Part 4: Being Clear About Expectations and Rewarding Great Work
Part 4
Being clear about expectations and rewarding great work
By Chuck Baren, COO of HirexHire
HirexHire is Building a Great Company for Great People.
Parts 1-3 of this 6-Part blog series discussed why that is important, establishing a trusting environment, and how to ensure the future is mutually beneficial for all employees. Read Parts 1-3 here. In Part 4, we discuss setting expectations and how to identify great work.
HirexHire Team Outing @ Pilsen Yards in Chicago
At HirexHire, we expect to consistently deliver great results for our clients and maintain that standard as we continue to grow. We know our employees want to do a great job. And common sense tells us that employees who do great work and are recognized and rewarded for their contributions will love where they work and stay for a long time (See Part 1 to read about why we believe that is critically important). Everyone will win if we can help our employees do a great job and reward them accordingly. This is why we are clear about what great work looks like, how to recognize it, and why we reward employees who deliver it.
Be clear about expectations
HirexHire clients expect us to deliver great results, so we ensure our employees know the expected standard of excellence. We clarify our expectations for work standards and behaviors, and we provide our employees with the required education, training, and mentoring to achieve these standards. Leaders who do not provide these clear expectations are unnecessarily putting their corporate goals at risk. They may as well cross their fingers and hope their clients will remain while their employees figure out how to do great work over time.
Unclear or inconsistent work expectations are counterproductive and often lead to larger problems. In addition to disappointing clients one of two things are likely to happen:
Employees won’t be told they need to do better by management and believe their performance is fine until they are eventually denied an anticipated raise or promotion - only then being told they haven’t been satisfactorily delivering. This leads to employee engagement issues and related problems.
Employees will be told they need to do better without receiving guidance on how to improve which leads to repeated negative feedback, frustration, and a new job search.
Some employees may figure out how to deliver great results on their own, but hope is not a good corporate strategy.
What great work looks like
HirexHire employees understand and are comfortable and flexible with their daily responsibilities. And just like in all growing companies, our employees are asked to help build out our operational infrastructure and, sometimes, to expand upon their client service role to ensure we deliver as expected. If we’re doing our jobs right, we’re properly setting this expectation with our new hires during our interview process.
When employees put in extra time and effort, or exhibit role flexibility, they deserve to be recognized. But this is expected in start-up environments and is not considered great work at HirexHire, so we acknowledge and thank employees when they demonstrate this commitment, but we do not call that great work.
To be sure we draw a distinction between great work and meeting expectations, we are clear about the difference. This is how we define great work:
Great work is when an employee's performance exceeds what is expected for their role, experience, and tenure. Someone’s great work today may not be great work in the future when experience and tenure raise expectation levels.
Great work is when a client goes out of their way to provide feedback about a great experience with an employee. We call this great work even if the underlying work product would have otherwise simply met expectations. We know that how you get there matters - for our clients, the journey can be just as important as the destination.
Great work is when an employee’s performance at work helps elevate the work of others. At HirexHire, we reward the rising tide that lifts all ships.
Defining great work has the added benefit of clarifying that working extended hours is not automatically great work. In fact, great people managers will be in tune with why employees have to put in extra time. Are they making mistakes that take extra time to correct, in which case more training and mentoring may be required? Are they prioritizing poorly, creating an unnecessary time crunch for the more important work? If that’s the case, better coaching and feedback are in order. Or is the employee doing a great job and prioritizing well but simply has too much to do? This scenario tells leadership where the team may be understaffed and help inform resource allocation decisions.
Rewarding employees for great work
We are building a great place for great people at HirexHire, and while we recognize the hard work of our employees, we know that we must reward great work if we want our people to love their jobs and stay with us for a long time.
There are a few ways we reward great work, including:
We save space to celebrate great work during our bi-weekly all-company meetings. Public recognition is more than a simple thank you or feel-good moment. For employees, it is also a public vote of confidence that gives them a bit of status among their peers. And highlighting examples of great work reinforces behaviors to others that they should emulate, which helps HirexHire deliver better results to our clients.
We reward employees who do great work with opportunities to further develop their skills or gain new ones. If a particularly important or challenging client need arises, we naturally want to assign it to top performers - those who have delivered great work - which accordingly helps them develop and grow more quickly. And when top performers see they can grow and develop professionally where they work, they will be happy and stay for a long time.
We reward employees who do great work with promotions. There is a limit to the frequency of role promotions and compensation increases, but top performers are at the front of the line when opportunities arise.
Our clarity about expectations for our employees and how we define and reward great work is an important strategy for how we’re building HirexHire into a great place for great people.
Thanks for reading Part 4! In Part 5 of this blog series, Chuck will discuss how HirexHire is nurturing a culture of continuous improvement on its quest to build a great place for great people.
How HirexHire is building a great place for great people - Hire by Hire:
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About HirexHire
HirexHire (pronounced: hire by hire) is a Chicago-based recruiting and talent consultancy that integrates with companies short-term to provide long-term talent solutions.
We take a seat in our client’s everyday operations to understand their people, goals, gaps, and challenges. We then develop and implement the processes and technologies to execute a sustainable and scalable talent plan.
We partner with companies expecting or experiencing high growth, leading them to hire at scale or fill a critical role rapidly. We develop and execute creative strategies to carry out all aspects of the recruiting process: crafting job descriptions, building candidate pipelines, vetting candidates, conducting interviews, negotiating offers, and leading new hires to their first day on our client’s team.
HirexHire was founded in 2018 with an initial investment by founder and CEO Mike Durec. The firm found its first customers through Mike’s network in the Chicagoland startup community. Consistent success has led to a sterling reputation and steady growth. The company has more than doubled its number of customers, revenue, and employee base each year and is showing no signs of slowing down.
About Mike Durec
Founder and CEO
As Founder and CEO of HirexHire, Mike partners with operating executives and investors to develop and implement processes and technologies to successfully attract and retain talent.
In his past work as a corporate recruiting leader in technology, Mike crafted and managed strategies to hire thousands of professionals across many functional areas worldwide. He has led hiring initiatives in the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, UK, Germany, France, Australia, and India. Mike brings practical leadership experience and a legacy of success to every engagement.
HirexHire now operates with Mike’s proven approach, deploying empathy with candidates and hiring managers and advocating for the best interest of both parties. Mike emphasizes the two-way relationship between the employee and employer, resulting in long-term people placement and greater work-life satisfaction.
About Chuck Baren
Chief Operating Officer
Chuck has more than 20 years of experience working in professional services for SAAS providers, most of which was with Fieldglass, where he helped it grow from 20 employees and no revenue in 2000 through its $1 billion acquisition by SAP in 2014. He regularly received high marks for the level of employee engagement of his teams for which he prioritized people management and the need to attract and retain top talent by building a great place for them to work. By the time he left SAP Fieldglass, the professional services team he led had grown to approximately 200 employees.
Chuck wrote about his experience leading his growing team at Fieldglass through challenging periods of rapid growth in Money Matters, Top Tips for Success, the Business Leaders Edition, volume 3. His chapter entitled “People Management is Key to Survival in a High Growth Environment” helped propel the book to Amazon Best Seller status in its first days of release.