CareerCurve™

More than ever companies are concerned with how to keep their top talent.  Among the reasons employees leave are lack of career progress, poor work/life balance, not feeling valued by the company, and bad bosses. 

One retention strategy is to promote from within.  This is a great idea as it addresses a number of retention goals in one shot.  Promoting from within shows loyalty to your employees.  It demonstrates the value an employee has to your organization.  It also provides a path for career progress and creates great bosses. 

Or does it?  Are you actually setting your employees up for failure?

Anyone who has done any research on retention is familiar with the adage “Employees don’t leave bad jobs, they leave bad bosses.”  So if your company promotes from within, how could you have bad bosses?  After all, you are careful in your promotion process.  You evaluate and assess and only advance your highest performers.  

But what do you do after that?  How do you develop and train your managers once they get that promotion?  What are you doing that could be preventing your promoted managers from being successful?

Just because an employee was a high performer in his/her area doesn’t automatically mean he/she will make a great manager.  The abilities required to be an effective leader often differ greatly from those needed in the role the employee just left.  Yes, knowing the previous role inside and out and having excelled there is important, but often, soft skills that haven’t been required before are integral to doing a good job as a manager.  Some of these new necessary skills include:

Objectivity – the new manager is now in a role where being objective is mandatory.

Diplomacy – managers often have to deliver difficult messages. 

Delegation – high performers tend to take on a lot of responsibility.  This is usually why they are high performers.  Delegating means relinquishing control and this can prove to be a difficult adjustment.

Managing Conflict – conflicts will arise and the manager is now responsible for resolving them.  This is probably not something the manager did on a regular basis.  He/she may have even been part of the conflict in the past as opposed to being the one who fixes it.

Business Acumen – managers have to understand the company’s long term goals and realize how the short term objectives fit into these goals.  Then they have to get their team to understand this.

Understanding of Corporate Culture – As an employee, the manager probably didn’t spend a lot of time analyzing the culture but rather adapted to it.  As a manager, the responsibility shifts to understanding it in order to get the team to buy into it and perform accordingly.

Communication – Not only does the manager need to understand the corporate culture and goals but he/she needs to effectively relay them to the team in order to achieve not only the objectives, but alignment with corporate philosophy.

Consider that previously the manager was responsible for his/her part in a project and although most of these skills were undoubtedly required on occasion, the actual work produced was the most important focus.  Even if there were stumbles with these soft skills, the work produced trumped these issues.  Now consider the change for the manager when the work he/she needs to produce IS these soft skills.

If your organization doesn’t pay attention to the magnitude of this promotion, everyone loses.  The company no longer has the high performer in the previous role, the new manager may feel lost and unsure, the team could feel as if they have no leader, and ultimately, everyone is disengaged and starts seeking greener pastures.  Your “Promote from Within” retention strategy just became an anti-retention strategy.

What does your company do after promoting high performers?  Is enough emphasis placed on the difference in skills required to do the job well?  What could the organization do differently?

A while back, I wrote a couple posts about managing Gen Y.  The first post was around the idea of understanding this generation before you attempt to manage them.  The second was about how you could adapt your business to incorporate some of things that are important to these so called “trophy kids” and how doing so may turn out to be a win-win for everyone. 

We are at a unique place in history when you consider the wide range of generations who need to work together and “play nicely in the sandbox”.  While each generation has its own unique requirements and desires, as I mention in this post about the mature workforce, the best place to start is by getting an understanding of the individuals that comprise each group of employees.  Knowledge is power and this knowledge can certainly make you a better manager.

On that note, my posts about Gen Y prompted some reaction and are generating conversation.  I was approached by a Gen Y blogger who wanted to share some insight about his generation.  Below you will see his thoughts on Gen Y and performance reviews. 

The workforce is changing, and just as a company would adjust its business model to a changing market, organizations must rise to meet the challenges of managing freshest batch of workers: Generation Y.  A big question posed to human resources professionals of late has been, “Can Gen Y handle performance reviews without the sugar coating?” Kyle Lagunas from Software Advice says the answer is yes.

Some analysts have dubbed Gen Y “trophy kids,” and believe we grew up being rewarded for our endeavors regardless of scale or success. Many assert that we cannot handle life in a less-than-adoring work environment. However, contrary to popular belief, we don’t need our hands held or our egos stroked regularly. Though there is some truth to the “trophy kid” complex, leaders and managers need to understand things from a Gen Y perspective before they can get the most out of our performance reviews.  

Here’s how we see it:

1. We don’t get it. Performance reviews are important, but are executed so poorly. Dust off your thinking caps, modernize your reviews, and capitalize on your most valuable asset (your people).

2. Lose the sugar coating. You weren’t the only ones suffering through the recession. Our idealism, though strong, has been tempered. If our performance can improve, give us strong, actionable feedback with measurable goals.

3. Connect with us. Regular feedback doesn’t have to be complicated. If you don’t have an instant messaging client in your office, get one. They’re a great tool for maintaining informal lines of communication (which we love).

4. Positive reinforcement isn’t a bad thing. Whoever demonized trophies should think again. Rewarding good performance can be as simple as an “Atta boy!” or “You go girl!” sent via email–and they go a long way in giving Gen Yers a sense of accomplishment.

To read this article in its entirety, check it out on Software Advice blog: http://www.softwareadvice.com/articles/hr/performance-reviews-gen-y-perspective-1062011/

____________________________
Kyle Lagunas
HR Analyst

So what do you think?  Can Gen Y handle performance reviews?  Have you changed your style to adapt to this generation?  Does Kyle have it right?  Keep the conversation going in the comments.

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.

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.

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 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?

Given the economic conditions, it is highly likely that you have employees currently experiencing the stress of an unemployed spouse.  Unemployment ranks near the top of the list when it comes to most stress-inducing life experiences, along with divorce and death.  If an employee is living with someone who is going through this doesn’t it stand to reason that this is affecting your employee as well? And does this stress decrease your employee’s productivity?  According to a recent study, yes it does.

Associate Professor Maw-Der Foo and lead author Professor Zhaoli Song of the National University of Singapore co-authored a paper called “Unraveling the Stress Crossover Between the Unemployed and Their Spouses”.  To summarize part of what they discovered, an unemployed spouse can mean a less productive employee.  According to Foo, “our findings call for more attention on the family as an integrated system in responding to the unemployment situation.”

Can and should your organization do anything to assist?  I can think of a few reasons that you should: 

• A calmer and happier employee will be more productive.
• Engagement and retention rates will be higher for those who feel supported by their organization.
• Demonstrating that you care for your employees will positively influence your corporate culture and brand, making you attractive to top performers when you are hiring.

Learning how to support an unemployed spouse in a healthy way could really make a difference to an employee who not only has the added burden of being the sole bread winner, but also has to navigate the emotional terrain of their partner.   But what can your company actually do?

Offer stress management information.  This could be in the form of newsletters, literature, webinars or a counseling session on site.  This could also be as simple as sending a mass email with a link to a relevant article every Friday.

Provide coaching for the employee.  These employees may find themselves stuck between being so compassionate they end up enabling and pushing so hard they seem uncaring.  A healthy balance makes all the difference in successfully supporting their spouse.

Schedule financial management workshops focused on suggestions of how to save money.  Most people have experienced the fear of instability in one way or another over the last couple of years.  As a result, more people are thinking of the future.  This means that practical suggestions on how to live on less money would be very useful, not only to employees with an unemployed spouse but to all employees.

Create a support group within the organization.  This could be done using social media or your intranet.  You could also provide resources to external support groups that already exist.

Taking a little initiative to understand and assist this employee challenge can mean a big payoff for your company.

I am fascinated by ROWE, which stands for Results Only Work Environment and is exactly that - an environment where how, when and where work is accomplished is completely irrelevant. 

Most managers say they evaluate employee performance on the results produced, but is this true?  Don’t things like showing up for work, being available for and attending meetings, and managing corporate politics play a large part in how an employee is evaluated?  With ROWE all of these things are thrown out the window and employees are  evaluated strictly on the quality of work produced. 

ROWE, quite simply, revolves around trusting your employees.  And trusting employees increases engagement and motivation which increases productivity for the company as a whole.  As you know, I am all about instilling trust and the benefits of it, but is it realistic?

This article does a nice job of summarizing the components of creating this type of work environment as well as the types of businesses where it could be successful and the industries where it could not.  I personally find the whole concept very appealing and can see how it could create the type of corporate culture that would not only attract the best and the brightest, but would be a great retention tool as well.  Then, when I stop to think about the details involved in actually running a company this way it’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that anything could actually be accomplished in a timely manner.

Doesn’t a successful company revolve around commitments and deadlines managed by numerous people to accomplish the business objectives?  How do you manage that without meetings, set availability of team members and mandatory updates on progress?  And legally, are the complications it presents worth the rewards?

Have any of you encountered this type of management philosophy?  Was it difficult to implement and do you see better results than a traditionally run organization?  Are your employees happier and more productive and is the quality of their work higher?  Please share real-life experiences in the comments.

A few decades ago, Human Resources was mainly centralized around managing personnel, policing corporate policy and keeping records.  As HR has evolved it has come to mean many things with many off-shoots under the Human Resource umbrella, and in some cases, the development of entire departments to manage separate areas.  For example, in some organizations Talent Management is its own entity that focuses on strategic functions such as inventorying the available talent pool, optimizing this individual talent to increase the organization’s ROI, and motivating employees to increase engagement (which increases retention which increases productivity).  In other companies, working in Talent Management means that you coordinate and execute training modules. The title Talent Acquisition may mean implementing tools like specialized testing, emotional intelligence assessment, and succession planning development where in another organization it’s simply a title for an entry level recruiter.

Think about the different organizations you know.  Are the industry buzzwords such as organizational development, performance management, learning and development, workforce optimization, and on boarding used in different ways to mean different things.  Are they sometimes interchangeable from one company to the next?  Many of these have been considered part of HR for awhile now but as more emphasis is being place on human capital, is this still true.

There is a lot of confusion around these buzzwords.  Each may have a different meaning, be a subset of HR or have evolved into a stand alone department.  But is this a negative thing?  Is it preventing Human Resources from showing itself to be a strategic business department that aligns its Human Capital with strategic business objectives? Do some of these functions like I/O psychology and process management have their own place to stand alone and then appear in individual departments such as operations and finance?  Is all this verbiage a good thing for HR only as long as it remain within HR?

Is each organization run differently using various definitions? I would love to hear your experiences and opinions in the comments.

Research shows that one very important factor in why older workers leave their jobs is because they don’t feel like they are needed anymore. Older employees will get discouraged when they feel their purpose is in doubt, anyone else in the company can do what they do – and more effectively, and if they start to feel like they are simply taking up space.

I previously posted about attracting and engaging Generation Y employees. That certainly needs to be addressed but another fact is that mature workers have a lot of experience, knowledge, and wisdom that can help your company be more successful. And this means that you need retention strategies for all the generations in your workforce. So what can you do to retain your older employees?

Start a mentoring program. This will help engage your younger employees while at the same time giving purpose and value to the older employees.

Encourage career development. Nothing sends the message that there isn’t any potential left than assuming older employees are uninterested in honing their skills or learning new ones. In addition, you can really benefit from the fact that years of working mean older employees are pretty quick learners.

Consider offering retirement preparation counseling. Just because someone can retire doesn’t mean they will. Older employees just want more control over their future. Providing assistance in this way may produce some interesting results, like someone moving into a different role within the organization or suggesting a consulting or telecommuting role where they continue to help your company on terms that appeal to the employee.

Be open to horizontal career moves. Many mature employees get bored and changing it up a bit may be all that is needed to relight the fire they’ve had in the past.

Provide a specialized wellness program. Incentivize mature employees to participate and offer programs that share dietary and exercise advice. Many older employees are beginning to think of these things in their personal lives. Providing expertise for them at work gives them another reason to stay and to feel valued.

Older employees are more loyal and tend to want to work at one place for the rest of their careers. They also have a strong work ethic, a deep knowledge base and are not as interested in climbing the corporate ladder. All of these can be of huge benefit to you in terms of lower turnover, which is expensive and great experience that can be passed onto your younger employees.  Because they are not fighting for the next promotion they also tend to stay in their jobs longer. 

Understand that retention programs can’t be exactly the same for everyone. Take a look at the percentage of mature workers your company employs and then realize that implementing strategies to retain this group is not only going to reduce costs, but can make your organization more successful.