Bringing new hires up to speed.

The following hypothetical human resources issue has, like so many of its ilk, no "correct" solution. To help your colleagues deal with such a situation, please tell us how you would resolve it. We'll print as many as space permits. The Editor

"Tom Evers," XYZ's R&D vice president,

Tom was particularly interested in examining the appraisals of the new hires to see how successful R&D had been in acquiring talent and making people productive in their first year on the job.

Most of the appraisals were just "satisfactory," but there were two exceptions: the two new hires in the Electronics Research Department had been rated "high achievers." Department head "Bob Bateman" expressed surprise at such high ratings for the first year on the job and wondered whether he had over-rated the two individuals. "I thought the same thing and did some further checking," said Pete. "These two people did achieve a lot in their first year. One of them in particular accomplished some research results that will probably lead to a key patent for us. I'm quite certain the ratings are valid."

"In that case," Tom asked, "are these two just that much better than the rest of the new hires or is Bob doing something special to 'get them up to speed'"?

"We haven't had many new hires recently because we have gone through an era of tight budgets," Pete replied. "We really have no specified program for bringing new employees up to speed. For new hires, I do a general orientation--company policies, organizational rules, hours the lab operates, security procedures, pay, dress code, etc. Everything else in the way of introduction to the actual work and results expected is left up to the individual department head."

Tom Calls a Meeting

Tom thought a few moments and decided to have making new employees productive quickly the subject of a special staff meeting and see if his managers could agree on the best approach to take. Initially, newcomers are a drain on productivity, drawing a salary, incurring training and orientation expenses, and consuming co-workers' time--all without providing much in return. But in today's competitive environment, XYZ would have to treat the cost of making new employees productive as a luxury and try to reduce those costs.

Tom opened the special staff meeting by observing, "Over the past few years of lean budgets we haven't had many new hires and don't really have a generally-agreed-on procedure for the best way to make them productive. We've left it to each of you to devise your own system--I'd like to hear your ideas on what you do, what works and what doesn't, and see if we can agree on a best approach for all departments. What are your thoughts ..."?

"Mike Hubbard," manager of Mechanical Engineering Research, responded immediately: "We pay these new hires very good salaries--a lot more than I made when I was new! I want to make sure quickly that they really can earn it, and so I assign an individual project to assess the individual's ability. I give just a minimum orientation on what resources they have available to them and what my expectations are. I've got to admit this didn't work well with my two new hires this year. They were good theoreticians but couldn't handle the practical aspects of their assignments. The experimental equipment they designed was impractical and didn't produce any results! I've got to change their assignments to find some way to make them more productive. I'm anxious to know if any of my cohorts have a better system."

Mentors and Buddies

"Roger Preston," manager of Materials Research, added: "I used to assign a senior person as a mentor to each new professional assigned to my department, but I found mentors don't always work out--the new person treats the mentor as sort of a mix of a "father figure" and his college advisor. Consequently, the questions that should get asked of the mentor don't seem to get asked. "I've gone instead to assigning a 'buddy.' The buddy is not there for technical advice on the project but is someone of whom the newcomer can comfortably ask questions--questions that are either trivial ('How do I order office supplies?') or politically sensitive ('How much attention should I pay to some of the criticisms I get from senior people?').

"Buddies are more important initially than mentors for several reasons--newcomers are generally more concerned with deciphering organizational norms and routines than they are with technical advice--with a buddy they can quickly learn the lay of the land as well as the myriad complexities of how the organization really works. They also help establish relationships with co-workers. I think it is more important to ask, 'Who does a new hire need to know?' than' What does a new hire need to know'?"

Roger continued, "The new hires in my department did not accomplish anything outstanding this year but I consider them well immersed in the organization and expect considerable accomplishments from them in the years to come."

Build those Relationships!

Bob Bateman weighed in: "It's been my experience that the biggest and most consistent difference between new employees in terms of becoming productive is the degree to which their first assignment requires them to build relationships with a wide variety of people in order to get their work done. Newcomers with stand-alone projects tend to remain isolated and fail to build the relationships they need to succeed in the long run."

Bob continued, "This year I had two new hires--each one proved outstanding--and I put them on a large group project. Both brought in new expertise that had members of the group coming to them for information. They quickly became productive group members and delivered excellent project results. They developed a set of co-worker relationships so quickly that they had little need to ask management for information and advice. I think when we review the work of newcomers we need to ask not only, 'What have you accomplished?' but 'Whom have you talked to'?"

Tom listened to a few more comments and then concluded, "I'm going to do a roundtable discussion with last year's new hires and then Pete and I will suggest a new policy on how we can rapidly bring new hires to a productive state."

The new hires were assembled and Tom explained that their inputs were wanted to see if, in the future, a routine could be developed to make new employees productive quickly. He invited comments on their first experiences at XYZ R&D. After a slow start, the new hires made several pertinent observations:

* "I got so much information dumped on me in the first few days that I was overwhelmed. I didn't have the necessary criteria to sort out what I should try to assimilate and what I could ignore."

* "I found out that who you know is what counts but I was reluctant to approach busy co-workers, especially those very senior to me."

* "I would like to have been assigned to a group project and not left to flounder on my own!"

* "I would like to have known more about the roles and responsibilities of people outside my immediate work group--could I turn to them for help?"

* "All of us newcomers need help in how to build an informational network with co-workers."

* "I thought I came in with a lot of good, fresh ideas, but I could not find anybody to input them to."

After the meeting, Tom turned to Pete and asked whether he saw the basis for a policy on how XYZ could bring new hires to productivity quickly. "We need to take a serious look at how to help new employees immediately build an informational network with co-workers--don't you agree?"

Acknowledgement

This case was inspired by the article, "Getting New Hires up to Speed Quickly" by Keith Rollag, Salvatore Parise and Rob Cross, in MIT Sloan Management Review, Winter 2005, Vol. 46, No. 2, pp. 35-41.

Questions

1. If you were Pete, how would you respond to Tom's question?

2. Many newcomers (whether college recruits or senior executives) express frustration about getting their ideas heard. How can companies make sure they capture fresh insights and ideas before the newcomers become socialized into old ways of thinking?

3. Academic research has apparently failed to find a consistent correlation between initial training of new hires and their subsequent productivity. How would you explain this failure?

Please email your reply, with your full name, affiliation and mailing address, to: mwolff3877@aol.com or mail to The Editor, Research-Technology Management, Suite 1102, 2200 Clarendon Blvd., Arlington, VA 22201.

READERS REPLY TO "Jeff Requests Time to Innovate"

March-April 2005, p. 60

Jeff Must Be an Innovative Manager

It looks like Jeff's "good ol' days" of experimentation, innovation and invention without interruption are over. XYZ's corporate operations have discovered the people and the expertise in his advanced development laboratory. The conversation between "Jeff Riley" and "Tom Evers" is a common one that occurs whenever a company tries to apply its business processes to units that have been previously isolated and free from such strictures. R&D is not the only function that believes that it is too busy to be bothered by corporate processes. The same attitude exists in engineering, accounting, marketing--all of which are measured by their ability to deliver results on a set schedule.

It appears that Jeff must understand six basic things about XYZ in order to continue to run his department:

1. Change Is Inevitable. Long periods of uninterrupted experimentation at the bench, collegial Friday brainstorming lunches, and afternoons to explore new ideas were a characteristic of the company and the department of the past. Growth, industry change and global competition make it necessary to change the working environment. It is also possible that XYZ has grown significantly in recent years and is struggling to hold all of its business units together and to manage them through standard processes. Going back to the way it used to be is usually not an option. Jeffmust learn to run the department in the environment that exists today and that will continue to evolve. Jeff must be an innovative manager.

2. Support the Business. Advertisements, presence at conferences, corporate technology reputation, and PR are all essential pieces of XYZ's strategy in the market. Marketing and PR may create the final polished product, but they rely on the operational and research people to provide the raw materials from which to build. The information that the company distributes to the world must be based on an accurate representation of what is happening in departments like advanced development. These are not "unnecessary diversions"; they are an essential function of the company and require support from knowledgeable insiders.

3. Bureaucracy Is Inevitable. Friday afternoons appear to have been appropriated by the HR department for training and information sharing. The advanced development is impacted in two ways--it is distracted from its research work and it is indoctrinated into membership in the larger company. As success leads to growth, it inevitably leads to more bureaucracy to hold the company together and to keep it moving in the same direction. Jeff must learn to work with these new demands on his department's time.

4. Flexible Scheduling. Jeff gave up on his Friday schedule too easily. He should reinstitute the brown bag lunch since there are no external events competing for that time. He should then move "free time" to Friday morning. Jeff can then invite HR to hold all of its training on Friday afternoon, after the group has spent a great morning and lunch doing free-form experimentation and brainstorming. Off-sites may be too expensive, but rather than canceling them, Jeff should convert them to "Down-the-Street" or "Across-the-Campus" events. This will eliminate airline, rental car and hotel expenses, but retain the isolation and focus that he is looking for.

5. External Liaison. Jeff must create an external liaison to work with other departments. He should use a real scientist who can interact with the researchers, but who also has aspirations outside of research. This person will serve as a bridge to marketing, production and other departments. This will relieve the pressures on other scientists who would prefer to spend their time at the lab bench.

6. Reporting. The support that has been provided to the Lima activity should be reported as a success and accrue to the metrics by which the department is evaluated. The same applies to the scientists who accompany marketing representatives to product introductions.

In conclusion, Jeff has to stop trying to turn the clock back. He needs to manage his group within the current environment and remain flexible enough to adapt to a constant stream of changes. Jeff is finding out that managing research effectively can be as challenging as actually doing the research.

Roger Smith

SPARTA Inc.

rsmith@sparta.com

Management Must Prioritize

Someone in this organization, like most all, likes to allow all functions in the company to go around saying, "This is Number One Priority." All things can't be Number One and one of the most important jobs of management is to prioritize. It's the most difficult thing to do after figuring out what our business is.

The second point is that there appears to be no discussion of how to improve the efficiency of R&D, both systematically and in what it works on.

Prioritization and productivity are the keys to this problem. Both Jeff and Tom are responsible. They both need to learn about new innovation and problem-solving tools, how to interact with customers more effectively, and both need to prioritize, which occasionally means saying NO.

Jack Hipple

Innovation- TRIZ

Tampa, Florida

www.innovation-triz.com

Gale Cutler consults on technical management and university relations from St. Joseph, Michigan. He is an IRI Emeritus and Honorary Fellow. g.cutler@prodigy.net