As health care needs expand, the U.S. will require more RNs. The growth in the number of patients as well as the need for more nurses is likely to blame for the shortfall. It is projected that 70,000 registered nurses retire each year due to the fact that about half of the workforce is over […]
The post Onboarding And Becoming A Nurse With Passport USA appeared first on Jobacle.com.
At times during my career, I’ve wondered if my concerns were adequately communicated to the board of directors or whether they appreciated my sense of urgency related to specific business issues within my function. I’m not alone in this. It is not just a data or analytics issueâmany of my peers in the C-suite have wondered the same thing.
(Note: While this posting describes my experiences as a CDO or CDAO, the action steps I’m suggesting are relevant to all functions.)
Upon completing my Ph.D. in 2018, my career took me overseas to Thailand, New Zealand, and Bahrain. I observed many business practices that were culturally different from that with which I was familiar. I want to share my experience in Commonwealth countries (the UK, New Zealand/Australia, and others) and highlight a practice that I believe would enhance alignment, transparency, and speed-to-decision between management and the board.
With primarily U.S.-based experiences, the business culture shift I saw in the Commonwealth was very apparent. Regularly (this was not a one-off), the board actively engaged with additional levels of business managers rather than being “gatekept” by the CEO. In the U.S., as a direct report of the COO, I presented to the CEO but never to board members. It was rare that members of the C-suite regularly did so, except for the CFO and a few select others. My experience in the Commonwealth has been those various levels of managementâgeneral managers, other C-level execs, “Heads of,” and sometimes even those in the lower ranksâpresented papers and updated the board.
In my view, this transparency and collaboration increased the sense of being heard throughout the organization and ensured that critical strategic business issues were raised and understood. The board’s engagement gave a sense of importance to the work and was connected to the larger organizational vision, a problem often raised in employee feedback surveys. CDAOs (and others) want to feel connected to the broader picture and serve the business. The linkages to the board and top management are often the glue that makes the role successful. Further, as a CDAO, this is an essential experienceâas ever more investment is needed in AI, big data, and the technology that enables data analytics, more interaction with boards, will be required, as many readers of my posts have alluded to.
To have engagement, all parties must speak the same language. As a CDAO, I had to understand how to communicate with the board and educate them in my functional area. To do so, I attended training (entitled How to Present to the Board of Directors) which included how to present to the board, how to write a good board decision paper, and what was called a “paper for noting,” an updating document for the board on critical initiatives.
My initial reaction was that this was just an academic exerciseâbut no, I soon realized that it created a higher level of business transparency and helped engender more trust across the business, knowing that strategic concerns and observations could be discussed and calibrated with the board. What a refreshing change from my previous experiences!
1) All general managers and executives had to undergo this training. Importantly, this session was held by the chairman of the board and the CEO.
a. When writing board papers, assume no content knowledge by the board of the paper to be presented; therefore, provide context on the problem frame.
b. Decide up front if the paper (primary way of communicating in addition to in-person meetings) was for updating/education (paper for noting) or a decision (decision paper).
c. The board also conducted education days, where presentations and progress reports were given on critical initiatives that were part of the firm’s strategic plan.
d. The board also hosts The Board Unplugged informal meetings over drinks, where they actively encourage feedback on what is working and how to improve the business. BTW, the managers of the participants were not invited! From my POV, this was an excellent way of behaving and mirrored the ‘servant leadership’ role that experts like Simon Sinek and others suggest.
[If this level of interaction and transparency exists elsewhere, I would like to hear more about it from my readers.]
e. Several times a year, the board invited both C-level and non-C-level executives to board meetings to receive updates, indeed an inclusive approach.
1. Bring the audience, i.e. the board, along the journey from the beginning of an initiative.
2. Give the problem statement and context for what you want the board to know.
3. Avoid using technical jargon(!) and explain things in simple business terms.
4. Know where you stand: If you mention any numbers or KPIs in a paper, be prepared to be asked about the status of these metrics. No theoretical KPI discussions; if you say a KPI make sure you can discuss your KPIs, define them, and present them, and they are consistent if the same ones are referenced multiple times in the same document.
5. Quantify the benefits and outcomes. Come with impacts and discuss the results.
This training is outstanding, especially for CDAOs. We, as domain experts, need to learn the language of board members, especially that related to running the business and P&L drivers. The board can also benefit from data analytics literacy programs, which will be the subject of a different post.
I hope this post outlines tips on how CDAOs and others can communicate with the board of directors to increase transparency, alignment, and speed-to-decision.
I look forward to your thoughts.
âDo you have any questions for me?”
This is typically the final question you will be asked in a job interview. Ask the wrong questions and you might look like a bad fit. Ask no questions and you might look indifferent, inexperienced, or uneducated about the position.
Asking the right questionsâaside from proving yourself to the hiring managerâis one of your best (and last) chances to determine whether the job and company are a good fit for you. Here are five questions to consider:
This is actually an extremely important question that should be asked during every job interview because the answer will provide important insights that, should you get an offer, will play a major role in your decision to take the job.
Jobs open up for a variety of reasonsâsome positive, some negative. Was the job created because the company is expanding? Was the previous person promoted? Or did they quit or get fired? Are you replacing a high performer, or a poor one?
The employer’s answer will help you determine whether the job has room for growth or a high turnover rate, and give you a better idea of how to manage expectations.
Most job postings list the position’s responsibilities without saying how much time is allocated to each responsibility. You want to know this information for two reasons.
First, if your typical workday includes spending hours doing something you dislike, you may want to reconsider whether it’s the right job for you. Second, by discovering which job functions are most important to the employer, you can tailor the remainder of your interview to those areas and include them in your interview follow-up email.
It’s always good to get a sense of a company’s culture and whether you fit into it. The employer’s response to this question will help you understand what it’s like working there day-to-day, what the company values are, how colleagues interact with one another, and so on.
Another good way to get a sense of company culture is to ask this question:
Can you tell me about one of your most successful employees and what makes them successful?
If the answer includes an employee who takes on a lot of extra work and works way more than 40 hours a week, this could be a red flag where the company’s values are only grounded in work. Ultimately, you want an answer where the response includes a combination of hard work, creativity, and character.
If you’re going to spend the majority of your waking hours on the job, you should make sure the company culture is a good fit.
Actually, a more specific question you could ask is:
What are the goals of the company over the next five years? How does this position and this department factor into those goals?
This question demonstrates your goal-oriented nature and suggests that you won’t job hop right away. An informed response will give you insight into the organizational structure and how your position fits into it. An uninformed response suggests the hiring manager is out of touch with the organization, the organization does a poor job communicating its goals to employees, or the organization is not thinking long term. None of these are a good sign.
Here’s another way to ask this question:
What is the company’s biggest challenge in the coming years, and how does this position help you overcome it?
It’s unlikely the hiring manager will say “no” but you can still infer a lot from their response. A moment’s hesitation followed only by, “Yeah…I do,” might be a red flag. A smile and explanation of why they like working there, on the other hand, signifies a more genuine response.
A few other ways to ask this question include:
How did you come to work here?
What do you like most about working here?
If you interview with multiple employees during your job interview, ask them each similar questions. This is particularly helpful when it comes to subjective questions (e.g. “How would you describe the company culture?” and “Do you like working here?”). Doing so will help you paint a more complete picture of the organization, which will help you make the best decision once you’re offered the job.
Need more help preparing for your next job interview?
We’d love it if you joined our FREE community. Itâs a private, online platform where workers, just like you, are coming together to learn and grow into powerful Workplace Renegades. More importantly, we have tons of resources inside our community that can help you prepare for your next job interview.
It’s time to find work that makes you feel happy, satisfied, and fulfilled. Join our FREE community today to finally become an empowered business-of-one!
This article was originally published at an earlier date.
If two heads are better than one, then how about ten?
The pace of change is speeding up, as is the pace of business. This brings new problems to solve, more of them and faster than ever before. New problems demand new ideas. How do you generate these ideas quickly?
One method is the very old-fashioned but very effective brainstorming session.
People often talk about brainstorming, but not many people know how to run a brainstorming session.
Itâs actually pretty straightforward.
A brainstorming session is a meeting between two or more people. One person presents a question to be answered or a problem to be solved. Everyone present thinks of many ways to solve the problem in a very short space of time. The organizer collates the ideas, then works with the group to choose the most useful, which are then used to formulate a plan.
This can be applied to any number of people in any setting. If followed properly, the whole thing can be finished in 20 minutes or less.
Brainstorming is quite a formal process. The formality is there for a reason. The rules make the process go faster.
Make sure that all participants know and understand how the process works before you begin. When running the brainstorming session, make sure all participants stick to the rules.
Step 1: Presenting The Problem
Present the problem to be solved as a question.
The question will usually be: âHow do we _____?â or âThe situation is _____. Now, what do we do?â
In a face-to-face setting, write the question on a whiteboard or flip chart. In a remote setting, write your question in the chat of your communications application.
Step 2: Generating Ideas
Tell the participants that you want their answers in two or three minutes. The urgency will motivate them to come out with the first things they think of, without their thoughts being filtered by notions of practicality, or by the fear of saying something âstupidâ or âinappropriate.â
In a face-to-face setting, participants can call out their thoughts while a âscribeâ writes them down. This favors the more extroverted members of the group at the expense of the rest.
Alternatively, ask participants to write their idea on paper and hand those in. Where your brainstorming session is done remotely, people can write their ideas in the chat.
At this stage, the most important rule is that there is no such thing as a stupid idea. All participantsâ ideas are equally as valuable. No one has the right to criticize someone elseâs ideas.
This will give you more ideas than you need.
Step 3: Filtering Ideas
Here is one way for the team to filter out ideas that will not be adopted:
Assuming you have 10 ideas on the board/displayed on the screen, ask each participant to rank each idea with a number from 1 to 10, where 1 is for the best idea and 10 is for the worst idea.
Get them to call out their scores. Add them all up. The idea with the lowest total score is the âwinner.â
Select a second and third choice as well, in case some external factor prevents you from running with the first idea.
Get the team to vote on the most âcreativeâ/âoriginalâ idea as well. This cannot be included in the âtop 3â results.
âCreativeâ ideas may not always be immediately practical but may be possible later. Look at a suitcase from the 1960s. Why did it take so long for someone to put wheels on luggage?
âOnce you have your âtop 3,â then itâs up to you to decide what happens next.
Do you ask your team for a plan to bring the idea to fruition?
Do you ask them to write a proposal to pass up to senior management for approval?
That depends on the situation. Like any other conversation with a purpose, there should be a concrete result that is used in some way.
If your team has never done brainstorming before, they may find it quite uncomfortable and not produce the best results the first time around.
It makes sense to use it for a less important topic first, like ideas for the next team event, just to get people comfortable with the format.
As well as being a great way to generate ideas quickly, it can also be a bonding experience for the team. Participants will see a different side of their colleaguesâ personalities and will actually work as a team, rather than as a collection of individuals who do more or less the same thing in the same office.
Over to you!
Your team is your âcollection of experts.â Think of your most pressing problem. Can you boil it down into a âhowâ or âwhatâ question?
Set up the meeting, run the brainstorming session, and tell me how it went!
In todayâs candidate-driven job market, employers are looking to the past to fill todayâs open roles.
Once considered disloyal because they quit for greener pastures, boomerang employees are now very attractive as hiring leaders struggle to fill job vacancies created by pandemic layoffs, the “Great Resignation/Reshuffle,â and increased production. Some boomerang employees may have retired early during the pandemic, but are now hankering for more to their days than golf and CNN. Finally, boomerangs may have been wrongly dismissed, or a change of leadership has softened the gaze of the new hiring leaders. Whatever the reason, boomerang employees are a growing segment of todayâs candidate pool.
As unemployment drops to record-low levels and workers become more selective about their career goals and company mission, sometimes a familiar face is just who you need to see in a hard-to-fill role. Itâs time to eliminate the loyalty issue and bring back some institutional knowledge.
PROS:
CONS
You likely have former employeesâ contact information in your HRIS, but if not, you can try search engines like Trupeople.com or Zoominfo.com, or LinkedIn.com to track them down.
If you do reengage former employees like my clients from the marketing and financial services industries recently have done, be sure you do not skip steps in your typical hiring process as well as:
Boomerang employees are on the rise; for the most part, itâs a good thing for employers. You can ensure the âsequelâ is better than the original by utilizing a thorough rehiring process.
For more information on boomerang employees, please see the World At Work article âFamiliar Facesâ and listen to my podcast.
Like JoJo Siwa sings, âIâm a come back like a boomerangââhiring leaders need to be ready.
COVID-19 had a negative effect on bricks-and-mortar businesses. However, the contact center industry is growing apace.
Where companies adopted a fully online model, contact centers are often the only way that they interact with customers.
For banking, telecommunications, travel, and other services, the âproductâ they offer varies little from one vendor to another.
Competition happens at the service level. Companies must define interaction standards to satisfy regulators and customers and define their brands.
This is usually done using an evaluation form. Team leaders or quality specialists use it to evaluate recorded calls.
Quality standards should reflect what matters to the regulators, who can shut the business down, and what matters to the customers, who can vote with their wallets or credit cards.
I use the following 6-stage method:
1. What happens during the call?
To answer this question, I talk to agents. They tell me what really happens on the call in 10 to 15 bullet points.
Flow diagrams showing how the workflow is structured in the CRM system are a poor substitute.
Agents frequently develop their own âworkaroundsâ to address poorly designed workflows rather than submit enhancement requests and wait for a response that never comes.
The list doesnât have to be meticulously detailed. If the data produced on the back of this call is important, then this also needs to be included as an event in the process.
2. What is âgood enoughâ?
You canât raise standards until you have defined them. Look at each stage and write down what makes that stage âgood enoughâ for regulators and customers.
Many contact centers do this internally. The drawback here is that your standards reflect the opinions of contact center managers, not the general public.
A customer is standing on the street on a dark, cold, winter evening calling his bank to find out why the ATM wonât accept his card. He doesnât care how many times the agent used his name in the conversation.
One way to get the customerâs view is to arrange a focus group and ask them. Another way is to look at what customers complain about. A third way is to ask agents what part of the call is most likely to upset customers.
3. Questions
Once youâve defined what makes each part of the call good enough, then you need to reformulate that as a question.
The question needs to be as specific and as unambiguous as you can make it. Your answers also need to be specific and understood consistently.
If your question is âHow well did the agent explain the function of the product?â and the answers are âExcellently,â âQuite well,â âPoorly,â or âVery poorly,” itâs unlikely that any two evaluators will agree on the answer in relation to the same call.
Evaluators find âYes/Noâ answers to questions defining a specific standard a lot easier to use.
4. What about behavior?
Most forms have at least one evaluation criterion related to how polite/respectful the agent was on the call.
There may be others related to how clearly or quickly the agent spoke.
There may also be a âbucketâ question on how well the agent adhered to compliance rules.
Put these at the end. An evaluator can answer them easily after listening to the whole call without having to scroll back up the form.
5. How much detail do you need?
Contact centers evaluating calls manually will evaluate no more than 1% of calls handled.
It takes longer for a person to evaluate a call than the length of the call itself.
To evaluate all calls manually, the contact center would need more evaluators than agents handling the calls. That is not going to happen.
The faster you can evaluate a call, the more calls you can evaluate, so a shorter form will lead to a better sample size.
Itâs a good idea to look at your questions and decide which ones are ânecessaryâ and which ones are ânice to have,â then cut out the ânice to haves.â
Catching enough detail is a delicate balance. Normally, less than 5% of randomly selected calls will have any significant problem at all.
Once you know what a âproblematic callâ is like in terms of length, which queue it serves, which agent handled it etc., you can focus part of your selection there to catch more of them.
Always select some calls randomly to validate your assumptions, however.
One idea is a 2-stage form. Start with some global questions on script/process adherence, correct information given, and politeness. Only move on to the second stage of the form if there is a problem to be solved in the first stage.
6. Testing
This form may lose people their quality bonuses or even their jobs, so we need to test it to be sure the results are accurate.
The read through
Get someone not involved in the form creation process to read it through. Authors tend to fall in love with their work. An external critical eye may see things that otherwise wonât be seen.
The test-drive
Get evaluators to use it to evaluate some real calls. They will point out how questions need to be changed to be useful
Calibration
Calibration is when multiple evaluators evaluate the same call with the same form. In theory, they should all produce the same results.
Where a question leads to disagreement, you will need to agree on the âcorrectâ answer, then adjust the wording of the question and pre-set answers to lead to this result.
Wrap up
If youâre struggling to create or improve a form. Try following this process. Tell me how you get on! Iâd love to hear about it.
Is a summary required on a resume? The particular short answer is: completely not!
âNo paragraph should actually lead your resume! micron warns J. T. O’Donnell, LinkedIn Influencer and founder of Function It Daily. âIt will not get read. in This is especially correct if you plan towards write an âobjective” assertion about yourself such because: âI’m a high-achieving best performer with outstanding in addition to incredible skills⦔
This is a LARGE no-no, according to L. T. âI get this same answers at all times through recruitersâthey don’t like [summary statements], ” she states. âIn fact, it’s such as double nails on some sort of chalkboard to some recruiter that will see [them]. type
Studies show you have six seconds to find that promotion with your current resume . Based on T. T., recruiters will check out your resume inside a Z-pattern (left to right around the top fold, straight down across the page, and even over). In those 6 seconds, they have so that you can decide if they’re heading to continue reading. So, exactly what are they will be sketched to on a resume?
âI make a face once i see people waste materials valuable space in often the top fold of their own resume with this huge, long summary paragraph, alone says J. T. âDo NOT do it! lunch break
Instead of struggling to help you write your resume, understand how to properly file format it for success. This particular includes varying your leading fold from a synopsis or objective statement for an experience summary, which is usually a listing of 6-8 difficult or transferrable skills required for the specific job you’re applying for. Likewise, make sure you quantify your job experience therefore your resume outshines your competition!
If you want to make sure you learn more about just how to do this, we are able to help.
We’d love it in case you joined our TOTALLY FREE community . Itâs a good private, online platform exactly where workers, just like people, are coming together for learn and grow in to powerful Workplace Renegades. A lot more importantly, we have lots of resources inside our community that will can help you create your resumeâthe right method.
It’s period to find work of which makes you feel delighted, satisfied, and fulfilled. Sign up for our FREE community today to lastly become an empowered business-of-one!
This article has been originally published at a good earlier date.
Are you looking for a way to help as many people as possible? If so, you should consider going back to school to become a medical assistant. There are plenty of opportunities available, and you might want to go into administration. Because there are a lot of career paths, it is important for you to […]
The post Reasons To Become a Medical Administrative Assistant appeared first on Jobacle.com.
In our fast-paced work lives, it’s easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle and forget to take a step back and breathe. With deadlines looming and projects piling up, it’s no wonder many of us end up feeling stressed out at work. However, you can do plenty of things to stay peaceful […]
The post How to Stay Peaceful and Avoid Stress At Work appeared first on Jobacle.com.
Most of the exact team is working distantly, but are they nevertheless coming together like a new well-oiled machine? May be the company a cohesive and powerful group supporting operations and even completing projects? Otherwise, a person (especially as a leader) should stop and realize why. You should speak with the team and could need to think involving solutions which are more outdoors of the box.
Taking the very quote âthereâs no ‘I’ in teamâ to a next level, remember of which each team member is usually different and brings some thing to the table. A person should leverage the advantages and balance them along with the weaknesses (like yin and yang). Even fundamental differences such as component of the team function schedule preferences can actually be capitalized on. With regard to example, some individuals may like to come throughout early while some prefer to help work late. If particular business units work exterior the typical hours connected with 9-5 p. m., the main team could readily end up being available for an expanded window to better cater to the businessâ varied job schedules.
In case the team hasnât already been collaborating as much since they could have, simply no time like the current to change that. In the beginning, some associates may really feel out of their comfort and ease zone, but theyâll obtain into a groove finally, the more they work collectively.
Essentially, that team needs to value, trust, and care with regard to each other. Associates want to have meaningful interactions and feel safe articulating their opinions to one of the rest of the party. During brainstorming sessions, you will see valuable perspectives that other folks may not have at first considered. The teamâs relationship and camaraderie can help to make working through those challenging time-consuming problems more controllable.
If some sort of new member joins they will, take that extra hard work to assimilate and help make them feel welcome straight into the team. Or in case someone seems a lttle bit diverted or aloof, question them exactly how they are doing, or perhaps when they need anything. Probably theyâre feeling a little bit burned out delete word questioned. When someone has gone out ill or on PTO regarding two weeks, the relax of the team voluntarily pitches in to protect their workload. Because no one wants to work whenever theyâre not feeling nicely and recuperating. If any kind of of these things occurred to you, wouldnât you are feeling fortunate to be portion of a team the fact that is so supportive with you?
You (as the leader) need towards produce a positive environment favorable for the team, provide any tools that this team requirements to succeed, and recommend for the team! In my opinion that the team may be stronger together, together with in the end, that they will grow and always be successful together.
To find out more on cultivating a good powerful team, follow me personally on LinkedIn !
I read this article by Forbes magazine on the subject of delivering bad news and realized just how many companies fail to follow the steps outlined when they lay people off. I honestly believe the majority of corporations and management teams donât mean to do this incorrectlyâthey just havenât been trained in what it takes to effectively communicate whatâs happening. The result is an angry, vocal group of ex-staff members and a concerned set of clients who wonder if they should look for a new vendor.
Here are the most common mistakes companies make during layoffs:
I once worked at a start-up company that, unbeknown to the staff, was running out of funds. So, one day we walked in and saw at 10:00 a.m. a large group of people got up from their desks and went to the cafeteria for a meeting. The other large group got up and went to the conference room. Each had been sent an email on where to go. When they got to their respective meetings, the cafeteria group was told they were all being let go and to get their things, head home, and the company would be in touch with final pay. The other group was held hostage in the conference room and told they had to stay there until the layoff was complete. Needless to say, the fallout from that experience was significant.
Iâm working with a woman right now whose company announced a layoff five months ago after they were bought out and merged with a larger firm. Absolutely nothing has happened since. She says the staff morale is at an all-time low. People feel paralyzed. They donât want to look for a new job if they donât have to, but they also donât want to walk in one day and find out itâs over. Productivity is down and stress-related illness is up from the fear of the unknown.
I have a friend who worked for a larger privately held company. One day he walked in and learned the company was âcutting expensesâ and laid off 20% of the staff. At the time he thought he was lucky because he kept his job. A month later, news came out that the owner of the company was going through a messy divorce due to cheating on his wife and had been using company funds to support his mistress. The layoffs were a way to save money so he could pay himself more to cover the alimony payments while still maintaining his current lifestyle. My friend found a new job, along with several of his colleagues who couldnât stomach working for the owner after that.
Some companies announce layoffs due to âa decline in salesâ only to show an increase in earnings for shareholders in the same quarter. This sends a very confusing message to the world. You are making more money, so you are laying people off?
The best companies are clear as to why they are laying offâeven if the reason is unpopular. If you feel appeasing shareholders is more important than keeping people employed, then say so. You might catch a lot of heat for your choice, but at least you wonât look like a liar.
âNow that so many companies have conducted layoffs, it appears that HR departments and management teams have decided to scale back what they spend on outplacement programs (a.k.a. career coaching for those affected by the layoff). And, while their lack of effort to help those who have been working for them usually doesnât make the national news, it does spread like wildfire through the social community.
Today, layoff victims have a large platform for tarnishing the reputation of a former employer who throws them out on the street without help: social media. Companies shouldnât underestimate the negative impact failing to give proper resources to layoff victims will have on their reputation.
Some companies donât feel they have to explain their reasons for laying off staff to anyone but those affected. What they forget is that anyone involved with their company is affected! For example, employees that donât get let go have to deal with survivorâs guilt. Itâs not as if they wonât ever see or hear from their former colleagues ever again. So, what should they do? And, no matter how hard you try to hide it, customers will hear about the layoffs. Would you rather they hear about it from a disgruntled ex-employee, or from you personally?
In a time when transparency in business is being demanded, companies cannot afford to ignore their communication responsibilities to all parties involved. Otherwise, you can expect to lose the trust of the very people you need on your side to see through these challenging times for your business.
After the deed is done and the employees are let go, many companies try to rush back to âbusiness as usual.â Well, that doesnât work. Why? Because the layoff fundamentally changed your business so there is no going back to the way it was.
Instead, companies should offer weekly progress reports to show those who are still with the company the ongoing efforts they are making to ensure the decision to lay off workers will in the long run be the right thing for both the business and them. You donât stop the communications until you reach the point where you can show proof of success (i.e. stopped losing money, stabilized budget, etc.). At which point, you announce the new game plan to get the company back to its former glory.
This is by far the most important. Iâm amazed at how many companies let people go and then try their hardest to distance themselves from them. Example: A company I know laid off 2,000 people recently. Not only did they not give them any outplacement services, but they also decided they would not allow anyone at the company to be a reference for those who were let go. As a result, the 2,000 workers had no way to give potential employers a reference to prove they were part of an RIF (reduction in workforce).
The company stated that given the size of the layoff, employers would know about it and wouldnât need references. Well, anyone in HR knows that these days references are very important. The company even went so far as to tell the employees who remained that if they got caught giving a reference, they would be fired. The 2,000 workers were forced to give an automated telephone line where it would verify pay and dates of employment as the reference instead. This created a lot of challenges for those workers who had been with the company for many years since they honestly had no live references they could provide during their job search.
I hope managers who are reading this article tuck it away so they can use it as a guide if the day comes when they need to conduct a layoff. I also hope anyone who has been affected by a layoff passes it along to their management team. Given how little training there is in conducting effective layoffs, we need to get corporate leadership up to speed on the right way to handle such a difficult situation. History shows that companies that manage the delivery of bad news and the need for change effectively are the ones that survive. So, the more senior management teams who read this and opt to follow the guidelines, the better, right? Do your part to educate your leadership teamâsend them a link to this article today!
Looking for outplacement services for your former employees?
I’d love it if you checked out the courses and coaching options my company offers, including our FREE community. In this community, professionals are learning how to become empowered in their careers so they can finally find career happiness and satisfaction. More importantly, there are tons of resources inside this community that have helped thousands of professionals find their next job.
Check out Work It Daily’s outplacement services today! My team and I are looking forward to working with you soon.
So, following up on my previous articles, let us discuss how to organize data governance (DG) for business impact. Yes, emphasis on business impact. Powered and enabled by technology but calibrated based on business use cases of data and the expected ROI. Leverage your data strategy and data management framework and assessment of your data governance maturity to architect the organization.
Data governance is managing data as a strategic asset for business impact⦠We can’t stress this point enough.
The HO of data governance is a strategic business and data leader who can ensure alignment between the architecture and business intelligence teams and the business. Said different, the HO of data governance is not solely a hands-on role; it has a blend of hands-on knowledge of technology and a deep understanding of data analytics but all for the aim of serving as a strategic business interface to maximize the use, access, and acquisition of data for competitive business advantage. The HO of DG is a strategic business leader and has to be able to serve as a unicorn between technology and the business, framing the business problem into data analytics and technology solutions that move the business forward. So while topics like technical metadata, the configuration of tools, file formats, and setting up the data catalog are essential, they aren’t the starting point of the DG leader.
The business usage of data should come first in terms of managing data as a strategic asset. The HO of data governance understands the use cases and how to put CDEs through lineage. The role is not only about setting up the data catalog and file formats for big data but also ensuring the correct data is a gold standard based on business needs and use cases warranting its inclusion in the catalog. It is a strategic and hands-on role but has its implementation teams to make DG a reality. The HO of data governance is responsible for uplifting the maturity levels of data management and the overall function, including the technology as an enabler.
Further, the HO of data governance is a leader that is the steward of the data management framework and ensures that data is uplifted across the lifecycle. I do not distinguish much between the data governance leader, the chief data officer, and the data management leader. These are variations on the same theme, and they are creating much confusion by separating all of these. Also, when the head of the data platform or data warehouse reports to the HO data governance/CDO/data management, it is a maturity multiplier as changes can be made to the data warehouse, and metadata can be more closely aligned between producers and consumers.
We have sub-optimized data governance by making it about the technology and thinking that architecture, engineering, or technology is the primary driving force behind treating data as a strategic asset. These essential functions should be plugged in and reported into the CDO/HO of data governance. The business side of what we govern should be given slightly more criticality than the technology. While I acknowledge that technology is essential, these folks should all hold significant roles. But to make data governance about configuration, engineering, or file formats is a sign of a struggle within the organization; that is why there is such a high turnover in the CDO role itself.
â1. Data Lifecycle Management and Uplift: Includes the data stewards, business owner management, and the data analysts and business analysts that help uplift data.
a. Data lineage and data uplifting efforts are made here.
b. Data dictionary and cataloging efforts.
c. Business glossary for getting standard business verbiage and metrics across the organization.
2. Data Quality: This team creates quality measures and KPIs, and dashboards to provide the monitoring function and works with risk to make sure the proper controls are in place to ensure quality data.
a. The team works with data stewards, data owners, and data custodians to align the data quality measures with the business and technical requirements and considerations.
b. The team works with engineering to create self-service analytics dashboards. It runs fit-for-purpose forums to ensure data stewards know quality issues in each line of business. This team serves as a squad of people who centrally monitor quality and work with data owners and stewards to document quality issues and refer any fixes to a remediation team.
I am often asked what data quality measures are anyway, and I have a start list that I recommend all firms adopt, and they are:
3. Remediations/Information Management Review: This team takes any issues raised by data quality and other functions and manages the fix of any problems or errors throughout the firm. This team may:
a. Make sure errors are fixed at the source.
b. The source of the issue is identified and resolved or minimized.
c. Data that is missing is extracted properly for fit-for-purpose use.
d. Data privacy rules are enforced.
e. Data risk and controls are put into place at the source, stagging, or ETL to ensure errors or issues are addressed.
f. This team reports to data risk and compliance on how issues are being addressed and closed out.
4. Data Risk and Compliance: This is a small team of data risk and protection and legal professionals who maintain a director’s questionnaire with all the identified data risks and how these risks could potentially create problems within an overall enterprise risk framework. This team works with the HO of data governance to co-lead a data risk forum where the progress on addressing data risks is reported. Line of business (LOB) data owners and stewards also sit on this data risk committee.
5. Data Engineering (within DG): I believe this should be a defined separate team reporting into HO data governance/CDO/HO DMO. This squad or tribe or pod contains engineers who specialize in the technology to govern data. They are experts in Collibra, Informatica EDC/Axon. They also help stand up any stagging data areas or pipes to move and manage data. Again, this is a separate team from the team that manages the data warehouse or data operations. It can be the chapter lead or squad leader who manages this team. The expectation should not be that the head of the data governance organization or leader is the same person configuring Collibra or working on file formats or technical metadata. This team should be joined at the hip with the HO of DG to help implement governance and all its sub-activities, including lineage. The HO DG should know how the technology works and evaluate if it serves the team’s needs. However, getting the data in and out of the data governance tool kit is this team’s and squad leaders’ primary responsibility. This is often a missing element in organizational design and talent architectures.
6. Data Management Leader (aka Data Analytics Platform Lead): This is the role where the data analytics platform and engineering team (formerly the BI team) reports to the CDAO/ HO of DG. This allows for much more effective data governance as both analytics and DG are significant clients of the platform. This allows the learning from analytics to quickly be incorporated into DG and the platform. Your data warehouse or big data “platform” should be a living, breathing âbrain.â Connecting the dots across DG and platform helps keep technical metadata up to date and creates a form of rapid cycle learning.
This is my POV on what constitutes a best practice data governance function and team. There certainly can be other variations of this, but this is what I have seen get traction. Let me know what your experience has been with data governance teams. What is the best way to define and organize DG for business impact?
I am looking forward to your thoughts.
Also, I believe some of the best teachers are on LinkedIn and YouTube. I highly recommend George Firican’s data governance course for a good POV on what I consider good data governance. His course can be found here.