Work Babble

Breaking Confidentiality – Cain allegations raise questions about non-disclosure

By Tony Deblauwe

The recent news about sexual harassment allegations with Presidential candidate Herman Cain raises some interesting questions about non-disclosure agreements between companies and employees. Normally the boiler plate language in these agreements is that a breach of confidence – meaning the employee talks about what happens even though the employee accepted a settlement, allows the company to remedy the breach in some way. Typically the company will assess what the damages of the breach are and in some cases could be deemed harmful enough to sue the employee for far more than the amount of the settlement that the employee received.

The discussion now on the table with lawyers representing the female employee in the case and the National Restaurant Association is to lift the gag order so she can tell her side of the story without any punitive consequences. Of course the drama unfolding in this case, and the possibility of lifting the gag order, has everything to do with the fact we are talking about the character of a potential choice for President. So does it make sense for people to attempt and breach a non-disclosure agreement?

In most cases, pursuing a change in the outcome of a settlement allowing an employee to talk is very unusual. The logic is – if the employee wanted to say something so badly then why take the money? Of course this simplifies the situation completely with no context, but many people would think this way – similar to why innocent people plead guilty to get a softer punishment. Sometimes circumstances can force people to accept deals they would not otherwise prefer to take.  

That aside, to really understand what is going on, especially in a sexual harassment related case; we have to know more details of the case. Certainly we are aware of many sexual harassment cases that were taken to the extreme, with little or no basis to the arguments, and settled out of court with the public unaware of what happened. On the flip side, egregious acts of harassment have also been quietly dealt with so you can’t say for sure what the situation is until the information is presented. Due to the nature of the he/she said of these cases, the average person involved in such a case needs to think very hard about if it’s worth saying something (with legal assistance or not).

For the Cain allegations, it’s doubtful much about the case will be revealed. Even if the employee has a chance to speak, there are two sides to every story and hopefully if it comes to this, the media will balance both sides of the case so that people have enough to judge whether this incident changes their view of Cain’s character and campaign.

The Cain case aside if you find yourself in a position where you accepted a settlement and your circumstances change such that you want to be able to speak openly about your issues; it’s possible to make it happen. In most cases you would have to pay all the legal fees unless you had knowledge of something so big that lawyers would pay your fees. For most people that task and consequences of attacking a non-disclosure are too daunting. If you wanted your say you should never have signed the agreement but again, often that is not possible when you are staring at a long term unemployment period. The best thing to do usually is to move on.

The Cain case might feel tempting for some to resurrect an issue they never quite felt was settled (even though they settled) but to the average person finding new purpose in a new job and different work environment is more satisfying and reaps more rewards long term.

Managers - 3 Ways To Show Employees You Care

March 4 is National Employee Appreciation Day. The observation started in 1995 by a founding board member of Recognition Professionals International and Workman Publishing as a way of focusing the attention of employers on employee recognition. It is celebrated on the first Friday in March each year.

Sadly, the statistics are not that encouraging in terms of employee recognition. MarketTools, Inc., released a report that polled 451 adults in February 2011.  The results revealed that most employees have issues with how companies and managers demonstrate employee appreciation.  Nearly 50% of employees surveyed have considered leaving their current jobs, and 21% have applied for another job in the past six months.  47% of survey participants indicated that salary was the lead cause of employee dissatisfaction.  Other leading causes of dissatisfaction cited include workload (24%), lack of opportunities for advancement (21%), and the employee's manager or supervisor (21%).

How can companies help employees feel more appreciated? The 3 tips below are great ways managers can acknowledge the efforts of their staff.

1. Feedback
Dissatisfaction with career growth occurs more easily when employees feel stuck in their jobs. Managers that don’t provide timely and constructive feedback will have disengaged employees. People want to know their contributions count and value coaching that improves their professional skills. Click here to learn feedback basics.

2. Recognition
Managers don’t need service awards, spot bonuses, or other elaborate methods to reward employees for strong performance. Simply observing and offering praise for working hard goes a long way. Small gestures like lunches or small token gifts can be meaningful if presented correctly and genuinely. Click here to discover more ways to provide recognition.

3. Flexibility
Not requiring vacation days for personal time, working from home, and even casual dress days, can create trust and comfort with employees. When organizations encourage a culture of accountability by being flexible to work and life balances requirements, productivity increases because employees are empowered to adapt their workload and personal demands more easily.  Click here to create a more flexible work culture.

Managers can take simple steps to improve employee appreciation and employee engagement. The main thing to do is to find connection with individuals and encourage a collaborative work environment.

Towards a More Harmonious Workplace: Tips for Resolving Conflict

By Tony Deblauwe

Job satisfaction and employee engagement are influenced by a number of factors – the challenge of the work, pay, and of course, who you work with. This last item can be the most challenging. Either you report to a bad boss, work with dysfunctional team, or interact with extended team members that seem to frustrate you at every turn. Point is - conflict at work is a real threat to your productivity and mental and physical health. So how can you address and resolve conflict at work? The following steps can be a great start at reducing or eliminating conflict no matter where you sit in the organizational hierarchy both up, down and sideways.   

1) Stay Grounded

It’s hard to avoid drama at work. People posture, jockey for resources, defend territories, and seek control on a regular basis.  When individuals drive with ego or agenda versus a collaborative team approach, you’re left emotionally charged and unproductive.  

The first thing you have to do is look at your behavior and adjust accordingly.  When you are in control of your emotions, the ability to be frazzled by other bad behavior is lessoned. A level head gives you focus to handle overt acts of conflict but also the passive-aggressive, roundabout behavior that can fuel team conflicts over time.

Understand a battle versus a minor incursion. Be pointed about where you spend your energy by influencing the right stakeholders who can resolve problems or redirect the issues into a positive, productive discussion. Somebody else’s emergency is not yours and if taking the higher ground makes sense then do it.

2) Stick to the Essentials.

You’ve heard the advice about not making important decisions when you are angry or emotional? This concept directly applies to managing conflict at work. A communication process means you focus on the essential pieces of getting work done. This is done objectively – what are the moving parts that you and your team have to do in order to achieve the right end game? It’s not about who is doing more or less or which group is more critical than another.  

Avoid tangents, value statements, and assumptions. State needs, gather inputs, and negotiate outcomes. You may have several private 1-1 conversations to achieve this but the point remains the same – when conflict is blinding everyone to what’s important – take a step back and stay organized around a core set of facts and business needs.

3) Focus on the Common Vision

Following conversations that stick to the essentials, you can build a communication framework and rules of engagement around common vision. Alignment in relationships helps everyone to row in the same direction. Alignment goes a long way to distracting people away from their selfish needs and concerns and re-orients them to mutually beneficial outcomes.  Leadership is key when relaying the vision because the leader can dictate what is important to achieve and the activities needed to achieve it. When co-workers understand the common vision they can begin to understand the tradeoffs and resources required to make the vision happen.

A harmonious workplace, like any long-term relationship, requires attention, patience, and understanding. Market conditions change, leadership points in new directions and organizational cultures shift. It’s not always possible to avoid conflict completely – even start-ups can run into issues. And the goal is not to only seek out people who agree with you.

Healthy conflict drives innovation and new thinking. Knowing what type of conflict you have versus assuming the worst intentions in others is important. In these cases, knowing how to form the communication to calm and refocus people on the right conversations and decision making is a vital competency that helps you with your productivity and well-being. 

Book Review - Robert's Rules of Innovation: A 10-Step Program for Corporate Survival

By Robert Brands with Martin J. Kleinman

ISBN-13: 978-0470596999

Retail: $34.95

By Tony Deblauwe

Innovation lies at the forefront of company credibility and competitive advantage. Companies that can transform concepts into new ideas quickly and bring them to market effectively will win customers and sustain profitability. Just look at Apple. The road to building brand and market position through innovation is no easy task. Fortunately, Robert’s Rules of Innovation provides an in depth plan that describes how companies can be more innovative both in design mindset, as well as organization structure and talent management.

The best part of this book is the arrangement. Each chapter provides a concept overview which spells out the simple pneumonic around innovation as:

Inspire
No risk, o innovation
New product development process
Ownership

Value creation
Accountability
Training and coaching

Idea management

Observe and measure

Net result and reward

This mental checklist (Brands describes as the “Innovators Manifesto”) forms the foundation of how teams and individuals can approach both new product or service development as well as overhauling legacy processes. Accompanying each chapter are summary points, questions to think about, and a generous amount of graphs and images that tie each process together.

The hardest part of creating change in organizations is to align people to new thinking. That’s why I particularly enjoyed chapter 4 (Innovation Emancipation) and how Brands addresses Devil’s Advocates and Champions for Change.  Accountability means not only should people follow-through on commitments, but it also means creating an environment that involves diversity of thought, trust, and collaboration so that the innovative mindset can take root. Brands offers tools to build the accountable culture so that change agents can promote their passion and bring others on board.

The latter chapters offer invaluable process checklists and talking points for each stage of getting innovation to stick for both immediate goals and as a sustainable part of organizational ways of working. The book is a concise reference manual. When I was originally given the book for review a few months ago I found I had to stop, absorb, then read on. So much is packaged inside you’ll find yourself re-reading chapters especially if you are trying to foster innovation in your work environment.

Brands has clearly experienced the ups and downs of how companies and cultures react to innovating innovative practices and I’m amazed he was able to break it down into such simple to follow parts. I feel this is required reading for both large and small companies. You will take away plenty of tips and techniques that will impact your business and work environment.

For more information on Robert Brands, visit his website at www.innovationcoach.com. Below is a video of Brands talking about innovation.

STUDY: As CEOs Make More Money, They Treat Employees Worse

July 16, 2010

 

Forwarding an interesting finding posted by Veritas Executive Compensation Consultants…

Want to get an idea of how nice a CEO will be? You might want to sneak a look at their paycheck.

The more a CEO gets paid, the more likely it is that they'll treat their employees harshly, according to a new study.

The study, conducted by professors at Rice University, Harvard University and the University of Utah, found that "increasing executive compensation results in executives behaving meanly toward those lower down the hierarchy."

The authors believe that this increase in meanness is due to an increase in power: As executives get paid more, they get a heightened sense of power, and "more power leads managers to mistreat subordinates more and evaluate them more unfavorably," the findings suggest.

This meanness gets worse as the gap between CEO compensation and the pay of lower-level employees widens, according to the study, called "When Executives Rake in Millions: Meanness in Organizations."

"Higher income inequality between executives and ordinary workers results in executives perceiving themselves as being all-powerful, and this perception of power leads them to maltreat rank-and-file workers." the study found.

Should executives be paid less to try to create a kinder work environment?  The study concludes the issue should be weighed.

"We have argued that in addition to examining the links between executive pay and a firm’s financial success, it is important to consider a thus far unreported ethical implication of high executive compensation — that executives with higher income treat employees more meanly," the study concludes.

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Veritas Executive Compensation Consultants, LLC. (“Veritas”) is a truly independent executive compensation consulting firm.

We are independently owned, and have no entangling relationships that may create potential conflict of interest scenarios, or may attract the unwanted scrutiny of regulators, shareholders, the media, or create public outcry.

Veritas also believes that public company Boards of Directors and shareholders deserve higher standards of disclosure that verify the independence of the executive compensation advice that their companies receive from their consulting firms.  This disclosure will assist in curing the terribly negative views that government regulators, shareholders, employees, the media, and the American public have on executive pay.

Veritas goes above and beyond to provide unbiased executive compensation counsel. Since we are independently owned, we do our job with utmost objectivity - without any entangling business relationships.

Following stringent best practice guidelines, Veritas works directly with boards and compensation committees, while maintaining outstanding levels of appropriate communication with senior management.

Veritas promises no compromises in presenting the innovative solutions at your command in the complicated arena of executive compensation.

We deliver the advice that you need to hear, with unprecedented levels of responsive client service and attention.

Visit us online at www.veritasecc.com , or contact our CEO Frank Glassner personally via phone at (415) 618-6060, or via email at fglassner@veritasecc.com . He’ll gladly answer any questions you might have.