CareerCurve™

As we all know, attracting and retaining top talent is a big concern for HR.  This is a guest post on the topic that I hope you will find helpful. 

There are many elements to talent optimization. Two of the chief ones are ensuring you’re making the most of your current staffing resources, and hiring the right skills when necessary.

Your talent management processes can help you achieve your talent optimization goals in a variety of ways. Talent management encompasses everything from recruiting, hiring and onboarding, to performance management, employee development, succession planning, compensation and offboarding. When done well, these processes can help you:

Set Clear Expectations for Work

There are a variety of ways you can and should do this.

The primary way most organizations set work expectations is through employee performance appraisals. Performance appraisals generally outline core and job specific competencies and the goals the employee is expected to achieve. Employee goals are important because they lay out “what” you expect the employee to accomplish over the review period. Competencies are used to define “how” you want work to be performed, and to communicate corporate culture and values. Ideally, each employee goal should be linked to and aligned with a high level organizational goal it supports. This gives the employee a clear context for their work, helps them understand their value to the organization, and aligns your entire workforce.

In addition to performance appraisals, it’s a good idea to have a clear, detailed job description for every role that outlines: the job duties and responsibilities, education and experience requirements, competencies important to the role and the organization, scope of decision-making and reporting, etc. In fact, job descriptions should actually be used to guide both performance appraisals for the role and any job requisitions/postings.

Laying out clear performance expectations has been shown to contribute to employee engagement, and is the best way to align your workforce and encourage high performance – all keys to talent optimization.

Give Employee the Feedback and Coaching They Need to Improve and Succeed

Employee performance management should be an ongoing activity and dialogue between managers and employees, not a once-a-year event conducted as a performance appraisal. To be their best, meet expectations, continually learn, and adapt to changing work priorities and challenges, employees need ongoing feedback and coaching. To help support this, some companies implement quarterly performance appraisals, or periodic goal setting/review sessions and development reviews. These processes are simply ways to formalize and encourage what should be an ongoing activity. By giving their employees ongoing feedback and coaching, managers can address performance problems when they are small, and better manage their employees’ work and performance.

Support Employee Development

You and your organization can also optimize your workforce and foster high performance by supporting employee development. Employee development can take a variety of forms, including: formal training, conferences, webinars, e-learning, mentoring, job shadowing, reading, work assignments, participation in cross-functional teams, volunteer work, continuing education, etc. Managers should work with their employees to identify performance gaps, career aspirations and organization needs. Then, they should put development plans in place to help the employee broaden or deepen their knowledge/skills/experience, achieve their goals and improve their performance. This is typically done as part of the employee’s performance appraisal, but can be run as a separate process.

Being given the opportunity to develop is also a contributor to employee engagement and retention. But it also helps you develop the staffing resources you have today to meet your organization’s changing needs, and develop a more highly skilled workforce.

Reward and Encourage High Performance

Another way you foster high performance is by rewarding it. While your compensation and rewards programs should take education, experience and market data into consideration, they also need to be rooted in employee performance. Your program should include a wide variety of means to reward, recognize and encourage high performance – money isn’t always the answer. In fact, employee engagement surveys tell us that simple recognition and praise are strong performance motivators.

Attract High Performers

If you have good talent management processes in place, let candidates know about them during the hiring process. It may help weed out candidates who aren’t committed to their personal performance and development, and make your organization more attractive to those who are. When recruiting, you can also use your job descriptions and even your performance appraisal forms and process results to identify the qualities/skills/experience/attitudes that lead to high performance and success in a role. Then make sure you onboard your new hires, start them off with goals, support them with development and monitor their progress. Hiring the right people, right from the start, and setting them up for success are the best ways to ensure high performance and an optimized workforce.

Conclusion

Talent management best practices are all designed to drive employee high performance. They can be some of your most powerful talent optimization tools. Why not use them to help you attract and retain a world class workforce and drive organizational success.

Sean Conrad shares his thoughts and expertise about fostering employee development and high performance on Halogen Software’s blog, as well as a host of others. He’s a Certified Human Capital Strategist and a Senior Product Analyst at Halogen Software.

Recently, I was discussing HR positions and the different duties that go with that title and it occurred to me how many areas of the business this department manages.  This led to the following train of thought and many questions.  I would love to know your thoughts on this topic and any feedback or answers you could provide in the comments.

I’m sure I’m missing some, but a list of objectives of human resources off the top of my head are benefits, recruiting, interviewing, hiring, employee concerns and complaints, downsizing, retention, talent management, on-boarding, policy, law, employee paperwork, and possibly payroll.  Then within some of these areas, whole departments can exist.  For example, within the benefits department there could be a need for an HR Generalist to manage health & wellness, 401k, disability, FMLA, workers compensation and a host of other areas.

How in the world does a business determine how many employees it needs in Human Resources?  It seems like it would make sense that a set ratio exists, kind of like when my kids started school and we were looking into student/teacher ratios.  But what would that ratio be and how is it determined when there are things like applicant tracking systems and human resource management software that would affect that number?  And then we all know the age-old argument about having a seat at the table and being strategic – how does that tie in?  Does all this depend on what role the owners, board or executives expect HR to play within the organization?

When someone decides to pursue a career in human resources, what does that mean?  Does everyone have their own definition?  Did you know what you wanted to specialize in when you started or did you end up in a certain area because of experience?  I posted previously about HR using a lot of buzzwords and the confusion that results, but the term human resources sure seems awfully broad.

As I was researching the different areas and seeking a flow chart that would explain all this (I didn’t find one), I came across this article about the responsibility of HR employees.  This made me think even more about the challenge of working in HR.  If you read this article, you can see an example of how the author, an HR Director, was held accountable for things she had little to no control over.  Doesn’t operating in this manner ultimately hurt the business?  

How does a company figure out not only that it has the right number of HR professionals, but that they are responsible for the things they should be?

Please share thoughts and experiences in the comments.

I was following a discussion recently on LinkedIn regarding whether or not a hiring manager can and/or should disclose to an interviewee why he/she wasn’t hired, if asked.  Initially, I was surprised that there would be so much discussion around this.  When I understood why, it quickly became evident that there are two main groups of participants – those that are most concerned about risk and potential discrimination suits and those that are more focused on transparency and doing the right thing.  This is not to say that those who strongly consider risk are unconcerned about doing the right thing or that those who want to be transparent don’t care about lawsuits.  But those participating in the conversation are passionate about one of these two positions and this weighs in heavily when  choosing whether or not it is a good idea to explain to candidates why they didn’t get the job.

As I read through the many comments, it became fairly obvious that there are far fewer reasons NOT to give specifics than there are reasons to provide honest feedback.  The main reasons not to include:

• The fear of legal ramifications.  This is by far the most commonly cited reason for not giving specific explanations on why someone didn’t get the job.

• There are just so many candidates for each position it is unrealistic to think that detail can be provided to them all.

• Arguing or further “selling” of qualifications to the interviewer delivering feedback that results in time wasted for both parties.

• In many cases, particularly for high level positions, there are multiple candidates that are equally qualified and the decision comes down to chemistry.  It is not possible to relay that to a candidate in a way that mitigates risk.

Now let me list some reasons to give feedback to an interviewee:

• The candidate receives useful information that can help them with the job search and in future interviews.

• It is good manners and common courtesy and HR is supposed to be about people.  Also, it is about respect.  The candidate has spent time completing applications and preparing for interviews and this should be acknowledged with feedback.

• The company improves its reputation by being honest.  Candidates learn that there is a transparent culture and will spread the word.  Current employees will learn about this behavior as well and these facts results in an employer brand and corporate culture based around trust.  Trust increases engagement and retention, which boosts productivity.  It also helps attract high quality candidates.

• Giving specific feedback shows your organization has nothing to hide.  And those that feel discriminated against and intend to take legal action are going to move forward no matter what you say them.

• Well-trained hiring managers can effectively word these points in a way that mitigates risk of lawsuits.  It is possible to provide feedback specific to the interview that is based on fact and supported by documentation, but your employees need to be trained to do it properly.

• No feedback on why a candidate was not hired allows the candidate to presume it was based on some discriminatory reason such as age, race, gender, etc.  If you provide specific examples of what went wrong, a candidate can no longer assume discrimination is responsible for he/she not getting the job.

• In the future, the interviewee may be highly qualified for a different role within your company.  The way you treat the candidate now has everything to do with how a conversation will go later.

My take on all this is that the rewards for giving specific explanations to an interviewee far outweigh the risks.  Maybe I am too idealistic, but are there really that many people out there interviewing who are looking to position themselves to win a lawsuit?  Is it really that time-consuming if you are only providing detailed information to those who not only interviewed, but also asked for it?  Can’t the hiring manager control the conversation to ensure this doesn’t turn into another interview when the candidate tries to resell his/her qualifications?  Aren’t there ways to explain chemistry without discriminating, such as letting the candidate know he/she lacked excitement or energy in the interview or that another candidate was more proactive in offering solutions during the interview?  Doesn’t this just come down to properly training your managers?

What are your thoughts as HR professionals?  Do you mitigate risk at all costs or do you lean toward openness and honestly?  Is this working or can you name a time when it turned out to be the wrong move?

Who would have thought that commuting costs would figure into a person’s decision to stay or leave a company?  Unfortunately, this is a fact now.  In my area of the country, I’ve seen gas prices of $4.35/gallon.  Most of the country has hit $4.00 and prices are expected to go up higher still.    Workplace studies show that the average commute for an employee is about 30 miles. Depending on the car the employee owns, this will really add up for some of your employees.  It reminds me of the question stay at home moms consider when deciding whether or not to reenter the workforce – does the cost of child care outweigh the salary and benefits?  Is it worth it?  HR departments need to explore ways to assist employees with these costs in an effort to retain and attract top talent. 

If you have employees who travel a significant distance to come to work, you can bet they will be considering a position closer to home.  They almost have to.  However, there are things your company can do to try to help your employees.

Change the schedule.– One example of this would be to lengthen each day and take Fridays or Mondays off the schedule.  Many employees would jump at the chance to work four, 10 hour days and have a three day weekend.  This also removes a roundtrip, saving a whole day’s worth of gas. 

Coordinate car-pooling. – You can do this yourself internally with carpool boards or on your intranet, or you can recommend employees go to a site that will do it for them, such as erideshare.com.  Encouraging your employees to get involved shows you are aware that gas prices are affecting them.  If differing schedules are an issue, be open to considering assisting multiple employees to get on the same schedule in order to make it work.

Offer on-site lunches.– Explore ways to feed your staff and keep them at work during lunch.  You may be able to negotiate special pricing with restaurants and catering businesses to make it more cost effective for employees to remain on-site.  This is also a great engagement tool, especially if once a month or so the company springs for the lunch.  Your employees get to socialize with other people in the company.  As with many of the other suggestions, this doesn’t have to be an every day event.  Offering the ability o order and buy lunch once or twice a week still helps.

Consider telecommuting where possible.- How many of your employees could work from home?  If you don’t want to make it permanent, be non-committal about the timeframe and relay to them that this is a program you will try temporarily, in order to help them get through this.  It doesn’t have to be all or nothing either.  Maybe some employees could work from home 1 or 2 days a week and be in the office the others.

Look into subsidizing public transportation.-  Are you familiar with public transportation in your city?  Can you offer incentives for employees to use it?  Or can you offer to pay for it?  This may prove to be a minimal cost compared to the cost of turnover and hiring and on-boarding.  Many times there are incentives offered by the public transportation authorities themselves such as group discounts or pre-tax savings for those who purchase passes through your company.  If your company is large, your organization may actually be able to negotiate an incentive program with the public transportation authority.

Work these solutions into your “green” program, too. – Many employees, particularly Gen Y, are interested in working for companies who care for the environment.  Going green is where it’s at, so you can use some of these solutions to demonstrate how you not only want to help your employees, but do your part to improve the environment as well.  You could roll the programs out as something you want to try to help with gas prices and want to keep in an effort to cut down on pollution. 

My best recommendation on all of these suggestions would be to take a vote.  If you’re not sure which program might be effective, ASK.  This situation provides your company with the ability to be transparent, which builds trust.  You can let them know you’re not sure what will work but you’d like their input and will explain any reservations.   The simple act of asking your employees what would help them demonstrates that you are aware of the impact that gas prices may be having on them and shows them that you want to do what you can to ease the burden.  Proving to them that you care will do wonders for your employer brand, engaging your employees, increasing retention, and attracting top talent.  Happy employees are productive employees, so putting in the effort means a win for everyone.  

Is your company currently offering any programs to help your employees deal with rising gas prices?  Do you plan to?  Please share any other examples in the comments.

I wrote a post back in November that listed 5 Smart Reasons To Hire The Unemployed.  This was prompted by the increasingly common practice by employers of stating in their job descriptions that they would not consider those who are currently unemployed.  This practice, of course, led to discussions of whether or not this is discriminatory. 

Apparently, as of Monday, it is.  At least in New Jersey, where a new law was passed and will take effect in a month.  I took a look at the law, especially because everything I’m reading is claiming that New Jersey is the first state to put a law in place that forbids businesses to discriminate against unemployed job candidates.   What I read made me wonder.  According to this law an employer may not run ads that contain any of the following three items:

1. Any provision stating that the qualifications for a job include current employment;
2. Any provision stating that the employer or employer’s agent, representative, or designee will not consider or review an application for employment submitted by any job applicant currently unemployed; or
3. Any provision stating that the employer or employer’s agent, representative, or designee will only consider or review applications for employment submitted by job applicants who are currently employed.

The law is short, sweet and to the point.  (You can check it out for yourself here.)  It repeatedly references that employers cannot “knowingly or purposefully publish, in print or on the Internet” any ads, or other documents that state any of the 3 items listed above.

Maybe I am missing something here but I see nothing in this law that forbids discrimination against the unemployed.  Yes, if you blatantly state in an ad that you will not accept applications from the unemployed you’ll get smacked with a fine, but I see nothing in this law that says it is discrimination not to consider them for a job.  I’m no lawyer, but the way I read this law, an employer can tell a candidate over the phone that the company will not consider anyone unemployed and even THAT is not illegal!  To summarize, it reads to me that employers can discriminate all they want when it comes to the unemployed, as long as they don’t say they are doing it, in print or on the internet or in any ad, anywhere.

Maybe the law in New Jersey is a victory that will soon be irrelevant.  On April 4,  H.R. 1113 The Fair Employment Act of 2011 was introduced to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.  This would amend Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to add the unemployed to the list of applicants already protected against discrimination due to race, color, religion, etc. This would provide real protection for the unemployed, although as in all discrimination cases it would be tough to prove – and the burden of proof will fall on the plaintiffs to show they were discriminated against. 

If this makes it through and is enacted, then I would agree that a law was passed forbidding companies to discriminate against the unemployed.

Because I am a mom of elementary school age kids, I’ve been exposed to all sorts of strange and unusual ideas, concepts, and celebrations.  We have Dr. Seuss night (just a night to eat cake and hear stories to promote a love of reading) and we have the nights where we flush ice cubes down the toilet and sleep with pajamas on backwards and spoons under our pillows in order to get a snow day.  In preschool, my kids also had Opposite Day.  As I’m sure you can surmise, this is a day where everything you say and do is the opposite of what is expected.  (Luckily preschool makes this feasible – it’s only 2 hours and 3 or 4 year olds lack the stamina to really do EVERYTHING opposite.) 

As a parent, you learn to pick your battles, negotiate, and yes, use all sorts of psychology to achieve the goal of getting your toddler to eat, clean up, get in the car, or whatever it is you need him/her to do.  Early on, opposite day became one of my short-lived, but effective tools.  Simply declaring it Opposite Day (or Opposite Hour if need be) was usually enough to accomplish what I wanted.  But I never considered it a potential business tool until I read this.    

In this really interesting article, Peter Bregman suggests ways to change a corporate culture.  This explores a highly successful company with one major problem – people don’t want to work there.  His recommendation is to start by changing the stories your employees tell about the company they work for.  This is where Opposite Day comes into play.  You don’t announce Opposite Day, but instead you adopt an opposite mindset when making decisions and managing your people.  He suggests:

“To start a culture change all we need to do is two simple things:

1. Do dramatic story-worthy things that represent the culture we want to create. Then let other people tell stories about it.

1. Find other people who do story-worthy things that represent the culture we want to create. Then tell stories about them.

For example, if you want to create a faster moving, less perfectionist culture, instead of berating someone for sending an email without proper capitalization, send out a memo with typos in it.

Or if you want managers and employees to communicate more effectively, stop checking your computer in the middle of a conversation every time the new message sound beeps. Instead, put your computer to sleep when they walk in your office.

Or if you’re trying to create a more employee-focused culture, instead of making the bride work on her wedding day, give her the week off. “

In essence, think of it as opposite day.  If you don’t like your corporate culture and want to change it, consider what your company would typically do, then do the opposite and see what happens.  This could be the springboard for a new corporate culture.

What are your thoughts?  Have you ever worked to change a culture?  Is this a valid idea?

HR deals with many employee issues but one that is particularly challenging is administering FMLA.  This law protects employees’ positions and benefits while giving them the ability to manage some of life’s biggest challenges, including health issues of their own or of family members (increasingly common as baby boomers care for aging parents), pregnancy, adoption and other family obligations that arise.  This law can be tricky and can also be abused.

Many times the perception exists that this law protects employees to the extent that they can take leave for any reason under any circumstances.  Even though it may feel as if employees have a free pass, there are things you can do to control abuse and reduce disruption to company operations while still following the law.  Because one of the most difficult aspects of FMLA to manage is intermittent leave.

Intermittent leave is when time off is taken in chunks rather than all at once.  For example, an employee who requires medical treatment three times a week may take four hour blocks of time three times a week for six weeks.  How do you mange this with as little disruption to the rest of the workforce as possible?

• Work with the employee to schedule intermittent leave.  FMLA obligates the employee requesting it to work with the employer to schedule treatments so they are the least disruptive to company operations.  In addition, if the option exists to schedule treatment on days off or after hours, the employee must do so.

• Ask for information on your medical certification request form regarding the employee’s projected number of treatments, dates of treatments, and how much time will be needed for recovery following each treatment. With the employee’s consent, you may also use your designated health care provider to ask the employee’s health care provider whether the treatments might be scheduled at alternative times that would not require the employee to miss work.

• Request recertification.  Generally you’re allowed to request this every 30 days and you should.  Things change and this will cut down on abuse by insuring the leave is still necessary.

• To reduce distraction to the rest of the workforce, you can also move the employee into a different role if their current position requires coverage at all times and it will interfere with the business’s operations for the employee to be absent.  This can also be done if it will assist in the recovery of the employee.  The same pay and benefits must be maintained even if the job changes.

FMLA can be confusing and sometimes feel like it leaves you with few rights and little control.  With a little bit of research and some well thought out policies you can regain some control, diminish abuse, and reduce negative abuse on the company.

Attracting and retaining top talent has been a key conversation in HR for a while now and it is not going away.  Our economy is improving and unemployment is dropping, but the rate at which this recovery is happening depends a lot on who you ask.  One thing that can’t be denied though is that it is happening slowly. 

Businesses are finding themselves in a situation where they want to staff up so they can support recovery but they don’t want to be overstaffed if the recovery slows down even more.  Ultimately, this means that talent optimization is not only a cost effective solution to this conundrum but it is also the safest solution.  And caution seems to be the word of the times.

Talent optimization is a concept that in its broadest definition means making the most of the talent you have.  But what does that mean in a practical sense?   And how do you not only achieve it, but know you’ve achieved it when you do?

Effective talent optimization requires a well thought out and deliverable strategy.  This concept cannot be some pie in the sky theory that is discussed ad nauseum with no executable game plan.  Talent optimization can easily fall into the category of when is a strategy not a strategy?  (Great article, by the way!)

Here are some key components to creating a Talent Optimization Strategy:

Strategic Alignment – Leadership, culture and business goals must be in alignment.  Without this, there is no hope that any strategy will succeed, especially one involving human capital.

Talent Assessment – There must be metrics in place to accurately assess performance in your people.  And high-level measurements and data analytic tools with which to do that.  You can’t optimize talent if you don’t know what that talent is.

Programs – Learning, development, and succession planning programs that take the defined talent and move it to the next level.

More Metrics – As important as it is to measure talent, you also have to be able to asses the results of any programs you do implement.  How else can you tell if your talent optimization strategy is having any effect?

These are obviously high level suggestions for what needs to be a very detailed and cohesive strategy.  But you do need a strategy.  Companies that are aware of the importance of this are creating organizational development roles internally and/or working with firms such as ours, or other consultants to achieve these goals. 

What are you doing to optimize your talent?  Do you have a set strategy?  Do you see the need for one?

I was talking with someone recently about their company’s take on hiring from within. Although the organization was all for it, there were definite challenges in actually making it happen. These challenges sounded to me like they all revolve around Human Capital Management.

There are a number of benefits to hiring this from within such as:

• Already evaluated work performance as well as an employee’s ability to fit into company culture.
• It is much more cost effective to re-invest in an employee, even if you just consider recruiting cost alone.
• The employee already has knowledge of the culture, corporate policies, and your business goals.
• Advancement opportunities do wonders to increase engagement, instill loyalty, and lower turnover.

But this may not be so easy to implement, especially for very large organizations. I saw this video and it made me realize how many things you need to know to make hiring internally a valid and productive choice. It uses a funny comparison between the role a chair plays and the role an employee plays in the company to demonstrate these things. And of course, it ultimately winds up being a commercial for Human Capital Management systems, but the video raises some valid points nonetheless.

• Do you have a solid understanding of each employee’s strengths and weaknesses?
• Do you have knowledge of your employees’ career aspirations and focus on training and career development?
• Do you know what your company has already invested in each employee?
• Are you aware of the specific contributions made by your employees?

All of these things have to be there in order for you to successfully tap into a pool of potential candidates. 

What’s your takeon it? Does your organization take steps to hire from within and is it successful? Do many of your employees lose opportunities and do you lose out on this resource because of poor human capital management?  Do you have processes in place to make this a viable option?  Do you see the relationship between hiring from within and Human Capital Management?

We’ve all heard the saying, “one bad apple spoils the bunch”.  In some cases this refers to guilt by association.   What I am referring to is that one bad attitude can bring down the rest of the team.  This is particularly relevant now, when employee engagement is low and one of HR’s biggest challenges is attracting and retaining top talent.

I read an interesting article about leaders being disengaged that makes the claim that “leaders are the unrecognized victims of the recession.”  Immediately, red flags waved in front of my eyes.  Corporate culture plays an important role in engagement levels within organizations and if the leaders aren’t engaged?  Well, that is not good.  How can the culture be positive and full of energy if the leaders aren’t feeling it?  And how can each person’s attitude affect the company, leader or not?

This article is written by Theresa M. Welbourne, Ph.D, founder, President, and CEO of eePulse Inc. and EEPulse.com.  They use surveys about energy levels combined with different topics to draw correlations between energy and productivity.  The goal is to engage leaders in interactive dialogues about what’s happening to them and their companies for the purpose of learning, in closer to real time rather than waiting for studies and papers to be published when the topic may no longer be relevant.    (It’s pretty neat stuff). 

In this article she lists some sample comments of respondents explaining the reasons for their different energy levels such as, “working with people that are not passionate about their work is sapping the energy out of me” in the negative range and citing “working with superb – knowledgeable, committed and responsible colleagues” as a reason in the positive range. 

 Many comments attribute a component of energy level to those around them.  As you can see by those two examples though, the good news is that this can work both ways.  If you can address the negativity in those employees and nurture the positive attitude in others, you will see a difference in the whole corporate culture.  Have you ever been in a great mood and talked to someone who is crabby?  Don’t you walk away a little less happy?    On the flip side, have you ever been cranky and irritated and spoken to someone who is passionate and upbeat?  Don’t you walk away just a little bit more optimistic?

The bottom line is not to underestimate the power of the relationships that exist in the workplace.  Someone who is pessimistic, negative and just a drag to be around is going to affect how others think and feel.  Don’t let one bad apple spoil the bunch.