Lowongan Kerja Indonesia: STRETCHED ASSIGNMENT OR OVERLOADED TEAM?

I took a breakfast with Evelyne in Starbuck coffee, Holland Villagr in Singapore.

And she started to share her challenge.

Evelyne is leading an Organization Development team for South East Asia in an European company, she is based in Singapore.

When she started her role, she focused on improving the process and the execution discipline. Her team did a lot of improvement during the first year.

Then starting the second year, Evelyne focus on the team efficiency.

Since the process is now simplified, now she has decided to reduce the number of people and improve the efficiency.

Before she has 6 team members serving 8 countries in South East Asia. She has decided to cut her team to become 4 headcounts only, and still serving 8 countries in Asia Pacific.

Since the process is simplified and the role & responsibility is claried, she think she can achieve that efficiency. And ... the regional HR Director has approved this change.

Now each team member will be responsible for 2 countries.

Evelyne mentionned that this would be part of the stretched assignment and this will improve the exposure of her team to other countries. Which is great, from the individual development point of view.....

Luckily... the other 2 team members can be redeployed as HR Business Partners (to replace the employee who resign).

Everything works... so she started the new structure 9 months ago...

Obviously, the first challenge came.

All the country HR Directors show strong resistence to the new model.

It's ok. She kind of expected that.

It is always hard during the first period of change.

She travelled a lot arround the region, explaining the new model, managing the expectations, motivating her team members ...etc.

When she thought the situation improved...

unfortunately the worse is about to happen.

Almost all her team members have submitted their resignation ....

Sylvie from Malaysia resigned 2 months ago, followed by Paula in Philippines las month and finally Christine in Singapore has resigned recently.

Puspita from Indonesia is the only person left from her team.

And she really hopes that Puspita will stay longer.

Everytime she discussed with every single one of them, they were very firm on their decisio and there is nothing she could do about it.

Everybody said that it has been too tiring to manage :

- the workload of 2 countries

- the resistances from angry HR Director in each country

They said they have expressed their opinions but Evelyne focused too much of her attention to manage the top level rather than taking care of her own team.

Evelyne stopped her story and drunk her hazelnut latté ...

I thought seriously at her story ... and start to wonder... how many of us could face Evelyne's situation.

Thinking that we are doing our best for our people (stretched assignment and development opportunity) and for our company (improved efficiency).

But in the end, we end up with the people who are so upset and resigned, and the company will suffer because of the impact of the resignations.

Evelyne asked," Was I wrong? Did I have good intention for both my people and my company? Why we end up like this?"

I drunk my Evian and start to comfort her...

"You were not wrong Evelyne. You had all the good intention"

And let's learn from her experience.

In order to succeed, you need more than good intention.

You need strong engagement with your stakeholders and your employees and the strong execution discipline.

And this is where perhaps Evelyne missed her move on this.

While she was busy travelling during the implementation and manage her stakeholders (country management team and HR Directors), she underestimate the importance of talking regularlt with her own team members.

And this is where the disaster started.

Evelyne wanted to develop her people by giving them stretched assignment and international esposure (frequent travelling to other country and experience of managing (internal) customers in 2 different countries.

Which is great, and everybody need that in the future.

But perhaps ... the stretched assignment was too stretched.

May be it was unrealistic to ask her team members to handle...

- stretched assignmet

- angry HR director

- new process

- educating other business leaders

- frequent travelling

at the same time.

There are times where too much is just "too much".

As a leader, Evelyne has to be able to observe and evaluate if her team members are really "stretched" or overload.

Stretched is very good and actually we should always look into the situation where our employees are always stretched and do extra milles, so they can develop themselves.

But if they are over strecthed, over load, fatigue and burn out... you will face big risks that you have to manage.

This is where Evelyne has to be excellent at reading the situation.

Dont trust your own understanding, you are not a mind reader (well, I pretend to be one 😀).

Spend time with them...

Listen to them ...

Understand them

Care about them

Ask them,"What can I do to help you?"

We all juggling with priorities and we tend to push too much on our people.

But since I am a juggler, I will share with you an analogy related to a juggler.

Supposed you can juggle with 3 balls, and suddenly you want to juggle with 4 balls, guess how many balls you will drop?

Some people answer you will drop one ball.

Well, you can try, and I can speak from my own experience, that you will actually drop 4 balls, all of them!

So understanding your limit (and your team's limit) is very important, if you dont want to drop all your balls, and actually this is what happen to Evelyne.

So, what are the learning points that we can take from Evelyne's case?

1. BE REALISITIC

Let's realistic when you stretched the capacity of your team.

Remember a balance between the ambitious objective and the realistic understandinf is key.

How do you know? Well, you don't.

The only way is to try and then to spend tine (a lot of time with your team) to understand their situation, and be prepared to adjust your plan accordingly.

2. DISCUSSS ABOUT THEIR CAREER ASPIRATIONS

Evelyne wanted to develop her team members by giving stretched assignment and international exposure. Is she sure that this is what they want?

First of all, she has to discuss about their career development and offer her help to make them succeed.

Then her employees will understand that Evelyne will make sure about the team's success by developing her people.

The wrong perception is that Evelyne wants to exploit her team members to make sure that she succeeds.

3. ALLOW THEM ASIDE PROJECTS

For your team members, doing their current work can be boring and exhausting.

Allowing them to take aside projects can be refreshing and energizing.

They may take more time, but since this will break the routine and monotonie actually those aside projects will motivate them.

And it shows how serious you are in developing them.

Be selective to make sure that those aside projects are relevant to their career aspirations, and it will help them to achieve their career dream in the future.

4. ACKNOWLEDGE, REWARD, PROMOTE

Dont underestimate the value of the recognition.

Your people are working extremely hard.

Recognize them, reward them and if necessary promote them.

5. HAVE A CONTANGENY PLAN

You have to be prepared with at least 3 scenarios.

In case your Plan A is not working, because of capacity (work load) issues or resistence from country HR Director, Evelyne has to be ready and has other scenarios prepared.

The objective must be achieved.

So if Plan A is not working, other plan could be activated to achieve the same objectives.

6. ASK THEM,"WHAT CAN I DO TO HELP YOU?"