Cargill - Everyday Performance Management. In 2010, Cargill's complex external environment was changing rapidly, requiri
2014 Human Resource Management Impact Award Winners
The Human Resource Management Impact Awards program was launched just over a year ago by SIOP and SHRM and their charitable Foundations. The program serves to bestow recognition on exemplary, evidence-based human resource management practices. The 2014 winners are: Cargill - Everyday Performance Management In 2010, Cargill’s complex external environment was changing rapidly, requiring the company to become more agile, reduce complexity, and simplify processes in order to focus on creating value to its customers. In response to these business priorities, Cargill implemented Everyday Performance Management (PM), an evidence-based practice that leveraged extensive internal and external research that pointed at the opportunity to simplify PM, adopt a new mindset, and focus on what really matters.
Milton D. Hakel SIOP Foundation President
The design and implementation of Cargill’s Everyday PM followed three key principles: (1) Focus on Everyday PM. The central premise was that day-to-day manager and employee practices are more critical to effective PM than are annual, eventbased procedures. (2) Strengthen employee and manager capabilities. Investing in strengthening PM-related capabilities of both managers and employees enables Everyday PM. These include building trust, effective communication, and effectively delivering and receiving feedback. (3) Simplify PM Requirements. This principle is meant not only to save time and labor costs but also to reduce the extent to which PM is viewed as an annual administratively complex event that contributes very little to individual and organizational performance. The primary focus of Everyday PM is more frequent manager-employee one-on-one discussions throughout the year. The simplified
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process has fewer system requirements in order to dedicate more time for collaboration between the manager and employee to strengthen the relationship, build trust, and increase employee engagement. After one full year, an evaluation of the employee experience and engagement with Everyday performance Management showed that Cargill successfully streamlined and simplified its PM process by focusing on ongoing employee-manager discussions, reducing administrative requirements and removing ratings. These changes have resulted in increases in both manager and employee satisfaction and engagement. Federal Bureau of Investigation - The Leadership Skills Assessment (LSA) As part of a consent decree stemming from a race-based discrimination class action lawsuit, the FBI was required to overhaul its promotion process for mid-level special agent management positions, to include a role-play assessment that was blind to race and gender. With the goal of emphasizing and promoting for leadership, factors such as the post-9/11 rebalance of mission for the FBI, the logistical challenges with filling 1,500 global jobs from a pool of nearly 12,000 candidates annually, and acceptability and transparency for candidates led to this complex challenge and ultimate design of the telephonically administered Leadership Skills Assessment. The Leadership Skills Assessment is a customized, live, day-in-the-life role play telephonic job situation designed by the FBI in partnership with Aon Hewitt Consulting, 114
who continues to administer the assessment. After a review of materials to set the stage, candidates interact with trained assessors who role play scenarios designed by the FBI. Assessors electronically capture notes and ratings based on the behavioral descriptors prescribed by the FBI to reflect its eight core leadership competencies. All leadership dimensions and subdimensions are scored multiple times within the assessment. A final overall composite score, as well as scores on the separate competencies, are calculated for use in promotion decisions, and a comprehensive feedback report that includes developmental recommendations is provided to each candidate. This first hurdle of the midlevel management promotion process has had measureable impact to the leadership of the FBI; not only did the targeted midlevel leadership positions increase in leadership skill (based on employee ratings), but the executive population later in the pipeline demonstrated twice the increase in leadership skill than the targeted position. This emphasizes both the short-term and long-term utility of the Leadership Skills Assessment for the identification of leadership talent at multiple points within the leadership pipeline. Sears Holding Company - Selecting Successful Leaders With Sears Holdings Corporation’s Executive Assessment With increased competition, heightened shareholder expectations, varying market conditions, and rapidly changing and improving technology, Sears Holdings Corporation (SHC) is challenged with selecting executive leaders who have the desired attriJanuary 2015, Volume 52, Number 3
butes and competencies to take advantage of the many future opportunities awaiting the company. As part of its strategy, Sears is placing a heavy emphasis on its Shop Your Way (SYW) Rewards program members and Integrated Retail initiative while also focusing on the development of internal technology that will enhance associate performance. Highly capable leaders within its 30+ business units (BUs) are needed to support this transformational strategy. In support of this search for top leaders, SHC partnered with Select International to develop and refine its Leadership Competency Model over the years and to create an Executive Assessment (EA) process to measure these critical competencies. This process contains a 4-hour assessment battery, review of the executive’s resume and background, plus a 1-hour interview with an assessor (PhD psychologist), who further explores a candidate’s experience, motivation, and fit with the organization, BU, and role. In a recent validation study, EA data was collected between 2010 and early 2013. Results indicated that EA results do an excellent job of correlating with executive performance, including overall performance ratings across all 4 years, executives’ nine-box ratings, engagement metrics of their teams, number of succession nominations, retention of top talent in one’s organization, and actual and forecasted revenues for their organization. Overall, empirical evidence supports the utility of SHC’s EA process on important
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financial-related (e.g., actual revenue) and people-related (e.g., actual retention) outcomes, at both the individual and BU level. Based on these results, SHC uses the Executive Assessment as a key component in selecting the right leaders for key roles, leaders who we are expected to play a critical part in SHC’s transformation. About the SIOP Foundation The SIOP Foundation provides support for the advancement of the field of industrial-organizational psychology. It is a structure through which members of SIOP and other donors can express their tangible support for the field with tax-deductible gifts. Its resources further the outreach of both the practice and the science of I-O psychology so that those in this field can play an increasingly vital role in fostering a productive and prosperous workplace, in the ways illustrated above by the HRM Impact Award winning projects. Information about the current and previous HRM Impact Award winners is online at http://www.hrmimpactawards.org/. Think about exemplary HR management practices, and submit a nomination or application when the 2015 award cycle opens February 1 and closes April 30. The SIOP Foundation 440 E Poe Rd Ste 101 Bowling Green, OH 43402-1355 419-353-0032 Fax: 419-352-2645 E-mail:
[email protected]
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January 2015, Volume 52, Number 3
