Welcome. It will be my intent to provide you with information in a form which is succinct, meaningful, and, I hope, valuable to you. My day seems like trying to put 5 quarts in a gallon jug and I'm going to assume it's the same for you.

By way of background, I've spent nearly 30 years in my chosen profession of banking having served the last 14 years as president and CEO of Bank One in Lexington, Kentucky and Union Federal Bank of Indianapolis.  We sold Union Federal in 2006 and in early 2007 I joined the professionals at Achievant. I was intrigued by the quality of Achievant's HRIS system, the quality and maturity of the team, and the opportunity to work with and learn from our clients. My consulting responsibilities are frankly quite like what I did in my prior career...performance management, leadership development, talent management, goals, training, etc. So, instead of using my experiential development to provide leadership to one organization, I use it to help my clients effectively lead their organizations.

I am a graduate of Indiana University, have an MBA from the University of Dayton, and I have completed post-graduate work at the Stonier Graduate School of Banking.

Future blogs will have real meat...but one must first set the table. If you would like to visit, you may reach me at kstolen@achievant.com.

As I meet with CEOs and discuss topics like Time & Attendance systems, they tend to not be involved with HR systems issues.  It just has not been a radar screen issue for them.  It should be!  The more I pursue Time & Attendance or the topic of systems with HR leadership teams I observe a frequent bias towards status quo.  Often, comfort with a particular Time & Attendance system is the determining factor for how to configure HR automation within the respective HR department.  Too often, payroll wants their preferred time & attendance system, performance management is a separate system, training wants their learning management system, and HRIS records may well be on yet another.  This “best in class” approach creates immense redundancy, software application complexities, and user confusion.  Singular integrated Human Capital Management Systems (HCMS) create efficiencies, drive automation, facilitate communication, enhance access, and are more widely accepted do to more frequent user access and consistency.   HR directors should be the efficiency role models within their organizations.   As an internal provider to every employee, the image presented by HR significantly impacts each employee’s perception of their organization.  The use of a fully integrated HCMS system…which includes Time & Attendance, performance management, application management, comp management, benefits management, learning management, HRIS, and more…will improve efficiency within HR through the elimination of disparate systems and the inevitable redundancy they create.  Organization wide use of an integrated HCMS will improve access for employees, improve the effectiveness of management, and create consistency in HR processes.

The number of providers of employee surveys may be infinite.  Try a search and see what you find.  Today, a search on "employee surveys" revealed 124,000 results.  They come in every imaginable configuration.  So if you have been charged with initiating a survey for your organization, here is some practical advice.  Employee surveys fall into two basic buckets, standard and custom.  If you have a specific issue(s) or situation(s) about which you wish to ask your employees, a custom employee survey would be your best course of action.  Custom employee surveys are more expensive, call for a greater level of support from outside professionals, but can yield insights designed specifically to your interests.  On the other hand, if your interest is to begin or sustain a process of gaining a basic understanding about how your employees perceive their employment situation, there are several very thorough and effective standardized tools available.  The price difference is enormous.  Let’s say you have 500 employees.  For an organization that size, a standardized employee survey may only cost a few thousand dollars while a custom survey will likely be over $10,000, and may approach over $30,000.  It takes some time to sort through the 124,000 responses to a search on employee surveys so it will be worth your while to seek professionals who are familiar with the tools (surveys), how they function, their validation, and the quality of their output.  These professionals will bring value through the time you save in sourcing and administering the process.  Employee surveys are a very valuable tool for management.  If employees can see their organization take action as a result of survey feedback, the tool becomes powerful and motivational.  The benefit is well worth the cost. 

The five activities which comprise the elements of PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT are a cycle.  The cycle evolves over some defined time period meaningful to the group.  Some groups repeat portions of the cycle literally every day.  Other groups define their cycle over some other measurement period, such as a fiscal year. 

Here’s the breakthrough - Make your cycle as short as possible.  The elements of the cycle collectively enhance task clarity, improving performance.  Use the tools discussed above to enable the shortest of cycles without crossing that line of distraction.  Like an athlete, your recurring coaching within each cycle enables practice of the critical tasks…which eventually becomes muscle memory, turning the players in your team into champions.   

Well integrated HRIS systems offer comprehensive platforms which incorporate virtually all the PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT best practices referenced above in one tool.  Find a provider who will deliver the HRIS system in such a way to provide not only software, but add value and enhance performance for your team in the process.   

There is a reason that sports teams generally have better records for home games versus away games.  During home games the team generates immediate success reinforcement, which is the fifth and last step in effective performance management.  Success is rewarded with applause or cheering, to which human beings respond favorably and, as such, exert effort to achieve more applause and cheering.  When the home fans provide success reinforcement through their applause and cheering the cycle continues until the last buzzer sounds or until the concession stand stops selling beer.    The team within your organization require the same success reinforcement and when provided will respond as do the home team athletes. 

Here’s the breakthrough - This is not all about monetary reinforcement.  Humans value reinforcement of their self worth above monetary value.  And not all team members desire the same form of reinforcement.  Modern HRIS systems can help you track those measures you want to celebrate.  Well integrated HRIS systems even allow for the vehicle to deliver the communication of success to you team or organization.  But it’s your job as a leader to provide for your team those top elements of Maslow’s Hierarchy.   Science and the art of leadership merge when the systems used to provide monetary reinforcement are utilized by leaders to find each team member’s successes and constantly reinforce those successes in whatever way is most effective with each team member.  The reinforcement elevates task clarity, motivates the team member to further achieve, and improves the group’s performance.  

Not performance review!  Performance Plan.  This is the third step of effective performance management...and it is the most important.  A review is reactive, a performance plan is proactive.  This is the fundamental document which establishes task clarity and it is, without doubt, the most underutilized element of performance management.  Often the performance plan includes a valuable element commonly referred to as a “scorecard”.  The scorecard can be a customizable component of the performance plan to establish task clarity for each group member individually.
 Here’s the breakthrough - No other means of leadership is as powerful in focusing an organization as the collective power of each group member’s performance plan.  This is leadership’s tool for ensuring that each person in the institution is pulling on the oar in the same direction.  These documents create focus, redirect to higher value activities, and even influence your organization’s culture.  Each performance plan should align behaviors with the organization’s core values, mission, current objectives, and establish unambiguous task clarity specific to each associate. Historically, this process has been highly labor intensive, paper based, quite subjective, judgmental, and sometimes even completely reactive.  But today, effective HRIS systems include performance management and improve the efficiency and quality of the process.  Integrated human capital management systems exist which create an online environment for performance plan execution and documentation, workflows which add discipline to practice, and goal management systems which align expectations and results throughout the work group.  Science and the art of leadership merge when an automated performance plan environment is established by the coach and group member and together they analyze outcomes, conclude the elements needed to improve, and practice new tasks for the next measurement period. 

First, what exactly do we mean PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT?  In the simplest sense, PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT encompasses those activities within an organization which align the talent and knowledge of the organization with task clarity to accomplish the desired results.  The premise is that a thoughtfully selected group, operating in an environment of task clarity, produces results which are superior to a group operating in the absence of task clarity.  Thus, for those expected to produce results, operating with task clarity is more effective than without.  The greater the task clarity the better…up to the point where involvement in the process of performance management distracts from executing on the required tasks.
Here’s the breakthrough - Effective financial institution managers have found tools which increase their group’s level of task clarity without approaching the point of distraction.  These tools, incorporated into practice within a group and executed as a repeating series of cycles over a predetermined period, will create a muscle memory for the group which will improve performance.  These cycles are comprised of five component parts.  They are: ASSESSMENT TESTING, KNOWLEDGE ENHANCEMENT, PERFORMANCE PLANS, RESULTS TRACKING, and SUCCESS REINFORCEMENT.  Effective HRIS systems include elements which enable and automate many of these steps, such as the critical activities of PERFORMANCE PLANNING and RESULTS TRACKING. I'll provide more input into the five steps of effective performance management in a later post.