Things that make you go "Hmmm...."
A call center announced that the planned closing of it's operation in Lafayette, Indiana was NOT going to happen, months after the first announcement. They were able to make some budget changes and survive with the smaller crew, as 80 of the employees had resigned due to the coming closure.
The chatter at the end of the article was cynical - that this had always been planned, and that the move saved the organization from paying for severance for those 80 that quit.
I take a different view. My experience has it that the high performers are the first to leave (because they CAN) and that the remaining employees are the mediocre and below, the ones that do not feel that they can get employment elsewhere.
All of these turnover statistics are misleading at a time of great stress (where we are now...) and most employees are hunkered down and biding their time. When the turnaround comes (which it will) there will be a whole bunch of high quality people moving around. Will the come to you, or move away? Will they join you, or leave just when you need them?
That is what you should be working on - an inclusive culture that promotes high performance...
There seems to be a lot of fear in the workplace lately. From the adult perspective, we know that crises happen, markets go up and down, people get laid off. But that used to happen to someone else, not us. That is no longer the case.
What do we do? Paul H. Sutherland of Zenvesting teaches: establish a habit of doing more than you're paid for. Do everything you can to keep your employer profitable.
Help keep your employer's core values in the vision. Don't let panic overtake reasonability. Keep connection to ethics, virtue and common sense.
As an employer, when hiring new employees what steps are you taking when hiring new employees to find the people who embody your culture through pre-employment testing & assessments? Do you assess what you need for job performance, think lean HR, or make use of applicant tracking and use human resource management systems available on the market to access for job fit? These steps will help set your employees up for success, not failure. After all, it is all about the people.
What are you doing as an employer or employee to insure your success?
We occupy space, or used to, in a building that we own. Last week, we found ourselves with the realization that to provide exceptional customer service to our building tenant, we have three days to move our operations so they could take over the floor of the building we occupy!! No easy task!
Thoughts run rampant in our minds: moving phones, furniture, artwork, paperwork, file contents and where do we find a mover on such short notice. Where do we locate space to store our "stuff", where do we move our staff??
Now, talk about personnel management, job performance, HR management and Human Resource Planning!! This was the maximum test of our patience, resourcefulness and skills. Definitely a team effort in every sense of the word. And this team reached the finish line with flying colors!
When you are building a team; before you hire, consider the use of Career Personality Tests or other Employee Assessments so that you know the candidate has Job Fit. It will be worth all the time and energy. We do and it continues to pay dividends.
I am the crash test dummy of applicant tracking systems. Before I talk with an organization about the quality of their new hires or their screening and assessment systems I check out their web site. I read their mission statement. I try to get a feel for what an applicant sees and feels from the most important chair - the applicant's seat.
Most of the systems may be efficient for the organization, but few systems do two very important things. They seldom project the values and attitudes of the organization, and the almost never ask me anything beyond what a basic resume has on it. In fact, most allow me to simple paste my resume into a box and move on.
Sadly, all of the technology and effort is used to speed up a flawed process, rather than using the opportunity to change the rules and get a better answer.
If you could change the outcome to your current application system, what would you want as a better result? Better job fit? Faster time to good job performance? A lean HR process? EEO reporting with a single click?
Social networking is requiring me to say "no" more than I prefer. At the start, I was happy to add anyone who would have me. Kind of like dating in Junior High. With the current business climate, I have been getting requests from a large number of strangers.
I'm saying "no" to the guy from Utah who is looking for a "new calling" and wants to be a part of my network. No to a guy with a vaguely familiar name who, from what I can tell, is doing nothing but sending invitation requests to the world. No to the intern with the perky picture who wants a few minutes of my time to demonstrate a knife set that she is going to be selling as a summer job. Nothing about what I am interested in, like Lean HR, employee engagement or talent acquisition.
I am a nice guy. Let me make it clear - I am accepting initiations from interesting people in my world, people that I can help in a reasonable way or people that are a part of my life.
I am not a cranky isolationist, by nature. In the work I do with hiring processes, applicant tracking and assessment work, I help organizations screen out applicants that are not a fit for their culture, and screen in those who will probably be high performers. My clients say that they are having the same problem with their hiring - an overwhelming volume of applicants that do not care about the job description, only that they get in.
So, what have I learned? Apply your rules of friendship to your in-box - accept those that will benefit from friendship, and will be of benefit to you. For the others, don't dilute your time and just say "no"
There he was. A nicely dressed man in a necktie on the main corner in town. I couldn't tell the color of his suit because he was wearing a sandwich board that was almost as tall as he was, saying "Hire ME!" He had his profession and his phone number on the sign, and he was waving at me with a hopeful sign as I drove by.
Wow. I realized that these are strange times. Even stranger, less than a day later, I got a call from a local journalist, doing a story about hiring in general, and about the guy in the sandwich board in particular. "Had I seen him? " Yes. "What did I think?" Hmm.
I said that I had two opinions. First, he would probably be successful for a variety of reasons - that nobody else was doing it so he would stand out, that he was showing determination and a willingness to try new ideas, even if the concept of holding a sign in public is certainly 100 years older than the Internet.
Then, I said he was a shining example of how flawed and overloaded the current job search process is. Organizations are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of applicants, and job seekers are willing to do WHATEVER it takes to get past the screening and get a job. Any job. He was certainly giving up on the Internet.
Savvy organizations are using this time to redo their core processes, putting in assessments and applicant tracking, using human resources software and talent management concepts to predict good job fit.
If not, when the economy turns (and it will) the organizations that did not focus on job fit will have their high performers leave and their mediocre people stay. What you want is to have the high performers stay. That requires good talent management.
I hope your filters and systems are in place, and that you will be rewarded by a sustainable culture of high performance. And, if the guy in the sandwich board is reading this, call me. I would be happy to help with your search.
Your organization's survival hinges on keeping your top performers.
Whether you are selecting the team that will remain or hiring for growth or attrition, if you have a group of top performers and you add anything but a top performer to join their group, bad things happen. Within days, if not hours, everyone understands their level of performance. The top producers then compare their compensation package and output with the new arrival, and are upset. Ask top producers how they feel in a situation like this, they will say “insulted, angry, and that they are hoping for management to step in and correct the error.” If nothing is done, the top producers know that, even in tough economic times they can be quickly reemployed, and they leave.
Simply put, to not focus on top producers results in a retention problem of the worst kind - the average producers stay. The poor producers stay. The superior producers find places where they are welcome. This kind of retention problem may not show up on normal retention statistics, because many organizations do not have a performance management system that allows tracking of the retention of superior producers. As top producers are less than 20 percent of the overall organization, high turnover in their segment may not show up as an alarm in the overall retention numbers.
What can be done? Manage the talent pipeline as if your organization's life depended on it. Use assessments, applicant tracking, and talent management to keep your organization's efficiency high, and getting higher.
Definition of Core Values: Operating philosophies or
principles that guide an organization's internal
conduct as well as its
relationship with the external world.
You think you are too young or too small to need and establish core values? Think again! Bring your core values to life. This is a valuable process needed for your company's strong cultural foundation. Strong culture leads to superior performance, higher employee retention and a better aligned organization.
A strong organization driven by core values sets a benchmark to lead people, gives a foundation to make tough decisions, and will bring simplicity and clarity to the "people" side of the company.
There is nothing magical about these concepts. You know that your company's core values are taking hold when you hear your employees restating and using them in their daily interactions.
It is the discipline of execution that distinguishes great companies. This is about building an organization that has purpose, focus and alignment, that lives its values every day and that creates an environment that allows employees to grow and to produce superior results.
This core ideology - our vision, purpose and values - is the heart and soul of ExactHire. We believe that adhering to this core ideology will help us become a strong, sustainable organization - a leader in an evolving business world.
Your core values will be used in talent acquisition, performance management, employee assessments, interviewing, orientations and human resource planning.
Keep in mind: The key is not what core values an organization has, but that is has core values at all!
So there I was, driving to work in the early dawn and thinking about applicant tracking or assessments or something. As the sun rose, the sky lit the clouds from below and filled my windshield with a carpet of orange and salmon clouds, a backdrop for the street signs and landing airplanes and all the normal interstate claptrap.
Moving with the morning rush hour, I fished the camera out of the back seat, rolled down the window and used one hand to wave my camera in the (cold) wind and fired off a dozen shots. I always have my camera with me, and so I thought nothing of it.
An hour ago, I was on the phone with a client. We had just set up a new assessment system that will help them screen for job fit, and I was checking in. After we had done our business, he asked if I had seen the sunrise this morning.
"Why, yes."
He said he was very frustrated. He felt it was one of the more beautiful ones he had seen, and that he had pulled off the interstate, gotten out of his car, and thought he had taken a photo of it to remember it by. He had just tried to show the photo to his staff, and the cell phone had not worked. Grr.
I smiled. "Would you like me to email some of mine?"
I could tell it made his day.
As HR professionals, we are always expected to anticipate needs and have everything that our staffs and employees and bosses want. It always feels good to have exactly what a client wants, when they want it - be they internal clients or external. Even if it's just a photo of a sunrise.
In these stressful economic times, good customer service and high performance is everything. Enjoy the pictures. Maybe it's what you need right now...
The distractions of the stock market are keeping the headlines off of the real news - the unemployment rates. As the ranks of job seekers swell, the arms race of polishing resumes and practicing interview questions is on. Think you have a good screening method? think you can compare resumes and get an "apples to apples" comparison? Think you have "radar" that is good at picking up false answers? Think again.
There are some great resources on the applicant's side. On-line research about your industry in general and you, the employer, in specific. Software to craft a very impressive resume. Videos and podcasts to guide the "soft skills" part of the interview. All of this produces a predictable result - erratic job fit and poor job performance.
Want to see what the applicants are using? Try
this link for some interview advice. Try
this link to review a blog that is intended to help applicants get by your pre-employment testing. Or even read
this website that is intended to help applicants fool drug testing.
My point is simple. As the employment pressure climbs, raise your standards and get pre-employment assessments into the mix. As applicants are preparing their answers, you should be preparing your questions...and building them into your talent management system.
Culture is more than the behavior of the
individual. It depends on the interaction of people - in pairs, small groups and
through the entire organization.
Talent management is a two-way street. A savvy organization wants to identify and keep
the people who will be high performers and make a difference.
High performing employees work for the
challenge, the personal development, and the “stretch assignment”.
Both parties can win at this game...
...or lose. What would it be like if employees told the truth? Click here for a very cynical (if funny) scene from Office Space.
Employees who are more engaged are less likely to leave when
things get tough. Their persistence translates into positive effects on the
bottom line. Today’s workforce, particularly high performers, want their work
to resonate with their core self, their reason for being. Imagine the increased contribution from
a passionate staff whose roles are aligned to their core interests and
capabilities, engaged to contribute their full measure. It forms the infrastructure of the
organization’s culture. Its strength is the organization’s strength.
This - the impact of passionate people doing good work - is the reason I'm so passionate about increasing the standards in hiring, in using applicant tracking and assessment software, and in implementing good talent management tactics. Care to join?
At ExactHire, we believe through preemployment testing, applicant management you can acquire the talent who will deliver world class customer service. Through human resource planning, you can differentiate your company. Too many companies try to streamline customer service with telephone trees and automated push buttons. That may be fine if all that is needed is to check balances and change profile data. But, if you have a business that needs to help clients implement new systems or you provide products that require service, then the telephone tree doesn’t work as well. You need outstanding job performance from your customer service department! Job fit is paramount and equals success!
To acquire the ideal talent, management must have the right definition of "world class customer service" and manage applicant flow to produce the right fit. With the availability of reliable and valid employee assessment tests, you can discover who those people are. And, by asking some key questions right on an on-line application, through an on-line tracking system, you can get a higher quality, pre-screened applicant pool from which to draw.
Consider this—If you eliminate that time consuming stack of resumes, ask key questions on an application, test your candidates against a valid benchmark created for your own environment, you can guarantee that your turnover rate in customer service will go down. Results: Turnover rates go down, training costs go down, customers feel cared for and appreciated, you get their return business, they tell their friends, employees will feel engaged, and profits will rise. Isn’t it worth a try? What have you got to lose? Start thinking how to achieve your ideal talent acquisition needs!
My final employee engagement recommendations revolve around creating employee satisfaction, by creating a future and perfect job fit. Human resource planning should include the following steps.
FIFTH: Make your on-boarding process of new employees unique. Your goal should be to have the employee go home at the end of the first day and tell those closest to them that their first day with your company was the best first day they ever had. There are many ways to make your employee engagement special.
SIXTH: Develop a mentoring process in your company to make sure your new employee is immersed into your company as efficiently as possible. This is especially important when you consider the generational diversity we are all facing in the workplace and the timeline that younger employees use to judge whether they have made the right decision.
SEVENTH: Communicate the career path options that employees have and be clear as to the expectations you have for them to be considered for these other assignments.
EIGHTH: Talent management also involves employees in decision making and open communication with them. The more knowledge they have, the more they can offer your company. The more they feel part of the company and the process the better the results they’ll produce.
LAST: Warehouse the candidate data and new employee information you have obtained in a secure website. This allows you to develop analytics, feedback loops and meaningful metrics. Then evaluate your processes for higher performance payback. This will help as you search for new candidates as well as manage those you have hired. This information can also be used to show candidates that you understand how to manage the human capital component of your business.
I do not have to tell you that the competition for top talent is getting more intense. Furthermore, we all are noticing that the younger generations entering the workforce are not as patient as the baby boomers that are retiring. As business owners, we do not have as long to "get it right". The generation X and Y employees are quicker to judge and to correct a decision they feel is not a good fit for them.
By implementing these processes, you can leapfrog your company right over best practices to NEXT PRACTICES. You will improve how your organization manages talent acquisition and develops human capital; the capital that delivers the world class customer service that truly differentiates your company from the rest.
Because as I always say "it's all about people"!!
Last week we were talking about WHY the hiring process was broken. Now we will discuss HOW we fix the hiring process.
FIRST: Let
’s decide what characteristics your top performers have and use those in search of your next top performers. Most of you do not understand what makes your top performers so good. Your top sales person sells a lot, but that is the outcome not their innate characteristics that create that outcome. You need to hire based on Culture and Job Fit and not just skills.
SECOND: Identify the kind of culture you have developed for your company. Understand it well enough that you can explain it to others. Whether you have defined your culture or not, understand that all companies have a culture. Your employees know it and you had better understand it as well. You need to hire employees that fit your Culture, not just those who have the right skill sets.
THIRD: Make the process of hiring efficient. Change your application process by developing an online portal. Ask open ended questions which gives you more knowledge about the candidates earlier in the process. This results in more information than a standard resume can provide.
FOURTH: Use a validated employee assessments product that helps you understand your candidate and compares them to the characteristics of your top performers that was developed in step 1. Applicant tracking tools and assessments will provide normative data on your candidate and ask legal interview questions. Utilize all this information to make your interview a much more powerful and beneficial event. The time spent in the interview will now be much more effective.
I'll let these tips sit in your mind for a couple of days. Stay tuned for several more which I will post later this week!
As business owners, we ALL worry about having enough capital to run our businesses. Most of us immediately think of financial capital. Without cash, we are out of business. However, I suggest that the most important capital we contend with is the human capital of business!
Why “Human Capital”?
It is clearly the most complicated component is talent acquisition and talent management. In fact, once our companies grow and we solve the cash situation, the people factor remains. Furthermore, it’s the human capital part of our businesses which interacts with our customers on a daily basis. What is more important than that?!
.
Jim Collins in his book “Good To Great” stated companies having the best culture and most engaged employees have the highest market value. These two factors almost always result in higher profits and fewer headaches in running our businesses.
I have always believed the following when it comes to running companies:
If I want HIGHER SALES and PROFITS, what will differentiate my company from my competitors will be:
• UNFORGETTABLE CUSTOMER SERVICE: the type that customers talk about and benchmark their other vendors against!
o This type of service is delivered by…ENGAGED EMPLOYEES who deliver SUPERIOR JOB PERFORMANCE.
o Remember that how you treat employees is how they will treat your customers. It is a simple rule that works.
o Therefore, you need to make sure employees FIT THE JOB and the CULTURE of your company. Most of us do not spend enough time in this area. This should happen during the hiring cycle.
Next week, I’m going to talk to you about the hiring cycle and what is involved in human resource planning so………..stay tuned!
So there I was, watching the presidential debate and munching popcorn and it struck me - this election is nothing but a very public (and drawn out) old-fashioned hiring process. We're forcing candidates through a stressful obstacle course, examining their values, asking behavioral questions, and making a group decision on the management team for the next four years.
Clearly, the process could use some help. How about applying some "next step" Human Resource Planning and Talent Acquisition and Lean HR ideas....
We could get better results if..
- We could use valid pre-hire assessment tools to match the candidates to a benchmark of the ideal president. Build the benchmark by going through past living Presidents and testing them (only the high performers, of course) and adding benchmark data from business and military leaders that would make a powerful standard for employment. Colin Powell. Herb Kelleher of Southwest. Gordon Bethune of Continental. Use the Profile XT - it has a distortion score so we can tell if they're being candid. Perhaps that would eliminate most of the candidates right there...
- Develop a standard application form that asks the questions that make a real difference up front, and have the candidates fill it out when they file their candidacy. Make them available online or email a copy to every citizen, and we could do an apples-to-apples comparison. Make the questions required.
My proposed questions -
What is the best job you ever had? Why?
What makes a great leader? What prevents you from achieving that standard?
How do you handle stress?
And, of course,
If elected, what can we do to help the Chicago Cubs win a World Series?
Okay, maybe a more reasonable question would be about peace in our time.
Your thoughts? What would your questions be on a Presidential application form?
Any port in a storm. This economy is a "perfect storm" that will drive the
future of hiring, and I'm focused on finding the best tools, from pre
employment testing to EEO Reporting. The arms race is back on, and
we'll be reporting from the battleground for you.
The economy is affecting hiring in surprising ways. At a time where the volume of hiring is slowing, each hire becomes more crucial. Before the downturn, there was a problem with people not telling the truth in the hiring process. Now, it gets worse.
As unemployment numbers start heading up, the pressure on screening and hiring systems increases. Advanced applicant tracking and assessment tools that apply "LEAN HR" are part of the modern Human Resources software suite. These tools are the first line of defense for an organization trying to maintain their "employer of choice" status. Good human resource planning requires good support tools.
Admit it - the arms race of the hiring process had kind of slowed down. Now, the race is speeding up again because of the combined forces of a slowing economy pushing unemployment up and organizations properly focused on building a high performing work force.
Organizations must use proper talent aquisition to produce job fit, employee engagement, and great job performance. At the same time, they must use whatever advanced tools they can find to keep applicants out of the process that are not sharing their true values and attitudes, and are simply trying to get inside an organization - any organization - and are willing to say whatever it takes to get there.
So, the arms race is on. Let's keep a step ahead....I'm looking for links to good blogs and sites that might help - share them if you have them!
On the theme of strange times, continued from the last post...
Then, there are the people you already have...
You may have noticed some disquieting trends in your organization at the end of summer of 2008 – absentee numbers that are higher that you prefer, low productivity numbers, the occasional loss of key employees, and the difficulty of hiring good people. They are all connected – and most businesses are feeling the same pinch.
Don’t get caught in the trap of focusing just on hiring new employees and bailing out the leaking ship. You have probably noticed that your top performers – the 16% that are stars – produce 80% of the bottom line results. The remaining 20% of good results come from the 68% of employees that are average performers.
Do the math – that’s 100%. Let’s also agree that about 16% of employees hide under rocks, hoping that you won’t notice that they haven’t produced anything useful, ever. Continue to ignore them for a moment - today, we’re talking about the high performers.
My point is simple - retaining all employees at any cost should no longer be your goal. Focus your retention effort on those few people that are producing 80% of your results. Do whatever you can do to keep your best on board. I am not recommending that you ignore the rest – just focus your efforts in the short term on a very important part of your staff.
I'll wager that if you were to shadow a manager for a day, most of their time would be spent on the lower performing people, leaving the high performers to self-manage. Not a good strategy...the high performers feel under-loved and will, over time, either become average performers or, worse yet, leave.
Even if you have a good human resource management system, practice good lean hr, and read all of the talent management books you can find, you will still be at risk for the departure of your high performers.
Action point - sit down with your supervisors and make the above point with them...and get them to spend more of their time with the ones they want to keep.
Reading the newspaper (yes, actually the paper version...) it became clear that all of the business stories were focused on financial metrics. They seem to have forgotten that no matter what, you HAVE to know your people….
Fact: As your organization changes shape and direction, the selection and motivation and management of
staff make all of the difference in building a high performance culture. If you have to restructure, change shape or downsize,
knowing your people is equally important.
The only question that remains is, how do you do it? Assessments? Talent Management? Employee Engagement?
As an extrovert, I hate this point, but you have to get better at listening...and you have to pay attention for the smaller details. Those details can come from watching, from listening, and from building metrics that matter into the management process.
I'm doing some significant research on current metrics - and how to apply them early in the hiring cycle so that job fit is more likely. Any advice on what metrics you are using will be welcome in this forum...
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