What HR can learn from Simon Cowell (Guest commentary)

Employee traits that influence company's success often subjective

What makes a company successful? Most people will agree it is a combination of a great product or service and engaged employees. A great product or service is clearly essential, but engaged employees are equally as important. These kinds of employees are the people who generate the ideas for great products and services, look out for the interest of the company and represent the company.

But how are we measuring success at the employee level? Somehow key elements of this area are getting lost and being replaced by the quantitative details of jobs, even if these details are not critical to job or company success. Intrinsically, if your manager rates how well you do something, you try to do it well. If it impacts your salary, you try to do it really well.

The question is: Are we measuring the right things? In an effort to be fair and objective, we’ve shifted to evaluating performance against quantitative and measurable aspects of jobs from what’s really important to the overall success of a company, which is often subjective.

Innovation, creativity and a positive attitude — common characteristics of an engaged employee — rarely show up on performance reviews.

A common example is the customer service department. The goal of these departments is to serve customers. An ideal employee would be patient, great at problem solving, knowledgeable and have a desire to help people. These are the skills necessary to help customers and provide a positive impression of the company.

But these employees are typically measured on very different metrics, to which a number can be attached, such as call speed and call availability. Focusing on the measurable aspects of these roles misplaces the emphasis and leads to employees who are more focused on working quickly than helping customers resolve issues in a calm and courteous way. “Going above and beyond” is very difficult in a timed environment, but important for customer loyalty.

Organizations can take a lesson from American Idol’s Simon Cowell. The judge on the popular TV show knows what is required to be successful in the music industry: voice, song choice, look and personality.

These items are all subjective. He does not use any numbers in his feedback to contestants but reinforces these four areas by providing them with timely and (brutally) honest advice. His feedback, both positive and negative, is what contestants say helped them the most.

Most organizations know what the corporate “voice, song choice, look and personality” is, but stand to improve at telling employees they are “brilliant” or “bloody awful” at things that may be subjective and qualitative but are critical to job success and, ultimately, company success.

Courtney McDaid is an HR specialist with Hallmark Canada in Toronto. She can be reached at (416) 492-2206 ext. 2209 or [email protected].

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