Too often, rumors and the workplace grapevine serve as the primary source of information for employees, a situation that severely limits the ability of managers to share important information accurately and communicate effectively. It also can foster employee distrust and resentment of management, spoiling morale and productivity.

In organizations that communicate well with employees, all levels of management are actively involved in regular organizational dialogue and participate in a process that creates a culture of open, factual and timely internal communications.

The Cascade Communications Process helps reinforce the relationship between managers and their staff by “cascading” or pushing information throughout the organization – from senior executives to supervisors and managers to workers on the frontlines.

The process also is designed to send information up through the organizational structure, creating a dynamic, two-way information flow that drives vital information and gives employees a voice in the workplace.

Most importantly, this process emphasizes face-to-face communications, allowing employees to learn about important information directly from their supervisors, to ask questions and to provide critical feedback.

As part of IRI Consultants’ custom Cascade Communications Process, supervisors and managers receive targeted training and participate in developing systems that fit the organization’s culture. This process includes regular updates for managers from senior executives, training in constructive conversations and how to use talking points, Q&As and messaging documents, both to influence and guide employee perceptions and improve the workplace dialogue.

Cascade communication is a flexible process. Some messages are most effective when they are delivered in “skip-level” meetings, others in a direct cascade. The exact configuration depends on the nature of the project and the organization’s structure.

Whatever your communication needs, IRI can help you develop an effective, cost-beneficial plan.

For more information on Cascade Communications Process contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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Communicating in the workplace can be challenging, especially when the subject is complicated or unpleasant and the desired outcome is ambitious or controversial. Because effective communication plays a critical role in leadership, it's essential that everyone in management have the skills and tools needed to inform, motivate, change behavior and achieve results.

• Increased productivity
• Stronger employee loyalty
• Greater customer satisfaction
• Higher Morale
• Less vulnerability to unionization
• Reduced waste and redundancy
• Lower legal expenses

Through its various Corporate Communications, Organization Effectiveness and Labor & Employee Relations diagnostic tools, IRI helps organizations pinpoint gaps in communications skills and resources that can impair business performance. Many of these gaps are the result of lack of knowledge, experience or skill.

IRI's proven communications classroom training courses provide intensive skill building and real-world practice in the techniques and tools that are most essential to effective organizational communication. These courses can be offered based on client needs: as one comprehensive series, as stand-alone modules or in groups of closely related curricula. Additionally, each course can be tailored to reflect specific organizational or cultural issues to ensure they are reinforcing any initiatives already in place.

Managers who complete IRI's training classes will be equipped with communications tools that they immediately can apply to their jobs. They not only will know the whys and hows of best communications practices, they will have practiced them and gained a comfort level that translates into immediate performance improvement in your workplace.

Leadership Communication Best Practices

At the conclusion of this module, participants will be able to:

• Use the three building blocks that comprise effective communication
• Understand specific tools and behaviors to enhance leadership communication
• Apply communication tools with different people in different situations
• Adapt their communication style to meet employee needs
• Deliver messages they don't completely agree with

Be Direct -- With Confidence

Sometimes, kinder gentler just doesn't work; if an employee is disrupting the workplace or their performance is sub-par, a more direct style of communication is necessary. Doing so without making the situation even worse can be difficult. Being Direct equips leaders to:

• Prepare to be assertive. Assess your risk,
reduce your emotional involvement and develop a plan to succeed
• Focus on specific behavior, not personalities
• Follow up. Stay assertive after a negative response, and provide reinforcing feedback should improvement occur

Developing a Personal Communication Strategy

At the conclusion of this module, participants will be able to:

• Identify the stakeholders involved in the communication process
• Determine expectations inherent in manager/employee relationships
• Identify the most appropriate communications tools or methods to achieve results
• Determine how best to manage time in order to ensure that communication is a priority
• Develop and use a personal communication strategy to enhance communication effectiveness on the job

Effective Listening

At the conclusion of this module, participants will be able to:

• Prepare to listen effectively
• Focus on the other person's communications
• Translate and validate understanding
• Follow-up as appropriate

Confront With Confidence

At the conclusion of this module, participants will be able to:

• Prepare to use confrontation positively and effectively
• Assess the risks of confrontation
• Reduce their emotional involvement
• Confront with confidence
• Focus on specific behavior (their own and the other person's)
• Follow the process for effective, respectful confrontation
• Follow up the confrontation
• Stay assertive after a negative response
• Provide reinforcing feedback after a positive response

Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

At the conclusion of this module, participants will be able to:

• Identify common sources of conflict
• Understand the five options for responding to conflict
at the source and the risks and benefits of each
• Leverage their preferred style for responding to conflict
and adjust it as needed
• Guide a conversation focused on productive conflict
resolution between themself and others, and between others

Planning and Running Effective Meetings

At the conclusion of this module, participants will be able to:

• Understand why different meetings require different processes
• Plan and begin outcome-oriented meetings
• Manage and conduct meeting processes and behaviors
• Close meetings to enhance understanding, agreement and action
• Conduct follow-up meetings to provide maximum benefit

Presentation Skills: Hands-on Learning

At the conclusion of this module, participants will be able to:

• Organize a presentation into a logical and interesting sequence, including the introduction, the body and the conclusion
• Choose words and tone that will enhance the audience's understanding of the presentation
• Choose, create and use the appropriate media for a presentation, including props and documents
• Use voice, posture and presence to make a point
• Respond to questions and comments after a presentation

Leading Others through Change

At the conclusion of this module, participants will be able to:

• Predict their own and others' natural responses to day-to-day and event-based change
• Create a strategy to gain acceptance of change
• Use their leadership and communication skills to help
their employees and others work through issues
• Adapt tactics as necessary

Coaching Employees to Higher Performance

At the conclusion of this module, participants will be able to:

• Define performance goals based on the needs of the employee and the organization
• Understand various coaching approaches
• Demonstrate which coaching approach is best suited to support individual employee success
• Set up and facilitate a coaching meeting for maximum success
• Increase employee performance as a result of focused feedback

For more information about Communications Training, contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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Integrated, strategic communications are pivotal to any organization’s success in managing change and achieving desired goals.

Organizations that employ a high-quality communications process perform better, enjoy greater customer satisfaction and a more engaged, loyal work force – all of which lead to a more productive and successful organization.

IRI Consultants offers proven communications tools and processes, as well as customized communications plans to help organizations communicate more effectively with their employees and key stakeholders in the community.

At IRI, we have helped hundreds of organizations meet their goals, manage change, and engage their employees through strategic communication planning tailored to their needs.

Among these services, we offer the Cascade Communications Process,an effective system that helps reinforce the relationship between managers and their staff through a “cascade” of information that flows down through the organization and back up again.

We also offer a wide range of assessments that allow clients to better gauge the success of their communications vehicles and efforts.

IRI’s Communications Services:

• Strategic Communications Planning
• Communications Audits
• Organizational Communications Training
• Stakeholder Communications and Advocacy
• Corporate Campaign Vulnerability Assessments
• Employee Polling and Surveys
• Presentation and Media Training
• Issue Research and Management
• Community Relations

In times of growth, change and challenge, organizations need allies in the community, the statehouse and within their own ranks. If your organization becomes a target or subject of controversy, those allies are even more important.

Our communications team includes former journalists, legislative aides and public relations executives who know how to gather information and craft compelling stories so that you can manage your message and rally support where it matters most.

For more information about Corporate Communications contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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A formal assessment of an organization’s ability to communicate key messages effectively, IRI’s Organizational Communications Audits highlight existing practices that work well, and identify opportunities for more robust, results-oriented communications with both internal and external audiences.

A thoughtful, well-executed communication strategy is the foundation of any successful positive employee relations program. Communication fosters the trust, support and commitment of employees and other stakeholders that is vital to successfully managing organizational change, public relations challenges and key employee relations issues.

Does Your Organization Need a Communications Audit?

• Does your organization have a communications strategy?
• Are you confident that organizational and departmental communications reach all employees?
• Do your communications convey your intended message?
• Are you maximizing opportunities to tell your story to employees and other stakeholders?
• Do you provide opportunities for employees to ask questions and receive feedback from managers and leadership?
• Do managers have the skills and knowledge they need to communicate effectively with employees?
• Do you know which communication vehicles are most effective in reaching, informing and motivating key audiences?
• Do you reach out to key constituents in the community and do they understand your organization’s value to the community?
• Are you maximizing your investment in organizational communications?

A communications audit provides information critical to developing a sound communications strategy designed to encourage employee engagement, improve community relationships, enhance workplace productivity and manage organizational change.

Successful organizational communications share key traits and benefits; chiefly, the ability to develop and deliver messages that are persuasive, educational and supportive of the organization’s goals.

Structured properly, an effective communications strategy provides leaders with the ability to anticipate issues and respond effectively, recruit employees as advocates and supporters, build community support, achieve financial and performance goals and burnish the organization’s reputation in the community.

IRI offers two levels of communications audits:

Internal Communications Audits

An analysis, report and recommendations assessing an organization’s communications process and proficiency based on:

• Interviews with key executives
• Surveys of key managers
• Employee focus groups
• Review of internal publications, materials and communication practices
• Prioritized recommendations for improvement
  
  

Comprehensive Communications Audits

An analysis, report and recommendations assessing an organization’s overall communications strategy, policy and materials to internal and external audiences, including employees, governing boards, financial stakeholders, legislative leaders, community leaders and the media. Assessments include:

• Employee communications
• Community outreach
• Media coverage and relationships
• Legislative and lobbying communications
• Communications to investors, bondholders and donors

The process and insight provided by a communications audit allows leaders to build upon successful communications methods and eliminate those that don’t work, delivering practical recommendations for improvements. Your investment in a strong communications program advances your organizational goals as well as demonstrates to employees your commitment to building a culture of transparency, open communication and collaboration.

For more information about using Organizational Communications Audits contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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Sometimes employers need to speak in many languages and many ways to really reach employees. One of those is the language of social media.

No longer can an organization publish an employee newsletter or update its intranet and assume that it has successfully communicated with employees. This is especially true for a younger generation who, as they enter the workforce, bring with them a strong habit and preference for social media. Unaccustomed to reading bulletin boards and not likely to pick up a newsletter, some under-30s even shun e-mail as outmoded technology. To reach them or any other employee more inclined to use Twitter than Outlook, smart employers build a strong social media component into any internal communications plan.

Why? Because employee engagement depends on strong, effective communications. And if you’re not tapping that channel, others are – including labor unions that increasingly rely on social media during organizing campaigns and contract negotiations. Too often, these efforts are off the radar screens of organizations.

Does your organization have a social media strategy? Are you leveraging this communications channel to its maximum effect? IRI Consultants helps clients develop and implement custom social media strategies to help leaders communicate quickly and credibly with various groups, and encourage shared ideas, concerns and suggestions to better guide your strategies.

At IRI Consultants, we have the experience and expertise to leverage new communication channels to help you make the best use of social media to deliver messages that resonate.

Engaging Employees with Social Media

Blogs

Many blogs have evolved from online journals into sophisticated communications channels. Blogs can be used as a way to reach workers who prefer online communications, and are often promoted through tools such as Twitter, Facebook and Google+. This allows for quick distribution of messages – including advocacy campaigns and community service initiatives – to a broad audience.

By engaging employees through blogging, leaders can reach a larger audience and build credibility with techno-savvy workers. And as a tool for two-way communications, blogging allows readers to comment and interact with leaders and their co-workers, providing organizations unprecedented opportunity to learn about the issues most important to employees and respond appropriately.

IRI’s experienced communications professionals guide clients with the strategic direction and carefully crafted messaging to maximize the use of blogs as a communications medium.

Campaign and Negotiations Web Sites

Organizations facing union campaigns and contract negotiations are particularly vulnerable to social media campaigns against the company. A successful outcome depends on an organization’s ability to counter those campaigns with a timely, effective and relevant social media campaign of its own.

Our experience and expertise helps your organization maximize the value of your online presence through:

• Toolkits for managers providing on-time and easily-accessible information to help frontline supervisors understand strategic objectives, stay current with new developments and communicate more effectively with employees
• Public websites designed to inform employees and key stakeholders about a campaign, negotiations or other developments critical to your operations

This online presence is a key component of any organization’s social media efforts, whether through blogs that provide a communications channel for an individual or department or websites that showcase broad initiatives and provide organizational information to:

• Handle questions from front line supervisors and managers. This feedback loop will lead to faster and more relevant and effective communications
• Collect feedback, solicit questions and manage rumors. Your ability to gauge opinion and respond to inquiries about your organization will help you better control your message
• Manage operational change by sharing a vision and speaking to employee and community concerns
  
  

The Social Media Solution

In today’s environment, there is no more important component of a communications plan than social media, whether for an operational change, employee relations objective or reputational campaign.

One clear threat is organized labor, which continues to refine and expand its use of social media.

Our services include:

Scenario Planning

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Scenario planning helps organizations think through and plan for possible threats to their business and reputation. With IRI’s experience, you will be able to plan for different scenarios so that your response is reasoned and deliberate rather than rushed and reactionary. Our approach is designed to help you craft an effective social media response to challenges ranging from:

• A union-run Web site launched to attack your organization’s reputation for quality and safety
• A flash mob of union supporters, organized via Facebook and Twitter, converging on one of your facilities
• Union representatives posting videos of your employees touting the benefits of joining the union

Social Media Monitoring and Reputation Management

Effective social media monitoring goes beyond clipping services to measure trends and changes that could influence your employees or affect your reputation. Our services provide early warning and real-time intelligence about what’s being said about your organization in the social media sphere and help you distinguish between isolated comments and actual vulnerabilities. Our monitoring services help you:

• Manage the online dialogue and shape the message in social media and traditional news coverage
• Track hits and commentary on high-traffic blogs
• Gather intelligence about union organizing and corporate campaign efforts

Corporate Campaign Preparedness and Response

With labor unions and special interest groups adopting social media as a primary weapon of attack against corporations and organizations, these online campaigns can wreak broad and lasting damage to your business, reputation and community standing.

• Disparaging web sites
• Anti-company blogs
• Fake “grass roots” campaigns
• Negative commentary in the mainstream media
• Facebook and Twitter feeds designed to organize opponents

The negative noise of a corporate campaign can seem overwhelming. IRI has helped clients to mitigate the reputational damage caused by corporate campaign tactics. With extensive experience and robust social media capabilities, we can enable you to retake control of your organization’s key messages, helping you rally the community back to your side.

At a time when social media is rapidly evolving and growing as a communications tool that can be used against public institutions, organizations and companies, the best defense is a social media offense. Our specialized expertise and social media services will help you develop a powerful,

For more information about Social Media: Strategies for Employee Engagement contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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IRI Consultants offers a complete range of strategic communications services. Our seasoned communications consultants – who have experience in newsrooms, public relations firms and managing corporate communications teams – can help clients develop and implement communications plans that successfully inform, educate and influence key constituencies.

IRI collaborates with an organization’s leaders and subject-matter experts to design programs that take advantage of a range of communications tools to target key audiences or expand the reach and influence of their current methods. As partners in your project, we will help you gauge your internal capabilities and capacities to manage costs, meet deadlines and achieve your objectives.

Recognizing that individuals are unique and communications shouldn’t take a one-size-fits all approach, a comprehensive communications plan leverages multiple tools to help ensure that the organization’s messages are delivered in an effective, consistent manner.

Organizational Communications Audits

Our formal assessment of an organization’s ability to communicate key messages effectively highlights existing practices that work well and identifies best-practice opportunities for more robust, results-oriented communications with internal and external audiences.

IRI offers communications audits that focus on specific constituencies including:

• Employees and internal stakeholders
• Community leaders
• Media
• Legislators and advocacy groups
  
  

Communications Messaging and Support

Communications are most persuasive when messages are coordinated, consistent and customized for the needs of specific audiences. For instance, employees need to know about process improvements, benefit changes or a construction project, but with different levels of detail and emphasis than do board members, managers, the public or elected officials.

IRI’s communications consultants help clients develop customized messaging for all critical stakeholders, from managers and employees to elected officials and community leaders.

Business Literacy and Education

As part of a broad-based employee communications program, business literacy efforts help employees understand nuances that are unique to the industry and the organization, and build support for new initiatives, service improvements and other changes. These efforts also better equip managers to discuss issues often targeted by unions and played out in the media, helping to keep the organization “on message.”

IRI helps clients develop and implement education and business literacy programs that enhance employee understanding of key issues and economic factors affecting the organization.

Community Relations

Organizations with strong reputations have regular, meaningful outreach in their communities, whether these relationships are geographic, demographic, economic or social in nature. Such interaction can be a continuous loop: the organization provides information to the community, the community gives feedback, the organization considers the feedback and in turn responds to the community’s views.

IRI’s communications consultants work with clients to determine the best approach for the organization, and then to develop and deliver strategic, systematic community relations initiatives that target critical stakeholders, convey clear, concise messages in the appropriate manner, and identify the best person in the organization to deliver and manage the two-way communications path.

New Media Consulting

The rapid growth and adoption of electronic communications and social media requires organizations to rethink and carefully consider their communications efforts for both internal and external audiences. Although electronic communications can be attractive for numerous reasons – especially their speed, wide reach and low cost – using them for maximum effect requires in-depth knowledge and experience with how different audiences access and process information.

With many years of hands-on experience, IRI’s communications consultants help clients balance the many benefits and risks of new media platforms and electronic communications. We also help clients make effective use of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other social media platforms and avoid potential legal and public relations pitfalls.

Cascade Communications

IRI’s Cascade Communications process helps reinforce the relationship between managers and their staff by pushing information throughout the organization – from senior executives to supervisors and managers to frontline employees.

The process is designed to also send information up through the organization, creating dynamic, two-way communications that drive vital information and give employees a voice in the workplace. Most importantly, this process emphasizes face-to-face communications, allowing employees to learn about important information directly from their supervisors, to ask questions and to provide critical feedback.

For more information about how IRI’s Strategic Communications Planning services can help your organization increase its effectiveness, contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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High-performing organizations make the best use of their human, physical and financial resources. In non-union workplaces, that can be challenging.

We help clients equip supervisors and structure work systems and policies to operate effectively under labor contracts by understanding the rights, responsibilities, constraints and opportunities in those contracts. Properly constructed, labor contracts should give managers wide latitude in assigning work, communicating with employees and maintaining a positive work environment. But much depends on your ability to administer your union contracts efficiently and effectively.

The efficient administration of contracts is even more important in organizations:

• With several different bargaining units
• With multiple unions representing employees on the property
• Considering a merger, sale or any significant strategic change that will affect staffing and work conditions

IRI's contract administration services help organizations optimize productivity to the full extent permitted by collective bargaining agreements, and avoid grievances and unfair labor practices, which put a tremendous strain on an organization's resources and negatively affect employee morale.

For more information about Contract Administration, contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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There is no perfect contract, no labor agreement that can prevent differences in interpretation, grievances and disputes. One key role of strategic contract administration is to structure a process by which disputes are managed fairly, efficiently and promptly.

Based on the unique structure of your workforce and collective bargaining agreements, our consultants can help you identify contract areas and situations most vulnerable to dispute, as well as explore alternative dispute resolution procedures that minimize work disruptions and expensive arbitration or litigation.

Dispute resolution procedures are also important in non-union workplaces, where a mechanism that gives employees a fair hearing and a voice in workplace disputes will go far to ensure positive workplace relations.

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Frequent and accurate assessments of employee opinions and satisfaction are critical to maintaining a healthy workplace and minimizing labor disruptions.

Our best-in-class workplace diagnostic tools have helped hundreds of organizations make measurable improvements by identifying and ranking issues that affect employee performance, morale and productivity.

Unlike typical survey methodologies that rank responders’ comments on a simple scale, IRI employee surveys and focus groups provide you the ability to not only identify issues that drive employee satisfaction, but also identify why those issues have surfaced and how embedded they are in the culture.

As part of our survey and assessment process, we also help clients with key issues relating to communicating results to managers and employees, to help employers get the maximum value and impact from the information they’ve gleaned.

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Working in tandem with your legal counsel, IRI consultants conduct proprietary training programs and techniques to help you build a corps of managers, supervisors and organizational leaders who understand the complexities of labor law and ensure your organization is in compliance.

Labor Law Compliance product sheet

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Supervising under a collective bargaining agreement poses challenges unique to unionized workplaces. To manage effectively, supervisors must understand their rights and responsibilities in their work with represented employees.

Union business and procedures add a significant layer of complexity and challenge to the workplace, with the added costs and burdens of collective bargaining, contract administration, grievances and potential work actions. Therefore, the key to best-practice management is the ability to maintain a clear focus on organizational performance.

Unions routinely train stewards to leverage work rules and legal processes to aggressively represent their members. Your goal is to make sure that supervisors are similarly equipped with a full understanding of the contracts, and the considerations that will allow you to maximize organizational performance and maintain positive employee relations. Targeted training helps managers to not only be more effective in their jobs, but also enlists them as proponents and advocates of the company’s vision and strategic goals.

In addition, supervisors in unionized workplaces must have a baseline knowledge of the National Labor Relations Act and the “Do’s & Don’ts” of managing in a union environment in order to ensure full compliance with labor laws and avoid grievances and unfair labor practices.

Our training and workshops focus on real-world workplace issues, including:

• The rights of union stewards to attend employee meetings
• The role of “past practice” in creating precedence that supervisors must follow
• When employee complaints can be resolved outside the grievance process
• How to maintain flexibility and productivity when contracts limit an employee’s scope of work

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With the right approach, collective bargaining can be a genuine opportunity for an organization to address industry challenges, competitive threats and operational goals.

Because of the operational and financial importance of negotiating an effective contract, we believe that bargaining should command the attention not only of an organization's employee relations or human resources departments, but its senior leadership and executive teams as well.

Moreover, in an era of fast and easy communications and skilled union communicators, it is increasingly likely that the issues that arise at the bargaining table and the rhetoric that accompanies negotiations will travel far beyond the walls of your company and into the public domain. This means that the tone and tenor of your labor relations has a direct and potentially significant impact on your reputation and employee morale.

IRI Consultants works with clients to establish effective negotiating strategies and improve employee relations. Our work helps clients craft a multi-pronged approach to negotiations with a focus on:

• Aligning labor contracts with operational performance
• Building management cohesion and confidence
• Effective problem-solving and interest-based bargaining
• Coordinating employee and stakeholder communications to support the negotiating strategy

Union leaders increasingly are skilled and strategic in making use of the media and allies at other union shops in order to "make an example" of employers during contract talks, and to promote agendas that are often far broader than the contract issues at hand. In modern-day contract negotiations, both sides often "bargain over how to bargain," craft complex communications protocols, and involve mediators and facilitators. Some unions use contract negotiations as a platform to carry their message to other workplaces they'd like to organize.

IRI's approach relies on research, training and the development of an effective labor relations team to direct the bargaining process. We guide clients through creating negotiations strategies that support organizational goals, as well as helping them explore the costs, timing and possible outcomes of different approaches.

Preparation and training are the most critical keys to establishing effective employee relations. Our negotiations services will guide your efforts to:

• Prepare the committee to bargain effectively
• Establish effective negotiations protocols
• Identify alternative approaches to conflict resolution
• Evaluate and cost out proposals
• Anticipate the risks and likelihood of protests and work stoppages
• Establish appropriate contingency plans
• Achieve settlement and ratification

Also key to this process is helping clients educate their workforce and outside constituencies on business realities, in order to help them understand the company's challenges and objectives in crafting a contract that will serve the best interest of the organization and its employees.

Finally, clients have access to IRI's extensive database and library of collective bargaining agreements and union backgrounders, as well as our research service that provides custom reports on union leadership and finances, contracts, negotiations history and NLRB filings.

Through our library, clients also have access to exclusive reports detailing recent bargaining trends, settlements, organizing efforts, alliances and insider information that's valuable to organizations preparing for contract negotiations or facing a corporate campaign.

For more information about Negotiations Support and Research, contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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Employee Input

Great managers are wired into employees’ views and voices as a way to get feedback, communicate vision and values, and establish goals.

One of the most effective workplace tools to promote engagement and manage difficult issues, Employee Advisory Groups (EAGs) can be used in any organization to provide focused, non-binding employee input, helping to guide organizational decision making and improve problem solving.

As forums for employees to voice concerns or issues that affect them in their workplace, EAGs help management understand employee concerns, solicit ideas and input, anticipate and understand the effect of management’s decisions on employees and learn how to communicate more effectively with employees.

Through this effort, EAGs also serve as channels for communication up, down and across the organization and allow management to address the issues and dissatisfiers affecting employees.

How it Works

An EAG is an employee team assembled to provide insight and perspectives in any department or on any issue facing an organization – whether a merger, downsizing, labor relations issues or implementing new programs and policies. The process is both flexible and creative; EAGs can be established to address only those issues where management wants input, with the group’s charter and scope limited to certain topics, or the issues addressed can be more employee-driven.

An EAG is not intended to replace existing structures to solicit employee input, only to enhance the overall level of employee engagement throughout

the organization. With an EAG, employees work in partnership with management to continuously improve the work environment.

Benefits

Employee Advisory Groups strengthen the workplace by:

• Improving two-way communication about issues on decisions that affect staff and the overall efficiency of the organization
• Gaining recognition and resolution for employee concerns
• Increasing employee involvement and commitment to organizational goals
• Soliciting staff input on overall organizational direction and human resource policies
• Boosting overall employee satisfaction and organization performance

EAGs can be used to build better workplaces, including employee recognition and involvement, job enrichment and education, communication, quality enhancement and organizational performance.

IRI Consultants’ field-tested methods for setting up and sustaining an Employee Advisory Group make EAG implementation quick, simple and effective.

For more information about Employee Advisory Groups contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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Rapid Resolution

In most organizations, change comes only with difficulty and a long road to adoption. Employee surveys, intervention programs and other organizational development tools take time to research and implement. Yet in many cases, a performance issue or operational adjustment requires immediate attention and action.

Fastrack Teams^sm is a rapid resolution process that provides measurement-driven results in a compressed time frame and within a clearly delineated budget. Fastrack Teams^sm offers a powerful change process that examines a specific, urgent issue and helps organizations implement timely corrective action.

The key ingredient in the process is tapping into the right people in the organization who can assess the situation, explore the issues and implement solutions quickly and effectively.

Why Use Fastrack Teams^sm?

Fastrack Teams^sm is the ideal intervention process to:

• Solve persistent problems
• Reduce staff anxiety and dissatisfaction
• Assemble productive, goal-oriented teams
• Achieve measurement-driven results in a condensed timeframe

What to Expect

Fastrack Teams^sm provides immediate results, allowing organizations to make a high-level commitment to action and involve and engage employees along the way – one of the most effective ways to ensure employee buy-in and improve results. The process is appropriate for small groups of 8 to 12 members, including managers and employees.

Fastrack Teams^sm works best when it is sponsored by leaders with the authority to provide resources and remove existing barriers. Members are selected by their role in the organization, their formal or informal power and influence and their ability to make decisions. The group is charged with the task of reviewing a problem and implementing a solution that will enhance the performance of the organization. This empowers the members to create a “must solve” mandate and integrate solutions into their ongoing operations and communicate the change and results.

For more information about Fastrack Teams^sm contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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Effective management training is a cornerstone for organizations working to create a comprehensive labor readiness strategy.

IRI Consultants works with clients to train managers and supervisors to identify signs of union organizing and understand their responsibilities to comply with the restrictions and requirements of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).

Our training programs are based on our belief that leaders learn best by doing; interactive sessions are part of a comprehensive curriculum designed to meet the specific needs of clients based on the organization’s vulnerabilities and culture.

Training, offered in half-day or full-day sessions, typically include role-playing exercises, small group discussions, a mock union organizing meeting and issue identification exercises. Custom programs also provide in-depth training on federal labor law and educate supervisors about the tactics and techniques unions use in organizing campaigns.

A typical one-day program includes:

• How to educate employees about union card-signing campaigns
• Early signs of union activity
• How unions organize
• Why employees seek unions
• Profiles about unions active in your industry
• How a union contract impacts a supervisor’s role
• Inside a union organizing meeting and union persuader activities
• Free speech rights of management during the organizing drive
• How to eliminate and avoid unfair labor practices
• A supervisor’s key role in small group meetings and one-on-one discussions
• How to communicate effectively with employees
• Building a foundation for positive employee relations

Through programs that simulate a typical union organizing meeting, participants get a realistic look at the approach and messages unions use to influence employees and recruit members.

The program also incorporates simulations and role-plays to illustrate best practices managing in a union environment, reinforcing the burdens on management and importance of legal compliance and positive employee relations.

As unions become more sophisticated in their organizing tactics, organizations must be trained and prepared to respond quickly, correctly and successfully. Supervisors and managers are a critical component of a readiness strategy. An investment in training managers is an investment in the organization’s success.

For more information about Labor Law Compliance contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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Positive employee relations create a competitive advantage in the marketplace by promoting employee retention and improving organizational performance.

IRI Consultants' Positive Employee Relations Audit (PERA) was developed over several years based upon our work in labor relations. Grounded in the premise that positive employee relationships can reduce employee dissatisfaction and increase organizational effectiveness, the PERA process gauges clients' strengths and liabilities with regard to employee turnover, performance, work attitudes, absenteeism and union organizing efforts.

At its most basic level, the PERA provides an efficient and dynamic organizational "gap analysis" to evaluate and diagnose the strength of a company's employee relations culture and systems. PERA can be administered over the course of three to four weeks, depending upon the size of the organization, its number of functions, hours of operation and the level of client support.

The PERA Process

PERA produces a snapshot of specific organizational components and compares them to best practices and structures that help develop and maintain positive employee relationships. Where possible, the system also produces metrics to monitor and manage systems that produce quality employee relationships.

PERA looks specifically at human resources policies and practices, compensation and benefits, management development, working conditions and organizational communications in producing results.

The PERA snapshot is then carefully assembled using a comprehensive range of data and information, including the following:

• Management interviews
• Document review
• Evaluation of organizational measurements, including employee turnover, management training levels and benefit utilization
• Analysis of organizational communications
• Union organizing vulnerability
• Employee perceptions

The Assessment

PERA findings provide a thorough evaluation and report based on the strength of employee relations, looking at interrelationships in the organization and identifying opportunities for improvement. The report also includes a timeline, communication plan and, where possible, metrics for ongoing monitoring and review of the employee relations support systems.

For more information about Positive Employee Relations Audit contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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Careful preparation is critical to a successful strategy to counter a union organizing campaign. In light of recent National Labor Relations Board decisions, likely passage of the “RESPECT Act” and a clear trend toward expedited union elections, early preparation is now more important than ever.

IRI’s Supervisory Status Analysis is a proactive determination of which employees would be classified as a “supervisor,” and an essential part of an organization’s comprehensive labor preparedness program.

The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) defines a "supervisor" as an employee with the authority to "hire, transfer, suspend, lay off, recall, promote, discharge, assign, reward, or discipline other employees, or to responsibly direct them, or to adjust their grievances, or effectively to recommend such action." These criteria apply if a supervisor’s authority requires the use of "independent judgment.”

The NLRB’s Kentucky River and Oakwood decisions clarified the definition of “supervisor.” But a more dramatic shift will be passage of the union-backed RESPECT Act (Re-Empowerment of Skilled and Professional Employees and Construction Tradeworkers). This bill would limit which workers can be classified as supervisors and therefore ineligible as union members under a collective bargaining agreement.

Through the RESPECT Act and other challenges to current law, labor’s goal is to strictly narrow the definition of “supervisor” in order to expand the pool of employees eligible to vote in a union representation election.

Our Supervisory Status Analysis is a process in which we work closely with Human Resources to review written job descriptions and responsibilities to ensure that supervisory duties are clearly and adequately defined to comply with NLRB guidelines. The analysis then goes beyond the HR manual and job description, using interviews to identify what an employee in a particular position actually does and the work they perform in that role.

As part of this Supervisory Status Analysis, IRI structures and conducts supervisor interviews – or, alternately, trains clients’ HR professionals in the process -- to review the full range of their responsibilities, document their authorities that qualify under NLRA criteria for a “supervisor,” and establish their use of independent judgment.

These interviews are designed to document each supervisor’s:

• Hours
• Compensation
• Position in the staffing structure
• Number of direct reports
• Job responsibilities
• Accountability
• Autonomy
• Acting authority
• Disciplinary authority
• Managerial duties

We then provide an analysis based on past cases, legal precedent and past union challenges to determine how a hospital can build the strongest case and protect the supervisory status of its key managerial employees.

Building a Foundation for a Strong Case

The Supervisory Status Analysis lays important groundwork for any organization facing a potential union organizing campaign, either in preparation for an NLRB hearing under current law, or the kind of rapid-fire campaign and voting process that might be the standard if labor law is changed, as expected, to include provisions for expedited elections. Additionally, the process presents organizations with what may be a limited opportunity before the law changes to strengthen job descriptions and duties for supervisors and train them as valuable members of the management team.

For more information about Supervisory Status Analysis, contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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The 360° Feedback Assessment (also known as a Multi-Rater Assessment and by other terms) helps to identify and assess gaps between desired and actual behaviors and outcomes, and pinpoint opportunities for growth.

By using a well-designed and thoughtfully executed 360° Feedback Assessment process, organizations can:

• Improve teamwork between individuals, functional teams and workgroupsor departments
• Increase customer satisfaction
• Enhance performance throughout the enterprise

As the name implies, this assessment is designed to collect reliable information from various sources – not just a supervisor, but also from peers, direct reports and even customers – and compare it with data gleaned from a self-assessment. This data collection is the first step in developing an action plan to achieve meaningful and measurable developmental change.

The IRI Solution

Clients can use our best-in-class online, web-enabled 360° Feedback technology as a stand-alone tool or include our consulting expertise in corporate communications, leadership coaching, and training needs analysis to support your implementation and follow-up. This enables us to offer as much or as little support as clients’ desire.

The 360° Degree Survey:

Using the Centranum technology platform, we can pull from a normative database of 1,300 behaviorally based items organized into 36 categories with dozens of survey items for each. The categories are consistent with leadership, cognitive and affective behaviors identified for personal and professional development. We also can create specific questions that support the Mission, Vision, Values or other statements that are reflective of an organization’s culture

The client-branded feedback report includes:

• Competencies summaries
• Competency ratings
• Detailed ratings comparing results of feedback from different categories of contributor (boss, peer, direct reports, self) on one graphic
• Blind spots (self versus others)
• Manager disagreement with self
• The highest-and lowest-rated competency standards

IRI’s 360° Feedback Assessment can collect narrative feedback as well as numeric feedback. This unique capability provides added insight into why an item was rated a certain way.

Because the assessment is designed to measure gaps and establish developmental paths, IRI’s 360° Feedback Assessment can be administered a second time within one year to measure gain at no additional cost.

Communication Strategy:

Proactively addressing participant concerns about the purpose of the assessment, how it will be used and confidentiality of results often are necessary to ensure optimal participation from those who will be required or invited to participate. This preparatory step can be crucial in the assessment’s success.

With corporate communications expertise, IRI can support the launch of the 360° Feedback Assessment by providing advice and/or developing a communications strategy. We also can deliver ready-to-use communications materials with messaging about the assessment that accounts for the different communication styles and preferences that employees bring to the workplace.

Coaching and Development:

IRI will create individualized coaching reports for each leader who is being assessed. These can be used for coaching by the participant’s managers, internal performance coaches or by IRI’s experienced leadership coaches.

IRI’s experienced coaches can provide private, on-site sessions for individual leaders to help them understand and accept assessment feedback, behaviors that contribute to rater perceptions and guidance to change behaviors and modify perceptions to foster more successful relationships. In partnership with each leader we can create specific action plans and develop implementation strategies to make change rapid, meaningful and lasting.

Alternatively, we can provide an action-planning template for self development. Participants can use it to identify goals and specific strategies to attain them. They can then track their progress toward professional development and can share it with managers to build accountability. It also offers suggestions about which parts of the reports to share to help reinforce bottom-up support for performance improvement.

And, with proven performance coaching training courses, IRI can enhance the coaching skills of leaders, including executives and members of human resources.

At times, the 360° Feedback activity identifies performance gaps that are consistent within a department or throughout the organization. By creating consolidated reports from the assessment results, IRI can help identify process improvement opportunities or training needs that extend beyond one individual.

Logistics and Options

IRI uses a project management approach to designing and implementing a 360° Feedback Assessment project. This means that our work is typically defined and described according to a systems approach to project management. These principles include:

• Defining the goals, scope and boundaries of the project
• Identifying the team and all stakeholders directly and indirectly involved with the project
• Creating plans, schedules and budgets. We can work on a fixed-fee basis for many of our projects or a time-and-materials basis for others
• Clarifying customer-supplier relationships for every phase and step of the project
• Determining what will be measured, by whom and how and when (what gets measured gets managed)
• Creating a communication strategy and implementation plan to ensure the right people get the right information when they need it
• Creating a risk management plan that includes both mitigation (preventive) and contingent (responsive) activities

For more information about 360° Feedback Assessments, contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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Organizations are in a constant state of change. Whether change comes from within the organization or outside, leaders must continually manage initiatives to realign the organization with its strategic goals. Even minimal change, however, can bring uncertainty and generate anxiety and resistance among employees. Understanding human behavior – that of managers and team members – helps leaders assess potential obstacles, determine how to navigate them, and fosters trust so that employees understand and embrace the rationale for change.

Through IRI’s Change Response Profile, an online survey-based performance assessment tool, we help leaders and organizations better understand how individual behavior impacts the attitudes and actions of others during change. With this knowledge, employees at all levels of the organization gain valuable insights into the interpersonal dynamics of change and how best to leverage them.

Based upon individual responses to the survey, IRI provides participants with visual and narrative descriptions about how their behavior affects others in various situations. By understanding their personal impact on others and the organization, participants are better able to successfully respond to change and meet expectations.

The Change Response Profile enables participants to:

• Recognize and understand different styles and approaches to navigating change
• Learn how these differences impact the way people work with each other
• Learn how to modify their own behavior and influence others during times of change
• Learn how to work more effectively with others and meet their expectations

The confidential survey is based on more than 30 years of social styles research involving more than 100,000 participants in the United States, Europe and Asia. The results make no inference about participants’ general skills or ability to perform a job, but provide a targeted assessment about how they interact with others.

Overview

The Change Response Profile is based on the knowledge that human behavior is predictable. We interact with our environment and the people in it, and our actions are reinforced through practice and feedback. Over time, these actions become behaviors that reveal observable patterns.

As part of the survey process, participants gain valuable insights into the interpersonal dynamics of change and learn how best to leverage these dynamics to help organizations create a successful change experience.

Each survey participant receives a comprehensive report that offers insight into their most likely responses to change and guidance about how to increase their comfort and acceptance of change, how to support individual coworkers during change and how best to contribute to the success of the organization. The sections include:

• About you as a person
• About you and change
• Strategies for self-improvement
• What others need to know
• Preparing yourself for change

Typically, feedback solicited from self-assessment or other evaluative tools to analyze how people respond to change in the workplace is based on subjective observations of human behavior. Participants’ survey responses are based on their observations of their own behavior and, as such, provide a behavioral road map to improved performance.

There are several varied but normal responses individuals may have when receiving feedback, especially if the feedback makes them uncomfortable or otherwise is inconsistent with their expectations. These responses range from denial, to intentionally or unintentionally ignoring the feedback, to accepting the analysis and committing to use it to make useful and productive change.

The Change Response Profile serves as a starting point from which individuals can make decisions about how to change their behaviors in order to be more comfortable and successful in navigating the challenges brought about by change while supporting others through the change process. It is a powerful tool that can be used by professionals in various situations:

Trainers and Facilitators – Can integrate the Change Response Profile into training classes about managing or coping with change and leadership development curricula where change leadership is a desired leadership competency

Coaches and Consultants – Can use the Change Response Profile as a self-assessment tool to complement individualized self-development activities

Teachers and School Advisors – Can use the Change Response Profile to help prepare students for the transition to college or to the world of work

Therapists and Counselors – Can use the Change Response Profile to add insight into the feelings or behaviors that are causing distress or discomfort

Logistics and Options

The Change Response Profile is available in an online format on a client’s Intranet or through a secure, password-protected Web site. IRI provides several report options, including:

• A PDF report emailed to each participant after completing the survey questions
• A PDF report emailed to a facilitator or coach after the participant completes the survey
• Batch reports for a facilitator’s use in group training or coaching

Additionally, the Change Response Profile can be “private labeled” so that the survey conveys the brand of client’s in-house materials.

IRI has several training courses that employ the Change Response Profile as a core learning tool. One course, “Leading Change,” focuses on a leader’s roles in helping teams navigate the effects of change on the workplace. Another course, “Coping with Change,” focuses on the employees’ role in supporting change in a positive way. These courses are available for use as-is or integrated into a client’s existing training courses.

IRI facilitators can deliver the IRI training as designed or can certify client facilitators to deliver the training.

For more information about the Change Response Profile, contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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Differentiating products and services from competitors’ has never been more critical or more difficult. Sales professionals must have refined inquiry and listening skills in order to understand what customers want and need, and equally strong communications skills to position their offerings in ways that resonate with buyers.

Through IRI’s proprietary Customer-Focused Selling training, sales professionals can increase sales by:

• Creating a sales strategy based on market, competitive and customer data
• Achieving sales objectives by setting SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Agreed-upon, Realistic, Time-bound)
• Understanding and navigating the politics of customer relationships by using the RASIC chart to identify and understand everyone who influences the buying decision
• Influencing customer buying decisions through the knowledge of behavioral and communication preferences
• Better managing time by better managing their own day-to-day behaviors, including territory management
• Understanding their customers’ financial and personal needs and business concerns by using interpretive listening
• Addressing common customer objections by using the LREAT model (Listen, Restate, Explore, Answer, Test)
• Making sales presentations and proposals that inspire a “yes” by using the HAT approach (form a Hypothesis, Ask and Listen, Tailor your Solution) to engage customers and influence the buying decision
• Demonstrating an understanding of customers by relating to what their organization values
• Getting customers and those who influence them to say “tell me
• more” after the introductory conversation
• Making sure every customer call and visit adds value to the customer
• Keeping business flowing by managing the sales pipeline into a usable forecast Traditional selling emphasizes “pitching” products and services. Solution selling tries to convince customers that a product or service offers the best solution to their need. Generally, both approaches emphasize the product’s features, functions and benefits.

Customer-Focused Selling, in contrast, moves the emphasis away from the product to where it belongs – on the customer and their “buying process,” which corresponds to the sales process described on the top line of each step below.

Course Overview

Customer-Focused Selling is divided into three modules of learning that focus on the areas of greatest challenge for many sales professionals:

Module 1 – Create a Customer Strategy: This module focuses on building a customer-focused sales strategy. It includes tools to understand the market, any factors that influence the sales environment, and collecting competitive and customer data and information. The course also focuses on the value of including both objective data and subjective information in understanding customer tangible and intangible wants and needs. Module 1 includes templates for setting goals, managing projects and developing the customer relationship. It also helps participants understand the factors that influence a buyer’s decision, including financial considerations and personal style, as well as the ability to identify potential deal-makers and deal-breakers and how best to manage each.

Module 2 – Enhance Your Communication Skills: This module provides an electronic behavioral assessment tool that teaches sales professionals to “speak the language” of each individual customer, recognizing that each customer thinks and speaks with different intentions. This module also helps participants understand their own personal style and habits and how that style affects their time management abilities. It also provides strategies, tips and exercises to increase listening skills, questioning skills, and shows how to identify and address three common types of customer problems and issues. By teaching a practical alternative to the traditional sales focus on “features, functions and benefits,” the course also helps sales professionals get to the root-cause of customer objections and make successful proposals and presentations.

Module 3 – Manage Your Business: This module concludes with tools and tips to help participants manage the business of selling. It includes templates and practice activities focused on creating a real value proposition, cold calling, the “elevator speech,” pre-call planning and managing gatekeepers. It provides strategies for effectively managing sales territories and concludes with a pipeline status and management worksheet to help advance the customer relationship and accurately forecast revenue potential.

Logistics and Options

This customer-focused training program is offered in three different formats.

1. A three-day, instructor-led training program including:

• A case study that helps participants become comfortable with the approach and supporting tools and allows participants to practice with customers to polish their skills. Clients can request either a generic case study or opt for a version customized to their industry.
• An electronic behavioral self-assessment that provides an individualized participant report, the contents of which are used throughout the course to help tailor skill development to each participants’ learning style.
• An Excel-based “sales toolbox” that provides foundational learning and invites the participant to prepare specific customer information to be used in class activities. Each participant can configure and customize the tools, templates and worksheets to best fit their sales style and the culture of their organization.
• A Manager’s Guide to help managers prepare their sales employees for success during and after the class.

2. One-hour eLearning Session: A one-hour eLearning version has been created with branding for a specific client. This course can be rebranded for other clients.

3. Six-week Virtual Classroom: An online fully interactive course that requires two hours per week with self-directed inter-session work shared on an online collaboration work space. Created for clients with widelydispersed workforces, this course offers the same core information and skill training as our three-day intensive program.

For more information about Customer-Focused Selling, contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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Engagement, from the employee perspective, means feeling valued and respected. Engaged employees know that management wants their input and values their role in the organization.

• Higher profitability
• Less absenteeism
• Less waste
• Less turnover
• Less susceptibility to unionization
• Greater efficiency
• Higher morale

IRI helps organizations maximize their performance by incorporating Employee Engagement into their overall business strategy. We enable businesses to integrate engagement across the entire organization, not just in problem areas. Even organizations using such efficiency systems as Six Sigma and LEAN have found that improving Employee Engagement strongly impacts business results.

Our first step is a thorough assessment of the client’s current engagement practices. We consider:

• In which parts of the organization are employees engaged?
• Where are they disconnected?
• What are the issues that are interfering with engagement?
• What are areas that have engaged employees doing that disconnected areas are not?
• Has disengagement become stronger recently or has it always been prevalent?

With answers to these and many other questions, IRI teams with clients to develop an enterprise-wide engagement strategy that meshes with operational, financial, customer relations and marketing initiatives. Although we offer an assortment of tools to firmly embed engagement in an organization’s culture, we have found three to be of particular value to many clients:

1. Employee Advisory Groups
2. Shared Governance
3. Fastrack Teams^sm

Employee Advisory Groups

One of the most effective tools to promote engagement and manage critical issues, Employee Advisory Groups (EAGs) provide managers with focused, nonbinding employee input on workplace issues. EAGs serve many roles, including as safety valves that highlight areas of conflict and dissatisfaction to help management identify and address problems in the workplace. Additionally, EAGs:

• Improve two-way communication about issues that may affect staff, operations and productivity
• Allow managers to recognize and resolve employee concerns
• Increase employee involvement and commitment to organizational goals
• Provide employee input into customer service, operations and human resource policies
• Boost overall employee satisfaction and organization performance

IRI has worked with hundreds of clients to establish effective, high-functioning EAGs. This process, designed to ensure compliance with legal and regulatory guidelines, begins by establishing the EAG’s mission, purpose and scope of responsibility and, importantly, those issues “off limits” – particularly issues involving wages and benefits.

IRI then collaborates with the client to design and conduct EAG training – or train client trainers – to develop membership criteria and outline the process by which organizations select and recruit EAG members.

One goal is to establish a sustainable EAG program by helping to design the meeting structure, facilitator responsibilities, communications guidelines and tools to monitor the group’s progress and measure its success.

Finally, we assist the organization in designing and implementing the internal communications that will help build support for the EAG, engage employees, and demonstrate the organization’s commitment to increasing employees voices in the workplace.

Shared Governance

Shared Governance is a highly effective tool used in the healthcare industry to promote quality patient care, increase nurse satisfaction and improve retention by providing a forum for improved decision making at the point of service.

IRI has extensive experience helping clients develop Shared Governance programs that promote collaboration among doctors, nurses and the entire patient care team. This teamwork not only encourages professional growth and leadership qualities in nursing, it also taps their collective insight and experience to improve patient care and outcomes.

Hospitals with effective Shared Governance programs experience measurable gains, including:

• Improved patient outcomes
• Reduced nurse turnover rates
• Open communication and collaboration within the patient care team

IRI helps clients establish the guidelines and procedures critical to an effective Shared Governance program, develop goals and benchmarks, select participants and train team members. In addition, we provide coaching and mentoring for managers, supervisors and directors to help ensure the success of the new shared governance practices.

Fastrack Teams^sm

In most organizations, change comes only with difficulty. Most intervention programs and organizational development tools take time to implement. Yet most critical performance issues or operational changes require immediate attention.

IRI’s Fastrack Teams^sm offer a rapid resolution process that provides measurement-driven results in a compressed time frame and within a clearly delineated budget. Fastrack Teams^sm provide a powerful change process that works by assessing a specific, urgent issue and implementing timely corrective action.

Through Fastrack Teams^sm clients can:

• Identify a problem, its parameters and expectations for change
• Identify key resources
• Develop an action plan and communication process

Fastrack Teams^sm provide clients with rapid results (often in less than a week) that allow leaders to involve and engage employees in priority initiatives, helping to ensure their success through employee buy-in and support.

For more information about Employee Engagement, contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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Change management, organizational transformation – whichever term one prefers, the need for organizations to do business differently is constant: to stay ahead of changing markets, economic conditions, government regulations, customer expectations and competitors who are continually transforming.

A recent survey of executives from around the world found that even though organizational transformation is a priority, only a third of them believe they are successful with it. Other research indicates only 30 percent of change programs succeed.

Why do some change programs work while most do not? IRI’s research indicates change initiatives succeed when:

• Individuals see, hear and feel a compelling reason to change
• Individuals know they are not alone in change and see their leaders leading it
• All organizational systems are in alignment with and reinforce the behaviors associated with the change
• Groups and individuals have the knowledge, skills and abilities to make the change happen as intended
  
  

How IRI Helps Organizations Change

IRI enables organizations to transform themselves by designing, developing and implementing specific solutions to address the critical change factors noted above.

We consider the culture of each organization: what has been successful in the past and what continues to be a challenge. Working in partnership with clients, we assess the extent to which:

• A case for change, including the vision for the future, has been established and agreed on by all who will have to lead and model the change
• The most appropriate formal and informal training and learning experiences are provided to transfer knowledge, develop skills and motivate stakeholders to make the change work as envisioned
• Financial and non-financial incentives have been assessed and reinforced or modified as needed to ensure that people are rewarded for making the change successful
• Resources, both tangible and intangible, have been identified and allocated as needed to fully support the change and overcome normal resistance
• An action plan for change has been created that considers the people side of change with the same amount of focus as the technical side

This assessment provides the foundation for such deliverables as a communication strategy in support of the change; the design, development and delivery of skill training courses, either on-line or in the classroom; recommendations how best to restructure compensation, reward and recognition systems; and implementation of a revised or new performance management system.

Overview of Transformational Training Courses

IRI’s transformational training courses focus on three target populations:

• Employees, who need to cope with and support change
• Managers and supervisors, who need to lead and be agents of change
• Senior leaders who need to launch, sponsor and champion transformation initiatives

Each course imparts skills that reinforce the behaviors required from each of these three stakeholder groups. Below are two sample skill areas covered in the training:

Communication

• Employees: Asking for the information they need
• Leaders: Giving the information others need
• Sponsors: Creating and implementing a communication plan

Group and Team Skills

• Employees: Being a supportive member of the group/team affected by change
• Leaders: Leading a group/team through change
• Sponsors: Removing barriers and providing resources for the group/team

IRI tailors its transformation training courses to meet the specific needs of the client and the type of change that is being implemented. Courses can be industry-specific and include role-play and case-study modules tailored to client issues and concerns. The result is content that is realistic and relevant to the participants, and serves as a vehicle to support the specific change being undertaken.

Experienced IRI facilitators can conduct scheduled sessions or one of our master facilitators can train client facilitators to conduct sessions.

For more information about Helping Organizations Change, contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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At IRI Consultants, we recognize that an organization’s most valuable asset is its people. We help clients fully realize the value of employees with our proprietary model called Human Resource Architecture® (HRA), a comprehensive approach to addressing human performance issues.

Building from the culture and characteristics of a client's organization, we work to provide seamless programs that encompass the spectrum of human performance issues, aligning performance goals with organizational goals.

In most organizations, human resource decisions evolve over time, reflecting the concepts and visions of various leaders and often representing situational rather than strategic decision making. Consequently, in most organizations, human resources are structured by happenstance rather than an orderly, logical and consistent design.

This lack of cohesiveness creates organizational inconsistencies that lead to organizational inertia and conflict.

Our approach recognizes that organizational policies too often work in conflict with strategic objectives and fail to reward desired behavior. For example, employees are often asked to be innovative and creative, yet are reprimanded when they do things outside the strict processes outlined in the company handbook. This has many effects, including sapping employee morale and reducing employees’ efforts to pursue new ideas for fear of disciplinary action.

In regimented organizations, there is little tolerance for risk, little room for innovation and a strict focus on compliance and procedure. Learning organizations, by contrast, accept mistakes as the basis for personal and professional growth and promote a culture tolerant of risk and innovation.

As organizations and companies grow, the infrastructure loses consistency. While the architecture is messy, the structure is serviceable. But the result can be redundancies, overlaps, inconsistencies, and other flaws in the design.

The goal of IRI’s Human Resource Architecture® (HRA) approach is to help organizations develop infrastructures that support their mission, culture and objectives and help leaders manage change.

Through this process, we identify any organizational policies, programs or practices that are misaligned or otherwise drive behaviors counter to the organization’s objectives. We then help develop and implement policies that take into account the various forces that influence employee behavior to build a stronger, more effective organizational architecture.

For more information about Human Resource Architecture® (HRA), contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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The Pressure of a Misaligned Human Resource Architecture®
Collapses Organizational Change

“The productivity of people requires acceptance of the
fact that the person who does the job is likely to know
more about it than the person who supervises it.”
-- Peter Drucker

To create an environment that supports truly effective performance, organizations need to understand the critical relationship between what employees think and how they perform their jobs.

Since 1994, the I^3® Diagnostic (pronounced “I-Cube”) has provided insights into more than one-half million employee opinions and perceptions in organizations across industries.

I^3® is a diagnostic and organizational improvement system that offers a comprehensive approach to identifying and addressing workplace issues through employee focus groups and interviews with leadership staff. The diagnosis looks at issues as diverse as human resources, operations, staffing, workplace communications, environment, equipment, work, procedures, compensation and benefits, leadership and teamwork.

IRI Consultants' client participants range from executives to physicians to machine operators and maintenance workers. Over the course of hundreds of engagements, we have collected more than a half-million employee responses, giving us the ability through the I^3® Diagnostic to directly link employee perceptions to organizational productivity and profitability. During this time, the I3® Diagnostic has helped organizations and business units realize measurable operational gains.

I^3® helps expose the hidden issues in an organization – those not typically addressed in standard surveys and questionnaires. These hidden issues can directly influence employee and organizational performance in ways that may not otherwise be visible to management.

Process

The I^3® Diagnostic consists of a three-part process that includes:

• A comprehensive organizational diagnostic.
• A detailed and actionable roadmap for improvement.
• A quarterly measurement process that provides accurate feedback on the extent to which initiatives are perceived as accomplishing their objectives.

The diagnostic component begins with two questions:

1. "What are those things that make work hard?”
2. “What are those things that make work easy?”

These open-ended questions allow employees at any level of the organization to identify an issue that affects performance. Because all responses are anonymous, employees are candid in their responses. Employees are grouped according to common interests in the organization (work shift, position, labor category, etc.) and provide their input in one of two ways.

• Data Input Groups - A focus group process in which employees meet for 90 minutes in an anonymous small group setting. Under the guidance of a skilled facilitator, they are asked questions and provide written, unstructured responses. The responses are affinity-sorted and ranked by the input group and then entered into a proprietary database for further sorting and analysis.
• The I^3® Assessment - A diagnostic tool developed using data from in excess of 500,000 employee comments during more than 300 I^3® studies. Each open-ended or multiple choice employee statement reflects an issue within the organization affecting employee performance. The issues are clustered into specific categories derived from the database. The assessment provides baselines that are supplemented by the open-ended responses.

Results

Management receives a detailed interpretation of the data, including a roadmap for organizational improvement. The results, grouped by issue category, highlight the most pressing issues in an organization, both on a global issue and those affecting specific departments and units.

As an additional option, IRI can produce a report that includes comprehensive analysis, conclusions and recommendations. Consultants are available to meet with leaders to brief them about the findings.

Performance Improvement

The I^3® roadmap identifies various opportunities for organizational improvement based on three levels of issues identified through the I^3® process.

First, there are “global” issues, which employees perceive need to be addressed, but that may be beyond the organization’s short-term control. These issues are often capital-intensive and require substantial investment, limiting management’s ability to make meaningful change in the short term. These decisions, and the rationale behind them, need to be communicated to the workforce so that employees better understand the organizational dynamics and develop a greater acceptance of leadership decision-making.

Second are unit-level issues that can be addressed by one group without affecting other groups. Examples of these include workgroup leadership, teamwork and departmental processes and efficiencies.

Third are general operational issues that are most effectively addressed at a business unit-wide basis. Examples include organizational leadership, equipment, systems and procedures and staffing.

Through facilitated planning meetings, management creates the initial high-level action plan to determine the best way to address the highest priority issues.

Why Use the I^3® Diagnostic?

Clients who have used the I^3® process have realized substantial improvement gains, including:

• Reducing new hire turnover rates from 55% to 4%
• Saving nearly $1 million in training costs within the first year of implementation
• Measurably improving customer satisfaction by improving employees’ perception about customers
• Making significant process improvements to equipment maintenance schedules, reducing operational down time
• Being honored with the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the Wisconsin and Missouri Quality Awards

Successfully Implementing Change

Most performance improvement efforts fail because the organization is not equipped to manage both the business and the improvement effort. To overcome this barrier, IRI can provide a complete improvement management service that includes employee communication, progress tracking, process management, technical expertise and more. It is this combination of services that transforms the I^3® system from a superior performance diagnostic into a superior performance improvement tool.

For more information about Issue Identification and Improvement (I^3®) Process contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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Background and Objectives

Coaching provides direction, guidance, advice or support to help individuals achieve an objective. In organizations, coaching can be used to help employees develop professionally, enhance their work performance and contribute to the overall goals and success of the organization.

Leader as Coach Training provides organizations the ability to invest in their own people by training leaders as coaches to work directly with employees. Training internal leaders to be coaches provides organizations a powerful means to improve overall business performance. In a 2001 study, Fortune 1000 companies that used coaching reported a wide range of benefits, including:

• Increased productivity (by 53%)
• Increased customer service rankings (by 39%)
• Increased retention of senior people (by 32%)
• Reduction in costs (by 23%)
• Increased profitability (by 22%)

In the same survey, individuals who were coached reported improvement in:

• Working relationships with their direct reports
• Working relationships with their manager
• Team-building
• Reducing conflict
• Business relationships with clients

In other words, training business leaders to be coaches makes good business sense.

Overview

The IRI Leader as Coach Training teaches two sets of core coaching competencies:

1. Observation and assessment of employee motivators and behavior related to both performing tasks and managing relationships, using behavioral or psychometric assessments or personal contact.
2. Outcome-oriented coaching and communication skills.

Our approach to coach development and training relies upon the IRI “Leadership Coaching Continuum” as its foundation. This approach is based on the core principles of situational leadership but goes beyond that esteemed tradition. Research shows that the most effective coaching occurs when coaching is not based solely on the situation, but also on an employee’s developmental or performance position and his or her communication and learning preferences.

The Coaching Continuum involves five progressive approaches a leader can take as a coach to help employees develop their knowledge, skills and abilities. Through structured conversations and the use of an IRI decision tool, the leader and the employee work together to determine the proficiency at which the employee is performing specific tasks or assignments. While an employee’s baseline position can range from “Novice” to “Expert,” most are typically at different levels for different tasks, assignments and goals.

The Leader as Coach Training teaches the manager what to do and say to help the employee move up to the next level of proficiency, and keep moving as appropriate until the employee has achieved the goal of the coaching relationship. The coach also learns to teaches the manager what to do and say to help the employee move up to the next level of proficiency, and keep moving as appropriate until the employee has achieved the goal of the coaching The decision tool also provides guidance to help employees get the most benefit from the coaching experience. refine and adjust these techniques based on the employee’s preferences for communication and learning.

The training takes advantage of self-analysis or psychometric tools to help enhance a leader’s observation skills and gain important insights into an employee’s strengths and challenges. This helps the leader as coach identify the most effective approach to coaching that individual.

The training includes mastery of the IRI Coaching Conversation Model. This model helps leader coaches create a positive connection with employees, identify issues and risks that may impede their performance, promote their confidence and measure their progress and success.

The Coaching Conversation Model:

The Leader as Coach Training integrates the Coaching Conversation format and the Coaching Continuum to help leaders understand which coaching approach is most effective with particular employees based on their unique developmental needs. It also positions the coach and employee to make meaningful progress with each meeting.

This training explores coaching “sidetracks” -- communication cues that employees may use intentionally or unintentionally to resist efforts to change their practices or performance. One of the biggest coaching challenges for leaders is avoiding getting sidetracked by an employee’s emotions, thereby potentially losing effectiveness as a coach. Leaders can reduce the negative effect of sidetracks by identifying common forms of resistance and understanding how to respond appropriately.

IRI Leader as Coach Training employs videos, role-play exercises and assessment tools for participants to identify opportunities for coaching in the workplace and to understand behavioral traits that may affect their success in coaching.

Logistics and Options

Leader as Coach Training can be customized for any industry, organization or need, with role-play and case-study situations tailored to client issues and concerns. Train-the-trainer services are available.

• The standard Leader as Coach Training is a one-day instructor-lead session. Variations in duration and format are available to meet the coach training and development needs identified by the client.
• All participants are required to complete an online behavioral assessment prior to the course. Other assessments may be required depending on the client’s preferred learning objectives.

For more information about Leader as Coach Training, contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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Successful organizations know that leadership performance is a major contributor to organizational success. They also recognize that even high-performing and high-potential leaders can benefit from targeted training and individualized skill development to help them achieve greater results.

Through IRI’s Leadership Development services, leaders at any level of the organization learn how to:

• Assess personal strengths and limitations to engage in continuous self-improvement
• Manage and inspire the performance of their employees
• Balance strategic focus, operating objectives and interpersonal relationships
• Target and identify opportunities for innovation and change
• Create or reinforce the mission, vision and values of the organization while achieving organizational objectives

IRI offers a complete array of Leadership Development services that meet the cultural and operational needs of any organization. These include:

Leadership Academy or Specific Leadership Training Modules

IRI provides a comprehensive curriculum of training modules to strengthen the competencies and skills leaders need. These can be delivered to individuals or to a group of leaders in a classroom setting through IRI’s Leadership Academy. Academies typically sequence a series of half-day sessions that address specific needs of the client organization. Academy titles include:

• Principles of Leadership (Manager as Leader)
• Performance Managing
• Building and Leading Effective
• Understanding Individual Teams Differences
• Planning and Running Effective
• Principles of Leadership Team Meetings Communication
• Making Conflict Productive
• Coaching Employees to Higher
• Organizing Time, Work and Performance Priorities
• Leading Change
• Behavioral Interviewing
• Writing for Business
• Win-Win Negotiating
• Finance for the Non-Financial
• Solving Problems Manager
• Strategic Thinking
• Leading a Diverse Population
• Improving Process Performance
  
  

360° Feedback

The 360° Feedback Process incorporates input from a leader’s peers, direct reports and managers to create a behavior profile that is compared with the leader’s self-perspective. The assessment can be customized to reflect a client’s existing benchmark leadership competencies and skills. Alternatively, clients may select specific skills they want measured from our reference materials of more than 3,000 behavioral descriptors.

Our process includes a detailed feedback report, self-development templates and leadership coaching suggestions. IRI’s leadership coaches often provide individualized follow-up to ensure that the reports are properly understood, and that self-development is appropriately launched and continued.

Self-Assessment Tools

These market-proven tools provide leaders with specific information about topics related to their personal and professional development. Topics include Leading Change, Managing Conflict, Emotional Intelligence, Behavioral Preferences, Learning Style and Relationship Building.

Leadership Coaching

After establishing coaching objectives, IRI employs various behavioral and psychometric instruments to help the individual understand their existing preferences and tendencies. Through face-to-face or phone conversations, IRI coaches help leaders identify and tackle on-the-job developmental assignments. By analyzing decisions made in completing assignments, as well as the consequences of their decisions, leaders are able to reinforce behaviors that are productive and change behaviors that are not.

Format Options

Clients may choose from several ways to implement IRI’s Leadership Development programs, including:

• Individual Training and Leadership Academy
  Experienced facilitators can deliver either customized or off-the-shelf modules. Additionally, we have the capability to train and certify client facilitators to teach the content, and can either provide materials or negotiate a licensing agreement.
• 360° Feedback Process and Self-Assessment Instruments
  We work with the client’s project team to establish and administer the selected self-assessment instruments or the 360° Feedback instrument. Our coaches then review results and debrief participants about how to interpret and incorporate them into a self-improvement program. Alternatively, because many self-assessment and psychometric instruments require specialized training or certification, IRI can train and certify client coaches to perform this work.
• Leadership Coaching
  Our coaches are carefully selected to match the various factors that can influence a successful outcome for each client. Working with clients, we help to identify consultants whom we believe are the best coaching candidates; clients retain the right to make the final selection.

For more information about Leadership Development, contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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IRI’s training capabilities, whether focused on classic training, instruction or education, begin in partnership with our clients to identify business needs and determine if the needs are best met through a training solution. If they are appropriate for training, we create specific learning objectives to address the business needs.

Our training solutions have four main components:

1. Experienced instructional design to lay out a roadmap for training tailored to an organization’s needs
2. Training developers to create programs in the format, method and media that best fit the organization’s culture
3. Facilitators to work with the client to deliver the training and/or train client facilitators in a way that maintains the integrity of the design
4. Program evaluation to determine the extent to which the training meets the business needs and learning objectives

This approach is based on the body of experience and research that has led to new thinking about the learning process. Effective training focuses on employee behaviors that need to be discouraged, encouraged, or changed to better contribute to business objectives. It incorporates the principles of adult learning in everything it delivers and is learner-centered, performance-based and offered in the context of practical application.

Successful training begins with a rationale (why the training matters), describes learning objectives (what the learner will know or be able to do as a result of the training), details specific activities (what will the learner hear, see or do to understand the material) and describes specific evaluation strategies to measure whether learners correctly understand the material and provide them with confirmation or correction.

Overview

IRI delivers options in eLearning, virtual classroom learning, on-the-job self-directed learning or instructor-led learning environments. We use one of three approaches to support client training and development needs.

1. Custom design and development – client owns the output

IRI follows the ADDIE model of instructional design (Assess, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate) to create learning solutions that are uniquely oriented to meet specific client needs. Working in partnership with the client, IRI will:

Assess – Identify the needs in the organization that will best be addressed by a training solution. Describe the target population and the learning objectives that apply in the given environment. (What are learners expected to know, do, think and feel; and why does it matter? Should the solution be instructor-controlled or learner-controlled?) If the identified need requires organizational adjustments, IRI will work with the client to address them.

Design – Based on learning objectives, create a design document that describes specifically what the participants will experience in order to learn the required information and demonstrate the identified skills. The design will reflect the nuances inherent in instructor-led versus learned-controlled experiences.

Develop – Draft learner materials and implement a pilot. Feedback from the pilot leads to revisions to the materials and the creation of final materials. Materials will vary based on whether the solution is a classroom experience requiring instructor’s materials or learner-controlled experience requiring either eLearning development or the development of on-the-job learning experiences.

Implement – Make available to the learning population the solution as designed and developed.  Evaluate – Test the effectiveness of the learning solution based on the extent to which the need identified in the assessment is fully addressed and create measurement tools based on Kilpatrick’s four levels:

• Level 1 – Did they like it?
• Level 2 – How much did they learn?
• Level 3 – Are they using what they learned on the job?
• Level 4 – What are the real results?

2. Tailored courseware using “learning objects” from IRI market-proven training materials – client purchases a license and can use the output in any way

IRI offers more than 140 Training Programs, the components of which can be used to teach a specific skill, behavior, or concept. Components can be tailored to meet client needs, with programs ranging from 10 minutes to four hours, depending on the desired outcome and the complexity of the objective. Learning objects typically consist of the following sections:

• Purpose and desired outcomes
• Graphic (Model) and Narrative Description
• Optional/Potential Applications that outline how the objects can be used in various situations
• Interactive Activity for group instruction or Think/Do Activity for individualized instruction, or both
• Worksheet or application guide (if appropriate)

IRI’s learning object materials have been used in a wide range of industries and professional groups, including:

• Instructional Designers and Developers who want to speed up their output with market-tested content focused on observable and measurable behaviors
• Academics who want to enrich their courses with practical material about human performance that reflects the world of business
• Internal and External Consultants who want to quickly respond to client needs with content that is aligned with other organizational initiatives
• Coaches who are looking for content that will supplement their client relationships with rational cognitive content
• Counselors and Therapists who want to expand their practice with market-tested content, examples, and metaphors that reflect the real world of work and relationships
• Directors, Managers and Supervisors who have responsibility for training their employees and need to do it in ways that are specific to their organization

3. Off-the-shelf courseware – client can use IRI facilitators or certify their own; client purchases IRI course materials or licenses them for internal reproduction

For more than two decades, IRI has been designing, developing and delivering classroom training for clients who want effective learning experiences. Our courses can be easily adapted for the culture and learning needs of specific target audiences.

Training Programs include:

• Business Writing
• Change Management
• Coaching Skills
• Communication Skills
• Conflict Management
• Consulting Skills
• Customer Relations
• Diversity And Sensitivity Training
• Employee Relations
• Ethics
• Finance For The Non-Financial Manager
• Global Business – Cultural Differences
• Influence/Negotiation
• Interview Skills
• Leadership Skills
• Meetings Effectiveness
• Performance Management
• Problem Solving / Decision Making
• Process Improvement
• Project Management
• Sales Training
• Team Development
• Time Management
  
  

Logistics and Options

Training can be custom-designed and developed based on the unique needs of the client, can be tailored from existing courseware, or can be used as-is.

Training is offered through eLearning, virtual classroom learning, on-the-job self-directed learning, or instructor-led classroom programs.

Classroom training can be delivered by experienced IRI facilitators and instructors or client facilitators and instructors can be certified.

Classroom materials can be purchased or can be licensed for reproduction by the client.

Classroom training can be delivered at the client site or IRI can arrange off-site logistics.

For more information about IRI’s Training Programs, contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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Now more than ever, organizations need to develop awareness and skills to manage an increasingly diverse workforce. The U.S. Hispanic population, already the nation’s largest minority population at more than 42 million, is projected to triple in size to 128 million by 2050.¹ In fact, according to U.S. Census data, Hispanics are projected to comprise 45 percent of the nation’s population growth from 2010 to 2030, and 60 percent between 2030 and 2050.² This increase will affect organizations’ employee demographics, as well as those of its customers.

Leaders must learn cultural sensitivities to ensure that all employees are treated with dignity and respect. They also must learn how to communicate effectively across cultural lines and through verbal and nonverbal means.

Progressive leaders explore differing cultural approaches rather than eradicate them. They recognize and value that a diverse employee population provides new perspectives regarding organizational objectives and strategy, offers insights about market opportunities and enriches team dynamics. Conversely, poorly understood and managed cultural diversity creates barriers that lead to isolation, antagonism and resentment, all of which inhibit organizational performance.

IRI helps organizations by assessing and building programs to manage diversity in the workplace. For instance, through our in-house training, we offer proven methods and tools to help manage a Hispanic workforce and foster a positive employee relations environment. Through this training, we prepare leaders to avoid costly mistakes that result from not recognizing and/or understanding cultural and language differences.

Benefits

IRI’s training prepares participants to:

• Be more aware of discriminatory attitudes and behaviors
• Have skills to effectively interact with individuals from diverse racial groups
• Develop strategies to serve multiracial clients/customers
• Identify steps to make diversity succeed in the workplace

For more information about Managing a Hispanic Workforce and how we can assist in developing leaders’ cultural sensitivities, contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

¹ Passel, Jeffrey S. and D’Vera Cohn. “U.S. Population Projections: 2005 2050.” Pew Hispanic Center. 11 Feb. 2008.
² Day, Jennifer Cheeseman. “National Population Projections.” U.S. Census.

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University of Michigan research determined that a human capital agenda (including culture management, ability to respond to change quickly and strategic decision-making) that contributes to business imperatives can account for nearly half of business performance. To achieve excellence, an organization’s leadership must consider and leverage human resource factors that influence performance and contribute measurably to goals.

IRI’s Organization Effectiveness (OE) approach supports organizational excellence by starting with a client’s business objectives and determining how HR practices can be created, strengthened, or reinforced to support operational objectives.

Partnering with clients, IRI provides full-service human performance consulting and training services to:

• Establish or enhance a human resources structure and infrastructure
• Structure and align work processes and systems
• Develop leadership competencies and skills
• Create a workforce that is knowledgeable, skilled, able and motivated to perform
  
  

Overview

IRI offers a broad range of expertise through our OE services. These include market-tested training courses and client-tested consulting processes that focus on delivering measurable results and return on investment.

• Our work has helped clients achieve a broad range of goals, including:
• A reduction of new-hire turnover rates to four percent from 55 percent
• $1 million in training savings within the first year of implementation
• Improved customer satisfaction
• Awards, including the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award

IRI’s OE practice includes the principles of Human Performance Technology (HPT) where appropriate:

1. Compare the present state of individual and organizational performance with the desired state to identify the performance gap. Explore the impact of the work environment (information, resources and incentives) and the people (motives, individual capacity and skills) on performance.
2. Design and develop or acquire appropriate interventions. These may include measurement and feedback systems, new tools and equipment, compensation and reward systems, selection and placement of employees, or training and development. The interventions are implemented and the change is managed to ensure maximum success.
3. Evaluate after each phase of the process to ensure each step is adding the necessary value. The final evaluations are centered on improvement of business outcomes (such as quality, productivity, sales, customer retention, profitability and market share) as well as determining return on investment for the intervention.

Our OE practice also is effective in situations in which the client has identified a performance gap and is seeking appropriate intervention. In these cases, IRI draws from four focus areas to meet client needs:

1 .ORGANIZATION DESIGN

• Structural analysis, policies and procedures
• Operational and information systems strategy
• Staffing and compensation strategy
• Organizational diagnostics and employee engagement

2. PROCESS IMPROVEMENT AND SYSTEMS

• Workflow process improvement (LSS)
• Human resource and employee life-cycle processes
• Aligned performance management systems
• Fastrack Teams^sm

3. LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT & PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

• Strategic and business skills (strategic planning, project management, finance for non-financial managers)
• Leadership and communication skills (motivation, influence, listening, speaking and presenting)
• Competency identification and succession planning
• Team development and leadership skills (facilitating meetings, forming and championing the team)
• Problem-solving and decision-making skills

4. WORKFORCE TRAINING & DEVELOPMENT

• Employee orientations and on-boarding
• Technical skill training
• Sales training and support systems
• Interpersonal skill training (communication, teamwork, respect and sensitivity)
• Self-development skills (time management, goal-setting, business writing)
• Executive coaching
  
  

Logistics and Options

IRI uses a project management approach to its OE practice area. This means that our work is typically defined and described according to a systems approach to project management. These principles include:

• Define the goals, scope and boundaries of the project
• Identify the team and all stakeholders directly and indirectly involved with the project
• Create plans, schedules and budgets. We can work on a fixed-fee basis for many of our projects or a time-and-materials basis for others.
• Clarify customer-supplier relationships for every phase and step of the project
• Determine what will be measured, by whom and how and when (what gets measured gets managed)
• Create a communication strategy and implementation plan to ensure the right people get the right information when they need it
• Create a risk management plan that has both mitigation (preventive) and contingent (responsive) activities identified

IRI identifies the most qualified resources to manage and deliver all OE engagements and to perform the tasks required for success. A relationship manager and a project manager oversee the initiative and ensure that work is completed on time and within budget. Clients typically meet and approve project team members to review responsibilities and ensure a good cultural fit with the organization.

For more information about IRI’s Organization Effectiveness services, contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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Today’s business environment is dynamic, fast-paced and wrought with uncertainty. The sustainability, profitability and success of an organization is based upon sound execution of their business model. Successful execution cannot be accomplished without strategic organizational alignment.

Strategic Organizational Alignment is a highly desired and productive state within an organization where the energies of people are focused on achieving strategic goals and carrying out strategic initiatives.

Elements of Organizational Alignment

Alignment begins with an understanding of the many complex elements that interact within an organization. These elements include: Mission, Vision, Values, Goals, and Strategies.

Mission and Vision are an expression of an organization’s fundamental intent. Mission statements define what an organization is in business to do. A Vision statement is a statement of some future state. It is a statement of the impact an organization would have on its environment (employees, customers, shareholders, etc.), if it successfully completed its Mission.

Organizational Values are the subtle values that drive individual performance at all levels of the organization. Most organizations identify the manner in which individual and group behavior will be conducted.

Strategy is the blueprint for the deployment of the organization’s resources, including capital, people, time and energy. It is a clear statement about how the organization intends to proceed.

Objectives are the benchmarks that tell members of an organization when they are achieving strategic goals. They are the what, not the how of organizational performance.

Organizational Alignment and efficiency requires that these interdependent components be in total alignment. It is essential that each of these elements is clearly articulated in a way that makes sense to, and is accepted by the workforce if alignment is to be achieved.

Achieving Organizational Alignment

To achieve strategic alignment, these elements become the foundation which organizational metrics are established. The goals of an organization can be broken down into specific strategies that can have measurable outcomes attached to them. For example, the goals of increasing customer satisfaction, increasing shareholder return on investment, or increasing marketshare can each be measured using specific tools and/or processes.

These goals must have specific strategies attached to them. Each strategy must then have specific tactics attached to it in order to make it happen.

As goals cascade to strategies and strategies cascade to tactics, measures must be applied at each step. These goals, strategies, tactics, and measures provide the focus for identifying observable and measurable behaviors that each individual in the organization must do as their contribution to help the organization achieve it Mission and Vision.

Creating alignment also includes assessing and adjusting all the operational and infrastructure factors that influence human performance. Each of these factors must provide positive consequences for desired behavior and negative consequences for undesirable behavior.

IRI can help your organization identify alignment gaps and facilitate the actions needed to achieve full alignment of your organization’s actions, processes and data with your business purpose.

For more information about Organizational Alignment contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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Organizations that succeed in the long term are effective in accepting and managing change over the short term. [As successful change requires that people and their behaviors also change, the responsibility for navigating organizational change often falls to the human resource executive.] Who better to navigate the waters than the executive charged with building and maintaining human resources?

In surveys, CEOs report that 75 percent of organizational change efforts do not achieve the intended results. With an incomplete initiative, managers may end up managing unintended consequences rather than moving the organization in the intended direction.

Whether the result of a leadership change, turnaround, labor dispute or competitive challenges, directing significant organizational change is one of the most difficult tasks a manager faces during his/her career.

At IRI Consultants, we help clients manage change initiatives with our proprietary Organizational Behavior Change Assessment Model. This roadmap helps leaders navigate the multitude of expected and unexpected organizational roadblocks and barriers to successful change.

Organizations facing change must look at three key factors -structure, process and people -in determining what tactics and methodology to use.

We guide clients throughout the process, focusing first on the organizational culture and resistance to change and then to the management infrastructure, communications capabilities and policies and procedures that promote or obstruct productive change. Using these tools, clients can explore, understand and guide successful change.

For more information about using Organizational Behavior Change Assessment contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 9650350.

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Organizational Behavior Change Assessment

Workplace Conflict Resolution

Employees today demand to be treated with respect and dignity and to have a voice in building the workplace culture. One of the most effective tools in human resources is a fair, credible and effective alternative process for resolving employee conflicts.

Peer Review, when designed as an in-house grievance procedure, gives employees a participatory process for handling their problems in a way understood to be fair and impartial. Organizations with a proven system for dealing with employee conflicts benefit from reduced exposure to litigation, higher morale and better productivity.

Goal: To Provide an Equitable and Timely Resolution to Work-Related Issues.

IRI Consultants helps clients establish and implement a Peer Review Process to resolve work-related issues, encourage an objective review of the facts and take advantage of shared decision-making as an internal “last-step option” to improve an organization’s conflict resolution process.

An effective Peer Review Process is not intended to replace normal communications between employees and their supervisors/managers. Instead, it helps prevent disputes from escalating or leading to litigation.

Under this system, a neutral party facilitates the Peer Review Process and resolution of the case is made by an employee’s peers.

Peer Review Panel

The Peer Review Process relies on a trained, objective review panel that has

the confidence of employees and management. Peer Review Panel members are randomly selected from a pool of trained, qualified employees who are understood to be “peers” of any employee involved in a review case. The panel also includes a designated number of managers specially trained in this process. The panel typically consists of five individuals, three of whom are non-management employees.

All aspects of the peer review panel hearings are strictly confidential. A Peer Review Panel cannot render a decision that is more severe than the original management action leading to the appeal hearing, and all decisions are final and binding.

Process

An effective Peer Review Process allows employees to have their issues resolved in a reasonable time frame strictly outlined in the charter. The Peer Review Panel is provided with all the documentation necessary to understand the case, then reviews the witness list and participates in a hearing. Panel members have the opportunity to question all participants and get additional materials or information from management upon request.

The panel then deliberates in private and votes by secret ballot, with each member required to review and sign the decision.

Certain issues and matters are customarily excluded from the peer review and appeal process, including changes to company policy, reductions in force, changes to company benefit plans, incentive plans or stock plans and any matter that is a legal obligation of the company.

The success of peer review depends on the extent to which employees have confidence in the system. When well-designed, peer review is a process preferred by employees as a means of resolving problems because they know that their peers understand their work environment and have accepted responsibility and accountability for their decisions.

Advantages of a Peer Review Process

• Effectively solves issues within the workplace through a process that is accepted as fair and reasonable by employees
• Supports the company’s commitment to treat employees with respect and dignity
• Helps build a spirit of trust and cooperation between employees and management
• Encourages employees to resolve their disputes in a constructive, open-dialogue manner
• Enhances employee involvement and understanding of the business and management’s understanding of employee issues
• Produces final resolution not subject to further appeal within the company
• Provides a well-documented case record of the issue if appealed to an outside agency

For more information about Peer Review Process contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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Performance Management once referred mainly to the burdens and pressures associated with annual performance reviews. Today, Performance Management – both in concept and practice – has caught up with contemporary leadership ideals.

Effective Performance Management helps develop high-achieving people in high-performing organizations. These organizations:

• Foster a culture of Performance Management by designing a user-friendly performance review process and system that promotes flexible, customized documentation and fits the needs of each department
• Link Performance Management and appraisals to organizational objectives
• Focus on the future more than the past in performance reviews through an emphasis on planning, goal-setting and multiple opportunities for feedback
• Use performance reviews as a tool to build trust, open communication and improve supervisor/employee relationships at all levels of the organization
• Walk the talk from the CEO down through the organization in modeling appropriate Performance Management behavior with direct reports
• Invest in training and education that encourages ongoing discussions between supervisor and employee in addition to any formal annual review
• Separate the compensation conversation from the performance review
  
  

Overview

IRI’s Performance Management consulting services help client organizations integrate best practices into their culture. Our approach to designing a successful Performance Management system is based on several influential factors:

I. Performance Management Alignment and Local Support

Performance Management begins when senior leadership articulates the vision, mission and values of the organization. It continues through the efforts of departmental leaders and supervisors who set goals that serve as the orientation for all work within the organization. The entire Performance Management system focuses on the achievement of these goals, directly and indirectly. Each level in the organization is responsible for and held accountable to the achievement of their goals by cascading responsibility and accountability, level by level, throughout the organization. Key to this process are communications and training that ensure alignment and address roadblocks and other barriers in organizations that contribute to employee dissatisfaction. To reduce potential resistance to change, IRI encourages clients to identify and train “performance coaches” from within the organization – the “local” experts – who become powerful champions for change. They, along with top leadership, are pivotal to creating an effective, sustainable Performance Management system.

II. Clarity of Process Flow

The process flow of a successful Performance Management system involves four basic elements:

A. Planning: Supervisor and employee mutually agree on the job responsibilities, goals and the measurement criteria.

B. Feedback: Supervisors and employees meet regularly to track progress against identified goals.

1. Coaching: Employees receive coaching and support throughout the review period to address areas needing improvement, allowing employees to regularly get feedback and gauge their progress based on frequent dialogue and documentation.
2. Formal review: Supervisor and employee participate in a formal, year-end performance review that assesses performance versus expectations, and together identify goals and create a plan for the following year.

III. Implementation

In implementing a comprehensive Performance Management system, clients follow a three-track project plan.

1. Communication and Strategy – Development of the overall strategy of the design or redesign of the Performance Management system, along with a comprehensive communication plan.
2. Training and Education – Training tailored to reach diverse and varied employee groups throughout the organization to help each understand their roles in the new system and learn how to meet the expectations of that role.
3. Performance Coach Training and Development – Performance coaches and “internal consultants” are trained to coordinate and deliver Performance Management training throughout the organization. They are responsible for coaching managers in conducting performance reviews to improve communication skills and strengthen relationships, and to measure the system’s impact and contribution to individual, work group and organizational performance.

Logistics and Options

IRI uses a project management approach to its Performance Management practice. This means that Performance Management projects are defined and implemented according to a systems approach that:

• Identifies the strengths and weaknesses in the current system as well as which processes, technology and cultural issues affect performance
• Defines the scope and boundaries of the project
• Identifies the core team and all stakeholders either directly or indirectly involved with the project
• Creates work plans, schedules and budgets
• Clarifies customer-supplier relationships for each phase of the project
• Determines the metrics and measurements that will be used to track the success of the project
• Develops a communication strategy and implementation plan to ensure the right people get the right information when they need it
• Creates a risk management plan that identifies mitigation (preventive) and contingent (responsive) activities

IRI identifies qualified experts and resources to guide Performance Management projects and work with an organization’s internal resources to develop and implement successful programs. A relationship manager and a project manager oversee the initiative and ensure that work is completed on time and within budget. Clients typically meet and approve project team members to review responsibilities and ensure a good cultural fit with the organization.

For more information about Performance Management, contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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Optimizing Organizational Results

The goals of Process Improvement include the elimination of waste and finding the most efficient pathway for each key business process. When implemented correctly, effective processes achieve measurable gains in productivity, quality, employee morale and customer satisfaction.

At IRI Consultants, we use tools embedded in Lean, Six Sigma, PDCA and other recognized quality initiatives to help clients launch and manage Process Improvement activities. Whether we provide training and coaching on how to use the tools as a first-time introduction or reinforce training previously provided, we focus on the real work in the client’s facility. Through this focus, employees and their managers conclude their work with us with a real Process Improvement project launched and on the way to success.

Our Process Improvement work is typically supported by our Organizational Behavior Change Assessment Model, a roadmap to organizational and individual change that helps leaders navigate the multitude of expected and unexpected organizational and human barriers to a successful Process Improvement initiative.

We work collaboratively with clients to focus on key Process Improvement elements by:

• Determining goals and objectives of the Process Improvement initiative based on internal or external measurable customer requirements
• Using the existing process as a starting point, identifying what about the process is not supporting customer requirements
• Identifying areas of improvement in the existing processes through data collection and analysis
• Creating a revised process model that better meets customer requirements
• Conducting a risk analysis on the revised process to ensure that changes will provide the anticipated gains
• Identifying tasks, resources, roles, timelines and guidelines, to make process changes
• Creating a project plan focused on successful implementation and supporting the plan where appropriate

IRI has significant experience across industries – from product manufacturers to service providers – helping organizations identify the best method for launching a Process Improvement initiative. The result is a refined process that aligns with organizational goals, values, cultures and current competitive and operational demands. Our work has helped clients improve financial performance, customer satisfaction, reduce employee turnover, and has led to them earning such recognition as the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

For more information about Process Improvement Initiatives, contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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Imagine breaking down the Byzantine system of procedures, processes and cultural norms that have taken hold in your workplace over the years – some that exist only through habit and inertia – and starting anew with a clean slate. That is the opportunity and promise of Process Reengineering.

Unlike such incremental change processes as the “Continuous Process Improvement” and “Total Quality Management” movements of the past, Process Reengineering begins with an effort to challenge the legitimacy of each process in the workplace in the light of new technology, new business models and new markets.

Once free from constraints put into place by outdated systems and timeworn organizational traditions, Process Reengineering challenges leaders to approach every business objective and goal with an open mind to determine how best to structure the workplace and workflow to get the job done.

The process takes full advantage of the best practices developed through continuous improvement and total quality programs while working with leaders to fine-tune the system in keeping with the organization’s goals, values, cultures and current competitive and operational demands.

Through fundamental rethinking and comprehensive redesign of business processes, organizations can achieve measurable performance improvements.

Executed properly, reengineering will help organizations and their employees:

• Develop new skills and competencies
• Successfully adopt and leverage new technology and equipment
• Improve communications
  
  

Who Should Consider Reengineering?

Many organizations will not achieve their ultimate potential through incremental improvements. Others – forced by crisis or sudden change – simply do not have the luxury of time. Reengineering should be a consideration for any organization that must make dramatic change to survive or any organization that is losing ground or facing difficult new market conditions. But even those anticipating change or gearing up for growth should consider the prospect, recognizing that it is better to do so while it is an opportunity rather than waiting until a crisis.

At IRI, we bring to the process critical experience, advice, tools and counsel throughout the effort.

The Reengineering Process

We partner with clients to clarify the organization’s vision, mission and strategic business goals in light of market conditions and demands. We then subject these factors to scrutiny in an unrestricted environment to develop a snapshot of the organization’s abilities and a roadmap for the future.

Throughout the initiative, we help clients identify the core processes that drive the organization’s major activities using process maps and sequencing and identify new, more effective processes that take into account resources, cultural issues and timing, along with risk analysis and contingency planning.

We also help clients to establish the training curriculum and materials to support Process Reengineering, including proven skill-building programs and performance improvement measures.

The objective: a total process transformation plan with input from all key parties.

For more information about Process Reengineering contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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A small group or group business simulation for leadership development.

Strategic Thinking^sm is a learning experience that simulates many real-world situations that leaders experience every day on the job. By simplifying those situations and focusing on the crucial elements involved in coordinating strategy within an organization, Strategic Thinking^sm helps leaders develop skills and instincts key to success in the real world.

The simulation uses a modified version of chess, the classic strategy game, but knowing the rules of chess is not a prerequisite.

Strategic Thinking^smequips leaders to:

• Describe the relationship of cash flow to business operations
• Negotiate the challenges faced by the juxtaposition of short-and long-term objectives
• Plan a budget based on resource allocation and cost/benefit analysis
• Create a strategy that encompasses tactical activities
• Identify and evaluate business opportunities
• Describe the cause and effect relationship between immediate actions and long-term consequences
  
  

Overview

Each participant takes the role of a managing director of a company’s major business unit. As director, each makes final decisions about how to allocate resources and spend the budget.

In the exercise, three other business units from the same company operate in the same market region, and the company can operate in as many as nine other regions worldwide in order to simulate a complex organizational structure.

Each market region is represented in the simulation by a chess board, which is itself further subdivided into 64 market segments represented by the black and white squares on the chess board. Each market segment square in a market region has a value associated with it. That value, in millions of dollars, is printed on the square. These values represent the maximum amount of revenue that can be generated by that market segment in a given business cycle. The talent, technical capabilities and real capital managed in the market are represented by the chess pieces on the chess board. The managing director generates revenue by occupying market segment squares on the board with the pawn chess pieces. The other chess pieces simulate overhead. Each has expenses associated with its movement but cannot generate revenue. Their role is to support the pawns’ positioning in the market place.

The simulation includes cycles designed to echo the business cycles in a typical organization. Each cycle includes three phases of activity:

Phase I: Planning & Distribution - Directors meet as part of regional and corporate planning groups to determine the amount of cash to be distributed from corporate level accounts to each region in the company based on strategic need. Once regional budgets are set, each regional level planning group must determine the amount of cash to be distributed from regional accounts to each Business Unit account within the region.

Phase II: Deployment & Expenses - Each director takes a turn deploying his or her resources in accord with a strategy and in response to their opponent’s movement in the marketplace. Each incurs expenses that must be accounted for in their budget.

Phase III: Accounting - Each director calculates his or her business unit’s revenue and balances their business unit, regional, and corporate accounting sheets.

Logistics and Options

The Strategic Thinking^sm experience typically requires at least six hours, which provides for a minimum of six 45-minute cycles of play with opportunities for debrief and reflection. This simulation is easily integrated into a leadership conference or other event, or can be offered as a stand-alone learning experience. The materials for the simulation are provided in kits that can be purchased or rented for one-time or limited use. Each kit contains materials for eight participants divided into two regional teams of directors with four directors per company.

Each kit includes a chess board and chess pieces, a timer, laminated rule cards and an instructional CD. A facilitator’s manual describes the role of the facilitator and directions for managing the learning experience. Accounting sheets can be bought separately or licensed to reproduce as needed.

This simulation can be facilitated by IRI facilitators or by client facilitators certified to manage the learning experience.

For more information about Strategic Thinking^sm, contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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When key people within an organization plan to move on, the challenges go well beyond finding their replacements.

Clearly, finding the right candidate for any job is one of HR executives’ most important responsibilities. But effective Succession Planning begins well before a leader gives notice. True leaders begin preparing one or more individuals who can serve as a successor while they’re still with the organization.

In the organizational development arena, Succession Planning is the process of continually identifying and training prospective candidates through mentoring, training and job rotation.

The best leaders aren’t born -- they’re groomed. Effective organizations nurture key employees and build their knowledge and skill sets as they rise through the rungs of management. One of the greatest contributors to turnover in most organizations is a lack of leadership development.

Tens of millions of Baby Boomers will leave the workforce over the next two decades. In passing the torch to a new generation, executives and human resource officers must understand the needs and values of the new workforce as they move into management ranks and a new era of leaders is identified and developed.

Managing a transition requires retaining talent and creating new leaders, the core tenets of a good succession plan. Together, retention and Succession Planning constitute a systematic process for preparing people to meet an organization’s needs for talent over time.

Retention and succession plans should translate the vision and strategy of the organization into optimal performance. When leadership needs are identified and the right people are developed to fulfill them, managers will have a pool of talented employees who are prepared for vertical or horizontal advancement.

Effective Succession Planning and talent retention develops employees responsible for achieving operational goals and supporting the vision of an organization. It assures a continuing pool of qualified people to move up and take the reins when the current generation of managers and leaders depart. And it provides a steady stream of people who are qualified to implement an organization’s vision of the future.

IRI Consultants offers Succession Planning services designed to ensure the continued effective performance of an organization by developing employees at all levels, while paying particular attention to the identification and training of high-potential candidates for managerial or leadership positions.

At its core, our Succession Planning model explores the expertise needed to address the challenges facing an organization and identifies the right combination of values, skills and leadership attributes.

Our consultants help clients find high potential candidates and develop a plan to keep them, through diverse tools including 360-degree feedback, confidential performance reviews by direct reports, peers and managers, as well as retention initiatives that cultivate employee talents, develop their professional skills and prepare them for higher positions.

The goal: future planning that reflects and supports an organization’s mission, culture and values.

For more information about Succession Planning contact IRI Consultants at info@iriconsultants.com or by calling (313) 965-0350.

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