Essential HR Disciplines for Salesforce Effectiveness

Often, when HR professionals are asked why they aren't more involved, common responses include, a common response is that “Sales kind of does its own thing." Sales leadership does carry the main responsibility for sales effectiveness, however, Human Resources need to increase their involvement in salesforce effectiveness. Why? Basically, companies that do not involve HR in salesforce effectiveness stall their growth.

Here are three of the core Human Resources disciplines that help to drive salesforce effectiveness;

Talent

HR partners will often be requested to help Sales Management with recruiting specific job roles. Sometimes, the Sales team accuses the HR team of not understanding the skill set required for those jobs. The Sales & Human Resources teams need to work together and be able to strategise together. One key strategy would be to focus on talent, this includes; managing poor performance and providing better training for the sales team.

Motivation

The next core element of Human Resources that is vital to maintaining a high-performing sales team is motivation. Sales employees often have a different perspective from the rest of the employee population and are usually more motivated by product quality, marketing influence and achievable goals than their non-sales colleagues, and less motivated by performance management and equity rewards.

Compensation ranks high on their list of concerns, but are these organizations more productive because they pay more, or are they paying more because they're more productive? Paying at or above the market doesn't mean performance will follow. Pay and performance are vital components of salesforce engagement and motivation.

Productivity

There is a strong relationship between sales force effectiveness and time allocation. Companies who spend more time on sales, and less on other duties, such as administration, often have greater sales productivity.

Within any sales organization there is opportunity for productivity to increase and can directly translate to the company's growth. Sales organizations need HR disciplines to align talent with strategy, assess opportunities for increased motivation, and identify barriers of productivity. HR has a very relevant, hands-on role in contributing to sales force effectiveness.

Do you need to fix your culture so leaders can thrive?

If you have invested a lot of time and money into developing your leaders but are still not seeing the results you had hoped for then maybe you are focusing your attention on the wrong area. It does not matter how talented a leader is if they are working in a place where the culture towards them is negative. This may mean that you have to work on your culture in order to get the most out of your leaders.

How do you know if there is a culture in your workplace that is negative towards leaders?

Here are a few common signs:

• Staff have an “us against them” attitude with leaders and clearly view them as the enemy.
• Team members have not actually ever met their senior leaders and do not recognise them or know their names.
• Staff are often trying to catch out their leaders and belittle them
• There is often negative talk amongst team members about leaders
• Team members deliberately creating problems or testing their leaders to see how they will cope.

If you have noticed this kind of behaviour within your organisation then it might be time to work with your senior leaders to form better relationships with team members before investing any more time, money or effort into developing new leaders.

Here are a few ways to strengthen relationships between team members and leaders:

• Encourage understanding of shared goals and task. For employees to work together effectively, they must understand group and individual goals. When this understanding is poor, work inefficiencies, lower work quality and low employee morale often are the result. Lack of understanding over goals is often misdiagnosed as an individual performance management problem, when actually the team member is unsure of what the organisation expects from them.
• Provide team members with sufficient Knowledge and Resources. Managers can’t have a high performing organisation without capable and knowledgeable employees who are provided with the right resources and tools required to do their jobs. If staff are made to do work they are not qualified for, they will not be happy and their performance and the quality of their work will suffer because of it. Without proper knowledge and training, employees are likely to use resources inefficiently and become disheartened which leads to frustration and higher staff turnover.
• Communication. Ineffective employee communications lead to inefficient coordination efforts. Miscommunication causes poor information sharing and makes it difficult to get the right people involved at the right time to make the best decisions.  Effective interaction can encourage opportunities for combined learning for both manager and employee and greatly enhance employee job satisfaction. Effective interaction creates a culture of collaboration and encourages sharing of ideas and information.

Minimising Workplace Negativity

There is nothing more detrimental to workplace morale than unrelenting workplace negativity. It drains the energy from a workplace and steals attention away from work.

As a manager it is important to stay closely in touch with employees throughout the company as this will allow you to sense any workplace negativity in its early stages.

It is essential to pay attention to employee complaints, exit interviews and employee discussions and feedback to pick up any signs of negativity. This information will help you learn to identify the symptoms of negativity before its consequences damage your work environment. It will also help you prevent future negativity and cure any current workplace negativity.

Negativity is a growing problem in the workplace, it is often the result of a loss of confidence, control, or community. Understanding what people are negative about is the first step in solving the problem.

Communicating with employees will help you define the exact problems and the extent to which these problems are influencing your workplace. One of the easiest ways to do this is to identify the particular employee groups who are experiencing the negativity and the source of the issues that triggered their unhappiness.

Perhaps the organisation has made a decision which has negatively affected staff or staff are feeling threatened or neglected by management.

Whatever the reason for the workplace negativity, these issues must be addressed.
Here are a few tips for keeping your workplace a negative free zone:

• Give staff opportunities to voice their opinions about workplace policies and procedures. Acknowledge the impact of changes in work hours, pay, benefits, overtime etc. on your employees.
• Treat employees like adults with fairness and consistency. Do not create rules for all your employees to target the few people who are doing the wrong thing. Keep the number of rules directing the behaviour of adults at work to a minimum.
• Keep your staff in the loop with what’s going on within the organisation. Provide the context for decisions and communicate regularly and effectively.
• Give employees opportunities to grow and develop. Training and opportunities for promotion are visible signs of an organisations commitment to staff.
• Make sure you give your employees appropriate reward or praise and recognition for a job well done.  Reward and recognition are some of the most powerful tools an organisation can use to boost staff morale.
• Listen, often people just need a sounding board. Be present and available to staff. 

Re-shaping Performance Management


Performance management has been a popular topic of discussion within organisations recently, with 96% of surveyed organisations having recently changed or planning to change their system within the next 12 – 18 months. As companies struggle with leadership, engagement, and capability challenges, they are realizing that the performance management process affects all of these challenges.

Many employees and managers are feeling dissatisfied and frustrated with the current performance management systems. However instead of completely over hauling current systems, the way to change will most likely require organisations to evolve the practices they already have in place.

New performance management models are now becoming imperative as businesses update and improve their talent solutions. Companies leading this transformation are redefining the way they set goals and evaluate performance, focusing heavily on coaching and feedback and looking for new technologies to make performance management easier.

Some essential changes are needed but some of the original elements should remain the same.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when changing your performance management strategies:

• Performance management is changing, not disappearing with the focus shifting from annual assessments to more continuous dialogue. The performance information gathered will be more constant and more relatable to what employees are doing at that moment instead of reviewing what they did six months to a year ago.
• Corporate culture and values are to become more closely aligned, with employers encouraged to enabling employees to do their best instead of “fixing” their performance.
• Different techniques for different areas of the workforce. Different jobs require different performance management criteria and systems.
• Disposing of the performance rating. Rating your employees is not helpful or productive. If ratings are not eliminated completely, they should at least be simplified into broader categories.
• Separate performance from rewards. Fixed approached based on performance ratings are dubious, especially when objectives are conditional or achieved through team collaboration.  Assessing someone’s skills produces inconsistent data. 
• Continuous feedback - the regularity, emphasis and quality of communication will change to enable more real time conversations about how the employee is going.
• Mobile technology should enable more immediate and personalised feedback.
• Managers need training to become leaders. Manages who have received development to become better mentors and coaches will focus conversations on capabilities and performance than faults or issues.
• Simplicity is the key. Much of the current performance management processes involve filling out paperwork, evaluating job rankings and developing unrealistic goals. The information that was gathered had little practical application for managers or team leaders. 

Tips for Implementing a Performance Management System

The basic theory behind a performance management strategy is that if employees know what is expected of them, they are more likely to excel at their jobs. This is also a vital aspect of employee engagement.

By implementing a system like this you will see improved individual performance, greater employee engagement and overall better organisational performance.

Here are some keys steps to implementing a successful performance management system.

1. Clarify Objectives

An important first step is identifying some major objectives for the program and refining the need for a performance management system. What should be included within the system? You can choose to get input from your employees when trying to define the parameters of your performance management system or you can delegate it to your HR department. A good place to start is to use the definition of improving performance and satisfaction.

Some helpful things to include in a performance management system are:

• A clear company vision
• Documented and communicated core competencies
• Formal and Informal rewards which are seen as consistent and fair

2. Support of Your Managers

Once your objectives have been identified along with your expected business outcomes, you have to ensure that your managers are on board. The agreement of the senior management team is needed before any implementation steps are taken. Many systems fail because they are not seen to be included in a managers basic day to day responsibilities. Senior Managers must be seen to be actively supporting the process.

When training your managers in the implementation of a performance management system it is important that they understand:

• How much time is required to implement the system and maintain it on an ongoing basis?
• How the system works and what it will deliver if its implemented successfully
• And developing the skills necessary to carry our effective performance management often take time – more time than expected.

3. Prepare system and supporting materials and documentation
                            
Develop a process and documentation to support the system. Ensure core competencies are defined with associated behaviours and are communicated to all staff.

Included in the documentation should be:

• Review performance against the key parts of the job
• Review performance against any specific goals or objectives which have been set
• Review performance against the organisation’s core competencies if they have been defined
• Identify any learning and development needs for both short and longer term
• Allow for feedback on progress on an ongoing basis
• Ensure job descriptions are current and in a form that provides clear and measurable results required

Staff Retention Strategies

If you are not doing all you can to keep your staff happy and engaged, you may be at risk of losing your most productive workers to your competition.

You do not need to spend a lot of money to put a staff retention strategy in place. Here are a few things that can help you keep your staff happy.

• A well-defined career path – Most employees want to progress in their careers and like to know that there are opportunities available within their workplace to do so. Have discussions with your team about their professional goals and aspirations and how they can achieve them within your organisation. Offer mentoring and training programmes.
• Acknowledgement - Make an effort to acknowledge staff achievements and hard work. Most staff are more engaged and have a stronger feeling of satisfaction in their work if they feel that managers appreciate their contribution to the workplace.
• Trust – It can be difficult to be productive when someone is breathing down your neck while you are trying to go about your duties. Most employees like to feel that they can be trusted and relied upon to complete their work efficiently without being micro managed.
• Flexible work environment – Flexible work agreements are one of the most desirable elements of a work environment for staff. Giving your staff the opportunity to attend their children’s school activities or medical emergencies can make a big difference to an employee’s happiness within their job. Helping your staff maintain a healthy work and personal life balance can really increase loyalty to your company.
• Ethics – Most people would prefer to work for a company that they believe is good. It can be beneficial to promote ethics when interacting with customers and employees. Ensure your workplace encourages fairness and diversity.
• Communication – Well defined communication is one of the most important factors of retaining staff. Most staff liked to know what is expected of them and to have clear a clear job description or role within the company. Keep employees up to date when it comes to developments within the organisation. People feel more involved and part of the organisation when they are kept in the loop. Encourage employee feedback and ideas. When staff are involved with projects from the beginning they are more likely to feel connected to the outcome. Make sure to address interpersonal problems among staff members as soon as possible.

By using some of these strategies you can help encourage employee motivation and loyalty and lower the likelihood of losing staff to your competition.

The Benefits of Implementing a Performance Management Strategy

A performance management strategy is important for the improvement of the overall structural performance of a company by managing the performance of both teams and individuals to ensure the achievement of organizational ambitions and goals.

A successful performance management strategy can play a vital role in managing the performance in an organisation by:

• Making sure that the employees understand the importance of their contributions to the company’s goal.
• Ensuring that each employee understands their role within the organisation and what is expected from them.
• Identifies if employees have the specific skills needed to fulfil the expectations of their job.
• Facilitating effective communication throughout the organisation.
• Encouraging a pleasant and harmonious relationship between managers and employees.

Performance management strategies can have a positive influence on employee engagement and job satisfaction by

• Providing honest and open job feedback to employees
• Establishing a connection between performance and compensation.
• Providing learning and developmental opportunities when they are needed.
• Establishing clear performance objectives.
• Providing opportunities for career growth.

Establishing defined goals and regularly assessing individual performances can help you to establish any major skill gaps, therefore helping you understand where extra training may be needed. A performance management strategy can help you evaluate the willingness of an employee to take on higher responsibilities and provide feedback to employees on their current competencies and where they might need to improve.

A common misunderstanding among managers is that behaviour and activities are the same as results. An employee may give the impression of being very busy but may not be actually contributing at all towards company goals. They may not, for example, be fulfilling their job using the latest or most time efficient procedures.

A performance management strategy helps to identify organisational goals and the measures that need to be taken to achieve those goals. It also helps to gage the effectiveness or efficiency and means of attaining these goals.

The results from the information collected from a personal management system have a wide variety of uses. They can help with setting standards for comparison with best practices in other organisations. They can provide you with a consistent basis for comparison during internal changes or restructures. It can also help you to establish results during improvement efforts such as employee training or management development. They help to encourage fair and equal treatment to employees based on their performances.