HR and Marketing, or HR vs Marketing

Executive summary of the Forum for People Performance Management & Measurement hosted by the Northwestern University.

The document presents the results of a research about the way and level of relation between the departments of Marketing and HR, in the sense that a good communication between both is a must for reaching high motivated employees contacting the main customers, as well as the incentives used for this range of employees ( leaded by recognition awards )

Few words about the summary:

      1-High market performers are more likely to place a higher value on directly measuring customer satisfaction than on using more traditional sales measures to approximate customer satisfaction

      2-Firms that have an open corporate culture and strong orientation by senior management are more likely to be able to develop the appropiate communications, measurement tools, and incentives to achieve and maintain strong customer satisfaction levels ans financial performance.

It is not only to say that “it is all about people”, but there is a clear mandate to execute in this sense, empowering employees with information, allowing them to develope their capacities.
Goals must be deployed along the organization, properly explained and shared with all the incumbents of a role in the organization

HR Best Practices

New report from Boston Consulting Group about the “HR practices for volatile times”

The report is based in an online survey, receiving more than 5.000 responses from 109 countries.

The Four topics stand out as the most critical:

•             Managing talent

•             Improving leadership development ( increasing importance from last reports)

•             Employee engagement ( To be restored after  two years of difficulties linked to layoffs and other cutbacks)

•             Strategic workforce planning

But I thing that we must pay attention to the differences in HR practices when comparing the High performing companies to the Low performing ones ( taking into consideration revenue and profitability growth):

Performance management and rewards is the topic where the distance is more remarkable. Let's say that the best ones are seeking for the best ones, in a continuous process of improvement of the quality of the workforce.

Is it fear what retains a good employee in a bad company?

Stop Comparing Yourself with Steve Jobs

The post tittle has been copied from Dan Pallotta’s blog , and it refers to one of the mistakes, not only of managers or any individual trying to compare himself to an icon or myth, but also can be an error when using the model to evaluate the members of our team, or when running a performance appraisal.

In previous post there are comments about the difficulty for having a standard level of rating the employees, and the risk related to the rater's subjective view. This issue adds one more difficulty to the task, because it can also be linked to setting wrong targets, which will drive to demotivation

Guide the employees in contributing to the organization’s success

The tittle of this post is one of the sentences of a presentation covering the following items:

Identify major determinants of individual performance
Discuss the three general purposes of performance management
Identify the five criteria for effective performance management system
Discuss the four approaches to performance management, specific techniques used in each approach, & the way these approaches compare with criteria for effective performance management system

From this exhaustive work, I’m would like to point out two ideas:

1- When referring to the sources of performance information, the authors propose the manager, the colleagues, the customers and the subordinates, but when describing the qualities and issues of each level, the critic to the information produced by the subordinates is that this can "give power to the subordinates".

Empowerment has been recognized as a strong motivation tool, and one of the consequences, that we must not only accept, but encourage, is the power of the employees as professionals in any level of the organizational relationships.

2- The rater's values and attitudes can condition the result of a Performance Appraisal.

The HR department must create a clear procedure, and give training to the raters, in order to avoid that the mangers could evaluate their people based in their own qualities and performance, just using a mirror instead of an honest and professional method

Creating destruction

In the Cover Story of BusinessToday we can read about Microsof in India:

"We look for talent. Full stop. We don't stick with one sector or not only to high technology," says Joji Gill, Senior HR Director— Microsoft India.

When you want to hire talent, the next day responsibility is to retain it, because you want the hiring process to become an investment rather than a cost

In reference to how do a candidate can become a member of the team, he explains:

"We are not looking for skill sets, but we are looking at what the potential candidate's fundamental DNA is and how we can scale him. The question we ask: 'Is he a Microsoft hire,'" says Gill. And what DNA is Gill looking for? People who have initiative and can work without too much of direction. And, yes, somebody hierarchical will not survive in Microsoft.

"While, some new talent comes through incremental headcount each year, there's also new talent that comes in form of replacing low performers," says Gill. Creating destruction has to be a part of any innovation factory.

I would say that this is not only for companies in the high tech domain, but for any organization not willing to loose knowledge along the time, by retaining only the low performers.

Getting people on board with a higher commitment, and skills matching with the company requirements, is a must for the management in all the levels of the organization. 

If a hiring mistake  arrives, there are several formulae for correcting the disfunction between capabilities and skills versus the current responsibility/position in the company, but at the end it is worth to go for replacement, as soon as possible, and invest, again, in an proper hiring process

Bechmarking for performance

"Hiring Right Person First Time" is the AssessSystems's  proposal for avoiding future performance issues.
The Managing Director, Rob McKay, gives some tips in his blog, on how to use benchmarking for an objective performance appraisal.

 The discussion about having a PA not depending on feelings but on parameters, will always lead to the process to define, to select, the right parameter.

When selecting performance indicators, we are sending a message to the employees about what's relevant for us ( should also be relevant for the company ), so we are opening a box full of possible misunderstandings.

To avoid it we must deploy the indicators step by step, aligning the goals of the company with the ones of the departaments and the one of the individual employees, in order to guarantee that no one single kpi is deviating the attention of the people to pursuit other targets that the expected ones

Why do low performers leave?

Interesting paper about the investigation performed by Trevor, Hausknecht and Howard, named "Why High and Low Performers Leave and What They Find Elsewhere: Job Performance Effects on Employment Transitions"

Working with a sample of approx. 2.500 former employees of an organization, they find that there is a variety of quit reasons, differing both across and within performance levels.

As the result of testing 9 different working hypothesis, they end in a list of reasons, clasified on relative importance for the leaver.

We can consider that they confirm what anyone could expect based on common sense:

The quit reason importance ranking is,

For High performers:

• Advance Opportunity
• Pay
• Opportunity to use skills

For Average Performers:

• Supervisor
• Pay
• Advance Opportunity

For Low performers:

• Supervisor
• Working hours
• Advance Opportunity

Nothing new under the sun, but this time properly supported by statistical tests.

Does the company deals effectively with poor performers ?

This is a question for an engagement survey to be deployed by a company, allowing us to know if the peers are concerned and/or affected by the behavior of the low perfomers in the organization.

 When willing to take care of the overall performance, not only as the addition of individual performances, but as the result of the individual interrelations which conform the group's behavior, we must know what's  the sensivity level related to the response of the management, when facing the issue of a low performer employee.

 In order to reinforce the attitude of the high or middle performers, the core of the organization, we must ask them about their concerns and expectations when dealing with LP, simply because they are our main asset, and the most involved stake holder

5 reasons to get rid of low performers

Amazing ( elementary ) proposal: give them a job at the competition

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J34KuLGzNEg

I would advise BilltownBoyy, the owner of this Youtube channel to read, in the previous posts of this blog how to improve the performance, before getting rid of them.

We are suposed to be managers, not firing machines, and people is the main row material for succeeding in reaching the goals of the organization, according to it's culture.
Mission, Vision and culture are the principles of the religion that any employee in a company, does not matters in which level of the organigram, has to follow with no doubts about how to understand the message.

Dismissing, laying off, getting rid, firing,  don't care how we want to call it, must be the last option, to avoid becoming a low permormant manager

Renters instead of owners

This is how the low performers are defined in a very interesting post in Allbusiness.com, about the management of performance.

The proposal is simple, in two steps:

First: decide to analyze the level of performance of the employees. Same issue of previous posts: the manager must be the one to understand that low performance is an issue with impact in all the organization, not only the attitudinal problem of an individual employee. A coward manager, is a low performant manager

Second: Face the problem, explain your point of view and the targets for the job, evaluation, follow-up and take action if there is no visible improvement.

Start with a detailed and proper Job description, to avoid any kind of misunderstanding, and an accurate and professional performance appraisal. Coach them. ( please, coach! )

From the post:

“Many healthcare organization leaders are spending 80 percent of their time on the 5 percent of employees who are not meeting expectations.”

"A useful tool is a staff differentiation worksheet that defines each type of employee with specific characteristics across five traits: professionalism, teamwork, knowledge and competence, communication, and safety awareness."


"Basically, high performers are people who bring solutions. Middle performers can identify the problem but may lack the experience or self-confidence to bring solutions. Low performers tend to blame others for the problem. They act like renters instead of owners. "

"..consequences if performance does not improve by a date you specify. Then follow through and take action."

Performance + Potential

John Belchamber signs a post in invokeresults, the blog linked to his consultancy firm for SME’s, were he explains the difference between :


Performance ( is happening now or has happened – measured via your KPIs) and
Potential ( is a thing that will happen in the future – measured with tools such as DISC & Aptitude Assessments )

The matrix is reduced to four options, making more simple to align both characteristics and, thus, being able to make the best choice for the developement of the employees

It is very important to follow his recommendation, that I transcribe directly:

Thinking about how your people fit into the Performance Vs. Potential Matrix, ask yourself the following questions:


• Do I know where my people fit in the Performance Vs. Potential Matrix?


• Do I have the right people, in the right places, performing the right tasks?


• What’s stopping me doing something about this?


I would like to pay special attention to the last one which, once is solved, will trigger action to develope the other two.

From the position of Managers we must reject the options of doing nothing, expecting for a change, or moving the employee to a new position, or assigning some tasks to others because, in fact, this are not even options, are simply ways of delaying the only possible management action: work actively to move up or to move out the low performer.

Execution is a main part of the manager's role