Posts Tagged ‘talent management’

Employee Engagement is a hot topic as the shortage of high performing talent increases.  A May study from McKinsey & Co. found that by 2018, the U.S. will face a shortage of 1.5 million managers who can use data to shape business decisions. And the shortage gets even larger for non management employees, especially knowledge workers in the areas of  healthcare, technology, and accounting.

Another study in June 2011 from Mercer, the global HR consulting firm, found that nearly  one third (32 percent) of American workers are considering leaving their organization, which is 40 percent increase since 2005. So not only is there a shortage but there is also a higher risk of losing the talent you already have on your team.

So what should you be doing to nurture and increase employee engagement on your team? Here are a few tips to get you started:

1. Before hiring ask yourself does the candidate fit culturally with the organization. In other words, does the potential employee have the same set of values the company lives every day?  More often than not employees fail in the short term because they don’t “fit”  the culture of the organization, not because they don’t have the skills.

Coaching Tip: Devise several interview questions that can illuminate a candidate’s values and/or use an assessment that measures values such as the Hogan Leadership assessment.

2. Once you have the right person on board, you need to keep them challenged which means providing them with opportunities for growth and development.  Development plans are an integral part of the talent management system and should be updated on a quarterly basis. The types of development can include special projects, rotation to a lateral position, matching a mentor with the employee, structured learning, and executive coaching.

Coaching Tip: It is critical that the employee be a part of their development planning process. Too often managers assume that an employee wants certain opportunities when they either may not want the opportunity at all, or the timing isn’t right for them due to a personal situation.

3. Demonstrate that you care about your employees by recognizing their good work and showing appreciation. The number one reason good employees leave a company  is because they don’t feel appreciated. Many managers feel that if they show too much appreciation and recognition that it will make performance correction more difficult.  Studies show that it takes upwards of 5 acts of appreciation to equal one act of criticism.  Keep track of your appreciation for others over a week, be purposeful by looking for the sparks of good work, potential, and recognize it.

Coaching Tip: Make sure that when you do provide recognition and appreciation that it be done in a timely manner and with sincerity.  There is nothing worse than receiving insincere appreciation. If you can’t be sincere, then don’t even bother.

4.  Trust is a critical component to employee engagement.  Employees who trust their co-workers, managers, and company generally have a higher level of engagement than those who don’t.  And the one area that will impact trust the most is transparent leadership.  Organizational transparency requires among other things, open access to information, and participation in decision making.

Coaching tip:  A higher degree of transparency will exist if communications are timely and frequent.  And remember to use different communication channels to satisfy the preferences of the multiple generations in the workforce-email, text, hard copy, meetings, video, etc.

These are all techniques that can be implemented in a short period of time that can provide you with some insurance in retaining your key employees. Which one do you plan to implement first?

The talent obsessed are companies like GE, IBM, and Procter and Gamble who really know their people: what strengths they have, what they value as an individual, their personalities, and what drove them to their achievements. Their obsession in understanding and developing their people has brought their organizations a higher level of success than many of their competitors.

Many of you reading this are thinking, “I don’t have the resources that an IBM has”.  ”How can our company manage our talent like a Fortune 500 company?” The answer is by focusing on the important and not the urgent and taking a longer term view of your company’s human capital resources.

Here are four steps to starting on the road to becoming talent obsessed:

1. As a leader, take ownership for the development of your employees. Incorporate learning into your regular staff meetings. Delegate the learning process to your team members so that everyone is involved in the process. Be on the look out for best practices that individuals possess and have them share with their team mates. This is a great development opportunity for both the presenter and other team members.

2. Make development of employees a critical success factor for all managers within your company.  Employee development should be a significant factor in performance reviews for managers.  One great way for managers to develop others is through coaching. And if managers don’t have the coaching skills, provide them with training and become a coaching role model to them.

3. Peel back the onion and ask a lot of  quality questions to understand how a person achieved their results. The more questions you ask, the clearer you will understand the skills and talent an employee possesses.  If you identify a skill the employee has that you weren’t aware of, figure out ways that the employee can build on this skill.  This may include delegating something on your plate, or assigning her to a new project.

4. Ask others who were working with or around the individual for their feedback. Structure the questions based on what you learned in step 3, while also asking questions that can broaden your knowledge of the employee’s core talent.

Once you have gained enough knowledge of the employee’s core skills and strengths, start looking at your organization’s needs in the next 12-18 months.  Are there upcoming projects in other parts of the organization, where this employee’s talents can shine? Is there an opportunity that will stretch the person to a higher level of mastery in that talent, or will it be too much of a stretch that could frustrate him?

To become talent obsessed, the focus needs to come from the top.  Those companies who have a long term commitment to the talent inside their company will see greater long term business results because their employees will have reached their true potential and be fully engaged.

In Daniel Pink’s newest book Drive and the underlying message is that a leader can provide a motivating environment but can’t motivate their employees; motivation comes from within an individual.

This goes entirely against the common belief that given more carrots, an employee will be motivated to behave in ways that will increase the success of a company. Yet, time and again, leaders have found that providing more money and better benefits, extrinsic motivators, only provide a short term effect on behavior change. Extrinsic motivators are not sustainable.

Last month’s newsletter outlined the Top 5 Leadership Mistakes and one of them was misunderstanding motivation.

I outlined the three attributes that when implemented effectively within the organization, can increase the long term behavioral changes a leader is looking to instill in the organization.

And what can a company expect from its employees when they provide an environment that provides for autonomy, mastery, and purpose?

An academic study by Richard Ryan and Edward Deci in 2000 issue of American Psychologist showed that focusing on internal motivators can lead to a higher self-esteem and self-actualization while a focus on external motivators on average leads to lower self-esteem and self-actualization.

In turn, employees demonstrated a greater level of persistence, creativity, energy, and well being, which increased the performance level employees.

So if in fact employee performance increases with intrinsic motivators, why aren’t more companies creating and implementing a plan to transition to a culture of autonomy, mastery and purpose?  Because it is not easy! It is a massive shift in long term beliefs and requires both employer and employees to change their mind set as well as the way they work.

What are the critical success factors to transitioning your workplace to an intrinsically motivated organization? They are the three C’s.

1. Creativity: be able to devise innovative ways of working outside the traditional mode. Bring in outside assistance if you don’t find you are making the progress you desire.
2. Communication: changes to the work process need to be communicated to all employees in a multitude of methods. Communication should be ongoing and frequent and provide employees with the opportunity to have their questions answered.
3. Change Management: demonstrate how the changes will positively affect employees, create methods to identify employees who may be struggling with the changes, and have resources available to help them adjust.

A recent article in Talent Management Magazine reports that the number of people quitting their jobs rose to 2.1 million in April. Skilled professionals are one of the fastest growing  segments of the workforce who are quiting.

According to the article, the level of effective leadership perceived by employees can impact whether an employee would consider leaving a job or not.

http://talentmgt.com/talent.php?pt=a&aid=1280

So what are you doing to become more effective in your leadership and how is your company developing leadership talent? If you don’t have answers to these questions, you may start losing key employees. Don’t wait, have a plan.