Hack:
Remove manager bias on employees by increasing employee motivation

Remove Manager bias on employees by increasing employee motivation and flatten organization politics by participating in projects within each functional unit on a voluntary basis.

Problem

• In most organizations, employees are assigned their tasks and projects by their direct supervisor, who will delegate these tasks based on seniority or some internal approximation of talent. At larger corporations, this supervisor will be responsible for a group ranging from 5 to 10 people with the same common organizational goal and, therefore, transferable talent or abilities
• From our own experience, we found that the task of delegation done in this way suffers from two main weaknesses:
  • Inertia – employees are allocated a comparative ranking (either formally or informally), with the result of lower ranking employees receiving low value tasks (repetitive, un-stimulating) and higher value employees receiving higher value tasks. This results in a form of organizational inertia where it is difficult to perform above your ranking. Because of this, high value employees never have a chance to add value to the low value tasks and low value employees never have the opportunity to prove themselves with a high value task
  • Internal Politics – managers either consciously or carelessly delegate tasks without regard to employee growth and overall organizational goals

Situation

In our experience, we have been able to identify 2 major clusters of employees:

• the ones who are ‘content’ with their jobs, compensation and working hours
• the ones who are ready to progress faster and are willing to work harder, longer hours and always go the extra mile.
• While employees who belong to the first category are happy with their positions by definition, those who belong to the second category are presented with a number of options when their managers do not fully benefit from their value by giving them tier 2 projects or tasks:
• Look for another job outside the company
• Go for a higher education and re-join the company within a different division or at a more senior level within the organization
• Ask to be transferred to another team, assuming your current manager will let you go and the new one will be happy to accept you in and eventually train you for the new job

• An employee who is happy with his current career progression and/or team may simply choose not to participate in any of the aforementioned contests

Goal

• to minimize biases and eventually eradicate them
• to raise awareness of such issues within the organization and make managers more accountable for their human resources management and talent development
• Nobody will be asked to participate in a single contest to progress within his career but still, those who might want to have a chance to  show their talent to everybody in the firm (including senior executives) will be opened to all of the employees of the firm

Solution implementation

• Problem posted on IT created platform
• Employees have the option to submit a short solution idea
• Manager chooses his/her favourite idea blindly(no disclosure of employee yet)
• Idea linked to employee
• Manager and employee expand on idea and put together a team to develop the solution if needed

Solution Description

• To introduce annual (internal) contests where participants compete by identifying and proposing ideas and solutions in a number of different fields, for instance:

• to innovate product and management practices
• to increase processes’ efficiency
• to encourage new product development
• Our aim is to give a ‘second chance’ to those employees that could be frustrated because of the aforementioned issues (i.e. line managers’ biases) or simply would like to move ‘horizontally’ to other functions within the organization. By participating and winning a contest they will have the chance to demonstrate their potential and skills and enter a sort of ‘talent development program’ or simply move to another function/group within the firm

Desired result

Move from a position-based hierarchy or seniority-based hierarchy to a competence-based hierarchy.

IESE Business School

Team: Donna Crowell, Michael Dallala, Jose-Miguel Gonzalez, Silvia Fregolent, Francesco Sabato, Scott Van Etten