About Our Speaker 

 
Catherine is a strategic HR consultant, coach, and trainer, who partners with clients to replace toxic workplace behaviors and cultures with positive, respectful ones. Catherine has presented keynotes around the world, has appeared on the likes of CNN and NPR as an expert and has been cited as an expert in Inc Magazine, Entrepreneur, USA Today, and more. She was also a regular contributor to Forbes.com. 
 

Catherine has written three books: 
– “BACK OFF! Your Kick-Ass Guide to Ending Bullying at Work” – hailed as the “most comprehensive and valuable handbook on the topic” by international leadership and business guru Ken Blanchard. 
– “Seeking Civility: How Leaders, Managers & HR Can Create a Workplace Free of Bullying” 
– “Stand Up, Speak Out Against Workplace Bullying: Your Guide to Survival & Victory Through 23 Real Life Testimonies.” 

A Peek into the Podcast 

01:22 – 02:10 – How much is the influence of a strong culture on the performance management practices of the organizations? 

02:25 – 04:02 – Is there anything going to change in terms of how the performance managers approach? 

04:27 – 05:27 – What are the challenges in linking the positive culture and employee development? 

05:29 – 07:28 – What are the certain best practices would you suggest for improving employee engagement in the right way? 

07:29 – 08:08 – Is training required for HR folks too? 

The Challenges Confronted by HR in this Pandemic  

So, interesting times, these days, you know, I keep talking all the time in our podcast, like, I can’t probably say enough that these are amazing times as HR is getting transformed and also, these are the times where the HR is looking to add a positive work culture in their organizations, and also, they have to make sure that the performance of the employees remains strong. So, how much is the influence of a strong culture on the performance management practices of the organizations what you have seen, and how it impacts each other? 

Yeah, I think they’re definitely intertwined in fact often that it’s a major part of what we’re doing when we’re working with organizations on culture changes to adjust their performance management. I mean, truly in the big picture, performance management is about candid feedback that’s going both ways tying people’s goals to the organizational goals so that they’re growing together. I mean, all of those Nuggets you hear about when we’re talking about employee engagement or positive culture, those are all the same exact nuggets that we’re talking about with performance management. So there, they’re definitely very intertwined. 

If you look at performance management, let’s say our colleague, I won’t call it new normal and I think there are so many buzzwords now post pandemic, new normal. Is there anything going to change in terms of how the performance managers approach? Any change in the process do you recommend? What do you forecast?  

Yeah, I think the paradigm is definitely been shifting already before COVID from the annual review into monthly formal one on ones and that type of thing. I think that one-on-one monthly is gonna get even weekly or maybe twice a week because of the way we’re operating now. We almost need to touch base more often, so I do think those performance conversations will get more and more sort of informal as employees and managers are touching base a lot more often than to check in with each other “What do I need to be doing today?” “What are you doing today?” “What has to happen?” So, I think that’s one big change that we will get more informal. I also hope and I was talking about this before COVID but would like to see this even more so with COVID that emotions and vulnerability has to be a part of the conversation now at work. It has always been that you don’t get emotional at work, don’t cry at work, and that type of thing and we’re all vulnerable right now. We’re all in high stress, and I think it’s gonna take a long time for us all to get over our PTSD that we’re gonna have once this is over. So, just making more room for that vulnerability is going to be an important part of the performance conversations as well.  

And I think that’s all the talks about how important the culture has to be people-friendly, right? A lot of companies have performance practices based on employee development, how they are focusing on making sure the employee develops in the company. There seems to be some kind of disconnect in achieving it. It’s like there are some challenges in terms of how people and companies can link the positive culture and employee development. What’s your take on it?  

Yeah, I think it goes back to what I was just saying that employee development feels often very formal like what are your formal goals, let’s get those formal goals written now, and that’s important certainly. We all need to have goals and achieve them but there’s more to a person than that and there’s more to growth that just setting tangible goals and achieving them. So, I think if we turn our employee development towards developing the whole person, thinking about their career along with the organizational goals, thinking about performance management as a whole person process, not just the work or the quantitative part.  

The biggest challenges for the HR department right now, they have to be engaging with the employees even more, not just engage but doing the right communication, choosing the right words, not overdoing it, at the same time trusting your employee that they are doing the right thing, what are the certain best practices would you suggest? 

Well, unfortunately, I think it has to do with just the managers’ personality and probably, the relationship before all of this. So, I am in the space of workplace bullying and addressing toxic cultures, and so if you have managers and supervisors who are toxic already or not that great, they don’t even necessarily have to be toxic but they’re gonna continue down that way. They’re not all of a sudden going to be some great manager or supervisor I would assume, and so I think it has a lot to do with the relationship that managers and supervisors were building prior to all of this. So, I don’t know, you can change that now other than for HR leaders to give managers and supervisors more training on having candid conversations, allowing people to be more vulnerable. One thing I see in toxic work environments all the time consistently is that managers and supervisors were never trained on how to have good conversations about behavior and performance. And so that, in my mind, a risk factor for a toxic work environment is managers not being trained, so now would be a great time to start doing that and giving managers and supervisors those tools on better performance conversations because that’s the way organizations are going to survive if everybody is being teed up for success, and managers supervisors need to be trained to do that.  

Absolutely. Now that comes to an even more important point. Not just the managers have to be trained but also the HR folks need to have to get trained because now it’s not something here that most HR folks have gone through before. So now, there should be training for them too, right?  

Yes, we’re all learning a lot and so to not engage in training right now would be silly now more than ever. I know training often gets cut when we’re worried about cash flow and revenue but we’re all on a major learning curve, so recognizing that training is super important right now should not be the thing you’re cutting. 

I think what you’ve said is basically some of the basic things every company has to do, right? Whether you’re a manager or HR or you’re an entry-level employee or you’re a director, I think they are all on the same boat in terms of how do they work with the employees, how do they treat their peers, how did they work with the HR. I mean I’m going in the zoom calls every day and at the end of the day, I feel like I have done only 30 – 40% of what I do if I am in the normal office. When I go to office, somebody says, “Hey, I am micromanaging my team because I am not seeing them in front of me, right?”  

Yeah, that’s one risk we run. Starting to micromanage, we want to know what everybody is doing. There’s is this balance and trust. And again, relationships are important. I think whether or not an employee decides if their manager is micromanaging them or not has to do with the relationship thing they have.  

Hope you find the quick take on how performance management and HR management can react post pandemic insightful. Thanks for listening to the podcast/ reading the blog. Keep your workforce engaged!