Tag Archives: Training

Three Steps to Earning A Promotion

Posted in Performance Management, Professional Development by

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Wondering how you get promoted? Tired of being looked over for advancement opportunities? Restless and bored in your current job? Want to earn more money?

Here’s 3 Steps to Earning a Promotion:

  1. Take stock of your individual performance- not against your own expectations, but the expectations of your manager, the expectations of leadership and against the company’s mission, vision and values. Self-awareness is the name of this game. Outside of the annual performance review, I doubt most of you work for an organization where your manager is engaged in active performance management. If this is the case for you, make sure you are asking your manager for performance feedback often. The next time you see him or her, ask for 10 minutes of their time to review your current job performance, areas that you are exceeding his or her expectations and areas you should be working on. Ask your manager straight up what they think you need to work on to improve your performance. This is your career, your life, stop waiting passively for someone to share what they think about your performance, go out and get the information. Ask your peers,  team members and other colleagues to give you real and honest feedback on your performance. Listen to what they have to say and take some action steps. Becoming self-aware to our own strengths and weaknesses is a difficult experience but also elevates us to a better more genuine place.
  2. Get outside of your comfort zone. Employees who stay in their safe zone and never stick their neck out to take on a challenge, even if they nail their current job to a “T”, do not get promoted. Individuals that lean into the discomfort and fear of the unknown, who take the bet with uncertainty of the outcome, get recognized as having unique qualities worthy of promotion and advancement within the organization. These folks are generally the ones chosen for individual development plans, leadership programs and succession plans- they are given first crack at new training and development opportunities. Not sure where to start? Again, sit down with your manager and ask if you can co-lead or partner up on a challenging new project. Or, identify an area of the business that is ripe for process efficiency, cost reduction or innovation. Write up a business case and present it to your manager. As an employee on the front lines you are best equipped to identify these opportunities. Any manager worth a damn will be pleased as punch to hear your idea that solves a bonafide business problem and will have no problem advocating for your cause with leadership.
  3. Finally, ask for the promotion. I’m a firm believer that an employee is ready for a promotion when they have mastered the role they are in and beginning to show aptitude and prowess for the next level up. Managers with a solid grip on his or her employees should be able to put their finger on just the right time; however, you, the employee, as your own best advocate, need to find your adult voice and ask your manager for the promotion. Be prepared to outline your position- what you have accomplished thus far, what you are ready to take on and the value that your promotion will bring to the business. If your manager is unable or unwilling to consider your promotion at that time, do not give up, ask for a training and development plan to get you to the next level. Remember, your manager owes you two things- to remove obstacles that get in the way of you being able to effectively perform your job and to provide the opportunities and resources to help you prove your worth. But YOU and you alone are responsible for earning that promotion.

Setting Up Employees to Fail

Posted in Employee Engagement, Employee Relations, Leadership, Lists, Management Effectiveness, Performance Management, Uncategorized by

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Implicit within the employment agreement are certain things that the employer owes to the employee to set him or her up for success. If the employer neglects their end of the bargain, the employer ensures the employees’ failure. This is very basic. And I think almost every reasonable person would agree on what the role of the employer is. Yet time and time again, employers fail on this fundamental level. The way this usually plays out is when a manager is sitting in my office complaining about an employee who has barely worked 6 months and all of the shiny luster has worn off because reality has set in. It’s almost like the manager really wants to say (and in some cases does) “well, we hired the employee, now you’re saying we have to something with him:?!?!?!?!”.

Employers owe the following things to their employees as part of the employment agreement. These should be nonnegotiables and HR should be doing everything in their authority to make sure the employer is holding up their end.

The tools to do their jobs. Oh my god. This is so damn obvious. But we have all heard the stories of employees starting work and on Day 1, they do not have a computer, a login, a security badge to get in the door let alone an orientation, a resource to ask questions or a written training plan. Employees know they are hired to do a job. But without the proper tools and training, you, the employer, are making this impossible.

Decent compensation. All companies should have a compensation philosophy, at the end of the day it provides purpose for whether the employer decides to lead, lag or meet the market. This philosophy should be transparent and communicated to candidates and employees. So when the inevitable conversation arises about pay dissatisfaction, the company and the manager are prepared and feel comfortable reiterating the legitimate reasons behind an employee’s compensation.

Expectations. At every position I have been at I attempt to train managers on defining and setting their expectations from Day 1 with their new employee. This is also one of my greatest pain points. How does an employee know what is expected of them if you do not say it? Did you hire a mind reader?

Purpose. Employees need to understand how their individual contributions help achieve the goals of the company. Employees need to understand the purpose of their jobs. Employers who have business plans that flow top down and bottom up, should have no problem defining this line of sight for each employee.

Trust in Management and Leadership. The individuals that represent the leaders of the company must be approachable, they must be honest , they must be transparent and do what they say they are gonna do. Employees who do not trust their management and leadership will do just enough to fly under the radar and will be focused on when the next shoe will drop and not the success of the company.

Safety and security. I’m not just talking about guns or violence in the workplace. I’m talking about workplaces where there is respect for the individual. Employers that allow mockery, drama, off-color jokes, bullying are creating a hostile work environment for their employees. The only thing the employee will be focused on is how long they have to wait for another job to come along to leave their current one. They won’t be focused on helping the company meet its goals.

If an employer does not actively ensure these basic tenets are being met via partnership with HR, they are setting themselves and their employees up for failure.

Straight Talk on Harassment Training

Posted in HR Policy by

Discrimination, Harassment and Retaliation Prevention Training is the worst! How can training employees and managers to contribute to a corporate environment free from discriminatory and harassing behavior be bad or even the worst, you ask? Because harassment training is stale, it begets stupid commentary and it has to exist in the first place. 

First, the content is dry, it’s boring, it’s routine. There is no way to make this training fun. I can’t even sell it as another “tool in your toolbox.” I’ve developed training at two different companies,  created two different presentations and both were exactly 24 Powerpoint slides of the same content. Protected classes- check; history lesson of Federal law- you bet; examples of discrimination- oh yeah; sexual harassment- both hostile environment and quid pro quo- yup, got that. Retaliation, Code of Conduct, verbatim policies copied and pasted from the Employee Handbook- it’s all there. As much as I want to be an HR Extraordinaire, there is no way to brush the wand of innovation over this training. The only thing to hope for is new material. Despite the number of companies where training is mandatory and where hordes of employees have all been trained en masse, the corporate environment year over year miraculously keeps the pipeline of palm-to-forehand dumbshit-tery a-flowing.harassment

Second, the unending number of asinine comments. Not the straight-up ignorant comments that led to the training in the first place, but the inane comments that fly out of the employees’ mouths when the training is announced. You know who are the absolute worst, Managers! Yes, Managers somehow come down with a case of uncontrollable mouth diarrhea as soon as the training invite hits their inbox. “Now that I’m trained, I’m free to harass, right?” “Is this training going to teach me how to harass better?” and “Oooh, you can’t say that, that’s discrimination against (insert any characteristic that’s not actually a protected class)” Hardy-har-har, you witless buffoons.

Third and finally, Discrimination, Harassment and Retaliation Prevention Training is the worst because its even a thing.
Why can’t people just come to work, get the job done, have a friendly conversation with his or her colleagues and then go home? Somehow in that basic transaction, we find ways to bash other people for characteristics they can’t even control. Somehow we just have to be better than someone, even at work, to make ourselves feel better. On the other hand, if everyone minded their P’s and Q’s in the workplace, at worst, I probably wouldn’t have a job and at best, I wouldn’t be writing this post.