Does Success Equal A or B?
Since the 1990s, the business media have been inundated with articles about the “war for talent” and the corporate stars sometimes known as “A players.” Suddenly, however, more attention is being shifted to “B players,” those long-neglected, hard-working folks who are neither stars nor problem employees but who are, some experts claim, the true bedrock of successful companies. This focus on B players is calling into question whether companies need to rethink their organizational focus on top performers.
There’s no doubt that “talent” remains a touchstone in the corporate world, especially in the HR field. In fact, a 2003 Towers Perrin study of almost 1,300 organizations in Asia, Europe, North America and Latin America found that “the number one priority on the HR agenda is still to attract and retain key talent.”
When respondents were asked about four tactics for managing people costs, the number one response was “segmenting the workforce according to performance.” That is, many companies are concentrating their rewards on the best performers so that they’re able to both control costs and retain talent.
Yet, these types of tactics lead some experts to claim that organizations are virtually ignoring huge portions of their workforces, a point of view taken in an influential Harvard Business Review article titled “Let’s Hear It for B Players.” The article broadly defines B players as the majority who do their jobs sandwiched between the top 10% – the talented high performers who are on the corporate fast track – and the bottom 10% – the low performers.
Employees in this large group tend to share certain characteristics, such as valuing their work/life balance, disliking calling attention to themselves, and being less motivated than A players by power, status and money. Within this large group there are also important subgroups, argue the authors, Harvard business school professor Thomas J. DeLong and Vineeta Vijayaraghavan of consulting firm Katzenbach Partners. For example, there are the “recovered A players,” who have voluntarily gotten off the fast track, and the “truth tellers,” who are willing to speak truth to those in power because they’re more interested in their work than their careers.
B players operate at the level where the rubber meets the road, where strategies become operational realities. And because they’re not as ambitious, they tend to stay in their jobs longer and so are sources of institutional memory and learning. “A players, it is true, can make enormous contributions to corporate performance. Yet, in our collective 20 years of consulting, research, and teaching, we have found that companies’ long-term performance – even survival – depends far more on the unsung commitment and contributions of their B players,” write DeLong and Vijayaraghavan.
They also argue that companies should focus on managing their B players more effectively. The first step is for top managers, who tend to be A players, to adjust their attitudes toward B players. Managers tend to undervalue such employees because they have a different worldview from them. B players often suffer from a kind of benign neglect, which can breed resentment and cause costly turnover when the labor market grows tighter. Therefore, it’s argued, managers should spend more time communicating with these employees and recognize their achievements.
“Organizations must create compelling reasons for their valuable B players to come to work each day by providing excellent compensation and benefits, advancement opportunities, regularly scheduled performance reviews and other popular perks, such as flextime,” said Bonnie Kabin, director of rewards, education and certification at WorldatWork, in a recent Workspan article. Companies should also rethink cutting work/life programs, which tend to appeal to B players and yet often wind up on the chopping block during economic downturns.
Not everyone agrees, however, that companies should refocus their attention on B players. In a letter to the editor written in response to the article by DeLong and Vijayaraghavan, Marc Effron and Lisa Labat of Hewitt Associates state that in one recent Hewitt study, only a third of companies said they “consistently use a formal process to develop and track the performance of leaders with high potential.” Given the critical role of high-potential leaders, they ask, “shouldn’t organizations refocus their management efforts on these individuals first?” In response, DeLong and Vijayaraghavan agreed that “not all A players are managed well” but stated that “a company shouldn’t ignore B players while trying to get it right for the top performers.”
This is a debate that’s likely to continue within organizations, especially if voluntary turnover rates climb in 2004. HR professionals may try harder to balance the needs of A players against the more modest but still important needs of B players. Of course, these two types of employees aren’t as neatly defined in real organizations as they are in management articles, so companies will also look for strategies that engage every employee. Ultimately, organizational success doesn’t depend on one subgroup or another but rather on the complex and often seamless interactions among all organizational members.
For more information on “Let’s Hear It for B Players,” go to
http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=4007
For a USA TODAY article called “Employers Learning That 'B players' Hold the Cards,” go to
http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2003-09-09-bplayers-frontcover2_x.htm
For a Computerworld interview with Vineeta Vijayaraghavan, go to
http://www.computerworld.com/careertopics/careers/story/0,10801,82071,00.html
To read Towers Perrin’s “Rewards and Performance Management Challenges,” scroll down the following Web page:
http://www.towersperrin.com/hrservices/global/default.htm
For more on the Time magazine article called “It’s the B Team’s Time to Shine,” by Daren Fonda, go to
http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1101030915-483304,00.html
For more information on Workspan and WorldatWork, go to
http://www.worldatwork.org/
Other documents used in the preparation of this TrendWatcher include:
Heathcote, Andrew. “Get to Know Your ABCs.” Business Review Weekly. LexisNexis. January 2004, p. 66.
“Letters to the Editor.” Harvard Business Review, November 2003, pp. 131-132.
Parus, Barbara. “Recognizing and Retaining Worker ‘Bs.’ Workspan. ProQuest. March 2004, p. 46.
There’s no doubt that “talent” remains a touchstone in the corporate world, especially in the HR field. In fact, a 2003 Towers Perrin study of almost 1,300 organizations in Asia, Europe, North America and Latin America found that “the number one priority on the HR agenda is still to attract and retain key talent.”
When respondents were asked about four tactics for managing people costs, the number one response was “segmenting the workforce according to performance.” That is, many companies are concentrating their rewards on the best performers so that they’re able to both control costs and retain talent.
Yet, these types of tactics lead some experts to claim that organizations are virtually ignoring huge portions of their workforces, a point of view taken in an influential Harvard Business Review article titled “Let’s Hear It for B Players.” The article broadly defines B players as the majority who do their jobs sandwiched between the top 10% – the talented high performers who are on the corporate fast track – and the bottom 10% – the low performers.
Employees in this large group tend to share certain characteristics, such as valuing their work/life balance, disliking calling attention to themselves, and being less motivated than A players by power, status and money. Within this large group there are also important subgroups, argue the authors, Harvard business school professor Thomas J. DeLong and Vineeta Vijayaraghavan of consulting firm Katzenbach Partners. For example, there are the “recovered A players,” who have voluntarily gotten off the fast track, and the “truth tellers,” who are willing to speak truth to those in power because they’re more interested in their work than their careers.
B players operate at the level where the rubber meets the road, where strategies become operational realities. And because they’re not as ambitious, they tend to stay in their jobs longer and so are sources of institutional memory and learning. “A players, it is true, can make enormous contributions to corporate performance. Yet, in our collective 20 years of consulting, research, and teaching, we have found that companies’ long-term performance – even survival – depends far more on the unsung commitment and contributions of their B players,” write DeLong and Vijayaraghavan.
They also argue that companies should focus on managing their B players more effectively. The first step is for top managers, who tend to be A players, to adjust their attitudes toward B players. Managers tend to undervalue such employees because they have a different worldview from them. B players often suffer from a kind of benign neglect, which can breed resentment and cause costly turnover when the labor market grows tighter. Therefore, it’s argued, managers should spend more time communicating with these employees and recognize their achievements.
“Organizations must create compelling reasons for their valuable B players to come to work each day by providing excellent compensation and benefits, advancement opportunities, regularly scheduled performance reviews and other popular perks, such as flextime,” said Bonnie Kabin, director of rewards, education and certification at WorldatWork, in a recent Workspan article. Companies should also rethink cutting work/life programs, which tend to appeal to B players and yet often wind up on the chopping block during economic downturns.
Not everyone agrees, however, that companies should refocus their attention on B players. In a letter to the editor written in response to the article by DeLong and Vijayaraghavan, Marc Effron and Lisa Labat of Hewitt Associates state that in one recent Hewitt study, only a third of companies said they “consistently use a formal process to develop and track the performance of leaders with high potential.” Given the critical role of high-potential leaders, they ask, “shouldn’t organizations refocus their management efforts on these individuals first?” In response, DeLong and Vijayaraghavan agreed that “not all A players are managed well” but stated that “a company shouldn’t ignore B players while trying to get it right for the top performers.”
This is a debate that’s likely to continue within organizations, especially if voluntary turnover rates climb in 2004. HR professionals may try harder to balance the needs of A players against the more modest but still important needs of B players. Of course, these two types of employees aren’t as neatly defined in real organizations as they are in management articles, so companies will also look for strategies that engage every employee. Ultimately, organizational success doesn’t depend on one subgroup or another but rather on the complex and often seamless interactions among all organizational members.
For more information on “Let’s Hear It for B Players,” go to
http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=4007
For a USA TODAY article called “Employers Learning That 'B players' Hold the Cards,” go to
http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2003-09-09-bplayers-frontcover2_x.htm
For a Computerworld interview with Vineeta Vijayaraghavan, go to
http://www.computerworld.com/careertopics/careers/story/0,10801,82071,00.html
To read Towers Perrin’s “Rewards and Performance Management Challenges,” scroll down the following Web page:
http://www.towersperrin.com/hrservices/global/default.htm
For more on the Time magazine article called “It’s the B Team’s Time to Shine,” by Daren Fonda, go to
http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1101030915-483304,00.html
For more information on Workspan and WorldatWork, go to
http://www.worldatwork.org/
Other documents used in the preparation of this TrendWatcher include:
Heathcote, Andrew. “Get to Know Your ABCs.” Business Review Weekly. LexisNexis. January 2004, p. 66.
“Letters to the Editor.” Harvard Business Review, November 2003, pp. 131-132.
Parus, Barbara. “Recognizing and Retaining Worker ‘Bs.’ Workspan. ProQuest. March 2004, p. 46.