Managing Information Effectively.

Firms Put Themselves at Risk by Not Managing Information Effectively.

Many firms are failing to manage their unstructured information, which can comprise 80 percent of their total data effectively. In a new report, "Document and Records Management (DRM)," European IT research and advisory organization Butler Group contends that organizations need to look beyond compliance to plan the implementation of DRM to provide business benefits.

For example, by enabling users to save all unstructured information into a central repository where it can be accessed and shared, they will also derive cost efficiencies. In these circumstances compliance will be free.

"Despite an increase in the number of regulations and legislation to which organizations must adhere, compliance is still low on the agenda for many, and litigation risk continues to be a bigger driver in the U.K. and Europe," said Sue Clarke, senior research analyst at Butler Group and the report's co-author.

"Better manageability of unstructured information is also a determining factor in the decision to implement DRM. It is our belief that return on investment can be achieved and therefore DRM justified on the savings that can be made through the better management of information alone, although it is often difficult for business managers to justify the required budget on these grounds."

We are now in the second wave of document and records management, with many organizations that implemented DRM systems a few years ago looking to replace or roll out their systems to a wider audience. The provision of solutions built on top of DRM systems has greatly extended the capabilities of DRM so that organizations can bring together information from multiple sources to complete tasks initiated by the DRM system.

The major technology issue for organizations is how DRM can address their particular needs and which solution will provide the closest fit. For organizations that are document-centric, creating most of their documents internally with little requirement for integration with other repositories, an electronic document and records management (EDRM) system may be sufficient.

This generally provides workflows that support the life cycle of a document including its declaration as a record, but does not provide extensive integrations with other applicants. These products are geared toward serving organizations in document-centric, regulated industries.

However, an enterprise content management (ECM) platform with DRM capabilities will generally be better-suited for organizations that import rather than create a high percentage of their documents, have a need to integrate with structured data as well as unstructured information sources and require complex document-centric processes.

Organizations therefore need to carefully consider which type of product to deploy and must take into account future requirements rather than simply current needs. In terms of DRM functionality, there is little to choose between the leading ECM vendors. The areas in which they differentiate themselves are in broader ECM fields such as business process management (BPM), digital rights management, scanning and imaging, digital asset management, e-mail archiving and output management. These additional capabilities of the ECM vendors are reflected in the price of the platforms, although some of the additional capabilities are offered as optional modules.

Regardless of the type of DRM system that organizations implement, a potential issue they face is long-term retention of information. Whilst most organizations now recognize the need to carry out a hardware refresh periodically, they are also faced with the problems of file-format obsolescence, and there are a number of new file formats being developed for long-term retention.

One of the more contentious areas of record management (RM) is the debate between integrated RM and in-place or federated RM. Whilst Butler Group regards an integrated approach to be more secure, it recognizes there are circumstances when this is not appropriate and federated RM is the only feasible option. In these circumstances, organizations need to pay particular attention to the security of the records that are maintained in their native repositories.

As organizations look to replace existing DRM systems, it is of the utmost importance that they get the implementation right. The cost of failure can be high with the system not addressing the pain points of the organization, or take-up by employees low because it provides them few benefits and is cumbersome to use. The way to avoid failure is to plan the implementation in detail with the objectives fully defined and understood and by following best practices.

Clarke concluded: "Organizations continue struggling to manage growing volumes of information, having little idea or control over content employees create or retain. They are exposing themselves to risk, particularly as the fines for nondisclosure grow in size as the courts and regulators become tougher on organizations unable to fulfill disclosure requests.

"In addition they typically suffer brand damage. Senior executives must understand their responsibilities for the management of information. Claiming ignorance of poor practices is no defense."

Juggling Your Way to the Top.

Juggling Your Way to the Top

What can a juggler or a mime teach a corporation? To most, the answer would be nothing - unless you looked through Carr Hagerman's eyes. The former professional street performer sees the same dynamic in his trade at play in the business realm between managers and employees, employees and customers, and even trainers and trainees.

"The image of a street performer working with an audience is an exotic image," said Hagerman, who is also a co-author of Top Performer: A Bold Approach to Sales and Service. "But the traits of a successful street performer are the same as [those needed to be] a successful business employee."

A top performer on the street is one who engages the energy of the audience so that the performance becomes co-created and co-authored. That moves a performance from "average to rare," Hagerman said. Coincidentally, the same is true in business, as employee success depends on interaction with the client, whether it be an internal or external customer. It isn't about learning difficult new skills, but instead it's about being authentic and honest in these engagements.

"The street performer is face-to-face with their audience, the same as a businessperson is to a customer," Hagerman said. "[But with a street performer], we can see - in microcosm - engagement happen. It's less about the material in their show and more about the connection and working with energy."


Through songs, staged performances and interactive training sessions, Hagerman illustrates what makes a performer successful: claiming your pitch, building the circle, juicing the jam, mining the mess, developing insurance, choosing the close and passing the hat. These concepts can be used to better business interactions.

"The performer claims open space, and we fill that with our claim: our material and our audience," Hagerman said. "In business, the word 'claim' means to take something as your own. When you look at any business leader, they are strong and successful because they claim it."

As one can imagine, there's a level of unpredictability in street performing. As the audience grows and the circle builds, performers have to be ready for unexpected problems or "jams."

"The street performer declares their presence authentically - the better the commitment, the bigger the audience that will come," Hagerman said. "The larger the circle, the more jams that come up. Then we can actually see the disruptions of the marketplace, such as a drunk walking into the stage, and that's a great image for teaching people about flexibility. Great innovative companies recognize that problem as a gift."

Finally, a performance's success is determined by what's in the hat.

"What if everything you did was dependent on what it was worth?" Hagerman said. "If your product is lousy, the hat never lies."

Article Resource:
Lindsay Edmonds Wickman
[About the Author: Lindsay Edmonds Wickman is an associate editor for Chief Learning Officer magazine.]

Talent Wars Set to Intensify.

Talent Wars Set to Intensify

If finding the right employees isn't challenging enough, companies in the developed world are about to face a new challenge: recruiters from emerging markets. A survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit, sponsored by SAP AG, found that when talent isn't available locally, companies in emerging markets will look to Western Europe and North America to fill their vacancies.

This is particularly onerous as aging populations and declining birth rates in much of the developed world are beginning to cause a talent crunch. In some countries, such as Japan, the problem is particularly acute. Three-quarters of Japanese executives view the aging population as the primary factor in the talent gap their firms are facing.

Businesses across the world are worried: Of the 587 executives polled for this survey, nearly two-thirds expect employee recruitment and retention to become tougher during the next three years, and more than one-fifth see this as becoming "significantly harder." Faced with situation, talent management is high on the corporate agenda.


"Organizations need to start thinking creatively about how to resolve the talent shortage issue," said Robin Bew, editorial director at the Economist Intelligence Unit. "Hiring a headhunter to poach employees from a rival firm is not a sustainable solution."

Other key findings of the report include the following:

a) Soft skills are the most sought after, but the hardest to find. The ability to manage change, think strategically and communicate effectively are the most wanted skills; yet, these skills are in the shortest supply.

b) Talent management is too important to leave only to HR. Having recognized people as a core competitive asset, companies are treating talent management as an integral part of their business strategies. A majority of survey respondents believe the most effective talent management strategies are devised and implemented by business units themselves and supported by the HR function.

c) A more creative approach is needed. Companies are continually told that, to stay competitive, they need to be more innovative. This is no less true of talent management. Firms will need to recruit not only from other countries but also from other industries, for example, and they will also need to work more proactively with universities, as well as other businesses, to develop training programs and help expand the available pool of skilled employees.

Eight Hiring Mistakes Employers Make.

Eight Hiring Mistakes Employers Make: From Application to Interview

Hiring decisions that result in "bad" hires sap your organization's time, training resources, and psychic energy. These are the top hiring mistakes to avoid during your recruiting and hiring process. Do these eight activities with care; your recruiting, interviewing and hiring practices will result in better hires. Better hires will help you develop a strong, healthy, productive, competitive organization.

Here are eight recruiting and hiring mistakes to avoid.

1. Do Not Pre-screen Candidates

A half hour phone call can save hours of your organization's time. Pre-screening applicants is a must for recruiting and hiring the best employees. You can discover whether the candidate has the knowledge and experience you need. You can screen for applicants who expect a salary that is out of your league. You can gain a sense about the person's congruity with your culture. Always pre-screen applicants.

2. Fail to Prepare the Candidate

If your applicant fails to ask about your company and the specifics of the job for which he or she has applied, help the applicant out. Prepare your applicants better for the interview, so interviewers spend their time on the important issues: determining the candidate's skills and fit within your culture. Prepare the candidate by describing the company, the details of the position, the background and titles of the interviewers, and whatever will eliminate time wasting while the candidate interviews within your company.

3. Fail to Prepare the Interviewers

You wouldn't choose a college for your child or launch a project without a plan. Why, then, do organizations put so little planning into interviewing candidates for positions? Interviewers need to meet in advance and create a plan. Who is responsible for which types of questions? What aspect of the candidate's credentials is each person assessing? Who is assessing culture fit. Plan to succeed in employee selection in advance.

4. Rely on the Interview to Evaluate a Candidate

The interview is a lot of talk. And most frequently, because applicants are not prepped in advance, a lot of interview time is spent giving the candidate information about your organization. Even more time is invested in different interviewers asking the candidate the same questions over and over.

During an interview, candidates tell you what they think you want to hear because they want to successfully obtain a job offer. Organizations are smart when they develop several methods for evaluating candidates in addition to the interview.

According to the Chally Group, a Human Resources consulting firm, in, The Most Common Hiring Mistakes, research at the University of Michigan found that, "The typical interview increases the likelihood of choosing the best candidate by less than 2%. In other words, if you just 'flipped' a coin you would be correct 50% of the time. If you added an interview you would only be right 52% of the time."

5. Do Nothing But Talk During an Interview

Every interview needs to have components other than questions, answers and discussion. Walk the candidate through the company. Ask about his or her experience with situations you point out during the walk. In a manufacturing company, ask how the candidate would improve a process.

Watch the candidate perform a task such as separating parts or components to get a feel for their "hands-on" ability. Have a documentation or writing candidate write a description of the steps in one of your work processes. See how quickly a person learns a particular task. Ask how the candidate would approach improving the quality of a given accounting process.

As long as you use tests and tasks that are directly related to the position for which the individual is interviewing, you will earn reams of relevent information to use in your selection process.

6. Evaluate "Personality," Not Job Skills and Experience

Sure, it would be nice for you to like everyone at work. But, this is much less important than recruiting the strongest, smartest, best candidates you can find. People tend to hire people who are similar to themselves. They are the most comfortable with those candidates, of course.

This will kill your organization over time. You need diverse people with diverse personalities to deal with diverse employees and customers. Think about the customer that drives you crazy. Isn't it likely that a new employee with a similar personality would have the same problem? Likewise, hiring a candidate because you enjoyed and liked him or her, as the main qualification, ignores your need for particular skills and experience. Don't do it.

7. Fail to Differentiate, Via Testing and Discussion, the Critical Job Skills

How do you differentiate one candidate from another? Everyone has a "wish list" for all of the qualities, skills, personality factors, experience and interests you want to see in your selected employee. You must decide on, and perhaps, test, the skills you most desire in your candidate.

What are the three - four most critical factors for contribution and success given the job, the skills of the other employees and the needs of your customers? Once you have identified these, you cannot "settle" on a candidate that does not bring these to your workplace. Or you will fail.

8. Develop a Small Candidate Pool

Take the time to build a candidate pool with several candidates who meet the needs of your organization. If you don't have to make a choice among several qualified candidates, your pool is too small. Don't "settle" for someone if you don't have the right person with the skills and experience you need. It's better to reopen your search.

These mistakes are often fatal to a candidate's ultimate success within your organization. If you do these activities successfully, you increase the probability of a happy, successful employee contributing what you need from him or her to your organization.

Reference:
Susan M. Heathfield
[About the Author: Susan Heathfield is a Human Resources expert. She is a management and organization development consultant who specializes in human resources issues and in management development to create forward thinking workplaces. Susan is also a professional facilitator, speaker, trainer, and writer. Susan is a member of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD). Susan contributes regularly to professional publications including a book chapter for ASTD and a recent article in the American Society for Quality's Journal for Quality and Participation.]

Four Principles to Execute Today's Talent Management.

Four Principles to Execute Today's Talent Management

With an aging workforce, a growing talent shortage and an uncertain economy, a lot of emphasis has been put on developing new and exciting tools to help organizations navigate their talent needs. But while technologies might be revolutionary, the best practices behind them aren't groundbreaking.

According to Peter Cappelli, professor of management at the Wharton School and author of Talent on Demand: Managing Talent in an Age of Uncertainty, the talent management models being championed today were developed in the 1940s and 1950s.

"Everything that anybody is talking about doing now was done arguably better in the early 1950s," Cappelli said.

Techniques such as 360 feedback, ranking systems, assessment centers, executive coaching and sophisticated workforce planning all were popular during this time. Ninety-six percent of big companies in the U.S. even had dedicated manpower-planning departments, Cappelli said.

"But that whole approach was based on the assumption companies knew with very great certainty what they were going to be doing years in advance," he explained. "If they had a 10-year business plan, [they] more or less stuck to that 10-year business plan. And if you know what the company is going to need in 10 years, it makes workforce planning much simpler."

Additionally, talent managers in the 1950s knew exactly where their talent was going to come from. There were virtually no lateral hires in those days, as most organizations hired entry-level workers and then promoted from within.

These same models are applied today, but change is more rapid - thanks in large part to technology - and the economy is volatile. That means organizations must continually modify their business plans to reflect demand and remain competitive. Additionally, as talent moves in and out of organizations faster and more frequently than ever, organizations have a harder time accurately predicting talent needs and end up lurching between too much and too little, Cappelli said.

"The problem we've got in talent management is managing risk and uncertainty," he said. "How do we do talent management when we can't accurately forecast in the long term what businesses are going to be doing - when we can't accurately forecast in the long term or know with certainty who is going to be inside the company [or] what our internal talent supply is going to be like?"

To answer this question, Cappelli used his extensive knowledge of business, specifically of supply-chain models, to devise a set of four principles for successful talent management.

Principle 1: Make and Buy to Manage Risk
With all this talk of a talent war, companies might be overshooting their needs when it comes to hiring. This is more expensive than underestimating because retention costs - especially when it comes to idle, likely-to-leave employees - far outweigh the higher cost per hire, Cappelli said. Companies should undershoot their estimates and plan to hire from outside to compensate for any deficits, he said.

Principle 2: Adapt to Talent-Demand Uncertainty
A variety of factors including technological advancements and societal changes have made people more mobile. Organizations must accept that talent comes and goes and adapt their programs accordingly. For example, rather than put high potentials through a three-year functional program, talent managers could bring them together in an 18-month course that teaches general management skills and send them back to their functions to specialize, Cappelli said.

Principle 3: Improve the ROI of Employee Development
Investing in employee training and development is crucial for any organization, but talent managers are aware that workers easily can take their new skills elsewhere. Thus, organizations should get employees to help cover the investment, Cappelli said. While it's illegal to charge employees for training required for their jobs, companies can take advantage of their newly honed skills by offering them experience-rich stretch assignments on a volunteer basis.

Principle 4: Balance Employee-Employer Interests
Talent managers can preserve their development investment by getting employees involved in the process, as well. Factor in employee goals with business needs, then have a third party mediate.

Reference:
Agatha Gilmore
[About the Author: Agatha Gilmore is an associate editor for Talent Management magazine.]

Confidence trip of a new-age employee

Confidence trip of a new-age employee.

Success is a combination of expertise, experience, talent, external factors and luck. Confidence is a derivative of these factors. Hence, confidence skills are essential to be successful. (Vide KMailer, The Road Often Taken-I).

Origins of Confidence

Physiological perspective - Confidence is an area covered much better under a self-help system than under the functional area of psychology. According to Jerome Kagan, Professor of Psychology at Harvard, an individuals' temperament plays a major role in determining his confidence levels. The tension or uncertainty an employee faces, under challenging work situations, could be attributed to the chemical reactions the brain undergoes.

Psychological perspective - Apart from the physiological origin of confidence, there is another theory that it arises from employee's outlook. This theory as explained by Robert Arkin, also a Professor of Psychology at Ohio State University, throws light on the achievement orientation of employees. According to him, there are two classes of individuals-the underachievers and the overachievers. The only differentiating factor between them is that the former focuses on the individuals while the latter in emptying their thoughts about self. Overachievers emphasise on their environment, and emerge as confident personalities.

Reality perspective- Another origin of confidence is the reality factor. The practical experiences in life of the individual play a role in tuning him into a confidence icon. Learning through observation helps him project a confident image. For example, Greyhawk's Berman, the construction consultant, learnt to cut business deals by observing his father. Abid Abedi, CEO of Adea Solutions, attributes his confidence to overcoming obstacles.

Divider ahead

Confidence has two faces. There is false confidence and there is real confidence. A thin red line separating the two determines the success of the employee. False confidence is defined as a grave misappropriation of one's own abilities and cannot be regained whereas real confidence is that which can be regained despite losing it. Employees with real confidence are successful because "absolute conviction" is what they feel.

For example, Scott Earnest lost his confidence when he failed in his first swimming pool cleaning company venture due to colour blindness. His wife staged a 'confidence intervention' to help him and Earnest came up with a successful new venture, an IT staffing company, CEO Inc., because of his 'real confidence'.

No parking zone

Another concept called fake confidence is used as a business tactic unlike false confidence, which is a flaw. Many entrepreneurs feel that confidence must not be faked. Brent Habig of Tigris Consulting asserts, "Acting confident when you don't feel that way is a complicated risk that's best avoided. If your confidence isn't based in the knowledge that you can deliver, you risk letting people down".

Kevin Price of AccuCode, however, often faked confidence in front of his customers. He soon realised that there should be conviction in doing anything. In due course, Price made sure that he did not fake confidence any more.

Over bridge ahead

Confidence can surely help one climb the over bridge. Everyone uses different methods to build it. Timely recall of achievements is the right thing to make the individual bloat with confidence, says Chris Carmichael of Carmichael Training Systems.

Some entrepreneurs believe that confidence can be developed through building mastery and experience in their areas of functionality. An individual's confidence levels rise out of awareness of his multi-tasking ability. Habig attributes his success, in launching Tigris Consulting, to his confidence in being able to do a variety of things.

Confidence shows: Ros Taylor of Ros Taylor Ltd., runs Confidence Lab, a popular BBC programme airing a host of exercises to build confidence. Taylor feels that confidence can be built from the scratch and promotes skills in areas such as body language and positive thinking. She says, "If you start doing things in a more confident fashion, it feeds back to your nervous system that you might actually be confident". Most of her Confidence Lab graduates emerged highly successful within months of joining the confidence course.

Right turn

There comes a right turn for every individual when he decides to carry confidence gained in one area to another relatively weaker area. This lifts up the spirit of the individual in accepting business and personal challenges. For example, Don Preston of Loss Mitigation Services got rid of acrophobia by learning to skydive. He believed that if he overcame his fear of heights, he could also overcome the fear of his new company's failing.

U-turn

It's a fact that employee confidence can be built and reflected over in various activities. But, assume that confidence is lost. Can the demoralised employee regain his confidence?

Yes, he can, provided he

• Recollects his success stories
• Constantly reminds himself of his goals
• Seeks help from associates
• Resorts to mental exercises

Deborah Weidenhamer of an auction company did exactly the same when she knew her confidence was in doldrums. Deborah sought help from her friends and customers, when she needed the push to carry on with her failing company. This honesty in reaching out to people was a " life-changing experience" for her. She received many ideas to improve her operations and that boosted her morale. Her company was back on track in just a couple of months.

Confidence implies action and many entrepreneurs rebuild it by subjecting themselves to mental exercises. The most common of these is visualisation- the art of detailing tasks and splitting them into achievable smaller ones. Effective visualisation is therefore, very essential to regaining confidence.

Destination 'Confidence'

Choosing the right path always leads to faster arrival at destination and an employee needs to have conviction in his choice. "When you talk about something being a 1 to 10,000 chance, at the end of the day either it happens or it doesn't. And it might happen", says Arkady Maydanchik of Arkidata Corp.

Now that's what is 'confidence'! A much needed ingredient to succeed in a global competitive environment.

Reference:
The Manage Mentor

Motivating Factors for Employees.

Motivating Factors for Employees

Tangible rewards play a role in job satisfaction, says today's expert, but for many workers, the "happiness factor" depends heavily on intangibles, such as respect, trust, and fairness.

Is money the key to retention and productivity? It helps, says the Christian Science Monitor's Marilyn Gardner, but it's not enough. Beyond pay and benefits lie eight key factors that influence "happiness" at work-factors that motivate workers and keep them at your organization.

1. Appreciation
Praise heads the list for many workers, and it doesn't cost the employer anything to provide it, says Gardner . A sincere thank you or a short note can mean a great deal.

2. Respect
Again there is no cost and a big payback. Respect plays out in letting people know that their work is appreciated, in treating them like adults, and in being fair in your dealings with them.

3. Trust
Trust is the action side of respect. People need guidance, but they need to know that their boss trusts them to be able to get a job done on their own.

4. Individual Growth
Today's workers-especially the Gen Y group-want training, want to take on new challenges, and want to advance based on their new abilities. Giving a raise without increasing responsibilities could actually backfire, notes Gardner .. As one expert says, if you give more money to an unhappy employee, you end up with a wealthier unhappy employee.

5. Good Boss
It's the old saw: People don't leave companies, they leave bosses. In a recent Robert Half survey, Gardner notes that 1,000 Gen Y workers ranked "working with a manager I can respect and learn from" as the most important aspect of their work environment.

6. Compatible Co-workers
Working with people you enjoy is also very important, says Gardner . Spending the day-every day-with people you don't like does not make for a productive workplace.

7. Compatible Culture
Employees want a work environment that fits their needs. That could mean hard-driving, high paying, or it could mean high flexibility and significant attention to work/life balance.

8. A Sense of Purpose
People want to know that they are contributing to something worthwhile. They need to know what the organization' s core purpose is and what it is trying to achieve. And then they need to know how their particular job fits into the whole.

One of the interesting things that Gardner discovered about employee "happiness" is that there is a disconnect between what managers think and what employees think about happiness at work.

Managers tend to think that salary and benefits are the main motivators, while workers consistently respond that factors such as those mentioned above are what's important. Successful organizations will find a good balance to retain their best people.

Types of Behaviour Models

Different Types of behaviour model

Using the behaviour model to identify behaviour allows us to do two important things:

1. Tailor our response and behaviours to the individual, in order to be more effective and professional.

2.Understand and pay attention to their personal needs.

These two statements are the heart and soul of special treatment.

Type 1 Behaviour

These are behaviours that are high in initiation. They are direct, dealing with issues, making things happen, but with low consideration for others.

Typical type 1 behaviour might include:

• Making Demands
• Acting arrogantly and self importantly
• Talking down to other members of staff
• Failing to show appreciation for excellent service
• Ignoring other’s needs, internally focused
• Talking loudly
• Rude

Type 2 Behaviour

These are behaviours that are low in initiation. They are avoiding behaviours, but also demonstrate low concern or regard toward others. They are, if you will – ‘I don’t want to and I don’t care’ behaviours.

Typical type 2 Behaviour might include:

• Not telling us about changes in procedures
• Not returning calls
• Uncommunicative
• Refusing to consider a newer way of doing things
• Resisting changes in procedures
• Being aloof
• Don’t bother me
• Often too busy

Type 3 Behaviour

Type 3 behaviour is low in initiation, avoiding, not confronting or making things happen, whilst high in consideration. That is to say, behaviours which are ‘nice’ or warm, but not focused on business nor geared toward making things happen and moving forward.

Typical type 3 behaviour might include:

• Not mentioning things that are really problems
• Saying everything is fine when it really isn’t
• Verbally agreeing to new procedures, but not following through
• Trying to smooth-over and compromise on differences
• Giving positive feedback, but moaning internally about your service
• Very friendly and talkative
• False agreement

Type 4 behaviour

Type 4 behaviour is behaviour focused on initiating and making something happen, but doing this in a way that shows high regard and consideration for others.

Typical type 4 behaviour might include:

• Taking the time to make certain we understand their needs
• Remaining calm and professional
• Not having to be ‘right’ all the time
• Communication always clear
• Giving constructive feedback
• Seeking challenges

The above information gives you broad outlines of the four key behaviour types. In order to understand them better it is appropriate to consider the motivation behind each behaviour type.

• Type 1 behaviours are ‘I’ oriented. There is a real need to be seen to be in control, to be recognised.

• Type 2 behaviours are cautious and want to be sure before deciding. There is a tendency to resist change.

• Type 3 behaviours believe they lack social skills, so are keen to be seen to be part of the crowd. They want to be liked and tend to like people.

• Type 4 behaviours like a challenge. Their energy can be exhausting to an outsider.

By now you might be feeling certain negative connotations exist for each of the behaviours, so don’t give up if you can see yourself in any of them. In fact you should be able to see a little bit of yourself in each of them, because your behaviour changes according to the situation.

In a crisis, Type 1 behaviour is necessary, for instance police behaviour in an emergency. Type 2 behaviours are prudent decision makers, good where due care is needed. Type 3 behaviour is a social behaviour, good at getting on with people, and everyone tends toward this behaviour when with friends. Type 4 behaviour is that which is expected when you’re in the office environment.

People generally rest somewhere in the Type 4 quadrant, however when the situation around them changes they may choose to move to a different behaviour quadrant. An example of this is the way in which people drive. A person may be in T4 behaviour when they leave their home, however, a bad driver cutting them off may alter their behaviour to T1. Their aggression is likely to fade if they are then pulled off the road by a traffic policeman for negligent driving, and they may move to T2 behaviour.

Type 1, 2 and 3 behaviours all show a lack of self-confidence in the particular situation. If you can correctly identify the behaviour of the person, then you know more about their personal needs and can respond in a way that gives them special treatment.

The exercises on the next pages examine how you can adapt your style to meet the personal needs indicated by the behaviour of the person. Remember, your behaviour should not alter, as a coach and manager you must remain T4.

Behaviour – Personal Needs Type 1

Type 1 behaviour reflects needs such as:

• A need to be in charge and make one’s own decisions
• A need to be ‘right’, a need to be competitive, to ‘win’, to be first
• A need to hold the floor, to talk, to be listened to

When someone is giving us T1 behaviour, what kinds of special treatment can we give to meet those T1 needs?

Behaviour – personal needs type 2

Type 2 behaviour reflects needs such as:

• A need to feel secure and cautious
• A need to trust before opening up
• A need to make ‘safe’ decisions
• A need to see something tried and proven

When someone is giving us T2 behaviour, what kind of special treatment can we give to meet those T2 needs?

Behaviour – personal needs type 3

Type 3 behaviour reflects needs such as:

• A need to avoid confrontation or differences
• A need to make harmonious, ‘popular’ decisions
• A need to be accepted and liked
• A need to please, to placate and make comfortable

When someone is giving us T3 behaviour, what kinds of special treatment can we give to meet those T3 needs?

Behaviour – personal needs type 4

Type 4 behaviour reflects needs such as:

• A need to be businesslike, but courteous and reasonable
• A need to take the necessary time, but no more
• A need to make the best overall decision
• A need to see benefits, not just features
• A need to be treated in the same way as above

When a person is giving us T4 behaviour, what kinds of special treatment can we give to meet those T4 needs?

Remember the following:

• The model is not meant to categorise or classify. It is a broad pointer to behaviour and gives us clues that can help to overcome and deal with the behaviour
• The model does not represent personality. Your personality does not change, but your behaviour can change from situation to situation
• Type 4 behaviour is the preferred choice and the one we should aspire to even when dealing with a difficult behaviour type

Be prepared for a change in behaviour and ensure that you shift your response accordingly – but – not your behaviour.

You are, through the coaching process, asking people to question their own performance and then change as a result – neither can be easy.

The end solution must be achievable, but not too easily achievable. It should be stretching for the person. To get the right amount of stretch you need to consider their personal needs.

Goal setting must consider the individual and should where possible be jointly agreed and set. The personal benefits must be clear to the individual and the goals should always enhance business performance.

Candid Culture: Embracing Employee Complaints.

Candid Culture: Embracing Employee Complaints

Ever hear the tagline "Your Vote Counts?" In corporate America, the mantra might read "Your Opinion Matters."

Unfortunately, creating a workplace that values candid feedback is no easy task. Cultures in which employees feel safe sharing their inner thoughts and breaking down barriers are rare. Promoting this type of candor, however, can produce substantial benefits including the ability to harness innovation, root out underlying problems and increase productivity.

"Organizations and leaders look at risk management, but they don't look at the risk of poor communication and lack of candor," said Jim Bolton, CEO of Ridge Training, which provides interpersonal communication skills training. "If people felt empowered to talk openly about how to resolve the problems they encounter on a day-to-day basis, huge gains could be made in productivity and efficiency."

General Electric's Approach to Candor

The legacy of candor established during Jack Welch's tenure still reverberates throughout General Electric. What was once considered the CEO Survey during his reign has become an enterprise-wide initiative known as the General Electric Opinion Survey (GEOS).

Approximately 235,000 of GE's 330,000 employees are eligible to complete the GEOS. Because of its size and scope - it takes six months to prepare and disseminate in 29 languages - the survey is biennial, allowing GE's business units more time to act on the data.

"[We] decided to move it to a two-year cycle to give us more time to work with the insights we had gained," said Nancy Schumann, GEOS survey co-leader. "Employees have provided their voice, their perspective, and it's very important for them to see that it's acknowledged and acted upon."

While a survey is a great method to gather candid feedback, it can only provide numbers, not stories. The cycle of candor is complete when the managers take the GEOS data back to employees and they work together to find solutions.

"We ask the employee's opinion - take it online, put [it] in reports, summarize it, analyze it, review it and cut it in different ways," Schumann said. "The meaningful part is once [we] have that information, [we] go back and share what we've learned in the aggregate, then have more conversations and ultimately take actions as a result of what was learned. It's closing the loop. We start with the employee, and we complete with the employee.

"We have a terrific culture with respect to candor and employee opinion, but the survey is just one mechanism. It's an important one, but it's strengthened because we also have other forums by which our employees speak with our leaders. You need multiple touch points. You can't ask enough: What's the pulse of the employee?"

US Airways: A Different Kind of Candor

Airlines struggle with many industry-specific challenges such as developing an aura of candor in an environment in which the majority of employees work from a cockpit, galley, runway or airport instead of a traditional four-walled office. US Airways overcomes this obstacle by meeting its 36,000 highly dispersed employees where they are: in the field.

Cultivating candor at the airline is especially crucial because some areas still operate with two different cultures, a lingering result of a merger in 2005 between US Airways and America West. To complicate matters, US Airways is highly unionized and still is battling to merge two labor contracts into one.

To deal with these sensitive issues, the company has adopted a policy under which comments, complaints and problems are addressed head-on.

"Truthfully, I don't think [employees would] let us have any other culture here," said Elise Eberwein, US Airways senior vice president of people. "Airlines get so much press; if management's not listening, [employees are] going to tell the story to someone who will."

The airline also gathers employee opinion during brown bag lunches that take a relatively informal tone.

"You'll hear about things that if you listed them all, you might say, 'Gosh that's a lot of minutia,'" Eberwein said. "But minutia adds up to something greater: the real story. If you really want to focus on things that matter to your employees, especially in the service business, get out there and listen to them because they [know] firsthand what's really happening."

Eberwein said candor at US Airways is a commitment modeled from the top of the organization - CEO Doug Parker - down. Without that pledge, it becomes a broken promise in which leaders say candor is important, but their actions illustrate otherwise.

"It's imperative to find someone at the top who doesn't just give it lip service," she said. "I would submit that if you checked Doug's calendar and our president's calendar, a good 55 percent-plus time is spent on employee communication in one form or another, and that says a lot."

Some may not agree with US Airways' philosophy of open and largely uncensored candor, but the culture is working.

"Some days it feels like you take one step forward and two back. [But] we're making a tremendous turnaround," Eberwein said. "We just announced our February on-time arrival results, and we came in number one among the large domestic carriers. We are taking the feedback we got last year and making changes in ways that directly impact each person's working environment. That's how progress is made, one step at a time."

Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Candor?

Nurturing open communication is a necessity, but it can be a double-edged sword if it's not managed appropriately and complaints run amok. Craig Mindrum, a strategic management consultant, communications specialist and author, believes true candor is a balance.

"Aristotle said that virtue is a midpoint between two extremes," he said. "We could say candidness is that midpoint between being very closed and unwilling to admit mistakes and [being] candid in terms of constant harping, criticism and a culture of negativity."

Corporations have to be candid, but they also must govern candor to ensure it doesn't foster a negative environment in which employees feed off one another's discontent.

"It's irresponsible for a company to promote candidness and openness and let things spiral down into a culture of complaint," Mindrum said. "Then people experience that company negatively. If you're told this is a pretty crummy place to work, it's going to be a crummy place to work. There has to be some effort to contextualize all the feedback."

To make sure US Airways' culture of candor doesn't perpetuate negativity, Eberwein said the company tries to balance the perspective, as well as add humor to the mix.

"Four times a year, we do a pretty big State of the Airline [address], so we're taking hundreds of questions off the Internet," she said. "You'll get a fair amount of negative comments because you can hide behind the anonymity of the Internet. Typically, what I do with those is summarize the negative [comments]: 'Hey Doug, it's been two and half years - we still don't have a contract? Could you speak a little bit about [that]?' You can work through negativity as long as you don't let it get you down, and you can also release the pressure with humor."

How to Create Candor

Leadership gurus always are proselytizing about how important workplace candor is, but few actually outline how to develop it. Bolton believes cultivating several different skill sets - which include but are not limited to changing employees' internal thinking processes and developing supervisors' abilities to actively listen - can create candor. Part of the process is altering the way employees perceive their ideas and promoting an environment in which they feel safe sharing them.

"Many times [employees] are worried about the worst-case scenario: 'If I say this, people might think I'm an idiot,'" Bolton said. "A lot of times the worst-case scenarios don't come to pass. Try to expand [employees'] thinking so that they're making different censorship choices when they're in that candor moment."

If employees change the way they censor their comments and become more open, managers must be prepared to listen.

"If everybody's talking and nobody's listening, there's not really a conversation happening," Bolton said. "A key skill of candor is the ability to [actively] listen so you can get to the heart of core issues. Candor is not a one-way practice. It's an interactive dialogue when it's working well."

One reason there's no easy how-to guide for creating workplace candor is because it starts with behavior, and changing behavior can be difficult.

"It's easy to put programs in place, create a newsletter or a two-way feedback mechanism," Mindrum said. "It's harder to get managers' behaviors manifested in the right way, [where they] listen to people and say: 'You know what, you have a point there. Let me see what I can do and get back to you.'"

The Value of Candor

Candor is not perfect: Each company must navigate uncharted waters to find the best balance of openness befitting their workplace, culture and employees. If companies develop an environment in which employees feel comfortable expressing their personal opinions, the results can be profound. Having a candid culture can solve operational problems, create efficiency and encourage innovation.

"Give people the sense that they make a difference, that someone is listening to them and that they really can affect their work environment," Mindrum said. "That kind of valuing is going to have tremendous impact on your ability to attract and retain the best employees. People want the sense that they're making a difference.

"Without that [willingness] to listen to what's going on out in the field, I'm not going to be able to harvest innovations from the people closest to where it's all happening," Mindrum said. "Being able to solve employee issues is great, but even more important is the ability to understand your business and customers better."

References:
Lindsay Edmonds Wickman
[About the Author: Lindsay Edmonds Wickman is an associate editor for Talent Management magazine.]

Telecommuting: Pipedream or Reality?

Telecommuting: Pipedream or Reality?

Telecommuting continues to be a hot topic among job seekers as people strive for more work/life balance and flexible arrangements. But I think there is a misperception about how to secure a telecommuting arrangement. It's unlikely that you will land a telecommuting job through an online job board (and be wary, because most of these opportunities are scams). Most telecommuting jobs start out as traditional jobs that evolve to a more flexible arrangement through a mutual agreement between the employer and the employee. You must first prove to an employer that you are trustworthy and loyal and that the telecommuting arrangement presents benefits for the company as well as the employee. If you are considering requesting a telecommuting work arrangement, here are some potential employer benefits you can reference during your conversation.

1. Increase in work hours.
The telecommuter can continue to work during the time they would normally be commuting. This increase in productivity can translate into company profits like money earned, saved, or also result in more interaction with important clients.

2. Reduced infrastructure costs.
Employers can save on their real estate, technology and telecommunication costs by offering telecommuting arrangements.

3. Decrease in distractions.
Traditional office settings are plagued by time wasting activities and ongoing interruptions. Who hasn't been in a situation where they were constantly interrupted by people coming into their office to ask questions? And how often have you seen co-workers wasting time gossiping by the coffee station? All these distractions can be eliminated in the telecommuting arrangement.

4. Increased morale.
Employees that have greater control over how they manage the competing demands in their lives tend to be happier in their work. This positive attitude can contribute to increased productivity and better rapport with colleagues and clients.

5. Increased employee loyalty and retention.
Employees who feel that their employers are supportive of their need for workplace flexibility tend to stay with their companies longer. In the long run this saves employers the enormous costs associated with sourcing and training their replacements.

If you hope to secure a telecommuting arrangement in the near future, start targeting companies that embrace workplace flexibility now. Start off with a traditional in-office role and prove your ability to be productive with limited supervision. Build trusting relationships with colleagues, clients and supervisors. Doing so will help improve your chances of securing a telecommuting arrangement at some point in the future.

References:
Barbara Safani
[About the Author: Barbara Safani, owner of Career Solvers, has over twelve years of experience in career management, recruiting, executive coaching, and organizational development. Ms. Safani partners with both Fortune 100 companies and individuals to deliver targeted programs focusing on resume development, job search strategies, networking, interviewing, and salary negotiation skills.]

Build an Organization Based on Values.

Build an Organization Based on Values

Why Values, What Values?

"Our people are our most important asset." You've heard these words many times, if you work in an organization. Yet how many organizations act as if they really believe these words? Not many. These words are the clear expression of a value, and values are visible through the actions people take, not their talk.

Values form the foundation for everything that happens in your workplace. If you are the founder of an organization, your values permeate the workplace. You naturally hire people who share your values. Whatever you value, will largely govern the actions of your workforce.

Sample Workplace Value-based Actions

If you value integrity and you experience a quality problem in your manufacturing process, you honestly inform your customer of the exact nature of the problem. You discuss your actions to eliminate the problem, and the anticipated delivery time the customer can expect. If integrity is not a fundamental value, you may make excuses and mislead the customer.

If you value and care about the people in your organization, you will pay for health insurance, dental insurance, retirement accounts and provide regular raises and bonuses for dedicated staff. If you value equality and a sense of family, you will wipe out the physical trappings of power, status, and inequality such as executive parking places and offices that grow larger by a foot with every promotion.

Whatever You Value Is What You Live in Your Organization

You know, as an individual, what you personally value. However, most of you work in organizations that have already operated for many years. The values, and the subsequent culture created by those values, are in place, for better or worse.

If you are generally happy with your work environment, you undoubtedly selected an organization with values congruent with your own. If you're not, watch for the disconnects between what you value and the actions of people in your organization.

As an HR professional, you will want to influence your larger organization to identify its core values, and make them the foundation for its interactions with employees, customers, and suppliers. Minimally, you will want to work within your own HR organization to identify a strategic framework for serving your customers that is firmly value-based.

Strategic Framework

Every organization has a vision or picture of what it desires for its future, whether foggy or crystal clear. The current mission of the organization or the purpose for its existence is also understood in general terms.

The values members of the organization manifest in daily decision making, and the norms or relationship guidelines which informally define how people interact with each other and customers, are also visible. But are these usually vague and unspoken understandings enough to fuel your long term success? I don't think so.

Every organization has a choice. You can allow these fundamental underpinnings of your organization to develop on their own with each individual acting in a self-defined vacuum. Or, you can invest the time to proactively define them to best serve members of the organization and its customers.

Many successful organizations agree upon and articulate their vision, mission or purpose, values, and strategies so all organization members can enroll in and own their achievement.

The Strategic Planning Framework for Vision, Mission, Values

Want the background about why values are important in an organization? See the impact that identifying organizational values can have.

Values are traits or qualities that are considered worthwhile; they represent an individual's highest priorities and deeply held driving forces.

Value statements are grounded in values and define how people want to behave with each other in the organization. They are statements about how the organization will value customers, suppliers, and the internal community. Value statements describe actions that are the living enactment of the fundamental values held by most individuals within the organization.

Vision is a statement about what the organization wants to become. The vision should resonate with all members of the organization and help them feel proud, excited, and part of something much bigger than themselves. A vision should stretch the organization's capabilities and image of itself. It gives shape and direction to the organization's future.

Mission/Purpose is a precise description of what an organization does. It should describe the business the organization is in. It is a definition of "why" the organization exists currently. Each member of an organization should be able to verbally express this mission.

Strategies are the broadly defined four or five key approaches the organization will use to accomplish its mission and drive toward the vision. Goals and action plans usually flow from each strategy.

One example of a strategy is employee empowerment and teams. Another is to pursue a new worldwide market in Asia. Another is to streamline your current distribution system using lean management principles.

I recommend that you start developing this strategic framework by identifying your organization's values. Create an opportunity for as many people as possible to participate in this process. All the rest of your strategic framework should grow from living these.

What are Values?

The following are examples of values. You might use these as the starting point for discussing values within your organization.

ambition, competency, individuality, equality, integrity, service, responsibility, accuracy, respect, dedication, diversity, improvement, enjoyment/fun, loyalty, credibility, honesty, innovativeness, teamwork, excellence, accountability, empowerment, quality, efficiency, dignity, collaboration, stewardship, empathy, accomplishment, courage, wisdom, independence, security, challenge, influence, learning, compassion, friendliness, discipline/order, generosity, persistency, optimism, dependability, flexibility

Why Identify and Establish Values?

Effective organizations identify and develop a clear, concise and shared meaning of values/beliefs, priorities, and direction so that everyone understands and can contribute. Once defined, values impact every aspect of your organization.

You must support and nurture this impact or identifying values will have been a wasted exercise. People will feel fooled and misled unless they see the impact of the exercise within your organization.

If you want the values you identify to have an impact, the following must occur.

a) People demonstrate and model the values in action in their personal work behaviors, decision making, contribution, and interpersonal interaction.

b) Organizational values help each person establish priorities in their daily work life.

c) Values guide every decision that is made once the organization has cooperatively created the values and the value statements.

d) Rewards and recognition within the organization are structured to recognize those people whose work embodies the values the organization embraced.

e) Organizational goals are grounded in the identified values.

f) Adoption of the values and the behaviors that result is recognized in regular performance feedback.

g) People hire and promote individuals whose outlook and actions are congruent with the values.

h) Only the active participation of all members of the organization will ensure a truly organization-wide, value-based, shared culture.

References:
Susan M. Heathfield
[About the Author: Susan Heathfield is a Human Resources expert. She is a management and organization development consultant who specializes in human resources issues and in management development to create forward thinking workplaces. Susan is also a professional facilitator, speaker trainer, and writer. Susan is a member of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD). Susan contributes regularly to professional publications including a book chapter for ASTD and a recent article in the American Society for Quality's Journal for Quality and Participation.]

Tools for Effective Coaching.

Tools for Effective Coaching

Key Learnings:

• Understand the communication skills needed to help you coach effectively.
• Be able to handle objections in a professional way.

Before you can be an effective coach you need certain skills so you get the most out of each meeting with your staff.

In this chapter we will examine the probing skills you require. This will allow you to manage the meeting and get all the information you need. Active listening is also critical to success and we will also discuss how to handle any objections that an individual might raise.

Probing skills

There are five basic probing techniques that you can use.

1.Open questions

It is good to let the individual talk. The answer to an open question is generally broad and non-specific. These questions are good for getting the person to talk, and open up.

Examples of these types of questions are as follows:

• ‘Tell me about your target projections for the next year’
• ‘How will your decision affect the others in the team?’
• ‘What will you do if the machine breaks down?’

2. Pauses

Using silence is a good way of getting the individual to talk more.

After asking a question, allow time to reply. Pauses are also good in allowing you time to think of the next question to ask!

Pauses can be quite hard to master... a silence might seem to last a long time. Don’t allow excessive pauses. If your member of staff does not answer, ask the question again – perhaps rephrase it a little.

Pauses will also allow you to slow the pace of the interview, and put gentle pressure on your colleague to reply. They are very effective when used properly and confidently.

3. Reflective Statements

A reflective statement is used when you detect the other person is showing emotion. For instance if you feel that the person is upset about something it might be worthwhile saying something like: ‘You seem unhappy with this decision.’

The emotion should be used in the statement, but be careful of the wording. Avoid using words that might make the person feel worse, e.g. confused, angry. Rather use words such as ‘unhappy, concerned, upset.’

When emotions are involved, then reflective statements of concern are useful. They show you care and can help build rapport with the individual.

4. Summary Statements

Summaries are a good tool to use allowing you to ensure that you understand what the individual is saying. If you feel you have lost your way, use a summary. It gives you time to think and allows you to check your understanding. It is always helpful to bring the discussion back on track.

Use as many summaries as you feel comfortable with – they show that you are listening. Throughout a coaching interview use summaries. It is best to use them at the end of each of the phases. This will allow you to pace the conversation comfortably.

5. Closed Questions

These questions require only a short specific answer, or the answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Avoid using too many of these – it might make the conversation sound short, abrupt or interrogative. The more open questions you have used the less closed questions will be necessary. They are useful however when you want to narrow down specific information.

Avoid leading questions

It is very easy to ask these questions. We have already decided what the answer should be! For example ‘you don’t mind working overtime, do you?’

They show a lack of consideration – why bother asking the questions if you already know the answer?

Avoid ‘why’ questions

‘Why did you choose him to do the work?’

‘Why haven’t you actioned this yet?’

These examples can make the person feel defensive, and might cause anger or resentment.

Active listening

Probing is of little use without good listening skills. People often confuse hearing with listening. But hearing is a passive behaviour.

Listening is an active skill.

This means you need to be using energy and effort.

You need to be involved and responsive to others.

You need to have total focus on what the other person is communicating.

It also involves the following:

• Not interrupting
• Suspending judgement until you have all the facts
• Picking up the feelings behind the words
• Showing you are paying attention by gestures such as nods, appropriate levels of eye contact and by words such as ‘I see’ and ‘aah’

What might stop you from listening actively?

The art of Active listening

Stop talking

You can’t speak and listen.

Empathise with the speaker

Try to understand what he or she is getting at. Put yourself in their shoes.

Concentrate

Listening is hard work. Listen to feelings, emphasis and hidden meaning as well as to what is actually said.

Use pauses

Don’t interrupt too soon. If you are patient the meaning might become clear as the individual continues talking.

Look at the speaker

Be seen to be listening, by using eye contact. This will encourage the speaker to be sensitive to your presence. You also have a chance to assess the individual’s body language.

Leave emotions out of it

If you are worried, defensive, hostile etc. these emotions make it more difficult to listen. Try to remain in T4 style of behaviour.

Get the main points

Many constructive discussions are destroyed by unnecessary emphasis on the unimportant.

Don’t argue mentally

You might never get around to verbalising your argument and confusion will set in.

You listen faster than the individual can speak

This gives you an opportunity to consider the implications of what is being said and prepare a constructive response. But you should be aware that in doing this you might miss something else of importance your colleague has said.

Listen for what is not said

It can be more significant than what is said. Be prepared to probe further if necessary.

Test the speaker’s reasoning

Mentally, while he/she is speaking, and verbally, when he/she has finished if the mental test has failed. Basically, ask ‘do I understand what they are saying?’

Look for points of agreement

Just as a salesman looks for buying signals, you can bring them out and build upon aspects of agreement. Help the discussion to reach a successful conclusion.

Handling Objections

People don’t raise objections because they want to give us a hard time. They raise them because they have a concern. Often it is simply a request for further information. Objections are not always obvious – it takes skill and practice to recognise and deal with them. One thing is definite – they won’t go away!

Objections are:

• Inevitable – few people will accept everything you say
• Requests – for more information
• Opportunities – for you to gain more information – probe to find out what is bothering the individual

You should deal with an objection as it arises. If you want to delay dealing with it you must get their permission. Otherwise the person will think you have ignored it or are avoiding the issue.

LAPACT is an effective system for managing objections and is equally useful when dealing with customers, staff or even your own manager!

Let’s have a look and see what LAPACT stands for.

Listen

To deal with an objection effectively you must understand what the individual is objecting to. This is not what someone usually objects to or what you think they are objecting to. It means understanding the concern from their viewpoint.

Acknowledge

Tell them you have heard the objection and you think it is important.

Probe

Make sure you fully understand the issue. For example if they say the new computer system seems too complicated, do they mean in comparison with the old system, or because their fellow team members feel like that, or because they are not aware they will be having training? You might have to probe several times to clarify the objection.

Answer

Focus on what is bothering them. Give them the information they need to understand. Explain how it can help them. You might, once you have tested their understanding, need to answer the objection again in another way. You might also wish to summarise to ensure clarification.

Confirm

Make sure they understand your answer and are satisfied.

If not, you should acknowledge this, thus returning to the LAPACT structure.

Thank

The individual has shared a concern that might help you to understand others better in the future. Thank them for bringing it to your attention.

Work/Life Balance Steady.

Work/Life Balance Steady

The uncertain economy hasn't negatively affected work/life balance policies on the whole, according to a recent study. But not all of the news is positive. Paid-time off for maternity leave has decreased and some of HR's focus has shifted from work/life to wellness initiatives.

Although the United States is in the midst of an economic downturn, the frequency of policies that promote work/life balance has not only held steady, but increased in certain aspects, according to the 2008 National Study of Employers.

The survey, released May 21 by the Families and Work Institute, of 1,100 companies with 50 or more employees located throughout the United States found, for example, that 79 percent of employers now allow at least some employees to periodically change their arrival and departure times, up from 68 percent in 1998.

Providing access to elder care increased from 23 percent to 39 percent, and employee-assistance programs rose from 56 percent to 65 percent.

Ellen Galinsky, president and founder of the New York-based Families and Work Institute, a nonprofit research organization, says that even through rocky times, employers understand the importance of promoting work/life balance.

"They're seeing things like flexibility, caregiving leaves, child- and elder-care assistance, and health and economic security as ways to retain employees, which is important to do in good times and bad," says Galinsky. "That's different because, in the past, employers have tended to see these more as soft issues or perks for valued employees."

Over the past 10 years, there was no reduction in the maximum length of caregiving leaves offered to new mothers and fathers following childbirth or to employees caring for seriously ill family members, according to the study.

"The fact that there hasn't been a change in a difficult [economic] time indicates to me that these [policies] are becoming more mainstream," says Galinsky.

Bruce Byington, vice president of the Americas region for the Greensboro, N.C.-based Center for Creative Leadership, says that creating a work/life balance for employees is a pivotal issue for the executives who attend training classes at the nonprofit executive-education institute.

"The organizations that are progressive enough to understand that productivity does go up and leadership does improve, they have not backed off," says Byington.

The NSE survey, however, also showed work/life initiatives declining in some areas. Possibly the most glaring is that just 16 percent of employers provide full pay for maternity leave, compared to 27 percent in 1998.

"Having fewer companies providing paid-time off for new mothers after having a baby can really hurt," says Galinsky. "Those are significant changes."

Since maternity leave often comes under a company's disability policy, says Tom Klett, a senior consultant with Washington-based Watson Wyatt, the amount of paid leave really depends on the amount of time the employee spent working for the company.

"If you have a maternity event or break your ankle, if you've been with the company less time you're going to get less benefits," says Klett.

Although the NSE study showed an increase in the number of employers providing flexible work hours -- eight out of 10 allow it -- Klett says the increase in flexibility may not have come from companies trying to help employees, but is just a byproduct of the times.

"If you take this on a 10-year period, it's a little misleading," says Klett. "They also give people BlackBerries and laptops. Yes, you have more flexibility but if you get an email at 8 o'clock [a.m. or p.m.], they expect you to answer it. So it's come at a cost on the work-family side."

Klett says that many programs or initiatives geared to provide more of a work/life balance have been pushed to the back burner because of healthcare costs and the promotion of wellness plans.

"The emphasis has shifted," he says. "Many companies have tried to encourage their employees to be better consumers of healthcare. That takes time and effort and may have come from focusing away from more traditional work-family benefits."

Byington says that human resource executives should understand that creating policies that are more employee-friendly should positively affect profits.

"The challenge is helping people understand there is a bottom-line improvement if, in fact, we can develop a better work/life balance for people," he says.

Reference:
Jared Shelly HRE Online June 04, 2008

Curbing Attrition: Romance @ Workplace

Cupid strikes in Cubicles.

If you have a soft corner for the cute manager in the next cabin and you want to show how much you like her, just wait until after work to hand out that bouquet of red roses. After all, Cupid doesn’t spare even busy executives.

He was an uptight marketing executive and she was a chirpy advertising manager of the same company. They worked on several business assignments together. While he worked on tight deadlines on his client’s presentations, she would cheer him up by making him a cup of coffee. And after she would crack a whopping deal for the company, he would leave a box of chocolates with a note saying ‘congratulations’. After several power lunches and coffee dates, they tied the knot! Evidently, Cupid was at work in the office. According to the latest findings of the Workplace Romance Poll Findings by SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management), almost 15 per cent of the organisations surveyed had a written workplace romance policy and this figure has shot up to 18 per cent. 40 per cent of employees reported being involved in a workplace romance at some point of their careers. The study shows that employees have become more open-minded about the relationships between their colleagues.

As good as it gets

Where do members of the opposite sex meet? The obvious replies would be - the park, the infamous bus stop, the quintessential college library or a common friend’s birthday party, right?

Why can’t two co-workers meet, socialise and eventually, go for a romantic liaison in an office environment? The office setting is only incidental.

Let’s discuss the client’s proposal on our date tonight.

Office romance can actually curb attrition! Attrition is affecting all of us in more than one way. A couple in love can act as cushions for each other at work, indirectly benefiting the company. Their passion for each other and the desire to ‘stay together’ is often translated into more enthusiasm for work and greater stability.

Laws of attraction

Senior executives fear that workplace romances can generate negative publicity, embarrassment and tension among co-workers. An office romance is neither a taboo nor a boon. Every workplace has a generic structure of rules, with regard to maintaining a professional environment. Keeping in mind the essential corporate norms that professionals have to abide by, an organisation cannot lay rules promoting or prohibiting natural phenomenon. Attraction to the opposite sex is a natural phenomenon. If it hinders professionalism, then it is bad. But if it doesn’t, such liaisons can be overlooked.

Dangerous Liaisons

Office romance is a double-edged sword. When handled well, it could actually boost work culture. Handled badly, you can do worse then a career suicide. Office romances adversely affect one’s perception and also take away emotional energy. With companies setting higher standards for themselves, an employee’s emotional stability (and not emotional addiction like in an office romance) is essential. A career is built on rational learning experiences and not on emotional (blind) romantic binges. Many a times, the work environment is negatively impacted by office romances due to immaturity of one or both parties involved and their inability to separate and/or balance personal issues from business.

So, should HR introduce stringent laws to curb workplace relationships? It will be difficult to introduce concrete policies but HR’s role is important.

We live in an era of ‘extreme-jobs’ where people routinely put more than 12 hours a day for many months – hence there is bound to be some emotional attachment with coworkers. Hence HR should take pragmatic steps to ensure that relationships are kept within certain limits of ‘public decency’ and they should not disturb the ‘rational balance’ of productivity. Therefore as soon as the situation arises, a clear distinction between work and personal interests and preferably a policy guideline on this so that the matter is dealt with professionally should be made. At work, your loyalty should belong to ‘your work’ and not to any person or thing. It is but natural that two colleagues who work on the same project for months may become more a part of you than those you leave behind at home. But if you have people at home screaming for attention, you know it’s about time you consider the various consequences that occur while progressing from a ‘professional relationship’ to a ‘relationship’.

Why office romances can cause problems for a company?

There tends to be a lot of favouritism shown that may not be so apparent to the moony-eyed couple, but very clear to everyone else around.

As all romances do not always have a happy ending, a breakup can often lead to much dirty linen being washed in public.

So does romancing @ workplace can help us to control attrition. Does sharing an emotional bonding with a fellow collegue leads to a biased behaviour? Can something be done so that private life is not mixed with professional responsibilities.

Attrition is a growing challenge and I have seen companies encouraging fellow colleagues to get married within the organization. Trends have shown that due to this practice people have shown much respect and bonding towards the organization.

Does encouraging romance at workplace can help us to cub attirtion still remains under the realms of doubt?

Putting People First.

Fifth Third Bank: Putting People First

In times of hardship, the natural response is to buckle down, retrench and strive to maintain the status quo. Today's stumbling economy presents no exception. While most financial institutions are focusing on the bottom line, Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bank is taking a different approach: It's focusing on its people - all 22,000 of them.

After all, it's the people who are responsible for the organization's competitive industry performance, and it's the people who make the difference when the economy turns around, said Brent Carter, vice president and director of talent management and workforce planning at Fifth Third. Carter has worked to ingrain a talent mindset into every aspect of the business, from managing succession to establishing strategic goals. By effectively humanizing the institution, he hopes to better prepare the organization for the future.

TM: Describe your company's approach to talent management.

Carter: We try to have an integrated approach so that we're not operating in silos. We have to make sure we have performance management linked with development linked with talent assessment processes, and then make sure that through all those efforts we're supporting and improving our business goals.

TM: What programs have you established to improve the performance of the entire workforce?

Carter: We've always tracked business at a branch level, but now we can track down to the employee level. If [employees] know their monthly goal is to get X number of deposits, loans, credit cards, et cetera, sold, they can check that on a day-to-day basis and find out where they stand.

[Additionally], if we have certain expectations, we make sure people have the knowledge to get there. For instance, if they need Series 7 certification, we provide the training. Not only do we let people know what to expect in terms of their performance, but we provide support and a vehicle to do that.

We've also rolled out consistent goals across the board. We have 18 different affiliates, so instead of having 18 different sets of goals for retail, we drive that more centrally. We drive common goals out to everyone.

TM: How is performance management linked to the strategic objectives of your organization?

Carter: We make sure that any goals established in our system fall within one of the categories related to our strategic objectives. Either they're related to business results, employee engagement or customer experience, or they have to do with expense control. If anybody creates a goal in the performance management system, it has to fall within one of those four categories.

TM: How does your company work to change or create leadership and management behaviors that lead to optimal workforce performance?

Carter: The key part of that is setting the expectation. We've got a tiered competency model for executives, leaders, managers and individual contributors. Executives know, for instance, they are to drive for results; they are to champion change. Those are the common competencies that set the expectations. They're measured on those in our annual performance cycle. For more specific behaviors that drive performance, we have an annual talent review cycle. [Managers] know through that talent review process what their strengths are, what their development needs are, what they need to do to improve themselves as leaders in the company.

TM: How does your company develop organizational culture and employee attitudes to optimize workforce performance?

Carter: We have a culture of "what gets measured gets done." We measure almost anything. In fact, if we're launching a new [service], one of our first conversations is, what results are we expecting, and what are the metrics to measure those results? People know that; it's just part of our culture. As I said, we're tracking performance down to the individual contributor level, so we measure, we reward performance and we have friendly competition. Affiliates, banking centers and our commercial middle-market folks all know where they are stack-ranked compared to their peers.

TM: What processes or programs have you established to attract, recruit and retain top talent?

Carter: Instead of having recruiting organizations in 18 different affiliates, we've consolidated and regionalized, and now we have certain recruiters who are focused on just commercial or just retail talent. So they become very familiar with the type of skills and experience required.

[Also, when internal candidates] say they're not relocatable right now, we're still going to tap them on the shoulder and let them know they're being sought after, that their name was being considered for this position. It's a good retention strategy because people know they're still on the radar.

TM: How do you handle succession planning at your organization?

Carter: We try to promote from within to the extent we can. Over the past couple of years, we've swung the pendulum from hiring mostly externally for top positions to now 75 percent internal placement. We require 100 percent identification of immediate successors for all assessing managers - so the top 300 positions. We make sure the business continuity is there. If somebody's not actually ready now, we identify them and indicate some sort of readiness: two years, three to five years. In the past two years, our turnover has come down.

Also, in the past few years we've gone to a "talent pool" concept. We don't just look at that manager's successor; we look across the board to see if there are others who might fill that position. If you say [a potential successor] is not really on track for your position, [we'd ask], "Is there another position in the bank they would be ready for?" A lot of it is based on current position, readiness for this position that we're looking at them for, knowledge, how long they've been with the company and certainly the leadership competencies: Have they led large teams? Do they inspire followership? We really leverage that, so when the time comes where a position opens up, we'll have ready successors.

TM: What compensation and incentive practices do you use to help manage talent in your organization?

Carter: We have three types of pay compensation: There's merit pay, bonus pay - which we call variable compensation - and long-term incentive [compensation] that we pay in equity, either in restricted stock or stock appreciation rights. What was a little bit different this year, and turned out to be a real positive, is that as with other financial companies, our performance was very tough. The mortgage industry, the credit issues: It's hit us as hard as it has other banks. But compared to our peers, we've performed much better. This year's variable comp was based on our performance related to our peers.

So on paper, it looks like '07 was a tough year. It looks like variable comp is going to be low, [but] because we performed very well in relation to our peers, variable was much higher for people than they would've expected. That's a key factor in retention. People can say, "Gosh, yet another tough year. I'm tired of this. I'm going to go work for another company." But we rewarded for the effort people put forth.

TM:How have your workforce performance management activities contributed to your company's bottom line?

Carter: The way we measure performance directly impacts the bottom line. The other thing that we do, as most good profitable companies do, is take a look at those that are underperforming. If they're not performing according to plan, or especially if they're well below that, we'll go through the process of counseling, trying to improve their performance. But if that's not working, then they're not going to stay with the company. We don't hold on to people for a long time if they're not performing.

TM: What challenges impact talent management in your organization?

Carter: The economic picture is very tough. When [sales associates] can't get the business, profitability is down. Maybe their compensation isn't what they think it should be and stock price has been declining. Those are tough times for people. Sometimes that triggers thoughts about the "grass is greener on the other side." So from a talent perspective, it's a challenge in that we've lost some good people to other companies. When they go to those other companies, they find out the grass is pretty much the same color!

I think the other thing is, we have a good expense ratio, and we run pretty lean. There's not much fat to trim, especially in our staff divisions. It becomes tougher to pay attention and do those things that are necessary for talent, like development. People's time is spent focusing on the bottom line, doing what they need to do to generate income or keep expenses under control.

TM: What's next for your organization in terms of talent management and workforce performance development?

Carter: Instead of having talent activities or events, instead of [saying], now it's time for performance management, now it's time for total rewards or compensation, now it's time to do our employee engagement survey, we want talent focus to be year-round. It should be just part of a manager's job, a leader's job, to focus on talent: Am I optimizing the talent that I have? Am I developing them? Am I very clear on expectations? Am I clear on where their performance levels should be? Am I providing the feedback I need to?

Now is really the key time to focus on talent because when the economy breaks open and people are better off financially and they start spending money again, they start investing again, they start buying houses we're doing the foundational things now to be prepared for that launch. And I think a lot of companies maybe don't realize that. They're focused so much on the bottom line, they're not focusing on talent. I think we're going to be much better prepared when that bubble opens up.

References:
Agatha Gilmore
[About the Author: Agatha Gilmore is an associate editor for Talent Management magazine.]

Why are recruiters abandoning the pay-to-post model?

Why are recruiters abandoning the pay-to-post model?

Monster.com and its pay-to-post pricing model once took the recruiting world by storm. Now, the storm may be calming as employers begin to second guess the pay-to-post model.

According to Deutsche Bank analyst Jeetil Patel, the number of job listings on employment Monster Worldwide fell dramatically in May compared with a year earlier. U.S. job postings were down 18 percent on a year-over-year basis for the second quarter, with a 21 percent drop in May. That's worse than the 8 percent slide in April.

So the question becomes, why are more recruiters abandoning the pay-to-post model? Is it sheer economic conditions, or are recruiters merely looking for a new model? Hiring managers and recruiters are sounding off.

The Survey Says…
In a recent survey promoted to recruitment and Human Resource executives, some answers to the pay-to-post question begin to emerge. For example, nearly 69 percent of respondents said job board pricing models no longer satisfy their online recruiting needs.

Drilling down a little deeper, only about 20 percent of respondents agreed the pay-to-post model yields good results with consistent value. More than 65 percent took the opposite view, reporting dissatisfaction in the overall value of pay-to-post.

A whopping 75 percent of respondents disagreed with the premise that searching resume databases often uncovers quality candidates. More than 64 percent said most job boards don’t provide useful tools that allow them to manage and make hiring efficient, and only about 16 percent agreed that online job boards provide a quality service to job seekers and employers.

The overarching takeaway: More than 60 percent said they would prefer a less risky performance pricing model where they only pay if they find a suitable candidate for the job.
"The pay-to-post pricing model places all the risk squarely on employers and provides no guarantees of finding a qualified candidate,” says Rafael Cosentino, vice president of business development for RealMatch. “Risky up front pricing and poor performing keyword based job boards are just two of the reasons why employers are beginning to abandon the pay-to-post pricing model in favor of pay for performance and free employment sites.”

The New World of Recruiting

Recruiting is much more complex than it used to be, says Vani Colombo, vice president of programs with the Northern Virginia Chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management. “You can’t just post an ad on a site like Monster and wait for candidates to come,” says Colombo, also the director of Human Resources at VIPdesk, an Alexandria, Va.-based outsourced customer care provider. “You really need to do your homework and think of recruiting as a marketing campaign—who is my target market, and how can I reach them?”

The bottom line is this: With a wave of retiring Baby Boomers, a wave of less experienced Generation Y workers coming into the market, and the changing economic landscape, finding the right people for the right jobs at the right time is more critical than ever.

Michael Buckner, global director of Talent & Acquisition at Waggener Edstrom, a multiservice global public relations agency headquartered in Boston, cites several reasons for the decline in pay-to-post, including the languishing economy, the trend toward targeting passive candidates and the rise of Googlers who just use search engines to look for “PR Jobs in Boston.”

However, Bucker’s fourth reason may well expose the root.

“It’s hard to see the ROI for job boards,” he says. “The ‘tagging’ of candidates to determine from whence they came to you originally is not an exact science and the ‘self-declaration’ of a candidate regarding how he was sourced is probably even less accurate. Hence, it is difficult to say X percent of your hires came from Monster or HotJobs or CareerBuilder.”

Throw it Against the Wall

Kiersten Kaye, director of Human Resources for Boston-based CSN Stores, an e-commerce company that operates more than 200 stores, has watched what she calls a growing trend over the past decade.

“Job seekers are using the throw-it-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach to their job search,” she says. “For every one qualified applicant we’re getting resumes from 10 to 20 unqualified applicants for the open roles we post on job boards and our Web sites.”

This “wall sticking” approach led to companies adopting Applicant Tracking Systems that allow recruiters to do keyword searches to cull through a bank of resumes and extract only the few that meet the criteria for the role. But that, too, causes problems: a backlash of disgruntled applicants who complain they are sending their resume into a black hole, never to be seen again.

Applicants feel disconnected with the recruiting process and consequently hate recruiters because most recruiters are only contacting and following up with the truly qualified applicants, Kaye says. So what do the applicants do? Throw more up against the wall.

“Applicants feel like they need to send 100 resumes to get one bite,” she says.
“Smart recruiters gave up posting for roles, because it’s like culling for a pearl in a oyster farm.”

Wading Through Irrelevant Listings

Jonathan Davis, founder and executive vice president at Austin-based recruitment process outsourcing provider American Workforce Companies, handles active searchers for more than 100 companies a year. From where he sits, Monster’s advantage is it drives more traffic than other boards but the number of irrelevant listings is hard to digest.

“Not only have we been using niche job boards a lot more often,” Davis says, “when we just came up for renewal with Monster.com they practically gave away job postings just so that we would renew because they are well aware of the decrease in the value of their posts.”

Another possible cause of the pay-to-post model’s decline is the proliferation of pay-to-post job boards. Dan Sager, co-owner of Civil Search International, a Tempe, Ariz.-based engineering staffing firm, is certain the hundreds of new boards are splitting the attention of hiring managers and job seekers.

“Monster used to be an effective recruiting tool to find the passive job seeker, but most of our clients are no longer willing to pay the big bucks to find average talent,” Sager says. “Monster no longer gives us an adequate return on investment.”

Many recruiters are paying big dollars for long-term pay-to-post contracts and are extremely hesitant to renew, according to Sager. In the meantime, he says, Monster is being very stubborn about cutting prices.

Suggesting a Paradigm Shift

Dora Vell, principal of Vell & Associates, an executive search firm in Waltham, Mass., has some suggestions about how the pay-to-post model needs to change. More targeted responses, she says, is a good place to start.

“Right now, we get too many responses that are irrelevant,” Vell complains. She’d like to see anonymous posts that don’t demand a response from her firm. If there is only one qualified candidate out of 100 resumes, she says, her team doesn’t want to be obligated with the financial and time burdens of responding to the other 99 so they are not left wondering about the position.

“We’d like to see some way for the posting site to allow us to post the acid test, and for the site to analyze candidates – like a Business Intelligence system – and proactively provide alerts,” Vell concludes. “We want the site to screen irrelevant candidates out automatically.”

Reference:
Jennifer LeClaire

Integration Key to Effective Succession Planning.

Integration Key to Effective Succession Planning

Whether attempting to crown the next CEO or determine which workers to tap for promotion to the company's managerial ranks, an organization needs a comprehensive view into the workforce's skills and talent in order to make the best talent and business decisions. Integrating learning, performance management, compensation management and career planning can facilitate effective succession planning.

A successful succession plan should answer the following questions for each candidate:

a) Learning: What does the candidate know (knowledge)? What is he or she qualified to do (skills)? What training has the candidate completed?

b) Performance and competency management: How well has the candidate performed in the past? What does past performance indicate about areas of strength and/or weakness? Which competencies has the candidate attained or still need to ascend to the next level? Which positions in the organization map to the competencies demonstrated by this candidate?

c) Compensation management: What is the candidate's compensation history? How does the candidate's compensation map to his or her performance and achievement of corporate goals?

d) Career planning and development: What are the candidate's future career goals? Where does the person see him or herself professionally, one, three, even 10 years down the road? Is the candidate willing to relocate in order to accept a new or existing position? How much is he or she willing to travel?

To answer these questions, organizations must have insight and visibility into organizational talent. By integrating and aggregating information about an employee's learning, performance management, compensation, career-planning activities and history, organizations can generate a comprehensive snapshot of each employee or of an organization's entire workforce.

Further, this integrated approach serves to match employee career goals with organizational staffing needs, allowing companies to more effectively leverage existing talent.

Historically, the enterprise-technology platforms available to manage this employee data have been largely cut off from one another, each confined to its own silo of functionality. Traditional learning management systems (LMS), for example, automate the delivery and management of training and, in some instances, competencies. Traditional employee performance management systems (EPM) automate performance management administration and, in some instances, career planning.

This siloed approach has made it nearly impossible to integrate the information necessary for effective succession planning. But talent managers now are driving the evolution of a new class of enterprise software.

According to a June 2007 research report titled "Learning Management Systems 2008: Facts, Practical Analysis, Trends and Vendor Profiles" from research firm Bersin & Associates, the integration revolution already has begun.

The report said the "convergence of learning and performance management systems is still in its early stages," but LMS features are evolving and "continue to snowball at an incredible rate." Further, in response to customer demand, nearly every major LMS vendor "has developed a new set of capabilities for performance management, succession planning, and competency management."

According to Gartner Inc. the same phenomenon is occurring in the EPM market. When Gartner Research Vice President James Holincheck wrote the update to the research firm's "MarketScope for Employee Performance Management Software" in late 2007, he said EPM systems are no longer being evaluated on their own, and customers are increasingly selecting EPM solutions that are "more integrated with compensation and succession management."

In response, Gartner not only broadened the scope of its research to include all three areas, it expanded the very definition of EPM, from focusing only on performance management to include succession management and compensation management.

With succession planning moving to the forefront of the corporate agenda, the time has come for stakeholders to evaluate their succession planning strategies and solutions in the context of broader talent management capabilities and goals.

References:
Shelly Heiden
[About the Author: Shelly Heiden is executive vice president for Global Field Operations at Plateau Systems.]

Implementing Successful Learning Programs.

Implementing Successful Learning Programs

As the world moves to an increasingly fast-paced, service-oriented global economy, talent management tasks grow more difficult to complete. Yet, HR must find top talent, develop future leaders and motivate employees if their organizations are to succeed. To make matters worse, marketplace concerns come on top of HR-specific issues such as regulatory compliance related to HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley.

Given the increasing pressures and complexity faced by HR and talent management leaders, more and more companies are turning to learning and development as a way to improve performance. When executed according to best practices, a learning program can help HR leaders and companies they serve stay on top of their game.

However, before HR leaders can help create learning programs for the rest of the company in support of broader business objectives, they have a lot to learn about effective enterprise learning. HR leaders must understand where their companies are today and where they need to be tomorrow. It takes vision, hard work and a keen understanding of the inner workings of an organization to put these pieces together and to mesh them with appropriate learning interventions in a way that leads to successful business results.

Pave the Road Ahead

For effective enterprise learning to occur throughout an organization, executive buy-in is critical. The more executives from various departments and those at the top are involved and engaged, the more impact enterprise learning will have on the organization. HR leaders needs to, at a minimum, bring executives into the conversation. Executives must understand the bottom-line organizational impact for proposed learning programs and be given opportunities to commit to and become champions for enterprise learning.

To assure executive level buy-in, there are at least three fundamental barriers to overcome:

a) Alignment: Priorities vary from department to department, but learning efforts should always align with strategic company objectives. Talent managers should make certain they focus on these objectives when communicating with executives and creating development programs.

b) Performance measurement: Talent managers should be prepared to share with executives how they will measure the impact of learning programs on achieving company objectives.

c) Governance: An organization's system of control, whether it's highly centralized or dispersed over multiple, far-flung locations, is critical to influence how learning programs are accepted throughout the organization.

Talent managers should take their organizations' governance models into consideration when selling learning programs to executive teams and identify communication gates throughout the learning process to keep senior leaders apprised of learning progress and ensure continued support.

Learning Content is King, Right?

Sure, content is king. But just like in chess, the king can't do much on his own. Identifying the skill gaps that hold a company back from achieving its objectives should be the talent manager's first step when developing learning content. It's an important knowledge-building step because it provides the foundation on which HR-initiated learning programs are built.

Next, talent managers need to determine how to measure learning impact. This benchmarking analysis can then guide the design of an organization's learning programs, as well as content development.

It's also important for HR leaders to understand the options they have available when specifying content for learning programs. Depending on the organization, content may come from disparate sources and take a variety of forms. For example, a hospital may work with one vendor on clinical content and another vendor for the best content on coding and billing.

Choosing a learning partner can be a critical decision. Talent managers should learn as much as possible about vendor offerings, and in the case of learning content, what restrictions external partners may have around content development. Talent leaders charged with learning responsibilities should work with a partner that has expertise in performance improvement, and it's advisable to consider partnering with a full range of in-house content and media developers as well.

Whomever the talent manager chooses to help implement enterprise learning, external or internal partners must be able to blend all content to deliver a multisensory learning experience that can be used for both instructor-led and Web-based learning.

It's Not About the Bike

As Lance Armstrong won race after race, people wanted to know what kind of bike he rode, what kind of gears he used and what tires he had on his bike. His answer was always the same: It's not about the bike. Yes, he had the very best bike, they very best tires and they very best gears. But in the end, that's not why he won the race. It's the same with learning technology.

Technology has made tremendous advances in the past five years. Many learning technology providers offer a cornucopia of standard features for learning management systems. But chances are these features won't fit all organizations' needs right out of the box.

It is the HR or talent management leader's responsibility to learn as much as possible about the learning technology available in order to assist an organization in meeting its immediate and long-range business goals.

A good learning management system (LMS) solution supports a range of formats, including asynchronous or self-directed Web-based learning; synchronous, or live learning, instructor-led, Web-based learning; and traditional, classroom-based, instructor-led learning.

No matter which delivery mode is appropriate for a learning program, the organization's LMS should be able to:

a) Synchronize with human resource management systems.

b) Provide robust virtual classrooms that facilitate whiteboard sessions, interactive project work, breakout rooms and online mentoring.

c) Automate, track and manage compliance training and certification programs from a single, global platform.

d) Manage course offerings, participant enrollment, testing data and more.

e) Design and deliver an unlimited number of assessments with automated testing and grading.

f) Organize and track personal transcripts and learning plans.

Talent managers should be careful identifying the right system provider: Some aren't interested in training employees to use the company's new training system, leaving them to struggle along as best they can to figure out the new technology. Look for a commitment from the provider that assures employees will know what they're doing once the system implementation is complete.

Attending user groups and trade shows and networking with peers are great ways for talent management executives and their staffs to stay informed about learning practices. In addition to learning about the technology, talent leaders should pay attention to solutions that facilitate their ability to provide meaningful business-performance measurements and aid development of business acumen. Recent studies show business leaders want their learning and talent leaders to be well-informed about the business areas they affect.

People, Process, Technology

Ever-tightening budgets are forcing many HR departments to fulfill training duties with less staff, and they must think and act creatively to provide the most qualified trainers with the least amount of resources invested. This puts a greater emphasis on distributing the learning function throughout the organization.

It is important for talent management executives and HR leaders to identify the key subject matter experts throughout the organization. Talent leaders need to identify the relevant departments responsible for establishing and upholding best practices and choose the appropriate trainer candidates based on who is performing those relevant tasks.

This also reduces the likelihood of conflict or disruption in the training cycle because the subject matter expert is doing the training and will be seen as a proponent of the training. In this scenario, train-the-trainer instruction takes on special significance because subject matter experts are not experienced trainers. As a result, staff may need to focus on training fundamentals first.

It's also important for HR leaders to share with company executives and managers that subject matter experts need time to work with the materials to be able to provide the best educational experiences. The expectation often is that experts can leave their jobs, train their co-workers and then go back to work. It's more than simply taking people "off the line" while they share their knowledge. Training the trainers is only effective if they're given the time to learn the new programs/systems prior to becoming the trainers.

In large organizations at the forefront of enterprise-learning best practices, learning functions are distributed widely for the greatest impact and effectiveness. Programs should strive for this wide distribution so talent managers can take advantage of all the knowledge and expertise that exists within the organization - not just in HR.

In the long run, the considerable up-front work of training the trainers and subject matter experts can help ease the burden of learning program management and provide the talent management team with more time for core tasks such as building skills, aligning practices and assimilating new employees in support or organizational goals.

References:
Robb Powell
[About the Author: Robb Powell is president of Gradepoint, an enterprise learning company based in Detroit, Mich.]

General Electric: Candor in Action.

General Electric: Candor in Action

Candor means nothing without action. That's why General Electric surveys its employees, analyzes survey data, has conversations around the results and ultimately brings about change for the better.

"If you ask employees for their input and they take the time to respond, you better do something with the data," said Susan Hunsberger, GE's Aviation Engineering human resources leader. "If you're not going to make a commitment to make changes, then you really shouldn't ask for their input to start with."

In line with this philosophy, Aviation Engineering ensures it makes changes based on the data collected through the General Electric Opinion Survey (GEOS).

Based on results from the 2006 GEOS, Aviation Engineering highlighted three areas for improvement: the need for a better explanation of employee compensation and benefits packages, better understanding of performance management and improved employee-manager relationships. With results from the GEOS data, Aviation Engineering followed up with some distinct changes.

On the compensation side, the organization looked at market survey data to compare salaries and found that, in some instances, engineers were not being paid as competitively as they should be. Adjustments were then made.

"India, Mexico and Poland are very hot markets right now for engineers, so [we took] a look at the markets in which we operate, what competitors are there, what other industry is in those locations looking for technical talent and [made] sure we had a good plan around salaries," Hunsberger said. "Some of [that was] prompted by what we learned from this survey."

In terms of performance management and the talent development process, Aviation Engineering created more communication around the process, as well as tools to explain the company's performance management strategy.

As far as employee-manager relations, managers created communication or engagement plans for the year, detailing how they would strengthen their relationships.

The HR team also developed a learning module to provide tips on how to improve contact with direct reports.

With each survey, Aviation Engineering's 17 different divisions also highlight three areas of improvement, and as a result, change trickles throughout the organization.

While the department is analyzing the overall results, the People Plan Team - composed of representatives from the organization's 17 divisions - analyzes, summarizes and presents the data to its respective employee populations. Then the People Plan Team leaders choose three areas to improve that are specific to their divisions.

"After that part of the process, [the People Plan leaders] take it the next step and do action planning around those areas that scored the lowest, and the employee is very involved in that, which is part of the richness of the process," Hunsberger said.

Because of this cycle, GE's culture of candor is working.

"When everybody feels that they count, they want to give 110 percent every day," she explained. "If they want to give 110 percent, they're going to want to stay, and that's really what it's all about for us: attracting the best, developing the best and keeping the best employed. When you have a candid culture and people get to participate in that culture in shaping it, addressing problem areas and leveraging areas of strength, you've got a winning formula."


Reference:
by Lindsay Edmonds Wickman
[About the Author: Lindsay Edmonds Wickman is an associate editor for Talent Management magazine.]

The Training Of “The Will To Do”.

The Training Of “The Will To Do”

The “Will To Do” is the greatest power in the world that is concerned with human accomplishment and no one can in advance determine its limits.

The things that we do now would have been a few ages ago impossibilities. Today the safe maxim is: "All things are possible."

The Will To Do is a force that is strictly practical, yet it is difficult to explain just what it is. It can be compared to electricity because we know it only through its cause and effects. It is a power we can direct and to just the extent we direct it do we determine our future. Every time you accomplish any definite act, consciously or unconsciously, you use the principle of the Will. You can Will to do anything whether it is right or wrong, and therefore the way you use your will makes a big difference in your life.

Every person possesses some "Will To Do." It is the inner energy which controls all conscious acts. What you will to do directs your life forces. All habits, good or bad, are the result of what you will to do. You improve or lower your condition in life by what you will to do. Your will has a connection with all avenues of knowledge, all activities, all accomplishment.

You probably know of cases where people have shown wonderful strength under some excitement, similar to the following: The house of a farmer's wife caught on fire. No one was around to help her move anything. She was a frail woman, and ordinarily was considered weak. On this occasion she removed things from the house that it later took three men to handle. It was the Will To Do that she used to accomplish her task.

Genius Is But A Will To Do Little Things With Infinite Pains. Little Things Well Done Open The Door Of Opportunity For Bigger Things.

The Will accomplishes its greater results through activities that grow out of great concentration in acquiring the power of voluntary attention to such an extent that we can direct it where we will and hold it steadily to its task until our aim is accomplished. When you learn so to use it, your Will Power becomes a mighty force. Almost everything can be accomplished through its proper use. It is greater than physical force because it can be used to control not only physical but mental and moral forces.

There are very few that possess perfectly developed and balanced Will Power, but those who do easily crush out their weak qualities. Study yourself carefully. Find out your greatest weakness and then use your will power to overcome it. In this way eradicate your faults, one by one, until you have built up a strong character and personality.

Rules for Improvement.

A desire arises. Now think whether this would be good for you. If it is not, use your Will Power to kill out the desire, but, on the other hand, if it is a righteous desire, summon all your Will Power to your aid, crush all obstacles that confront you and secure possession of the coveted Good.

Slowness in Making Decisions.

This is a weakness of Will Power. You know you should do something, but you delay doing it through lack of decision. It is easier not to do a certain thing than to do it, but conscience says to do it. The vast majority of persons are failures because of the lack of deciding to do a thing when it should be done. Those that are successful have been quick to grasp opportunities by making a quick decision. This power of will can be used to bring culture, wealth and health.

Some Special Pointers.

For the next week try to make quicker decisions in your little daily affairs. Set the hour you wish to get up and arise exactly at the fixed time. Anything that you should accomplish, do on or ahead of time. You want, of course, to give due deliberation to weighty matters, but by making quick decisions on little things you will acquire the ability to make quick decisions in bigger things. Never procrastinate. Decide quickly one way or the other even at the risk of deciding wrong. Practice this for a week or two and notice your improvement.

The Lack of Initiative.

This, too, keeps many men from succeeding. They have fallen into the way of imitating others in all that they do. Very often we hear the expression, "He seems clever enough, but he lacks initiative." Life for them is one continuous grind. Day after day they go through the same monotonous round of duties, while those that are "getting along" are using their initiative to get greater fullness of life. There is nothing so responsible for poverty as this lack of initiative, this power to think and do for ourselves.

You Are as Good as Anyone.

You have will power, and if you use it, you will get your share of the luxuries of life. So use it to claim your own. Don't depend on anyone else to help you. We have to fight our own battles. All the world loves a fighter, while the coward is despised by all.

Every person's problems are different, so I can only say "analyze your opportunities and conditions and study your natural abilities." Form plans for improvement and then put them into operation. Now, as I said before, don't just say, "I am going to do so and so," but carry your plan into execution. Don't make an indefinite plan, but a definite one, and then don't give up until your object has been accomplished. Put these suggestions into practice with true earnestness, and you will soon note astonishing results, and your whole life will be completely changed. An excellent motto for one of pure motives is: Through my will power I dare do what I want to. You will find this affirmation has a very strengthening effect.

The Spirit of Perseverance.

The spirit of "sticktoitiveness" is the one that wins. Many go just so far and then give up, whereas, if they had persevered a little longer, they would have won out. Many have much initiative, but instead of concentrating it into one channel, they diffuse it through several, thereby dissipating it to such an extent that its effect is lost.

Develop more determination, which is only the Will To Do, and when you start out to do something stick to it until you get results. Of course, before starting anything you must look ahead and see what the "finish leads to." You must select a road that will lead to "somewhere," rather than "nowhere." The journey must be productive of some kind of substantial results. The trouble with so many young men is that they launch enterprises without any end in sight. It is not so much the start as the finish of a journey that counts. Each little move should bring you nearer the goal which you planned to reach before the enterprise began.

Lack of Perseverance is nothing but the lack of the Will To Do. It takes the same energy to say, "I will continue," as to say, "I give up." Just the moment you say the latter you shut off your dynamo, and your determination is gone. Every time you allow your determination to be broken you weaken it. Don't forget this. Just the instant you notice your determination beginning to weaken, concentrate on it and by sheer Will Power make it continue on the "job."

Never try to make a decision when you are not in a calm state of mind. If in a "quick temper," you are likely to say things you afterwards regret. In anger, you follow impulse rather than reason. No one can expect to achieve success if he makes decisions when not in full control of his mental forces.

Therefore make it a fixed rule to make decisions only when at your best. If you have a "quick temper," you can quickly gain control over it by simple rule of counting backwards. To count backwards requires concentration, and you thus quickly regain a calm state. In this way you can break the "temper habit."

It will do you a lot of good to think over what you said and thought the last time you were angry. Persevere until you see yourself as others see you. It would do no harm to write the scene out in story form and then sit in judgment of the character that played your part.

Special Instructions to Develop the Will To Do. This is a form of mental energy, but requires the proper mental attitude to make it manifest. We hear of people having wonderful will power, which really is wrong. It should be said that they use their will power while with many it is a latent force. I want you to realize that no one has a monopoly on will power. There is plenty for all. What we speak of as will power is but the gathering together of mental energy, the concentration power at one point. So never think of that person as having a stronger will than yours. Each person will be supplied with just that amount of will power that he demands. You don't have to develop will power if you constantly make use of all you have, and remember the way in which you use it determines your fate, for your life is moulded to great extent by the use you make of your will. Unless you make proper use of it you have neither independence nor firmness. You are unable to control yourself and become a mere machine for others to use. It is more important to learn to use your will than to develop your intellect. The man that has not learned how to use his will rarely decides things for himself, but allows his resolutions to be changed by others. He fluctuates from one opinion to another, and of course does not accomplish anything out of the ordinary, while his brother with the trained will takes his place among the world's leaders.

Employee-Manager Trust Strengthens Work Relationships.

Employee-Manager Trust Strengthens Work Relationships

With more than 135,000 employees working in some 80 countries worldwide, Procter & Gamble, creator of brands such as Tide, Folgers, Pringles, Charmin and Crest, has isolated the manager-employee relationship as a critical component of effective performance management.

"It's the No. 1 reason why people leave a company," said Keith Lawrence, director of human resources, beauty, health and well-being at Procter & Gamble Co. "It's such an important relationship. It determines the work an individual is assigned, their future assignments, promotions, compensation, as well as the basic love, care and feeding that we get each day."

In order to enable effective manager-employee relationships, Lawrence said the process must begin with a manager's fundamental belief that a high-quality relationship with every one of his or her employees is important.

Positive manager-employee relationships actually start when an employee joins the manager's team or attends the company on-boarding program. On-boarding can help the two get to know each other, identify their strengths and establish how they can work together.

To set the right tone at this stage, Lawrence said the manager should have clear work plans and objectives for what will be accomplished in the first assignment.

Ongoing, continuous feedback - including not only what needs improvement, but recognition of what is going well - will help reinforce the employee's contribution and build a basic feeling of trust, respect and a sense of teamwork.

"We have a lot of systems to give feedback on an ongoing basis, but the most effective way to give feedback is to tailor it to the individual employee," he explained. "Some employees like to get written feedback, some like to get it in person, others like to hear all the good stuff, and you have to soft pedal the issues. It's important for the manager to know every one of their employees and deliver feedback as they like it delivered."

The level of personalization and trust in this manager-employee relationship is so relevant, it can take only one incident to damage it. Saying one thing and doing another, offering inaccurate information or not fulfilling commitments related to advancement or new opportunities for growth and development are a few critical but common manager mistakes.

"Fundamentally, all relationships boil down to trust," Lawrence said. "The worst thing a manager can do is make a commitment and either not deliver on it or not be honest, candid and complete with their employee. It's very hard to rebuild trust. Stephen Covey would say you need seven deposits in the emotional bank to account for one incident like that. In the trust fund, it's beyond that. A manager can really blow a relationship when they're not trustworthy or when they lack integrity."

Procter & Gamble uses its annual employee survey to measure how well managers are building and sustaining employee relationships. The survey has several relationship-based questions for which answers are monitored, benchmarked and tied to manager - particularly senior managers' - bonuses.

"That puts teeth behind the importance of this," Lawrence said. "We also have a wide range of tools and training available to managers and employees to help their relationship building. For example, we have a relationship-building tool kit that has an array of different exercises and approaches that both employee and manager can use to help them strengthen their respective relationship.

"Last, we're leaning toward what we call strength-based relationships, and the analogy here is in a marriage, you learn to appreciate and play to each other's strengths as opposed to trying to fix the parts you don't like. The same is true here. We're trying to focus on what are the strengths that each employee and manager has and how can they respectively play to those over time and build and strengthen one another."

Reference:
Kellye Whitney

The Succession Fix.

The Succession Fix

The purpose of a succession plan is to decrease interruptions and negative business impact in the event a leader leaves the organization. Traditionally, succession efforts focused only on C-suite-level positions, but pivotal non-C-suite roles also should be included in a comprehensive succession plan.

For most companies, showing leadership consistency during CEO transitions is essential to ensure business continuity and maintain the confidence of customers, investors and key talent. Imagine the business and stock implications for Apple if Steve Jobs' health scare had turned out differently or if McDonald's didn't have a successor ready in 2004 after Jim Cantalupo died suddenly of a heart attack at age 60.

Smart organizations also realize interruptions in leadership below the CEO level can have a major impact on business operations and productivity. This knowledge has prompted many companies to look for a more comprehensive succession management system that will allow them to operate seamlessly during any leadership transition.

Succession Value Beyond the C-Suite

Succession management should not be a stand-alone practice. A good succession management plan is woven into an overall HR system that values continuous talent assessment and development programs. For example, programs that identify which high performers have the potential to ascend the corporate ladder should be linked with succession management.

Succession management plans also should reflect overall business objectives and projected challenges. If a company has a large pool of baby boomers in executive positions that plan on retiring relatively soon, the succession plan should have a large pool of potential candidates ready or being readied to step into those roles.

Or if the business plans to expand into new global markets, talent to fill necessary roles abroad should be reflected in the plan. Executing these tasks will almost certainly require leaders outside the C-suite.

Every position at a business serves a functional purpose, but some roles are so crucial that even minimal disturbances could have a detrimental impact. The concept behind comprehensive succession management is to take the necessary steps to have the right people in these crucial positions and a pool of able candidates ready to fill them when the time comes.

Which Levels Should Have Succession Management Plans?

Knowing succession management is valuable and knowing how to execute a comprehensive succession management plan are two different things. One of the biggest challenges is deciding which levels and positions to focus on. Should there be a successor in the wings for every senior executive? What about mid-level leaders? Are there other specific positions that need attention?

Overall, succession management plans should include:

a) Chief executive suite (CEO, CFO, etc.).

b) Senior executive positions (frequently referred to as the Top 50, 100, etc.)

c) Pivotal roles.

Generally, constructing an expanded succession program to include every senior executive role makes sense. These roles have greater importance because the business units or groups they oversee would be significantly impacted by sudden transition or leadership gaps. However, it is essential to remember each business is different, and the unique aspects of each business model will determine other positions that should be included in a succession management plan. These positions are pivotal roles, positions that significantly impact operations or overall success regardless of leadership level.

Consider an engineering company. Program managers at engineering companies tend to manage multimillion dollar programs, as well as large teams. While the position is not in the senior executive ranks, a sudden transition or departure would dramatically impact a large number of employees, as well as a large budget. Thus, the program manager position is a pivotal role, and engineering organizations should have succession plans in place.

Another example can be found in the oil and gas industry. In this sector, some roles are responsible for negotiating deals on oil drilling rights or access to pipelines with other countries and competitors. The impact of these deals can last for 20 to 30 years and involve billions of dollars. Clearly, this is a pivotal role, and it's in the company's best interests to have successors ready to fill these spots should they turn over.

Define Skills and Experiences Successors Need

No two companies are the same. Nor should two succession management plans be the same. Each position included should be clearly defined.

That said, some skills and characteristics will be similar for positions at the same level. Vice presidents all will need certain leadership competencies to be successful. But they also will need a certain set of skills and experiences that are specific to their roles. Despite the positions being relatively equal in terms of compensation and job tasks, managers in France would need to function under different government regulations than their counterparts in China.

Despite the same VP status, a vice president of marketing would need a different set of skills and experiences than a vice president of finance. A succession plan should reflect all of this.

To maximize resources, broad-based skills training pertinent to multiple positions should be standard, and additional training dollars for tailored coaching or skills training should be available as needed. A full set of expectations and requirements for each role must be identified prior to setting up a pool of potential successors. After all, how can talent managers prepare to support a role without understanding the full breadth of responsibilities and tasks the role requires?

How Should You Identify Successors?

Generally, the best way to identify successors is to pay continuous attention to the performance assessments of the host organization's high-performance and high-potential employees.

Talent assessment might look at four components: performance, potential, readiness and fit. Performance indicates how well individuals are doing in their current roles and how they achieve results. Potential indicates whether individuals are capable of performing well several levels above their current roles. Readiness measures an individual's ability to take on a new role at the next level, now. And once an individual has the potential and readiness to take on a new role, his or her fit for the new position must be considered.

Fit should take into account whether the person's particular set of strengths are appropriate for the business challenges to be faced, whether his or her leadership style will mesh with the culture of the group or organization, whether the promotion is being given at the appropriate time in the person's career, whether the person is mobile and whether he or she has the right mix of experiences.

When designing a program, it also is important to understand work silos that may exist and block the organization's comprehensive succession plans. Ideally, a good succession plan should identify multiple people for any one position, and multiple positions for any one person. If a company is separated by specific business units or geographic areas, they tend to miss potential pools of talent outside of immediate work groups.

For example, many companies look to each individual leader to identify successors within each business unit. Although there may be likely candidates in this pool, the approach doesn't offer much breadth on an enterprise level. A director in one unit may have several traits and characteristics that, with some minimal additional experiences or skills training, could be a perfect fit for another business unit. Looking across business units allows talent managers to expand their potential talent pool and take advantage of leaders from different business units who can bring a broader range of business knowledge to a new position.

The goal of a succession program is to create the largest qualified pool of candidates possible for each position. When planning for the unknown, talent managers certainly do not want to put all of their employees/eggs in one basket.

Pushing the Right Development Experiences for Succession

When successors have been identified, the development process begins. Successors can be given general development opportunities and specific exposure to the roles they most likely will be asked to fill. Providing experiences does not need to be an activity separate from real work. In fact, development activities or experiences should be integrated with the host organization's business needs in the same way a company's strategic plan should align with its succession planning process.

Consider a high-level executive who is being groomed for the CEO position at XYZ Corp. This individual may have exceptional skills but might need more exposure to the overall business. This exposure might mean a stint as the CFO. In this particular company, the CFO position certainly has a high level of responsibility, but placing the high-level executive there offers lower business risk due to the overall strength of the finance function and the existing financial systems in place across the company's business units. By providing this experience, the high-level executive is able to do useful work while getting the necessary exposure and experience needed to further his readiness for the CEO position.

Address Business Risks and Talent Constraints

Finally, a good succession plan should address talent-related business risks. For key strategic initiatives or critical parts of the business, talent managers can't afford to lose a person in a pivotal role. The succession process should ensure there are viable successors being groomed, and where none are available, it should provide ways to bring in talent from outside.

Executing comprehensive succession planning proactively, before there is a crisis, will minimize the likelihood of business disruption. Similarly, a good succession process will identify where an organization's business plan may be at risk and highlight alternative approaches to achieve an organization's strategic goals.

Succession planning is not just for CEOs anymore. A solid succession plan should reflect business challenges, identify as many successors as possible and take the steps needed to ensure qualified candidates are ready to fill key positions and maintain business continuity.

Reference:
Cindy Marsh, Ph.D., L.P
[About the Author: Cindy Marsh, Ph.D., L.P., is president and COO for Personnel Decisions International.]

Talent Management Activity Alignment Key for Growth.

Talent Management Activity Alignment Key for Growth

As the global economy shows signs of volatility, businesses face a new set of challenges as they strive for stronger performance. Organizations working on their growth agendas are not willing to sacrifice the progress they have made. But the investment associated with growth can be unpalatable in economically uncertain times. So many organizations have embarked on dual objectives: belt-tightening and growth.

As the economy weathers uncertain times, businesses are hard-pressed to squeeze every ounce of fat from their organizations to reinvest those dollars into activities that drive growth. At the same time, organizations are deploying people in different ways to better align them with the company's business strategy and quest for profit. That means changing the way people work.

True change - the ideal of best intentions designed to create new behaviors with different outcomes - is elusive. For individuals, it is certainly a challenge. But for organizations struggling to affect transformational change, well-intentioned approaches to company-wide change frequently fail.

Transformational change is difficult to initiate and even harder to sustain, especially during times when external markets are changing rapidly. As one sage client said, "Making change happen during uncertain times requires that we do the equivalent of changing a car tire while zipping down a highway at 60 miles per hour! We have to maintain or improve today's performance while we position ourselves for even stronger future performance."

The most common pitfalls are found in how companies approach transformational change. Many have historically tried broadscale change through behavioral training and culture programs. These drain resources and distract individuals while never really addressing the core issues: Behavior in an organization really changes when one changes the work. The role individuals performs is the primary determinant of the behaviors they demonstrate.

Three Phases of Activity Alignment

The key to transformational change is rather simple: People change behaviors if there is a change in the work they are doing. Activity alignment occurs when job roles and work activities are aligned with the strategy and priorities of the business. As simple as it may sound, achieving activity alignment requires extreme discipline through three phases:

1. Strategy development:

Make a vision come to life with clear strategies, initiatives and well-defined work activities. There must be a direct link between strategy and core capabilities, where the organization needs to excel in order to drive the strategy forward. To facilitate a transformation, the organization must first examine its strategy and ask clarifying questions: What is the future state it wants to achieve? What are the specific, measurable objectives for the business? Are the objectives sufficiently defined to identify the work activities associated with them?

Organizations often have to make choices about strategy. Some may choose to focus on running the business, while others may concentrate on business growth. Still others may find it necessary to balance both concerns equally.

Once the strategy is in place and the company is positioned to achieve objectives, how will it get there? Its leaders need to define core capabilities by answering the question, "What do we need to be great at?" This makes it possible to define the critical processes, activities, roles and skills/competencies necessary to execute the strategy and deliver desired results.

2. Organizational design:

Group work activities into refined or redefined jobs. After the strategy is defined and the supporting capabilities are determined, consider design, since an overhaul of the business processes, tools and talent often is required to organize or align the company around the new strategy. This is a five-step process:

a) Processes and activities: What processes must be designed and implemented to achieve the strategic objectives? What metrics measure these activities?

b) Resource allocation: What allocation decisions will need to be made to support these activities and processes? The question is whether to allocate resources to organizational capital (processes, systems) or to human capital (salaries, incentives).

c) Systems and tools: What systems and tools - technology, processes and delivery of services - will be put in place to support the strategy and meet critical objectives?

d) Jobs and structure: What roles are critical to carrying out the new strategic direction? How will the roles be designed and organized into an effective structure?

e) Assess and select talent: Which current employees possess the skills to fill the new roles? Where are the talent gaps, and how will the organization fill them?

Redesign should be approached by using a value-based methodology that will identify critical activities and their performance requirements, categorizing each according to the type of value generated: value requirement, or transactional activities; value protection, or protection of assets and ensuring work and people are properly managed; and value creation, or highly leveraged activities that create great value for an organization.

Using these three value characteristics, leaders can design jobs with activities that are aligned with the strategy. While most jobs have some elements of each of the value characteristics, if an organization can create more homogonous jobs, the roles are cleaner, and there is a better likelihood individuals will be staffed and perform effectively.

The roles should avoid combining value-creation and value-requiring activities. It is very difficult for individuals to perform transactional activities and create longer-term, high-value solutions for the business. Many jobs are junked up. They have evolved over time to have too many of each type of activity. These become nearly impossible jobs that require superhuman effort to accomplish results.

Once jobs are clean and critical knowledge, skills and behaviors are defined, it is time to assess and select people for new jobs. After the organization redesign is complete, a transition or implementation must begin.

3. Transition:

Put the right people in the right jobs, and put support processes in place to ensure effective performance in the new roles. Determine which activities will be required to transition this newly organized company to the desired future state. Management must expect and plan to handle resistance. In fact, transformation often can cause a performance dip as equilibrium shifts during the process. This change in employee attitude and performance can arise during each of the three phases of change.

A performance dip can develop for different reasons and at different stages. It may be a product of deficiencies in root-level strategy development, when a lack of clear vision exists and senior leadership seems unwilling to take calculated risks or take ownership and accountability for the strategy.

However, a dip is most common during the design process, when the wrong people design the work, leading to work activities and performance requirements being ill-defined in order to allocate resources effectively. Frequently, there is a breakdown in the design of new job roles that are then ineffective in supporting work activities or enabling individual success.

Often, poor transition management is the problem. Poor project management and risk planning, lack of rigor in talent selection, misalignment of skill sets with future roles, inability to make tough calls on favorite employees, improper training, as well as disconnects between compensation and roles, all can contribute to a performance dip during transition. During implementation, managers need to clearly define individual performance expectations and metrics.

This process is hard to put into action because it requires focus in operationalizing business strategy through organization and people, while simultaneously being supported by all traditional change management activities and tools.

Countering a Performance Dip

When the activity alignment activities are properly performed, there's a shorter period of performance dip. A structured change management process can proactively counter a performance dip with great success. Change management entails people management, or setting individual performance expectations, assessing and selecting, training, redefining compensation and rewards and supporting individuals so they perform effectively. It also involves:

a) Communication: Deliver the right messages to the right people at the right times so they can align their work with strategy.

b) Risk and impact management: Identify and manage the risks and impacts associated with the change.

c) Leadership and sponsorship: Engage leadership to drive change.

The Role of Leadership

While talent managers can change the work, they can't transform an organization overnight. The transformation process requires discipline, great communication and strong investment in the support structures and processes that enable people to be successful. By definition, providing that discipline, communication and support is the role of leadership.

The notion of activity alignment holds true for leaders, as well. As roles in the organization change, so do leaders' roles. Transformational change requires leaders who can lead on multiple dimensions, who possess the competencies to build the operational excellence required for profitability, as well as the innovative focus to capitalize on product, market and customer opportunities.

To achieve lasting change, a company must create activity alignment through a step-by-step process that begins with developing a vision designed to achieve strategic business objectives, supported by core competencies and followed by a new design composed of clearly defined processes and roles that must be effectively transitioned. Once the work has changed, the behaviors will follow, as will business results.

In uncertain economic times, the dual objectives of belt-tightening and growth are undoubtedly difficult to reconcile. However, if the imperative is to change, there is no easy way out, no silver bullet or magic pill to swallow. Companies trying to achieve lasting change and growth cannot cut corners on the steps that relate to activity alignment, which are outlined above. Change doesn't have to be expensive, but it will require the time and resources to get it right.

Reference:
Carol Henriques
[About the Author: Carol Henriques is a principal at Capital H Group.]

The Two Faces of Career Management

The Two Faces of Career Management

Until recently, it was the sole responsibility of employees to plan their career management strategies. They might quietly seek out new positions outside an organization or hope to be among the select few groomed for a higher position internally. Inevitably, those who did not want to follow the lockstep path of advancement within large organizations - often among the most talented and highly qualified - voted with their feet.

A confluence of economic and demographic factors has given new urgency to reversing this phenomenon. According to a 2006 survey by the consultancy Knowledge Infusion, 6 to 10 percent of the workforce will retire by 2010, putting considerable pressure on organizations, particularly those with more than 10,000 employees. This emerging global shortage of talent - driven by fast-growing economies, increasing competition and the first wave of retirements among baby boomers - is forcing organizations to seek out new strategies to retain top talent in a tight labor market.

Offer Formalized Career Development

One proven strategy is collaborative career management: helping your best people develop their talents and skills for positions within the context of your organizational needs instead of watching helplessly while your competition lures them away.

Leighanne Levensaler, director of talent management research at Bersin & Associates, has defined a framework in which career management can be thought of as an umbrella term containing several core elements or processes.

First, from the perspective of individual employees, the notion of career planning indicates employee-driven choices and career exploration. Second, and from the perspective of the organization, career development points toward formalized programs intended to drive employees along closely defined and strategic career paths.

Thoughtful management of these two sides of career management can make or break any workforce planning strategy. Keeping talent engaged, providing opportunities for development, helping them steer along a self-directed career path and striving to align their daily activities with company goals is crucial to retaining your human capital.

"In this intensely competitive knowledge economy, talent can be the biggest differentiator and the most critical factor in driving a company's performance," Levensaler said. "Looming gaps in the talent pool threaten every company's ability to execute on their current and future business plans."

Research shows gaps will persist across job functions necessary to compete in a knowledge-based, industrialized economy, especially in areas such as sales and customer service, IT, finance, marketing and research and development. Yet, despite widespread acceptance of the growing talent shortage as a real business problem, few are taking action to formally assess or counteract it.

Technology Integrates Career Management Processes

One barrier facing all organizations has been the lack of a comprehensive career management solution. Traditionally, the HR function has been highly decentralized, consisting of complex manual processes loosely supported by disconnected technology solutions. Information about individual employees resided in different silos, hampering managers' ability to effectively guide and develop employees. At the same time, employees did not have clear views into their own career management and possible career paths within the organization.

Early efforts to integrate HR functions within a single software package were a mixed bag. The good news is software solutions are catching up with the needs of the marketplace. Vendors such as Cornerstone OnDemand now offer comprehensive talent management solutions that touch on the entire life cycle of the employee, from development to performance assessment to compensation and succession management. By integrating these functions into a single suite of software tools, the best solutions give organizations a big-picture view of current and future needs.

Levensaler advises using caution when viewing talent management solutions as a kind of magic bullet that can be bought off-the-shelf and plugged in. But when implemented effectively, career management platforms offer a win-win for both employee and employer.

"Talent management solutions are starting to mature," said Levensaler. "The potential long-term returns from such solutions are huge, as long as organizations are willing to make the investment of time to tailor the solution to their business needs."

Career Management Benefits Drive Deep

The best technology solutions help HR managers produce measurable results that justify their functions while delivering on business goals. The benefits include:

a) Increased retention (and lower costs of recruiting).
b) Organizational needs matched with the best candidates.
c) Optimized use of existing talent resources.
d) Increased productivity.
e) Individual career paths better-aligned with broad needs of the organization.

Further, many systems can dynamically produce organizational charts and organizational readiness models to identify future needs and provide HR practitioners and line managers with the ability to set individuals on satisfactory career paths. Automating the processes that drive this next generation of organizational modeling makes real, long-range planning possible.

Deep in specific business units, the benefits can be felt acutely, as well. The promise of these technologies does not live strictly in the boardrooms or with higher-level HR. Supervisors can take advantage of real-time access to employee career preferences, performance data and development records to developing a better, more well-rounded understanding of employees' professional goals, strengths and training needs - which can result in more realistic staff and development planning.

"Done right, career management serves the best interests of both the employee and the organization," said Levensaler. "The employee benefits from a well-thought-out road map leading the way to future advancement while the organization retains and engages its best talent."

Individual Development Planning

The core of any career management process and system to support these processes is the individual development plan (IDP) that allows managers to work with each employee to develop a personalized career development plan. Employees are encouraged to seek out future interests or new roles within the organization.

A competency appraisal lets the employee assess readiness for a new position and identify gaps in his or her resume or skill set. And employees can link to resources that allow them to upgrade their skills through training, education or certification.

The technology delivers these development plans as templates that can be easily customized to the needs of the organization and the employee. Development plans can be directly tied to the competency assessment process, allowing managers to link corporate goals into personal learning plans such as shadowing a manager, taking an online course, etc. Free-form objectives and goals also can be entered, and any type of training can be directly linked so the entire process is self-contained. Target dates can be established and managerial comments can be attached to any learning plan.

For the employee, this personalized approach bonds them to the organization, aligning their personal career goals with those of the organization. The overall effect helps:

a) Boost morale and increase productivity.
b) Improve workplace engagement.
c) Encourage employees to take active roles in career development.
d) Keep employees' sights focused on future positions and roles within the organization.
e) Increase value of each employee to employer.

Employees derive value from the whole experience, especially in light of the fact that continuous improvement of job skills is critical in a tight knowledge economy. Further, employers develop systematic inventories of employee skills and can identify gaps for workforce planning.

By breaking down the barriers between employee and employer and bringing them together under a common cause, career management offers one of the most promising ways of addressing the current talent crunch. When career management is embedded within an integrated talent management solution, organizations have a tool to guide, develop and reward their best talent.

To keep employees engaged and aligned with company goals, today's most forward-thinking organizations work aggressively to implement career management solutions.

Reference:
by Charles Coy
[About the Author: Charles Coy is director of product marketing for Cornerstone OnDemand.]

Modern Workforce Ethics More Flexible in Knowledge Economy.

Modern Workforce Ethics More Flexible in Knowledge Economy

One of the best reasons to explain the continued relevance of talent management practices is the changing nature of work itself. The move from an industrial to a global knowledge economy, coupled with the increased speed of business and new worker expectations have combined to shift the talent paradigm to one that's quite a bit looser behaviorally than traditional talent managers might like.

For example, according to the "Deloitte 2008 Ethics and Workplace" survey, some 51 percent of workers take time off during the workday, even when it's against company policy. Further, some 59 percent of workers think it is ethical to take time off during work hours without providing a clear explanation to their immediate boss. And the survey respondents don't see anything wrong with their behavior.

"In many companies, the policy has not caught up with reality," said Anne Weisberg, a director in Deloitte's talent organization and co-author of Mass Career Customization: Aligning the Workplace With Today's Nontraditional Workforce. "A lot of the policies were written at a time when we didn't have a knowledge economy. The vast majority of workers were college-educated and in a different relationship than the one knowledge workers are in today. People in the knowledge economy are looking for a more collaborative relationship with their employers. They want the trust that they can manage their own time and deliver on their work without the command and control environment from another era."

Weisberg said talent managers dealing with situations such as those outlined by the survey stats must realize this type of employee behavior likely won't be solved by program creation or policy adjustments.

"It's almost beyond a policy issue," she explained. "One of the clear messages out of this survey is it's a cultural issue - creating a culture of trust and transparency, which in turn creates a high level of engagement among your workers."

Weisberg said talent managers and employees are walking an unclear line between the transparency people want to build trust within the workplace and a sense of privacy around how much of their personal lives they need to disclose.

"They also want to have honest, open communication with management in order to build that sense of trust," she said. "That's a constant line that's always being drawn. There's no formula for that."

The Deloitte survey also stated leadership can play a big role in creating a more transparent and ethical work environment. Some 70 percent of respondents indicate if their boss was more open about their need to step away during work hours, it would help create a more ethical workplace.

"Role modeling is really the key," Weisberg explained. "For example, if you say to your team, 'I've got to leave early today to take care of something for my kids,' that's one thing. Do you have to say, 'I have to leave early to go to my kid's psychiatric appointment?' No. But if I said, 'I'm leaving early today,' and you don't say it's because of a personal commitment, then nobody will feel permission to do that either. That's where the transparency comes in. Show people it's OK by giving them information about yourself without divulging everything.

"People are working very differently today," she said. "Yesterday's leaders were taught to solve problems. Tomorrow's leaders are going to have to learn how to manage dilemmas. Meaning, there are going to be more and more situations that literally don't have an answer. We've learned at Deloitte that transparency gets you a lot closer to managing the dilemmas than to try and solve them programmatically."

Reference:
Kellye Whitney
[About the Author: Kellye Whitney is managing editor for Talent Management magazine.]

Developing HR for Business Profitability.

Developing HR for Business Profitability.

India Inc 2000, HR people were rushed off to feet with the directorial and administrative roles, and they once in a blue moon had time to explore tools that could boost their contemporary tasks and effectively make a massive constructive impact on the business success.

The scenario continued over the years, and slowly reached a crisis saturation point when companies continually scale up and back, and get flooded with job seekers. This crisis situation have had a big impact on company profits -- directly, through lost productivity, longer waits to fill positions, and higher recruiting costs; and indirectly, through lower company market value, reduced employee satisfaction, and poorer company image.

THE HR MACHINERY

One of the vital ways to enhance business effectiveness, promote value, and revenue is to empower HR machinery. In spite of the vast clerical workload, HR senior managers need to explore tools that will assist them coerce efficacies company-wide. This may engross spreading out of the current HR tools.

Some first-rate examples of engineered tools that go beyond the nitty-gritty of advantage include the following:

Communication on-net - These tools provide far-fetched ROI, allowing employees to modify their statistic information, apply for time off, review company policy, review job postings and provide for employee suggestions and this results in increased effectiveness, improved the exactness of your data, and high employee morale.

E-Performance – Making it a paperless office, these tools help ensure timely employee performance reviews and provide a documented record of performance data, electronically, which is easily accessible by managers, HR, and senior management. This should be an important part of your risk management efforts.

E-Recruitments - In the down economy, companies were swamped with resumes. In the vast majority of cases, job candidates were ignored, most not even receiving so much as an automated "we have received your resume" e-mail. These candidates may now have a negative view of the company. Consider how they will feel when your recruiter comes knocking at their door in the changing environment, when candidates are harder to find.

Among other features, applicant tracking systems, some with Candidate Access Channels, allow job candidates to enter/update their resume information, check the status of their submission, and feel they are getting more attention from your company

Succession planning - Does your current workforce have the skills to meet future demands? Which employees can cover for key positions? Who is being groomed for management positions? With the retirement of the Baby Boomers in the not too distant future, we expect a huge labor shortfall, both in the number of people available to fill open positions and in the skills they possess. Companies should be looking at expanding skill development and training programs, as well as methods to motivate, reward and retain employees. You need to set strategies and plans for how your company will do business when the bodies aren't there to fill all the jobs.

Succession planning tools can help lay the plans for tomorrow.

Management for Objectives: HR Metrics - The new front line in HR is metrics. Metrics is a tool that allows companies to develop and drive corporate strategies through human capital information. Companies identify, track, and analyze key variables, by job function and business need, to highlight human capital trends and the interaction of key variables. Metrics provides a clear statistical perspective on human capital performance. Taken a step further, it provides a benchmark for management to measure itself against company goals and objectives, as well as industry standards. Further, metrics is presented in a language - numbers - that is easily understood by your CEO, CFO, and senior management throughout the company. Metrics can be implemented at all levels, starting with basic data, such as days to fill, cost per hire, and turnover rate, and progressing to more complex analysis such as employee satisfaction and quality of hires, which might involve a combination of factors and/or formulas to calculate.

Metrics has enormous potential as a business tool to:

• Analyze the impact of your HR programs and initiatives

• Develop HR strategy and align HR programs with corporate goals


• Link performance and compensation for key positions/roles


• Analyze department and company "health"

Compare company metrics to industry metrics Companies have been slow to adopt metrics, although this tool can really link HR, operations and finance, allowing everyone to talk the same language and plan for the future.

HR is now-a-days becoming a strategic business partner. Although it is becoming increasingly clear that business innovation can be helped by forward thinking human resources function there is reluctance on the part of top management in many progressive organizations to allow HR assume strategic partnership role.

‘These HR guys talk about strategic role, e-learning and e-recruitment but they really don’t want to do this stuff. They would rather read about it in the quiet of their offices or sit passively in an audience while other people talk about doing it. I have my doubts about their understanding of our business goals’

CAN HR GO TECHNICAL WAY?

We all know that the pace of technological innovation will continue to accelerate. HR can take advantage of these changes by automating HR processes and becoming more effective in communicating with its internal customers. More importantly, by absorbing latest technology, HR can project a forward looking image which will help it earn the respect of skeptical colleagues.
Let’s talk about e-HR strategy, e-HR transformation and e-HR enablement.

1. HR INFORMATION SYSTEM

As the web is becoming more reliable, organizations are increasingly turning to Application Service Providers to host software and manage it from remote computers. Through this technology outsourcing many companies can avoid up front capital costs associated with buying systems. When managed well there is no performance loss. These ASPs are aware of the security concerns of their clients and have taken effective steps to allay such fears.

2. HOME PAGES

Web portals offer tremendous advantage in learning and knowledge management support, business process support and employee self-service opportunities. The web has revolutionized the way HR services are offered to employees. Internet and Intranet enabled HR services has facilitated data capture and retrieval and freed HR executives from shackles of personnel administration trivia allowing them to concentrate more an HR strategy and employee well being. Through web enabled HR services an organization can move rapidly towards a paper less office where Personal Files, Leave Forms, Appraisal Forms will become a thing of the past.

3. HR ON MOBILE

As Personal Data Assistants (PDAs) and digital phones become a fixture in corporate world the next step in the evolution of devices is wireless access to news, personal information and corporate data. Progressive organizations are already offering HR services through hand held Palmtops. For example before walking in for a doctor’s appointment an employee can browse through his company’s HR web site for a list of service providers (medical practitioners) and also refresh his memory regarding his medical coverage—all on his handheld Personal Data Assistant! 3G which stands for third generation wireless communication technology will raise speed of communication from 9.5K to 2M bit/sec. HR professionals can leverage this ‘death of distance’ phenomenon sweeping the world by offering HR services on a virtual mode.

4. BLUETOOTH TECHNOLOGY

Bluetooth named after a 10th century king who united Denmark and Norway is poised for widespread roll out later this year. Imagine carrying your mobile phone into office and while it is sitting in your pocket, having it automatically exchange data with your PDA and desktop PC or setting your mobile phone down next to your PDA and checking e-mails without cords or wires. That is the goal of Bluetooth- a wireless synchronization technology invented by cellular phone manufacturer Ericsson. Bluetooth works automatically within a certain radius is relatively inexpensive and provides users with a simple way t o manage all their devices.

5. VIRTUAL HR MANAGERS

With the introduction video streaming technology, the HR Manager has a powerful communication tool in his possession. He can stop shuffling video tapes and trying to gather employees in front of the TV for CEO’s monthly address. He can beam it to the PCs making it easier for employees to view video without leaving their desk. It is a useful tool for employee communication and training. In combination with webcasting tools, it is also possible to include an array of interactive capabilities, including chat, polling, graphics, and Q & As.

6. INTRANET MONITORING

The media is flooded with articles on internet security and internet misuse. Many organizations are installing sophisticated software to track down web sites an employee is accessing. The HR Manager has to formulate an E-Policy and give it widespread publicity. There are issues related
to discipline, corporate ethics that might come up due to increased use of internet and networking technology. The HR Manager has a crucial role to play in formulating and implementing internet policy.

How does transformation differ from change? Although essentially the approach is same, transformation is about starting over from an entirely new perspective. It requires, first and foremost, a change in mindset followed by change in processes, and finally a change in services. HR is being challenged to transform in order to:

1. Provide flexible alternatives to previously restrictive HR processes
2. Visibly demonstrate value addition to the accomplishment of organization mission
3. Improve individual and organizational productivity
4. Provide change management strategies
5. Partner with operational units to achieve goals and measurable success

To grapple with these challenges in future, HR technology can help.

Add a Personal Touch to Nonprofit Recruitment and Retention

Add a Personal Touch to Nonprofit Recruitment and Retention

In the nonprofit sector, a motivational strategy can be just as crucial to attracting and retaining talent as providing a competitive compensation and benefits package. As a result, the mission of the nonprofit has to be clearly aligned with the culture so employees stay intrinsically motivated.

"There needs to be real alignment between how people are treated internally and what your mission, your vision and your objectives are for people outside of the organization," said Chris Musselwhite, president and CEO of Discovery Learning Inc., which provides executive education and organizational leadership development products.

If employees are disenchanted and lack motivation, the results can be especially damaging for a nonprofit.

"You put your values out there because it's clear what you're about and what your mission is," Musselwhite said. "When the culture of your organization is inconsistent or doesn't match those values, it becomes a lot more obvious to people and a lot more damaging. It create more discontent than it might in the for-profit sector where the clearly stated purpose may be to make money."

For cash and resource strapped nonprofit organizations it is even more important to create an interactive environment in which employees feel recognized and appreciated.

To do this, Musselwhite said managers should take time to acknowledge employees for what is working. Regular meetings should be scheduled so employees can give reports on their successes. These meetings also provide a forum for employees to clarify what's not working and to solicit feedback or potential solutions from peers and leaders. To be successful, though, this behavior must be modeled from the top down.

"It has to start at the top of the organization, and it has to become part of the culture," Musselwhite said. "Typically, a mid-level manager is not going to manage his or her employees in a really effective way when [the mid-level manager is] being managed ineffectively."

Creating a culture of motivation also should actively encourage managers to provide their employees with development opportunities. One way to do this is through targeted projects. When assigning a project, managers should clearly communicate the desired end result and the parameters in which employees must work, Musselwhite said. Then employees can decide how they're going to achieve the end result. In doing this, managers are giving employees the independence to develop their own solutions.

Some nonprofits understand how to motivate employees better than others, just like in the for-profit sector. However, the nonprofit organization is more likely to keep its talent by leveraging engagement or motivation and rewards-based performance management strategies than the for-profit company, where tangible compensation often plays a larger role in work or career considerations.

"The smart [organizations] are learning, especially with knowledge employees, that if they want to keep them, they're going to have do [this]," Musselwhite said. "When people leave their jobs, the No. 1 reason they report leaving is not because they got more money somewhere else - it's because they didn't like their manager. If I come along and offer you a little bit more money and you're miserable, you're probably going to go. But if you're really happy, I'm not sure offering you a little bit more money is going to be enough to pull you away."

To ensure employees stay intrinsically motivated, nonprofits should cultivate effective and inspiring leaders who invest in their teams. Musselwhite said something as simple as taking time to get to know employees on a personal level will build trust and provide insight into what motivates them.

"Especially with employees that have options and are in demand, you're going to have to create a work environment that meets the intrinsic needs, [where] they feel like they're not just a cog in a wheel - they're getting opportunities to advance, and they're recognized when they do well," he said.

Reference:
Lindsay Edmonds Wickman
[About the Author: Lindsay Edmonds Wickman is an associate editor for Talent Management magazine.]

What 8 Things Do Employees Want?

What 8 Things Do Employees Want?

Tangible rewards play a role in job satisfaction, says today's expert, but for many workers, the "happiness factor" depends heavily on intangibles, such as respect, trust, and fairness.

Is money the key to retention and productivity? It helps, says the Christian Science Monitor's Marilyn Gardner, but it's not enough. Beyond pay and benefits lie eight key factors that influence "happiness" at work-factors that motivate workers and keep them at your organization. Here's our distillation of Gardner's eight factors, as found on the website, Community Investment Network.org


1. Appreciation

Praise heads the list for many workers, and it doesn't cost the employer anything to provide it, says Gardner. A sincere thank you or a short note can mean a great deal.


2. Respect

Again there is no cost and a big payback. Respect plays out in letting people know that their work is appreciated, in treating them like adults, and in being fair in your dealings with them.


3. Trust

Trust is the action side of respect. People need guidance, but they need to know that their boss trusts them to be able to get a job done on their own.


4. Individual Growth

Today's workers-especially the Gen Y group-want training, want to take on new challenges, and want to advance based on their new abilities. Giving a raise without increasing responsibilities could actually backfire, notes Gardner. As one expert says, if you give more money to an unhappy employee, you end up with a wealthier unhappy employee.


5. Good Boss

It's the old saw: People don't leave companies, they leave bosses. In a recent Robert Half survey, Gardner notes that 1,000 Gen Y workers ranked "working with a manager I can respect and learn from" as the most important aspect of their work environment.


6. Compatible Co-workers

Working with people you enjoy is also very important, says Gardner. Spending the day-every day-with people you don't like does not make for a productive workplace.


7. Compatible Culture

Employees want a work environment that fits their needs. That could mean hard-driving, high paying, or it could mean high flexibility and significant attention to work/life balance.


8. A Sense of Purpose

People want to know that they are contributing to something worthwhile. They need to know what the organization's core purpose is and what it is trying to achieve. And then they need to know how their particular job fits into the whole.

One of the interesting things that Gardner discovered about employee "happiness" is that there is a disconnect between what managers think and what employees think about happiness at work.

Managers tend to think that salary and benefits are the main motivators, while workers consistently respond that factors such as those mentioned above are what's important. Successful organizations will find a good balance to retain their best people.

Bridging the Gap.

Bridging the Gap

With baby boomers filling most companies' executive ranks and with qualified replacements increasingly scarce, an aggressive focus on talent management may be the only solution to an impending talent crisis.

If you believe the consultants at Dallas-based Stanton Chase International, a lot of companies are about to realize they have way too many eggs in way too few baskets.

"A storm is gathering," says Dean Bare, managing director of Stanton Chase's Atlanta office, echoing a much ballyhooed and growing sentiment in the business community. "We're going to see the effects of current conditions within the next 12 to 36 months as more baby boomers begin to retire. One of the things those people take with them is a huge knowledge and experience base that most companies have not replaced."

Corporate North America, he says, is top-heavy. A disproportionate amount of knowledge and leadership talent is vested with older employees who may not be with their companies for much longer. Executives will continue to retire and younger employees are insufficiently prepared to fill those vacancies.

Stanton Chase, in a 2008 report entitled Business Implications of the New Reality 2008, makes it very clear that the war for talent isn't just a catch phrase; it's real.

Of 37,000 surveyed executives and managers, 94 percent said they believe there is a talent shortage today or that there will be one soon, and 79 percent perceive a moderate or significant gap between retiring boomers and younger generations when it comes to qualified leadership talent.

Yet only 18 percent of respondents indicated their companies had a plan in place for talent acquisition, and 67 percent felt their organizations needed to do a better job identifying and developing potential leaders.

Overall, 71 percent cited employee retention as a major challenge.

"Those companies that begin to fill their pipeline with talent now -- to replace the talent that's going away -- are the companies that are going to succeed and have real advantages," says Bare.
The best way to weather the storm? Put a new, more urgent priority on talent management and promote HR from a back-office to front-line strategy.

To successfully fill the talent pipeline, experts and HR leaders say, companies need to proactively address three key points: Retain the best people currently in the company; develop and train those people now so they're prepared to step into executive positions when the need arises; and, where a gap remains, create an organized plan to recruit the best people from outside.

"Talent management has to be an integral part of a company's strategic plan. It's a 'must have,' not a 'nice to have,'" says Ed Wolff, chief administrative officer of Seattle-based Pinnacle Realty and past president of the Atlanta Chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management.

Wolff has watched the executive talent crunch unfold both while serving on SHRM Atlanta's board from 2000 to 2002 and while working in senior HR positions for several large companies.

He insists that it's real, that it is, in his estimation, an issue that will trouble businesses for the next 20 years, and that it's no longer good enough to be passive and allow talent to come to you. Companies that thrive during the shortage will be those that move recruiting, retention, succession planning and employee development to the top of their priority list.

Wolff notes it's not enough to plan for today. It's more important than ever to predict the organization's needs and potential shortcomings in advance, before they become evident.

HR leaders need to work closely with the executive team to identify where those shortfalls will occur and then forecast the timing, Wolff says. One way to fill talent gaps, he adds, is to form "operating committees" -- groups of hand-picked rising stars who are ambitious, capable and willing to embark on an educational fast-track.

"Each department head identifies high potentials and determines whether they are clearly promotable now or promotable within 12 to 18 months," he says. "Then, the company works with and educates those people, with the required training and development, to focus on competencies as defined for leadership in that organization."

By empowering HR to conduct a comprehensive corporate review to forecast future needs -- and by proactively funneling high-potentials into educational programs now -- employers will be in a better position to minimize the harmful effects of an executive-talent shortage.

Aflac's Solution

Columbus, Ga.-based insurer Aflac has been actively combating the executive talent shortage for the past two years using this "develop the best among your current people" model, says Executive Vice President of Corporate Services Audrey Tillman.

The best way to fill executive talent needs in the future, according to Tillman, is to optimize the recruiting of non-executives today, conscientiously develop those people and then move them up the corporate ladder. Recognizing that a shortage was on the horizon, Aflac revamped its talent-acquisition process and assembled a formal, dedicated college-recruiting group whose sole purpose is to cull college graduates for the best new prospects.

Executive talent needs are then filled in large part by grooming the best of these internal people to take on larger roles.

"As important as it is to bring in new talent, it's just as important to keep and develop the people that you do have," says Tillman. "Our executives have 'read the memo.' They've bought in to the fact that retention helps our bottom line, so they are very active in keeping those people we want to keep."

To minimize executive-talent shortages tomorrow, Aflac does its best to retain all levels of employees today.

Much of this retention strategy is focused around such soft ideas as "recognition" and "making current employees feel needed" -- concepts that may sound almost wishy-washy, says Tillman, but which nonetheless make a huge difference.

The company hosts an "employee-appreciation week" each year that's attended by the CEO, who shakes hands, poses for photos and presents recognition awards. For employees with significant tenure, the company dedicates a day to recognizing their time with the company, including tenure lunches recognizing their 5, 10, 15 or up to 30 years with Aflac.

Thanks to these efforts and others, turnover at Aflac has remained under 10 percent -- leaving a larger pool of internal talent to mold into future Aflac executives.

Of course, having good people to develop is only part of the solution. The remainder is an acute awareness of current and future talent needs. A company needs to know what executive talent it will need, when it will need it and what skills those executives will need to have.

"We hold an annual meeting with the division heads [during which they] look at workforce demographics and identify employees as 'high potential' or 'risk of flight,'" says Tillman. "If there's an area with some vulnerability, with someone we think may retire or may leave the company, we'll put a plan in place to develop a successor. If anything were to happen, we would at least have eliminated the surprise."

Tillman says Aflac has an expectation that, if things go as planned, "anyone we recruit here will retire here. ... That's our desire."

Of course, not all recruits leave Aflac at age 65 with a gold watch. With the average marketplace tenure of C-level executives hovering at around five years, Aflac reports that its own vice-president level and above executives stay 14 years on average.

Tillman points to education and employee development as two keys to keeping people on board. Two years ago, the company created a new Talent Manager division at Aflac, comprised of a team that works with business units specifically on these issues and reports to Tillman.

During the past two years, Aflac has also formalized its leadership development program for officer-level employees. The company defines the core competencies for leaders at each level of the organization and puts high-potential execs on track to meet those competencies. For senior officers, these might include skills such as "strategic agility" -- the ability to predict what positions and leadership will be needed during the next three to five years in one's business unit and plan accordingly -- and "financial acumen."

Aflac takes executives off-site several times each year to train and develop these skills -- both those required for an executive's current level and, if desired, for the next level up.

Stanton Chase's Bare says that this kind of before-it-happens thinking is the key to thriving in the midst of an executive-talent shortage.

"The best-practice companies are using third-party assessments to identify what they have against what they need, and then they're using training, executive coaching and team building as excellent strategies for bridging that gap," he says.

Family Culture

Shared Technologies, a telecommunications company headquartered in Coppell, Texas, uses its own "familial" corporate atmosphere to attract and retain executives, says Vice President of HR Eileen Quilici.

"We're very close as an executive team," she says. "It's not unusual, when we get together as a group, to greet each other with hugs as opposed to handshakes. It's a very 'family' type of situation." It may sound like warm fuzzies and nothing else, but Quilici insists the friendly culture pays off when it becomes something that people want to be part of -- simultaneously aiding retention and enhancing the ability to recruit.

"This culture is so unique that people want to be a part of it," she says. And it may be true. Despite widespread consensus that executive talent is in short supply, Quilici says that Shared Technologies hasn't felt it. Speaking anecdotally, she reports very few executive departures and no problem finding good people to fill any occasional vacancies.

While Quilici admits that the company still has work to do in terms of developing a formal succession plan, she credits CEO Tony Parella's "single-minded" focus on building a strong executive team for helping the company successfully weather the talent shortage thus far.

As the executive-talent shortage intensifies, Quilici says, her company's strategy for retaining its best executives and attracting new ones remains largely the same: Build a culture that people want to be a part of.

Interestingly, Quilici makes a point quite common among companies that are retaining and developing executive talent unimpeded in the midst of a talent shortage: You don't necessarily need to pay higher salaries to get the best execs.

Rather, you get them by offering intangibles, such as culture and appreciation. "You can have all the benefits in the world, but if people don't feel included and that their job is important, you're going to be paying a lot of money for nothing," she says.

Quilici notes that Parella regularly engages his executive team in the decision-making process and solicits their advice, "He [asks his subordinates' opinions when meeting groups] and says, 'Tell me what works for you. Tell me what you do on a day-to-day basis that isn't working or could be done better,'" she says. "We're all very open to listening to the suggestions of our employees, and have, on many occasions, brought those suggestions into play and changed processes or added benefits where they were needed."

Parella hosts monthly conference calls that are mandatory for all executives (fittingly called "all hands" calls) to discuss the company's status, what was done well and what needs to be done better. The company's intranet contains a link called "talk to Tony," where any employee is encouraged to contact the CEO directly via e-mail with questions or ideas. A similar "talk to Ms. E" link exists to contact Quilici.

But Parella doesn't just depend on remote or electronic means of communication. In 2007, he visited all of the company's 41 locations to talk to branch leaders and local workers -- and plans to do so again in 2008.

Without paying huge bonuses -- and instead with a dedicated focus on communication and concept of "team" -- Shared Technologies is having no problem retaining and attracting executives and employees. The company ranked No. 25 on Fortune's "100 Best Companies to Work For" list and has a turnover rate of less than 9 percent.

"This isn't magic," notes Aflac's Tillman. "It takes planning. Developing people takes hard work, and there are a lot of bright, developing people who come into companies, and they're not born leaders. It takes an investment of time and attention, and that investment has to come from the top."

Before rolling out Aflac's talent-management programs, Tillman says that she had to get the CEO, CFO and others on board. Luckily, she adds, all of Aflac's C-level managers "get it."

"Getting it" means understanding that there is a real war for executive talent and that consistent, proactive action is needed to deal with it. Unfortunately, according to the Stanton Chase survey, many respondents felt that their employers do not "get it."

Thirty-one percent believed that company leadership did not understand or only somewhat understood what needs to be done to attract, assess and retain the employees who will fill the boomers' shoes. Only 28 percent felt that leadership understood completely or to a significant degree.

The task of HR, says Tillman, is to convince company leaders that a strategic focus on talent management is not only beneficial, but flat-out necessary as more boomers retire and the talent gap widens.

"It's an investment of time and money, but it's an investment that is going to pay off big time in years to come," she says. "Otherwise, what's the cost of not planning?"

Reference:
Grae Yohe
[About the Author: Grae is skilled in the development of websites and is a knowledgeable resource in many areas of technology. He is also a prolific magazine writer whose experience in the field of human resources allows him to write informed copy for Hoek Associates, Inc.]

Hone your Corporate Skills.

Hone your corporate skills.

Trainer, HR professional, career practitioner, counsellor and coach -- a corporate trainer performs all these roles.

Most professions today need certain specific skill sets that have to be learned in the classroom or through experience. While formal education provides a basic framework to all of us, we still need to invest time and effort in acquiring knowledge and functional skills specific to an industry. That's where professional trainers come into the picture.
If you thought that anyone armed with above average public speaking skills and adequate knowledge of the relevant field could become a corporate trainer, there is more to it then what meets the eye. Here is what you need to know about a career in corporate training:

The First Step

There is no one method to become a trainer. There is hardly any young professional articulating his ambition to become a trainer at the start of his career. Corporate training is typically a job people come to after they've worked for a while and gained considerable experience.

"Most of our trainers started at the company in a technical position and became interested in training. They became experts in their domains after a period of time and also demonstrated an inherent ability to work with people, so we promoted them as in-house trainers," says Ravi Kant Verma, a training manager with a Delhi-based IT company.

A good first step for professionals is to develop a technical or functional skill that they can build on and use as a way to transition over to a training job. Expertise in a field will also improve the credibility of a professional which is critical for the success of a corporate trainer

Job Profile

Progressive organisations have realised that training their employees on a continuous basis is the only real way to stay ahead of the competition. Corporate trainers typically find themselves teaching topics that people don't learn in their formal education, such as communication skills, business writing etiquette, public speaking, presentation skills and other job specific functional and technical skills. There is a great need on behalf of corporations to improve the way their employees present themselves to the outside world and training them is the straight forward answer. Trainers have the option of working as in-house trainers with organisations, join a specialist training firm or even work as independent/freelance trainers

Teaching vs Training

There is a difference between conventional teaching and training. The former is simply conveying information, which can be accomplished with a PowerPoint presentation or a classroom lecture. Professional training, however, provides people with the tools and skills they need either to change their behaviour or develop new skill sets they never had before. In order to teach other people new behaviours, a trainer should develop these abilities beforehand. Also, most importantly, corporate trainers have to deal with mature adult audiences who have their own experiences and perceptions.

Teachers have a certain position of authority because of which students have a natural tendency to follow their instructions, trainers enjoy no such luxury and have to build strong relationships with their learners to get the message across.

Skills Required

Trainers need to possess a natural ease in dealing with people, an ability to present themselves with confidence, speak before a large audience with conviction, a mature thought process to create training material relevant to their audience, spontaneity to respond to difficult situations with ease, a good sense of humour, loads of enthusiasm and most importantly a passion for the subject matter that is being presented. Most good trainers also have that indefinable 'Charm factor' that makes them create magic in a training forum and leave a lasting impact.

Train to be a Trainer?

There are several 'Train the Trainer' programmes available for aspiring trainers. Most certification programmes last anywhere between 3 -5 days. Academic bodies like ISTD (Indian Society of Training & Development) & XLRI ( Jamshedpur) offer such certifications. These certifications are also offered by several training and consulting firms. Getting a certification is a good start for new trainers and usually helps them understand 'training' as a function and also helps them acquire trainer like qualities. Training certifications typically verify that their holder has an adequate grasp of essential fundamentals, at a certain acceptable level. A certification programme will equip you with basic knowledge of how to present effectively, design training courses, how to conduct a training needs analysis, how to set objectives for a training programme, how to deliver training effectively and evaluate the effectiveness of training

Professionals must note that certification says nothing about quality or richness of experience and does not measure or reflect the hard-to-quantify characteristics that distinguish a 'seasoned trainer' from a novice. It's however a great 'starting point' for those relatively new to the field.

In the words of Mark Twain: "There is nothing training cannot do. Nothing is above its reach. It can turn bad morals to good; it can destroy bad principles and recreate good ones; it can lift men to angelship." Corporate training is an elusive art. There is no checklist to follow in order to excel in this profession. You not only need tremendous confidence in your level of expertise, but also in your ability to entertain and educate an audience.

Reference:
Sunder Ramachandran

Trust Is a Competency.

Trust Is a Competency

"The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."
- Marcel Proust, French novelist

One of the most significant things today's leaders and organizations can do to achieve and sustain superior performance is to look at "trust" through new eyes.

Typically, trust is assumed, taken for granted, misunderstood and severely underestimated. As the French proverb says, "Fish discover water last." In other words, fish are so immersed in the presence of water that they are unaware of its existence - until the water gets too low or becomes polluted. In the same way, people discover trust last. We become so immersed in the presence of trust that we take its existence for granted - until the trust gets dangerously low or polluted. Then we become painfully aware of the effects of its poor quality or absence.

Increasingly, more leaders are rediscovering trust as they begin to see it with new eyes. Looking beyond the common view of trust as some soft, intangible and illusive social virtue, they're learning to see it as a critical, highly relevant and tangible asset. They're discovering that trust affects everything within an organization, every dimension, activity, decision and relationship. They're also beginning to recognize that trust is quite possibly the single most powerful and influential lever for leaders and organizations today.

In this light, it is important to look at trust through "new eyes" and see it differently in at least three ways:

1. As an economic driver.
2. As the currency of the new economy.
3. As a competency.

First, let's examine trust as an economic driver. While few would argue with the notion that trust is desirable, many leaders don't believe that internal organizational trust is directly connected to their companies' bottom line. They see trust as merely a nice-to-have social virtue.

But the reality is that trust is a hard-edged economic driver. Why? Because trust always affects two measurable outcomes: speed and cost. The economics of trust are simple: When trust goes down, speed goes down and cost goes up. This creates a trust tax. When trust goes up, speed goes up and cost goes down. This creates a trust dividend. It's that simple, that predictable.

Once we understand the hard, measurable economics of trust, we can see quantifiable impact everywhere. If we have a low-trust organization, we can rest assured we're paying a tax. While these taxes may not show up on the income statement as "trust taxes," they're still there, disguised as other problems such as redundancy, bureaucracy, politics, disengagement, turnover, churn and fraud. And the economic impact of a low-trust tax on the organization can range from minimal to crippling to fatal.

In 2004, one estimate put the cost of complying with federal rules and regulations alone in the United States - put in place essentially due to lack of trust - at $1.1 trillion, which is more than 10 percent of the gross domestic product. A 2004 study conducted by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners estimated that the average American company lost 6 percent of its annual revenue to some sort of fraudulent activity. In Enron's case, of course, the fraud tax was ultimately 100 percent, which sank the company. Research shows similar effects for the other disguised low-trust taxes as well.

But research also shows the impact of the dividends of high trust. A 2002 Watson Wyatt study showed that high-trust organizations outperformed low-trust organizations by 286 percent in total return to shareholders (stock price plus dividends). A 2005 study by Russell Investment Group showed that Fortune magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For" - in which trust comprises 60 percent of the criteria - earned more than four times the returns of the broader market over the prior seven years. A PricewaterhouseCoopers study on corporate innovation among the Financial Times 100 showed that the No. 1 differentiating factor between the top innovators and the bottom innovators was trust.

Now let's look at trust as the currency of the new economy. Take a look at the nature of the new economy - what Thomas Friedman called a "flat world" - where globalization and technology are creating enormous change. The essential nature of this flat world is interdependence. In fact, economists refer to it as the "collaborative economy," and the interdependent dimensions it requires - collaboration, partnering, teaming and relationships - thrive or die based on the presence or absence of trust.

In addition, trust cuts through the excessive noise and clutter of today's world. A trusted source sounds clearly through the plethora of voices that bombard us daily. A trusted brand stands out from the myriad generics that scream for our attention.

The reality is we're operating in an increasingly low-trust world. There's a crisis of trust all around us, with low levels everywhere we turn. Research shows that only 34 percent of Americans believe that people can be trusted. In the United Kingdom, the figure is 29 percent, down from 60 percent only a few decades ago. Trust in most institutions is low as well, and in some cases, it sits at historic lows. In U.S. organizations, less than half of employees trust their senior leaders. In the United Kingdom, it's only 31 percent. Having a good reputation and the ability to create trust in a world of distrust is a huge advantage for any leader or organization today.

Finally, let's look at trust as a competency. Several years ago, I worked with a major investment banking firm in New York City. Some of us had just come out of a very exhausting meeting, during which it had become evident that there were serious internal trust issues. These issues were slowing things down and negatively affecting execution. The senior leader said to me privately, "These meetings are dysfunctional and a waste of time. I just don't trust Mike. I don't trust Ellen. In fact, I find it hard to trust anyone in this group."

I said, "Well, why don't you work on increasing trust?"

He turned to me and replied seriously, "Look Stephen, you need to understand something. Either you have trust or you don't. We don't have it, and there's nothing we can do about it."

Unfortunately, that sentiment is not uncommon among managers. But I completely disagree with it. I believe we can do something about trust. In fact, my work as a business practitioner has convinced me that there is a lot we can do about it. We can increase trust, and much faster than we might think. And doing so will have a huge impact, both in the quality of our organizations and in the results we're able to achieve.

A distinction here may be useful. "Trust" is both a noun and a verb. The noun refers to an outcome, a value, a state of being. But the noun is a direct result of the verb - of the actions we take that create and inspire that state of being. In other words, trust (the verb) is a competency, and it can be developed.

In organizations, trust has almost always been seen as a noun, a value. Just take a look at the mission and values statements of many companies, from the Fortune 500 to the 100 Best Companies to Work for. Many organizations such as IBM and Genentech specifically name trust or some derivative of trust as one of their values.

However, we're now beginning to see some companies include trust (e.g., the ability to engender trust) in their competency models or equivalents. They're starting to recognize that trust is something they can consciously work to improve. And it's showing up increasingly in generic competency models, as well, whether the competency is called "creates trust" (NAPA) or "inspires trust" (PDI) or "trusts people" (David Hatch, Fidello). As Starbucks founder and CEO Howard Schultz said to all Starbucks' partners, "Trust the coffee and trust one another."

Seeing trust as a competency is a highly valuable organizational perspective because competencies and competency models always have been critical to driving organizational development and improvement. In fact, the CLO Business Intelligence Board ranked competencies as the top activity that will have a significant impact in 2008.

In that context, let me go even further to say that the ability to establish, grow, extend and restore trust with all stakeholders - customers, business partners, investors and co-workers - is the key leadership competency of the new, global economy. In fact, there is no leadership without trust. There may be management. There may be administration. But as Warren Bennis said, "Leadership without mutual trust is a contradiction in terms." Indeed, the first job of any leader is to inspire trust.

These are bold statements, but this is why I make them: Getting good at trust as a competency greatly accelerates an organization's improvement because high trust makes every other competency better. Companies with high trust experience a "performance multiplier" that positively changes the trajectory of every other competency, skill, strength and asset. This becomes clearly evident in the abundant research that shows specifically how trust increases value, accelerates growth, enhances innovation, improves collaboration, strengthens partnering, speeds up execution and heightens loyalty.

In contrast, research also shows how low trust siphons value from every other competency, skill, strength and asset. As an illustration, only 46 percent of disengaged employees trust their leaders, compared to 96 percent of engaged employees. So which comes first, the distrust or the disengagement? Clearly, getting good at trust helps us get better at everything else.

You can do something about trust. You can turn it into a competency, personally and organizationally. And you can measure it, which is often the first viable action step. You can measure:

1. Trust levels (trust, the noun).
2. Trust components and behaviors (trust, the verb).
3. Trust effects (the impact of trust).

All three measures are important, and you can move the needle in all three dimensions.

For 20 years, I've been responsible for building and running organizations, developing teams, reporting to boards, getting results and having to "hit the numbers." During many of those years, I've also done consulting work with dozens of well-known companies, many of which had good strategies and execution abilities, but fell short of being able to accomplish what they wanted to without being able to explain why. I also had the opportunity to serve in community situations in which I counseled individuals and families dealing with complex trust issues. In addition, I've had the privilege of being a husband, father and member of a large extended family with many multifaceted relationships.

In all of my experience, I have never seen an exception to the basic premise of this big idea: Trust is a competency, and as such, it is something you can do something about, and probably much faster than you think.

So what is the role of learning practitioners with respect to trust? I suggest it's threefold, corresponding to the three ways of seeing trust with new eyes:

1. Always seek to frame trust within the organization in economic - not merely social - terms. By creating a compelling business case for trust, you can engage organizational buy-in and make real improvement sustainable.

2. Define leadership as "getting results in a way that inspires trust." In other words, personally model trust through character, competence and demonstrated trust-building behavior. By doing this, you become the starting place for increasing trust, and your trusted reputation becomes an additional currency that carries significant value in the new economy.

3. Recognize and treat trust as a competency - as something you can do, create and measure - and help managers learn and understand how to behave in ways that establish, grow, extend and restore trust with all stakeholders.

The bottom line: Nothing is as fast as the speed of trust. Nothing is as profitable as the economics of trust. And nothing is as relevant as leaders and organizations that have the competency of trust. Trust truly is the one thing that changes everything.

Reference:
Stephen M. R. Covey
[About the Author: Stephen M. R. Covey is the CEO of CoveyLink Worldwide and the author of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-seller The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything.]