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Management Speak: Please apply for this position using our online application process.
Translation: You're a number. Don't bother calling us.
We consider KJR Club member Mark Rathbun, who provided this week's translation, to be much more than a mere integer.
Ready for ugly?
Unemployment has reached 7.6 percent, up from 4.9 percent one year ago.
Ignore this statistic. It counts only those actively looking for work—not a particularly useful metric. More interesting is the employment level, down 4,218,000 adult Americans in the last year.
It's interesting if you're among the unemployed, less because misery loves company than because who needs this much competition?
And it's interesting if you're a CIO, because with this many people out of work, there have to be opportunities to hire great people.
Hire? In this economy? I'm kidding you, right?
Well, no, I'm not. If I were kidding it would have sounded, if not funny, at least funnier. There's nothing at all funny about what I'm about to suggest. It's ugly.
It's time to hire. Here's why.
We've known for decades that the best employees are at least ten times more effective than average ones, both from Frederick Brooks and your own personal experience.
Since you pay your best employees no more than twice what you pay the average ones, your best employees are, from a financial perspective, a bargain.
Do whatever it takes to keep them. If one leaves for any reason, your chance of finding an acceptable substitute is small.
But first you have to know who they are. To find out, steal a page from the star-performer research Kelley, Caplan and Hayes performed at Bell Labs more than a decade ago. Here's how:
Put each non-managerial employee on one of three lists. One contains your exceptional employees, the second contains the strong performers, the third includes everyone else. Involve your managers in the exercise—they know more about the department's employees than you do, or should.
Then ask every employee to list the ten they consider exceptional. You don't even have to sugarcoat your explanation. Just tell everyone there's no certainty as to where the bottom is, and you're making sure that no matter what else happens, the department keeps its best people. You value everyone's opinion as to who qualifies, and employees who are hands-on with the department's work know things you don't.
Compare the lists. Anyone staff and management both consider exceptional probably is. Anyone on one list but not the other deserves at least a strong performer rating.
Right now, as a matter of cold-hearted business tactics, you should consider replacing everyone else. The reason is simple math: You can get more for less, because some of your competitors in the employment market are, not to put too fine a point on it, fools.
Take advantage of them.
You know and I know that any number of mediocre leaders mistake getting along with strong performance, while considering employees who make waves to be undesirable troublemakers. When they have to lay off staff their troublemakers are the first to go; the employees they personally like the best are the ones who get to stick around.
That means exceptional IT professionals are pounding the pavement right now, waiting for you to find them.
Except you can't, because your labor budget is already under excruciating pressure. You're already in the middle of planning a round of layoffs. Maybe you've just finished one, and already are quietly creating contingency plans for the next.
The popular complement to layoffs is reducing the cost of an average employee, either by moving work offshore or by replacing seasoned staff with younger and hungrier substitutes. You might manage to cut costs by as much as 15% this way, while demoralizing everyone, losing invaluable institutional knowledge, and reducing your ability to get work done.
Replace your sledgehammer with something more subtle. Lay off three acceptable employees and hire one who is exceptional. You can pay premium wages, get just as much work out the door, and reduce your labor budget much more.
In ordinary times this strategy doesn't work—there isn't enough exceptional talent available to you, and the disruption to working teams would be more damaging than any likely improvement in individual performance.
These aren't ordinary times. Layoffs are already disrupting your teams, and outstanding IT professionals are pounding the pavement, concerned about foreclosure or worse.
It's that bad out there, and your budget isn't pretty either. Triage, while not pleasant, is necessary. If you're direct and honest, employees will understand and accept this, even as they mourn the departure of friends who are perfectly acceptable performers.
Nor is this as heartless as it sounds. The laid-off superstars outside your door deserve gainful employment just as much as your current employees do, after all.
Don't they?
Reprinted from Keep the Joint Running.
Copyright 2009, all rights reserved.
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