oger is the vice president of human resources in a midsize medical manufacturing organization and is contemplating reintroducing the annual performance review.

About three years ago he and his senior management team decided to eliminate the review altogether because of its time-consuming nature, potential for confrontation, and disagreement between leaders and their team members. They also wanted to make use of software that could provide feedback in real time throughout the year rather than only once per year.

Roger’s executive leadership team ultimately realized, however, that it never had to be an “either/or” decision and should instead be a “both/and” consideration: Performance reviews are excellent accumulation tools to capture ongoing, year-round feedback that happens in real time.

After all, what gets measured gets managed, and without a formal cumulative scorecard reflecting an entire year’s performance, it becomes difficult to justify exceptions in merit and bonus payouts. At Roger’s organization, a small pocket of layoffs occurred the previous year, and it was more difficult to determine which individuals should be selected for layoff via a peer group analysis when no recent annual reviews were available. And in reality, leaders in Roger’s organization shied away from providing ongoing (and potentially confrontational) feedback over time—even when they had apps and software programs at their disposal to help them share real-time feedback. Roger realized that the annual cumulative exercise kept front-line leaders disciplined and focused, especially when performance reviews were combined with goal-setting modules.

“The original thought in abolishing performance reviews was that annual feedback wasn’t enough and became stale. Companies wanted their employees to receive current, real-time feedback, immediate recognition and constructive engagement discussions surrounding performance, and new technologies promised to deliver outstanding results, obviating the need for the annual performance review,” said Winston Tan, compensation consultant and principal at InTandem LLC based in Spokane, Wash,, and co-author of The Performance Appraisal Tool Kit: Redesigning Your Performance Review Template to Drive Individual and Organizational Change (Amacom Books, 2013).

“What happened in reality, though, is that the organizations that abolished performance reviews got little in return. Even if software programs and apps are available to drive real-time feedback, they don’t work if leaders aren’t using them to deliver constructive, and sometimes potentially negative, feedback on an ongoing basis.”

Reinventing the Traditional Performance Appraisal Grading Scale

Roger and his team were already believers: Current, real-time feedback and discussions regarding recognition and on-the-spot course correction aren’t intended to replace the annual review, they’re meant to complement it. But the old grading methodology where “meets expectations” equates to something like a “C” earned in school needed to be replaced. Company leadership wanted to avoid grade inflation as well as motivate staff members to equate a score of “3” (out of 5 grades) with a positive contribution for the year—the equivalent of playing par in golf. Therefore, Roger’s team adapted a revised annual grading scale as follows:

5—Distinguished Performance and Role Model Status: Clearly and consistently demonstrates extraordinary and exceptional accomplishment in all major areas of responsibility. Performed above and beyond expectations under exceptional circumstances during the review period. Others rarely equal performance of this caliber in similar roles.

4—Superior/Highly Effective Performance: Performance is continually and consistently superior and regularly goes beyond what is expected. An exceptional contributor whose performance exceeds expectations on a consistent and sustainable basis.

3—Fully Successful/Effective Performance: Performance consistently meets the critical requirements of the position, continually achieves preset goals and performs with distinction. Incumbent performance is reliable and consistent in adding value to the work unit.

2—Partially Successful Performance/Needs Improvement: Performance does not consistently meet or occasionally falls below what is required of the position; improvement in specific areas is required.

1—Unsuccessful/Unacceptable Performance: Performance fails to meet minimum expectations for this role, and immediate and sustained improvement is required.

This description of the “3” score introduces an element of pride and accomplishment. It recognizes that an individual “performed with distinction” throughout the review period, which reflects the organization’s appreciation of the person’s hard work and efforts. As such, it allows leaders to provide more realistic feedback and saves the 4 and 5 scores for those who are generally recognized as standouts among their peers (or the top 5 percent), who performed under exceptional circumstances, or who are otherwise exceptional contributors.

Redesigning the Template’s Content

Traditionally, annual reviews focus on reaching minimal job performance thresholds and then grading upwards if someone has gone beyond the norm. “That paradigm should shift to describe outstanding performance and then grade downward if employees aren’t reaching their full potential,” said Larry Comp, principal of LTC Performance Strategies in Valencia, Calif. “Set the bar on truly effective performance, with those being rated above this level demonstrating exemplary performance.” For example, a traditional performance review descriptor for a customer service representative might sound like this:

Provides prompt, courteous and professional customer communication. Provides timely and well-informed advice to customers. Demonstrates sufficient knowledge of company products and cross-selling skills to ensure a high level of customer satisfaction. Prioritizes workload based on customers’ needs. Regularly adheres to scripts and selling tips. Skillfully overcomes customer objections. Consistently gains necessary authorizations and approvals for one-off exceptions to policy.

Ho-hum … With such a low level of performance expectation, it becomes easy for managers to award scores of 4 and 5. “Likewise,” Comp pointed out, “workers can become resentful for receiving a score of 3—’meets expectations,’ which they equate as ‘average’—when the bar is set so low.”

Now look at it another way:

Demonstrates total commitment to outstanding customer service. Provides knock-your-socks-off service that consistently exceeds client expectations. Consistently exhibits creativity and flexibility in resolving customer issues.

Remains customer-oriented, flexible and responsive to last-minute changes in plans. Regularly puts the human relationship above the transaction. Looks always to surprise customers with unanticipated benefits, including lower costs and shortened delivery time frames.

Effectively exceeds customer expectations by providing timely feedback and follow-up in an empathetic and caring way. Tactfully informs customers when their requests cannot be met and escalates matters for further review and approval as appropriate. Takes pride in building relationships with even the most challenging clients. Enjoys identifying “out-of-the-box” solutions for clients with special needs. Goes beyond customer satisfaction by driving customer loyalty, as evidenced by a high rate of repeat business.

These enhanced descriptors drive higher performance expectations, set the bar at a new level and reflect performance relative to a much higher standard. If employees can honestly meet these heightened expectations, then they deserve a higher score of 4 or 5. Many will realize, however, that a score of 3 is more suitable relative to the heightened expectations outlined above.

Introducing Dynamic Templates

“If you’re not upgrading your template every few years, you’re missing the point of the exercise,” Tan said. “Performance review templates should be dynamic, not static, to reflect your organization’s changing priorities.” For example, a startup company might focus on the key core competencies of creativity and innovation, strategic and critical thinking skills, and culture and values, while a mature organization might emphasize its top three competencies as policy compliance, communication and leadership, and process improvement.

Tan even recommends enhancing focus by attaching an “annual report-like cover letter” to each individual’s performance appraisal to identify the organization’s key accomplishments and focus areas in addition to its key employee development initiatives or the availability of training programs. “Help employees see the significance of this annual report, give this performance scorecard the dignity it deserves and create a stronger achievement mentality by raising the bar to a new standard,” he said.

When done right and in its highest form, the annual performance review becomes a strategic organization-wide initiative, a human capital balance sheet and an enterprise-wide assessment of the organization’s human capital muscle—the asset that drives all operations and productivity.

Whether you’re reintroducing performance reviews after a hiatus, continuing them but want a “pop” or creative boost to make them more relevant and appealing, or introducing them for the very first time, use your creative eye to not only reflect the past year’s performance but to drive future change by setting your organization’s strategic goals. Performance management, it turns out—far from being a burden and an onus on managers and staffers alike—is one of the “low-hanging fruits” that can catapult your career as an effective leader and marshal your company’s human capital assets to new heights.

Try initiating onboarding meetings using some of the questions that follow. Then be prepared to address any shortcomings in individual performance or organizational challenges that may be hindering productivity. It doesn’t take much time, can head off problems proactively and will demonstrate your effective leadership and communication abilities.

30-Day, One-on-One Follow-Up Questions

• What do you like about the job and the organization so far?
• What’s been going well? What are the highlights of your experiences so far? Why?
• Tell me what you don’t understand about your job or about our organization now that you’ve had a month to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty.
• Have you faced any surprises since joining us?
• What could we have done differently during the interviewing process to realistically prepare you for your new role?

60-Day, One-on-One Follow-Up Questions

• Do you have enough, too much, or too little time to do your work? Likewise, do you have access to the appropriate tools and resources? Do you feel you haven’t been sufficiently trained in any aspects of your job to perform at a high level?
• How do you see your job relating to the organization’s mission and vision?
• What do you need to learn to improve? What can the organization do to help you become more successful as you transition further into your role?
• Compare the organization to what we explained it would be like when you initially interviewed with us. Have you experienced any surprises, disappointments or other “aha” moments?
• How does it go when your supervisor offers constructive criticism or corrects your work?
• How would you describe the general tone from your co-workers: Do you find that they’ve been supportive of your success, or somewhat critical or pessimistic?
• Do you see a pivot coming? In other words, after two months in the role, do you feel that you’ll need to make a major adaptation to what you originally imagined you’d be doing or a critical change in your focus or expectations to remain successful?

90-Day, One-on-One Follow-Up Questions

• Which co-workers have been particularly helpful since you arrived? (The goal in asking this question is to pinpoint which employees can be influential in retaining new hires.) Would you recommend anyone to become a mentor to new employees?
• Who do you talk to when you have questions about your work? Do you feel comfortable asking? Has anyone gone out of his or her way to make you feel welcome or included in social or work-related events?
• Have you had any uncomfortable situations or conflicts with supervisors, co-workers or customers? Did you feel inclined to refer matters to your supervisor or to human resources on any particular occasion?
• Does your supervisor clearly explain what the organization expects of you? How would you rate leadership communication overall on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being highest?
• Do you believe your ideas and suggestions are valued? Can you give me an example of some type of change you’ve recommended that’s been implemented?
• In retrospect, what could we have done differently in terms of setting your overall expectations appropriately for working in our company, and for your job specifically?
• (Ask this question if the new hire supervises leaders.) Have you engaged in any skip-level meetings with your extended reports to gauge how they’re feeling about their immediate supervisors? Is there anything you’d recommend reinventing in terms of how your department or team functions?
• How would you grade us in terms of our extended onboarding program, and what suggestions can you share that would make our program stronger?

The result: better performance, improved engagement and stronger retention. After all, it stands to reason that employees who are engaged in these types of activities from the first day will feel a stronger connection to your organization over time. They’ll feel acknowledged, included and more excited about their prospects for long-term success, so they’ll likely demonstrate greater loyalty and productivity. What a high-payoff activity for such a minimal—but smart—investment of your time!

“One of the biggest mistakes that HR leaders make early on is failing to get the buy-in from front-line operational leaders,” said Don Phin, attorney, executive coach and chairman at executive coaching firm Vistage Worldwide Inc. in San Diego. “HR tends to gain approval from the immediate boss—for example, the CEO, CFO or head of legal—and then marches forward without gaining buy-in from the leaders in the field who will be impacted by the changes.” The better approach? Before proposing solutions, spend time with senior leaders in the field to learn…This link will take you off this site to SHRM online.

Carla is an HR executive at a blood-banking company and is faced with a crisis in culture, leadership and retention: The company suffers from 53 percent annualized turnover in field operations, with almost half of that occurring in the first 90 days of employment. Employee opinion survey scores are disappointing, citing leadership apathy, unfairness, and lack of recognition and communication. Needless to say, the CEO and senior executive team want Carla to stop the hemorrhaging and reinvent field leadership from top to bottom. But where should she start and, more important, whose buy-in will she need to support her in this massive endeavor?

“One of the biggest mistakes that HR leaders make early on is failing to get the buy-in from front-line operational leaders,” said Don Phin, attorney, executive coach and chairman at executive coaching firm Vistage Worldwide Inc. in San Diego. “HR tends to gain approval from the immediate boss—for example, the CEO, CFO or head of legal—and then marches forward without gaining buy-in from the leaders in the field who will be impacted by the changes.”

Meet with Leaders

The better approach? Before proposing solutions, spend time with senior leaders in the field to learn firsthand about their assessments of the problem and their proposed solutions. “At that point,” Phin said, “HR can serve as a catalyst to provide the structure and platform that the operational leadership team needs to drive change throughout the organization.”

[SHRM members-only toolkit: Engaging in Strategic Planning]

A case in point: At Carla’s company, regional managers are incentivized to increase the amount of blood donated but aren’t sure how to do that. Further, because of high turnover, employees appear to be burned out and frustrated; in certain centers, they even take bets on how long a new hire will last before throwing in the towel.

Carla holds meetings with key stakeholders in this order: 1) vice presidents, 2) general managers, 3) regional managers and 4) select donor center managers. The feedback is fairly consistent: The pressure to increase the amount of donated blood has led to a leadership strategy that appears disjointed and misaligned, with regions and donor centers acting independently of one another.

She quickly identifies what may be triggering such high levels of employee dissatisfaction: Leaders aren’t hiring the right people, setting expectations appropriately or holding workers accountable. She also realizes that donor center managers are not familiar with key human capital metrics that may be impacting performance and blood-volume goals.

So Carla proposes three programs that donor center managers can lead with her HR team’s support:

–First, rewrite job postings to “sell” the company and attract better applicants.

–Second, create a recruitment brochure featuring the company’s history, career progression program, benefits and specifics of the hiring process. She ensures that the applicant tracking system automatically e-mails the brochure to candidates selected for an interview.

–Third, create a “What to Expect in Your First 90 Days” one-sheet that hiring managers can share with candidates during interviews. The document explains the challenges of the role, including cranky customers, standing all day and time spent in the freezer storing blood specimens. A donor center tour becomes the new standard, with applicants observing the donation process, the quality review process and the freezer visit.

Help for Better Hiring

Carla is off to a good start, but it’s not enough. While the initial recruitment experience is now better, regional managers confirm that center managers don’t know how to interview effectively or identify talent with confidence. Carla’s HR team quickly designs an interview guide that suggests questions specific to each role—whether that be for a phlebotomist or a medical staffer. The recruitment team then checks references to ensure that candidates have the “softer” skills needed to excel at the company, including a strong penchant for customer service and teamwork. In addition, the donor center managers suggest an ambassador program where high-potential employees are assigned to mentor and coach new hires during their first 30 days, ensuring a smooth transition into the company and a healthy sense of competition among ambassadors looking to ensure their mentees’ success.

Create a Scorecard for Success

So far, so good, Carla reasons. But regional managers still don’t have a handle on how to increase blood draw volume in their donor centers. Worse, certain center managers use a harsh leadership style that focuses on “volume, volume, volume” without explaining to workers how to get there. Carla realizes that the donor center managers don’t necessarily know how to get there themselves.

The solution? “What gets measured gets managed, and this organization would clearly benefit from a leadership scorecard that drives performance and production,” said Ruben Galvan, vice president of human resources at Zodiac Pool Solutions N.A. in Vista, Calif., which sells pool maintenance products. The question, of course, is what to measure.

“Start first with basic employee demographics—what does the average employee look like?” Galvan said. Include average tenure, age, time in role and salary/wage to get an overall feel of your population at a particular location. After all, a team made up of individuals with an average tenure of less than one year may have different needs than more-mature workers who are further along in their careers.

Then delve deeper: “Voluntary versus involuntary turnover, corrective action trends, and average employee performance ratings at each donor center should be measured against customer service ratings, average blood volume and other [key performance indicators],” Galvan said.

Finally, get down to the key variables that make each donor center operate smoothly and efficiently: Employee cross-training, certification and step progression (for example, from Phlebotomist I to II to III) will not only make the center more flexible but also should help reduce turnover. After all, if employees are cross-trained and promoted, they’ll feel they are achieving. Likewise, have donor center managers create a quarterly action plan for their regional managers’ review that reflects key focus areas from the human capital scorecard.

Finally, “celebrate success,” Galvan said. “Turning around group performance and spiking production is typically directly linked to human capital management and measurement, and teaching your front-line operational leaders to garner success through their people is an accomplishment that’s worth celebrating, not only for its immediate impact on the business but as a portable skill that can be repeated at any time in the future.”

And it all started with Carla’s wisdom in knowing that the company’s leadership team had all the answers from the very beginning. Carla and her HR team simply made it safe for operational leaders to volunteer ideas, then provided the structure and direction to put those ideas into action. That’s what an aligned HR–operational client team looks like.

Nina is a one-person employee and labor relations department for a midsize hospital. Her job can get rather busy because line managers reach out to her often for support in holding their employees accountable.

Nina’s approach to employee discipline stems from her sense of fairness and her strong work ethic: While she understands that employees sometimes face challenges that might get in the way of their work performance, she believes they nevertheless need to perform at a minimally acceptable level to earn their pay. Yet she also recognizes that recent changes in employment law may constrain her ability to discipline or terminate workers, and it can be a challenge to explain this to the line managers who look to her for guidance and wisdom.

A case in point: Employers historically have had a huge amount of discretion when it comes to dealing with employee misconduct. Depending on the level of egregiousness, employers could typically move to immediate termination (known as a “summary dismissal”) or issue a final written warning even for a first offense. “The NLRB, however, in recent years has curtailed an employer’s discretion in handling certain conduct-related offenses, even for nonunion employee populations,” Falcone said. Consequently, employers need to ensure that their policies and practices are not only consistent with state law but with the National Labor Relations Act as well.

Disciplining Employees for Insubordination

Historically, determining what was considered egregious misconduct or gross insubordination toward a supervisor was fairly straightforward. But the NLRB recently has taken liberal interpretations of what constitutes “protected, concerted activity” on wages, hours and working conditions, especially during times of union organizing. “In fact, recent NLRB rulings protect workers who used profanities against their supervisors when complaining of their company’s inability or unwillingness to change certain working conditions,” Falcone said. “Likewise, workers’ use of company e-mail on nonwork time as well as their Facebook posts and tweets are considered protected under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act.” In certain cases, the NLRB reversed the terminations and ordered reinstatement with back pay.

In the not-too-distant past, workers who demonstrated anger or defensiveness toward co-workers or a general inability to work with others could be disciplined for their failure to create and sustain an inclusive work environment. While this is still applicable today, courts have recently ruled that mental health issues that impact personal behaviors may invoke the protections of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Likewise, remember that communicating with others and even thinking and concentrating are considered “major life activities” under the ADA. Employees who have challenges here could obligate a company to engage in the ADA interactive process and ask how it could help them meet the essential functions of the job.

According to Falcone, “the reasonable accommodation standard might include, for instance, assessing the nature of the employee’s limitations, assessing the individual’s ability to perform the essential functions of the job and identifying possible accommodations when it comes to confrontational personalities in the workplace.” With claims of both disability discrimination and failure to engage in the ADA interactive process on the rise, it’s likely worth additional consideration before jumping to progressive discipline and ultimately termination for what could be considered by some courts a reasonable accommodation issue related to mental health.

Disciplining Employees for Excessive Absenteeism

A number of states and cities have enacted paid-sick-leave laws that require employers to provide a set amount of protected sick time each year (for example, 24 hours) that workers can use to tend to their own or a family member’s health care needs. If such sick-leave laws are present in your state or city, they severely limit your right to discipline workers for excessive unscheduled absenteeism or tardiness, provided the absences are covered by the protected sick-leave reasons.

“Specifically, that means that you can’t count those occurrences of unscheduled absenteeism or tardiness as violations of your company’s attendance control policy,” said Jacqueline Cookerly Aguilera, a partner with law firm Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP in Los Angeles. Further, you can’t necessarily ask for a doctor’s note or require advance notice as a condition of using sick leave, nor can you apply disciplinary measures when employees pattern their time off around regularly scheduled weekends or holidays.

“In short, the recent passage of multiple states’ and cities’ paid-sick-leave laws make it even more difficult for employers to hold workers accountable for the excessive use or abuse of paid-time-off or sick-leave policies,” Cookerly Aguilera said. Even no-call/no-show policies, in which an employer terminates a worker who fails to call in or report to work (typically for 72 hours), may be under scrutiny by certain courts. The courts’ argument is that the employer may have an affirmative obligation to determine why the no-call/no-show incidents occurred. “Further, certain courts have argued that a refusal to grant a reasonable accommodation because of an inflexible reliance on company policies and rules may violate the ADA and similar state laws, which could challenge any hard and fast applications of policies such as no-call/no-show,” Cookerly Aguilera said.

And the most challenging recent twist in the law? Assigning additional time away from work as a reasonable accommodation once the 12 weeks of leave available under the Family and Medical Leave Act is exhausted. “The EEOC [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] and courts routinely view extended leaves of absence as a reasonable accommodation under the ADA and similar state laws,” Cookerly Aguilera said. The question, of course, is what is a reasonable period of time for a particular extension of leave to help a worker prepare to return to work?

“There’s no clear answer for this, and each case must be evaluated on its own merits,” Cookerly Aguilera said. “Employers are advised to focus on how that one individual’s absence negatively impacts co-workers who must make up for the gap and whether this negative impact constitutes an undue hardship for the employer.”

Ask for Help

Nina, the hospital employee, is well-advised in today’s legal climate to amplify discussions with legal counsel about her company’s approach to issues like these that in the past were relatively straightforward to administer. Of course, the legal climate may change because of the new White House administration, but that will surely take time, just as it takes time to develop new case law that influences employer practices and policy interpretations. For now, a conservative approach to these and other workplace matters is the wisest path toward healthy, transparent and legally defensible employee and labor relations practices.

“The relationship [between interviewer and candidate] isn’t ready to dig into details right off the bat,” said Gabrielle Bowden, HR director and assistant controller at The Bridges Club at Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. Taking the time to build rapport, establish some common ground and make the individual feel welcome are critical to the relationship-building process that’s supposed to happen during an interview. But how do you get there? What types of questions typically make a candidate feel at ease sharing more about themselves: their short-term goals, longer-term career objectives, and their ultimate willingness to join your organization versus the others out there that are competing for talent?  This link will take you to the web site of SHRM…

Take the time to build a relationship before jumping into your questions

Heidi recently joined a mid-sized company as manager of recruitment, and her initial goal is to strengthen the interviewing skills of her frontline hiring managers.

She assembles a group of 15 leaders for an interviewing workshop and hands out a sample resume that’s common to the types of hires the organization typically makes. She asks everyone to review the resume for several minutes and then requests that they begin interviewing her as they normally interview any other candidate. They’re collectively the one voice of the hiring manager, and she’ll field their questions in this mock interview scenario.

Their questions are scattered and lack alignment. Initial questions from the audience bounce around from “Tell me about yourself” to “What’s your greatest strength?” to “Give me an example of a time when you’ve had to overcome a significant obstacle at work.” Clearly there’s little consistency in the team’s questioning techniques, there are no ice breakers to ease into the interview, and the team’s interviewing abilities leave a lot to be desired.

Create Trust, Comfort

“The relationship [between interviewer and candidate] isn’t ready to dig into details right off the bat,” said Gabrielle Bowden, HR director and assistant controller at The Bridges Club at Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. Taking the time to build rapport, establish some common ground and make the individual feel welcome are critical to the relationship-building process that’s supposed to happen during an interview.

“Move too quickly into a formal question-and-answer format,” Bowden said, “and you’ll likely create an expectation of formality where candidates are hesitant to show their true selves.”

Your objective should be to establish trust and allow candidates to feel comfortable sharing some vulnerability in a positive sense. You’ll know you’re there when a candidate occasionally says, “Well, Gabby, I wouldn’t normally say this during an interview, but . . .” Your ultimate goal will be to get to know the real candidate behind all the interview hype.

But how do you get there? What types of questions typically make a candidate feel at ease sharing more about themselves: their short-term goals, longer-term career objectives, and their ultimate willingness to join your organization versus the others out there that are competing for talent?

Start with something related to the business that also allows a candidate to put their best foot forward. Here are some suggestions:

• Tell me about your job search up to now. What’s motivating you to look for a new opportunity, and what have your experiences been as a candidate in the open market?
• Before we launch too deeply into your career experience and background as well as what we’re looking for in our next hire, tell me what criteria you’re using in selecting your next role or company.
• What’s really important to you at this point in your career?
• Not to limit you in any way, but besides us, who would be the two or three leading companies that you’d want to pursue now if you could, and why are they on your short list?

Ice breakers are helpful in creating a relaxed and personalized atmosphere. People tend to be comfortable talking about themselves and their experiences and then jumping into the question-and-answer session in the formal evaluation process.

“Openers are meant to establish the tone and tenor of the interview meeting, and richer discussions stem from more personalized and transparent invitations to connect on a personal level,” Bowden said.

Continue with Inviting Opener Questions

“If the ice-breaker questions set the mood, then a smooth transition into the first formal interview questions will go a long way in cementing a spirit of trust and transparency between the hiring manager and the candidate,” said Eve Nasby, vice president of business development at Amerit Consulting in San Diego. Open up with a question that allows the candidate to share a broad overview of their backgrounds like this:

• Let’s start with a brief overview of your career progression, leading me up to how you landed in your current role. Just maybe a minute or two working backwards on your resume from the past to the present so that I understand how you’ve progressed in your career and gotten to this point.

“The ‘minute or two’ caveat sets the stage for a quick refresher, and it’s good to have an opportunity to hear directly from the candidate how they compartmentalize information and discuss their historical career priorities,” Nasby said. In addition, it will save you a lot of time if you, like many employers, haven’t had a chance to look at the resume in detail just before the interview. “The Readers’ Digest version of the candidate’s resume overview accounts for the larger blocks of time in her career and will help you keep focused on the individual’s historical career drivers and current needs,” she added.

If a candidate is entry-level or hourly, you can adjust your opening questioning salvo to build rapport and trust by asking something a bit more humorous and friendly like:

• So, let me ask you the most important question before we begin: Do you enjoy interviewing, or would you rather do just about anything else other than this?
• Most surveys will tell you that there are only two things that people hate more than interviewing: dying and paying taxes. Does that describe you fairly well, or do you actually enjoy interviewing a bit more than that?

With more senior candidates, you might want to defer to their hiring expertise by asking a question like:

• Let me switch roles with you before we begin. When you hire people at your own company, what do you generally look for in terms of their backgrounds, experiences and overall style? And what do you like or dislike about interviewing candidates?

Clearly, you can open with questions that reflect your style, personality and individuality. What’s important, though, is that you’re comfortable in your own approach and try to make the candidate comfortable in answering questions transparently in a spirit of getting to know one another.

“Too many times employers engage in formal Q&A discussions without ever letting the candidate talk about their true selves,” Nasby said. “Candidates really want to know what it’s like working for you. Don’t underestimate the power of a strong bond or interpersonal relationship to serve as the ultimate swing factor in the candidate accepting your job over someone else’s.”

Be Truthful, Too

Of course, vulnerability and trust go two ways: as an employer, you’ll want to share your true perceptions about the job in terms of its advantages and shortcomings. No candidate is a perfect fit, and no job is a perfect opportunity either. But establishing trust and rapport in the very first meeting goes a long way in getting the relationship off to a good start and creating an expectation of transparency.

“In essence, you’ll be giving each candidate a glimpse of how you value and handle professional and career development in the workplace. To do that in the pre-employment stage may come as a shock to some candidates, but it will certainly help you stand out among your competition because of your selflessness and goodwill,” Nasby said.

Combined with additional interviewing queries focusing on what the candidate’s ideal opportunity might look like in terms of role, responsibilities and learning curve, you’ll be setting a foundation for longer-term success. After all, how many candidates are asked “career introspection” questions that force them to think about their career progression up to now, their key motivators in selecting a new role, and this position’s link to future career opportunities three to five years from now?  No, they’re not easy questions, but most candidates will walk away from an interview like this with a very solid impression of the organization and your leadership style. Open your interviews with questions like these, and watch candidates’ interest grow exponentially as they reveal more of their “true selves” during the interviewing and selection process.

John is a successful manager, but he’s concerned about potential staff turnover in light of today’s hot job market. He’s wondering what he could do to proactively avoid employee resignations and is taking an objective, introspective look at his leadership style. So John reaches out to the vice president of human resources at his company for advice, and learns a lot more than he bargained for.

As John soon realizes, retention of key employees comes from both leadership offense and defense practices. More importantly, it stems from exercising leadership wisdom that allows team members to motivate themselves, find new and creative ways of solving problems and finding solutions, and, when necessary, removing roadblocks that may impede team growth. This link will take you to the web site of SHRM…

Minimizing the effects of unwanted turnover and building a team with solid tenure comes from each leader’s ability to foster motivation in teams and instill a strong sense of accountability. Therefore, as unnerving as it sounds, John realizes that he needs to reassess his own strengths and shortcomings in order to reinvent his relationship with his team.

Leadership Offense

Getting all your company’s managers on the same page in terms of motivation, employee satisfaction and engagement is no easy feat.

“But first get one thing straight:  Your job as a leader is not to motivate your employees; motivation is internal, and you can’t motivate them any more than they can motivate you,” said Jo-Anne Smith, outplacement executive, career coach and equity owner with Career Partners International in Southern California. “Your job as a successful leader, however, is to create an environment where your workers can motivate themselves.”

It may sound like a fine distinction, but it’s an important one. For example, try delegating what you enjoy most and are particularly good at as a means of professional development for the employee taking on the task (not of offloading work). Monitor what you’ve delegated by asking your employee how she’ll follow up with you and what the concrete and measurable outcomes will be throughout the delegation exercise. Then be sure to celebrate successes along the way.

Further, conduct “stay interviews” by asking your top performers what motivates them, what suggestions they have for improving the work flow and how you can help them prepare for their next career move.

“This is your chance to recognize and acknowledge their contributions, and employees will always feel engaged and excited when they’re making a positive difference at work while building their resumes,” Smith said. After all, top performers will always be resume builders, and learning is the glue that binds an individual to a company, despite offers from headhunters or competitor organizations. You’re always better off conducting proactive stay interviews rather than needing to make reactive counteroffers once a top performer has tendered notice.

While stay interviews are a smart longer-term strategy, you may have a turnover crisis that’s suddenly thrust upon you, and under certain circumstances, extending a counteroffer may make sense. Just make sure that if you’re going to make such an offer, you do it the right way.

According to Smith, “Counteroffers should always remain the exception, not the rule, because of their potential to backfire. After all, most employees [think], ’Why should it take my resigning to trigger a salary increase or promotion?’ ”

But if your strategy is to openly address what’s been plaguing the individual beyond money and identify ways where you can help the individual reconnect and regain a sense of value, the counteroffer may make sense.

Invite the individual to consider a counteroffer like this: “Even though I can’t promise anything at this point, I hope that you’ll allow us to explore some new avenues with you. If we can’t develop an overall career development strategy and growth trajectory that would motivate you to remain with us, then we’ll certainly support your transition to the new company. But we want to keep you, Sarah, and we appreciate your contributions every day. Would you be willing to engage in those kinds of discussions with us?”

Leadership Defense

One key reason for employee dissatisfaction that drives top performers to pursue greener pastures is a perception of unfairness or a leader’s inability to hold everyone accountable to the same performance standards.

John realizes he needs to develop some critical muscle around addressing subpar performance and certain poor behaviors that have calcified in his team over time. The wise vice president of HR counsels him, however, that suddenly addressing substandard performance and conduct issues can shock employees and potentially open up the organization and John personally to employment-related liability. Therefore, in a spirit of full transparency, John will announce to his team that he’s committed to reinventing himself as a leader in this critical area of accountability and setting high and consistent expectations for everyone.

Taking precautions to avoid litigation land mines protects the individual supervisor and the organization as a whole.

“While 1 in 4 managers will likely be involved in employment-related litigation at some point in his or her career, it’s important that leaders like John remain aware of potential pitfalls that might blindside an otherwise unsuspecting supervisor,” said Sharon Bauman, partner in the employment and labor practice group at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP in San Francisco.

Employees are very sophisticated consumers and often realize that the best way to protect themselves from managers’ complaints about their individual performance is to strike first by filing complaints about their supervisors’ conduct. John learns from the vice president of HR why he should run, not walk, to HR when he needs a partner to address a subordinate’s subpar performance or inappropriate workplace conduct. Leadership is a team sport, and it’s shortsighted to think that he can do it all on his own.

After all, whoever gets to HR first triggers the investigation—either focusing on John’s subordinate’s performance problems (if John gets to HR first) or on allegations regarding his conduct as a supervisor (if the employee gets to HR first). That’s when terms like “hostile work environment,” “harassment” and “retaliation” come into play.

John’s lesson? Don’t allow employees to engage in the preemptive strike of “pretaliation” by lodging complaints about him before he has a chance to speak with HR about problems that certain staff members may be causing.

Next, John is advised to avoid the biggest problem facing corporate executives today: grade inflation on the annual performance review. Too many unsuspecting managers take staffers through the progressive discipline process all the way to the final written warning stage, only to issue a “meets expectations” overall score on the annual performance evaluation. John now understands that by doing this, he’ll end up creating a major roadblock if the company wants to terminate the employee in the future.  After all, by giving a “meets expectations” rating, he’ll have validated an entire year’s performance despite the final written warning on file.

In short, it is John’s responsibility to demonstrate consistency between a subordinate’s corrective action history and overall performance review score. When these documents contradict one another, the company will likely have to continue with the documentation process in order to clarify the record. When both are in alignment, the company should have the discretion to terminate the employee upon a clean final incident.

John’s final lesson from the meeting with the vice president of HR: From a practical standpoint, you can’t just terminate, lay off or “give a package” to someone who’s not fitting in or otherwise contributing to your team’s overall success.

“The employment-at-will defense will not guarantee a summary judgment of a wrongful termination claim at the hearing stage, so you’ve always got to assume that a case will make it all the way to the trial stage, and that the jury will be looking for a really good reason to justify the termination decision,” Bauman said. Therefore, John recommits to engaging in those challenging but necessary conversations and to documenting his findings in the form of progressive discipline to reduce or eliminate the possibility of the claim coming back to bite him and his company in litigation. Bauman advises, “Remember, it’s not just the potential dollar cost of being sued; it’s the time and disruption of interrogatories, depositions, hearings, mediations and potentially trials that will zap your team’s energy for six months to a year—or more—after the termination that are the biggest challenges you face.”

As a leader, you can give your company no greater gift than a motivated, energized and engaged workforce. Spikes in turnover may happen from time to time, but what’s critical is your response, the counsel you seek and your willingness to reinvent yourself so that everyone benefits from the crisis. Follow these offensive and defensive leadership practices not only to cultivate your own leadership capabilities but also to foster an environment where motivation, engagement and satisfaction become the hallmarks of your shop. That’s the greatest workplace wisdom of all.

1. Apostrophe Marks

The most common error that distinguishes well-trained writers from those who conveniently skipped high school English class can be found with apostrophe marks.  Apostrophes are generally used to show possession.  Here’s how they work:

Singular: the boy’s book

Plural: the boys’ books

The apostrophe comes after the s when plural possessive nouns are at hand, as in workers’ compensation, employees’ benefits, and unions’ collective bargaining agreements.

Okay, easy enough . . . Now here’s where it gets a little tricky: When you’re writing the plural of an abbreviation, you’ll need to use an apostrophe if the abbreviation itself contains periods.  (However, if the abbreviation doesn’t contain periods, then you can simply add an s to show the plural form.)  Therefore, you’d write plural abbreviations as follows:

In a similarly tricky construct that confuses many business writers, the apostrophe should be omitted when referring to a decade.  Therefore, you’d write:

the 1940s

the 2000s

the ‘90s

2. Commas

Commas are used to separate items in a series.  The issue that causes the most confusion is whether you want to use “serial commas” or not.  For example:

I’ve always been interested in recruiting, employee relations, and training.

That comma between the second and third element (i.e., between employee relations and training) is highly recommended.  Newspapers have historically omitted the comma between the second and third elements to save space, while books typically include them.  As a rule in business writing, include the additional comma and become a “serial comma” enthusiast.  It will avoid confusion every time.

Next, use commas between two independent clauses (i.e., full sentences).  For example:

I like working out at the gym, and I also enjoy reading in the library.

As you can see, the compound sentence above has two independent sentences that can stand on their own.  In comparison, if you write a sentence with a dependent clause (i.e., a partial sentence), then no comma would be necessary.  For example:

I like working out at the gym and also enjoy reading in the library.

3. Semi-Colons

A semi-colon can be used to tie two sentences together that are very closely related.  As a writer, you have the discretion to create two separate sentences or to connect them via the use of a semi-colon.  If you use a semi-colon construction, however, you’ve got to get it right.  Here’s what it might look like:

I’ve always primarily voted Democrat.  However, I will go with a more conservative candidate on particular issues.

I’ve always primarily voted Democrat; however, I will go with a more conservative candidate on particular issues.

Notice that the word however can be used to begin a totally new sentence or as a connector between two very closely related sentences.  If you opt to use the connector semi-colon rather than split your ideas into two separate sentences, just remember that the semi-colon connector is constructed like this:

; however,

The semi-colon ends the first thought and precedes the word however.  Following however, a comma is used to introduce the second half of the sentence.

One more thought about semi-colons: they can be used like commas to introduce a list of items when the items themselves require commas.  For example:

We have offices in Spokane, Washington; Chicago, Illinois; and Springdale, Arkansas.

4. Hyper-Urbanisms

A hyper-urbanism is a 50-cent word for over-correcting language in order for the writer to come across as super smart or intelligent.  Here’s where you’ll find this problem most:

Our boss gave the assignment to Nina, Sam, and I.

In reality, that sentence should read:

Our boss gave the assignment to Nina, Sam, and me.

People tend to over-correct by saying I at the end of a triple series that includes them even if grammar rules would dictate otherwise.  If you break down this sentence into its component parts, here’s what it’s saying:

Our boss gave that assignment to Nina.

Our boss gave that assignment to Sam.

Our boss gave that assignment to me.

You’d never say “Our boss gave that assignment to I.”  However, in an effort to sound more educated, writers often overcompensate by saying “I” at the end of the series.  Similarly, “Our boss asked Nina, Sam, and me to help put away the tables.” is correct and proper English. Don’t assume that any time you list yourself as a third element in a series that “I” is the appropriate usage.  Ditto for “between you and me,” which is correct.   There’s no such thing as “between you and I” in the world of proper English usage!

5. That versus Which

Okay, this one confuses a lot of people too.  Master it and shine among your peers!  That is typically used with a clause that is absolutely necessary to the meaning of a sentence (known as a “restrictive clause”):

This is an assignment that will launch your career.

Which, in comparison, is used with a nonrestrictive clause, meaning that the content isn’t critical to the point you’re making—it’s just an element of clarification or a “nice-to-have.”  Further, when you use the which construct, remember that it generally needs to be set off by a comma like this:

The change control board, which meets every other Tuesday, hasn’t addressed this policy change as far as I’m aware.

True, while any one of these grammar and punctuation issues may not upend an otherwise brilliant career, collectively they can create a less favorable impression than you’d otherwise prefer to portray.  In fact, small tweaks to your written communications may go a long way in enhancing your reputation for competence and professionalism.  Whether these minor errors occur within an email text or—gasp—within a resume you’re reviewing, they paint a subtle picture of an individual’s level of sophistication and education.  No, you don’t need to be an English major to compete in the business world.  But give yourself every advantage by portraying yourself as a well written professional who’s aware of the ins and outs of business writing essentials, and let your communication skills soar.

Fortunately, employee relations experts agree that turning departmental leaders and front-line supervisors into coaches, rather than allowing them to be unilateral decision-makers and disciplinarians, is a culture shift that can be achieved subtly and in a fairly short amount of time.

Finding new software engineers is very difficult for most companies, and retaining them is equally if not more challenging. For Louis, a chief human resources officer (CHRO), attracting and keeping Millennial engineers is a particular challenge since tenure within that age group at his organization is averaging less than 18 months.

As an added challenge, Louis wants to transition his organization’s culture from a focus on individual contributors to team accomplishments. His plan is to reward leaders based not just on their own individual contributions but also for growing the next generation via coaching and development. However, he isn’t sure where to start or how to create this shift in organizational focus, given that his company has adhered to its individual contributor culture for decades.

“It isn’t easy, but you can definitely move your organization in the right direction,” said Shara Fisler, executive director of the Ocean Discovery Institute in San Diego, a nonprofit that supports underserved communities by offering inner-city students opportunities in the fields of ocean science, research and environmental stewardship.

[SHRM members only: Presentation–Core Competencies for Supervisors]

Employee retention and talent management are hot topics in today’s business environment because great workers are so hard to attract and retain. “I’ve found that asking the right questions rather than telling employees what to do creates a sense of empowerment, professional growth and ownership that most employees respond well to,” Fisler said.

Fortunately, employee relations experts agree that turning departmental leaders and front-line supervisors into coaches, rather than allowing them to be unilateral decision-makers and disciplinarians, is a culture shift that can be achieved subtly and in a fairly short amount of time.

Coaching Questions in the Interviewing Process

The employee development paradigm can actually begin during the pre-employment process when candidates are being interviewed for a position. The three following questions can go a long way in forcing career introspection and helping job applicants articulate what they’re truly looking for in their next position:

1. What’s your primary reason for considering leaving your current company, and how would joining our firm help satisfy that need?

2. What criteria are you using in selecting your next opportunity, and what would joining our organization do for you in terms of building your resume over the long term?

3. If you were to accept this position with us right now, how would you explain that to a prospective employer five years from now? In other words, how would this role provide a link to your future career progression?

“No, these aren’t easy questions to answer, but they’re challenging in their own right because they require a certain amount of critical thinking on the candidate’s part, and most [candidates] will walk away being very impressed by an organization that takes such an interest in them personally and in their career needs,” Fisler said.

Coaching Questions for Stay Interviews

Too many companies spend time and energy tending to the lowest 10 percent of performers via progressive discipline, failed annual performance reviews and the like. Maybe a good amount of time spent on these employees is warranted in the sense that all leaders want to avoid or at least minimize the chances of being sued for wrongful termination.

“But every organization’s focus should be on leveraging the top 20 percent of talent because building on strengths is a far more lucrative game than shoring up weaknesses,” said Bill Milowitz, CEO of Turf Care Supply Corporation in Cleveland.  Don’t neglect your top performers only to find yourself struggling through a counteroffer once someone has given notice. Instead, consider conducting stay interviews where you focus on your top performers’ needs and then build individual development plans to help them leverage their strengths by contributing more broadly to your company’s overall success. Simply hold a one-on-one meeting with the top 20 percent of your team members—your “keepers” in the truest sense—and ask them:

4. How would you rate your overall job satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest? How would you grade yourself in terms of doing your best work every day, finding a balance in terms of the company’s needs and your own career and personal development interests, and feeling like you’re firing on all pistons in terms of your overall performance? (Follow up with further questions, such as: Why are you an 8? What would make you a 10?)

5. Which of the following five categories holds the most significance for you career-wise at this point?

(a) opportunities for promotion and advancement

(b) rotational assignments to gain a broader understanding of the organization’s operations and key players

(c) additional training, certification and acquisition of new technical skills

(d) money and other forms of compensation

(e) work/life balance

(Follow up with another question: How can I support you on building on that?)

6.     How can you and I partner as co-leaders to make things better for the rest of the team?

“Making your top performers a critical part of your team’s performance turnaround is just good medicine,” Milowitz said. “Your top performers will always be resume-builders, so placing them into shared roles of key turnaround areas allows them to gain traction and thrive in their own unique way while increasing accountability and engagement.”

Coaching Questions for Employee Development

Building accountability stems from a combination of trust and expectations of high performance. Telling your employees what to do, micromanaging or otherwise holding their hands won’t get you very far. In comparison, stretch assignments, goal-setting and allowing employees the freedom to execute in their own unique way will often beget high levels of loyalty, appreciation and trust. The development of a strong talent bench stems from leaders who trust and respect their workers, as well as those who create an environment where employees can motivate themselves. Try these coaching questions to strengthen the muscles of your top performers:

7. What makes you stand out among your peers? How do you differentiate yourself from your competitors, and how can I help you prepare for your next career move in terms of building up your resume and LinkedIn profile?

8. What professional or career-related opportunities are you most excited about pursuing? How can we make one of your annual goals about or build your individual development plan around what’s most significant to you at this point in your career?

Leader-coaches are typically focused on helping high-performers get even better. But they should also be thinking about what can be done as a team to move the middle of the bell curve—in other words, how can we work together to make some of our good performers great, and who should we focus on?

Don’t underestimate the importance of this concept of “moving the middle.” Minor shifts in overall team performance can have tremendous results, especially when you’re partnering with your top talent to get there. Similarly, condition your team members to come to you with two possible answers for each question they raise.  “That will get them used to thinking constantly about solutions rather than simply passing the buck to you and expecting you to provide answers,” Milowitz recommended. But the most critical method that will force a healthy sense of introspection and also build confidence is simply this—and provides the last two of our 10 questions to develop employees:

9. When an employee asks you what to do, simply ask right back, “What do you think we should do?” And when he or she smiles and politely says, “I don’t know—that’s why I’m coming to you,” you can politely smile and respond back:

10. “I know you don’t know what I think. But if it were up to you, what would you say we should do here?”

Voila! You’ll quickly find that employees will volunteer exactly what you were going to recommend in 90 percent of the cases. “Even when they’re off a bit,” Milowitz said, “asking that magic question gives you an opportunity to guide and mold their response so they understand the why behind the logic of your recommendation. It also helps them realize that they knew the answer the whole time, which builds their confidence and decision-making abilities.” Coaching by asking appropriate questions may take a little getting used to, but you may just find profound results over time with this simple shift in leadership focus.

Creating this kind of learning culture may go a long way in engaging candidates’ hearts during the interview process and stemming the tide of turnover among your earlier-career Millennials. After all, it’s true that people “join companies and leave managers”—that is, of course, unless your leadership team members see themselves as leader-coaches who are helping to strengthen those who will be following in their footsteps. “Selfless leadership is the name of the game,” Fisler said, “and nowhere does it show itself more than in your current leadership team’s willingness to foster and grow the next generation of talent.”

As for CHRO Louis, he realizes that this soft change in leadership strategy may be a fairly easy sell to the rest of the senior executive team, and it may very well be just what his company needs to transition the culture to being more team-oriented and selflessly focused. This all begins with the questions you ask and your willingness to guide the responses you get. Don’t be surprised if your Millennials respond particularly well to this shift in energy as well: After all, leaving your company for another may be a less attractive option if they feel that you are developing them and meeting their career needs.

How can Sharon help Laura put an end to the complaints? More importantly, how can Sharon help Laura reset team expectations to stop not only the drama but also the spiraling accusations and traps that the two appear to be setting for one another?

“Sharon needs to counsel Laura that both Laura’s executive assistant and the company receptionist need to raise their awareness about how they’re coming across to the CEO and to everyone else on the team,” said Judith Enns, Ph.D., executive vice president at Eastridge Workforce Solutions in San Diego. “Further, Laura needs to stop allowing herself to be placed in the middle of their dispute, no matter how much Laura prides herself on having an open door to all of the firm’s employees.”

The healthiest place to start is with HR, since conflict management and dispute resolution clearly fall under HR’s umbrella.

Sharon wisely recommends to Laura a strategy that allows both employees to feel heard and supported. Rather than sitting both employees down at the same time and insisting that they stop the ongoing antagonism and tension, it’s better for Laura and Sharon to plan two sets of meetings over a two-day period. On the first day, they can both meet with each employee to hear the individual’s side of the story and to demonstrate their support and understanding. On the second day, the four of them will hold a group meeting to reset expectations and move forward on a healthier basis.

“Adults can’t typically fix both the what of the problem and the how of the solution on the same day and in the same meeting,” Enns counseled. “They typically need to hear the other person’s side of the story and to sleep on it to be able to walk a mile in the other person’s shoes and make themselves part of the solution. When they own their own solutions, they can act.”  Here’s how Sharon opened the meeting, which Laura attended to ensure full transparency and total understanding all the way around. (We’ll call the executive assistant and the receptionist Joe and Vanessa, respectively, in our example.)

“Joe, Laura and I called this meeting with you to share our concerns about the ongoing tension between you and Vanessa. It appears you and Vanessa struggle to keep the peace, and Laura feels like you’re each in and out of her office way too frequently complaining about the other. It has also risen to the level of being a workplace disruption issue because others are noticing it and informing Laura that they’re uncomfortable when you and Vanessa are together. People have told Laura that they feel like they have to walk on eggshells around you both when you’re together and that they’d prefer to cut a wide swath around you rather then deal with you directly when you’re angry.

“Here’s how we intend to handle this, Joe. Both Laura and I want to hear your side of the story in terms of what’s driving the ongoing antagonism and tension between you and Vanessa. We’re here to support you individually and as a team, but we’ve got to reset expectations and reinvent the relationship by giving you both a fresh start. Here’s the catch, though: Everything you tell us now is something we’re going to share with Vanessa immediately after this meeting. Likewise, we’ll meet with her after this meeting to learn about her side of the story and inform her that we’re going to provide you with her feedback before the end of the day.

“At that point, all the ghosts will be out of the closet in terms of what the problems are, what historically led to them and why there may be resentments lingering between the two of you. I’ll ask you both to reflect on the other’s input tonight and give thought to what you can change about your own behavior to elicit a different response from the other person from this point forward.

“Tomorrow morning at 8:30 a.m., we’re then going to meet as a group—all four of us. In that meeting, we’re going to address the matter professionally and focus on the how of it all—how we move forward from here, how we handle ourselves relative to the rest of the staff, and how we can assume good intentions to build a stronger sense of camaraderie and teamwork.

“Let’s be clear: After tomorrow morning’s meeting, we’re re-welcoming you both back to the company for a fresh start. We’re not going to ask you to forgive; in fact, we’re not even going to ask you to forget. But we are going to ask you to assume good intentions, rethink your commitment to our firm and hold yourselves accountable for managing how you present yourself to your co-workers, which in both your cases has been negative and to your detriment.”

After meeting with Joe, Sharon and Laura hold the same meeting with Vanessa. They explain their intention of resolving these ongoing tensions. After hearing Vanessa’s side of the story with an open mind, they then inform Vanessa of Joe’s specific complaints and allegations. Likewise, they tell Vanessa that they’re going to reach out to Joe immediately to convey Vanessa’s specific concerns.

But if employers don’t provide specific names, the employee being disciplined will likely feel paranoid or misunderstood “I’ve never treated anyone that way. Who says that I’m coming across as rude, crass and confrontational when dealing with others?” is a likely and predictable response.

The key to resolving this potential quagmire is to name names but not attribute specific quotes to specific people. In particular, this would be easy to handle if, for example, all eight members of an eight-member team come forward. Then HR can inform the subject of the complaint that all eight members of his or her team have complained about the behavior. HR can include the remarks that the employees shared but avoid attributing specific quotes to particular employees.

But what if only five members of an eight-member team come forward? Is sharing their names with the director an appropriate response under the circumstances?

“It could be, but like so much else in the human resources/employee relations world, it depends,” Farber said. “If it’s obvious who those five employees would have to be, based on the nature of the complaint, then yes—naming names makes sense. But you, as the employer, have the right to simply state that five members of the eight-member team came forward to lodge the following complaints, without naming names if you’re concerned that the director may attempt to retaliate.”

In documentation format, Nina’s (final) written warning might read like these:

“Today all members of your team voluntarily came forward to human resources to file a formal complaint about your behavior and conduct as their leader. Among the issues raised were [list issues here].

“It has been reported that you, as the department head, continue to engage in intimidating behavior by humiliating members of your team publicly. A number of your direct reports stated that it appears to them that you are attempting to intimidate and belittle them, and more than one person whom we interviewed described your actions as ‘public shaming sessions’ where you sought to ‘break’ and ‘shame’ the individual into compliance.

“I met with the following team members who report to you and requested feedback regarding your general leadership and communication style: [list names here]. The general, consistent theme from these individuals is a lack of trust and respect that you demonstrate toward them. Specific comments they state that you have made recently include: [list comments here].”

This example demonstrates that Nina, as the employer, has the discretion to name employees who came forward to complain. She likewise has the right not to include any names and to simply generalize her findings instead, so long as she provides the parameters of her investigation in terms of the number and level of individuals interviewed.

Likewise, it’s important to document that members of the team stated to her and/or the larger HR department that they fear retaliation for coming forward. Retaliation is a separate and very serious violation in and of itself. Nina should include a sentence such as the following in her disciplinary warning:

“Further, the fact that multiple members of your team volunteered that they fear retaliation for coming forward with a good-faith complaint about your leadership and communication style underscores a lack of trust in you as their leader, which is a separate and equally concerning problem regarding your leadership of the team.” 

When Documentation Can Hurt You

“Be careful, however,” cautioned Farber, “not to overgeneralize or create a record that demonstrates that you may have jumped to conclusions without having given the individual enough information to defend himself.”

For example, generalizations such as “everyone feels uncomfortable working with you when you’re in a bad mood” or “no one enjoys working with you when you’re angry, and you’re angry often” will likely leave the director feeling confused, paranoid and ganged-up on. Absolutes like “everyone” and “no one” will often come across as exaggerations, especially on paper, and will rarely be defensible should the matter proceed to litigation.

Therefore, to avoid overgeneralizing, Nina could draft her corrective action in one of these ways:

“A number of the individuals HR interviewed stated that they feel uncomfortable working with you at times when you appear to be angry.”

“Individuals whom HR interviewed stated that you appear to be angry often, which makes them feel like they have to walk on eggshells around you.”

“You have every right to document your concerns regarding the individual’s mood swings or apparent anger management issues,” Farber said. “Documenting how those directly impacted experience the effects of such behavior is key to fair and consistent progressive disciplinary documentation.”  

Set Expectations Appropriately

Nina should tell the employees who complained that she will be listing their names when communicating with the director. Yes, this may initially raise fears of confrontation and retaliation, but employees will likely feel more comfortable about it if she communicates expectations as follows:

“Everyone, I called this meeting with you and Denise, John’s boss, because we need you to know as a group that we’ll be using your names in bringing this matter to John’s attention. We need to tell him whom we’ve met with and what the overall feedback was in order for him to understand the gravity of the situation. However, we won’t be attributing any specific quotes or statements to any of you—we’ll only provide information regarding the feedback we’ve received and the people who were interviewed.

“Plus, Denise is here to ensure that no retaliation of any kind results from this good-faith investigation. Further, we’ll set expectations with John very clearly that he’s not to conduct any investigations on his own as to who said what about whom during this process, and I’m instructing you to inform me as the HR manager, or Denise as the department head, if you sense that any such investigations are going on. We’ll explain to John that any actions on his part that could appear to be retaliatory in nature could result in serious discipline in its own right.

“Finally, we’re going to instruct him to keep managing and directing his team and not to avoid anyone or any issues that could negatively impact performance. Our expectations of John will focus on him managing as normal and holding everyone accountable to high performance standards without engaging in any conduct that could appear to be retaliatory in nature. What questions do you have about our intended approach?

With a forward-looking action plan that is transparent and honest and that sets expectations all around, trust can be restored. The critical elements are that Nina’s written corrective action to John is clear and uncontestable in its intent, that the employees understand that she handled the matter responsibly and set expectations for them as well, and that HR’s partnership with John’s leader will remain tight and keep things on target and in order. It’s a no-nonsense approach to a serious matter that can be resolved with minimal drama and angst, while maintaining everyone’s self-respect and allowing the healing to begin.

Karen recently joined a plastics manufacturing company as its director of HR and administration. An employee needed to be terminated, and Karen was asked if it would be better to provide a generic termination letter, provide a detailed termination letter or simply to notify the individual verbally that the company was choosing to move forward with dismissal.

Like so much else in human resources, it depends: Providing accurate and specific termination letters may be in the company’s best interests because details of the situation serve to demonstrate that the termination was legitimate, consistent and based on sound business reasons. Further, well-written and substantiated termination letters can dissuade plaintiffs’ attorneys from taking on a case. On the other hand, Karen is aware that a poorly constructed termination letter could do enormous damage should the matter proceed to litigation, which is why certain defense lawyers recommend only generic letters with few or no details—and some recommend providing no letter at all.

“It’s not so much which style is better—it’s which style best suits your organization’s history and culture, as well as the particular circumstances surrounding the termination decision,” said Chris Olmsted, shareholder at Ogletree Deakins in San Diego. “Terminations without explanation can give rise to incorrect assumptions about the company’s motives. For example, terminating a witness in a harassment investigation without explanation may give rise to the belief that the company retaliated against the employee, even if the employee had a history of performance problems. A well-written and accurate letter of termination could provide contemporaneous evidence establishing the legitimate basis for termination.

“On the other hand, if the termination letter is poorly written or includes wrong facts or incomplete information, then the company’s credibility could suffer in litigation. For example, if the termination letter references a reduction in force but the company then immediately hires a replacement, the offered reason might be seen as pretense.”

While it’s true that advising an employee of the reason for the termination is considered a best practice and may be required in some states, the employer generally retains the discretion to express the reasons for termination specifically or generically and either verbally or in writing.

Consider the Company’s Investigation and Documentation Style

“Look first to see how well the company conducts its investigations, documents its findings and engages in consistent practices across similar cases,” said Travis Griffith, vice president of human resources and administration at Azubu, a global e-sports broadcast network provider in Sherman Oaks, Calif. Inconsistencies in either the documentation itself or the organization’s investigational practices in the past could raise doubts around fairness and consistency.

“After all, if you’ve not documented your investigational efforts consistently over the past few years, if you’ve investigated some cases but not others or if your termination decision doesn’t seem to square with the particular policy that was violated, then limiting the specific facts in your termination letter probably makes most sense.” But if you’re rock-solid in terms of your investigational efforts, consistent in your findings and have a past practice of providing detailed justifications for terminations, then continuing that practice will likely benefit the company over the long term.

Issues of Performance vs. Conduct

Another key consideration lies in your company’s approach to performance versus conduct terminations. It may make more sense to provide details in performance-related terminations, Griffith said, where an employee has failed to meet the terms outlined in progressive disciplinary warnings. For example, if the company issued verbal, written and final written warnings to a worker for substandard job performance that was clearly within the individual’s control, then a specific termination letter may be a better choice. In such cases, the specific termination notice should outline the particular policy that was violated, the dates of prior disciplinary events, the progressive levels of corrective action that were taken and the final incident that violated the terms of the final written warning, thereby justifying the termination.

“Providing detailed findings in a termination letter may not always be the best approach when the circumstances involve egregious misconduct that results in what’s known as a summary [or immediate] dismissal,” Olmsted said. In cases where behaviors like theft, fraud or extreme harassment take place, it’s probably better to provide general statements and conclusions. “The letter could end up in anyone’s hands or even be posted on the Internet. An overly specific letter may contain sensitive details that, if disclosed to others, may harm the company’s reputation.”

Although the company’s investigation file ought to contain the specific details, you’re not obligated to tell the whole story in a termination letter, especially if it’s complicated or debatable or if it’s possible that certain key facts or sides of the story could be left out. “Just understand that the termination letter will likely be a key focus of the plaintiff attorney’s litigation claim, so regardless of whether the letter is general or specific, be sure that its findings are beyond reproach,” Olmsted said.

Formatting the Termination Letter

A generic termination letter may simply reference the fact that you’ve discussed the reason for separation with the individual verbally:

“As you know and as we have discussed, we have determined that you have engaged in inappropriate workplace conduct that violates company policy. As such, we have decided to terminate your employment, effective immediately. Thank you for your service to XYZ Corporation.”

On the other hand, if you’re planning on providing details that justify the termination, your documentation might look like this:

“This is to inform you that you are being terminated immediately for failure to perform your work at an acceptable level. On Aug. 7, 2016, you received a verbal correction notice for substandard work performance and an unwillingness to perform properly assigned work duties. On Oct. 4, 2016, you received a written warning for substandard work performance and equipment breakage. On Nov. 2, 2016, you received a final written warning for substandard work performance.

“Today you committed a serious error in the handling of company equipment. Namely, you failed to place the Unit X2137 in the rack washer after spraying it down with acid. Because you did not notify your co-workers about this exception to standard operating procedures, a fellow worker handled the acid-covered unit and was subsequently injured. Your failure to properly process equipment demonstrates an ongoing inability to perform at an acceptable level and a lack of focus in your job. We consequently have no choice but to immediately sever this employment relationship, effective immediately.”

Remember, of all the decisions that managers make, termination calls are the ones most likely to result in litigation.

In reality, most managers typically put off this confrontational task for as long as possible.

No, corrective action isn’t a death sentence, and in its purest form is meant to be an alert that an employee’s performance isn’t meeting company expectations so that the individual can turn things around and get back on the right track. But what if an employee refuses to sign a written warning or a final written warning? What are your rights and alternatives in terms of holding the individual accountable for her performance turnaround? “The good news is that you’ve got options,” according to Jacqueline Cookerly Aguilara, partner in the Los Angeles office of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, LLP. “Having the employee sign the piece of paper is important as an evidentiary matter in terms of according workplace due process, but it’s more important that the individual assume responsibility for her performance or behavior. That’s where the true fix occurs.”

Invite the employee to write a rebuttal

Your progressive discipline template should invite employees to participate in the turnaround by making themselves part of the solution. Consider including language in your corrective action template that reads as follows:

“I recognize that you may have your own ideas and suggestions for improving the situation at hand. Therefore, I encourage you to provide your own performance improvement plan input and/or rebuttal below or on a separate sheet of paper if you wish.”

If an employee disagrees with the facts contained in the write-up, the rebuttal allows the individual to draft his version of the events and document his version of reality.

Further, as a matter of practice, the company shouldn’t “rebut the rebuttal.” The employee gets the last word, and unless material facts are included that the company is bound to address for the sake of record clarity, the employee should have the right to respectfully disagree with the company’s actions. “All in all, however, the rebuttal does the same thing as signing the document in the eyes of the law: It provides acknowledgment that the employee received the document and will be held to its terms and conditions,” according to Cookerly Aguilara.

Call a witness into the room

When all else fails and an employee absolutely refuses to sign the document or provide a rebuttal, call another member of management/human resources into the room to witness that the employee received it. The management witness doesn’t need to be brought into the details of the disagreement or otherwise be inserted into the argument. That manager’s role is simply to witness that the document was issued, should the employee later claim that she never received it. The manager-witness can simply document on the written warning below the employee signature line: “Employee Sarah Doe was issued this corrective action in my presence and refused to sign it.” As such, the evidentiary requirement is met, and the company can move forward with further discipline at a future date if required.

Progressive discipline is a necessary part of management. Finding ways to involve your employees in their own performance improvement turnarounds and encouraging their formal input is a smart way to make a tense situation more cooperative and palatable. Knowing how and when to include an objective manager-witness from an evidentiary standpoint is an important legal tactic when both sides can’t seem to see eye to eye.

Casino Revenues Are Skyrocketing

The casino industry generates huge revenues on a yearly basis. Most of the figures are generated by brick-and-mortar gambling branches that reach gross earnings of around 450 billion. The online gambling market is not falling behind either. On the contrary, it is recording bewildering growth from one year to the next.

Taking advantage of the ascending trends, casino managers and their HR teams need to find the best strategies to hire the best people to fill in casino positions.

What Kind Of People Should Casinos Be Hiring?

First of all, know there is no real golden rule casinos follow when hiring new personnel. They hire all sorts of people who are attracted by the glamorous industry and have a passion for the games. Lots of the individuals who land casino jobs have zero experience in the field. But they do possess the right qualities that make them suitable for the job. The list would include qualities and features like outgoing personality, openness, friendliness, and a take-charge attitude.

Technical skills such as dealing specialty games should also be a part of the same list of characteristics HR should be looking for. People who can handle the money as it flows in are also on high demand. And the same goes for security personnel, slot change attendants, or even the personnel responsible for beverage service personnel. There are also many receptionists who work in casino resorts or people who work for online gambling venues and casino rooms as live dealers or game designers.

Since there are more and more gamblers who prefer to go online and opt for a paypal casino UK based for example to satisfy their quench for gambling, more online casino personnel is needed. Even though a casino is located online, it still needs a powerful team of people behind it to run smoothly. There are places like Top News Casinos that offer reviews on the best gambling places online where live dealer games can be played. Needless to say the HR team needs to focus on hiring the best people for the role of dealers. The more telegenic and friendly they are, the better players’ experiences.

Of course professional dealers need special training. Dealers can attend professional dealing school, get on-the-job training, or learn the skills from friends who are already in the business. They can start small, by playing casino games for free online and getting better familiarized with them.

Janet wisely looked at the personnel file of the three-year employee in question and found three annual performance reviews that the employee met expectations and no corrective action. She asks the department manager why these ongoing performance issues hadn’t been documented in the form of progressive discipline or a negative annual review, and the leader defensively responded that the demands of the job were too high to divert energy and resources toward corrective action or any other type of negative, confrontational activities. It was time for Janet to educate the manager on the nature of at-will employment and its practical limitations in the workplace. This link will take you to the web site of SHRM…

At-Will Employment History in the U.S.

Have you ever wondered, “Why can’t we just fire employees if they’re employed at will?” or “Don’t we have total discretion to terminate on a whim (i.e., without cause) for substandard job performance or inappropriate workplace conduct?” You’ll understand your rights and limitations a lot better once you have a firmer grasp of employment law history. At the time of our nation’s founding in the 18th century, U.S. employment law borrowed much of what existed in England at the time, where termination for just cause only was the standard. In fact, the 14th Amendment to our Constitution later guaranteed, among other rights, workplace due process, based on the fact that the right to work was so fundamental to U.S. citizens that it shouldn’t be taken away arbitrarily or without due process of law. In essence, workers had a property right to their jobs, and companies were not at liberty to terminate without just cause or good reason.

That all changed in the 1930s at the time of the Great Depression. The very existence of capitalism appeared to be under threat, and Congress pulled out all the stops to ensure that companies could stay in business. The employment-at-will relationship was born, and the employment property right shifted to companies, which suddenly retained full discretion to terminate at whim.

After World War II, unions gained a stronghold in corporate America. However, it wasn’t for the reasons most people expect. When polled, most respondents believe that the ability to collectively bargain for better wages and benefits drove union growth in the late 1940s through 1950s. In reality, it was the unions’ promise of job security in the form of workplace due process that sent membership ranks through the roof. According to Rich Falcone (no relation to the author), shareholder and senior employment litigation partner with Littler in Irvine, Calif., “In short, the promise went, if your company becomes unionized, you won’t be employed at will. The company will have to follow a termination-for-just-cause-only standard, meaning that you can’t be terminated at whim and must generally be informed in writing if your job performance is a problem or your position is at risk.”

Workers flocked to unions as a result, with union membership reaching its peak in the 1950s when roughly 35 percent of the U.S. workforce fell under some form of a collective bargaining agreement. Today, that percentage is closer to 12 percent of the workforce (with the majority in public-sector organizations).

One key reason for the decline in union membership is the advent of tort law. In the 1980 case Tameny v. Arco Oil, then-California Supreme Court justice Rose Byrd ruled that a 15-year employee who refused to engage in price fixing on the employer’s behalf couldn’t be fired under the employment-at-will umbrella.

“The public-policy exception was born, and exceptions to the employment-at-will practices made it much more difficult for companies to terminate using the employment-at-will affirmative defense,” according to Falcone. Specifically, four major categories of exceptions to employment-at-will included:

Public-policy exceptions (e.g., as in the Tameny case, where whistle-blowing or otherwise engaging in protected, concerted activities eliminated a company’s ability to terminate at whim under the employment-at-will affirmative defense)

Statutory exceptions (i.e., protected classes, like those outlined in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, race, color, religion, or national origin)

Employment contracts (including collective bargaining agreements)

Implied contract exceptions/implied covenants of good faith and fair dealing (especially pertaining to potential promises made in employee handbooks)

Why Performance Reviews Are So Important

Today the plaintiff bar, rather than unions, functions primarily as the mechanism to remedy employer malfeasance in the workplace, and the concept of workplace due process is still at issue when it comes to litigating employment claims. What’s key, however, is that employers understand how the dual standards of employment at will versus termination for just cause only are used in the courtroom.

The employment-at-will affirmative defense is applied at the hearing stage with the goal of gaining an immediate dismissal of the case in the form of a summary judgment. The company will argue that the former employee was employed at will and that the company did nothing to repeal the employment-at-will relationship. Therefore, the company’s defense attorney will request that the court dismiss the case by relying on the employment-at-will relationship that the company had established with its ex-worker. If the judge grants a summary judgment based on the employment-at-will affirmative defense, the case ends at the hearing stage, plain and simple.

Unfortunately for most corporate defense attorneys, 90 percent of claims don’t get dismissed at the summary judgment hearing stage—they continue on to the next stage in the litigation process: the trial. “Once the case is escalated to trial, there’s almost no such thing as the employment-at-will affirmative defense any longer. At the trial stage, the only standard that likely will be considered is termination for just cause only,” Falcone counsels. “So once a case makes it to trial, our legal system reverts back to the termination-for-just-cause-only standard established in the 18th century. And as the saying goes, ‘If it wasn’t written down, it never happened.’ ”

Therefore, practically speaking, companies can’t terminate workers solely based on the fact that they’re employed at will. Without a crystal ball, the company can’t know whether it will win a summary judgment at the hearing stage using the employment-at-will affirmative defense or if the case will proceed to trial. As a result, when it comes to relying on the employment-at-will status of a worker versus documenting progressive discipline to prove that a company had cause to terminate, it’s not one or the other—it’s both.

“Every company should attempt to protect the employment-at-will relationship with its workers (for the sake of winning a summary judgment at the hearing stage) but also be prepared to show that it had cause to terminate should the case escalate to the trial stage,” Falcone advises. That cause to terminate is typically found in the form of documented progressive disciplinary warnings and failed annual performance reviews—and you’ll sure be glad you have them if a claim escalates to trial.

“As a general rule, therefore, you should always assume that a litigated case will progress to the trial stage and that your company will have the burden of proving that it had good cause (in the form of progressive discipline) to terminate,” Falcone advises. “That’s what jurors want to hear.”

That’s just the advice that Janet needed to convince her department manager that effective leaders are responsible for tackling employee performance and conduct issues head-on and documenting them, when necessary, as they occur. Never underestimate the importance of progressive disciplinary documentation and failed performance reviews to demonstrate that you had just cause to terminate. You’ll protect your company, make your defense lawyer proud and, most importantly, give the worker a chance to course-correct and turn things around.

“First, keep in mind that with a layoff, you eliminate positions, not people,” said Lara de Leon, shareholder and labor and employment attorney at Ogletree Deakins in Costa Mesa, Calif. In other words, your written records must first reflect that a position is being eliminated because of a lack of work or other financial constraints and then that an individual employee must be impacted because there’s no longer a job for that person. “If removing a problem performer is your goal, then eliminating that individual’s job may be a big mistake. After all, you’ll still need to get the work done,” de Leon said.

Peer Group Analysis

Second, determining which employee should be laid off once you’ve established a legitimate business need to eliminate a position can be difficult. Remember, you can’t arbitrarily select someone for a layoff simply because you believe he or she is the weakest performer or even because that person happens to be sitting in the seat that’s being eliminated. Instead, you’re obligated to identify the least qualified person in the department or unit. The least qualified person on paper, however, may end up being your best (albeit newest) performer.

For example, if you have three social media coordinators in your communications department and you decide to eliminate one position, you now have a selection pool to choose from. As a result, your company will be required to conduct a “peer group analysis” to see which of the three individuals is the least qualified to assume the remaining job responsibilities once the position is eliminated. Sometimes, the three employees will be invited to interview for the two open positions. “More typically, the company will select the person based on a review of relevant factors, such as skill, ability or experience and notify them of the layoff,” de Leon said.

Once performance reviews, progressive discipline records, education, technical skills and other criteria are considered, a final decision can be made; the key is ensuring that the documentation supports the decision.  “Don’t be too surprised, however, if the poor performer you’re looking to eliminate has the most tenure or the strongest record on paper,” de Leon cautioned. “In such cases, the documentation won’t support your selecting that individual for layoff.”

If your records don’t support separating the problematic employee in question, then a layoff would no longer be a viable option since you can’t use that rationale to eliminate the individual who’s causing the problems. Instead, you’d have to revert to managing that problematic employee’s performance via documented progressive discipline.

Leaving the Position Unfilled

There is another key consideration when determining if a layoff is the appropriate employer action when dealing with an underperforming employee. Courts and juries have certain expectations about employers’ responsibilities when eliminating positions and laying off workers. The logic is simply this: If a company has a legitimate business need to eliminate a position, then it probably shouldn’t have a need to recreate that position in the near future. If the company were to do that, it could appear to a judge or jury that the company’s original action was pretext. In other words, the court could be persuaded that the so-called layoff was really a termination for cause in disguise. This could obviously damage the company’s credibility during litigation.

How long does the position need to remain unfilled? That depends on your state. “There is usually a one-year or two-year statute of limitations on wrongful termination claims, so backfilling that position in less than the one- or two-year statute of limitations period becomes legally risky unless you have a legal release from the ex-worker precluding them from suing you for wrongful termination,” de Leon said.

What if an employer were willing to gamble and fill the position after, say, six months? If the ex-employee learned that his or her previous position was filled and then engaged the services of a plaintiff’s attorney to pursue the matter, the damages sought could be similar to a wrongful termination claim, including reimbursement for lost wages, compensation for emotional distress, plaintiff’s attorney fees and, in egregious cases of employer misconduct, punitive damages.

A Release May Provide Some Protection—If You Can Get One

If the individual signs a release agreement in exchange for a severance package, then you should be able to backfill the position without much risk. “The only catch to this scenario is that you won’t know upfront if the individual will be willing to sign the release at the time you notify him of the position elimination,” de Leon said. If he opts not to, then you’re pretty much stuck because you “showed your cards” and won’t have much recourse if you try to remove the individual without progressive discipline. If you ultimately terminate the individual for cause, some sort of a retaliation claim may be leveraged against your company. After all, the individual will know that you originally wanted him gone at the time you discussed the layoff option, and a plaintiff’s attorney will likely argue that the corrective action issued after that point in time was either pretext or downright bogus.

“Bottom line: Following your performance management or progressive discipline process is the optimal way to deal with substandard job performance or inappropriate workplace behavior,” de Leon said. “Trying to hide behind a layoff may feel easier to implement on the front end but could leave your company vulnerable should the matter ultimately proceed to litigation.”

If there’s a performance issue, address it. Don’t tiptoe around it by trying to eliminate the person’s position. While this tactic may have initial appeal because it appears to be a tidy and efficient way of separating someone from the company, you owe your employees more than that. Hold yourself to the highest leadership standards and address critical performance or conduct issues head on. That’s how the performance management system was designed to be used, and it’s what great leaders do when faced with adverse employee performance situations. It’s also healthier for your organization overall because it’s honest and transparent, and employees respect their companies more when they feel that matters are treated above board, especially in difficult situations like these.

Could that sort of documentation come back to haunt Sally and her company legally? Note this link will take you off site to SHRM online where this article first appeared. “There are two common errors that leaders make when documenting investigations,” according to Sam Sherman, employment defense attorney with San Diego law firm Tencer Sherman. The two errors—typically committed when drafting performance reviews and documenting disciplinary action—are codifying the damage and using mental qualifiers.

“They’re fairly easy to avoid, though, if you’re aware of them and understand the logic behind the damage they can cause,” Sherman said.

Avoid Codifying the Damage

Many well-meaning leaders place their organizations at risk by not thinking through the significance of their corrective action documentation. For example, if, in the documentation, it says that an employee “sexually harassed” or “retaliated against” a co-worker, those phrases could later be used against your company as a concrete, documented fact. “‘Sexual harassment’ is a legal conclusion,” warned Sherman. “If you confirm in writing that sexual harassment has indeed occurred, then your own investigational documentation may become prime fodder for a plaintiff’s attorney looking to find proof of a supervisor’s inappropriate actions.”

As another example, if it is written that a loan administrator “mishandled a pool of loans” by failing to follow appropriate mortgage banking guidelines, then this documented information could become evidence of neglect and mismanagement on your firm’s part if that pool of loans never gets sold on the secondary mortgage market or otherwise becomes discoverable to stock investors.

Instead of naming or codifying the specific damage to the organization or to the employee on the receiving end of a supervisor’s inappropriate workplace behavior, document such matters using language that is less concrete. For example, if it appears that a worker violated the company’s anti-harassment policy, say that: “This individual’s actions appear to violate company policy 5.30 on Respect in the Workplace.” You might also write: “The employee’s actions suggest that he may have inadvertently created an offensive environment” and that, as part of your follow-up action plan, you would expect the individual to “never again engage in conduct that could appear to diminish a person’s self-worth or sense of well-being.” Similarly, in the case of the loan administrator’s performance, you might document: “The loan administrator’s failure to follow standard operating procedure could have potentially jeopardized an entire pool of loans.”

While certain documents may be protected by the attorney-client privilege because there is a need for legal counsel’s analysis and guidance, all of your investigation notes probably won’t be protected by the privilege (i.e., barred from consideration by the plaintiff’s attorney). In fact, your notes will basically become the foundation on which the company justifies its defense. As such, Sherman advised, “Avoid codifying any damage by avoiding conclusions and instead simply document facts, which will prevent your own documentation from inadvertently benefiting a plaintiff attorney’s case against your organization.”

Avoid Using Mental Qualifiers

In particularly egregious cases of workplace misconduct, supervisors sometimes try to paint a picture of the severity of an offense by using terms like “deliberately,” “purposely,” “intentionally,” “willfully” and “maliciously.” Such mental qualifiers may indeed drive home your point that someone acted in a highly inappropriate way, but it isn’t necessary to use such descriptions. “Instead,” recommended Louis Gutierrez, an employment attorney and chief human resources officer at the Port of Long Beach in Long Beach, Calif., “let the facts speak for themselves.” It doesn’t matter whether “John deliberately tried to offend Sally publicly in front of her whole team.” All that matters is that “Sally stated that she felt offended by John’s comments, which were made in front of the whole team” and that John’s actions were “confirmed by other credible witnesses.” One is an objective observation, while the other is a subjective judgment. “Always document objective observations and avoid anything that might appear to be subjective or judgmental,” advised Gutierrez.

In the litigation arena, this becomes all the more relevant. Plaintiffs’ attorneys will be quick to cast doubt on the validity of your “objective” investigatory findings if you pepper your notes with adverbs that speak to someone’s alleged state of mind. In essence, you may end up making yourself vulnerable to a slew of legal challenges, as a plaintiff’s attorney can challenge your fact-finding skills and attack your credibility with questions about how you could have possibly known what was going on inside their client’s (your former employee’s) mind at the time of the incident. For example, an attorney might say: “How do you know that my client was acting deliberately and willfully when he made that remark? How could you purport to know what was going on in John’s head at the time of the incident in question? How well do you know him? Do you not like him for any reason? Can you honestly state that you’ve harbored no prior resentment against him for any reason when conducting this investigation?”

In summary, “avoid words like deliberately, intentionally, purposely, willfully, or maliciously when documenting your findings during an investigation and, as a general rule, stay away from adverbs,” advised Gutierrez. “They’re simply not necessary and do little to drive your message home.” Moreover, they do little to support your investigatory findings and any remedial action but can do a lot of damage to your credibility in the litigation arena.

As a corporate leader, drafting corrective action and annual performance reviews may not be things that you do often or enjoy. Still, because formal employee documents can be subpoenaed and used as evidence against your company, they are critical records. Make sure you’re aware of how to write them properly to accord employees with workplace due process, turn around substandard workplace performance or conduct, and protect your company legally should a wrongful termination case ensue.

On the one hand, Millennials typically want many of the same things that their predecessor generations were looking for at work: A company that articulates a healthy mission, benefits from establishing and practicing the right values, makes a difference in its community, and serves as a responsible and benevolent corporate citizen. What makes them different, on the other hand, is that they’re confident in their abilities to change the world, and they’re not afraid of job change and arguably perceive a lack of job security as normal. Having witnessed their parents’ generation’s lack of job security and uncoupling with corporate America, they arguably search for employment opportunities with the goal of finding experiences that satisfy them and where they can make the most difference. Further, Millennials are the most sophisticated consumers in history. They know how to search for products and opportunities well in advance of a sale or a job interview. As such, they pose a challenge to organizations looking for retention and talent development over the long haul.

Where does that leave you in terms of your approach and strategy to interviewing earlier career candidates? How do you reinvent the interviewing process to account for this massive generation’s focus and values? And how can the interview itself become a demonstration of your organization’s culture and uniqueness as a key selling factor? Make no doubt about it: The interview will remain your opportunity to shine, and if your interviewing approach is done right, you’ll actually be able to move the post-employment talent development paradigm to the pre-employment stage by giving candidates a preview of your approach to personal and professional development.

Here’s how it works: Replace the trite and hackneyed “Tell me about yourself” and “Why do you think you’d want to work here” opening questions with much deeper, purposeful queries that help you get to know the candidates better and force them to engage in honest career introspection. Learn about what makes them special, what drives them, and how they’re going about selecting their next company or position. Wow them with your focus on matching your organization’s staffing needs with their career development needs so that it’s a win-win for both sides. Here’s what some of your questions might sound like during your interviewing opener:

• Walk me through your progression in your career, leading me up to how you landed at your current company and in your present role.

• What are the two or three criteria you’re using in selecting your next company or position? What’s important to you at this point in your career?

• What would the ideal opportunity look like in terms of the industry, company, or title that you’re pursuing?

These openers make for an easy entree into any interviewing scenario, but more importantly, they launch the interview with self-assessment questions that allow candidates to speak openly and makes themselves “vulnerable,” an important aspect of establishing trust from the very first encounter. Before the meeting concludes, ask these additional questions to gain a better feel for the candidate’s interest level:

• What would joining our organization do for you in terms of building your resume over the long term?

• Now that you’ve had a chance to research us and learn more during this interview, how would this opportunity provide a link to your future career progression?

• Likewise, if you were to accept a position with us, how would you explain that to a prospective employer five years from now?

• What would be your next logical move in progression if you remained with your current company, and how long would it take for you to get there? (Alternative: What would have to change at your present company for you to continue working there, and have you spoken with your boss about your concerns?)

Very few interviewers pose such selfless questions, and candidates will likely walk away with a very positive impression: “Wow, I’ve never been asked questions before that really focus on my needs, where I am in my career, and what I’m considering. I really appreciate how that hiring manager handled my interview. And if they approach interviewing this way, I’m guessing that this is an important part of their culture once you’re aboard . . . “ If you as an interviewer make that type of impression, you’ll no doubt have pierced their hearts in addition to engaged their heads. Millennials have forced companies to rethink everything from workplace flexibility to the nature of real-time feedback to the use of cubicles. Now’s the time for the interview to take on new meaning as a more significant exercise to both candidate selection and potential career development.

Sarah is a successful vice president of sales, but is struggling with Roger, a member of her account executive team. Roger has been with the company for about two years and consistently meets minimum performance standards, yet has difficulty controlling his temper and has a penchant for blaming others—both co-workers and clients—for his problems. As a result, few people trust him, and most walk on eggshells around him rather than deal with him directly.

The straw that breaks the camel’s back comes when Sarah learns that Roger is complaining about her leadership and communication style to her peers and the organization’s leaders, as well as to some key customers. She wants him gone. However, because he consistently meets minimal sales performance expectations, Sarah hasn’t addressed Roger’s conduct problems, even though they continue to plague her team. Still, she reasons that because of his inability to work as part of a team and his lack of trust and goodwill among peers and department management, as well as his aggressive behavior, ending Roger’s employment swiftly may make the most sense. Sarah’s proposed solution: offer Roger a separation package to move him out of the organization.

Separation packages typically mimic severance packages in terms of the structure of the offer—two weeks of pay for each full year of service, for example. However, with a separation package, there’s no position elimination involved. Instead, the company simply opts to give an employee money to entice the individual to leave the company. A release is signed, and the company is held harmless so it can move forward with hiring someone else for the position.

“It sounds like a tidy solution at first, but it poses a number of challenges that aren’t necessarily evident at the outset,” said Rich Falcone (no relation to the author), shareholder and employment litigation partner at Littler in Irvine, Calif. “The request to separate Roger now with a separation package poses two significant risks: First, the employee may refuse to accept the company’s offer. Second, it could make it more difficult for the company to terminate Roger in the future” since such a termination might appear retaliatory. “Third, the organization appears to be entering into this negotiation with little if any leverage to entice the employee to accept the separation package.”

To address these shortcomings, Sarah will need to partner with her organization’s HR and legal department to structure this intended negotiation appropriately.

3 Caveats When Considering a Separation Package

Caveat 1: The employee may have the upper hand in the compensation negotiation. If the company offers four weeks of lump-sum salary in exchange for Roger’s signing a release, for example, and he demands six months, Sarah may be weakening her position. Since she has no leverage in this negotiation other than an intense desire to make Roger leave, she’ll have little choice but to meet his demands for a six-month separation package if she wants him to sign and go.

Caveat 2: While a company certainly has the discretion to make a take-it-or-leave-it offer, threatening termination if the employee doesn’t accept the package and sign the release is exceptionally problematic. Per Falcone, “Workers are sophisticated consumers who will reach out to an attorney to find out if the deal you’re offering is better than what they could get in litigation. And if their attorney senses that there is a potential case not only for wrongful termination but also for other causes of action like harassment, discrimination or retaliation that carry punitive damage potential, then you may find yourself in court with little if any defense. After all, you won’t be able to demonstrate cause for the separation.”

Caveat 3: If the employee refuses to sign the agreement and you opt not to terminate at that point, you’ve now “shown your hand” and revealed your intention to remove the individual from the workplace. Therefore, as soon as you take legitimate steps to document Roger’s substandard performance in the future, your actions will likely be interpreted as retaliation by an attorney who can make the argument that “Once he didn’t voluntarily accept your severance package, you made up reasons to terminate him for cause.” You can logically expect the attorney to argue that any reasons for subsequent progressive discipline were either based on pretext or were downright bogus.

A Practical Solution to Turn the Negotiation in Your Favor

There’s a practical solution to this potential quagmire, and it lies in how you set expectations. Nicole Minkow at Pearlman, Borska & Wax LLP in Encino, Calif., advised, “Don’t begin separation negotiations or offer any type of separation package without having leverage in the game. That leverage typically comes in the form of documented corrective action that places the individual’s job at risk.”

In Roger’s case, his overly aggressive and threatening behavior toward co-workers, ongoing negative comments regarding customers, and habit of placing blame on peers any time something goes wrong give the company plenty of content to draft corrective action based on Roger’s inappropriate workplace conduct. Depending on the nature of the behaviors and the individual complaints involved, a written warning or even a final written warning may be in order.

When this corrective action documentation is delivered to Roger, Sarah and the HR department may want to offer him the option of accepting a separation package as an alternative to potentially being terminated for cause. Sarah’s part in the conversation might sound something like this:

Concluding Thoughts

The beauty of this negotiation is twofold: First, the pending written warning serves as a leverage point because Roger realizes that his job is may be in jeopardy. Second, you’ve now set up the negotiation so that he’s asking you for the separation package, and you’re offering to look into it to help him. No guarantees and no promises, but you now have him asking for your help because it’s for his own good. In fact, even if he doesn’t want to pursue the package option right now, you’ll have quietly established that escape option should the need arise in the future.

No, this may not provide you with the ultimate solution you were hoping for: immediate separation. But you also have to assume partial responsibility for not necessarily having managed the situation appropriately in the past. After all, if Roger has demonstrated such problematic behavior that you now wish he would simply disappear from the workplace, there were likely opportunities in the past where you could have documented those issues formally on performance reviews or in the form of corrective action warnings.

“As in all successful negotiations, the transaction should be a win-win for both sides,” Minkow said. “But you’ve got to have some form of leverage to rely on. Corrective action documentation will typically serve that purpose.”

Keep your documentation tight and avoid including any recommendations that attempt to make people magically disappear overnight. Such recommendations typically won’t work because you have very little control over the outcome, and you wouldn’t want to expose your organization to unnecessary liability under circumstances that are otherwise within your control. Besides, you owe your people—even the difficult ones—more than that.

Paul Falcone (www.PaulFalconeHR.com) has held senior HR leadership roles with Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon and Time Warner. A long-time contributor to HR Magazine, he’s also the author of a number of SHRM best-sellers, including 96 Great Interview Questions to Ask Before You Hire (Amacom, 2008), 101 Tough Conversations to Have with Employees (Amacom, 2009), 101 Sample Write-Ups for Documenting Employee Performance Problems (Amacom, 2010), and 2600 Phrases for Effective Performance Reviews (Amacom, 2005). His newest book is 75 Ways for Managers to Hire, Develop, and Keep Great Employees (Amacom, 2016).

I’ve been very blessed as a human resources executive and bestselling author of nine books and scores of magazine articles, and my message has always focused on encouraging selflessness, servant leadership, and appreciation and recognition for a job well done. This website, however, makes that mission much more concrete . . .  It combines entrepreneurship with philanthropy to help both our HR profession and those in need.  And besides highlighting some of the books and articles I’ve written, it offers new tools to help corporate executives become more effective communicators and leaders.  I’ve done my best to build “giving” into the DNA of this website, and I hope you find my career management tips for executives in career transition and recent college grads helpful as well.  Thanks for visiting! – Paul

VISIT our LIBRARY and ARCHIVE for various helpful resources.

While all these reasons are noble at first glance, the mistake that employers are making nowadays lies in using behavioral interview questions as lead-in queries rather than follow-up discussion grabbers. Here are what these artificial and somewhat uncomfortable interviews sound like:

“Hi Mike, very nice to meet you. Did you find us okay and did you have any problems finding a parking spot? [No] Great—I’m glad to hear that. We’re going to begin the interview by asking you a number of questions that we’d like you to reflect on and then give us your feedback. Would that be okay? [Sure] Okay then, here we go . . .”

• Give me an example of a time when you were especially effective in redesigning a complex process and making it easier for stakeholders to understand.

• Tell me about a time when you had to work with a cross-functional team where the individuals came from different values, cultures, and backgrounds than you. How did you approach working with them?

• Describe a time when you failed to gain someone’s trust or establish a respectful relationship. How did you attempt to reinvent the relationship after the initial lack of success?

And the list goes on and on . . . While there’s nothing inherently wrong with these questions, when asked as lead-ins, behavior-based queries tend to exhaust candidates and tell you very little about their career needs, concerns, or goals during their job search process. In reality, behavioral questions were designed as follow-up questions, and here’s what a typical behavior-based question sounds like when used more appropriately:

You: “Mike, what would you say you like least about your current position?”

Candidate: “Personally, I’d say I hate it when I have to fire or lay someone off. Those are always the toughest things for any manager to do.”

You: “I totally agree. Tell me about the last time you were involved in a situation where someone needed to be terminated for cause. What were the circumstances, and what were some of the considerations you went through along with your HR department?”

As you can see, the behavior-based question gets off the formal question-and-answer pattern and allows both the interviewer and applicant to get down into the weeds and explain a more personal accounting of the events that led up to the experience in question (in this case, termination). That’s the ultimate goal of behavioral interview questions—to shine light on responses that are simply begging for more information and to provide you, the interviewer, with a glimpse into how candidates think and present their ideas. Likewise:

You: “What would your boss say makes you stand out among your peers or, better yet, what would your most respected critic say about one area where you could improve and strengthen your performance?”

Candidate: “Well, in my line of work handling community relations, having a deep local network of contacts in the community is critical to success, and I’ve got to admit that I have lots of long-standing relationships that I can draw from. As far as an area for development, though, I’d have to say that I sometimes shy away from conflict. I know that nobody likes conflict, but I’ve been told I can be a bit too risk averse under certain circumstances.”

You: “Fair enough. I like the fact that you’ve got that level of self-awareness and that you feel comfortable sharing it with me. Let me ask you this, though . . . Tell me about a time when you knew you were skirting around something and probably should have addressed it more openly. Was there a lesson learned, and did it somehow come back to bite you?”

And there you have it: a logical follow-up query that helps candidates make themselves vulnerable (i.e., by sharing their self-critical insights with you openly in an attempt to impress upon you the fact that those “weaknesses,” while real, are arguably able to be strengthened by joining your organization or gaining appropriate support from leadership).

How many behavioral interview questions should you ask during a typical interview? That depends on how many responses scream out for more information, especially in terms of real life application and experience. As a rule, though, two to three behavioral follow-up questions should be all you need to make the interview more personal and transparent.

What shouldn’t you do? You shouldn’t ask behavioral questions as leading queries that drive the majority of the interview. Riddling candidates with “Give me an example of a time when” types of questions—when not linked directly to a particular response in an interviewing query— provides very little insight into the individual’s personal style, decision-making process, or potential fit with your organization. More significantly, it precludes candidates from letting their hair down and making themselves human and vulnerable during the interview process.

Get to know the real person by asking about career interests and desires, concerns about leaving their current company or changing jobs, and motivational drivers in terms of accepting another opportunity. Interviews front-loaded with nothing but behavioral interview questions leave little time to get to know one another more personally or establish trust at this early stage in the relationship. If used exclusively to structure an interview, lead-in behavioral questions can actually preclude relationship building and open communication. Simply put, if you feel after an hour-long interview using lead-in behavioral questions that you don’t know the candidate any better than when you first started, you’ll likely want to consider looking for an alternative interviewing strategy that meets both your and the candidates’ needs more efficiently and effectively.

One of the toughest leadership tasks will always involve communicating problematic performance or conduct concerns for the first time during the annual performance review. After all, one of the key rules in issuing performance reviews is that there should be few if any surprises. Note that the following link will take you to AMA Playbook… Communicating expectations and providing performance feedback is something that should be happening all year long—even all day long in a typical healthy working relationship. Many companies formalize a mid-year or quarterly review process to ensure that workers are getting updated with regular feedback on a consistent basis so that the annual performance review is a culmination exercise—not an opportunity to spring new (and potentially surprising or disappointing) information on a subordinate to justify a substandard performance review score.

But even if it’s indeed intuitive “horse sense” that employees shouldn’t be blind-sided during the annual performance appraisal culmination exercise, it still happens. New managers on the scene often have differing expectations from prior leaders. Or current supervisors realize they’ve been permitting poor behavior or substandard performance for far too long, inflating grades for fear of upsetting or demotivating the individual, only to have Human Resources or a member of senior leadership instruct them to “put their foot down” and stop the behavior or address infractions once and for all. The annual review really serves in many ways as a hard stop wake-up call, a command to take an objective look at someone’s performance or behavior and provide accurate and sometimes difficult feedback. So it stands to reason that occasionally some new information may need to be interjected into the equation that addresses performance or conduct concerns.

If there’s new negative information that must be shared for the first time during the formal review (when it affects employees’ pay and becomes codified in their performance record), then they will likely feel that management is unfair and that they have been blindsided. And they’re not wrong for feeling that way: it’s generally considered the supervisor’s fault for not communicating more effectively by raising the issues at the time of occurrence. Fair enough. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t address those issues now—you just have to be forthcoming in the narrative about accounting for your lack of feedback in the past. As such, your documentation should include some form of managerial mea culpa for not disclosing problematic issues in the past at the time of occurrence. That’s a fair compromise. But again, this should always be the exception, not the rule, and you’ll have to look to organizational past practices as well as collective bargaining agreement restrictions to see if this is a safe path to take.

Your Verbal Opener

Your opening discussion with the employee might sound something like this:

“Ted, my goal here isn’t to surprise you with new information introduced at the time of the annual review, but I’m afraid that’s necessary in this case because the issues have become detrimental to your reputation and to our ability to execute effectively as a team. Before we begin walking through the details on the evaluation that I’ve prepared, I want you to know that you won’t be meeting expectations for this review period. Again, I’m holding myself accountable for not sharing problematic issues with you at the time they occurred, but I’ll commit to you to bring problematic issues to your attention immediately in the future. However, it’s time to share our concerns formally in writing and set our expectations on a go-forward basis, and the annual review gives us that opportunity each year because it’s hard stop in terms of providing feedback and setting the record straight.”

If there’s any reason why you don’t feel this individual should or would still be employed by your company a year from now unless there’s marked improvement, then the pain of delivering a failed review now will be more than offset by the strong record you’re creating to justify termination down the road if things don’t turn around significantly.

Taking the Failed Performance Review to the Next Level by Incorporating Disciplinary Language

Managers often times don’t realize that they can include language in the review itself that turns the document into a written warning (i.e., a part of your organization’s progressive discipline system). This again is not the norm: typically you’ll want to allow the employee time to demonstrate improvement before issuing formal corrective action. Yet a failed annual review could arguably be seen as a step of progressive discipline in and of itself, and by including disciplinary language from your corrective action policy, you can impress upon the employee the seriousness of the matter. Union contracts, however, may not permit this, and as a general rule, you’ll want to check with your employment attorney about introducing this “twist” to your internal employment practices.

Assuming you opt to take the step of incorporating corrective action language into the annual review, you’ll be making this document a “two-for,” meaning that it will serve as both a substandard annual performance review and as a written warning. Your written narrative might sound something like this:

“Several of the issues and concerns outlined in this performance review were not addressed at the time they occurred during the performance period. However, that does not detract from their significance. In preparing for this review and in reviewing the documentation with human resources and departmental leadership, we determined that your position is now in serious jeopardy of being lost.

“Therefore, in addition to documenting that your overall performance for this review period does not meet company expectations, this annual appraisal will also serve as a formal written warning. Failure to demonstrate immediate and sustained improvement may result in further disciplinary language up to and including dismissal.”

Yes, this arguably sounds harsh and isn’t an easy message to deliver. But it’s not enough to say, “Surprises should never happen during the performance review,” and end the story there. Surprises should be the exception, not the rule, but occasionally issues like this surface at the time performance feedback discussions are under way. It’s never easy to issue a document that’s going to be permanently codified in the individual’s personnel file. But occasionally, and with agreement from your senior leadership team as well as human resources, this type of advanced strategy may be necessary to correct the record and reset future expectations.

Clearly, the answer is both, but you need to understand how a plaintiff attorney (representing the ex-employee) would present the evidence on both tables to a jury. This link will take you to the
AMA Playbook… A plaintiff attorney would likely describe the evidence on Table A – historical performance reviews – as “battleships.” Battleships are humongous, displace tons and tons of water, and cover (i.e., validate) an entire year’s performance. Four consecutive performance reviews therefore carry lots of weight in the courtroom. Corrective action documents like written and final written warnings, in comparison, are the equivalent of “PT boats” that may only describe one bad day in the office or a temporary lapse in judgment. In short, plaintiffs’ lawyers will always argue that battleships trump PT boats, and the documentation on Table A should outweigh the written warnings on Table B in the eyes of the jury in terms of the consistent messages communicated by the employer over the years.

While that argument has merit, the defense attorney (representing your company) will explain that the purpose of those written and final written warnings was to break the chain of positive performance evaluations on record and reverse the documentation trail that, up until that point, hadn’t been problematic. In other words, those corrective action notices created the proper and responsible record to ensure that the worker knew there was a problem, was given the tools and a reasonable amount of time in which to fix the problem, and understood that the consequences of not providing immediate and sustained improvement could result in dismissal. Those are the key elements of “workplace due process,” and the defense attorney will surely argue that the more recent notices of corrective action should trump the historical performance reviews on record.

Whenever possible, supervisors want to have consistency between the annual review score (e.g., “not meeting expectations”) and corrective action history. Here’s how it might look in terms of the ideal record and paper trail:

Table A

Result: Termination may occur at any point after the failed annual review for failure to meet company performance expectations. The record of the final written warning plus failed annual review sends a consistent message that the individual is not meeting performance expectations and his job may be in immediate jeopardy of being lost.

Unfortunately, many front-line leaders inflate performance review scores because they want their employees to receive a merit increase or bonus (which is typically tied to the performance review score). Their guilt and mistaken intentions of awarding a “meets expectations” score during the annual review—despite the final written warning or other issues on record—creates the following scenario:

Table B

However, when a request is made to terminate the worker in March or April, guess what? It’s much more difficult to do so because the last formal document on record—the battleship in the metaphor we’ve been using—confirms that the individual met company expectations in the previous year. That over-inflated performance review score documented that, despite the multiple problems from August through December, the employee’s overall contribution to the company outweighed the problems, and the entire performance year was validated.

The result? Further progressive disciplinary documentation is now warranted to correct the formal written record that you, the front-line leader, established for fear of de-motivating the individual or otherwise eliminating his chances of receiving a merit increase or bonus. What’s the lesson here for the supervisors in your organization? Not only should they work with HR and/or their senior management team whenever an employee isn’t performing up to standard to ensure that corrective action is appropriately administered at the time of occurrence, but they also need to ensure consistency with the annual performance review score.

To do so, follow a simple litmus test when doling out “Overall Scores” at the end of employees’ annual performance reviews: If you have any remote hesitation about an individual’s ability to make it in your department or company in the upcoming year because of sub par job performance or other issues, then grade the individual as “not meeting expectations” in the “Overall Score” section at the end of the performance appraisal form. To do anything less will significantly weaken your ability to terminate cleanly or otherwise jeopardize the record you’re creating to ensure you’ve accorded the individual with workplace due process.

In the seminal book, First Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently (Simon & Schuster, 1999), authors Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman gathered data from the Gallup Organization that resulted from interviews with 80,000 managers in 400 organizations, looking for the talents that made individual leaders stand out among their peers. Their research found that, according to the Gallup study, the strongest leaders formally spent on average four hours per employee per year discussing performance, style, and goals compared to most organizations’ one hour. That’s a four-fold increase in formal feedback based on four quarterly reviews plus the annual performance review process.

And that would only make horse sense: In a knowledge economy marked by high levels of disruptive and shifting technology and intense global competition, more formal feedback—not less—would benefit both leadership and staff. Ask your staffers at the time of the appraisal meeting when they’d like to meet with you again to determine progress against their goals and performance benchmarks. The ideal answer is quarterly: three-month review intervals are healthy in terms of reviewing annual goals. So, if your subordinates suggests a quarterly follow-up, simply ask them to send you a calendar meeting marker for quarterly meetings spread over the next twelve months.

Notice, however, that it’s important that they send you the calendar invitation. This is their career and you’re offering to help, but always treat adults like adults and allow them to take the lead in seeking out your guidance, not vice versa. That being said, don’t be swayed by supervisors who say, “I don’t need to formally meet with my employees regarding their performance throughout the year because I provide them with feedback every day.” That’s a bit of a cop out . . . The goal is to create a performance culture—one in which performance and goals become part of the fabric that connects everyone to everything, that allows the company’s senior leadership team to measure and manage the “muscle” known as human capital. Exercised correctly, a renewed focus on performance excellence can yield outstanding results in terms of company turnarounds and driving company performance and productivity. But it has to be uniformly implemented with senior leadership support. Otherwise, one-off supervisors who unilaterally opt out of the program will kill its effectiveness and value.

What if someone only wants to meet in six months to review their goals and progress? That could be okay too. Depending on the individual’s level of independence, role knowledge, and tenure in position, quarterly meetings may not be necessary. Our best recommendation, though, is not to allow an entire year to slip by without discussing performance feedback and progression toward goals, challenges, blind spots, and the like. That’s because the goal statement is in many ways the glue that binds the leader and subordinate together throughout the evaluation period. That individual development plan helps you both keep your eye on the ball, bond together in overcoming unforeseen obstacles and challenges, and celebrate intermittent achievements that can be “bulleted” on a resume or on next year’s annual self-evaluation form.

If this sounds to you like the annual performance feedback and goal-setting processes are really more of a verb than a noun, you’re getting the picture. Too many companies and organizational leaders see the annual performance appraisal as a form rather than an ongoing process of engagement, interaction, achievement, and celebration. “Performance appraisal” becomes a one-size-fits-all mandatory annual “paper chase” that is endured so that you could justify giving a subordinate a particular merit increase or bonus. And then all that paperwork goes into the individual’s personnel file, never to see the light of day again until the following year. What a lost opportunity—The process is the point of it all! What gets measured gets managed, and measuring and managing the human capital asset will be the primary differentiator between successful and mediocre companies in a knowledge-based economy.

Mistaken Assumption #1: “If I mess up, the company has to give me written notice before they can fire me, right?”

Wrong! In most states, you’ll technically be hired “at will,” meaning that a company can terminate you with or without cause or notice. Further, most organizations have “introductory” periods, otherwise known as “probationary” periods, which allow them to terminate a new hire at whim if that person isn’t meeting performance or conduct standards. In fact, even if you’re hired into a union job, most collective bargaining agreements give employers full latitude to terminate at whim within the probationary period (typically 60–90 days). So it’s definitely not the case that you’re entitled to some form of documented corrective action before a company will feel comfortable pulling the plug on your employment.

Mistaken Assumption #2: Companies treat performance problems similar to how they treat conduct problems

Wrong again! Performance and conduct challenges are typically handled in a totally different manner in most organizations. When you think of “progressive discipline” (AKA “corrective action”) in the form of a verbal, written, and ultimately final written warning, you’re usually referring to performance or attendance problems. However, conduct or behavior-based infractions often warrant what’s known as “summary dismissal” (i.e., immediate termination)—even for a first offense.

It’s easy enough to understand why a company would terminate someone outright for theft, embezzlement, fraud, and the like, but employees don’t realize that there are other types of infractions that typically result in immediate dismissal. Here are just a few:

Timecard Fraud

In the workplace, time is a proxy for money. If you steal time, it’s the same as stealing money, because the end result is the same: The company is out the money that you took illegally. For example, if you put in for overtime that you didn’t work, that’s considered “timecard fraud.” You may not have stolen $10 from the cash register, but the ultimate effect is the same: You’re $10 richer at the company’s expense. Likewise, if you arrive at work two hours late but falsify your timecard to show that you arrived on time, you’ll be awarding yourself two hours of additional straight-time pay. Again, companies will view that as theft, plain and simple.

Casual Drug Use

What you do in your private time is strictly up to you, but many companies have a “for cause” drug-testing standard that requires anyone involved in a slip-and-fall incident or auto accident to be tested for cause. Here’s how it works . . . say your general duties include driving a company car or van and you’re rear-ended at a stop sign across the street from the office. While it certainly wasn’t your fault that someone rear-ended your car, the fact that you were officially in an auto accident requires that you be tested for drug usage.

As it turns out, about two weeks ago at your 22nd birthday party, you smoked marijuana with your friends. Unfortunately, you didn’t realize that pot stays in your blood stream for about 30 days, and low and behold, you test positive for drugs. The end result? You’re terminated for failing to abide by your company’s drug and alcohol abuse policy, even though the effects of the pot have long since disappeared.

Employment Application Falsification

If you’re four units short of your Bachelor’s, but show on your resume and employment application that you already have a degree, you’ll find yourself back in the unemployment line before you know it. Why? Because you falsified your pre-employment record to give yourself an unfair advantage that helped you land the job . . . even though it was based on false pretenses.

Common Themes Surrounding “Summary Dismissals”

What do these cases have in common? Think about it from the Human Resources department’s perspective: If you act unethically or dishonestly, the company has no choice but to terminate you. To do anything else could create an unwanted precedent in the organization’s employment practices. In other words, if they don’t terminate you for falsifying your time card, engaging in unlawful drug use, or manipulating your employment application, then they’ll have a hard time terminating anyone else in the future because of the exception they’ll be setting with your case. The result? Companies terminate swiftly and consistently when it comes to ethics breaches and dishonesty.

Put another way, conduct and behavior-related infractions provide companies the discretion to skip any steps of written, corrective action and escalate immediately and directly to the termination stage. And the downside for you, of course, is two-fold: First, you’ll have lost your current job. Second, you’ll have a much more difficult time during an interview when you’re asked why you left your previous company. (Hint: “I was terminated for cause due to an ethical breach and violation of the company’s code of conduct” isn’t a great lead-in when you’re in job search mode.)

The Lesson

It’s simple but still as true as ever: Always tell the truth. Don’t take shortcuts, especially when it comes to electronic records that can be easily traced in an audit (which companies do all the time). Avoid casual drug use. And most important, create a reputation for yourself early in your career as an ethical worker who demonstrates the highest level of integrity. It will help you avoid common pitfalls like the ones above and sleep better at night as you build your career and grow and develop in your role.

This article was originally published in AMA Playbook. Link to Article

• To help your soon-to-be former employees work through their career transitions more successfully.
• To jump-start their job search efforts by affording them the benefit of experienced career consultants who can short-cut their job search time.
• To expose them to a resourceful team of career coaches who have local networks of contacts and deep-dive information on the local economy and hot companies.

But how do you ensure that you’re getting the most out of your outplacement firm’s offerings? And what should you report back to your senior leadership team about the concrete benefits that your departing workers received—which are your return on investment for the outplacement firm’s costs? This link will take you off this site to SHRM online.

“First, understand that approximately 70 percent of companies offer outplacement benefits in their severance packages to workers impacted by a layoff,” said Doug Mathews, president and CEO of Career Partners International, one of the nation’s largest global outplacement firms and headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. “That means that if you’re offering this critical benefit, you’re with the majority in demonstrating true care and concern for your employees’ well-being and career success once they’re no longer with your company. The disruptive and destabilizing forces impacting the economy likely won’t go away soon, so this benefit becomes all the more significant, especially for executive and professional employees.”

Onsite Notice Support

The first touch point where outplacement career coaches provide in-person support is at the notice meeting. Insist that your outplacement provider is available onsite for the notice session.  Employees are typically informed of their position elimination in one room and then can move on to meet with the outplacement counselor immediately afterwards in an adjoining office. This helps take the sting off the initial notice because of the human contact and go-forward hope that the counselor will likely instill in the individual after the notice meeting.

“After all, it is one thing to find out that your position’s just been eliminated,” said Chris Bryant, president and CEO of the San Diego Employers Association. “It’s another thing to find someone immediately available who can commit to helping you find work with another company quickly and who has the resources to help you through the transition well.”

In fact, you should be able to gather statistics when vetting outplacement service providers as to average placement time, customer satisfaction rating (i.e., net promoter score), and the percentage of employees that landed in higher level or lateral positions.

Facilitating an Easy Connection to Your Employees

Some workers may not be emotionally ready to get much out of the initial meeting with the outplacement counselor because they’re in shock after learning of their position elimination. Ensure that the initial contact is made whenever possible, but allow workers their own time to come to terms with their changed situation.

“If they’ve met the outplacement counselor initially, it will be easier for them to reach out a few days later or at least make them more responsive to the counselor’s call,” Bryant said.  “After all, the shock of the separation notice is one thing; moving forward with their careers in a healthy and positive way is another.”

Give your outplacement provider a contact list of those employees who were notified so that—at the employee’s preference—the career transition program can begin. Note, however, that some employers are concerned about legal privacy issues when sharing worker contact information with outplacement providers.

“There’s little need for concern about providing employee contact information to an outplacement firm, as long as the company gets the employees’ approval to share their contact information,” said Rich Falcone (no relation to the author), shareholder and senior employment litigation partner with Littler Mendelson in Costa Mesa, Calif. Names, phone numbers, and email addresses may constitute protected information in certain jurisdictions, so get approval in advance to share contact information.

“This approach works well internationally too, so it shouldn’t breach EU safe harbor guidelines or other international privacy regulations if you have the employees’ advance permission,” Falcone said. After all, most employees would agree to allow their email address or cell phone number to be shared with an outplacement firm if they realized it could mean landing a new job that much faster.

Reportable Metrics

Your outplacement provider should be able to share incremental updates with you about employee participation rates. For example, you, the sponsoring employer, have every right to know how many of your ex-employees have engaged the outplacement firm’s services and begun their program. Your outplacement provider will also be able to confirm for you how many employees are opting to pursue specialty programs that are typically available beyond traditional re-employment services: transition into retirement, the entrepreneurship route and return to school, for example. Insist initially on daily contact for the first five days. Shift to weekly contact for the first month, followed by monthly reports thereafter.

Further, you have the right to expect person-by-person feedback beyond the broader employee participation rates mentioned above. Engage the services of your HR team to reach out to any workers who haven’t yet responded to the outplacement counselor’s outreach efforts. Gently encourage them to hold at least an initial meeting with a counselor.

“In many cases, workers don’t understand or appreciate the vast resources that the outplacement firm possesses to help them land a new position more quickly than they otherwise could on their own. A light-touch phone call to explain why it’s in their best interests to take advantage of this company-paid benefit may be all it takes to generate an initial meeting with the counselor,” Bryant said.

Outplacement services today offer much more than traditional resume-writing support and interview role-plays: Building social media campaigns, especially surrounding LinkedIn, for example, will statistically garner much stronger job search results, depending on the type of work the employee does. Electronic tools that help match an individual’s resume to a particular job posting using word cloud technology can help a job applicant maximize the chances of getting selected for a particular interview. Proprietary tools that develop resumes with built-in social media integration by matching keywords and skills graphs with postings found on Indeed.com can jumpstart someone’s job search before they’ve even posted their first resume. And as a job applicant, telling an interviewer that you took full advantage of your prior company’s outplacement services will help you stand out among your peers because it speaks to the caliber of the company you worked for and your wisdom in approaching your job search in such a healthy and mature way.

If you’re a wise and caring employer that offers outplacement services to your displaced workers, making sure that your former employees benefit from this cost-effective benefit will not only help you maintain positive relations with them, but it will likewise go a long way in strengthening your relationship with your remaining employees who can move forward in a healthy way, knowing that your organization had to make tough business decisions but kept people’s needs at the forefront of their considerations. That provides a critical degree of relief in today’s volatile workplace as well as a return on investment that goes far beyond dollars and cents.

Ever since I wrote my book 101 Tough Conversations to Have with Employees, people ask how to handle particular, quirky situations in the workplace. One that tops the list is how to deal with executives who just don’t seem to get it.

Whether they continually make off-color political remarks, refer to female staffers as “sweetie” and “honey,” or simply enjoy good old-fashioned public shaming sessions where they censure others openly and inject ongoing embarrassment and resentment into their working relationships, these executives apparently don’t want to play nicely or otherwise get along with others. In fact, some are “spoken to” and even disciplined for past behaviors, yet their inappropriate conduct continues to roller coaster up and down every few months. At some point, frustrated and angry employees challenge why such behavior is allowed to continue, and company leaders often times don’t take the situation truly seriously until people threaten to leave or a lawsuit looms on the horizon.

There are several rules that will help you navigate successfully through these often treacherous waters.

Rule 1: Hold People Accountable for Their Own “Perception Management”

Such meetings or executive interventions require a combined front. For example, if a director-level executive continues to suffer from ongoing behavior lapses and poor judgment episodes, then three leaders should prepare to meet with him to discuss this: the director’s immediate VP boss, the VP’s boss (one tier higher, for example, a senior VP or company president), and HR. This way, the errant executive receives one consistent message from all key stakeholders: there’s no way to “divide the baby” or work one group against another. All are on board with the same message, plain and simple.

Next, determine upfront whether your organization can risk losing this individual, either via termination or resignation. If the answer is yes, then the suggested scripts that follow can be strengthened in terms of the consequence language that you inject; if not, because the individual is simply too valuable to your organization to risk losing at this point in time, then you can soften the language that follows.

What’s critical, however, is that you not come across as judgmental. “Why do you keep making inappropriate remarks about people on your team and throwing them under the bus in public?” won’t get you very far as a supervisor. The individual will simply go into self-defense mode and place blame elsewhere. Instead, come from observation—the “what’s so” rather than the “so what”—to explain the challenges as you see them:

“John, we’ve had these discussions before, and you’ve committed to undoing some of the damage that occurred when you admittedly engaged in public shaming sessions with some of your staff members in the past by censuring them at group meetings in front of their peers. You agreed at the time to follow our guidelines that you praise in public and censure in private. Yet yesterday two members of your team came to me, your immediate supervisor, to complain of that very same behavior repeating itself at your staff meeting. From what I was told, you reverted to using the F-word and questioned why people “aren’t thinking” and “acting like f-ing idiots.” Is that an accurate assessment of what occurred yesterday? [Yes]

“Based on our prior discussions and reflecting on your handling of yesterday’s meeting, can you look back and see some sort of justification for your behavior? [No] Would you be surprised then if I told you that both employees were now considering quitting because of how they were treated in front of the rest of the team? [No]

“Then based on that, John, you’ve got a real perception problem on your hands. They say that perception is reality until proven otherwise, and people are simply assuming bad intentions when dealing with you. In fact, your actions yesterday are very much now part of everyone’s reality—perception issues aside. We’re holding you fully accountable for your own perception management from this point forward. In other words, regardless of your intentions or how you think others may be receiving your message, you’ve got to raise your awareness level about how you’re coming across. You no longer have the discretion to fly off the handle or enter into public diatribes about your entire team or individuals on your team, especially using that kind of language. Is that a fair request on our part?” [Yes]

Rule 2: Remind Leaders about Personal Liability Surrounding “Managerial Bad Acts”

HR can then add the following to the conversation:

“John, you’ve also got to remember that you may be putting yourself at risk from a liability and financial standpoint. When a manager engages in what could be construed as harassing behavior or in potentially creating a hostile work environment, a lawsuit from a disgruntled ex-worker will typically name you separately from the company. We don’t pay you enough money to warrant risking your savings and your home in a personal lawsuit for what’s deemed to be ‘managerial bad acts’ or ‘acting outside the course and scope of your employment.’

“But the threshold for individual liability is fairly low, and last I read, one out of four managers in corporate America will become personally involved in some sort of work-related lawsuit during their career. What executives don’t realize is that, in some states, they can be sued for up to $50,000 of their own money, while in states like California, there’s no cap on how much they could be personally sued for. As an executive in our company, you may be seen as a juicy target yourself—a high net worth individual—who’s worth pursuing separately and apart from the company, and you can’t risk your personal savings because you keep losing your temper or otherwise striking fear in the hearts of your staffers. They could all serve as witnesses to your behavior in a court of law.”

Rule 3: Gain a Lasting Commitment That You Won’t Have to Discuss This Matter Again

The senior-most executive in the room—John’s boss’s boss in this case—can then conclude the meeting by resetting expectations:

“John, we want you to be successful here. We’re having this meeting to confirm for you that you’re a valued and key member of our company’s leadership team, but that this sort of conduct has to stop. We want you to think about options and resources that may be helpful, including an executive coach. If you feel you would benefit from having one-on-one guidance from an external expert who could help you navigate through these types of situations, especially when you’re feeling frustrated, let us know. If there are other resources—education, headcount, or otherwise—that you feel are necessary at this point to relieve some of your stress and pressure, we’d like to hear about them. You tell us what will help, and we’ll do our best to accommodate.

“But I’d like a commitment from you right now that we’ll never have to have a meeting like this again. This is totally within your control, and as much as we value you and want to support your success, we don’t want to risk unnecessary turnover or the potential of lawsuits because you can’t or won’t control your temper. In short, the roller coaster needs to stop as of today. This type of meeting is uncomfortable for us, and we know it’s uncomfortable for you, but once you give us your commitment, I expect that this will become water under the bridge and ancient history. We’re re-welcoming you to the company today—a fresh start and a new beginning—but it’s up to you to accept our olive branch and make this commitment. Are you willing to commit to us right here and now that you’ll hold yourself fully accountable for your behavior and actions and ensure that we never have to have a meeting like this with you again? [Yes]

“Great. Then I’ll consider the matter handled and taken care of at this point. That being said, if you have any additional suggestions or concerns that you want to share with me separately, my door is always open. Thanks for joining us today.”

Said quietly and without a lot of drama, a respectful discussion scenario like this, led by the individual’s immediate supervisor, next-level supervisor, and HR, will more than likely quell the drama once and for all. After all, you’ve placed John in control, listened to him openly, and offered additional resources and options to support him. Even if it doesn’t and you’re forced to pursue this issue again, you’ll have created an outstanding record of according the executive due process in the legal sense. Any further actions on the company’s part—whether in the form of progressive discipline or ultimately termination—will be strengthened by this healthy and fair intervention.

This article was originally published in AMA Playbook. Link to Article

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Some Kind Words…

“When you feel the need to document an employee’s actions (or inactions), turn to this great tool, 101 Sample Write-Ups for Documenting Employee Performance Problems.” —Legal Management [hr]

“2600 Phrases for Effective Performance Reviews is an enormously useful thesaurus of specific, concrete verbiage that will take you far, far beyond ‘Meets/exceeds expectations.'” –Accounting Today [hr]

“…the advice in 101 Tough Conversations to Have with Employees will be invaluable. It deserves a prominent place in the office of anyone who is responsible for managing others.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette [hr]

“96 Great Interview Questions to Ask Before You Hire takes the guesswork out of the interview process.” —Benefits and Compensation Solutions [hr]

“2600 Phrases for Setting Effective Performance Goals helps supervisors to write active performance goals which are clearly understood and leave no room for ambiguity. It is an excellent resource book for managers and supervisors involved in the performance evaluation and goal setting process.” –Bellaonline.com[hr] Indicates that the title has been a “Great 8” selection from the Society for Human Resource Management, which is designated for the top eight bestselling books in any given year.

Here’s a major hint: Asking no questions typically leaves a hiring manager feeling unimpressed, too many questions can feel inappropriate or intruding, and “filler” questions that reveal little insight about your candidacy or credentials could not only waste time—they could damage an otherwise successful interview.

Job candidates typically focus so much on how to respond to interviewing questions that they give very little forethought to asking the right questions when invited to do so by the employer. Nothing ends an interview on a worse note than when the employer asks the candidate, “Are there any questions I could answer for you?” and the candidate responds, “No, I think you covered everything.” Really? “You mean you want to work here for the next five or ten years, and you can’t even think of one question to ask me as your prospective employer?” reasons the wise interviewer.

Yet it’s not just a matter of asking questions—it’s really all about asking intelligent, well thought out questions that will help you stand out among your peers. Simply put, the questions posed by candidates should reveal critical insights into their values, goals, and aspirations as well as their analytical abilities and research knowledge. So let’s look at some general rules for what to ask and, more importantly, what not to ask when the interviewer turns the controls over to you by asking what questions you have.

Rule 1: Don’t Ask “Filler” Questions

Filler questions add very little value to the information exchange. Think of this as “questions for questions’ sake.” Anyone with Internet access shouldn’t ask the following questions because the answers could be researched in less than five minutes:

• “How large is your company in terms of employees and annual revenue?”
• “How long has your company been in business?”
• “What stock exchange trades your stock, and what has the recent price been?”
• “What is your primary product line and who is your primary target consumer?”

I know what you’re thinking: “I’d never ask those questions during an interview. It would make me look foolish to do that.” Yes, you’re right—but not having prepared questions in advance could lead to embarrassing moments because candidates sometimes freeze due to nervousness (which goes up exponentially if they’re really interested in the job). So always do your homework in advance and have your questions written out based on your research before you arrive.

Rule 2: Don’t Ask “Selfish” or “What’s-in-It-for-Me” Types of Questions

Selfishly perceived questions typically focus on the benefits that the candidate will receive by joining the organization rather than how that individual can make a unique contribution. Asking about what the job could develop into, whether executives have their own assistant or fly first class, or if a pension is available after five years of service will likely come across as selfish and me-oriented. Instead, candidates will do to remember President Kennedy’s (slightly modified) axiom, “Ask not what your company could do for you; ask what you could do for your company.”

Bottom Line: Go easy on any questions that focus on what you’ll be getting out of the relationship rather than putting into it, especially during the early rounds of the interview. You’ll have an opportunity to ask these questions and more once the company is seriously pursuing you during the final rounds of the offer. That’s when they’ll likely put you in touch with someone from the benefits department to answer your questions about medical plans, monthly premium costs, and the like. Jump to these types of questions too early in the process, however, and you’ll likely come across as naïve at best or selfish and entitled at worst.

Rule 3: Do Ask Intelligent, Well-Thought-Out Questions Prepared in Advance

With initial intelligence that you can garner from the company website, Google, and LinkedIn, you’ll be prepared to ask thoughtful, insightful, and intelligent questions as follows:

1. “I’ve had an opportunity to research your organization on the web and via your company website before coming in today, and I was wondering what you believe makes your organization unique. What are two or three things that help you differentiate yourself from your competition?”
2. “What do you believe would really make someone successful in this role? In other words, what two or three things would you want to add to a candidate’s background experience or personal style to make that individual an ideal fit for the position?”
3. “I understand the primary aspects of the role as you’ve described them and that I’ve read online in the recruitment ad. Can you give me some additional background in terms of the secondary duties involved—maybe things that occur once a quarter or twice a year but that will still be an important part of this position?”
4. “I saw in your online profile that you’ve been here for four years. What initially attracted you to join the company, if you wouldn’t mind my asking, and what do you like most about working here?”
5. “How would you define the organization’s overall culture or at least the personality of your department? What do you think would work well in terms of making someone successful from a personality and personal style type of viewpoint?”

You’ll see that what these “Big 5” questions have in common is that they focus on the positive and invite the interviewer to share personal stories and engage in more of a one-on-one conversation. Everyone likes to talk, especially about themselves and what makes them or the organizations where they work successful and unique. Extending that invitation as a candidate is usually a wise move because it strengthens the personal bond and looks for common interests.

How Many Questions are Appropriate?

How many questions should you ask an interviewer at the conclusion of your meeting? That’s always the magic question, and as with many things in life, it depends on how things are progressing during your interview . . . As a general rule, ask two to three well thought out questions, and save the rest for another day (especially if this is a first interview). After all, too many questions—even if they’re well thought add and valuable—could weigh down a first meeting. Remember, you always want to end on an up-note, so if things are going well, don’t overburden the interviewer with too many questions at the very end.

Further, understand that your goal is to use the questions in your arsenal to impress the employer, not just to gain additional data. That’s the key strategy underlying the questions you’re asking. Be sure and have five or six questions listed and ready to go in advance. This way you’ll never be stumped when asked to pose questions about the role, the company, or the people you’ll be working with and supporting. Remember that questions make the candidate, and you’ll stand a much stronger chance of impressing a hiring manager and ending the interview on a positive note if your questions are well thought out, researched, and delivered.

There’s no doubt about it: Once a letter of resignation is submitted, a mental break with your organization has already occurred. And you don’t want to be forced into discussions that sound like this: “Oh, I didn’t know you were unhappy! Why didn’t you tell me you wanted more? Let me know what your new title and salary will look like and give me a few days to see if we could put together a package that will keep you happy. Just promise me you won’t make a decision yet until you hear what we have to say . . .

Unfortunately, this real life scenario is playing itself out more and more in organizations throughout the country. But could it have been avoided? Was there something the manager could have done to avoid this snare? The answer of course is yes: Surprises regarding your best performers are avoidable if you’re in tune with their career needs and longer-term goals. So if you’ve been taking this for granted and haven’t had this type of conversation in a while (or never at all before), now’s your opportunity to open up the lines of communication and go through a “resignation drill” to ensure that your best and brightest are fully engaged, excited, and in some sort of learning curve that keeps them motivated and committed to your team and company.

Stay interviews focus on your top performers—the top 10% or 20% of your workers who set the standard for performance and productivity and make your life so much easier. Communicating your appreciation of their contributions and interest in their future career development within your organization in general and on your team specifically is critical. This type of engagement exercise shouldn’t ever seem artificial, superficial, or insincere, but it may be something that your people aren’t used to or otherwise expecting from you. Therefore, here’s a way to ease into a conversation with someone you’d hate to lose to some other organization should an opportunity come their way.

First, some background context . . . If a headhunter approached one of your top employees with an enticing opportunity at a competitor firm, the headhunter might ask:

• What’s your reason for wanting to leave your present company?
• What would have to change in your present position for you to stay?
• What’s your next logical move in career progression if you stay with your current employer, and how long would it take you to get there?

How would your top performing employee respond? A typical response from an unhappy or otherwise disengaged worker might be, “Well, there’s really no room for growth at my current company. I don’t see myself learning anything new – I’m just doing volumes of the same work that I’ve been doing for the past few years. And I just feel like I’m treading water career-wise. There’s no room for growth here, either in terms of dollars or new responsibilities.” So if you suspect that one or more of your key players might respond to a headhunter’s call in similar fashion, it’s time for you to spend more time with them and get to know more about their current level of job satisfaction and engagement. In other words, use this starting point as an entrée into deeper discussions about their ideas for improving the workflow in your area, building their own careers while remaining at your company, and finding new ways of reinventing themselves in light of your department’s changing needs.

Start your discussion by asking your staffer how he’d rank his experience at your organization in terms of how happy, engaged, and rewarded he feels. Also, does he feel like he gets to do his very best work every day? If he asks why you’re asking, just tell him that you want to reinvent the relationship and are looking to spice things up a bit in terms of raising the engagement level of the people on your team. However, you’re starting with your star players first to get a gauge on how they’re feeling and how they think the rest of the team might respond to similar questions.

Expect an answer of 7 or 8 on a scale of 10 (10 being extremely happy, 1 being unbelievably miserable). After all, it’s only natural that most employees are discontent to some degree at any given time. While most won’t volunteer that type of feedback directly unless you ask, they typically won’t give you, their supervisor, a score lower than 7 for fear that you’ll think they’re unmotivated or otherwise looking to leave. Likewise, anyone who defines themselves as a 10 probably is “blowing smoke” rather than being totally honest with you (barring any recent promotions or special events that really benefitted them). If the average response, then, will typically come in around an 8, ask the follow-up questions: (a) Why are you an 8? and (b) What would make you a 10?

The goal here is to find out, in a very subtle and sincere way, where they stand relative to your organization and how vulnerable they might be to becoming “recruiter’s bait” to a headhunter’s call. To drive the conversation even further, ask them what would motivate them most of the six variables that follow. “Which of the six following categories holds the most significance for you career-wise at this point?”

1. Career progression through the ranks and opportunities for promotion and advancement
2. Lateral assumption of increased job responsibilities and skill building (e.g., rotational assignments in other areas, overseas opportunities, and the like)
3. Acquisition of new technical skills (for example, via external training and certification)
4. Development of stronger leadership, management, or administrative skills
5. Work-life balance
6. Money and other forms of compensation

While almost all will initially comment on the money/compensation invitation—after all, who wouldn’t want more money?—most will quickly shift over to one of the other five areas, which are the real drivers in terms of their motivation to remain with or leave your firm. Remember, employees don’t leave companies solely for money: Compensation is typically fourth or fifth on the ranking scale. The top three or four slots are reserved for open communication, recognition for a job well done, career progression opportunities, and the ability to make a greater difference at work.

Use this conversational format to launch into more in-depth discussions about each of your key performer’s needs, wants, and desires, and then ask for suggestions in terms of how to get them there. Yes, you run the risk of opening up pie-in-the-sky wish lists, but in a one-on-one setting, the chances of a runaway train in terms of unrealistic requests diminishes. Instead, ensure that you understand what’s driving your top performers and how vulnerable you and your company might be to losing them.

If your approach is sincere and selfless and comes from the heart, your employees will respect the effort that you’re making, and that alone could go a long way in strengthening your working relationship. Of course, you have to be prepared to follow up on requests for promotions, equity adjustments, and the like, but you can always clarify upfront that you can’t make any promises or necessarily control the budget constraints that the organization is facing. Explain that the purpose of your conversation is not only to gauge how they’re feeling about the organization—a mini climate survey of sorts—but to remind them how much you value them and appreciate their contributions. Tell them outright that you wouldn’t want to lose them to a random headhunter’s call, and this kind of “stay” interview is far more valuable than an exit interview after the fact.

Finally, confirm that you want to encourage them to develop a realistic and customized retention plan that will help them prepare for their next move in career progression and that you’re willing to support and sponsor them. Likewise, ask for their input now in terms of what can be improved, made more efficient, reinvented, or recreated within your department and how you both can partner as co-leaders to make things better for the team in terms of increasing their confidence level and willingness to stretch the rubber band a bit.

Start the conversation now. Make your key performers a critical part of the team’s performance turnaround. Listen to what they’re saying and look for new ways to help them build their career internally within your organization—whether that be vertically, horizontally, or via a renewed learning curve. Engaging your best and brightest before they’re lured to greener pastures is a healthy proactive measure to avoid counteroffers after the mental break has been made, and stay interviews and resignation drills are a practical and smart approach to raising both key employee engagement and retention.

This article was originally published in AMA Playbook. Link to Article

Yes, it may seem hard to believe, but managers oftentimes inflate scores in order to avoid confrontation or otherwise attempt to “motivate” workers who aren’t performing at an acceptable level.

Then, when they ultimately try to terminate, their paper records work against them because the overall review validated an otherwise substandard performance year. Here’s what it might look like on paper:

July 2014 Documented verbal warning

August 2014 Written warning

November 2014 Final Written Warning

January 2015 Performance Review Overall Score: 3 (“Meets Expectations”)

February 2015 Manager recommends terminating employee for substandard job performance and/or inappropriate workplace conduct issues

Do you see the dilemma with the record that the manager inadvertently created here? Despite the verbal, written, and final written warnings in the second half of the year, the overall score on the performance review reveals that the employee met expectations for the entire review period. In that worker’s eyes, therefore, his job isn’t in jeopardy of being lost, and the review trumped the prior progressive disciplinary documents. Terminating in February 2015 would be much more difficult because the last document on record confirms that the employee has been doing an acceptable job overall.

Battleships vs. PT Boats

You may ask, “Well, doesn’t all the corrective action count for anything? Oh, and our company has a six month ‘active’ period for final written warnings, so we should be able to terminate at any time within that six-month window, shouldn’t we?” Well, not so fast . . . First, understand that plaintiff attorneys will typically sell performance reviews to a jury as much heavier and weightier documents than written warnings. After all, an annual review measures an entire year’s efforts and output, whereas a documented warning may simply result from one bad day in the office.

Therefore, expect plaintiff attorneys to position annual reviews like battleships in comparison to written warnings, which they’ll sell more like PT boats (i.e., much smaller and less significant employer interventions). True, the purpose of those written warnings is to break the chain of positive reviews on file and create a new record that demonstrates that the individual is either unable or unwilling to do his job. However, the plaintiff attorney will more likely than not focus on previous positive annual reviews (especially for longer-term employees), arguing that the series of corrective action notices that went out toward the end of that calendar year were atypical and clearly didn’t dissuade the supervisor from validating the individual’s entire year’s work and overall contributions

The most practical solution in cases like this is to provide your managers with a simple guideline: If you have anyone on your team who you suspect will probably not make it over the next year and whom you’ve disciplined during the previous review period, then assign an overall score to the performance review of either “partially meets expectations” or “fails to meet expectations.” Because once you assign a “meets expectations” score, you’ll have placed a massive roadblock in your way in terms of your company’s ability to terminate (especially if that favorable annual review is the last record on file).

Dealing with the Current Problem of a Mis-assigned Grade

But what if you’ve already assigned the grade of 3 (“Meets Expectations”), communicated it verbally and in writing to the employee, and the individual already received a merit increase in a recent paycheck? That’s always a sticky wicket, but you’ve basically got three choices:

(1) Say nothing because it’s too late to make any changes and may unnecessarily upset the worker.

(2) Reissue the review with a failing score and recoup the additional merit payments already made.

(3) Allow the employee to keep the money, but write an amendment letter for the record that documents that the review’s overall score was issued in error.

Under normal circumstances, either the second or third option typically makes the most sense. After all, doing nothing about the problem and not even addressing the matter is short sighted, especially if you’re planning on moving to termination sometime in the near future. But Option 3 may have better results than Option 2 because it appears to be fairer and less punitive: After all, trying to recoup the money under Option 2 may arguably smack of retaliatory action against the employee and could be considered to be in bad taste from a perception or corporate image standpoint. (It was the company’s error, after all!) But clarifying the record on paper under Option 3—while allowing the employee to benefit financially from the company’s mistake—shows the company to be wise, transparent, and constructive, which is always your goal when creating and correcting formal employee records.

If you opt to pursue this third option, then here’s a draft of what your written communication to the employee might look like:

Dear [EMPLOYEE NAME]:

The purpose of this letter is to establish a clear understanding of your path forward with our organization.

2014 Annual Performance Review –The review you signed on 12/16/14 was completed erroneously by your immediate supervisor and delivered to you in error. Your performance rating for 2014 was entered at the “Meets Expectations” level, and you received a 2% merit increase. However, as indicated by the numerous corrective actions that you received throughout the review year, and particularly in the last six months of 2014, the correct performance rating should have been a “Needs Improvement” score. As such, we wanted to take this opportunity to clarify the record

Corrective Action Notices – You received three written warnings in various forms for failure to follow the directive of a supervisor and for insubordination, which occurred in July, August, and November 2014. This notice serves as a reminder that these corrective action items are still active in your employment record. Furthermore, any future incidents of failing to follow the directive of a supervisor or otherwise engaging in inappropriate workplace conduct may result in further disciplinary action, up to and including dismissal. You are currently on a Final Written Warning, which remains active for six months from the date of issue on November 1st, 2014. This is your final opportunity to improve your conduct, or your position will be in immediate jeopardy of being lost.

2014 Merit Increase Status – Your 2% increase will not be reversed or retracted. However, the purpose of this memo is to clarify that your overall score for the 2014 review year was issued in error and that had it been issued correctly, you would not have been eligible for a merit increase this year.

In addition, as discussed with you during today’s meeting, I will remain available to help you and discuss areas where you require additional support. Please let me know what I can do to help you succeed in your role from this point forward.

Sincerely,

[SUPERVISING MANAGER’S NAME]

Grade inflation occurs more often than you think, and companies have to find smart ways of clarifying the record and ensuring that employees have clear go-forward expectations when such errors are identified after the fact. By correcting the record with a memorandum of understanding like the sample drafted above, you’ll not only have clarified the record in terms of the failing score: you’ll also have reset expectations regarding the final written warning remaining active, the individual’s job remaining in jeopardy, and the manager’s willingness and availability to help. That approach will clearly place the company in the best light possible should you later need to terminate the individual’s employment despite the inflated annual review score.

When team energy seems to flag, senior leaders often think—very reactively—what do we need to be doing differently? Or what books can we buy now that focus on ways of motivating staff? Worse, these topics often only come up in one of two key scenarios: when key performers are being lured away by headhunters or when there’s talk of union organizing efforts. Under those two dire conditions, leaders typically flock to the tomes available on the bookstore shelf that propose bold new ideas on how to motivate and reengage staffers who might otherwise not be “feeling the love . . .”

But what if the truth were that you—as the department leader or immediate supervisor—aren’t responsible for motivating your team? What if the answer lies in the fact that motivation is internal and people can only motivate themselves? If you accept those assumptions, then you’ll quickly realize that your responsibility as a leader in corporate America is not to motivate others, per se, but to create an environment where people can motivate themselves. And if you can come to terms with that truism, then it’s simply a matter of understanding how to do that . . .

People Respect Competency, Passion, and Genuine Concern for Others in the Leaders They Choose to Follow

Think of your favorite boss. How would you describe that person? Think especially about how you’d describe why that individual was your favorite boss. If you’re like most people, your answers would probably sound like this:

“Kim always made me feel special. She made me feel like I made a difference, that my opinions mattered, and that she was on my side. She had my back and I had hers, and we always had fun—no matter what craziness we were facing in terms of the daily challenges that came our way.

“Further, she was very respectful of others, she listened attentively, and she practiced servant leadership—she put others’ needs ahead of her own and expected people to respond in kind. She had very high expectations, but she taught to those standards and always helped us focus on developing our skills and building our resumes. Boy, do I miss working for her . . .”

If you look at these descriptors in more depth, you’ll realize that everything you’ve described here focused on your ex-boss’s beingness, i.e., who she was as a person and what she stood for. You’ve described her approach to dealing with people, making you feel special and included, helping you grow professionally and personally, and expecting more of you than you sometimes expected of yourself. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with doing things—it’s just that when you come from a good and healthy sense of being, the things you do stem automatically from the healthy person you are.

In comparison, you probably won’t find many people who describe their favorite boss in terms of particular things she’s done: “Wow, Kim was wonderful because she threw a wicked Halloween party at her home every year, she let us work remotely occasionally without telling her boss, and she brought in bagels every Friday morning to get us into a weekend mindset . . . “ Again, there’s nothing wrong with doing things that make others feel good about themselves or the company—It’s just that most people don’t define their favorite bosses or employment experiences this way.

A Simpler Solution

So rather than worrying yourself silly about 101 ways to motivate your team or something similar to that, relax. Take a deep breadth and go inside to find your truth. And ask yourself a few magical questions:

• Am I the type of boss to my team members that Kim was to me?
• How would people describe me in terms of the leadership I provide—the structure, direction, and feedback that I offer on a day-to-day basis?
• Do my employees feel like I know them and care for them? Do they sense honesty and transparency in my dealings with them, and would they describe me as a selfless leader who considers their needs in our day-to-day dealings?
• Would I want to work for me?

If the answers to any of these questions is no, then you might want to rethink your approach to your role as a people leader. Look—we all feel overwhelmed and underappreciated at times, and that’s sure to show itself in our day-to-day dealings with others. And that’s okay because we’re human and sometimes get short with one another. But what if you changed your sponsoring thought about yourself in relationship to the people you supervise? What if you considered the greatest gift in the workplace the fact that you have an opportunity to mold and develop future leaders to one day replace you (as you move up your own career ladder)? What if you realized that happy cows produce more milk and looked to reinvent relationships with those who don’t appear to be happy with their own performance or who generate negativity and dissatisfaction? And what if you realized that the greatest gift you could give your subordinates lies in helping them realize how looking at the workplace from a standpoint of thankfulness and gratitude will make their whole work experience change forever?

What Could This Look Like in Reality?

Simply put, if you care, they’ll care. If you put others’ needs ahead of your own, people will typically respond in kind. And when they don’t and they try to take advantage of your kindness, peer pressure will typically kick and fix the problem for you on its own: “Hey, don’t talk that way about Paul. He’s too good a guy and he works too hard for anyone to treat him with anything other than respect. He’s passionate about what he does and he cares about us individually—not just in terms of the work we produce. So knock it off—you won’t find many people on your side if you make a comment like that again.”

Further, how do you, as a true leader, address someone who appears to be disengaged, dissatisfied, or otherwise burned out or angry at work? Here’s how this leadership wisdom might reveal itself in a case like this:

You: “John, I wanted to meet with you one-on-one and in private to discuss something that I perceive but that you may not be aware of. Over the past two or three months, I’ve noticed that you’re becoming shorter with everyone. You appear to be angry and frustrated, disappointed in the company, and at times outright confrontational and loud about your experience working here. Can you see why I might perceive things that way or why others might be keeping a distance from you nowadays, or does this sound totally foreign to you?”

Employee: “Yeah, I guess I can come across that way at times, but this company is so cheap. They keep taking things away and demanding more of us. They’re sitting on record amounts of cash but won’t add to headcount, our systems are totally out-of-date, we’re always announcing things at the last minute so that everything’s always urgent, and it’s just no fun around here any more.”

You: “Okay, I’ll give you that . . . Much of what you’re describing I’m seeing too, and there isn’t much we can do about that. But does my behavior reflect yours? In other words, we’re seeing and experiencing the same things, but would you—or do others—describe me as someone who’s potentially angry, frustrated, and confrontational?”

Employee: “No, they don’t. It obviously doesn’t bother you as much as it bothers me.”

You: “Not necessarily—you may be interpreting too much into your response there and making some assumptions that may not accurately reflect reality. Let me share with you how I think I could help. Do I have your permission to share some constructive advice, and will you be open to what I have to say and think about it?”

Employee: “Sure.”

You: “You may have allowed yourself to get swept up in the negativity, to feed into the downside that exists in every office in every company and every industry in corporate America, without realizing how much you can lead the change and be part of the solution. Sure it can be frustrating—but how you define yourself in light of this challenge indicates how much you’re willing to learn and grow from it.

“When I originally hired you, I saw someone with amazing talent. I saw someone who was passionate about what you do, someone who came aboard looking to make a difference, and someone interested in giving back to the company while building your own skills and experience. That’s the person I want back now . . . I want you to think about how to reinvent your relationship to this company and to your fellow team members. I want you to think about how you can come from thankfulness and appreciation rather than resentment and frustration. Most importantly, I want you to come over to my side and partner with me to make this a better experience for everyone. You carry a lot of clout and influence with your coworkers, and if they sense we’re partnering together and on the same side, it will restore harmony to the entire team. Can you make that commitment to me?”

And voila—No drama, no judgment, and no unnecessary confrontation . . . You’ve simply reminded your subordinate about his own talents, his unique ability to influence others, and his opportunity to reinvent himself and strengthen his reputation. In short, you’ll have demonstrated how your beingness—in this case, your patience, wisdom, and selflessness in helping your staffer reflect on how his negativity is coming across to you and others—allows others to motivate themselves by seeing the bigger picture and the view from your vantage point. The details don’t matter—there will always be workplace shortcomings and irritants due to overwhelming volume, inferior systems and processes, or personality conflicts. However, your workplace wisdom allowed this individual to rise above the action, see the broader picture, and redefine himself in light of these challenges.

Such leadership and workplace wisdom is your gift to share, your ability to positively impact others’ lives and careers, and your opportunity to give back to others in a spirit of openness and goodwill. Motivational leadership doesn’t get any better than that. Just remember that it’s who you are that counts—not necessarily what you do at any given point in time. You’ll soon realize that when you come from a spirit of selflessness, an understanding that growing and developing people is the greatest gift the workplace offers, and that teaching appreciation and thankfulness changes everything about your daily experience, you’ll create more harmony at work, get more done through your people, and develop a very loyal following of self-motivated staffers who will see you as the best boss they’ve ever had.

First, seeing that HR is a class in every MBA program, you’ve got to understand that the HR discipline, broadly speaking, is about managing and motivating people and maximizing employee productivity. As such, it’s a portable skill that continuously needs to be explored and honed throughout your career. What many managers fail to realize, however, is that working with and through HR can significantly mitigate or outright eliminate any personal liability that might come your way as a supervisor in corporate America.

HR on the Front Line by Your Side

For HR to be effective, it’s got to be on the front-end of employee interventions. Nothing is appreciated more by line managers than when they can go to HR for guidance and support on handling potentially adverse or hostile employment actions and they find a true ally who partners with them and has their backs. On the flip side, nothing is more frustrating to HR staff than having to fix a people problem once it has reached a crisis level. HR’s key purpose, after all, is to support management in making the best people decisions for the company.

One of the greatest areas where HR can provide you with invaluable support lies in the employee relations (ER) arena. Supervisors hate having to discipline or terminate staff members or engage in the “progressive discipline” steps that typically precede a termination for cause. As a result, it’s not uncommon for many managers to delay the inevitable with under-performing employees and avoid confrontation, hoping that the problem will simply fix itself. As is usually the case, problems continue to build until some magic straw breaks the camel’s back, and then managers explode into crisis mode and want the employee fired immediately.

Ouch—way too much drama . . . Remember, HR doesn’t want to be seen as an obstacle to management. Indeed, it’s arguably the case that one of HR’s key responsibilities lies in insulating companies from the bad acts of its employees. When HR only first learns of a manager’s desire to fire someone at that crisis point, its only recourse lies in examining the merit of the case from a legal standpoint. It starts by pulling the employee’s personnel file to see what kind of a paper record exists. More often that not, HR finds little if any progressive discipline (AKA written and final written warnings) that can help justify a termination for cause.

When that’s the case, HR has no choice but to nix the termination because there’s no paper record to support it. The only solution that HR could offer, instead, would be to begin the progressive discipline process from scratch by composing a first written warning. Unfortunately, that makes HR appear to be the “red tape” machine that stops you from taking the action steps that you feel are necessary and warranted to keep your operation running smoothly. How much easier it would have been had HR been involved earlier in the process: With prior warnings documented and substandard annual performance reviews on file, this final incident that “broke the camel’s back” could have indeed justified a clean termination decision with minimal fear of legal recourse.

HR Can Insulate You from Personal Liability

In addition, don’t inadvertently take on personal liability yourself for issues that occur in the workplace: They don’t pay you enough to shoulder responsibility that could jeopardize your home or savings. It’s a little known fact that in many states, managers found guilty of unlawful employment decisions could be personally penalized up to $50,000 for engaging in what are known as “managerial bad acts” (i.e., acting outside the course of scope of your employment). In fact, in the Golden State of California, there’s no limit to how much a supervisor can be sued for personally. (Tell me that’s not scary!) The best way to insulate yourself from potential charges of personal liability lies in getting the hot potato off your lap and having everything blessed by HR first before taking any type of potentially adverse action (like termination) against one of your employees.

Don’t Walk Alone

Line managers historically have avoided HR like the government. The old mantra “Keep it inside the family” is still alive and well in corporate America, especially seeing that managers traditionally have come to believe that if they couldn’t handle a problem in their group themselves, they’d be perceived as weak. Nonsense! As a line manager, you need support in resolving people issues and maximizing staff performance. If you’re fortunate enough to have an HR resource on board, then be sure and use it to your advantage. Your partnership with HR, when forged early in the relationship, will provide you with key strategic advantages to insulate you and your company from charges and challenges that may come your way in the employment litigation arena.

Still, it’s important to remember that a formal company policy doesn’t have to be broken for you to address problems effectively with a member of your team.  In reality, you’ve got a lot more discretion and flexibility here than you think, especially when dealing with an employee who appears to be apathetic about his work, condescending toward others, disinterested in making firm eye contact with customers and greeting them with an appropriate amount of energy and enthusiasm, or who appears to have a negative thing to say about everyone else on the team.

Step 1: Verbal Coaching and Counseling

Addressing your concerns verbally is a logical first step.  Sharing your concerns in a constructive manner, alerting the employee to the issues at hand, and creating the beginning of a record that could later help the company justify the necessity for taking adverse employment actions like termination are logical outcomes of verbal interventions.  But what happens when your conversations don’t work and you find yourself on a roller coaster, re-addressing the same issue every few months?

Step 2: Formal Corrective Action

Of course, written warnings are available to help you communicate the severity of a situation and lay the groundwork for a tidy dismissal.  Most companies rely on a three-step system that includes first written, second written, and final written warnings to document substandard job performance or inappropriate workplace conduct.  But what if you feel that formal corrective action may be overkill or otherwise too heavy-handed for the situation?

Step 3: Letter of Clarification to the Rescue!

The interim step between verbal counseling and formal written warnings eludes many managers in corporate America when, in fact, they could issue a documented letter of clarification as an alternative to formal corrective action.  First, because it’s in writing, it steps up the perceived level of severity and helps the employee realize that you’re serious about the issue and want to escalate beyond verbal discussions.  Second, letters of clarification are not part of your company’s formal corrective action program.  As such, they lack the “shaming” element that’s so often associated with being “written up.”

In essence, you’re escalating the matter without any of the negative trappings of progressive discipline.  What might a letter of clarification look like on paper?  While the technique can be used to address all sorts of job performance and workplace misconduct issues, here’s a common example illustrating negligence and carelessness:

Mary, over the past three weeks, I’ve shared with you my concerns regarding your overall job performance.  Specifically, I’ve notified you that you are not handling patients’ files correctly: Items are being misfiled, and files are being left in the offices without being returned to the central filing area.  In addition, a patient complained that you delivered a wheelchair that was still wet from the rain to the patient pick-up area.  Finally, on multiple occasions you have failed to use the magnetic location board to show when you were on break or lunch.  As a result, the schedulers were not able to locate you in a timely fashion.

This isn’t a disciplinary document, Mary.  It will not be placed in your formal personnel file and will not be shared with other members of management at this time. However, I have put my concerns in writing to impress upon you the seriousness of these multiple, smaller errors. My greatest concern lies in the fact that you appear to be less focused on your work or concerned about others’ needs.  You also appear to be apathetic about the outcome of your assignments, and several of your coworkers have noticed a change in your work as well and shared their concerns with me.

I want you to know that I’m here to support you in any way I can.  However, I am also holding you fully accountable for meeting all hospital expectations regarding your performance and conduct.  I recognize that you may have your own ideas for improving the situation at hand.  Therefore, I encourage you to provide your own suggestions to turn around these specific performance areas as well as the overall perception of your lower commitment level.

Please sign this document to evidence not only that you received it but also that you agree to accept full responsibility for addressing these concerns and changing the perception problems that exist.  Understand that if these issues are not resolved on an immediate and sustained basis, this document may be attached to a formal disciplinary notice in the future confirming our discussion today. Thank you.

X_________________________                                _____________

Employee Signature                                        Date

The Legal Record

Note the language in the sample above: While this isn’t a formal disciplinary document and will not be placed into the individual’s personnel file at this point in time, it “may be attached to a formal disciplinary notice in the future” as evidence that the conversation took place and that expectations were reset. Further, in cases of litigation, the letter of clarification is a formal part of the employer’s record to show that the individual was aware of the problem and informed about how to improve performance.  Therefore, the letter of clarification codifies the problem for the record and is typically used as an evidentiary element to demonstrate that the company acted responsibly in according the employee with “workplace due process.”

One Caveat about Letters of Clarification

As practical as this new tool may sound, you won’t want to issue letters of clarification every time someone does something wrong.  If these letters become your active practice and you issue them all the time, then you may end up inadvertently turning your three-step corrective action process into a four-step program (i.e., by insisting that letters of clarification be issued prior to corrective action under all circumstances for all employees)—or so might argue a plaintiff attorney in the wrongful termination litigation arena.

Simply realize that a letter of clarification, viewed by many employees as a precursor to formal discipline, typically has the same prophylactic effect as formal discipline without the negative trappings.  Added to your performance management toolbox, this alternative could get the desired results you’re looking for without any of the drama or angst that comes from issuing formal corrective action.

This article was originally published in AMA Playbook. Link to Article

Search Strategy #1: Any Port in a Storm

While we’re inclined to look for the “perfect” job or one that comes relatively close to the position that we recently vacated, remember that keeping food on your table is priority number one while you’re in transition.  And bear in mind that the healthiest thing you could do while in career transition is to keep active via temping/consulting or finding new and creative ways of giving back to the community.  Think of this as an opportunity to experience organizations and opportunities that you may not have otherwise had a chance to explore and a time to redefine yourself in light of these new career challenges.

To begin, “Executive on Demand” services, similar to temp agencies, look to provide their clients with mid- to executive-level professionals on an interim basis.  These roles range from functional heads and technical specialists to “C-suite” executives (CEO, CFO, and COO) across a wide range of disciplines and sectors.  Unlike temp agencies, however, you’ll typically contract directly with the client company for a specific time deliverable or time period (generally 3 – 12 months).  To locate executive and professional recruitment firms that provide interim management talent to their clients, Google “Executive Temporary Agencies in [LOCATION].”

Likewise, if you’re looking for contract gigs and projects for consultants, freelancers, or gurus (subject matter experts), register with www.eLance.com so that you can become an “outsource” provider to other organizations or individuals who may temporarily need an extra set of hands for someone with your skill set.

With eLance, businesses and entrepreneurs post their jobs for free.  They then get to review proposals from providers like you and ultimately choose the freelancer they want based on credentials and the price you set for yourself.  Both parties collaborate online, and you’ll get paid upon project completion.  eLance is a trusted source by Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and other prominent organizations.

Search Strategy #2:  Reference Bridging

Former supervisors are great resources for job leads, plus you’ll want to enlist their help as your reference once you hone in on a job offer. So be sure and reach out to your last three or four bosses (preferably covering about the last ten years of your employment history) to catch up, let them know what you’ve been up to since speaking with them last, and ask their permission to provide their name to prospective employers as a reference.  And don’t forget to send them your resume and ask them to keep you in mind if they hear of any relevant positions that might be a fit.  It’s amazing how many candidates skip this simple step, but it’s the best “two-fer” available:  Who better than your previous bosses to recommend you for job openings that they hear about?  And don’t even think about launching a job search without getting your references lined up!  Simply stated, this is one of the “low-hanging fruit” that you’ll want to take advantage of at the outset of your job search.

Search Strategy #3:  Social Networking Announcements

While you’re at it, ask your former bosses if they’d be willing to recommend you on Linked In.  Not only would that help strengthen your online credentials, but it will also notify everyone in their online networks that you’re available for work!  Two or three online references from former supervisors could easily get out to 500 or so people, and that’s very wise “exponential marketing!”

Also, remember to add your Linked In address to the very top of your resume under your name, phone number, and email address.  It’s important that you create a “vanity URL” on Linked In so that your address is nice and tight and doesn’t look like an alphabet soup of sorts that takes up all the space at the top of your resume. For more information, simply Google “Creating a vanity URL on Linked In” for step-by-step instructions.

Search Strategy #4:  Boutique Employment Websites

Segmentation and niche marketing are what the Internet is all about, and your job search marketing strategy is no exception.  There’s nothing wrong with Monster, Career Builder, The Ladders, or any of the other mega job boards out there, but don’t neglect boutique websites that often cater to a more exclusive clientele like:

Executive Career Network: www.execunet.com

Six-Figure Jobs: www.6figurejobs.com

Idealist.org for nonprofit opportunities: www.idealist.org

USAJobs for a massive listing of federal jobs: www.usajobs.gov

Glassdoor for postings and company dish: www.Glassdoor.com

Dice for technical (IT and eCommerce) careers: www.dice.com

Depending on what you’re looking for, especially if you’re looking for a “Second Act” in your career, try sites like the following.

Bilingual jobs: www.TwoLingos.com

Overseas jobs: www.Overseasjobs.com

Telecommuting jobs:  www.tjobs.com

And don’t forget the two largest job aggregators, www.Indeed.com and www.SimplyHired.com.  Simply set your job search parameters and allow these aggregators to email you every time a job posting matches your criteria!

Search Strategy #5: “Pro Bono” Volunteerism and Giving Back to Your Community

If giving back to your community is something you’ve been wanting to do, log onto www.taprootfoundation.org to learn more about pro bono opportunities where you could help nonprofit organizations grow and develop into your community’s future leaders.  There’s no pay for your work, but you’ll be doing a wonderful deed to help those who need you most, and you can never go wrong with that approach to life. Besides, you’ll work with executives and professionals just like yourself, and that’s a great way to build your network the easy way.

Job search strategies are as unique and specialized as you are, but these resources may help you cut to the chase that much faster by enjoying and benefiting from your transitional period while speeding up your arrival at your next full-time position.

I was fortunate enough to attend a resume writing seminar by Lee Hecht Harrison, the largest outplacement provider in the world, and I learned a number of short but very helpful resume writing tips that should come in handy for anyone launching a job search or simply updating their most important credential. The job search world is changing in numerous ways, thanks to the newest technologies available in company applicant tracking systems, on Linked In, and even in light of identity theft. So join me for a quick tour of some of the newest twists and recommendations that outplacement coaches are recommending for their clients.

1. What to Include and What to Leave Out

Your resume is a marketing brochure, and standard menu items that most employers are looking for include the following:

• Heading
• Core Qualifications
• Key Accomplishments
• Professional Experience (i.e., work history)
• Education and Foreign Languages
• Professional Designations and Certifications

In comparison, you can leave out the “Career Objective” section typically found at the top of the resume along with “References Available Upon Request” tag line at the end of the resume. The Career Objective typically limits you, and the reference add-on is pretty much understood, so it just takes up unnecessary space. Likewise, don’t include salary information or reasons for leaving on the resume itself: save that for the employment application when the time comes.

2. Resume Heading

First, make yourself easy to find. Your cell phone and email address are a given, but be sure and include the address to your Linked In profile. And be sure it’s in a “vanity URL” format, which is much shorter than the original link that Linked In generates when you create your online profile. If you’d like a 5-easy-step plan to creating a vanity URL on Linked In, simply click here:

http://davido22.ipage.com/newsite/creating-a-vanity-url-on-linkedin-in-5-easy-steps/

Next, leave off your street address at the top of your resume. The World Wide Web can forward your resume into the unknown recesses of cyberspace, and for safety’s sake, you don’t really want to announce your street address to the whole wide world. GPS tools simply make it too easy for strangers to show up at your door. However, you’ll still want to include your city and state so that prospective employers have some idea where you currently live. So a heading that looks like the following will work well:

PAUL FALCONE
Los Angeles, CA
(###) ###-#### Cell
Paul@PaulFalconeHR.com
www.linkedin.com/in/paulfalcone1

3. Acceptable Font and Size

You should employ a uniform font size throughout your resume, and it should be nothing smaller than 11-point font. Further, while Times New Roman is historically the font that’s been used most often, it’s considered a bit outdated these days. The “hotter” fonts in today’s market include Ariel, Calibri, Tahoma, and Verdana.

Here’s another interesting tidbit: Qualifying the companies where you’ve worked is always a good idea, especially at the senior executive level. Generally speaking, you’ll want to include the company size in terms of revenue and/or number of employees along with any other special accolades. When doing so, bold the company name in ALL CAPS and then bold and italicize your title. Here’s what it might look like:

GRIFOLS BIOSCIENCE, Los Angeles, CA ……………………………………2012 – present
Ranked by Forbes in 2013 and 2014 as one of the world’s 100 most innovative companies, Grifols (Nasdaq: GRFS) is a $4.5 billion bio-pharmaceutical manufacturer of plasma-based protein therapies headquartered in Barcelona, Spain with 12,000 employees worldwide and 9,000 workers in the United States.
Vice President, Human Resources

4. Resume Formats

You’ll generally want to save your resume in three separate formats: MS Word, PDF, and as a text file. The reasoning? The Word doc is the most common and what you’ll typically upload when filling out an online application. A company’s applicant tracking system will be able to scan and filter your Word resume version for key words (which a PDF won’t be able to do since it’s only a static snapshot).

The PDF version is necessary because it’s the most secure (i.e., it can’t be manipulated or changed on the receiving end) and because it can be opened on any computer. Therefore, there’s no concern that outdated software on the recruiter’s or employer’s end could unintentionally garble your content when it’s opened. The PDF will also ensure that your two-page resume remains two pages long and doesn’t unintentionally grow to a third page because of an orphan line that’s carried over due to software differences.

Finally, save your resume in a text-only format for times when you’re required to paste it into an online application’s text box. Text-only resumes are not very pretty, but they’ve got one feature that Word resumes don’t: they break lines naturally, so the lines on your resume won’t continue on beyond the right-hand margin. If you paste a Word document into a text box instead, the reader could have a very hard time getting to your content because of all the right-margin scrolling that may become necessary.

Special Note: If you’re emailing your resume directly to someone, include both the Word and PDF versions (but not the text version) so the recipient has both for convenience.

5. Posting Your Resumes to Job Boards is Not Necessarily Recommended!

This one was really an eye opener for me. Open job boards like Monster make your detailed employment history accessible to the entire world. Add that to the fact that real estate and financial websites may be able to reveal details about the price of your home or other personal matters, and you’ll soon come to realize that identify theft could become an issue if you provide too much data about your career specifics. In short, it may not be worth the risk of posting your resume on open job boards after all.

Here’s why: Statistically there is only a 4% response rate for blind resume uploads to online job postings with no network introduction (versus an 80 – 90% success rate with network introductions). Also, the potential for actually having your resume seen is much stronger with Linked In than with Monster or any of the other job boards. In fact, because in-house recruiters only have so much time and resources, they may only look at the first one hundred resumes of an 800-resume batch, so your resume uploaded to the job board may never even be seen. If you do opt to post your resume to an open job board, be sure and note your user name and password so you can deactivate it once your job search is complete. But again, the payout may not be worth the risk when “blind” applications have so little statistical success and identify theft is clearly on the rise.

A lot has changed in just the past few years in terms of resume writing and posting norms and expectations. Hopefully these five short tips will help save you time and answer some of your questions as you spiff up your resume for prospective employer considerations.

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