Management Questions

Not sure how to individualize recognition? Just ask your employees questions like these:

• By what name do you like to be called?
• What are your “hot buttons” — hobbies or interests you like to talk about a lot?
• What increases your positive emotion or “fills your bucket” the most?
• From whom do you most like to receive recognition or praise?
• What type of recognition or praise do you like best? Do you like public, private, written, verbal, or other kinds of recognition?
• What form of recognition motivates you the most? Do you like gift certificates, a title for winning a competition, a meaningful note or e-mail, or something else?
• What is the greatest recognition you have ever received?

Source:
The Best Ways to Recognize Employees
by Tom Rath
Gallup Management Journal, December 2004

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Executives need to take a fresh look at their businesses and realize that in the parts that are people intensive, capital-based measures may not provide the insights they need. The risks of not understanding employee performance and failing to set up differentiated rewards based on value creation are substantial. Executives can avoid such problems by asking some basic questions:

• What kinds of business environments are we competing in? How important are people (as opposed to capital investment) to our success?
• If people make a significant difference, do we have people-oriented metrics in place to help us understand productivity and manage the business?
• In which parts of the company are employees most productive, and where do we receive the highest return from our investments in them? Do our current reward structures recognize employees who create value? Are these structures aligned with our business strategy?
• Are our employees focused on generating short-term or long-term business value? In business units that have a long-term orientation, do we need separate metrics to measure and reward employee performance?
• Is the performance of our business units interdependent? Do we have assessment mechanisms in place to measure managers’ contributions that depend on coordination with other business units? Do managers trust us to reward them fairly?
• Which companies compete with us for talent? Are our current compensation and benefit systems fully competitive? Do they adequately reward the people who generate the most value?

Source:
Workonomics: Measuring the Importance of People
by Felix Barber
Boston Consulting Group, March 21, 2001

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• Do your employees have confidence in the job being done by senior management?
• Do your employees believe the company conducts business with honesty and integrity?
• Do your employees trust senior leaders at their company?
• Do your employees believe the company effectively manages business changes such as downsizing, mergers, restructuring, and expansion?
• Do your employees believe the company communicates effectively with employees?
• Do your employees believe the company involves them in decisions that affect them?
• Do your employees believe senior management motivates them to perform well?
• Do your employees see a clear link between their jobs and pay?
• Do your employees believe that high-performing workers go unrewarded?
• Do your employees believe the company does a good job telling them how their pay is determined?
• Are your employees satisfied with their pay?
• Are your employees satisfied with their benefits?

Source:
Dazed and Confused
by Stephen Taub
CFO Magazine, September 11, 2002

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• Did you choose people for managerial roles because they were the type of people who could get their fulfillment and satisfaction out of helping other people shine rather than having the ego-need to shine themselves?
• Did you select them because they had a prior history of being able to give a critique to someone in such a way that the other person says: “Wow, that was really helpful, I’m glad you helped me see all that.”
• Do you reward these people for how well their group has done, or do you reward them for their own personal accomplishments in generating business and serving clients?

In other words, are you choosing people who want to do the job, who have demonstrated any prior aptitude for the job, and are you rewarding them for things other than doing the job?

Source:
Why (Most) Training is Useless
by David Maister

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1. Which segments of the workforce create the value for which we are most rewarded in the marketplace?
2. Which areas of our business will be most impacted by impending waves of retirement? What are we doing to prepare successors? What impact will anticipated retirement have on the skills and productivity necessary to meet future demand?
3. In what areas is the talent market heating up (i.e., demand will outpace supply)? Which segments of our workforce will be most impacted? What are the potential top-line and bottom-line implications?
4. What skills will we need over the next five years that we don’t currently possess? How will we create that capacity? What happens to our business if we don’t?
5. What is our turnover within critical areas? How much is it costing us? In customers? In productivity? In innovation? In quality? What are we doing to resolve the root cause?
6. Are we actively developing talent portfolios or workforce plans that will help us to understand and communicate the financial consequences of talent decisions on our business?

Source:
Why Must a Leader Be a Learner?
by William Luckert
LiNE Zine, Fall 2001

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