When HR professionals lead their organizations to engage in business practices that reflect corporate social responsibility (CSR), positive outcomes are delivered, according to the Society for Human Resource Management’s SHRM 2007 Corporate Social Responsibility Pilot Study. The top positive result noted was a stronger public image, the number-one response from HR professionals in the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India and Mexico. Other workforce-related benefits of being involved in CSR programs included improved employee morale, increased employee loyalty, a strengthened position as an employer of choice and improved retention and recruiting. (Workplace Visions [Society for Human Resource Management], 2007, pp. 7-8) (as reported by i4cp)

The quality of workplace relationships can significantly affect employees’ productivity, according to a 2006 survey conducted by SelectMinds, a firm involved in developing corporate social networking. The poll of 1,919 professional employees found 87% of respondents acknowledging that their productivity was highest when they were among co-workers with whom they had good relationships. Such associations in the workplace further enhanced job satisfaction, said 70% of employees. Eighty-three percent of respondents credited good working relationships with influencing their attraction to an employer, while 16% said they’d left past jobs that didn’t afford them rewarding associations. Said SelectMinds CEO Anne Berkowitch, “As businesses begin to exhaust gains from processes and information technology, their next big productivity frontier is people and the complex networks of information and relationships at their disposal.” (Best Practices in HR, January 20, 2007, p. 6) (as reported by i4cp)

10. Power Positioning — A competitive, enduring and ownable brand positioning serves as the foundation to a healthy brand. If any other brand were to attempt to use the same positioning, it would be false. That’s because the brand goes beyond mere product attributes to encompass a constellation of “values” that are relevant to the target. These values form the basis of the brand’s reputation and equity — the special value customers attribute to the whole entity of the brand. It is a function of customers’ experiences with the brand along with the marketer’s communication of its positioning in every marketing mix element. Accordingly, the brand stands out with compelling brand positioning values in everything it does, as opposed to a plethora of messages, which diffuse the brand’s intended positioning.

11. Company Commitment — The health of a brand may be gauged by determining the company’s commitment to the brand. Is the financial role of the brand that of a cash cow or a star? How the brand is perceived internally is a sure indicator of future health. We can usually get a feel from this by reading annual reports and paying close attention to marketplace activities.

12. Management Competence — One of the key criteria used by investors for stock selection is company management. We also need to look to the brand management team to gain a perspective on brand health. All of us have witnessed the impact, either positive or negative, of a change in company and brand management. A healthy brand results from competent brand leadership. A super healthy brand grows from exceptional brand leadership.

(Reproduced with the permission of Richard Czerniawski and Mike Maloney)

8. Don’t get emotionally involved. Salespeople don’t have problems; their customers do. As you perform your diagnosis and lead the customer through a quality decision process, “yes” is not a problem and neither is a quality “no.” The customer who is losing $1M in sales due to inability to get a finished product passed by QC has a problem. It is only when you feel the need to get the order now—when you come across as “too hungry”—that you run into problems. The professional operates with an objective and clear mind and methodically unravels the customer’s challenges so both the salesperson and the customer can come to a mutually beneficial understanding of the problem and formulate a solution. Becoming emotionally involved appears defensive and biased toward your needs.

9. People never say what they really mean . . . at first. People learn from a very early age that saying what is really on their minds can have negative consequences. As a result, they are cautious about expressing their real feelings until they feel “safe enough” with the other person. The professional salesperson “peels the onion” to help the customer feel safe, which encourages the free expression of thoughts, opinions and feelings.

10. You can’t sell a group. A guaranteed prescription for failure is to present to a group without having first identified and appealed to the critical perspectives of its members on an individual basis. By the time you present the solution, there should be no surprises. Everyone should be aware of how the proposed solution will impact them, and enough support should exist to guarantee that the group decision will be a mere formality prior to implementation of the solution.

(Republished with the permission of Jeff Thull)

Success at talent management seems to correlate with financial success, suggest the results of the Institute for Corporate Productivity’s Talent Management Survey 2007. Of the 524 respondents, nearly half (48%) of the best market performers rate their ability to manage talent as good or excellent. This compares favorably with the 34% of respondents overall who rate their ability to manage talent as good or excellent. (Talent Management Survey 2007 [Institute for Corporate Productivity], May 2007) (as reported by i4cp)

“You will get a significant boost in productivity and performance when your supervisor employs a coaching culture,” says Ritu Agarwal of the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, one of a team of researchers who examined the impact of a newly implemented coaching culture within the sales division of a multinational manufacturing firm. By drawing on coaching skills gained at a two-day workshop in 2003, a trickle-down coaching culture emerged within just three months in which both managers and salespeople received coaching from their direct superiors down the corporate sales hierarchy. Agarwal and his research associates determined that 36% of the subsequent advances in sales performance and productivity corresponded directly to “the differences in coaching.” Agarwal points out, however, that this does not mean the coaching culture drove a “36% [boost in productivity].” A further observation: Middle managers did not necessarily model the coaching behaviours of their supervisors. (MIT Sloan Management Review [Yu], Winter 2007, p. 6) (as reported by i4cp)

According to Cy Charney the author of The Portable Mentor there are twenty key leadership attributes. Last week we identified the first ten this week we will look at the remaining ten.

11. Leaders are adaptable. They see change as an opportunity rather than a threat.

12. Leaders are human. They make mistakes. When they do so, they readily admit it.

13. Leaders learn from their mistakes. They use errors as a way to improve their skills.

14. Leaders enjoy being challenged. They are prepared to take risks and encourage others to do the same. If they fail, they treat the exercise as a learning experience.

15. Leaders focus on the future, not the past. They anticipate trends and prepare for them.

16. Leaders encourage and reward cooperation within and between teams.

17. Leaders develop guidelines for the team. They enlarge the guidelines as the team becomes willing to accept more responsibility.

18. Leaders change their role according to the demands of the team. For example, they function more as coaches or facilitators when needed.

19. Leaders listen to fellow team members. They don’t interrupt others, and they allow themselves to be influenced.

20. Leaders involve people in finding new ways to achieve goals.

(Excerpted, by permission of the publisher, from The Portable Mentor by Cy Charney)

5. Spending Mix — A healthy brand is evidenced by spending more in equity building drivers such as product development and advertising than in short-term sales drivers such as trade promotions. An indication of eroding brand health is increases in the percentage of, and growing dependence on, promotion spending.

6. Awareness — The level of “unaided” awareness, particularly “first mentions” can be used to diagnose brand health. A high level of unaided awareness both in the absolute and relative to competition may indicate a healthy brand. Growth in this area serves as a lead indicator of sales productivity. This is especially true when coupled with strong brand linkage—the customer associating the brand name with a meaningfully differentiated benefit.

7. Lifecycle Management — Healthy brands are aggressively engaged in creating ways to extend the lifecycle. As we alluded to in point 4, this is characterized by intelligent investment in R&D. Specific R&D activities to look for: clinical studies to establish new indications that extend patent protection and deliver meaningful differentiation; product improvements that enhance the value proposition for customers; line extensions that broaden the target-group.

8. Compelling Advertising — This means advertising that has been proven not just to increase awareness but also to build the business. Compelling advertising is determined by an increase in top-box “purchase intent.”

9. Proven Business-Building Initiatives — Healthy brands have an arsenal of “proven” business-building initiatives. This spans product developments, package extensions, follow-up or backup advertising campaigns, new promotions, etc. These initiatives have been demonstrated to have strong business-building capabilities through in-market testing. They don’t represent mere hope or a repetition of what has been successful in the past but, instead, powerful tools proven beyond doubt to productively grow sales. Healthy brands are continuously testing new initiatives so that they can predict, and drive, growth and return on investment more accurately. Moreover, these business-building initiatives are available on a timely basis. They are not late to market.

Check back next week for the last installment of this 3 part series.

(Reproduced with the permission of Richard Czerniawski and Mike Maloney)

Community and social problems — the breakdown of family units, number of single working parent or two-working-parent households, have placed many of what are rightfully family responsibilities on schools and employers. The challenge of HR executives is to return them to the appropriate unit — the family — when possible, with positive, selective intervention.

Until or unless that can be done, HR departments become “surrogate parents” with all of the duties and responsibilities that go with such a daunting job. Teaching young employees about values, attendance, responsibility, etc., is tough — but falls back on the principles of leadership, ethics, and doing the right thing, all the while communicating exhaustively the “whys and wherefores.”

Employee training and employer-supported education can help. Supporting social services in the community is another avenue for help. Employee Assistance Programs, which are available to employees on a confidential basis, is a good step. All of the above and more will not remedy the social ills of a country — but all of it will help employers cope with problems that society bestows on them.

“Few factors are as corrosive to employee engagement as a colleague who skates through the workweek taking advantage of the much harder work of others,” say Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter. Gallup Organization principal Wagner and Harter, chief scientist for international workplace management practice for the consulting firm, point out that research has shown that team members who don’t perform eventually dishearten those who do work and bring down the productivity of the entire team. Accountability, they say, is the answer. The pair encourages managers to review organizational policies to ensure an equitable distribution of workload among all employees. They also advise leaders to listen to worker feedback and act to resolve identified problems or inequities, and they suggest leveraging the power of workers who are in positions to positively influence their colleagues. (Harvard Management Update [Wagner and Harter], January 2007, pp. 5-7) (as reported by i4cp)