Listen to what your people really want from your organisation. Then tell your managers to meet their requirements. Only HR heretics can create the great workplace where your best people would love to stay and work.

By A Gallup-MBA Research Project Presented by Business Today

In the New Millennium, the only good hr will be heresy. The only good hr strategy will be one that aims to make managers believe as much. And the only good hr company will be one that uses this heterodoxy to attract and retain the best human resources. Breaking all the conventions that circumscribe the hr policies of ordinary companies, it will teach its managers to create a great workplace for their people. In the wonder workplaces of the 21st Century, classic wisdom will be uprooted ruthlessly by the hr anarchists. Treat all your people as equal? Perish the thought. Fix your workers' weaknesses? What an antiquated notion. Train people for skills they don't have? You must be joking. Promote your star-performers to become managers? Just set off a stick of dynamite instead.

The rules, they're becoming extinct. Only, chances are you didn't know. Perhaps because you weren't close enough to your people. Perhaps because you were too caught up in designing their pay-packages. Perhaps because you inundated them with rewards, but forgot to make them feel productive and proud. But now, listen up. For, seminal global research, covering Indian companies too, is revealing just what it is that makes a company a great workplace. And just what it is that you-and your managers-have to do to keep it that way. No, this isn't the cue for you to slip out, and your Chief Human Resources Manager to take over. For, the responses from your people demand that it is you and your managers who must act. That's because your people don't work for your company. They work for your managers. Better believe it-because scepticism will only force a human haemorrhage in your organisation.

A year shy of the Next Century, a great workplace has proved to be akin to a great product. It must not only offer what your competitors do, but must also promise and deliver a differentiator that makes it qualitatively superior-not to everyone, but only to its best customers. And, just as great brands are built on an accurate understanding of the user's needs, so too must great workplaces be created by grasping just what matters the most to the customer-a.k.a. your people. If you're among those CEOs who worry every night whether their most mobile assets will return in the morning, you must translate their deepest wants-the ones that few workplaces meet-into actual working conditions in your organisation. But just what do your star-performers-the ones you wouldn't want your company to lose under any circumstances-really crave for? And are you doing the right things to ensure that those longings are fulfilled by your company?

Everyone knows that only great people-not just great processes, systems, or financial power-are essential for a company to succeed. But virtually no one knows whether all their caring carrots-their stock-options and twice-a-year increments, their challenging assignments and fast-track promotions, their child-care facilities and anniversary gifts-really attract, retain, or motivate their best and most productive people.

Why the doubts? First, it's never clear just which of these offers genuinely adds value to your people-and which only brings your company at par with the rivals. Second, the efficacy of these measures at retaining the best-without providing added incentives to indifferent performers to stay on-remains fuzzy. The only certainty is that the winning factors in a great workplace, probably, do not flow from the tried-and-repeated tools of hr intervention: fatter pay-packets, quicker promotions, and snazzier perquisites. Not only can that be matched-and bettered-by your competitors, they can also make your company attractive to deadwood, whom you would rather lop off. Without these incentives, you cannot compete for top talent, but having them is no assurance that top talent will come to stay with you.

Just how, then, do you create a great workplace tomorrow? It is to answer just that question that the global opinion-poll specialist, the Princeton (US)-based Gallup Organisation, has been compiling, for the past 25 years, the perceptions of employees in corporations across the world about their workplaces. Conducted through detailed interviews with over 80,000 managers in 400 companies, this epochal survey has yielded-after years of analysis-the Q12: a shortlist of 12 critical parameters that matter the most to employees. In this continuously-conducted survey, employees are asked questions relating to the conditions, benefits, irritants, and other issues in their specific workplaces, and must pick an alternative on a 5-point semantic differential scale, ranging from Strongly Disagree (1) to Strongly Agree (5).

In May, 1999, Gallup's Indian affiliate, Gallup MBA, extended the study for the first time ever-in association with BUSINESS TODAY-to cover corporate India as well. The results of the survey, which collected the opinions of 683 managers from 550 companies, reveal to hungry hr practitioners-in today's knowledge corporation, their ranks start with the CEO-just where the country's companies stand in their employees' perception on those 12 crucial factors which, not incidentally, draw on Abraham Maslow's pyramid of expectations, and Frederick Herzberg's hygiene theory.

To understand your company's performance against these benchmarks-and to identify the hr strategies for improving them-it is essential to visualise the holistic picture of the great workplace that they add up to. Naturally, these 12 factors are not unrelated measuring-sticks. First, they can be stacked up to create a hierarchy of needs on 4 distinct levels. And second, each of these 12 factors is related strongly to at least 1 or 2-and, often, all 4-of the business outcomes that matter to your company: productivity, profitability, employee-retention, and customer-satisfaction.

Given this framework, just which of the established rules of managing your people must you defy? Which must you modify? And which must you rewrite from the drawing-board up? BT presents the innovations that are going into creating wonder workplaces, with explanatory passages extracted exclusively from Gallup's own research, compiled as The Workplace Column: A Weekly Summary Of Gallup's Discoveries About Great Managers And Great Workplaces, as well as First, Break All The Rules, the soon-to-be-a-classic text authored by Gallup's workplace-management experts, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. Ready to deploy that orthodoxy-busting mindset to manage in the Millennium?

WHAT DO I GET?

We ask you to picture, in your mind's eye, a mountain. At first, it is hard to make out its full shape and colour, shifting from blue to grey to green as you approach. But now, standing at the base, you sense its presence. Put on your employee hat for a moment. This may be a psychological mountain, but, as with an actual mountain, you have to climb it in stages. Think back to the needs you had when you were first starting your current role. What did you want from the role? What needs were foremost in your mind at that time? Then, as time passed and you settled in, how did your needs change? And, currently, what are your priorities? What do you need from your role today?
First, Break All The Rules, Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman

Q I] I Know What Is Expected Of Me At Work.

THE ORTHODOXY. Quality in work flows from unambiguous directions. Give clear instructions at every stage of every process.

THE HETERODOXY. Define the outcomes you want from your people, and insist that they find their own way there.

Set your best people goals, and disappear-and so will they. Sure, unless your company has a system in place for translating organisational goals into specific targets for departments, functions, and individuals, it won't even be in the running for success. But these are not enough. It is crucial to set accurate performance-expectations, encompassing numbers as well as behaviour, hard results as well as soft factors. And, most important, your managers must know, for each individual, where and how much to insist on conformance to systems, and where and how much to allow originality and creativity to flower. Naturally, the balance between the two will be different for every person-which means appreciating and valuing the differences between individuals.

This is vital because the goals and aspirations of the individual and those of the organisation are, increasingly, diverging. For instance, at Dabur, all the senior managers have been assigned specific organisation-building goals by their functional and departmental heads through a two-way process that customises the goals according to individual needs. As Yogi Sriram, 44, Vice-President (hr), Dabur, puts it: ''Each one of your people must know what is expected of her, both at the organisational as well as the individual level. And then, people feel empowered enough to innovate their way to achieving their goals. Only that can lead to a greater sense of purpose and commitment.''

THE GALLUP ANALYSIS. Expectations are the milestones against which we test our progress. Within the workplace, knowing what is expected of us is the pathway that guides us towards achievement... Setting clear expectations is not a new concept for managers. In our attempts to set and define clear expectations, however, we often over-operationalise jobs. We focus solely on describing the steps to follow and, in doing so, create an environment that communicates 'Check your mind at the door, follow these steps, and you will meet expectations.' This roboticising of humans builds little self-worth and self-confidence in them, and dramatically impairs quality output... The best managers in any organisation define the right outcomes first, and then let each person find his or her own route towards achieving those outcomes.

Q II] I Have The Material and Equipment I Need To Do My Work Right.

THE ORTHODOXY. Build a superb infrastructure of resources, accessible to everybody, for people to do their work without hindrance.

THE HETERODOXY. Let each individual decide what equipment she needs so long as it helps her and the customer.

Creating the appropriate infrastructure for productive work is a vital responsibility for your managers. Mundane as it may sound, simply ensuring that all your employees have the tools they need can prevent the ground-level frustration that often goads talent into departing. Deprive your people of essential material, and they will have to compensate for their absence with additional effort, which cuts into output. But, again, what matters is customising this infrastructure to match the responsibilities as well as the abilities of each individual.

That's why your managers must know the precise approach that each of their employees takes towards doing her tasks. Equally important, the manager must subvert attempts to ensure that equipment is not confused with clues that define where an individual stands in the company's social order. Reasons Arunav Bannerjee, 46, former Director, PricewaterhouseCoopers, where work-tools are provided on the basis of individual need, not hierarchical designation: ''Access to equipment acts as an important hygiene factor today, the absence of which demoralises and demotivates the employees, leading to poor productivity and attrition. But this access is purely need-based, and never driven by hierarchical considerations.''

THE GALLUP ANALYSIS. The challenge we face in providing the necessary tools in the workplace is how to appropriately match individuals with the right tools to maximise their potential. Many organisations, for instance, have supplied their salespeople with laptop computers. But many salespeople don't use them. In other words, sometimes, we give people material and equipment they actually do not need to do their job well... The best managers shift the decision to the employee. They provide criteria for employees to use in taking decisions such as: how is this new tool or piece of equipment going to help: (1) you as an employee, (2) our company, and (3) our customers?

WHAT DO I GIVE?

You climb a little higher. Your perspective changes. You start asking different questions. You want to know whether you are any good at the job. Are you in a role where you can excel? Do other people think you are excelling? If not, what do they think about you? Will they help you? At this stage, your questions centre around: ''What do I give?'' You are focused on your individual contribution and other people's perceptions of it. Each of these questions helps you know not only if you feel you are doing well in the role, but also if other people value your individual performance, if they value you as a person, and if they are prepared to invest in your growth.
FBATR, Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman

Q III] At Work, I Have The Opportunity To Do What I Do Best Every Day.

THE ORTHODOXY. Hire intelligent, hard-working people with the right skills for a job. They can be taught the rest.

THE HETERODOXY. You cannot teach people new abilities. Find every person the job that needs her strongest abilities.

It begins with selection. Unless your managers know how to hire wisely, they will never be able to ensure that a particular job allows its incumbent to play to her strengths and feel the glow of satisfaction that follows. Then comes the even more difficult process of understanding just which of a person's strengths to hone, and which deficiencies not to make an abortive attempt to compensate for. The principle at work: don't waste time trying to put into an individual what was left out of her; spend time, instead, trying to draw out what was actually put in.

Your company will benefit because ensuring that every person can showcase her strongest abilities will mean better quality of work. And, satisfied in this fashion, the individual concerned is more likely to stay with the organisation. Of course, the results that these abilities can generate must also add up to the organisation's goals-which makes it imperative to factor in the corporate strategy and the capabilities that executing that strategy will need. At LG Electronics, for instance, the process begins with a complete mapping of the functional, technical, and psychographic characteristic of every potential new hire. Only after a complete profile has emerged, after detailed interviews as well as a battery of psychometric tests, will a specific job be found for every individual-and not, crucially, the other way round-whom the company recruits. Elaborates Y.V. Varma, 41, Vice-President (HR), LG Electronics: ''The objective is to get a perfect fit between a position and the skills of the incumbent. That begins with the individual and ends with the job, and not vice-versa. Unless and until that happens, an employee can never give her best.''

THE GALLUP ANALYSIS. Full human potential is realised only when people are in a position to use their talent. Having an opportunity to 'do what I do best every day' is tied to the integration of a person's talent, skills, and knowledge. Talent is the pattern that one cannot turn on and off at will. Great managers realise that while talent is the differentiating factor in excellent performance, it can also be neither created nor altered... The task... is to clearly define the talents needed for each role, and then choose the right person for that role.

Q IV] In the last 7 days, I've received recognition or praise for doing good work.

THE ORTHODOXY. The formal assessment is the ideal platform for feedback, ensuring it is structured and comprehensive.

THE HETERODOXY. Provide continuous response, as quickly as possible, irrespective of whether it is negative or positive.

You expect your people to give their best every single day. And yet, your managers won't tell them how they are doing more often than once a year in the form of the official appraisal. Just how will your people know on a continuous basis whether or not they are on the right track? Crucially, this is where the personal response of a manager to the performance of a colleague-ideally, in real time-as opposed to the formal, cold evaluation of the organisation kicks in. One-on-one feedback-praise or censure-will make each of your people realise that her contribution is critical to the company's performance.

At Larsen & Toubro, for example, managers compliment their people using a short note, with the words 'I Appreciate You' written on one side, and the reason for the praise on the other. Elaborates Devendra Nath, 54, the company's Vice-President (HRM): ''Such non-formal recognition works far better at motivating employees because it is immediate. Since it does not have a reward linkage, it does not affect relations adversely, and helps promote bonding.''

THE GALLUP ANALYSIS. Praise and recognition are essential building-blocks of a great workplace... Obviously, recognition can be either positive or negative... However, positive and negative recognition are not opposites. Instead, the opposite of any kind of recognition is being ignored. The worst possible thing we can do to someone at work today is to ignore him or her!... Positive recognition is, often, thought of as coming strictly from supervisors or managers, but... employees cherish praise and recognition from peers. Co-workers know intimately the particulars of a job, and when they notice excellence, it is a special event. So, praise and recognition do not just come from the top down any more!

Q V] My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.

THE ORTHODOXY. People come to the workplace to work. Focus on managing them only in professional terms.

THE HETERODOXY. Treat every employee as a distinctive individual, with specific needs that she is seeking to fulfil.

Compelled to increase shareholder returns, boost profits, and smarten your cash-flow, you and your top management team may not have the opportunity to think of each individual in your company as just that: an individual. But you must. So, at the heart of your attempts to create the wonder workplace must be a managerial mindshift-to treating every individual as a unique bundle of needs, wants, insecurities, ambitions, desires, spirit, and genius. This attitude will then have to be translated into specific action in managing every individual's growth, training, rewards et al.

In other words, your managers have to be set a new objective too: developing the people whose work they supervise. And yet, it may not be enough. They must also genuinely care for each of their people as distinct individuals, spend time with them, share their joys and sorrows, and be a presence in their lives. At SmithKline Beecham Healthcare, for instance, this takes the form of empowering managers to offer special facilities that take into account the unique needs of individuals-such as a special taxi-allowance between October and February for women employees-that, often, go on to become institutionalised because of their success. What does that give the company? The benefit is articulated by P. Dwarakanath, 50, Director (hr), SmithKline Beecham Consumer Healthcare: ''Satisfied employees contribute directly to the bottomline.''

THE GALLUP ANALYSIS. Employees don't leave companies, they leave managers and supervisors... Great managers and supervisors possess identifiable talent or recurring patterns of thought, feelings, and behaviour. This talent includes getting a true sense of satisfaction out of seeing their employees grow and succeed, even if the employee's success surpasses that of the manager... Employee perceptions of senior-management credibility are largely driven by the quality of relationships employees have with their supervisors. Thus, rather than feeling the need for a town-hall meeting, the CEO should feel compelled to ensure that all employees have a caring relationship with their managers or designates.

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