skill development are nominated for training

This first principle is about ensuring that the people requiring training, and only those people, are conscripted or invited. Here, conducting a proper performance diagnosis is the key. I still see many organizations committing one or more fundamental errors in this first step of analyzing their training needs. One such common error is prescribing training as the solution to a problem when there exists no knowledge or skills gap. When this happens, the upshot is that no trainees nominated for the training are the right trainees.

Some managers fail to grasp that poor performance is not always attributable to lack of training.

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Downsized organizations, tough economic times, demands to reduce costs and improve quality and a myriad of other reasons can stimulate the need for an employee incentive program. Done properly, the investment can be minimal but it can produce very positive results.

If you want to improve results and morale throughout the organization, here are some tips on ensuring your employee incentive program meets your goals:

1. Realistic Pay for Realistic Performance…Rewards for Extraordinary Efforts
Rewards are no substitute for a decent paycheck. For example company stockholders/management shouldn’t expect employees to give back benefits and go the extra mile. Especially in light of the side deals senior executives received just for showing up at the office. Given the tough economic environment the industry is operating in today management should expect decent performance for decent pay. At the same time, management – in any industry – should be creative in developing programs that will help encourage off-the-chart performance, even if the rewards are deferred.

2. Don’t Let Them Strike Out Early
If they are half way through the incentive program and half the team has no opportunity to be rewarded you have lost half your team. They have no incentive to push harder and be more efficient/more effective if they are out of contention. Putting forth the extra effort and winning should be a team effort, not an individual effort. Keep the team interested and involved throughout the campaign.

3. Prepare the Team, Administer the Program
Don’t launch your employee incentive program and then go about explaining it to members of the team as the program progresses. Plan a promotional campaign for the internal program just as you would for a product launch.

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Mentoring is one of the best ways to learn, to get feedback, and to take your career to the next level.  Here are ten tips for making the most of your mentoring relationships.

Tip #1
Self-assess.  Ask yourself, “What skills do I need to get where I want to go?”

Tip #2
Identify your learning goals.  Put them in writing.

Tip #3
Decide together how the mentoring relationship will work – frequency and type of contact.

Tip #4
Commit the time.  Don’t give up if the chemistry doesn’t feel right at the first meeting.  Meet a minimum of once per month.  Touch base regularly – by e-mail, phone, in person.

Tip #5
Take time to build trust and communication.  Get to know each other on a personal level.  Discuss your backgrounds, interests, career histories, and perspectives of your organizations.

Tip #6
Keep confidences.  Nothing kills trust in a mentoring relationship faster than a breach of confidence.

Tip #7
Be sensitive to cultural and gender differences.  Do a little homework.  And listen. 

Tip #8
Understand and plan for the phases of a mentoring relationship.  Build in time for evaluation and closure.

Tip #9
This is about learning, whether you’re a protégé or a mentor.  Keep a journal.

Tip #10
You don’t need a single mentor who you keep throughout your career.  What you need is a mind-set that allows you to learn from those around you, no matter who they are.  To get ahead, create your own multitalented “board of advisors.”

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In current economic conditions, getting a pink slip can be disheartening, but it will rarely come as a tremendous shock. No company is safe from the downsizing or restructuring – and every employee should have a basic understanding about unemployment benefits. Furthermore, it would be wise to learn the rules of unemployment eligibility and the size of such benefits prior to moving to another location, as they can vary rather significantly from state to state. We have compiled a list of the best cities for unemployment benefits to give you a better idea of what to expect.

Unemployment Benefits
When calculating the size of a particular unemployment benefit package, it is necessary to take into account the cost of living in a particular area – if John Doe from a neighboring state receives $100 less per week than you in his unemployment benefits, but your cost of living is much higher, does that mean that you got a better deal? Definitely not! Here is the list of cities that are the best to live in from the aspect of unemployment eligibility, with a previous annual salary of $150,000:

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Wouldn’t it be great if our bodies could diagnose and fix themselves so we wouldn’t have to worry about going to the dentist, or visiting the doctor and you’d never fall foul of the usual round of cold and flu viruses that magically appear at this time of year? 

Unfortunately, there isn’t yet a Matrix style programme that we can download into heads to sort out our health. And yet most of us, if we stopped to listen to our bodies and took some simple measures, could actually prevent a lot of the illnesses we have. 

Ok so you’re rushing around trying to meet with clients, grabbing a quick lunch and preparing an important presentation, but a small amount of time spent on yourself and the welfare of your staff could pay dividends in the future. It’s one of those investments that we should make but often don’t to our cost. 

Healthy Environment
Providing a healthy environment for you and your staff is vital to help reduce accidents and keeping people safe. It everyone’s responsibility to ensure not only that their working area is tidy but that their equipment is up to scratch. It’s also good to check they are sitting in the correct positions and are following the correct guidelines when using equipment. However, as their boss, it’s up to you to make sure they are aware of their responsibilities and that all new staff are given adequate guidelines and the appropriate training.  

Reduce Stress
A tense environment can quickly escalate causing staff to burn out and is one of the main factors why people fall ill. They may even end up leaving if this pattern keeps repeating itself, and in extreme cases this can result in staff taking their employer to court. Using humour in the workplace can foster wellness, improve stress management and increase productivity and morale.

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