Gruntled Employees

"Gruntled" recognized by Human Resource Executive magazine

Human Resource Executive magazine has an article by Tom Starner in its April 2007 issue called "Best of the Web." In it, Tom lists what they consider to be "the leading Web sites and blogs for HR professionals today." You can read the article here. It's a broad and impressive list, including many of the blogs listed in the Blogroll to the right of your page. Personally, I'm gruntled and mayed (which should be the opposite of "dismayed") that the article recognized Gruntled Employees in the "HR law" category. Here's what Tom wrote:

As it says at this informative (and smartly named) blog, managed by employer advocate and attorney Jay Shepherd, the idea is to reduce employee lawsuits, which require employers to focus on keeping the workforce "gruntled." Shepherd covers a variety of great topics. Example: A recent post addresses how employers can deal with, what else, employees' personal blogs. The site also includes a very good Blogroll, featuring links to all sorts of HR and business-related places (HR Web Cafe, Guerilla HR) and thinkers (Guy Kawasaki, Tom Peters, Malcolm Gladwell).

Cool. Thanks a lot, Tom, and thanks for putting us in such good company. If you don't already subscribe to Human Resource Executive, you should click on the title and check out some of the excellent articles and resources.

What you can measure, you can manage

Not surprisingly (at least not to me), some of the best ideas in this blog come from readers who take a few minutes to post a comment. This happened again following yesterday's post, "Gruntled" on prime time, where we noted the use of our favorite pseudoword ("gruntled," of course) on NBC's "The Office." Scott McArthur, a people-management consultant in Cheshire, UK, thought of the blog when he heard the "Office" reference. That's good for NBC, and good for "Gruntled Employees."

(Ponder this for a second. "The Office" was originally a British sitcom, successfully imported and remade into an American hit, apparently being enjoyed back in the UK.) (OK, you can stop pondering now.)

Anyway, Scott has a great blog (now added to our Worldwide Blogroll — which sounds like a bakery item, but whatever) called "McArthur's Rant" where he talks about the kinds of topics that Gruntled readers care about. In his comment, Scott makes this terrific suggestion:

What we need now is the gruntled employee index on which we can base HR strategy and measure progress.

What a great idea! I've been wrestling with the concept of HR metrics and ways to measure the effectiveness of managers, HR professionals, and employment lawyers. (Some of the books on the right side of this page talk about these concepts.) Under the Peter Drucker rule that you can't manage what you can't measure, we need to find a way to assess our performance.

My plan then is to take Scott's great idea and develop the Gruntled Employees Index. I have some ideas, but I'd love to hear yours. What are the things that we should be measuring?

"Gruntled" on prime time

I didn't see it myself — I was busy driving to New Jersey, which would make anyone gruntled — but apparently "The Office" took a page from this blog last night. (Spoilers follow if you missed it.) In an episode entitled "The Negotiation," Roy attempts to attack Jim (your typical office-romance-love-triangle-workplace-violence story) and gets pepper-sprayed by Dwight. Later, Michael is discussing the incident with Jan:

        MICHAEL
It was a crime of passion, Jan, not a disgruntled employee. Everyone here is extremely gruntled.

If TV says it's a word, who am I to argue?

Bonuses: more bang for your buck

Guy Kawasaki's world-class How to Change the World blog picked up on an interesting study showing that bonuses are much more effective than merit raises in encouraging better employee performance. The study, conducted by the Cornell School of Hotel Administration, concluded that a one percent merit raise increases employee performance by about two percent. But a bonus of the same dollar amount improves performance by almost 20 percent.

Same buck, more bang.

Michael Sturman, a professor at the school, wrote the report, which you can download here. Guy's post is here. The study was reported on in Science Daily here.