[Sam Barona]

There are many posts here that relate to employing people, and most of you will go onto recruiting staff as your businesses grow. I have been giving a lot of thought about job design with a view of creating a new model for working conditions; I am including some details here and would love to hear your opinions.

THE PROBLEMS:
1- Most professionals now days complain about struggling with their life/work balance;
2- Most businesses complain about not being able to get more value from their human resources;
3- The current situation has been arrived at due to the Ford mentality about how work and productivity are meassured, with many companies rewarding things like punctuality, which do not necessarily translate into increased productivity. Staff happinees is measured mostly via churn, which doesnt really meassure productivity, nor the reality of the employee's private life.

THE SOLUTION?:
Employee Centric Work: jobs designed that are tailor made for the individual worker and that cater for his/her family life, enjoyment and life goals; thus, covering all of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

HOW IT WORKS (an overview):
1- Starting with the recruitment process, individual's personal lives are taken into the mix of the selection; including, but not exclusive to, personal commitments like young children, standard of life, aspirations like wanting to be an entrepreneur/singer/artist, and past times.

2- The company sets certain productivity targets based on industry/role specific KPIs.

3- The company calculates the worth of these and works out an equitable programme that incorporates non-work related training that is geared towards the personal/goal fulfillment of the individual worker.

4- The employee and the employer work together, and agree on a plan that will deliver the results the company wants, the freedom and resources the individual needs, and how productivity will be measured.

CONCLUSION:
1- The company secures an employee that is commited to performing for the company as this performance becomes part of their self fulfillment goal; whilst the individual gets the freedom to choose when he/she works, thus meeting his/her personal commitments. Life/work balance problem solved!

2- The company secures the ongoing commitment from the individual (loyalty) as this tailor-made solution is better than other alternatives, and thus, a happier/more productive employee; whilst the employee secures training that will lead him/her to fulfill his/her life ambitions. Productivity issues solved!

A more equitable solution is reached that does not meassure "bums on seats" as a KPI, but rather, focuses on real performace, whether it be financial, or work output quotas.

I would like to know how many flaws you find in this theory, and would love to also find possible solutions to these flaws.

I will implement this in one of my companies, and should the experiment work, will write a paper to report on the findings and will make appropriate contributors known in the final report.

Thank you

Sam

[TheCDAllenGroup]

^I really like this approach Sam.

[NeeJam]

Sam liking it but whne you mentioned a flaw i noticed one immediately which otherwise it may have passed without thinking. i believe that the flaw in the theory is that multiple people(i'm talking loads here not like 100) may not be matched to a certian type of job therefore no-one will want to work in that job, creating many vacancys and therfore causing difficulties for others.

[Sam Barona]

Not sure I understand your point n-james, but thanks for the input. can you please clarify for my benefit?

If I read your right, i am not proposing doing away with the typical job fit and culture fit parts of the selection/recruitment process, but rather, adding immense value (in my view) to the employee and to the company. I would still like you to clarify your flaw.


Cheers

Sam

[Sam Barona]

BTW. This is influenced by a report I read a few years ago on the Harvard Business Review about a Japanese company that attracts the very best from the Japanese universities due to their amazing 3-year training programmes for executives.

It includes:

Year 1: An abridged MBA using tutors from harvard to teach the recruits best practices and tools necessary to succeed in their new company

YEar 2: 12 months spent in a Zen Buddhist monastery learning how to focus the mond and learning discipline

Year 3: doing whatever they want! and funded by the company!!! provided that it will give them relevant knowledge, so they can just spend it travelling the world attending business/industry events to gain ideas; in research labs developing new ideas; or wahtever else matches this criteria.

All recruits, about 100 of them, then spend the following 6 months bringing their experiences/knowledge together to create a new blue print for the future of the company.

My version is not as totally cool as theirs, but is also more geared to the individual's needs, and if successful, then it can be adopted by many other companies without the costs associated with the Japanese MO.

[JaytheCreative]

Well there are many things that can help promote employee loyalty, productivity, and positivie esteem in the workplace.

For small white collar businesses, personality and customability in the office helps. There is a successful small advertising firm in Milwaukee that gives employees (like 35 of them) $200 company allowance to personalize their offices and workspaces.

A company I'm familiar with and has been in the news in Chicago, global logistics company New Age Transportation livens up the place by doing periodic company-wide dancing excercises for fun, keep employees up, and charged up, with the CEO herself leading the mini pep rallies.

Remember to always incorporate industrial-organizational psychology strategies when hiring and maintaining employees. Do personality tests and skills tests to get a better insight on each employee. U know what u can do for skills tests (other than those ominous critical "are u good enough for us" tests.....call them "Skill Advancement Survey" in which the company can provided the appropriate training and treatment to give new and senior employees comfortable and productive guidance.)

In fact, about this Skill Advancement Survey I just thought of (Im sure there are those that exist). Think of when u enroll into a college, and advisors sit with u and give u guidance in ur field of study as to what u can do, and what will help. Take that positive environment and train ur HR department to adopt that exact operation. Quarterly or yearly, monthly, whatever, I'd distribute SAS's to my employees to allow them to judge their own improvement. Except, the surveys proceeding the original would ask employees to report more objectively how they fill buy having them think about any performance discrepancies they've had since the first. And, have like a contest for the most improved employee(s) to get a reward of some sort.

Also, hire managers and supervisors that match the personality and communicative requirements of the company. Supervisors and managers that don't get along with employees (no matter if its all of them, or just some of them....very unfavorable supervisors create drama and gossip in the workplace and are terrible for maintaining a positive perception of an organization).

Also, one of my key theories for promoting the best employees are designing the job or career to fit their lifestyle. For example, a stock brokerage firm's employees are typically more materialistic and looking for gracious material rewards for being an employee (such as, high competitive commission to help afford the corvette and the 500,000 home); or an auto manufacturer's employees are more modest and looking for a company that is family-friendly, and hosts track events for the employees since they are car people.

Which brings me to one thought, a company should give employees something major to look forward to on a regular basis (like every Summer or quarterly) that is outside of salary and benefits. Going back to the auto manufacturer example. Employees would be increasingly more likely to stay loyal to the company if the company hosted a major event for them, where they can bring the family with fun for the kids, food, entertainment, and most of all, get to see or even test drive the cars they dream of (e.g. 2007 Ford Mustang GTs or Cosworth Ford Focus SVT's sold only in Europe). And, outside of that, do a contest where like a limited # of employees may win a vacation once a year.

There was one company in Wisconsin that gave employees nice peice of profits when the company's sales increased 4-fold. Allowing employees to actually feel that their progress actually is worth something to company's success is a huge motivator. It makes no sense for them to read in the newspaper that their employer just say a 60% in profits w/o seeing any increase in compensation. I've always been a proponent of the arguement that executives get paid too much and get too many benefits in lieu of performance when the employees see virtually nothing in reward. Instead of paying a CEO an additional $10 million a year over the last term, why not cut it in half, and give $5 mill. back into the company to improve productivity and reduce internal layover? In the end, the CEO is still a multi-millionaire and in the long-run, the company might even see incredible increase in profitable production (such as decrease in absenses, increase in units produced, decrease in defective finished goods or bad customer service/sales, no internal lawsuits, accidents reported, disputes, etc.).

Lastly, give employees a sense of ownership...if not actual ownership. Sure, the stock options that employees get may not seem like much when compared to the Board Chairman...but I've worked in an environment where all of the salaried employees recieved company stock, and gained education in financial management and the money market. They talked about what they say on CNN or MSNBC first thing in the morning. They may not have known what all of the ticker info meant from the other acronyms, but they new what was good/bad for them (and the company).

[Sam Barona]

Nice jay, but this is precisely the type of thing that i want to move away from; token jestures to keep people tied to jobs by enhancing the clasps that tighten the comfort trap. It doesnt fulfill individuals, it just makes them comfortable, which doesnt translate to happy; specially in their private lives.

I know that many people want just that, but the types I am looking to recruit are the outstanding professionals that are sick to the teeth of being patronised by token coporate jestures that dont translate into better private lives, but simply try to make their working lives more palatable. Its Ford all over again, but with some designer gear thrown in.

What I am looking for is to test a new way for companies and their employees to get more than what they are getting right now. it is not inspired by my altruistic values (which are very limited), but by my search to achieve more by pushing the boundaries of what is currently taken as best practice.

I am looking to break the mold here, not just replicate what i and many others are alread doing.

Thanks for the time and advice though. It will be useful for those looking at employing people in more conventional companies.

Sam

PS. The skill advancement surveys you refer to are used in large firms; I have known them as Career Planning and Skills Analysis

[NeeJam]

Originally Posted by Sam Barona

Not sure I understand your point n-james, but thanks for the input. can you please clarify for my benefit?

If I read your right, i am not proposing doing away with the typical job fit and culture fit parts of the selection/recruitment process, but rather, adding immense value (in my view) to the employee and to the company. I would still like you to clarify your flaw.


Cheers

Sam

Sam what i mean is for example a hard-working job which is poorly paid then not many people will want to work in that hard-working job which is poorly paid therefore it will create multiple vacancies if everyone took on board your theory. However, that being said if it created multiple vacancies the job would'nt become poorly paid much longer and it would start attracting people with a pay bonus etc.

However: I do believe in your theory and i think you could easily create a recruitment business out of this and be really successful with it as your getting a business the correct person with the job - with a lifestyle that suits that job

[Sam Barona]

Thanks n-james, now I think I understand. This is something that I havent made very clear. I am not proposing to employ only part-timers.

So, I recruit, lets say; 1 x sales person. The going rate of pay for the sales person is £21k (US $42K) plus commission, plus bonuses and perks, like laptop, car, health and pension.

OK. The sales person's output will be measured financially; so, say their target is to achieve £600K in sales for the year, for which he/she would receive a 5% commission.

Now their total package is worth some £70K to the company, once car, laptop, office space, taxes, pay and perks are factored in.

My offer to my new recruit would be as follows:

Salesperson to deliver £600K in sales on a self employed basis, so that they choose/decide what times they need to work to achieve their target.

Company delivers infrastructure, like mobile, car, laptop, etc. Also, the company pays a monthly retainer of say, £1,500 (£18K pa), they also pay for non-work related training in say, sculpting (lets just say that this is what the person wants to do as a life goal) at a cost to the company of £12K; PLUS, the 5% commission, which is an extra £30K, bringing the total package cost to some £70K.

Now, the result is that the company still gets its £600K in sales, but from a far happier, far more commited sales person; and for the same cost; its just that the moneys havent gone into corporate perks, nor taxes, but into the sales persons pocket and in life enhancing activities.

In fact, it is my belief that the sales person will reach their target much faster, as they are more motivated, and as a concequence of this, far more effective.

I hope this makes things clearer??

Sam

[jpaynecr]

I think that this is a good idea. I have read a lot about companies that are paying their employees for an entire day, but they only stay half of the day. Pretty much every study shows that people will do more work. However, once they get used to the new situation and that becomes the norm, they might want even more and more specilization for them.