Productivity – cindygoyette.com

Internal customers and suppliers. Are your employees clear as to who is who?

July 7, 2025 | Talent Management | No Comments

When I worked at a management training and consulting firm at the beginning of my career, I learned multiple concepts that have served me well throughout my professional life. Personal Accountability was one, and Total Quality was a close second. If you don’t know about it – Total Quality Management (TQM) was born out of the manufacturing industry (think Henry Ford and assembly lines creating cars) and it was the prequel to ISO 9000, Lean Manufacturing, and Six-Sigma methodologies. At their essence, they are managerial approaches related to organizational effectiveness that seek to improve human and company performance by eliminating defects and the waste of physical resources, time, effort, and talent while assuring quality in organizational processes and production.

What I learned at that time was through a simplified experiential learning experience where the class participants were given: 1) a job description, 2) direction to who their manager was and 3) the timeframe expected for them to accomplish their task. [Also keep in mind, the exercise was super compressed on purpose in order to add pressure to complete it and move the class forward.] The class was then divided into two ‘assembly lines’ where we were asked to create a product with only the 3 pieces of information. We were given a brief amount of time to read our job description, the timer started, and we were off on doing our assigned tasks. The room was very quiet during the experience because part of the directions said, ‘no talking among yourselves.’ Everyone hurried through their tasks as the facilitator yelled out milestone times – ‘10 more minutes’, then ‘5 more minutes’, until he said to STOP.

The debrief was interesting. We were scored first on how many ‘units’ (quantity) of the ‘product’ we made. Second, we were scored on how many of the units were completed to the quality expectation (zero defects). While I have no idea what the actual numbers were – we might have had 3 out of 20 that made the quality cut. The other assembly line had a similar outcome.

In round two of this experiential learning exercise, we were given: 1) updated, more detailed job descriptions, 2) the ability to speak to our ‘manager’ and ask questions during the process and, 3) the same timeframe to accomplish the same task. Again, we were given a brief amount of time to read our new job description, ask questions to our manager and when the timer started, we were off on creating a new batch of products.

This time when the clock stopped, we had about 25 units (up slightly from the first batch) so our quantity improved. When the units were checked for quality, we had about 15 that made the cut – which was a 60% improvement, and we were feeling pretty good about ourselves. The competing team had similar results, so the room was buzzing with excitement and chatter. When we debriefed the second time, we discussed our newly acquired awareness about what had transpired.

With individualized and detailed expectations, clear direction from our manager, and increased team communication, everyone better understood their job duties and performance expectations. With the stated encouragement to speak to our manager to get context and clarification – we had vastly different outcomes in the same amount of time. Some other learnings we had were related to clarifying who your internal ‘customers’ and ‘suppliers’ are AND understanding that employees can be BOTH depending on where they sit in a team and which department they work in.

Having done many organizational assessments in my career, I can say that most processes within companies are cross functional (i.e. span several departments) from beginning to end. That day in training, it was clear us that: 1) our ‘customer’ may be the person next to us in our team who depends on us to do our part of the work so they can take it and do their part AND, 2) our ‘customer’ may also be 2 or 3 steps away from us in a completely different department. Either way, our individual work output from both a quality and time perspective – positively or negatively – affected our customer’s ability to do their job effectively. Their work relied on our work to get completed.

I’ve never forgotten that concept since learning it a couple decades ago. Those simple but powerful learnings about the need to clarify roles and responsibilities with team members and other departments is a huge part of organizational effectiveness. And the need to define who is the ‘customer’ and who is the ‘supplier’ is super important to help teams achieve goals. And these principles hold true regardless of whether your company makes a product or provides a service because they apply to how work gets done in your company through people, systems and processes.

The way to improve the execution of work, and therefore increase employee productivity is 1) to have clear job descriptions, 2) for individuals and teams to share their job descriptions with each other to understand what each person is working to accomplish, 3) to openly discuss which role they hold in any and all processes they use to do their work – as they may be a supplier to some team members but a customer to others of that same team, and 4) set expectations with each other as to what outcome is needed (quality) and by when (timing) for all team members to help each other complete their collective work to deadlines. Some companies even take the concept in #4 to the next level by creating service level agreements, or SLAs, that outline the level of performance expected, the timing of completion, and what happens if those expectations are not met.

What I find over and over again in organizations is they behave in silos with little communication about where the boundaries touch between different departments. Leaders need to talk about what they do and how work gets done in their respective functions. Leaders also need to talk about the relationship between their departments, roles and responsibilities within them and what their expectations are so everyone can collectively get their work done. In addition to increasing productivity, if you want to elevate personal accountability in your company, consider having a team discussion about customer-supplier relationships and service expectations. With team feedback, you can craft better service level agreements and more measurable performance metrics.

As I always say, people don’t show up to work to suck at their jobs – and when I ask them what the problem is – the answer more than 95% of the time is related to there being a lack of management direction, unclear expectations of what they should be doing, nonexistent or ineffective communication within a team, ineffective systems and tools with which they do their work, and inconsistent organizational processes.

If your team members aren’t clear about their individual job duties and performance expectations, it inhibits their ability to directly, or indirectly, create and deliver the product or service your company provides its external customers.
If your managers can’t clarify individual job responsibilities and performance expectations, articulate direction, or block and tackle obstacles their direct reports have – they are impeding employee productivity that enables business success.
And, if you don’t have time bound goals and objectives that everyone’s work is aligned to, and/or any of your managers continually let employees off the hook for missing deadlines you are impeding the larger organization to execute the business’s mission.

Organizational effectiveness refers to how well an organization achieves its defined objectives — the very thing the company is in business to do. OE encompasses a company’s ability to produce its products or services while maintaining a productive workforce and optimizing its resources. It integrates strategic management, project management, leadership quality (especially amount senior management), operational efficiency, innovation capability and adaptability to change. Managerial competency is a significant driver of organizational effectiveness, particularly in environments where constant change and agility are valued.

PEOPLE MATTER in Business.

Cindy Goyette, SPHR, MAOM, CC – cindygoyette.com 2025

By Coach Cindy

Why Organizational Design (OD) is a Business Imperative, Not Just an HR Function

July 7, 2025 | Talent Management | No Comments

We have all witnessed firsthand how business landscapes evolve, often faster than organizations can adapt. The most successful organizations don’t just react to change — they anticipate it. And at the heart of this adaptability lies Organizational Design (OD). It’s more than a set of HR processes or structural tweaks to org charts; it’s a powerful business discipline and tool that drives agility, efficiency, and alignment across an entire organization.

So why, then, do many companies still view organizational design as an HR responsibility, separate from the day-to-day operations of the business?

The Disconnect Between HR and Operations

Having been a Chief Operations Officer and company owner prior to moving into a HR career, I have seen a disconnect more often than not. Business leaders mistakenly assume that OD is purely a function of the HR department. They wait for HR to facilitate organizational change. HR, on the other hand, assumes that it is Operations responsibility to initiate organizational change. And, depending on what HR does for the company, many HR teams don’t even have people on staff that know how to do Organizational Design.

While HR plays a pivotal role in the implementation of change, Organizational Design is a critical business strategy. It should be aligned directly with the organization’s mission, vision, and strategic goals.

At the highest level, OD is about designing systems, roles, and structures that enable the organization to execute its strategy efficiently. When the design of an organization is disconnected from its strategic vision, employees and leaders alike are left scrambling to make sense of their roles, contributing to silos, inefficiencies, and disengagement.

The Strategic Role of Organizational Design

Organizational Design is about optimizing how work gets done, ensuring that roles are structured to maximize both individual performance and cross-functional collaboration. It’s the framework that enables an organization to adapt to changing market conditions, foster innovation, and enhance the employee experience.

I learned firsthand that the following three things are key elements of OD that are critical to driving business performance:

1. Aligning Structure with Strategy

An effective organizational design ensures that the structure directly supports the business strategy – and by that, I mean, its business model. It should answer the question, ‘what are all the things we need to do to make this make money?’

In today’s dynamic marketplace, organizations often need to shift from rigid hierarchical structures to more flexible, networked models that can pivot quickly.

2. Empowering Cross-Functional Collaboration

Once that finite list of ‘all the things we need to do to make this make money’ is created, successful organizations create functions (aka departments) that make sense while breaking down silos and encouraging collaboration across them. Leaders of individual business functions need to talk openly about what they do and ensure there is minimal to no overlap in responsibilities and roles.

The right OD approach fosters seamless communication and shared accountability across departments, which in turn leads to faster decision-making and problem-solving.

3. Building Organizational Resilience

A well-designed organization can weather uncertainty and adapt to change without losing momentum. Effective OD helps businesses stay resilient by building a culture of continuous learning and empowering leaders at all levels to drive change.

What Does It Take to Get It Right?

To move beyond the “HR-only” view of OD, business leaders, especially those responsible for back-office operations functions like general management, finance, accounting, IT, HR, payroll, marketing, PR, legal, purchasing, etc. must be actively engaged in the design process. HR should act as a strategic partner to business operations, ensuring that organizational design is aligned with the broader business objectives.

Here’s how HR leaders can ensure successful OD initiatives:

OD must be directly tied to business outcomes. It should reflect the company’s business model (i.e. how it makes money). HR should work closely with leadership to identify strategic priorities and align the organizational structure accordingly.
Consider the employee experience: Companies make money because the people and technology within them. Organizational design isn’t just about efficiency—it’s about creating an environment where employees feel empowered and connected to the organization’s mission. Incorporate feedback from employees at all levels to ensure the design supports a positive work culture.
Keep the future in mind: As we move into an increasingly agile and digital world, organizations need to be future-proof. OD must not only address current needs but anticipate future shifts in technology, workforce demographics, and global markets.

Organizational Design is not just an HR initiative—it’s a business imperative. The organizations that succeed in today’s fast-evolving, chaotic world are the ones that embrace a holistic approach to OD, ensuring that their structure, strategy, and culture are in lockstep. As HR professionals, we have the opportunity to lead this transformation, working in tandem with business leaders to create organizations that are not only efficient but also resilient and adaptable.

People Matter in Business.

Cindy Goyette, SPHR, MAOM, CC – cindygoyette.com 2025

By Coach Cindy

From HR Generalist to Organizational Strategist: Why I’m Pivoting After All These Years

July 7, 2025 | Talent Management | No Comments

After nearly three decades in Human Resources working in the capacity of a Swiss army knife accomplishing all aspects of HR operations from recruiting to M&A integrations — I’m making a deliberate shift. I’m pivoting my focus to Organizational Design, Organizational Effectiveness, Change Management, and Organizational Development.

Not because I’ve outgrown HR — but because I’ve known for a long time and recent events have made it more acute — that the future of HR success lies in how we shape organizations to execute strategy, adapt to change, and enable people to thrive. And that’s where I plan to spend the rest of my career: at the intersection of business operations and people strategy.

The Evolution of My Career (and HR Itself)

Many who know me don’t know that I actually started my career in Marketing Communications out of college. I was fascinated with psychology, motivation and how we use communication to lead and connect to one another. And, in my late 20s, I inherited a business which permanently altered my career trajectory. Overnight, I was a Chief Operations Officer leading the operation of a 10-year-old franchise of a national company. While I didn’t have a business degree, I proceeded to earn one through my own blood, sweat and tears over the next four years.

Using the degree I did have and some innate talents of organization, leadership and tenacity, I changed the financial outcomes of the business and after 4 years of 200% growth year-over-year successfully sold it. That experience informed my choice to move into Human Resources. I wanted to work in the space that connected business strategy and operations, leadership competency, and human behavior because I had seen firsthand that companies make money as a result of the efforts humans make who work in them.

As I have said since then, PEOPLE, more specifically, human beings and their behaviors – are the core of business. Executive leaders have control over all aspects of their companies: products and services, strategy, direction, technology systems, organizational processes, communication – and how things get done – CULTURE. Without a solid understanding of human behavior and motivation, many executives make business decisions about those aspects which consequently affect their people. As a result, employees’ behavior either HELPS or HINDERS a wide range of business activities that lead to increased, or decreased, PROFITS.

For most of my career, I’ve been a Human Resources Generalist in the truest sense of the word. I’ve sat in every HR chair, built HR functions from the ground up, led teams through acquisition integrations and divestitures, implemented HR technology infrastructure, and partnered with senior leaders to solve complex workforce challenges. I’ve seen what works — and a lot more lately what doesn’t work and derails good intentions.

What those experiences have shown me over and over is that even the best HR strategies fall flat when they aren’t embedded into the design of the business itself. You end up with leadership teams that aren’t aligned on how decisions get made. Org charts that don’t reflect how work actually gets done. Structures that crush agility and frustrate talent. Without the right organizational design, HR becomes reactive. And without change capability, even the best-designed organizations stagnate.

Where I’m Going Next: Building Organizations for the Future

What excites me most now is getting back to my roots and working with leaders to enable organizations to become more resilient, adaptive, and aligned.

That means focusing on:

Organizational Design: Creating structures that enable clarity, speed, and collaboration
Organizational Effectiveness: Ensuring companies have the right chairs, right talent and right tools to be successful
Change Management: Designing change that people can absorb, adopt, and own
Organizational Development: Building leadership and culture that sustain high performance

These are not siloed disciplines. They are strategic levers to enable business transformation—and HR should be at the helm, not the sidelines.

Why It Matters (Now More Than Ever)

In today’s environment of constant disruption—AI, remote work, shifting talent expectations—organizations can’t afford misalignment between their structure, strategy, and people. It’s not enough to react to change. We need to design for it. That’s what I’m here to do.

What You Can Expect From Me

Over the next few months, I’ll be writing about what I’ve learned — and what I’m still learning— about:

Designing organizations that actually deliver on business strategy
Building cultures that enable execution, not just engagement
Making change stick (without exhausting your people)
Ensuring managers and leaders have the skills they need to be successful

This isn’t about theory. It’s about making organizations work better—smarter, faster, and more human.

If you’re a business leader, an HR peer, or someone navigating organizational change, I hope you’ll follow along and share your own insights. Because designing better organizations is work we all own.

People Matter in Business.

Cindy Goyette, SPHR, MAOM, CC – cindygoyette.com 2025

By Coach Cindy

The Notorious Bait and Switch when Hiring

July 7, 2025 | Talent Management | No Comments

While there is nothing illegal about companies posting attractive jobs and giving their chosen new hire something completely different and maybe even inferior, it isn’t a great business practice. If you want to retain good talent and decrease turnover of new hires within their first year, it behooves you to look at your end-to-end recruitment process to ensure your company isn’t one of those notorious for the ‘Bait and Switch.’ Do your new hires get what they were sold during the recruitment process? Are you seeing a lot of turnover in your new hires’ first 30, 60, 90 days? Turnover is a symptom of a people and/or organizational systems breakdown and it costs your company a lot of time and energy along with degrading your employer brand quality.

As I have worked with executives for decades, I have found that some feel integrity is about the soundness of the construction of something (i.e. there are no holes in the boat, so it has structural integrity) while others see integrity as the act of being honest and honoring your words by following through with aligned behaviors. I believe INTEGRITY is both. Your team needs to behave with personal integrity (words and actions aligned) while your organizational systems also need to have integrity in order to support consistency, efficiency and legal business practices.

In today’s business environment where companies want to increase employee trust and productivity to stay competitive, it is important that leaders look at their end-to-end recruitment process with the intention of ensuring it has behavioral and systemic integrity. This begins from the origin point of creating a job posting, through interviewing, the offer phase, hiring phase, onboarding and including the first several months of employment.

Early in my career, I joined a phenomenal company that had high integrity in its people and organizational systems. It was U.S. based and operationally aligned with its international parent company known for its employer brand quality and employee centric organizational business practices. Resume screening was done by trained recruiters, humans who actually called you up and spoke with you directly about your experience. All employees who interviewed candidates had been trained and each had distinct roles in the process and the debriefing meeting afterward. At the job offer phase – candidates received job descriptions in addition to offer letters. They were told how their position would be measured for performance, how the bonus program worked, and told why they were being offered the amount that they were.

The formal new hire onboarding was a full week long and started with the site executive, or the CEO if he was in town, telling the history of the company and clarifying the business strategy and mission. During that week, new hires learned how their jobs aligned to the company’s strategy and they were given their individual goals and objectives and an understanding of when the performance review cycle would be in relation to their start date. They learned about every product and service the company sold regardless of their position. They learned how the company operated including internal processes, policies, available resources and the expectation that employees give feedback about anything that caused them discomfort during their employment. If a new hire was a new manager, they went through Manager training in addition to the week of new hire onboarding.

Every step of the recruitment process through initial onboarding was consciously designed and purposefully scheduled in order to set every new hire up for success. Leaders and employees alike were proud of how they operated their company and it showed through the integrity of their words with their actions. After new hires were onboarded, they knew they could expect to have regular meetings with their managers to have ongoing conversations about job performance against goals, and how they felt the team could support them and their continued development.

It was rewarding working there because I had a great place to work and when I was recruiting, I had a great workplace and management team to ‘sell’ candidates on. I knew new hires would get what we sold them during the interview process because of the integrity embedded in the entire employee experience. That company and the experience I had there with high integrity people and organizational systems, set the bar real high for me early in my career. I know that companies can have exceptional employee experiences because I have lived it.

Fast forward to today and I can tell you many stories from job seekers and employees I’ve worked with where they experienced a large gap from what they were sold in the interview process and what they received. The bitter taste that a perceived ‘Bait and Switch’ creates for a new hire typically erodes their ability to trust or feel a sense of loyalty to either their manager or the company and lessens the amount of productivity they have or even shortens their employment all together.

RECRUITERS

Many recruiters don’t know the hiring manager’s personality or management style, so they can’t speak to it with candidates. Those same recruiters don’t always know the inner workings of the departmental the open position is in, so without knowing that dynamic – they don’t fully know what kind of unique traits and talent is needed for that team. They only have the job posting and the manager’s ‘wish list’ to go by, so they do their best to find a match. Then, there is the fact that many recruiters are measured by ‘time to hire’ metrics – so they just want to get a warm butt in a chair. It doesn’t make them bad people, but it does reflect a process that lacks integrity.

HIRING MANAGERS

Hiring Managers change their minds a lot. Typically, after talking to multiple candidates, what they are looking for changes. They learn from the first couple interviews, they want new or different experience, or skills in their ideal candidate; but, neither they nor the recruiter update the job posting to reflect the changes. They also don’t change their interview questions or update the interview team that what they want has changed. So, by the time they hire someone, the job duties and qualifications for the position have changed but the chosen candidate has no idea. The new hire joins the company only to find the job is not what they agreed to. Again – this is a point of breakdown in a process that shows a lack of people and system integrity.

Having studied and worked to influence human behavior and organizational systems integrity for decades, I know that the turnover resulting from a perceived ‘Bait and Switch” is completely avoidable. Putting the right talent in the right chair is achievable as is increasing a new hire’s trust – AND it takes work to create behavioral and systemic integrity. I also know that company leaders have to agree to spending the time and money it takes to ensure their people and systems reflect a level of professionalism, quality and effectiveness that is integrity.

In other articles, I have highlighted that employee engagement and productivity is all discretionary. Therefore, if you want increased engagement, you have to be mindful of the equation I have presented below. If you set expectations high with your employer brand statements, your stated values and the perception candidates have of how you operate your company – but then the integrity of your recruitment process falls short of that, you will lose talent. You may even lose future hires because people who’ve had bad experiences talk about them.

It’s important to know during a new hire’s onboarding process – within days and weeks of hire – 1) what their expectations were when they took the position and 2) if they received what they were sold during the recruitment process. If there is a gap between the two things, the company is at risk for flat out losing the new hire to self-ejection soon after hire OR the new hire staying but never really engaging deeply into the position or company based on their recruitment experience. Over time, as the company surveys new hires and current employees about their employment experience with their manager, the company and its organizational systems, their feedback is critical to reflecting the level of the discretionary effort they are choosing to give. Pay attention.

[P.S. I would have stayed at that high integrity company forever but due to its success, it was acquired by its competition who bought them to get their products off the market and had no desire to keep employees. Everyone, including me, at the site were let go.]

People Matter in Business.

Cindy Goyette, SPHR, MAOM, CC – cindygoyette.com 2025

By Coach Cindy

Another Overlooked Talent Pool

July 7, 2025 | Talent Management | No Comments

Having recruited for so much of my career, it pains me to see yet another viable talent pool get overlooked because of inaccurate assumptions on the part of recruiters and hiring managers. I am talking about entrepreneurial people in the form of previous small business owners and self-employed independent contractors and consultants.

Many years ago, when I was formally taught by seasoned HR leaders and executive recruiters how to read resumes and source talent, I was told to pass on considering any business owners, independent contractors and/or consultants for positions I was recruiting for. Their reasoning was that these candidates were deemed problematic because they didn’t have ‘real’ jobs and as an employer, we couldn’t verify the work they actually did, how they performed in their jobs or verify their income level like we could with applicants who had ‘real’ jobs in ‘real’ companies.

Fast forward to today and unfortunately many recruiters and hiring managers STILL limit their options for exploring this pool of highly employable talent. So, where does this leave the brave entrepreneurial people who left corporate America to see if they could make it as a business owner/entrepreneur/solopreneur and now for a myriad of reasons want to get back in? Why do corporations disregard talented people who had the guts to try something that is super hard to do and who may have failed? Haven’t we learned that failure is an outcome of risk taking, creativity and it reflects that these individuals are potentially more innovative?

WHY THEY LEFT

In my research as to why most small business owners, independent contractors and/or consultants left the corporate world in the first place, the answer is usually for one of a couple reasons:

Entrepreneurial spirit – they felt compelled to ‘try it’, they had family members or friends who’d done it, and they were just curious to see if they had what it took to own and run a business,
Caring for family/loved ones – either by choice or necessity, they left to stay at home caring for babies, children or aging family; and, while doing so, built a small business to receive an income or intellectual stimulation or both.
Traumatic/negative work experience – they experienced something that was enough to catapult them out on their own to accept contract work in their area of expertise. These experiences include bad bosses, bullies, discrimination, harassment, and/or ethical dilemmas where the company leadership or direct bosses expected them to do something against their personal values or ethics.

A majority of the people I spoke to who become independent contractors and consultants left corporate jobs because of this third reason. They became disillusioned by poor leadership, unethical business practices, or toxic corporate cultures where harassment and discrimination were negatively affecting their physical or mental health that they felt they had to leave.

WHY THEY WANT BACK IN

In recent years, my professional network has become more of a 60/40 split of corporate people and entrepreneurial types, so I asked some of the latter to give me their insights about why they want to get back into corporate jobs? Here are the top 3 reasons I heard over and over:

Business ownership is a HARD, all-consuming 24/7 job. The truth is – it’s hard to create a viable business on your own. Statistics show that more small business fail than are successful. As much as employees in corporate jobs think they don’t have work-life balance, small business owners and independent contractors have even less.
The kid(s) have grown, or the ailing family member passed away, and they are now seeking personal and professional growth that they put on hold while caring for others.
Time away from corporate life has given them time to heal from the trauma they may have experienced, the health issues they experienced healed and they feel they still have a depth of talent they want to apply to solve business problems.
It’s LONELY. If you’ve done your own thing, you realize you spend large amounts of time alone. Human beings who have personality types that need to be with other people, crave interaction and overall camaraderie don’t make great solopreneurs or contractors.

Regardless of the reason why they left – the sad fact is that there doesn’t appear to be a clear ‘in’ to a lot of companies today. Recruiters and hiring managers don’t appear to know how to translate the work a business owner has done to job postings and/or a company’s applicant tracking systems (ATS) is not able to match their skills to keywords. The irony is – today’s corporations are seeking the very strengths and abilities that entrepreneurial people have and the two parties are not effectively connecting.

Here’s what else they bring to the table:

Passion – if aligned to an inspirational business strategy and aspirational leader(s)
Creative, out-of-the-box thinking – ability to mount obstacles and find solutions to a variety of business problems
Courage – to work hard at bringing an idea, product or service to fruition and make money doing it
Tireless work ethic – they don’t know what a 40-hour work week is!
Strategic AND tactical work style – no job is beneath them – i.e. chief cook and bottle washer
Business acumen – they ‘get it’ when it comes to understanding business strategy
Tenacity – they don’t give up easily
They know the value of money – these people are bootstrappers and frugal! They’ll treat corporate money like it’s theirs
They have learned their limits – they realize they need others with complementary skills to be successful – they are great subject matter experts but not great sales people
They have failed and kept going – so they’re humble
They are a grateful bunch. Give a previous business owner PAID vacation, partially paid medical benefits and free lunches and they will be THANKFUL (unlike job seekers who have grown entitled, ungrateful and who just expect all the paid benefits that companies now provide.)

And, btw – they don’t want to ‘run YOUR business!’ This is the biggest misconception of all with previous business owners. They proved to themselves they no longer wanted to run a business so they aren’t a threat to your job. Instead, they can appreciate what leaders and managers are going through and can provide unique perspective, if you ask them.

Hiring for job fit and culture fit considers not only qualifications and experience; but also how candidates are wired, their attitudes, beliefs and motivations to see if they are aligned with your company’s. The goal is always to balance both of those to find the right talent. The more your employee’s feel a sense of purpose and belonging the more they apply their discretionary effort the work they are given. Don’t you want these entrepreneurial attributes in YOUR company?

People Matter in Business.

Cindy Goyette, SPHR, MAOM, CC – cindygoyette.com 2025

By Coach Cindy

Why Job Hopper Mentality No Longer Serves Us

July 7, 2025 | Talent Management | No Comments

About a year ago, I was shamed in an interview by the CEO of a start-up. At first, based on their aggressive delivery and word choice, I felt I was being tested to see if I could stand up to this person. I have worked with plenty of influential executives who have varying levels of self-awareness in my 25+ year HR career, and for that reason, I have thick skin to these types of egos and outbursts. This one seemed to like using intimidation tactics as a way to screen candidates. And, in that moment, I was being shamed for appearing to be a ‘risk’ to hire because I have changed employers multiple times during the second half of my career.

I was once again reminded that an age-old bias is still alive making companies overlook talented professionals. Inexperienced recruiters and hiring managers see a laundry list of jobs on a resume and they assume that 1. you got fired or 2. you leave jobs because you aren’t engaged. They see it as something is wrong with YOU. However, everyone who has had more than one job knows there is a number 3 which I will label as ‘Other’ for now. [Spoiler alert #3 is about something being wrong with THEM.]

As an experienced recruiter, HR professional and career coach – I know how my job history appears to people who are still have bias and make sweeping assumptions about job hopping and its negative connotations. Like many candidates with short stints in positions, I cannot control the fact that I was laid off after acquisitions, that small companies or start-ups went bankrupt, or even that contracts end once project work is completed. And, like many candidates, I choose to admit that a couple of those same positions were in toxic cultures with illegal business practices that I could no longer work in.

It is not new information that many reasons exist as to why people leave jobs including: toxic cultures, bully bosses, favoritism, bait-and-switch jobs (i.e. not getting the job that was advertised and being stuck with work they don’t want to do or know how to do), lack of onboarding and job training, lack of resources to do the job, too much overtime being required and without pay, illegal business practices or policies, leaders who don’t walk the talk, etc. etc. And, regardless of the reason — length of time in a job has no correlation with extent of a candidate’s qualifications, credentials or performance outcomes in the jobs they had while they lasted. (Read that last sentence again.)

The problem is, some recruiters and hiring managers use the excuse that candidates are job hoppers to weed you out instead of admitting they don’t know whether their company is ethical in all of its business practices, has managers who are bullies, or runs in a way that won’t challenge your morals. Yes, candidates are blamed and shamed for reason number 3 which is Something was wrong with THEM (the company they left.) And by inference – the company screening you out as a job hopper believes you will find fault in them so they are just circumventing you being a problem. They don’t want to be held accountable by people who may threaten their level of ethics or expect them to behave to certain moral standards.

Those who know me know I will forever be touting culture fit and job fit as two of the most important factors to productivity, job satisfaction and employment longevity. If a hiring manager advertises a job and those job duties are not what the new hire gets once employed – it creates distrust from the get-go. If the company says it values honesty but interviewers can’t accept a candidates’ truth about why they left their last job, the words they use to describe their culture are obviously not lived values and instead hollow words – again creating distrust from the get-go for a new hire. In either scenario, the new hire thinks, ‘What else was not truthful during the interview?’, they never truly engage and eventually leave.

How does choosing to stand up for oneself by creating healthy boundaries and having an ethical and moral compass make a qualified candidate not employable?? That’s what it comes down to. And if time in the job is one of a company’s primary data points to screen out qualified candidates, and its an internal business practice to not consider candidates who have been in jobs for less than 3 years, as an example, just say so. Put it out there. It’s not illegal to do or say, it just limits the company from considering what could be highly qualified candidates who just had some bad luck. Without it, it just wastes time of candidates thinking they will be considered because they meet the qualifications and time of recruiters screening resumes when according to the company, the job hopper doesn’t have a chance in hell of being considered.

I have taught recruiters and hiring managers best practices for recruitment for most of my career and these kinds of biases and assumptions are not only unprofessional but they aren’t based in fact. I know this because I have helped self-aware hiring managers and leaders hire what appeared to be job hoppers who went on to be long standing, productive employees who lived out their careers in companies.

I have also coached hundreds of people in their careers and a Cindy-ism many people have heard from me is ‘You have to be able to live in your own skin if you are going to be the best version of you at work.’ If your company or your manager expects you to line up to managers, work practices, systems or policies you don’t believe in or can’t support – that misalignment will stress you out and possibly make you physically sick. If you take a job that was advertised because you have experience doing that; but, you end up being given completely different job tasks that you don’t know how to do – that misalignment will stress you out and possibly make you physically sick. None of those allow you to be the best version of yourself at work.

As leaders, if we want sustainable companies, it’s our job to build and run ethical businesses, create leadership teams of experienced and self-aware leaders who provide clear direction, create accountable workplaces, support wellness and diversity, provide challenging work and reward achievements toward goals. In addition, we have to have hard conversations, too. We need to assess the integrity of our daily business practices and policies, make hard decisions and weed out low performers, bullies and pot stirrers whose negative behaviors erode the values and positive behaviors we strive to model and reinforce in order to make great workplaces.

I believe that humans are on the planet to use our natural and learned talents for good. No employee should stay in a job or a company if they feel bullied or abused by their manager or coworkers, are asked to take part in activities that are outside of their moral boundaries, or anything that can be construed as an illegal business practice. And, leaders – when they tell you these things are happening in employee surveys, and eventually exit interviews, LISTEN to what they are saying and do something to change the behaviors and internal organizational systems that are driving employees away.

Now, to close out my initial story…

After I briefly explained my recent work history choices, the interviewing CEO said, “Well, I give you credit for knowing what you want and don’t want in your next job. And for not staying in job or a company you disliked LIKE MOST PEOPLE DO.” [Yes, they actually said that.] And to drive their point one more time, they went on to say that hiring me ‘might make them look bad to their Board of Directors.’ There was their truth. Something was wrong with THEM and they admitted it. When our conversation was over, I actually felt sorry for the person.

I know that self-aware leaders hire smart, driven and talented people and engage them with challenging work, so they won’t resign and leave their company. I know self-aware leaders surround themselves with people who are going to challenge them to make them better and not just tell them what they want to hear. And I know that self-aware leaders know that length of time in a job has no correlation with extent of a person’s qualifications, credentials or performance outcomes in the jobs they had while they lasted.

Self-aware leaders also listen to the advice they give others, and nobody is going to shame me for being me. I MATTER – and so do you.

People Matter in Business.

Cindy Goyette, SPHR, MAOM, CC – cindygoyette.com 2025

By Coach Cindy

The core of Business is Humans; the core of Human Resources is Data

July 7, 2025 | Organizational Effectiveness | No Comments

Throughout my career, I’ve asked thousands of employees and managers what they think the primary function of HR is in their business. Most have told me one of two things 1) to find and hire talent, OR 2) to defend management and to police employee behaviors (which includes firing people). Oh, and I should say, the third runner up would be 3) to pay employees.

From my perspective, after 25+ years in Human Resources operations, the job of HR even before serving managers and employees in the ways stated above is to be stalwart stewards of employee data. In addition, to share the necessary parts of that same HR data to other company functions (finance, IT, business ops, etc.) so leaders can make business decisions, analyze labor costs for purposes of profit and loss, pay employees, and measure human productivity and organizational performance.

As part of their stewardship, every HR person should put the utmost priority on data integrity to ensure it always reflects the truth. In several companies I’ve worked for, we talked about our HR data as “the one source of truth” and painstakingly ensured we centralized, in one repository, all information that had initially been in multiple places, hard copy files, or disparate systems. As HR departments have transitioned from manual, paper-based processes to implementing HR information systems/platforms to automate activities – the goal is to remove potential human data entry errors but also to ensure data integrity. In contrast, if the HR team is not rigorous in its handling of its critical data – making it inaccurate at its core – the HR department loses credibility in the business that can be difficult to win back.

Anyone who has read my blogs or articles before, knows I like a good origin story. I believe in all things that you must learn how they began so you can best apply that history to the change you are about to cause when you implement the solution to a problem.

Prior to the invention of electronic HR Information Systems (aka HRIS), all of a company’s Human Resource data was housed in physical documents within multiple types of confidential employee records (personal employment data, recruiting, payroll, benefits, performance reviews, and other types of correspondence, etc.) Any reporting out to the business of that data was manually pulled and compiled by HR professionals mining their employee files and centralizing the data into spreadsheets and other software.

Over time, the centralized data repository HR had created – whether on a hard drive or one of the initial electronic HR systems – became critical and highly valuable to the business and still is today. During mergers and acquisition events, it was a usual practice for the acquiring company to request all the hard copy HR document files be sent to ‘headquarters.’ Then those documents would be painstakingly scanned to ensure all the historic employee information and data changes were captured for record-keeping compliance purposes and legal defensibility if needed. By owning this critical aspect of the business operations, Human Resources was elevated from being mere administrative file keepers to being the strategic service and data providers that it always has been regardless of whether business leaders initially saw it that way. HR ‘owns’ the data related to the most expensive line item on a company’s General Ledger – its employees. That’s a pretty serious responsibility!

While historically, employees have always had the right to request access to their employee data file contents, in recent years, global data privacy laws, the expansion of pay transparency laws, and employee litigation for unfair employment practices has put heightened attention on the very information HR is steward of. The onus continues to be on the HR department to be able to produce all of the historic changes to employee data and all other forms of documentation from the beginning of their employment, if requested. And legal, financial or compliance authorities don’t care if it is in physical form or electronic in nature – they just care if it is thorough and accurate with dates, reasons and approvals. That includes every type of data change that can occur – which are many. And whether employees, people managers, or HR people initiate the data changes, each of those changes need to have a justifiable business reason and appropriate approvals. And for those reasons, it is why over the last few decades HR departments, large and small, have chosen to install and/or upgrade HR Information Systems with automated workflows in them so there are clear steps and accountabilities along an electronic trail, and data changes are consistently handled every time.

Again, the core responsibility of every HR department is data related to nearly all aspects of the people working for the business. Because of its importance, if you don’t have experienced HR professionals on your team that have a full spectrum of HR operations knowledge and HR systems design experience, you have a problem. Ownership of your HR data is an inside job. Remember my comment about compliance and legal defensibility? You don’t want to leave any responsibilities for your data accuracy to an external vendor. If your core data is inaccurate due to flawed recordkeeping, lack of compatibility to other systems, poor data transfers that left out key information, lack of established processes and documentation, lack of data fields needed to collect the necessary data you are required to keep – you have a BIGGER problem because pointing to the vendor you bought your system from is not a legal defense.

During my career in corporate HR and HR consulting, I have been actively involved with M&A integrations and many HR transformation initiatives because HR departments have been moving from paper to electronic platforms for decades as the focus on HR data has become more elevated and acute. And what I have found makes or breaks these sometimes massive change management events – is the state of the data prior to a system implementation, the competency of the individuals who comprise the project team, and the combined understanding of all parties with what the current state HR operations is in relation to what HR Information Systems are capable of automating. A mismatch of what work is actually done by the HR team members to the HR system functionality can be detrimental to a successful choice being made and an implementation going smoothly.

Some examples I have seen of flawed HRIS implementations include:

No connection between the HRIS to the General Ledger because finance and accounting were not involved in the system selection or design. That glaring error negatively affected payroll processing, labor costing activities, financial reporting and required a lot of manual manipulations of data outside the system – which made data accuracy and compliance tricky.
Separate modules of an HRIS being installed one at a time (ATS, Compensation, Performance Management, Payroll, etc.) because the company was too cheap to implement the whole system at once. By doing so, without using the whole system as it was designed, the HR team became reliant on manual workarounds so as new modules were installed, not all of the team members adopted the system changes – which made consistency tricky.
One system did not have the functionality needed to automate some of the company’s compensation programs. This was a mismatch to system needs and system functionality. And it meant the company’s pay programs were all calculated manually on spreadsheets outside of the system that should have been able to do the calculations leaving important activities open to human interpretation and errors – which made data accuracy tricky.
And last but not least, a system where project team members did not have a clear understanding of what data fields should be used, what data would go in them and what business functions would ‘own’ them. By using a limited amount of available data fields, it caused significant issues when data was transferred from an old HR system because the former had more data fields than the new database. The outcome resulted in the team losing pertinent HR data in the transfer. This meant the new system was already flawed at set-up because widely known HR and finance related data fields were not there from the beginning. Also due to the lack of proper data fields, some existing ones were inappropriately connected to other aspects of the database causing complex data issues to occur when mass data changes were made – which again made data accuracy tricky.

I could tell you MANY more (horror) stories about the millions of dollars in sunk costs related to poorly chosen HR systems, systems that were sound choices for the business but improperly implemented, and even extreme cases where a system had to be completely scrapped and replaced. None of these scenarios are optimal if your business is relying on HR to provide ‘the one source of truth’ and you can’t provide it.

The HR Information System you choose can make or break your HR team’s success and ability to provide critical data to the business. The one you choose should not be taken lightly, not only because of cost, but because your business is relying on it. And please note that I said, ‘the one.’ If you haven’t already surmised by my commentary that you need to commit to a wholistic solution, I will say it again. After working in HR departments at the beginning of my career that had to creatively mine data out of disparate hardcopy files and electronic systems; and, after seeing many other HR departments deploy separate HR tools one at a time that didn’t effectively speak to each other – look at full solutions (i.e. comprehensive and covering end-to-end HR activities).

As you look to purchase, you need to include not only subject matter experts from each subfunction of the HR team (TA, HR Ops, Comp, Benefits, Payroll, T&D); but, also representatives of the other business functions in the company when doing system due diligence, product evaluations and making decisions. Then, research the origin story of every system you evaluate because, no two HR systems are 100% alike. If you do not know, there are HR systems whose origin stories include starting out as 1) a finance system that now includes HR functionality; 2) a payroll processing system that expanded to include HR functionality; 3) an ERP that expanded to include HR specific functionality; 4) others that were created specifically to perform 1 aspect of HR, for example, performance management, that were bought by other tech companies who bundled a bunch of separate HRIS products together as their solution, and 5) some that were designed from the beginning to do all end-to-end HR activities and easily connect with the surrounding business systems.

I am not here to pitch a specific product so don’t ask me what HR system I prefer or would recommend because my answer is ‘it depends.’ Every HR department is different. While there are general responsibilities that most HR departments have in common, no two companies have the same HR support model because of their unique company culture, how the entire business is organized, and what type(s) of product or service the company sells. You need to choose the HR system that 1) aligns with what your company does/sells, and 2) the other business systems it operates with beyond your HR function. And then, it has to align with 3) how your HR department is set up to support the company (i.e. decentralized, COE model, etc.) and 4) it should have the functionality that allows for all of the activities your HR department is asked to perform.

I have always said, “Employees don’t show up to work to suck at their jobs.” Their productivity is discretionary and when you give them poor tools and systems that make their work harder, they are frustrated and unproductive (and some will eventually leave your employ due to it). In a HR department that should be focused on providing quality data to the business AND serving the employees that make the products and services your company sells – it is important to get this key system right.

People Matter in Business

Cindy Goyette, SPHR, MAOM, CC – cindygoyette.com 2024

By Coach Cindy

Hiring Managers: Your Talent is out there but your ATS is working against your recruiting efforts

July 7, 2025 | Talent Management | No Comments

Why you should read resumes and talk to more candidates

Ahhh…the Applicant Tracking System (aka ATS)…while its’ invention was initially meant to help Recruiters weed out unqualified candidates in order to save their time – that same ATS is also removing a whole lot of qualified candidates before you even see them. Instead of buying into the narrative that there is a shortage of qualified candidates out there (which is NOT true) — you need to proactively expand the parameters of your ATS. What also needs to happen is that Recruiters and you, Hiring Managers, need to READ more resumes instead of letting flawed AI in your ATS decrease your options.

Here’s a short list of the MANY problems:

Resumes are marketing tools and NOT a full accounting of someone’s work experience
No candidate is ever going to write the exact verbiage in their resume that is a match to your job posting so your ATS rules them out
Key words that your ATS matches on ASSUME that all businesses use the same titles for their jobs and that people describe their work experiences in the same way – which is FAR from reality
Someone may have a college degree that is relevant in what the curriculum taught them; but, because the degree name is not an exact match to the job posting, they are being weeded out
Your ATS may be calculating length of job experience which can weed out candidates due to their age which is discriminatory (AI regulation in hiring is on the rise in several states)
Your ATS may be weeding out candidates because of time gaps in employment without anyone talking to them directly to understand the cause of gaps

When I was taught how to read a resume, (yes – I was actually taught how!) I was shown how to see the patterns in a person’s job history, job titles and types of companies they worked for. And by a combination of those and other data points shared on the resume, whether they were qualified to do the work I was screening resumes for. It takes human beings with competence and understanding of the connection between particular titles in particular industries and what candidates likely ‘know’ based on those things, and how the size and types of companies they’ve worked in impact their scope of work and level of authority in those positions as well.

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for using LOGIC and TECHNOLOGY as a way to keep a level of objectivity when screening large amounts of resumes. But, the fact that most ATS measure job gaps as a thing in this day and age is always weeding out potentially great talent that you need to review. You can only learn what happened in that gap by TALKING to the candidate, but if your ATS is allowed to ASSUME that the time gap was a negative and should be used against the candidate, you as a Hiring Manager are missing out on seeing resumes of a lot of talent.

While I shouldn’t have to write the obvious about employment gaps, I will. People get laid off even when they are good and even great employees and high performers. As a 25+ year senior HR professional who did a lot of M&A in the first half of my career, I was part of laying off large amounts of talent and the closure of several job sites, so I speak from experience when I say – it happens. I’ve had to involuntarily terminate hundreds of high performers. And, besides layoffs and downsizing, people sometimes need a mental health break between jobs, or they unexpectedly have to be caregivers, or they stop working to have families, or to pursue a college degree, or their own business.

Aside from those who were involuntarily cut due to layoffs or those who live paycheck-to- paycheck, most people leaving an employer have a reason, or several reasons. Departing employees are always walking, or even running, away from something (i.e. they hated their job, their boss, the hours they were expected to work, the pay increase they didn’t get, a change in leadership, the lack of appreciation they felt, or some experience related to discrimination, bullying, unethical behavior, etc.). Even when you recruit passive candidates, they take your phone call because a new opportunity offers them something they are missing in their current job/company. If they truly loved their current situation – they would not have taken your call. Period.

Why some Recruiters and Hiring Managers still care about candidates having an employment gap is ludicrous. Shouldn’t the fact that candidates had time to rest, get their head and life in order, be more grateful and maybe even be eager to use their talents to solve your business problems be why you screen them IN to your pool of candidates? Your ATS may be screening out talent you need based on the wrong assumptions. It is highly likely it is.

It takes human beings to DISCERN whether candidates are truly qualified or not because the people writing resumes are flawed. There are many positions where qualified candidates could come from other industries, but they don’t use the same terminology when describing their work experience – so your ATS filters them out. With many of those same jobs, there are tons of TRANSFERRABLE SKILLS that make candidates qualified for your open job but they are being overlooked by ATS AI because the AI is just matching key words not comprehending what skills are transferrable. It also takes human beings to ensure that the ATS is not making decisions that result in discriminatory hiring practices on behalf of your company because EEO compliance is still expected with or without the use of technology.

If you are a Hiring Manager, you need to work with your Recruiter(s) to actively participate in deciding what criteria the ATS is screening your candidates IN and OUT for. You should also have access to the ATS so that you can look at the resumes that were screened out because they weren’t formatted the best or didn’t have the necessary keywords. The talent you seek is out there – and your active participation in the resume and candidate screening process is important.

People Matter in Business.

Cindy Goyette, SPHR, MAOM – cindygoyette.com 2023

By Coach Cindy

Employee Productivity is about Discretionary Effort

July 7, 2025 | Talent Management | No Comments

I was reading Gallup’s 2022 report about Employee Engagement and it said ’employees who are not engaged or who are actively disengaged cost the world $7.8 trillion in lost productivity, according to their State of the Global Workplace: 2022 Report. That’s equal to 11% of global GDP.’

We all know engaged employees are productive employees and we know why engagement matters but what are you doing about it as a leader in your company?

When I wrote the 10 Simple Truths about People series, the issues employees were having with their employers weren’t hugely different than they are today aside from what COVID-19 did to the location of where people now work. SIMPLE TRUTH #6 is Employees want to be heard and understood. Keep reading to understand how this relates to employee productivity.

As leaders communicating all types of information to your company, please know your people, in return, want to communicate with YOU. They want to give you input and feedback based on their perspectives. However, in order to have the ongoing dialogue your employees expect, you need to be receptive to hearing what they have to say and be prepared to make behavioral and/or operational changes needed to address their concerns. Your employees’ beliefs, thoughts and actions have a direct impact on your company’s bottom line. The closer you are to understanding the daily activities, conversations and beliefs of your people, the more effectively you can manage expectations and lead the business. The further removed you are from the collective ‘pulse’ of your people, the higher the chance your company has low productivity due to misaligned activity, waste of resources and frustrated employees disengage.

EMPLOYEES WANT TO BE HEARD

Because your employees hold the key to productivity, business improvement, innovation, and ultimately, the profits of your company, you need to provide ways for them to speak to you and to be heard. Not providing avenues to hear from employees, limits your ability to learn useful information, process improvements and other creative ideas they have to share. Besides that, you hire smart, talented, insightful people who want to be involved and who know how to solve your business problems – you should be tapping into your valuable investment and largest cost to your company.

Stay interviews have been around for nearly 10 years now and still few companies are doing them. These are when you interview current employees and solicit feedback you need to hear while these talented people are still working for you (i.e. “what is working?” “NOT working?” etc.) The resulting data is more useful and relevant to improving your organization and/or addressing concerns than if you wait to do an Exit Interview with someone who has resigned and is soon leaving your company. The stay interview is concerned with keeping great talent by giving leaders and managers a chance to address potential issues in real-time. The more popular Exit Interview is retrospective and doesn’t help you keep a talented employee who is walking away.

The second half of SIMPLE TRUTH #6 is harder to accomplish but worth the effort if you intend to keep high performers, increase productivity and ultimately – profits. In order to show you understand your employees, you first need to know what they expect.

EMPLOYEES WANT TO BE UNDERSTOOD

What employees expect from their employer is not the same across the board. Read that again because it’s important. Your employees all come to work for your company for different reasons. And, over the course of each person’s employment with your company, those reasons change priority as time passes and their career evolves. It is important for you to understand what I call – employment variables – that both potential and current employees make their work and life decisions based on. Psychologists usually refer to them as tangible and intangible benefits or rewards. They include, but are not limited to:

Company culture (behavioral expectations, values)
Company mission
Job content
Job title/level
Manager quality (leadership ability and job competence)
Ability to learn and grow (both formal and informal Training & Development)
Clear career path (line of sight of how to get promoted)
Up-to-date tools and technology (resources to be successful)
Caliber of team members
Compensation (fair market value)
Benefits (medical, paid time off, 401k match, etc.)
Job location (length of commute, if applicable)
Physical work environment (if going to an office)
Financial stability of company
Company’s diversity, equity & inclusion initiatives
Company’s actions re: giving back – philanthropy, the environment
Etc.

Whether they’re candidates interviewing for a position, or current employees, people base their employment decisions and discretionary efforts on a combination of the employment variables listed above that are important to them. On a regular basis, they review those variables and determine whether they want to spend their time and energy (discretionary effort) contributing to their job and the company for which they work. Thinking “is it still worth my time?” They continually gauge if they are getting what they expect from their company and their resulting engagement (productivity) reflects where they are. While you control many things in your company, discretionary effort on the part of your employees is the one thing they control that you don’t.

Here’s how it looks: Ed Employee is a top performer. His top 3 employment variables are job location, caliber of team members and compensation. Some of his teammates have recently left to work for other companies, his recent pay increase wasn’t what he expected and didn’t reflect his high performance rating, and company leadership announced it is moving the office 20 miles from its current location – further from Ed’s home. For these reasons, Ed is now an unhappy employee. His level of engagement decreased because his current reality is out of sync with his expectations. Ed’s manager will probably see a change in his attitude and behavior including absenteeism – and Ed will likely pursue new employment making his productivity lower as well until he accepts a new job and leaves.

Another example is Susie Star, also a top performer in a growing start-up. Her top 3 employment variables are Manager quality, tools/resources, and company benefits. She is mid-career and needs a manager who has deep work experience and subject matter expertise to teach her some of her job responsibilities that are new to her. The company is funded but spending is not equitable across departments at this time. And while it has basic benefits, saving for retirement is important to her but the company has a 1 year waiting period to contribute to its 401k. Unfortunately, her manager just gave notice and is leaving in 2 weeks, the budget for her to get the new software she needs to do her job effectively has been put on hold; and, HR informed her that company leadership was not willing to lessen the wait period for 401k enrollment this year to allow employees to begin contributing prior to their one-year anniversary of employment. For these reasons, high energy Susie has now turned sour towards her situation. Her productivity (discretionary effort) has immediately lessened while she decides if she will stay with the company given the changes or look for a position somewhere else.

THE ENGAGEMENT EQUATION

Employee Expectations – Current Reality (What They’ve Received) = ENGAGEMENT

In order to more fully understand employee expectations and the variables impacting their engagement, leaders and managers need to solicit different information than what current employee satisfaction and engagement surveys measure. Surveys and internal interviews need to ask: Of this list of Employment Variables, which are your top 3-5? Then, on a regular basis managers & HR should be asking: “What have you received in relation to that same list?” These questions, in addition, to the usual ones like: “What could be improved for you to be more engaged?” and “How satisfied are you with your benefits?” will result in better data.

If you’ve read my articles before, you know a Cindy-ism is – ‘People don’t come to work to suck at their jobs.’ They come to work expecting to be successful and do something meaningful with their time and energy. However, if they don’t get what they need to be successful from your company (i.e. the tools/resources, training, a Manager with the right amount of experience, or there aren’t policies or programs that support their values and needs of belonging) your employees will not produce at a high level.

If you understand my equation and apply it to how you measure engagement you have a better chance of increasing productivity. Remember: company profits are a result of human behavior. Your employees’ behaviors either help – or hinder – business activities that lead to increased, or decreased productivity, customer satisfaction, product/service innovation – and ultimately profits.

Company profits are a result of human behavior. Your employees’ behaviors either help, or hinder, business activities that lead to increased or decreased productivity, customer satisfaction, product/service innovation – and ultimately profits. ~ Cindy Goyette, SPHR

The more you understand the individual expectations of your employees, the more effectively you can lead. When you start asking the right questions, your employees will know you, in earnest, want to understand them. When you then change things within your organization based on their feedback, your employees will know they are being heard. This SIMPLE TRUTH is important to them — and your company profits reflect it.

People Matter in Business.

Cindy Goyette, SPHR, MAOM, CC – cindygoyette.com 2022

By Coach Cindy

How I helped my ex get his Dream Job at the PGA Tour (It’s about transferrable skills, people)

July 7, 2025 | Talent Management | No Comments

When my ex-husband and I were selling his business and getting divorced, we made a conscious effort to end things in a positive way, showing respect to each other and the 7 years we were married. Eight years earlier, he and his family had asked me to quit my paying job to manage operations of the business he and his father co-owned after the father had become incapacitated from cancer causing him to go into a coma. At the time, I reticently accepted the challenge and without a lot of transition time, I became an employer and business leader overnight. And because neither of my undergrad degrees were in business, you might imagine I was petrified.

My ex had been a paramedic prior to becoming the primary medical examiner in the paramedic exam firm they owned. He and his dad had been operating their franchise of a national company for about 10 years when I met him. He had a friendly, approachable demeanor and was quick to help anyone in need. During the four years we worked in the business together, we talked about how we saw our lives after business ownership. His dream job was to be a golf pro and work for the PGA Tour.

The medical exam business required early morning starts and sporadic scheduling of appointments, so my ex was able to spend time getting in at least 9 holes of golf on a regular basis. And we lived in Colorado where it’s sunny most of the year – so the great weather provided lots of opportunity for him to golf. When his father eventually died of cancer, the sale of the business was eminent. My ex did not want to do it alone and I was not willing to continue running their business indefinitely given that I was dispassionate about the work. In addition, our marriage hadn’t withstood the pressure and we both wanted out of that as well.

‘So, what would it take for you to work for the PGA?’ I asked. He gave me a list of qualifications that included:

Being a scratch golfer (player ability),
Having the ability to teach golf, provide instruction to different levels of students
Being able to successfully run the multi-faceted operation of a Pro Shop
Managing a variety of people in a variety of golf course related positions

That said, I had studied human behavior, motivation and leadership in college and had learned what several of my strengths were at that time. I have known how to translate skills, experience and natural ‘wiring’ of people since a young age. This is where TRANSFERRABLE SKILLS come in to play.

‘You don’t have to start at the bottom when you transition to a different job in a different industry because your work and life experience to-date comes with you.’

~ Cindy Goyette, SPHR

How could a ex-paramedic and current business owner translate his experience to get a job as a golf pro, you ask? He had the resident skills to meet most of the job qualifications. Aside from being a really good golfer, his work experience to-date translated to operating a pro shop – providing quality customer service to patrons, hiring employees, managing employee schedules, buying equipment and merchandise, overseeing equipment maintenance, dealing with emergency safety situations, etc. Not only did he have the skills, he had the personality needed to be successful as well. He was an extrovert, a charismatic ‘people person’, an early riser, a good teacher, was calm under pressure, organized, and had solid problem solving abilities, etc.

In addition to the franchise he owned, he had been a volunteer at the International, a PGA Tour golf tournament held in Colorado for several years in a row by that time. As a volunteer score observer, he had met and worked for PGA Tour personnel and learned about all the areas of operations and logistics of the annual, international event.

Given all those things, we made an agreement that if he could pass the player ability test in 3 attempts, or less, (the tests were expensive) I would figure out how to financially support him taking the tests and making the job transition while we sold the business and finalized our divorce. To ensure he could show recent work experience, after we sold the business, he got a part-time job at both a local pro shop and a golf equipment and apparel retailer. In the resume I wrote for him, I was able to link his cumulative work and life experiences to the job requirements and show the value of his transferable skills. With all his skills and attributes compiled in a strong resume, it helped his confidence in conveying his story and unique skill set. He was later able to use his golf industry connections to acquire his DREAM JOB at the PGA Tour where he has been working for the last 18 years.

The morale of this story is … making a job change to a completely different position and industry is possible. Your life and work experiences are cumulative. You don’t have to start at the bottom of the ladder when you transition to something different because your experience to-date comes with you. It helps if you are crystal clear with what you want to do, then you inventory your skills and map your previous experience to the requirements of the job.

And you need to be patient. I’ve seen some clients do the strategic job search work and immediately acquire their dream job. AND I have seen some career transitions take longer. You may need to fill in skills or education gaps that you lack in order make the change; but, regardless of which path you take – when you are aligned to the right job – it fuels you – not only energetically but financially.

I have witnessed firsthand when people’s talents are truly aligned to the right jobs, they are the BEST versions of themselves at work. High performers and the most successful employees in organizations are those who know who they are (self awareness) and what they are good/great at doing. They are passionate about what they do, and in turn, they actively help the organization they work for – be better and more profitable.

I believe that deep down, we all crave direction and connection to our life purpose and satisfying work – so when it is all said and done – we’ve made a difference in the world and our lives mattered.

People Matter in Business

Cindy Goyette, SPHR, MAOM – cindygoyette.com 2021

By Coach Cindy

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