HR
November 27, 2006 from Harvard
Business School – “The topic of performance reviews triggers a wide
range of complex responses. The fact that most of their strongest critics elected
to reply anonymously to this month's column suggests that there are also political
overtones to the subject. This month's debate was much like a case discussion,
one that is often hard to summarize. But in an attempt to do it, here is my "take"
on what you have said collectively…” 180 View - While this
Harvard Business School article and related survey addresses many of the important
issues surrounding Employee Performance Reviews, perhaps a ‘refresher’
on the importance of performing such reviews would be helpful. Most of the
companies that Lawrence Young has consulted with only do employee performance
reviews on an annual basis, and usually as part of a yearly salary review. Lawrence
suggests that employee performance be evaluated on a quarterly basis at minimum,
and that these reviews are of a great benefit to not only the employee, but to
the company and the employee’s supervisor as well. Performance evaluation
benefits the employee by: - Translating job duties into specific performance
expectations (goals/strategies) and standards;
- Prioritizing goals to be
accomplished during the evaluation period;
- Helping the employee focus
on the job and on how it contributes to the overall goals of the business unit;
- Providing
meaningful job performance feedback;
- Providing concrete suggestions for
how job performance can be improved;
- Laying out a plan for future career
development;
- Recognizing work achievements;
- Providing a formal
opportunity for the employee to inform the supervisor about barriers to work accomplishment,
to ask for clarification of duties and roles, to identify resources and tools
needed to help improve performance, and to highlight work achievements and the
strengths he brings to the job.
Performance evaluation benefits the
supervisor by: - Clearly communicating job performance expectations
and standards to all parties involved so there is no basis for confusion or disagreement
later on;
- Serving as formal documentation of numerous personnel actions
such as training needs, performance improvement needs, recognition of goal accomplishment
and exceptional performance, pay increase, job redesign, and discipline;
- Providing
a means of either encouraging the employee to continue good work or to change/improve
in areas that don’t meet expectations;
- Providing an opportunity in
time to paint a picture of past performance and lay a roadmap for future planning
and development;
- Reinforcing the employee’s accountability for job
performance
Performance evaluation benefits the company by: - Communicating
to employees the overall corporate strategic plan so that they can plan for the
future;
- Engaging everyone in the organization, from top to bottom, to
help the company successfully fulfill its mission;
- Helping to define and
clarify roles – who does what, how and when – in order to foster responsibility
and accountability throughout the workplace;
- Helping determine when program
and policy changes need to be made;
- Aligning the work goals/strategies
of each employee with the mission and strategic goals of the company in order
to deliver its products and services effectively;
- Providing a uniform
method of giving each employee constructive feedback about their job performance.
According to Lawrence, the importance of doing employee performance
reviews on a frequent and regular basis cannot be overstated. “After all”
says Lawrence, “you cannot manage what you cannot measure!” By
the way, are you aware that there are usually government grants available to train
your employees if your company is based in Quebec and its gross payroll in 2006
was between $1 million and $5 million? As well, there are a host of other
grants, subsidies and cost-saving measures that may be able to help your company
significantly reduce its labour costs and address its human resource issues. To
obtain more information, without cost or obligation, on how your Quebec-based
company can benefit from one or more of these opportunities, please contact Lawrence
Young at lyoung@180systems.com. When
Good Teams Go Bad January 31, 2007 from Harvard Business School
– “What could better symbolize high-level business performance than
an eight-oared crew team rowing in perfect unison, their boat powered by a selfless
collaboration of strength, skill, and shared purpose? It's no wonder that advertisers
love to use this image to depict successful teamwork The rowing metaphor
also caught the eye of HBS professor Jeff Polzer and HBS associate professor Scott
Snook. The pair has produced a case about the behind-the-scenes dynamics surrounding
a college crew team. But unlike the beautiful images favored by advertisers, "The
Army Crew Team" case reveals a not-so-pretty picture of a frustrating and
baffling decline in performance by the varsity boat at the United States Military
Academy..." 180 View – Lawrence Young has worked with hundreds
of companies implementing IT and HR projects whose success depends on team work.
Lawrence has concluded that the maximum benefits derived from highly functional
teams accrue when: - The strategic and operational goals and objectives
of the project are clearly identified and communicated to all team members.
- The
culture of the team ensures a high degree of respect between members of the team.
- All team members clearly understand the basic dynamic of any team, which
is that the whole exceeds the sum of the parts i.e. the overall success of the
team exceeds the individual success of any given member of the team.
- Each
team member is given appropriate responsibility to complete their assigned tasks,
and is measured and held accountable by the team leader in a timely fashion.
But
according to Lawrence, the most critical success factor in effective team work
is ensuring that each team member is committed to the success of the overall project,
and not merely involved in completing their assigned tasks. As Lawrence says,
successful teams are all about bacon and eggs - ‘the chicken is involved,
but the pig is committed’. Are
Background Checks Necessary For IT Workers? January 29, 2007 from
Information Week – “When UBS PaineWebber hired Roger Duronio as a full-time
systems administrator in 1999, it didn't do a background check on him. An investigation
likely would've turned up a police record that included burglary and aggravated
assault convictions in the 1960s, drug charges in 1978 and 1980 for which he wasn't
convicted, and a drunken driving case in the 1990s. Those records were filed
by the U.S. District Court in New Jersey's Probation Office ahead of last month's
sentencing of Duronio, 63, convicted this summer of computer sabotage and securities
fraud. In 2002, Duronio unleashed a "logic bomb" on UBS' computer systems
that crashed 2,000 of the company's servers and left 17,000 brokers unable to
make trades. It cost about $3.1 million to fix. UBS didn't disclose the damage
from lost business. Duronio's criminal past is the kind of information most
employers need to know, especially if they're hiring someone who will have access
to key systems and applications. Duronio was one of about 40 people with the company's
highest computer security clearance, according to court documents, and he had
root access to the system. UBS PaineWebber, renamed UBS Wealth Management
USA in 2003, did background checks on a selective basis in 1999, but not on Duronio
when he went from being a contractor to a full-timer, a company spokeswoman says.
Now the company checks all full-time, part-time and temporary workers, she says. That's
good policy. "You better consider how important IT is," says Alan Paller,
director of research at the SANS Institute (www.sans.org). "Consider if you
could keep on doing business if someone inside hit you with a logic bomb,"
he says. "If you can't, you should think about background checks." Would
a background check have turned up Duronio's record? At I&T sibling publication
InformationWeek's request, investigation firm Fairfax Group found most of the
information in the probation report within four days using only public records,
and some within 24 hours. Such a search would cost about $500, or about $250 if
the person provided a waiver and information such as a Social Security number,
says Fairfax Group president Michael Hershman. Thirty percent of insiders
who launch system attacks have criminal records, says Dawn Cappelli, a senior
member of Carnegie Mellon University's CERT security response team, citing a 2006
study. In that study, 73 percent of companies did background checks, compared
with just 48 percent in the 2005 study. Companies just starting to do checks
on job candidates also should do checks on current employees, says Ken van Wyk
of Alexandria, Va.-based information security consulting firm KRvW Associates.
But be open about it, and make sure people understand why it's necessary, he says. IT
and HR managers also need to discuss beforehand what's acceptable past behavior
and what isn't, says Howard Schmidt, a former White House security adviser who's
now CEO of R&H Security Consulting. "If someone had a DUI 20 years ago,
or they were arrested for marijuana in the '60s, you check the circumstances,"
Schmidt says. "Was it a drinking problem, or was it one night out celebrating
a birthday? It's the repeating of a failure to comply with the rule of law that
I would be looking for."
Schmidt warns that background checks are no guarantee.
But in fighting insider threats, more companies are deciding they're worth the
time and expense. 180 View - While insiders aren't the most common
security problem, they can be among the most costly and the most damaging to a
company's reputation. Insider attacks against IT infrastructure and data are among
the security breaches most feared by both government and corporate security pros. Lawrence
Young (an associate of 180 Systems) has always done background checks on the people
he employed in the past. Lawrence says that the degree of checking, including
using a third party investigation agency, varies with the job the individual is
being hired to perform. In fact, Lawrence made every employment offer conditional
upon receiving a satisfactory background check, and advised the potential employee
that he may use a third party investigation agency. Investigation agencies
typically provide written reports including details on an individual’s education,
past employment, lifestyle habits, and encounters with ‘the law’ if
any that would otherwise be difficult for the typical employer to gain access
to. Lawrence also strongly suggests that all system access be revoked immediately
when an IT employee is terminated. While that may sound obvious, research shows
that about half of all insider attacks take place between the time an IT employee
is dismissed and his or her user privileges are taken away. | 
