Cornelia Gamlem of Gems Group: Five HR Strategies On How Companies Can Turn A Crisis Into An Opportunity or Advantage
An Interview With Rachel Kline
Have contingency plans in place before a crisis arises. The pandemic showed how ill-prepared most organizations were to shift their operations when things shut down. HR professionals in many organizations were tasked with coordinating the move of their organization’s teams to online and developing guidelines to maintain productivity.
As any HR leader can tell you, crises are an inevitable part of the job. Tough situations pop up, often at the least convenient times, and these situations need to be handled efficiently yet delicately. Whether it’s dealing with a new employee, wages, or internal conflict, there are ways to come out on top. How can companies learn to take a crisis and turn it into an advantage? In this interview series, we are talking to HR leaders who share their strategies about “How Companies Can Turn A Crisis Into An Opportunity or Advantage.” As part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Cornelia Gamlem.
A passion for helping organizations develop and maintain respectful workplaces is the reason why Cornelia left an HR leadership role with a Fortune 500 IT services company to start her consulting practice. That led her on a journey to becoming a speaker and author. She and her coauthor have written eight books together. You can learn more from their website, www.bigbookofhr.com.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us the “backstory” about what brought you to this specific career path?
My entrepreneurial spirit led me to start my own consulting practice after working for several corporations. I held operational HR positions prior to serving in a leadership role in a Fortune 500 company. Throughout my career, I worked and collaborated with a variety of companies across many industries, was active with employer advocacy groups, and served in national leadership volunteer roles with The Society for Human Resource Management. Along the way, I met so many wonderful colleagues, including my co-author, Barbara Mitchell. We were given a great opportunity to share our knowledge through the books we write together.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
People issues continue to challenge managers who are often confronted with tough situations and internal crises. When you combine that with all the changes in today’s workplace, it’s critical that managers handle them right. Barbara and I recently released a new book, The Decisive Manager, to help managers navigate the myriad of people issues they encounter and give them confidence to manage their teams amid the changing workplace. We describe it as a guide from hiring to firing and everything in between.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
One of my first bosses in HR, hired me as a recruiter despite my limited HR experience at the time. She assured me I could relate to the job applicants, just as I had with the managers I’d supported previously. We were talking about an employee issue she was dealing with when she said, “One day you too will have a book in your head of these experiences.” A message I took from that conversation was to be flexible and look at situations from all different aspects. I’ve always remembered that conversation, and ironically many years Barbara and I wrote the book that every HR professional has threatened to write: They Did What? Unbelievable Tales from the Workplace.
Fantastic. Thank you for that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview about HR strategies for turning a crisis into an opportunity. Can you share your story of when an organization you’ve worked at entered into a crisis? What happened? What did you do?
I was working for a government contractor and unfortunately our renewal bid for our major contract was not accepted — not unexpected in the industry. Most employees working on the contract, with the exception of some managers, were hired by the successor. Meanwhile, plans were in place for a series of other projects and smaller contracts. The crisis came when our corporate office made the decision that the plans were not enough to sustain us and decided to shut the facility down. The remaining staff, a significant number, were not prepared for the layoff.
My boss and I went into overdrive. We sponsored an internal open house with recruiters from around the company who interviewed employees interested in relocating. We did mock interviews and resume reviews with them. We also worked our networks to get our employees resumes into the hands of recruiters in other companies. I also asked and received job listings from my HR colleagues in the community and as I started sharing them, other employees followed suit with job openings they received from their networks. This was all occurring before social medium platforms were a part of our lives, but it was certainly a tribute to the value of building and maintaining professional networks.
What was your mindset during such a challenging time? Where did you get the drive to keep going when things were so hard?
As in any crisis situation, you start running on adrenaline because there’s work to do. Coordinating the events and information exchange helped me realize I could use my skills in more creative ways which fueled some of my drive. The hardest part, as in any layoff and downsizing situation, everyone turns to HR for emotional support without realizing that we are not trained therapists. Fortunately, my HR colleagues in the community were a tremendous help and source of support. And they sent HR job listings my way.
Can you please tell us how you were able to overcome such adversity and how the company ultimately turned the crisis into an opportunity or advantage? What did the next chapter look like?
The next chapter for me personally was interesting. My efforts were noticed within the community — I received a job offer and offers to interview — and within the corporation. I had the opportunity to interview for an internal job at the corporate headquarters, which I was offered and accepted, and it changed the trajectory of my career.
For the corporation, there were interesting and positive outcomes. Contract losses were not unusual, but shuttering facilities with current and potential business opportunities was. These collective experiences finally convinced the leadership that it was time to invest in outplacement services, which freed up a lot of time and alleviated a lot of stress for the HR community within the company. Our employees affected by layoffs were getting support from professionals focused on their needs. I had a role in implementing that program and working directly with the service provider.
Here is the main question of our interview: Based on your experience, can you share five actionable pieces of advice for HR leaders about How Companies Can Turn A Crisis Into An Opportunity or Advantage? (Please share a story or example for each.)
- Recognize there are potential risks, especially when implementing a new process or program, and be prepared to address any negative outcomes. As an example, organizations may conduct a pay equity audit to find and address potential gaps in pay. If large, widespread differences were to be found between the compensation of women versus men — differences not explained by controlled factors (e.g. seniority, education, experience) — the organization must address and remedy those differences, especially if it’s determined that discrimination could be the underlying cause. In this example, doing it right is an opportunity to show how important pay equity is to the organization.
- Recognize that conflict is often innovation trying to happen — an innovative product, service or solution. Consider a manager advocating for a large salary increase — well outside the standard — for an employee. He and the HR director dance around the issue and he tries meeting HR halfway as a compromise. The underlying interest, keeping a valued employee, is revealed when he finally discloses the employee may be actively looking for a new job. The solution was to invest in the employee’s development by having her represent the company at a prestigious conference and assign her to a new project giving her greater visibility in the company. Both of these positioned her for a promotion.
- Have resources in place to respond to conflicts and potential crisis, and ensure that people know about them and how to use them. Train your managers. Consider the employee displaying disruptive behavior — not showing up on time or at all, acting erratically, and making false accusations against co-workers. Not only were co-workers and customers uncomfortable, the manager, unaware of the help available from the employee assistance program, was so uneasy that he avoided confronting it. Had the situation been addressed early, it could have been quickly resolved and caused less workplace distractions. Instead, some terrible scenes took place that had a negative impact. Avoiding the problem was a missed opportunity to help an employee with a mental illness.
- Have contingency plans in place before a crisis arises. The pandemic showed how ill-prepared most organizations were to shift their operations when things shut down. HR professionals in many organizations were tasked with coordinating the move of their organization’s teams to online and developing guidelines to maintain productivity. One HR colleague had insisted on implementing Microsoft Teams well before the pandemic to improve efficiency across a geographically diverse organization. When everyone was sent home, their work continued with much less disruption because they were comfortable with using the technology.
- Learn how to recognize signs of a potential crisis. Some stark reminders of this occur after the unfortunate incidents of workplace violence when reports of disturbing comments, remarks and behavior made by the perpetrator come to light. Managers should be trained to recognize signs of troubled employees. The same is true for reading economic indicators, for example, and making appropriate adjustments to business plans.
What are a few of the most common mistakes you see leaders make when their company hits a crisis? What should be done to avoid them?
Without prior planning, resources and contingency plans like I discussed above, leaders tend to react to a crisis. Absent a proactive approach, responses are often rigid and lack creativity. Similarly, when confronted with an internal conflict, leaders and managers often don’t take the time to understand the underlying problem. The feeling of urgency that accompanies these situations can cause a failure to look at the big picture.
Organizations that foster cultures of transparency, trust, and honesty will have processes to address conflicts and crises — which often stem from internal conflicts. These processes can include having facilitated discussions for the purpose of discovering the underlying cause of the conflict. Once the cause is identified, the organization can move to processes of first brainstorming potential solutions or options to better address the cause, then evaluating each of the ideas presented to determine the most effective and realistic option for the situation. To complement these processes, have clear communication strategies and vehicles in place.
Dealing with a crisis takes a holistic approach. In planning for and confronting an actual crisis situation, it’s necessary to include a number of resources, such as HR, internal security and/or law enforcement, legal counsel, and public relations and/or internal communications team. The important thing to remember is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
What advice would you give to HR leaders and organizations who have yet to hit their first real crisis?
Expect that you’ll have to face a crisis eventually. It’s not a matter of if, but when. Be sure that your contingency plan includes taking care of your employees in the aftermath. For example, incorporate wellness training and wellness programs into your benefit offerings. They are a big factor in helping employees manage stress. To the extent you can offer flexibility in both hours worked and the ability to work from home, do so. It’s a way to alleviate stress and enhance productivity.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
I would love to see a movement based on accountability, or more specifically, taking responsibility for your actions. It is one of those things that is easier to talk about than to do. A lack of accountability is a systemic problem in our society right now.
Within the world of work, this must start at the top and flow down. Leaders have to reinforce the importance of taking responsibility by holding themselves accountable. Then they need to model that accountability to the staff. For instance, if they make an error or miss a deadline, admit it, correct it, and move on.
Leaders have to recognize their own vulnerability and the vulnerability of their teams. If mistakes occur, it’s important to acknowledge them and learn from them. Mistakes and miscommunications are opportunities to educate — for everyone in the organization to learn and grow.
At the same time, leaders must set clear expectations and provide assistance, but then follow through with consequences when expectations are not met. That’s not to say that a hardline approach is necessary. When a culture of respect exists, mistakes are treated not just as learning opportunities, but as a way for employees to be accountable.
The exception, of course, is when things don’t change once mistakes are pointed out, or mistakes that involve egregious behavior, such as harassment or discriminatory behavior. Then a more severe response is likely
How can our readers continue to follow your work online?
A link to my website is included in my bio and I invite readers to visit it. There they will find my social links a contact form, blog, and information about me, my coauthor and all of our books. LinkedIn is a great way to contact and connect with me.
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
