Are Your Employee’s Engaged?

In an article in the Wall Street Journal, Ram Charan warns CEO’s that they need to act to prevent an exodus of key employees  – see http://on.wsj.com/hynQOl .  The new normal will be one of talent management challenge and opportunity.  The opportunity will be to acquire some key performers who have been outplaced or become dissatisfied and restless during the recession.  The challenge will be to keep your high performers on board.  Four keys to building your workforce are selecting the right talent, challenging high performers with positive expectations and high quality feedback, and providing people with the resources they need to be successful. Doing these four things well creates a higher level of employee engagement.

The Engagement Cycle

Select

If the candidates who are being hired are not a match to the organization’s culture and values, and don’t posses the talent (defined as knowledge, skills and behavioral traits) needed to succeed, poor employee performance and high turnover are guaranteed! Not only will mis-matched hires under-perform, your good employees will not want to work with them.  Poor hiring decisions can result in the loss of high performers who prefer to work with competent co-workers.  Investing in best practice hiring techniques such as valid assessment tools and training supervisors to use behavior-based interviewing skills will yield returns many times the cost.

Expect

Ever try bowling with a blindfold on?  It’s not much fun not knowing where your target is and how many pins you knocked down.  High performers want to know what the goal is and how their doing.  Having clear expectations and working for a supervisor who provides positive reinforcement are motivating factors for employees who are hired based on their match to your culture, values and talent profile.  Don’t let them down, make sure they get the feedback they thrive on.  And make sure your organization’s total reward program, including compensation, benefits, recognition, and work-life factors, provides incentive and reinforcement for the discretionary effort that results in high performance and high profitability.

Connect

To your employees, supervisors and managers are the human face of the organization.  What does that face look like?  High performers thrive on positive feedback and recognition of their work.  They want to work for a person who conveys a sense of understanding and values them.  They seek a management team that is visible and accessible.  How are the “people skills” of your people leaders?  There’s an old saying that goes, “Employees don’t quit companies, they quit supervisors.”  Investing in the people leadership skills of supervisors and managers at every level is crucial to achieving an engaged workforce.  If leaders don’t make a conscious effort to create a sense of connection with employees, all the money the organization invests in compensation and benefits won’t raise the level of motivation.  People want to work for people, not abstractions, logos or brands.

Equip

Employees feel they are working for an organization that seeks to provide them with the resources they need to do great work, they tend respond accordingly.  This doesn’t mean throwing money away on the newest gadget, latest model, or “bleeding edge” technology.  It does mean making visible efforts to understand employee’s needs and the challenges they face in doing their work.  In most cases, employees simply need to know that management is listening and doing it’s best according to the organization’s financial ability, to give them what they need.  It also means sharing information.  Back to bowling while blindfolded – employees feel more a part of the organization when they are given a sense of the big picture, the goals and direction.  They want to know where the organization is going and what progress is being made towards achieving objectives.

Engage!

An engaged workforce is achievable when an organization has a talent management program that enables leaders to:

• Select the best candidates
• Provide clear performance standards, effective coaching and meaningful rewards
• Establish a sense of connection through superior people skills
• Create an environment where employees feel their concerns are heard and they are receiving important information about the organization and their jobs

The result of effective talent management is an improved bottom line for your organization.  The simple formula is Great People = Higher Profits.

 

When It’s Time to Hire, Hire Great People

August 1st, 2010 will be a red letter day when the history of the Great Recession is written. It was the tipping point when business leaders began saying, “We think this is a good time to begin making some key hires. There’s talent available, the end is in sight, and we’re going to selectively bring some people on board.”

Is this the right time for your organization to carefully begin building staff? It goes without saying that the financial house must be in order. With that in mind, here are a few points to consider on the people side.

Know which skill sets will add the most immediate value. Do an assessment of your organization’s talent infrastructure and get a quick two year SWOT analysis. Take a look at the emerging opportunities and the knowledge and skill gaps in your workforce, from top to bottom. What will you need to quickly move forward as the economy turns the corner – more capacity in sales, production, product development, supervision or perhaps somewhere else?

Check for burnout points that may be building in your workforce. As the economy headed downward into recession, employers did reductions in force. In 2010, things began to stabilize, and in some sectors, to improve. However, most organizations waited and waited, not wanting to add staff prematurely and jeopardize their slowly recovering bottom lines. Take a close, honest look at workloads. If there are hourly or salaried people who have been working extra hours for months, they are getting tired. Are you at risk of losing any key people due to burnout? If the answer is yes, it may be time to beef up staff a bit.

Hire the very best people you can. The right technical competencies – job related knowledge, skills and abilities – are critical, but don’t stop there. Really great employees are those who possess harder-to-measure behavioral competencies like teamwork, interpersonal skills, time management, strategic thinking, learning ability and others. They match your organization’s values and culture. Before you hire, map out the behavioral traits and skills required to excel in the position. Create competency-based behavioral interview questions. And use a proven, valid, reliable personality and leadership style assessment tool to determine each candidate’s fit to the position requirements.

Great people build great organizations and great organizations develop great people. Here’s hoping 2011 will be a building year for you and your organization!