NEHRA News

There’s a reason our profession is called human resources. It is about people, and more specifically about relationships. How an organization’s own people: it’s leadership, employees, and HR team, choose to relate to others defines the organization. Those relationships can be with other employees, clients, prospects, candidates, recruiters, college representatives, and community members. It is the public perception of these relationships that forms an employer brand. It is not something that can be created in a day (or when the market dictates). This brand should be cultivated over time—even when the organization isn’t hiring. Here are the five most important long-term strategies organizations can implement to recruit (and retain) the best employees:

1. Know your target and your message
The most effective way to attract top talent is to define what an "ideal employee" means for your organization. What type of people do you need? What skill sets are no longer relevant? Once you determine the kind of employee you want, develop your sales pitch. What do your target employees need to know about your organization? What will they find attractive, interesting, and challenging? By knowing your audience, you can better hone your message.

2. Streamline the staffing process
The biggest complaint from job-seekers is that they send their resumes out to companies, but they feel like they’re launching them into a black hole—they never hear back from organizations. Granted, the volume of candidates applying for jobs is massive, and it is difficult to keep up with the demand. Yet, an organization’s staffing activity is the best way to attract better prospects. If organizations do it well, word spreads. If they don’t, word spreads even faster. How an organization treats people during the application and interview processes is a telling sign as to how they treat their employees.

A good rule of thumb is that the organization should give back what an applicant puts in. For example, if someone submits a resume, that person should get an automated email response acknowledging receipt. If a person comes in for an interview, he or she should get a call back from a manager—and the response needs to be timely. Many HR managers think this is already happening at their organizations, but it needs to be formalized. A manager who does the interview might think that the hiring manager will get back to the interviewee and vice versa. The best way to avoid this confusion and simplify the system is to assign a point person. After interviews, candidates should have a business card with contact information for a specific person to answer any questions they may have.

3. Revamp your exit strategy
As important as it is to value people’s time and feelings during the hiring process, it is just as vital during downsizing. How do you send people out the door? The same attention, care, and respect that you afford your employees or star candidates needs to be extended to those you let go. You don’t want the first thing a prospective employee sees during a Google search of your company to be a blog written by a disgruntled former employee called, "Company X treats people like &#%*!"

4. Grow your own
Most organizations have access to thousands of prospective future employees within their own walls and communities. They should be instituting programs to gain exposure within these groups. One way to do this is through Employee Referral Programs. Current employees are your most influential spokespeople for prospects. They offer a unique perspective about what it’s really like to work at the company. Through incentive programs, employees can recruit their friends and families to apply for jobs.

HR managers can also establish programs in the community. They can partner with local high schools and colleges to offer training, events, and internships. Volunteering and sponsorships are another great way to establish a commitment to the community. People are more apt to support (and seek employment at) organizations that are invested in their neighborhoods. These long-term recruitment techniques can offer major advantages at hiring time.

5. Embrace what’s new
If it isn’t broke, do fix it! By utilizing new technologies and recruitment methods, you are establishing your organization as a progressive company—and that’s where top talent wants to work. Right now, that technology is social media. It is not enough to have a few managers on LinkedIn. There needs to be a corporately-organized social media strategy encompassing the Internet, social media sites, such as LinkedIn and Facebook, Twitter, blogs, video, and the company’s own web site. You may want to consider having each business unit head up its own strategy. The biggest part of this approach should be showcasing the stories of current employees. They are the best advocates for the company and can give prospective employees a first-hand look at how the organization operates.

Your organization should always be in recruitment mode, even when you’re not hiring. If you take a long term approach to recruitment, you can begin to build your employer brand. And when you do need a hiring push, your organization will be ready to pick up speed.

About the Author:
Elaine Varelas is with Camden Consulting Group (http://www.camdenconsulting.com), a consulting firm that provides focused, practical, customized and integrated human capital management, leadership development, executive coaching and training services to organizations and their employees.

 

While the cost to employees is their health, welfare and sometimes their income, the cost to workplaces is lost productivity, turnover, training, disability payments and staggering health insurance premiums. Moreover, a whole new field of litigation is opening – lawsuits against "bad" bosses and the organizations that negligently allow them to supervise.

But hope is not lost. A careful review of the research on leadership behavior and employee health yields some important surprises about leadership development and its potential impact on employee health and performance. There appears to be a clear relationship between leader behaviors and employee health, which is a pre-requisite for good performance. Furthermore, those behaviors are specific enough to be part of an effective leadership development program.

THE SECRET OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES

The research on leadership and employee health research spotlights a lurking secret in the field of leadership studies. Despite a vast literature on leadership and more than fifty years of investigation, in reality we know very little about leadership.

There are generally two types of literature on leadership: the Mythic and the Academic. The Mythic consists of confident assertions about the nature of leadership, for example The Leadership Secrets of Genghis Khan. These writings, no matter how popular, are opinions, often insightful, but with little or no factual basis. A 2002 survey, done by Connie Vance and Elaine Larson, of the literature on leadership from 1970 to 1999 found that only 4% were founded on data.

The Academic type is either theoretical (which is often just Mythic presented in academic language) or research-based. However, the many thousands of studies that have been done have failed either to validate statistically the efficacy of any theory of leadership or to establish a clear relationship between leadership style and employee performance. The leadership and health research supports a fact-based approach whose foundation is specific leader behaviors, rather than leadership style.

RESEARCH ON LEADER BEHAVIORS AND EMPLOYEE HEALTH

The impact of leader behaviors on employee health is a new vein of leadership research. More than thirty studies conducted over the last decade show clearly that leader behaviors do affect employee health for good or ill. This employee health research falls into two general categories: physical health and mental health.

The research on physical health has focused on three main health issues: heart disease, musculoskeletal symptoms and sick leave:

• Two studies found that certain leadership behaviors were associated with lower risk for two forms of heart disease.
• Three studies found that specific leader behaviors were related to three contributors to heart disease: lower blood pressure and decreased serum cortisol (a steroid hormone) and serum GGT (a liver enzyme) levels.
• Three other studies found that leadership behaviors are associated with increased musculoskeletal symptoms, such as pain in joints and muscles.
• Three more studies found that positive leader behaviors are associated with reduced sick leave. The 2008 meta-analysis of the leadership and health research by Jaana Kuoppala and associates concluded that good leadership was associated with a 27% reduction in sick leave and a 46% reduction in disability pensions.

 

The research on the relationship between mental health and leader behaviors is more extensive and focuses on three issues: psychiatric distress, burnout and stress. The aspects of psychiatric distress that have been studied most are anxiety and depression.

• Eleven studies found that positive leader behaviors were associated with lower levels of anxiety and depression while the lack of positive leadership behaviors was associated with higher levels of anxiety and depression. Kuoppala’s meta-analysis of the research on employee health and leadership behaviors concluded that employees with good leadership were 40% more likely to be in the highest category of psychological well-being, including lower levels of anxiety and depression.
• Eight studies on burnout – physical or emotional exhaustion as the result of prolonged stress – found that positive leader behaviors led to lower levels of burnout.
• Six studies on stress had mixed results. Four studies found a relationship between leader behaviors and stress; two did not. Taken altogether however these studies strongly indicate that positive leader behaviors can reduce stress while the lack of these behaviors creates an environment that increases stress.

 

The overall conclusions of the employee health research shows that the lack of certain leader behaviors can increase heart disease, promote musculoskeletal pain, foster sick leave, increase anxiety and depression, as well as, lead to stress or even burnout. Positive leader behaviors can reduce sick leave, increase attendance and reduce anxiety, depression, stress and burnout.

Put simply, your boss can give you a heart attack or precursors to one – high blood pressure, anxiety, stress and burnout. He or she doesn’t even have to be a "bad" leader but could be a "good" leader who is not demonstrating the right behaviors well. A leader, for example, who fails to establish clear goals for individuals in a workgroup, sets the stage for conflict between the group members, which leads to such health outcomes as stress, anxiety and burnout.

EMPLOYEE HEALTH COSTS

Leader behavior costs workplaces billions of dollars each year in employee health-related expenditures. An extensive literature documents the costs of those health issues associated with leader behavior:

Physical Health

• Heart disease and stroke were estimated to cost over $400 billion a year, including health care expenditures and lost productivity (The Council of State Governments).
• Pain, including musculoskeletal symptoms, accounts for one in four sick days per year and more than $3 billion in sick leave (Business & Health).
• Absenteeism related to health may cost over $70 billion a year, when spillover expenses are taken into account such as overtime and overstaffing (Workforce Management).

 

Mental Health

• Anxiety disorders cost workplaces over $4 billion annually (Journal of Clinical Psychiatry).
• Depression costs over $43 billion a year in absenteeism, lost productivity and direct treatment expenses (Mental Health America).
• Stress costs more than $300 billion each year in health care, missed work and stress reduction efforts (American Institute of Stress).

These estimates do not represent the total cost related to employee health because they do not include costs such as turnover, training new staff, disability payments and retirement benefits.

Although, the impact of leader behavior accounts for only a percentage of the health costs, even that small percentage represents billions of dollars. While the literature on health care costs does point to leader behavior as a cause, improving that behavior is never listed as a solution. Yet the research clearly shows that leader behavior can significantly impact the employee health and therefore health costs.

STYLE VERSUS BEHAVIORS (or BEHAVIOR OVER STYLE)

One of the most interesting conclusions from research on employee health is that leadership style has not been shown to affect employee health. The studies on employee health explored most of the major leadership style theories, including transformational, "consideration and initiation of structure" and situational leadership, as well as the work of Jim Kouse and Barry Posner. Five studies did find some relationship between leader style and employee health, but results were mixed; several did find a specific style was related, while others did not find a relationship with the same style. Twenty-one studies were clearer in that they found a relationship between specific leader behaviors and employee health.

The conclusion that leadership behaviors, not style, can more readily be shown to impact employees is consistent with findings from general leadership research. This research has failed to show a clear relationship between leadership style and employee performance. The research on employee health on the other hand, does show an indirect relationship with employee performance. A reasonable proposition is that if an employee is ill, his or her performance is likely to be negatively affected, and if an employee is not at work, his or her performance is definitely diminished.

The employee health research identifies specific leader behaviors that affect employee health. The leader behavior taxonomy of Gary Yukl is the best means to summarize and organize the research findings. Using Yukl’s terminology fourteen leader behaviors were cited by the employee health research, including Developing, Mentoring, Empowering, Motivating, Managing Conflict and Rewarding. Yukl defines these behaviors in several of his publications.

BOON FOR LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

A focus on leader behaviors is a boon for those responsible for leadership development, since the current theories that focus just on style have serious weaknesses. First, there is little evidence in support of the various leadership style theories. Yukl states that "the field of leadership is ... in a state of ferment and confusion." Most of the theories are beset with conceptual weaknesses and lack of strong empirical support."

Second, there is no convincing evidence that current concepts of leadership style affect employee performance. In 2008 Jaana Kuoppala concluded, after a meta-analysis of 27 studies, "the relationship between leadership and job performance remains unclear". Other experts on leadership have reached the same conclusion. A very modest relationship has been found between leadership and job satisfaction and an even more modest relationship between job satisfaction and performance. But the link between leadership style and employee job performance has remained elusive.

The third reason that a focus on behavior is a boon for leadership development is that most leadership style theories are so broad and abstract that they are difficult to implement and, therefore to teach or to learn. How do you teach a leader style? Whereas, specific, well-defined behaviors can be taught, learned and measured. Additionally, as noted above, these behaviors have been shown to impact job performance. (Click on the following Sidebar Article title: Building a Behavior-Based Leadership Development Curriculum).

THE FUTURE OF LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
Developing leaders based on current leadership style theories may not be the best strategy, since those theories are unproven and their impact on performance is unclear. Developing leaders based on behaviors is more achievable, since behaviors are more easily taught and learned than style and research does show a link between leader behaviors and employee morale, satisfaction and performance.

Organizations are greatly motivated to develop effective leaders because of their impact on financial success, employee satisfaction and performance, and health care costs. Yet most organizations have given up this goal and abandoned leader development programs. One problem for these development programs has been that there is little or no evidence they work.

However, a leader development program based on specific behaviors that can be measured before, during and after training and development can demonstrate their effectiveness and investment in leader development is likely to grow. Also, like sexual harassment and ethics, firms in the future may provide leader development programs to inoculate organizations from lawsuits based on negligent supervision by toxic leaders. Leader development has the potential for a broad renaissance if organizations base programs on well-defined and specific leader behaviors.

The full list of references for this article can be found at:
www.NehoidenPartners.com/published_article_references

About the Authors:
Richard Williams Ph.D. and Wallace Higgins M.B.A. are both Senior Consultants, and Harvey Greenberg M.S., M.B.A. is a Principal at Nehoiden Partners. For more information on their work, email info@nehoidenpartners.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Community Forums offer:

• Opportunities to network with other NEHRA members on a regular basis
• Opportunities to develop leadership skills
• Opportunities to share useful information and best practices within the Community Forum content area

Currently NEHRA has nine active Forums (click HERE for more info) and is eager to work with members to create more. Specifically we are looking for members interested in helping to form a Benefits Community Forum. 
 
If you have ideas for other Forums and are interested in helping us to pull a group together please contact Carole Edson, Director of Membership, at cedson@nehra.com.

 

• To become a fan of NEHRA on Facebook, CLICK HERE.
  
• If you are already a member of LinkedIn, CLICK HERE to join the NEHRA LinkedIn Community!

If you are not already a member of LinkedIn, you will need to follow the easy steps to create your profile. Once your profile is completed you can follow the steps below to become a member of the Northeast Human Resources Group.

• Find the tab for "Groups" on your home page and select "Group Directory."
• Use the search function in the upper right and type in "Northeast Human Resources Association."
• Click on "Join this Group."
• This will bring you to a description of the group and you will be asked to make selections about your preferences for display the group logo on your personal page.
• Enter a contact e-mail address, a digest e-mail address, delivery frequency, announcements and messages.
• Once you have made these choices click the button "Join Group."
• Your message will come to the NEHRA Group Administrator to verify membership and approve you for the group.

To Join a Community Forum Subgroup on LinkedIn

• Once you are a member of the Northeast Human Resources Group, select "Subgroups."
• Select all the groups you are interested in joining.
• Your request goes to the NEHRA Group Administrator for approval.
• You will receive a message that you are a member of this subgroup and you can begin to read and post information on the Subgroup page.

Current NEHRA Subgroups

• Learning and Development Community Forum
• Diversity and Inclusion Community Forum
• Consultants Community Forum
• Small Business HR Community Forum
• HR Technology Community Forum
• Talent Acquisition Community Forum
• Flexible Workplaces Community Forum

 

As you may know, NEHRA is continuing to evolve to better meet the needs of members. Therefore, we have created a new membership category: Group Membership.

This category is created to recognize the need, and often the desire, of many organizations to control spending and manage membership expenses for their employees.

What does this really mean for you? It means that if your company has five or more current members, you could experience a savings of 10 percent or more on the total cost of these NEHRA memberships through Dec. 31, 2011. In addition, the group membership allows you to renew all memberships at the same time—reducing the hassle and workload of individual renewal dates. Finally—and perhaps most importantly—it ensures that all members of your team have access to programming, to our new webinars, to resources and information at our website and to networking and professional development opportunities.

• How does the program work? All current members from your organization are renewed on a pro-rated basis—based on the individual membership type (NEHRA or NEHRA/SHRM), to bring them to a common renewal date, Dec. 31. Any new members are added and pro-rated, based on a Dec. 31 end date. The entire group is then renewed for another full year, based on this common renewal date.
• Can I add new members? New members can be added to your group at any time during your membership cycle, and their membership will be pro-rated to maintain them on the single renewal date.
• What if someone leaves? You can easily transfer that membership to another employee within your team, with one quick call.
• How does the membership work? Each group member is assigned an individual membership number, allowing them to access information on www.nehra.com and to register for events, webinars and professional development throughout the year.

This is an exciting new opportunity for you to expand access to NEHRA and save money!

If you are interested in learning more about the group membership or getting a quote for your group, please contact Carole Edson, Director of Membership and Alliances, at (781) 239-8705 or cedson@nehra.com.

 

Liz's email address is epicardi@nehra.com.