Dealing with a Union Environment: "There is no Spoon"

Matrix - The spoon
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"Do not try to bend the spoon...That is impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth"
"What truth?"
"There is no spoon."
"There is no spoon?"
"Then you will see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself."

When dealing with a Union environment there are two types of organizations. The type that is wringing their hands and wondering what the Union will say about every decision they make and the type of organization that has won all of the policy battles and is actually managing their employees performance. This is what it is all about people. The more you pretend the Union does not exist the more you win. This is more for the line supervisor. Don't get me wrong, good Union reps will get you second guessing yourself all over the place, but that doesn't mean you roll over. Keep fighting the fight. Keep doing the right things for the right reasons. You have to drive the business and in the end they want that too.

All of the policy battles are just white noise. Policy is fine and it certainly makes it easy to make decisions on attendance and other such nonsense that should be taken care of already. But the real holy grail (the part that is in the management rights section of every contract), is the fact that you have the right to manage employee performance. The problem comes when you actually have to measure and have some sort of semi-objective means of evaluating that performance. But seriously, why else are we here?

I will tell you right now, you have no idea how many organizations have not made the leap to actual performance management. They are stuck just trying to get people to show up to work or complying with some other kind of basic policy. If you are doing this type of thing you are failing. That stuff should all be black and white. The real work starts when you raise the bar and say "Who is doing a good job and who is not." That is when your talent level really starts improving and that is something that, as long as you can back it up, the union has absolutely no say over.

"There is no spoon"

Super Bowl Sunday in the Real World

When working in a 24/7 operation sometimes your shift workers miss things.

For instance Steel workers in Pittsburgh having to miss the superbowl.

The memorandum that was circulated through the management ranks has all the trappings of a Jedi Mind Trick. I have not seen their collective bargaining agreement, but I assume attendence is addressed. Most people will tell you it is hard to deviate from any attendence practice and terminate for one missed day or even two.

Unless you want to call it a wild cat strike, work stoppage, or some other kind of unfair labor practice, in which case well played sir (you will never win, but you get style points). Scorched earth approach to labor relations is always an interesting lifestyle choice.

The problem is that most of the arbitrators will probably be Steelers fans (Hmmmm do you think you could sneak an Eagles fan in there?).

You have to put this kind of stuff on your line supervisors to create a sense of belonging and responsibility to each employee's fellow co-workers. Healthy crews do not have these kind of issues.

1. Supervisors work with employee's to ensure everyone gets a fair shake.

2. One someone does get the shaft they have the knowledge that they will get a fair shake in a future scheduling because they are taking one for the team.

Honestly, if I want to see who my good line supervisors are at US Steel, I will see who works with a fully covered shift on Superbowl Sunday. If I want to see who my best supervisors are, I see who can work a fully manned shift without overtime on Superbowl Sunday.

Hazards of Being New

HR people new to an organization have a double whammy of hazards. First of all figuring out the plethora of new processes and ways of doing things is difficult. In addition the hows and why's are an unknown. Everyone would like to think they are a No BS HR person who uses a machete to cut through red tape . But every organization has their own politics and drama. Sometimes it is very hard to figure out the dramatics (also paranoids or people who view risk takers as some sort of leper) from the people who are just trying to help you out ("You know the COO is the approval authority for that and he is specifically looking for..."). Until you figure the political atmosphere out you have two choices:

1. Take refuge in the protective embrace of corporate HR and become the operational spy that narcs and circumvents your operational leaders at every turn.

2. Trust your operations guys and go along for the ride, make mistakes learn (maybe get thrown under the bus), but learn with your operations guys (you know the guys that actually make stuff and drive profit) and hopefully bond with them to create a solid relationship for the future.

Of course I choose #2. I see no problem going on an early ill advised jihad against corporate with your operations guys support, even if you know you will lose. It is call team building people and OPS guys need to know that you are no pansy that you wont be the one to constantly nag and harass them out of any out of the box idea they try to implement. Once they see you don't mind bleeding a little for them you would be amazed at the respect you get from them. This you can cash in later when you are coaching them to have more patience before they terminate that person who hasn't had a below average performance evaluation in his life and no write ups in his file ("Don't you think you should tell him what he is doing wrong in a formal setting before termination?").

I have always been an all or nothing type of guy and, in the end, I don't mind sacrificing a little bit of my early credibility with the corporate types to solidify my position within my team of people who actually drive profit.

So my advice, be prepared to bleed a little or go home.

But...Sometimes You Take the Money

In my last post I talked about how Jim Harbaugh would stay at Stanford because of the ownership he has of the Stanford team. Later that day, It was announced that Jim Harbaugh would be taking the head coaching position for the San Francisco 49er's.

So what does that say about my previous analysis? Well, it says that I have never been faced with a choice that had personal earnings of seven or more zeros attached to it, for sure. However if you look atmost of the news stories Stanford was always in the running. Jim Harbaugh was negotiating out of a pure strength position. He was happy at Stanford, but was open to other opportunities if, and only if, it was the perfect opportunity for him. Notice some of the earlier NFL teams were turned away. My guess (although no contract terms have been specified as of yet) is that Harbaugh was looking for the grand slam and, if he did not find it, would have been content to stay at Stanford until he did.

So Stanford, being the most prestigious academic school on the West Coast and not only landing, but making a good play at keeping the most sought after football coaching talent in America we salute you. It means you have something going very right in your athletic department. You don't win them all, but my guess is that Harbaugh will set you up for success and even help you with the search for his replacement.

Employee Loyalty and Owning a Team--A Hidden Retention Tool?

Jim Harbaugh is the kind of talented up and comer that makes corporate America drool. Certainly ready for the next step his accomplishments at Stanford speak for themself. He has taken an institution that was nowhere in the BCS discussion and high academic standards that probably have their own recruiting issues (no dummies at Stanford) and put them in the discussion their one loss is to either the national champion or the runner up. He has also mentored and trained the premier quarterback recruit of the 2010-2011 season. So when is Harbaugh going to make the jump to the NFL? He certainly has plenty of options with the Dolphins, 49er's, and Broncos chomping at the bit to sign him. Money, fame, and power are all within his grasp. Why would he stay at Stanford with so much to gain on the outside?

Andrew Luck.

Relationships matter. Often in business when someone is given the opportunity create their own team and has been recognized for success with that team a true leader wants to play out that success till the end. Very few people have so little ego that with the pinnacle of accomplishment (BCS Championship) so close they would give it all away for monetary gain or simple external rewards.

Andrew Luck is coming back to Stanford and so will Harbaugh. Ownership is the most powerful retention tool you can use in any organization. Harbough owns his success at Stanford, no one will dispute that he is the single most dominant force behind their success. Andrew Luck is giving up millions of dollars by coming back to Stanford next year and so will Harbaugh, just simply to finish what he started.

Let someone build there team and taste success and they will find it very hard to leave it behind for the unknown, no matter what is offered to them.

New Role, new challenges

Man, being new to a organizations is a pain! I was once told that no company is perfect and I accepted that on face value without really thinking about it. In reality, there are two types of companies. Companies that are can change course easily and companies that can't. I think one of the worst things about HR is that the first 6 months is spent learning all of the transactional procedures that get stuff done. Really, to me, this is a necessary but painful evil in an HR career. You need to be the expert on how an organization moves forward on a daily basis, but your job is not to provide transactional support for the operational guys. I just feel like I am wasting time learning this stuff however necessary to get to the good stuff like changing attitudes and processes toward talent and development. If Kris Dunn has taught me anything, it is that every minute you spend on transactional work is a waste of time. But, yet you must learn, so that you can teach others.

Part of my problem with the new organization (which is great, really), is that they are growing so fast they seem to be going overboard to create some semblance of organization as they rapidly expand. The result is a heavy handed attempt at an extremely hierarchical structure from a former marine (Oh, how I want to say ex-marine just to piss you guys off...Marines and military folk will get this).

As an HR guy who knows where his paycheck comes from, my number one goal has always been to increase my operational boss's authority. I firmly believe that the more decision making you push down to the lowest level the more flexible and effective you will be as an organization. However, I now find myself in a position where the organization is going the opposite way.

So, I now find myself in the role of insurgent. I need to convince people who get paid more and have worked for the organization longer than me that their path is wrong, and while structure is important, it is not what has made them successful in the past.

So, the question I have been pondering this week before the new year, in a two month old job is how ballsy should I be, and who can I afford to piss off to make my point.

Overtime and the Hourly Employee

Hours in a growing industry is always a challenge. In established industries it is simply a math problem where a certain amount of overtime equals another full time employee. In a high growth company, it is much more difficult. Employees become reliant on overtime pay for their daily expenses. A person who should only be making $2.5K a month starts bringing in $3.5k a month and their lifestyle becomes dependent on making that kind of money. However, in the end people who are putting in that kind of overtime will only want to put in that kind of time for so long. Once you realize that you have employees putting in 300+ hours a month you have to realize that these peoples lives are not "typical". Retention is also an issue over the long term. People do not want to work those kind of hours long term. While with the economy the way it is you can get away with it for a while, after a year or two employees will even take a pay cut to get a more family or lifestyle friendly schedule.

Really these type of situations should never happen. While their will be time frames of a month or so where increased hours are necessary in a production environment, if you go more than a quarter with this type of overtime you need to seriously consider adding shifts. The danger you are facing if an hourly workforce gets used to gross amounts of overtime is a complete change in the demographics of your hourly workforce. If you are looking specifically for guys who will work 200+ hours a month, they will never be happy when told that they only get to work 180. They have car payments and mortgages based on the high hours. They will leave and you will be forced to find people who have more realistic hour expectations. While you always want to hire people who will work a high amount of hours, too many of those and you create a situation where it is an entitlement. A proper mix is needed. For retention purposes you need at least a 70 percent hourly workforce that is happy to work 40 hours a week. Then you can leverage the other 30 percent to fill in the gaps. There will always be employees who will take whatever hours they can get, but creating workforce that is entirely composed of "hour whores" is a recipe for failure. In a Union environment you also get people that are on the watch for percieved seniority violations as it pertains to overtime.

Bottom line: Create a sustainable production pace and find a metric that tells you when to add people. For people in a more static and established industry you need to get with your controller and figure out what those metrics are.

Talk to a safety guy about the myriad of safety issues associated with long hours as well.