Organizational Self-Awareness

An increasing body of evidence supports the linkage between an organization's culture and its business performance. However, managerial and non-managerial staffs in Shanghai rarely talk about their company’s culture at ease.

During the past several weeks, I conducted very sporadic and unsystematic research in China to gauge employees’ and especially recruiters’ ability to describe their company’s organizational culture. The majority of professionals that I spoke with had very little to say when asked; third-party recruiters knew the least.

Comments were usually limited to: young staff, international team, big and established company, dynamic environment, processes to foster innovation, specific culture, unique culture, very distinctive culture, etc. Well, let’s stop before we get even more vague and tautological.

So, how can employees provide more substantive responses when referring to their company’s culture? One way of doing so involves increasing organizational self-awareness through:
• Learning dimensions of organizational culture,
• Understanding how the company scores against these dimensions, and
• Communicating the above to employees regularly (message reinforcement).

Raising organizational awareness can increase recruiters’ ability to promote the company to talents, managers’ ability to engage employees, and employees’ understanding of their own roles.

Cultural Fit

Cultural fit is the congruence between individual and organizational values.

Nevertheless, the concept of cultural fit is ambiguous because the choices of values are limited and organizational cultures are rooted in relatively similar if not the same values.

For example, accountability, integrity, and creativity are among the favorite values articulated by companies of different sizes and in different industries. But, companies can go differently about them in every day situations. Regarding accountability, one company can develop a very rigorous performance management system while the other still tolerates low performers and has no processes in place for exiting them. In respect to integrity, this particular value can be non-negotiable for some companies while perfectly negotiable for others. Additionally, creativity can be differently celebrated and practiced differently at various companies.

In fact, companies do not differ so much in the selection of values but in terms of how they cultivate values and are able to impact conditions where they flourish. Similarly, sometimes the values individuals think they embrace (ideal values they should have because of outside influence such as family, religion, or employer) are actually different from those they live (actual values).

Thus, when determining cultural fit, there are two useful tests to run in order to identify peoples’ actual values:
• Calendar test - How much time do you spend each week trying to acquire or increase this value?
• Checkbook test - How much money do you spend each week trying to acquire or increase this value?
The same questions apply of course to companies as well.

Importantly, prerequisites to success for assessing cultural fit are a solid self-awareness of employees and candidates and a sound company’s own organizational awareness.

Economic Crime means HR has failed

When codifying their desired culture, companies also formulate core values including the corporate governance/ethics issues expected of each employee. Even so, economic crime occurs in various companies and often this is not an isolated incident only.

In February’s issue of Shanghai Business Review, the nuts and bolts of economic crime in China were covered along with advice on how businesses can protect themselves. Key ideas presented include:
• Ensure that ethical culture emanates from the top,
• Provide regular training with real world scenarios,
• Establish a confidential hotline for whistleblowers,
• Make a public example of wrongdoers,
• Investigate reasons behind employees’ refusal of a promotion, employees’ unwillingness to take holidays for fear of replacement (possibly exposing a scam), and employees’ access to files that are unnecessary for their job,
• Introduce control systems to prevent a “Fraud Triangle” (motivation, opportunity, and rationalization), and
• Talk with customers to ensure that employees are conducting themselves ethically.

Notably, all of these activities fall underneath the field of HR. Indeed, HR’s job is to establish guidelines for ethical behavior and constantly reinforce them. However, overcoming a systemic problem with unethical behavior by leaders in certain industries (e.g. health care) or countries (e.g. China) may be out of HR’s reach and relates more than anything to Don Quixote’s Fighting Windmills. Nonetheless, I believe HR’s responsibility for designing a strong ethical culture translates into their partial responsibility for economic crime.

CNY Resolution: Walk the Talk

In 2008, financial rewards will continue to be the company’s chief weapon in the War for Talent.

Nonetheless, employers’ competition for talent based on compensation is as dreadful as market competition based on price. Undercutting prices can lead to an increase in market share in the short-term; however it can impact the profitability in the long-term. Comparable, companies can successfully lure talent, but may have difficulties to gain their loyalty and commitment over the long haul.

DDI’s Retention Drivers and Employee Commitment Model confirms that monetary incentives have a short life. Employees particularly fall prey to higher financial rewards (tangible elements of EVP) from a competitor, when they feel dissatisfied with the level of leadership, growth opportunities, and culture (intangible elements of EVP) at their current company. Thus, talent can be successfully attracted with EVP tangibles but must be retained with EVP intangibles.

So, to stop this vicious cycle of turnover, companies should design a distinctive EVP and actually walk the corporate talk of “employees are our greatest assets”. Surely this could be a valid Chinese New Year’s Resolution.

A Happy Year of the Rat!

Personal Impact Map

The rise of job branding clearly shows that companies are unable to communicate to their employees how each and every one of them creates value.

Thus, only a few employees can share bottom-line accomplishments like increased revenues, decreased costs, increased prices, increased product/service quality (so that it leads to one of the previous three) or efficiency improvements (better, faster, cheaper) during their tenure.

The vast majority of the workforce does not even believe they make a difference let alone their performance or lack thereof can have an impact on the company’s profits. As a result, when applying for a new job, many applicants have difficulties specifying their achievements.

Managers should start changing this reality by helping employees develop a personal impact map. Together with HR professionals, they should undertake job redesign to create positive benefits, better outcomes, or further progress toward employee career goals.

As a result, each employee will understand how specific activities that he or she performs contribute to the organization’s vision. They will also better recognize their accomplishments.

Lastly, job branding and personal impact mapping can act as catalysts for meaningful and purposeful jobs across the board.

Candidate Value Proposition ?

Recently, a Candidate Value Proposition (CVP) has been recommended to position a company on the job market more effectively and attract talent more successfully. I do not follow the logic of this concept because CVP inherently misses the value-transfer.

CVP probably has its roots in a (Customer) Value Proposition (VP) (marketing) and an Employee Value Proposition (EVP) (HR).

While VP is the sum total of benefits which a vendor promises that a customer will receive in return for the customer's associated payment; an EVP is the sum of everything employees experience and receive while they are part of a company for meeting expectations, exhibiting desired behavior, and producing results. Furthermore, just as VP targets customers and prospects; EVP focuses on both employees and job candidates.

CVP seems thus to be obsolete and possibly confused with 4 P’s of Marketing and the AIDA sales process.