The Strategic Employer

Everyone wants to know how they are doing at work. We have performance appraisals, goals, incentives, etc… all to help us keep score.  But often these measures don’t tell us the real story.  As a corporate leader you might excel in your business goals, but have a failing grade in your long-term strategy.  This could be especially true if your long-term strategy does not include upgrading and topgrading your team.  Here is a quick “360” checklist to assess how you‘re doing:

1. Have you profiled the key jobs in your company or department?
2. Do you truly understand the success metrics of each job?
3. Have you benchmarked your key jobs against your best performers?
4. Have you stopped asking interviewing questions based on a person’s resume?
5. Have you implemented independent, third-party assessment tools?
6. Would you classify all the potential candidates you’ve interviewed as ‘top talent’?
7. Have you identified and started to develop your replacement?
8. Are you spending time each week on a retention strategy?
9. Does your on-boarding for new hires last throughout their entire first year?
10. Have you integrated your Millennial generation hires into cross-generational teams?

If you answered ‘No’ to any of these questions then you have some work to do.  Traditional management and hiring is gone, stop using those techniques today.  Nothing has more impact on your current and future profitability and competitive edge than your people.  Pick one ‘No’ question and spend the next six weeks getting it to a ‘Yes’.  It is that important.

“That which cost little is less valued.” Cervantes

Although the expanse of health care reform may have been trimmed back, Medicaid expansion is still a centerpiece and likely to be included in any final legislation.  Medicaid Managed Care organization’s will have a tremendous financial, logistic, and staffing issues to resolve when the wave of Medicaid enrollments start.  With government, market, and public relations pressuring MCO margins, companies need to start today preparing their most valuable resource – their professional talent.

Here are specific steps Medicaid MCOs need to do now:

1. Listen to our recent webinar about this topic at your next management meeting.  You can access a recording on our website by clicking here.
2. Identify the key positions in your care management department that will shelter you from this storm.
3. Assess your Talent Equity against benchmarks.
4. Contrast your readiness against company goals and objectives for 2010.
5. Fill or upgrade the positions where you have gaps.

These steps will allow MCOs to place their human capital into the right roles for the right reasons.  Companies will see increased productivity, avoid burn-out, and surge ahead of their competition.

Let us know if we can help facilitate these steps in the process.

Heres a link to the article from Healthcare Finance News

There was a recent discussion on Fox Business about raising the retirement age and the impact it might have on business.  (Here’s the link – http://tinyurl.com/yetvhqr) What wasn’t included in the discussion was the impact on Corporate Knowledge. Corporate knowledge means profitability and beating the competition. But with so many Boomers retiring over the next 10 years,  companies run the risk of a significant drain on this valuable resource.    One solution – CONTRACTING!

When Boomers retire it creates a huge talent vacuum in the workforce.  And although Boomers will retire, they don’t want to stop working entirely.  In actuality, according to many studies, only a small percentage of Boomers (less than 20%) hope to never work again and a certain percentage even envisions the need to work full-time.  So that opens the doors for part-time work and/or cycles of work and leisure.  Companies can still access their corporate knowledge and skills through consulting relationships and contract projects.

This is also attractive to Boomers in that many are limited in their ability to relocate and are pressured to provide for their children or elderly parents.  Some other important factors include the following:

1. Money—The ability to financially supplement a retirement plan or Social Security income is an important factor.  Contractors are paid for every hour they work, and they are often paid at a very acceptable rate because of their experience and knowledge.

2. Flexibility—Flexibility is critical to these Baby Boomers, and contract staffing offers that option.  They can set their own schedules, work as many or as few hours as they like, take the summer off or time at Christmas, arrange for job sharing, etc.  The decision can be made based upon their own unique situations at home.

3. Health Care—Another consideration is health insurance.  Although Boomers are healthier than they used to be, certain chronic conditions become more common and usually grow worse with age.  And we all know that Americans are living longer than they used to.

What do companies say?
Studies show that older employees tend to be more loyal, detail-oriented, and reliable than younger people.  In many cases, Baby Boomers provide a competitive edge because they already have a required skill or knowledge base to handle a specific task or project.  Many companies actually try to recruit Boomers and retirees back into the workforce.  They have the experience and expertise the client needs, plus if he/she is a retiree, they’re familiar with the company’s operation guidelines, internal procedures, etc.

Contract staffing is an excellent alternative for both the Boomers and companies.

The current economy has driven many job seekers to desperation.  They are applying to almost anything and everything.  Employers are inundated with resumes, many from unqualified people.  Wading through all the applicants can be costly and time consuming for any company.  The downside to this activity  is expending precious time and energy on unproductive efforts.  The upside to this, however, is finding a jewel that a company can’t afford to through out!  Since human capital is a company’s most important resource, Strategic Employers are compelled to do everything possible to surface, attract, hire and retain top talent.  So what, and how,  do you look for a needle in a resume haystack?

Here are five strategic tips to guide any team as they consider which resume to keep and which to discard:

1) First benchmark the key positions in the company that  drive profits and give the company a competitive edge.  These are the positions in which you MUST have the top talent.  Then build a unique list of keywords for these positions and search the resume flood for only those that contain these keywords.

2)  Look for a  unique combination of skills/experience (for example, the actuary who has proven business development skills).  Zero in on someone with  a skill/experience background that is not normally found in the “typical” candidate.

3) People who have assumed progressive levels of responsibility at the SAME COMPANY should be moved to the top.

4)  Discard any resumes that only list job tasks and responsibilities.  Focus on the person who bullet-points  tangible, quantifiable results achieved in difficult situations.

5)  Outsource this entire resume sorting process to a firm who knows the top talent in your industry and who can quickly weed out resumes that don’t match.  They can then deliver only the best for a company to work with.

Screening resumes for top talent is not the core skill of many companies or most HR departments.  Every company needs top talent and top talent will be much harder to find in the coming year.  Unemployment isn’t going to turn around overnight.   Strategic Employers are putting plans in place today to be sure they find, attract, hire, and retain only the best in their industry.  Use these five tips to start moving the best to the top of the list.