The Strategic Employer

During an economic downturn it seems as if the media can report nothing but bad news. Advertising revenues are low and bad news sells, so it is a simple economic fact that more of it will be reported. Strategic Employers realize that this will impact employees, even in spite of the reality of a positive company situation. No matter how much positive company information you supply, your employees will get a daily dose of gloom and dire straits. Fearful employees don’t perform at peak capacity and they start looking for a plan B “just in case”. Even the rumor of a company downturn can cause jitters and job searches.

Don’t think your top performers are immune from this effect. They often feel a greater emotional investment in their company. They can be more sensitive to news, both internal and external, about company stability. Top performers also believe they have more to lose if they stay on a sinking ship. This thought impacts their productivity and, as informal company leaders, it impacts overall company morale. You cannot afford to lose your top performers at any point in your business’s life, certainly not in a recession. Strategic Employers know this and they anticipate the effect. They move quickly to put a strategy in place keep their top performers, capitalize on the economic downturn, and emerge more profitable and competitive than ever.

Top-Grade

The first strategy is to top-grade your employees. Top-grading allows you to objectively determine who really is a top performer and who you want to retain at all costs. This is best done by an independent resource so you can maintain objectivity in the process. Often time companies make retention decisions about people without any baseline data.

Effective top-grading is a process that gives you powerful intelligence about your people. It involves benchmarking top performance characteristics, assessing perceived top-performers against those characteristics, and then designating the real top performers. Top-grading will objectively identify your best people and who you want to keep. This is critical to protecting your profits. Your competitive advantage will improve as you retain your best people while they leave your competitor.

Profit Interviews

You’ve probably heard of ‘exit interviews’. It’s an interview with departing employees to get feedback about the company and, more specifically, why they are leaving. The results of exit interviews are marginally helpful. Most employees don’t want to burn any bridges so you miss good information about real issues affecting retention. Profit Interviews take place before employees leave a company. They are called ‘profit interviews’ because the information you learn protects your profits! Strategic employers will have semi-annual profit interviews with all their top performers. They want to know why these people stay and capitalize on those reasons. They also want to learn why these people might leave and do everything possible to eliminate those concerns.

These interviews should be conducted by a third party and under the strictest confidentiality. You want your top-performers to offer complete candor and substance. There is no value in telling the boss what they think the boss wants to hear. Profit interviews also tell your top performers that the company cares about their input and that you value their thoughts. It is a simple, yet highly effective way to improve retention and morale.

Hiring Alignment

A third strategy to adopt is Hiring Alignment. Just as top-grading showed you who you want to keep, it can also show you who you need to let go. Mediocre performers are a drain on your top people. High performers have to compensate for the bottom performers. This reduces their capacity. It is also a tremendously insidious reflection of company leadership. Top people have little patience for mediocre performance and they can’t understand why the company tolerates it.

You achieve hiring alignment when you let the bottom performers go and then align their replacements with your business priorities. If you have already top-graded or at least benchmarked each job, then you only need to prioritize each job with the business strategy. In a recession there are a lot of good people available or persuadable to make a move, often at a bargain salary! You can’t take advantage of this reality unless you know who to keep, who to let go, and who you really need to attract.

Strategic Employers see the recession as an opportunity, not an obstacle. While other businesses are scrambling around, cutting costs, sending mixed messages to their employees, indiscriminately laying off people, Strategic Employers are capitalizing. They understand that their top-performers are the key to profitability and competitive edge. They know that keeping them is the most effective strategy during an economic downturn. Top-grading, Profit Interviewing, and Hiring Alignment are how Strategy Employers gain more profits and sharpen their competitive edge.

Richard Yadon, CPC, CERS, is the President and CEO of Health Career Professionals, LLC, a health care executive search, selection, and retention firm. To implement any of these strategies, please contact Richard at 866.371.0687 x.110.