3.3.1T Staff Acquisition Techniques

Use Special Techniques for Dispersed Teams (3.3.1T.P1)

In the past, a project team almost always resided in one location. The reason is obvious: it was not easy to communicate and collaborate with people that were not in the same physical location. Today, it is still common for a project team to be in relative close proximity. However, it is also becoming more and more commonplace to have team members physically located in many different places. This may be because of pulling in resources from other company offices. In some cases, you may have team members that are teleworking from home. In other cases, you may be partnering with a third-party company - perhaps even internationally.

All of this is more common today because of advances in technology and software. People can access your company's computer network remotely with almost the same speed as if they were in the office. Software is available to share documents and make updates available real-time to the rest of the team. The team can get together as needed using phone conferencing. You can even see each other if you like using teleconferencing or utilizing video technology over the web.

That is all good news. The not-so-good news is that it is still easier to manage a team when the members are located together. There is no technology that can take the place of reaching out and touching someone or talking to them face-to-face. If you have a project team that is dispersed, you should identify it as a risk when the project is being defined. It is not an issue, since it is not causing a problem right now. However, there is some risk that this situation may cause a problem in the future. Then, put together a Risk Management Plan that will mitigate the situation and make sure that problems do not occur in the future. Consider the following ideas:

  • Make sure everyone has the right technology. Make sure that your remote team members have the right hardware, software, and other equipment to get their work done. For example, if some team members are working from home, a 14.4 modem probably will not cut it. You really need fast access connections.

  • Utilize collaborative technology. There are many products on the market that allow for much easier collaboration among people who are in different locations. Much of this is web-based today. For instance, you can get software that allows everyone to participate in a common meeting on the web, including viewing and changing common documents.

  • Make sure people have the right attitude. Both the project manager and team members must be especially diligent and sensitive to collaboration and teamwork concerns when part of the team is remote. It is easy for a remote worker to fall into a mode where he is isolated from what is going on with the rest of the team. People who are working remotely must be proactive communicators and must be especially good at working independently and meeting their deadlines.

  • Establish good communication processes. The project manager needs to develop a proactive Communications Plan to ensure the dispersed team works well together. For instance, if possible there should be regularly scheduled meetings where the remote workers attend in person. If the team members are in different cities or different countries, look for common times when you can have a videoconference or audioconference.

  • Plan the handoffs. Sometimes multiple people in different locations are working on the same, or related, deliverables. In these cases, the project manager may need to establish rules for handoffs, especially if different time zones are involved. Don't leave the handoffs to chance. Set up processes to ensure that work on shared deliverables transitions smoothly from one person (or team) to another person (or team).

The bottom line is that the project managers must recognize that there is inherent risk associated with remote team members. To a certain degree, the risk gets larger the further away they are because you not only deal with distance, but also time differences. However, a proactive project manager can work through the difficulties by looking holistically at the people concerns, process concerns, and technology concerns. A Risk Management Plan can be set up to mitigate the risk and ensure that the dispersed team works well together for the common good of the project and the team.

Hire a Diverse Workforce Without Compromising on the Best Candidates (3.3.1T.P2)

The whole issue of diversity is sensitive in many people’s eyes.  To many people, the focus on diversity is synonymous with the hiring of inferior quality for the sake of meeting quotas.  However, the focus on diversity is much more complicated than that.

The place to start is to discuss the case for diversity in terms of business value, since the discussion can go nowhere if there is not business value behind it.  No company is going to jump onto the diversity bandwagon if there are not real business benefits.  There are really two arguments for the business case for diversity.  The first is basic fairness and the second is the long-term business value associated with a diverse workforce.

Let’s start with the matter of basic fairness.  A company’s hiring objective is to always find the best person to fill an opening.  This would include looking at internal candidates and external candidates where appropriate.  Of course, looking for the “best” candidate can be a highly subjective matter.  What does it mean to be the “best” candidate?

Left to their own devices, different managers will have differing opinions about what makes a candidate the “best.”  In some cases, managers will choose the person with the best set of skills to fill the position.  However, in other cases, managers will pick people who are like them.  This is a natural tendency and comes from a couple natural, even subconscious biases.

  1. A hiring manager tends to rate a person’s qualifications using her own background as a measuring stick.  After all, if a manager has a certain background and ended up in the position he is in today, doesn’t it make sense to look for those same traits in another person?  However, typically when the manager makes this type of subconscious decision, he is also making a decision to pick a person that tends to look more like him as well.

  2. The other bias slips in under the guise of evaluating how a person will fit in with the rest of the team.  This is because in many cases there is not a clear-cut leader in terms of background and skills.  If there is not an obvious candidate based on background and skills, the interviewer starts to look for differentiators.  One of these differentiators usually has to do with how well a person will get along with the rest of the team.  If most of your team fits a certain race and background, there is a natural tendency to think that people with similar traits will get along well, or at least better than people with different traits.

If teams are left on their own, these two sets of natural biases tend to result in a like group of people hiring a like candidate.  That is, they will hire someone with a similar look and background to themselves.  In some businesses and some organizations, this results in a bias against workers of the opposite sex.  In other businesses, there is not a gender bias, but there is a bias based on culture and race.

Companies, especially large ones, have tried to formalize and standardize the recruiting and hiring process in a way that allows each candidate to be judged based on the same set of criteria.  The goal of a standardized process is usually not to hire diverse workers.  The goal is to remove as many of the subconscious biases as possible and to ensure that the most qualified candidate is hired.  The hiring process usually involves multiple people. The candidates are judged by multiple people using standardized criteria in the hopes of removing as much subjectivity as possible and making the final recommendation as objective as possible.

Many hiring managers take offense at the restrictions the HR Department places on the hiring process.  In fact, there is no question that some organizations have developed a burdensome and dysfunctional hiring process.  However, many of them are pretty good. They are not designed to be the easiest path to hiring a candidate.  They are designed to ensure that every candidate is treated equally and fairly, and that the hiring decision is based on the facts, not the subconscious biases that many of us carry.

So, on the surface, it should not be hard to gain agreement that you want to hire the best candidate and you want to have a fair process for everyone.  Hopefully there is not too much argument that this is a good thing.

In addition to the argument about basic fairness, diversity also provides real business value to the company.  One of the core assumptions about diversity is that no one would be pushing for it if everyone was the same.  However, the fact is that society as a whole is diverse and all companies exist and sell products in this diverse marketplace. Companies have discovered that diversity translates into being able to exist and prosper in a diverse marketplace.  The benefit filters down into at least three specific areas in the company.

  • Exploiting the marketplace.  The basic logic here is that it is hard, if not impossible, to effectively reach a diverse marketplace without a diverse staff.  If you are trying to reach Hispanic clients, for instance, it makes sense that you have Hispanic employees helping in product development, sales and marketing.  This doesn’t mean that every person is Hispanic, but that some are.  Likewise for African-Americans, Asian-Americans, etc.  Since your market is diverse, you need people with background and understanding in these ethnicities.  Together you can effectively attack the diverse marketplace.

  • Making better decisions.  People from the same types of backgrounds can have a tendency to think alike and this can affect the decisions that people make.  Managers need a diverse set of opinions to make the best goals, objectives and strategies for the company.  Of course, some people are very creative, but it is hard to be creative in areas where you have no background or context.  Having a diverse management structure helps drive better company decisions in a diverse world. 

  • Hiring better people.  Ultimately there is value in being able to hire the best person, regardless of the person’s background.