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Is an Office Romance Okay?

About.com Human Resources — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 10:00:18 +0000

Love is in the air at this time of year with Valentine's Day just around the corner and deadlines passing on custom gifts for that special person in your life. It's also the time of year when readers ask me about non-fraternization policies that forbid dating coworkers or bosses at work.

I'm a huge believer in prohibiting employees from dating their boss or any person who reports to them or who has any impact on their pay, performance rating, or promotions. In fact, if an employee has any impact on the working conditions or rewards of an employee, the two should not be dating. Period.

Love is in the air at work these days, though, as work expands to fill the majority of the hours in a day. Speaking realistically, where else do people meet others who share so many common characteristics? They have similar incomes, similar interests, and similar ages. They live within dating proximity and have their common interest in the company. Where else will any employee meet a person with whom love is more likely to bloom?

Consequently, I do support office romances between unmarried employees who are discreet. If the romance overflows into the office and causes tension, conflict, or impacts work in negative ways, then I have to intervene.

But, the dating couple needs to be aware of potential fallout in the future and factor the fallout into their dating decisions. When loves fades at work, the parties still need to be able to work together. And, the possibility always exists that one will report to the other or have to work closely together in the same department. As an employer, my advice to the person in this situation is, get over it. This potential existed when you dated, and it is not up to me to affect careers, responsibilities, and promotions because of your dating decisions.

What's Love Got to Do With an Office Romance?

Quite a lot, actually. To answer Tina Turner's proverbial question, I checked out current research on workplace romance. If the office romance is just about sex, if the romance is an extramarital affair, or if the relationship's goal is personal gain at work, coworkers and companies frown on love relationships in the office.

In our offices, we have experienced a number of serious love relationships. Several couples have married and those marriages have spawned additional relationships that have also ended up in marriage.

Several earlier marriages are working and couples have added children to our extended work family. In the research I highlight in a related article, Human Resources managers said that the most likely outcome of office romances that they have experienced is marriage.

So, if a couple is genuinely serious about dating and building a relationship, popular opinion is more favorable. And, these days, with the number of hours employees spend on work-related activities, they are likely to meet their friends and eventual spouses at work - even, if this can cause problems for employers.

If one employee is managing another employee and they are dating, one employee's job needs to change. What if performance problems arise later with one person in a married couple? I once worked with a client who opened a branch in another state and sent twenty married couples to staff the new location.

As you can imagine, when one partner was angry, two people were unhappy. The life and work balance was hurt also, because couples went to work together, worked together, went home from work together, and talked about work - together, all the time.

Learn more about dating, sex, and romance in the office. I've provided advice for both the dating couple and for HR staff and managers who are occasionally, and unfortunately, called upon to deal with problems that result from an office romance - gone good - or bad.

_{Image Copyright Susan Stewart}

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Rocking, Rolling Ice Breaker Questions

About.com Human Resources — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:00:32 +0000

Need a quick, easy ice breaker that requires almost no preparation yet is versatile enough to use for just about any occasion? This ice breaker is a direct result of notes I received from two readers. They both wrote to tell me how well the ice breaker had worked in their meetings.

I was, of course, thrilled to get the feedback, but both writers really caught my funny bone. They had not used the one-word ice breaker that I had tested in the field for them. They both took part of the blog post I wrote to tell my readers about the ice breaker and used it as an ice breaker. I asked, in my blog post, "What's rocking your world this month?"

Turns out that it made a great ice breaker. How fun. Had to share that with you. So, I wrote another ice breaker, Rocking, Rolling Ice Breaker Questions, using many more examples of ice breaker questions that you can use in meetings.

I hope that you tuck these away because they sure come in handy when you lead a meeting. I hear regularly, too, from readers who use these ice breakers in civic groups, teen activities, church groups and more.

More Ice Breakers

_{Image Copyright Digital Vision / Getty Images}

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Merit Pay Is a Powerful Motivator – Sometimes

About.com Human Resources — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:11:12 +0000

Looking into merit pay and what I find is that - bottom line - it is difficult, if not impossible, to remove the manager's opinion from the performance mix. (See the advantages and disadvantages of merit pay.)

I've had the opportunity to look at the merit pay systems of several companies in the process. One company (with 60-70,000 employees) had invested about five years in creating their merit pay system and had systematically created metrics for most components of most jobs, including specific deliverables.

Each of the systems that I've looked at do what I do not recommend that employers do. Their merit pay systems rate employees with grades of A-E or they rate employees from 1-5. Some of the companies, then, determine and establish an artificial percentage of employees who can receive each rating. Ugh and yuck!

Merit Pay Rewards Performance

Yet, I am a fan of merit pay. There is nothing so demotivating to your best employees than receiving the same pay increase or profit sharing check as the under-performing employee in the next cubicle.

From an employer perspective, when employers assign percentages of employees to the ratings categories, I always wonder why they still employ any employee who is performing in a way that earns the lowest two ratings. I have also seen employers invest hundreds of hours into designing systems that claim to objectively rate employee performance in a merit pay system.

Once they have these objective merit pay systems in place, then the managers decide, objectively, of course, how well the employee is performing within the rating system. And, assign a rating - and recommend a ranking. Ha.

I'd love to hear from you if you have designed, or are aware of, a merit pay system that works without demotivating half of your employees. Won't you please share it? I won't publish the merit pay approach, without your permission, but I am here to learn, too. I have written about numeric rating in the past and it's time to update my thinking. Merit pay, here we come.

_{Image Copyright Phil Date}

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On Sunday all eyes will be glued to their TVs watching the Super Bowl showdown between the New England Patriots and New York Giants. It’s sure to be a great game. Did you know that Super Bowl Sunday is also considered the second largest day of food consumption in the United States? Yep, and not [...] You May Also Like:

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Talent Management for Healthcare

Charles Coy — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:39:07 +0000

Talent Management for Healthcare

When it comes to talent management technology, healthcare is playing catch-up. But the times they are a-changing.

In the last few years, our old pals at Bersin & Associates argued that healthcare has lagged behind other industries in adoption and implementation of talent management automation and processes and that many healthcare organizations are working to make up for lost time. (Bersin & Associates 2009 Talent Management Factbook)

Any healthcare organization looking to jump-start a talent initiative should keep a few things front of mind:

Build with an eye toward integration - E-learning may be a natural starting point for healthcare organizations implementing new talent initiatives, but onboarding, performance management and succession initiatives all benefit from strong tie-ins to a learning management system (LMS). For example, performance assessments can automatically generate development plans for any area where deficiencies are identified. Don’t overlook targeted, formal development programs for employee supervisors. Extra training will prepare them to mentor and coach employees and maximize the value of your investment.

Automate job descriptions with a foundation of competencies - Establishing the competencies – the knowledge, skills and behaviors that are used to develop people in your healthcare organization – is a critical step for success of any talent management initiative. In the healthcare setting, it’s a requirement because compliance demands it. Maintaining one set of job descriptions and competencies is one way to integrate multiple locations common in large healthcare systems into a single culture and to build job profiles that will guide career development, training and performance improvement across your organization. You will also find it easier to deliver the ROI because the business impact of career planning is 45 percent higher for organizations with good or excellent leadership competencies. (Bersin & Associates, Competency Management 2008)

Build internal talent pools - Every healthcare organization needs to fill positions in critical roles such as nursing, IT and senior management. Yet, suitable candidates are hard to find. Most healthcare employers understand that the only solution is to “grow their own” talent. Implementing appropriate talent management and learning tools and processes makes identification of high-potential employees and development of critical skills far easier to accomplish.

Collaborate to build a comprehensive succession strategy - Most healthcare organizations have a critical need to develop their next generation of leadership. The current senior leaders must understand the critical need to address this gap. HR can – and must – play a crucial role in facilitating this conversation, and technology can provide a key assist to identify the gaps and assign development plans for designated successors.

Leverage the power of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) - SaaS technology allows healthcare employers to rapidly implement talent solutions at a far lower cost and with greater operational efficiency than traditional legacy on-premises ERP implementations of the past. The advantages include rapid deployment and easy scalability, and a lower cost with higher satisfaction, as well as less time to ROI.

In the end, empowering your people is the essential first step toward addressing talent challenges and delivering safer, higher-quality patient care and satisfaction. Using talent management technology, employers can manage their staffing, training and performance operations with healthcare-specific functionality, including competency-based job descriptions, pre-integrated training and continuing-education content – all in a single, secure location.

Do You Use Phone Interviews to Screen?

About.com Human Resources — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:00:54 +0000

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Companies that are growing quickly invest a lot of staff time in interviewing and selecting the right candidates for their jobs. Participative companies like to hold small group interviews in which four or five employees meet with each candidate in the first round interview.

While I support their interaction and believe that this is an effective method for assessing the candidate's ability to fit within their culture, it is a heavy investment of staff time. If you invest staff resources in interviewing, you may want to adopt the phone interview as an initial screen. The phone interview is a method for making sure that only the most qualified candidates receive a first round, time consuming interview on site.

The telephone interview allows the employer to determine if the candidate's qualifications, experience, workplace preferences and salary needs are congruent with the position and the organization. The phone interview saves management time and eliminates unlikely candidates.

Review my suggested format for a phone interview.

_{Image Copyright Marili Forastieri / Getty Images}

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