Once you have hired good employees, the next step that successful people managers take is to develop the full potential of their employees. Performance management is a process that helps managers achieve the goal of getting the best from their employees. In this third course in the Human Resources for People Managers specialization, we will discuss the skills and key processes you will need to develop your employees to attain department and organizational goals. These skills will include setting clear expectations, providing positive and corrective feedback, and delivering an effective performance appraisal.
4.3.3 Linking Cultural Norms and Behavior into HR and Performance Management Practices
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From the course by University of Minnesota
Managing Employee Performance
432 ratings
University of Minnesota
432 ratings
Course 3 of 5 in the Specialization Human Resource Management: HR for People Managers
From the lesson
CREATING A POSITIVE PERFORMANCE CULTURE
You are now ready to bring things full circle. In this module you will learn how to create a positive performance culture in you organization. You will learn the fundamentals of creating civility in your organizational cultures, as well as ways to identify and correct incivility, which can weaken your organization's performance. Finally, you will learn about building a culture that focuses on values and strengths. A culture that creates and reinforces positive norms and values is a culture that helps your organization grow. It is important to "walk the talk" and model the behaviors of positive performance culture.
Meet the Instructors
Larry BourgerieSenior Lecturer
Carlson School of Management, Department of Work and Organizations
When you create a culture of civility from the top,
how do you ensure it filters down through a whole organization?
Lets look.
I think that's an excellent example.
I think what you see here is, when you weave it in,
like this gentlemen is doing to your organization, it becomes part of it,
a whole process, and product, if not it falls apart.
So let's talk about that a little more in detail.
After this video, you'll be able to understand that
civility must be apart of the fabric of the organization, not just an accessory.
Build civility into your organization and processes.
What we need to do is make civility a part of the very fabric of your organization,
we talked about that, let's look at that in detail.
I love this quilt here.
It shows how civility is at every little piece of the quilt.
This is your organization, and these are different parts of your organization,
build it in, part of your every day life.
It's not just, you'll notice, it's not on one piece of the quilt.
Every part of our organization has built in, into our processes,
into our procedures, into how we conduct our business.
I love this quote by Emile Durkheim.
When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary,
when mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.
I think how this applies to organizations and to culture,
is that when we have a strong culture, strong mores, strong norms, strong values,
we get to spend our time doing fun things, developing people,
growing our organizations, all the good things that is fun to do as managers.
When they're insufficient, we spend too much of our time fixing problems,
dealing performance problems in our organizations, and
take it from me as a manager, that's no fun.
So the strong values, and mores, and
norms, are not just nice to have and sound like fun stuff.
It's really important to make your job a lot more easy, and
effective, and our organizations more successful.
Couple other things to think about civility, promote it at every opportunity.
If it's that important, talk about it.
I love the word promote because it brings up perhaps a concert promoter.
We talk about it all the time, people know it's there,
it's in our very purview, clarify it.
When I see something that isn't quite in line with it, clarify it for people,
assume that they're good people.
And that they are trying to behave in line with our culture, and our norms.
But if you see it, clarify it.
And enforce it, it's crucial.
What we enforce we send a strong message with enforcement.
We remember in a past video,
we talked about harassment discrimination being illegal, especially in the US.
But we talked about bullying, and civility is, we accept it sometimes.
What I would suggest is you make it equal.
To have it truly embedded in your culture, although it's not a legal issue,
it's one that's so important in our organizations that we put it on par.
We treat it the same, we have the same kind of training.
And we have the same type of enforcement as we would
with something that's a legal issue.
That sends a message that this is really important.
So let's look at some things.
One way to embed it into your culture and into your quilt is workplace design.
There's many, many ways to do this, walk around your workplace.
And see what it says to you about your culture is aligning.
Is it sterile?
What do you have on your walls?
I've seen some organizations where they've had the history of their organization,
that tells me a lot about how they feel about the history, walk into cubes.
Do you see people's families pictures?
Do you see pictures of things in your organization?
That tells you a lot about it.
You see pictures of people doing volunteer work,
all these things say a lot of about your culture.
So when someone comes in,
you're communicating to your very workplace design.
Transparent Communication, this is also crucial.
People need to know what's going on, and need to know that they're being truthful.
Now, there's a couple of exceptions.
If it's a legal issue,
or confidentiality, certainly we're not communicating that to folks.
But what you want to do, is tell people what's going on whenever you can.
There's an old adage in communication, if I don't know what's going on,
I'll make it up.
And most likely, it'll be worse than the truth.
So make sure people know what's going on in the organization,
make them your partners.
Recruitment screening, in the United States at least,
we always have we are an EEO opportunity employer, that tells that we
abide by the law, consider the same things from a civility standpoint, and
culture, that we promote a positive culture.
Send that message in your very material from the start when recruiting people.
Interviewing questions, you may remember, if you took the earlier module,
you talked about real estate job previews, and talking interviewing questions.
Have interviewing questions that get at the behaviors of people.
Will they be civil behaviors?
Respectful behaviors?
Ask questions about how they deal with difficult situations with the customer,
with a teammate.
That'll tell you a lot about it, so
make sure you're interviewing for that same skill set,
much like you would interview for a skill set that's attached to the job.
Onboarding, onboarding, one of the best opportunities here that I've used,
is just don't do paperwork, when you have people come in with their initial
orientations, have some executive leaders come in and talk about the culture.
And give examples of the culture out here.
That says a lot when the executive senior manager comes in, on day one, and
talks about how important civility is in our culture, and how proud of it we are.
Training at all levels, we often train managers,
and front line people on policies and procedures.
I talked about harassment and what to do, what not to do.
But this has to happen at all levels.
And make sure people know what to do, when they see an incident of incivility.
And how to report that and how to fix that.
Training at all levels, conflict resolution,
a lot of incivility comes up during difficult times.
So make sure you have some sort of training, coaching, and
conflict resolution within team members.
Conflict in it of itself, doesn't have to be bad,
in fact it identifies where we have concerns and issues.
It's how we deal with it.
Do we deal with it respectful win-win communication?
Or do result into behaviors that we're not so proud of?
Performance evaluations, we've alluded this before.
But I want to say more about that.
Make sure that your performance evaluations include behaviors
that are important to us.
Are they abiding by the values of the organization?
The norms you set.
It's not just what I do, and how well I do it, and the results I produce.
But how I do it, the behaviors.
And how I treat others while doing it.
That's crucial as well for a civil positive culture, couple other ones.
Promotions, so many times over my career,
I see people promoted because they're good at what they do.
So maybe they're a great IT person, a great salesperson,
they become sales managers, this is wonderful.
But make sure they have the people skills,
that reinforce our values of our culture as well.
So that is a big mistake I see.
So people are great at their job, but not great managers,
tend not to be as good when we promote them.
So make sure we promote them for both skill sets.
Abundant recognition, I believe in this.
Recognition is ever expanding,
it costs nothing typically, and we could do so much with it.
So in a simple culture, recognize people for
the good things they do, make them feel good.
That makes it a great place to work.
Voice, this is a concept we talk about in performance management and
in nature as a whole.
Make sure people have a voice.
Do they have a place where they can come with issues and questions?
Do they have a place, if they see uncivil behavior, that they can report it?
Many organizations will have a hotline,
where you can report either anonymously if you want, or give your name.
But make sure there's a place that we can have people go to when they see things.
This is very important to get that information to you as managers so
we can fix things.
Benefits, do we have benefits that are consistent with our culture?
If we have quote unquote family friendly benefits,
do we allow people some time off to pursue other opportunities?
Do we give them paid sick leave?
This says a lot about our culture that we care about our employees.
Terminations, this is one I strongly want to say a few words about.
Termination, how we treat people on the way out says a lot about who we are.
If you treat people with respect and dignity, even in a difficult termination,
and separation from the organization, that tells a lot about our character.
And remember, these people are going to go out in the the world, and
talk about how they're treated at your organization.
If it's respect and dignity, it'll say a lot about you as an organization.
And finally an exit interview questions, always recommend that you ask people why
after they leave, why they're leaving and stuff.
What typically happens, they'll say for more money or better job.
What I ask them is why did you start to look?
When you ask that question, you'll find often,
it was about the treatment, a bad manager, poor expectations.
You'll get a lot different information when you ask me why I looked.
That's a whole different question.
So make sure that you ask that question, when you are doing your exit interviews.
And last, this is sort of sad that I put this up here but
positive culture is a competitive advantage.
So many organizations don't practice these things that we're talking about.
But it can be a competitive advantage.
Everyone typically would love to work for
a company that is known to treat their people well.
And it is a competitive advantage.
It'll help you recruit and retain good people.
So I've talked a lot about my thoughts and some of the experiences.
But let me have you listen to a few voices of experience, some people I know, and
asked that same question to, the role culture and how that plays in performance.
So let's listen to them.
>> Culture is everything, if you don't have an organization with a good culture,
that values the contributions that employees make, and
the time that it takes to develop employees, nothing you do as far as
management process that any HR department can try to implement, will be effective.
>> I think a companies culture plays a huge role in performance management.
I think that performance management needs to be openly accepted from the top
down in a company.
I think it should wrap up into the companies goals and values.
And I think that performance management, from a company standpoint,
should be one of the core values to promote continuous development and
grow into, especially with young professionals.
>> I think culture is huge, specifically, especially, depending on if you have
an open culture or more closed culture, just depending on how comfortable you
are talking with your manager, talking with them, talking with their co-workers,
or their direct reports, I think, is really important.
The more open relationship you have,
probably easier it's going to be to receive feedback or give feedback.
So I think it's very important.
>> I hope their insights and thoughts,
helped you clarify some things that you might do in your organization, and
the importance of culture in the performance management process.
And I hope the things we talked about in this video,
help you weave your own quilt of civility, and culture, and
make your workplace a better place to be for your employees.
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