The Strategic Employer

By Roger E. Herman, CSP, CMC

Every time you lose a valued employee, you’re losing money right off your bottom line. It makes sense to stabilize your workforce as much as you can, so you can generate a stronger profit.

Human resources? Bottom line? Yes, they are connected. When you have to replace an employee, it can be costly. First of all, you may have to pay overtime or hire temporary workers to fill the void. Production becomes more expensive, if you can even keep up with what has to be done. Falling behind costs money . . . and may cost you a customer.

Recruiting, selecting, and hiring a new employee takes time and money . . . neither of which you have a lot of. Then, when you do find somebody that you hope will work out, you have to invest in training time and some team building to move that new employee into a position of productivity. Meanwhile, the business keeps moving. There’s no way to push a “pause” button while you adjust.

Benefits of Stability

Most of the benefits of workforce stability are obvious. Let’s explore a few others.

When you have a stable workforce–few, if any, people leaving unexpectedly–you also enjoy a good morale. People know each other, they’re comfortable with each other, they work well together. This kind of relationship can be powerful when there’s a rush order to get out or when there’s a problem somewhere in the manufacturing process. People are more likely to pitch in and help each other when they know each other and believe in mutual support.

Continuity is priceless. When people have been around for a while, there’s a sort of flow that keeps everything moving. People know where things are, how things are done, how to fix the little problems that pop up every once in a while. There’s a sort of corporate “memory” about these things that makes operations a lot more efficient. Confidence is higher, and therefore productivity is also strong.

You and your managers and supervisors don’t have to worry about hiring and training new staff all the time. You can invest your time in generating orders, communicating positively with your customers, and working more closely with your people. Training dollars can go toward improving skills of people who know the business and want to strengthen their ability to make a contribution . . . and to earn higher rewards.

Hire Right to Begin With

Silly as it sounds, the best way to keep good people is to hire good people. You would be amazed at the number of companies that just hire warm bodies to fill positions. They don’t care how talented the people are or how interested they are in the company’s work. These employers just look for bodies, expecting people to leave through the ever-spinning revolving door.

It makes no sense to hire someone who’s going to leave in a few hours, a few days, a few weeks, or even a few months. Avoid these applicants. Concentrate on the people who “fit” your company, the people who want to be there. Hire those who are looking for a career, not just a job.

Yes, it may take a little longer to find the right people. It’s worth the time and the trouble to screen properly to get the people who are best suited. We recommend use of screening tools like “Check-Start” to select the right applicants. Don’t invest money in people who are not going to be a loyal, dedicated part of your team. Make it more of a privilege to work for your company. It works for the US Marines: they’re the only military service today that meets its recruiting quota–”looking for a few good men.” The best ones want to join the Marines because of the organization’s reputation. You can create the same reputation in your field, in your community.

Care About Your People

When someone works for you, it’s like being part of a family. Show that you care about them. Recognize their needs, as well as your own. Find a balance between what people want in their lives and what you need to run the company. Let’s look at a few ideas:

Many companies benchmark their top performers to determine how to hire more people like them. That’s a good idea, but here’s a better one.

Instead of benchmarking your people, benchmark your jobs. When you benchmark people there are variables that may skew the results and not give you an accurate picture of the ideal person for the position. When people assess other people, their personal biases enter in, in addition to the fact that people are complex and bring unknown variables that may or may not have anything to do with success in the job.

If you “let the job talk,” so to speak, you’ll get an accurate and reliable picture of how the job should be done – the behaviors, motivations, and personal skills needed for the ideal job fit.

Here are the steps to follow in benchmarking a position.

First, get three to seven people in the company who know the job well (your subject matter experts) to sit down with an unbiased facilitator and begin listing everything the person in the position must do for the job to exist. Then categorize the list; categories might include Professionalism, Communication, Customer Service, etc.

From those categories the group defines the Key Accountabilities for the person in the job. A Key Accountability is a concise statement that describes the performance objectives for a particular position. Most jobs will have from three to five Key Accountabilities.

An example of a Key Accountability for the job of receptionist might be to “Provide excellent service in a pleasant and professional manner to customers and team members at all times.” Key Accountabilities are not lists of tasks, although the person’s job duties can fall under the heading of each Key Accountability.

The job experts then prioritize each Key Accountability and rank them as to order of importance. Everyone should take notes and keep the Key Accountabilities in front of them for the next step.

When everyone is satisfied the Key Accountabilities are complete, they’re ready to do two job benchmarking assessments. The first looks at the behaviors needed for the job; the second looks at job motivators, what values people ideally should have to be passionate about the job. Referring to their Key Accountabilities throughout, participants must reach a consensus on how to rank the statements of behaviors and motivators in the job benchmarking questionnaires.

Then the company assesses its employees and compares the job benchmarking assessments with their scores. Those who best match both job assessments will be your top performers and people with those behavioral styles and values are the ones you want to hire in the future.

Companies that do job benchmarking have achieved some amazing results in reducing turnover and increasing job satisfaction.

* A mortgage company was experiencing over 300% turnover annually among their sales department. The position was benchmarked and the top 5 sales people were compared to the benchmark. Turnover was reduced 250% in just 6 months after job benchmarking.

*Another company was losing 50% of its new hires during the training program. Benchmarking the job and bringing in the right people increased retention to 80%.

*Another organization had a 74% turnover in its sales force. After the benchmarking and debriefing, they reduced that number to zero during the last 18 months.
(Source: Target Training, International)

High turnover has a high price, not only in money, but also in stress and low morale to HR departments, recruiters, supervisors, and support teams. The costs of job benchmarking and employee assessments are extremely low by comparison.

A 2006 study of 422 HR professionals showed that 49% of them said attracting and retaining new talent is their top challenge. At corporations with revenues over $1 billion, 77% of the HR professionals ranked attracting talent as one of their top five priorities. By comparison, 73% chose health-care costs as their number one challenge. (Source: Human Resource Professional Online, March 1, 2007)

Companies that want to attract top talent will increase their odds of doing so with job benchmarking. As Jim Collins says in his book, Good to Great, “People are not your most important asset. The right people are.”

From a post by Online earnings on 2/4/2009

One of the best ways to reduce turnover is to have an effective on-boarding system. It won’t be the same for every company, but here are some guidelines you should use for any on-boarding process.

• Remember that on-boarding is not just a meeting on the first day, it should be implemented through out the first year of employment.
• On-boarding actually starts at the beginning of the recruiting process (think about your “employer brand”)
• Sr. management must buy into the on-boarding strategy and must participate
• To avoid new employee information overload, stage several orientation sessions over a period of time.
• Plan to reinforce the information again, most of it will be forgotten in the swirl of new job information and activities.
• Reinforce all the good reasons why employees choose opportunities with your company.

Each business has to have its own orientation program, but if you follow these guiding principals you’ll have a more effective program and increased retention.

Richard Yadon, CPC, CERS, is the President and CEO of Health Career Professionals, LLC, a health care executive search, selection, and retention firm.

Are your employees driving change or are you selling it?

This past month we conducted a poll on our website to solicit the perceptions of both employees and employers asking, “What is the best way to maintain morale and productivity?” Indeed this has to be a central question for any organization given the economic uncertainty of today.  Health care employers have not been immune to the effects of the recession and general anxiety of our country’s economic crisis.  Strategic Employers must do all that is possible to keep their best people productive and engaged.

Of the four possible answers to our poll, over 67% stated that the best way to maintain morale and productivity was to “Involve Employees”.  While this might seem to be an intuitively simple outcome of our poll, it is surprising how many employers don’t actually involve their employees.  Strategic Employers, those that are forward-thinking and understand the competitive and profitability impact of “human resources”, realize they must involve employees at all levels of the organization, not just management.  There was a big trend a few years ago to get “buy-in” from employees about decisions that senior leadership had already made.  This was sold to management as a way to involve employees and, therefore, keep them from complaining about changes that were going to take place with or without their buy-in.  In actuality this was an attempt to ease senior management’s anxiety, mitigating the inconvenience of employees complaining about change.

Real involvement is much deeper.  Strategic Employers value the intellectual capital of their employees as an asset of the organization.  When employees have an opportunity to share their knowledge and contribute to the success and growth of a company, their meaningful factor increases exponentially.  When employees have meaningful work they are likely to stay longer.  The corporate benefits from truly involved employees are magnified when that involvement then becomes collaboration.

There are several ways to increase involvement and collaboration.  Open Book Management, problem solving committees, performance improvement teams, even self-developed training programs are some of the ways companies can increase employee involvement.    To truly capitalize on your employee’s involvement, however, keep these key concepts in mind:

• Strategic Employers involve employees in all aspects of their company
• Essential financial information is available
• Employee development and training are priorities
• Employee intellectual capital is continually utilized
• Trust between employees and senior leadership is high

Strategic Employers know that involving all employees, at all levels, has tremendous payoffs in terms of retention, competitiveness, and profitability.  If employers are not consciously pursuing a policy of employee involvement the organization will never achieve its full potential.

Richard Yadon, CPC, CERS, is the President and CEO of Health Career Professionals, LLC, a health care executive search, selection, and retention firm.