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 is a Certified Human Capital Strategist and Senior Product Analyst at Halogen Software, one of the leading providers of talent management software. For more of his insights on talent management, read his posts on the Halogen Software blog.

Outplacement is tricky business. Solid organizations recognize the need but may not be sure how valuable it really is. Candidates (our term for those who are laid off) may be hesitant to engage and may not understand the impact having a personal coach will have on their job search.

I have a story I just had to share to help those that may not be using their coach and those in HR who may not understand the genuine value that offering these services can bring. I’m also hoping this advice can help those who may not be fortunate enough to have access to outplacement services. This is an example of how a coach’s expertise really helps the job search.

I received a call from one of our coaches who wanted to tell me about an experience she had with a somewhat resistant candidate. Initially, he wasn’t convinced that she could do anything to help him. (This is very common and why it is important to work with a company that has good coaches.)

Photo credit www.freedigitalphotos.com

As they got to know one another he realized that she provided sound advice and could be useful. One area where he remained unconvinced was in using LinkedIn. This particular candidate has a pretty technical background and his profile was solid, based on his experience. Our coach kept trying to encourage him to modify his profile in a few ways so that he could be “found” more easily. As he remained unemployed and was not getting any calls, interviews, or opportunities he became more and more frustrated and discouraged. He decided he had nothing to lose, so he implemented her suggestions. Here is the advice she gave him about what to do and how he modified his profile:

• Re-wrote his summary and added several specialties (keywords)
• Wrote his experience and achievements in conversational tone (rather than simply copying and pasting from his resume)
• Requested recommendations
• Added a current reading list
• Pumped up his education and research area (explained his research in a way that is more understandable and less technical)
• Began adding contacts (he started with 11 – is up to 100 now) and sharing his knowledge and expertise with his contacts
• Added his professional groups and joined various LinkedIn groups

The results were amazing! After weeks of basically no activity, he received 3 calls within 2 hours of making these changes! He could not believe it and called her with a whole new mindset.

This coach, by using her skills, changed everything about his job search.

Photo credit www.freedigitalphotos.net

• Rather than being depressed and frustrated he is excited, positive, and motivated. Anyone who has ever lost a job knows how hard it is to achieve this while unemployed and how important it is to portray that attitude to potential managers. Attitude is probably the biggest driver in how successful the search is.
• He is now interacting with professionals in his field on a regular basis, which will help him keep his skills sharp while he continues his search. It also provides an opportunity to learn and discuss trends in his industry, as well as helping him feel less like he is searching in a vacuum.
• He is now embracing his coach’s advice and looking for more.
• He is well on his way to his new role.

I LOVE stories like this and hope that this is inspirational for others.

Do any of you have a success story to share?

As I’m driving home from practice with my nine year old she started complaining that one of her coaches was “mean” to her.   He is always telling her things she is doing wrong.  I told her that is a coach’s job and they are supposed to be mean.   I was kind of flippant about it.  But then I realized that this really required a little more conversation because this can be a valuable life lesson for her; one I see plenty of “grown ups” struggling to learn.

I explained that I wanted her to do something that was going to be very hard for her.  I wanted her to go to practice for the next week and pay very close attention to this coach.  I know she feels she is being singled out, but I wanted her to focus on whether she truly IS being singled out.  I told her this would be difficult because she already feels she is, and she may have to be very honest with herself about whether this is really true; and possibly admit that it is not. 

The next week we discussed it again and she admitted that he treated everyone the same.  I was pretty impressed by this admission as I see experienced adults who can’t admit things like this.  I then explained to her that in the majority of cases if someone she respects who is in a position of authority is delivering a consistent message to multiple people, he or she is actually handing her a gift.  The goal is to help her grow and improve and this coach has invested himself in her future. 

I emphasized that a good first reaction is to view it that way, as if someone is handing her a present.  This will help her deal with the emotional piece and really assess the situation from a more objective point of view.  Obviously she is nine and must learn that this will not always be the case (which is why I mentioned this criticism coming from a position of respect and authority and not her friends.)  Eventually, it should be true of everyone who is close to her.

So, what does this have to do with anything?  How does this relate to business? 

Well, managing people is very difficult and many times criticism is not well received.  I am suggesting, without being condescending, that the idea of criticism as a gift should be discussed with your staff.  Have a conversation similar to the one I had with my daughter and set expectations.  If it is explained from the outset that if a criticism is brought up, it will be for the purpose of improving productivity, the employee is a lot more likely to view it in that light. Point out that as a manager, you are investing in the employee’s personal growth and professional career.  Commit to providing feedback both good and bad, fairly and frequently, for the purpose of individual improvement.  But address the role of constructive criticism as a part of this process.

Professor P. M. Forni, co-founder of the Johns Hopkins University Civility Project, advocates powerfully for people to communicate both honestly and humanely. He believes constructive criticism is “a welcome opportunity to learn.” But he also recommends a cautious and careful examination of motives before diving in. “Make sure that your intention is to help with a problem and not to humiliate, manipulate or exact revenge.”

In the workplace, Forni and other researchers emphasize that establishing an environment of positive reinforcement helps create a feedback-friendly climate.  Work done well deserves praise and recognition, but employers, managers and co-workers often overlook the simple step of consistently acknowledging good performance. The desire for approval is a basic human need going back to infancy that we never outgrow. Appreciation and recognition correlate strongly to employee motivation and morale. On the other hand, Forni cites U. S. Department of Labor statistics that show “Feeling unappreciated at work is a leading cause of leaving a job.”

What better way to show appreciation than by investing in an employee’s career and making sure they KNOW this prior to providing feedback?

My name is Jen Turi and I am writing CareerCurve’s blog.  I am the Manager of Social Media for this outplacement firm and am very passionate about what we do.  Please see the About CareerCurve and About the Author page to learn a little bit more about us and me personally.  My goal in writing this blog is to connect with all kinds of readers and initiate conversation that is thought-provoking, interesting, and insightful.  I want to both learn and share experiences in the world of career transition in the hope that this will provide a platform to help anyone going through a downsizing or reorganization, from any perspective.  The last couple of years have been very difficult in our economy on everyone – employees who have been laid off, employers who have had to do the laying off, retained employees who have had to adjust to less assistance and fewer co-workers, directors of organizations who have had to restructure to make do with much smaller budgets and resources –  the list goes on and on. 

I hope that by creating a forum to share individual experiences we can all learn and make transition easier and less painful, no matter who you are.  Being that CareerCurve provides these types of services, I also hope to gather information to continually improve quality for both our clients and our candidates.  The best way to know what really works is to ask and  I encourage  comments.   I also look forward to recommendations for more information on post topics, content suggestions and to reading your blogs.   If you want to comment offline, my email address is jturi@careercurve.com and you can learn more about the company at www.careercurve.com.  Thank you for reading and I look forward to getting to know you and learning from you!