November 16, 2011
What if I told you that your company could double its profit margin through employee engagement? Would that make employee engagement a priority? What if your profit margin only improved by 20%? Still a priority? If employee engagement is not a priority today, then it should be. Your corporate talent has more to do with driving profitability and competitive edge than anything else in your company. Engaged employees are more productive, more enthusiastic, and more effective than just competent employees.
Employee engagement is not the same as employee motivation. If you have a workforce of engaged employees then employee motivation takes care of itself. You don’t need expensive rewards and programs to foster engaged employees. For little or no expense you can create an employee engagement culture that will improve employee morale and employee relations. What it will take is some planning.
Company leaders can invest 30 days and follow four simple steps to plan for effective employee engagement. There are few principals to keep in mind, however, before you start employee engagement planning. First, don’t confuse employee engagement with employee involvement. Only when employee involvement is focused on the company mission and passion will you get engaged employees. Second, employee engagement is not employee relations. Employee relations are a barometer of employee engagement.
To plan for employee engagement on a super tight budget, follow these four steps over the next 30 days.
- Survey Employees – Find out why they come to work. What is it they want to contribute to the customers they serve? Why is this meaningful to them? You have to understand this to know how to help your team become engaged employees.
- Brainstorm – Hold a meeting with company leaders and key contributors. Present the results of your survey. Look at gaps between what employees want and what they are getting. Remember you are looking for gaps in the meaningfulness of the work, not the benefits you provide. Next, have the group brainstorm low/no cost ways to bridge these gaps.
- Prioritize – Review the brainstorm ideas and prioritize the ideas that will have the most impact on employee engagement. Develop metrics to gauge the impact of these ideas.
- Implement and Test – Implement the number one priority over the next 30 days. Measure the impact against the metrics you developed. If you don’t get the results you expected, fine tune and try again. Then move to the next priority.
Of course it would be more effective to get outside help to facilitate this process if your budget permits. By following these four steps, however, you will start to raise the level of employee engagement and your profit margin.
Richard Yadon consults and speaks about employee engagement and other talent management issues.
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employee retention, hiring process | Tagged: employee engagement, employee involvement, employee morale, employee motivation, Employee Relations, engaged employees, Engagement, Human Resources, Talent management | 
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Posted by Richard Yadon
September 17, 2011
When I finished my active duty service with the Navy I took a job as a sales representative. The company sent me to a training session with a world renowned sales trainer. During one session he asked us to list the first word that came to mind when we heard the term “salesperson”. We all listed words like “pushy”, “obnoxious”, and “slick”. He told us that if those are the words 95% of the pubic used to describe salespeople we should become the exact opposite and we’d be successful. For me that strategy worked very well.
Employers can apply this lesson after they read the article linked below. Not only does the article list the most hated jobs, it also provides great insight as to what employees hate most about a job. It’s not what you might think!
Today it is the company with the best talent that beats the competition and increases profits. Employers don’t want their top talent hating their jobs. Read the article then be sure your company is doing the opposite!
10 Most Hated Jobs
Leave a Comment » | employee retention, Top talent | Tagged: competitiion, employee engagement, employee motivation, employee retention, employee turnover, HR, Human Resources, job analysis, profits, reduce turnover, retention | Permalink
Posted by Richard Yadon
September 7, 2011
Give employees a career instead of a job
“That’s just not fair!”
Whether it is true or not, this is not something you want employees to say. Often is beyond a company’s power to control how employees feel. However, company’s can avoid creating situations that might cause an employee to think or say this. Companies DO have a great deal of control in which they hire and promote.
In my executive search business we often hear from executives who feel this way. Either they have been passed over for a promotion or they have seen others passed over multiple times. Sometimes their company never considered an insider for an open position. Whatever the reason, these people feel like a commodity instead of a valued contributor. If this kind of perception starts to permeate the workforce the company is doomed – especially now that top talent is harder to find.
There are many reasons why a company would go outside to hire top talent; they don’t have a qualified person internally, they want fresh perspectives, they want competitor intelligence, etc… Hiring outside is expensive, time intensive, and dangerous (see steps 1 & 2)! Often it can be avoided if companies have a career development culture instead of an open seat culture.
Hiring from your current employees only works if you diligently practice Step 3. It also means a huge ROI on your labor expense. When employees believe they have the opportunity to grow and advance they don’t spend time looking elsewhere. When they enjoy a company development program they have greater confidence to take on more responsibility. Employees will take their performance more seriously and pursue self-development agendas. Giving an employee a career is a long-term investment strategy, one that every company must follow.
This is the final installment of the four steps to building a high performance team. Putting these steps into practice will have tremendous impact on company profitability and competitive edge. Don’t wait until your competition has all the top talent, beat them to the best people now!
Leave a Comment » | employee retention, Top talent | Tagged: competitiion, employee engagement, employee motivation, employee retention, employee turnover, Employment, health career professionals, hiring best practices, HR, Human Resources, job benchmarking, Job description, keeping good people, Recruitment, reduce turnover, retention, selection, Small business, turnover | Permalink
Posted by Richard Yadon
August 31, 2011
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Align training with business priorities and coming trends.
Why do high performance sports teams film their games and practices? Why do they scout their opponents at other games? Why do they watch film of their opponents? It’s because they want to be prepared for the future. They want to know what to expect in an upcoming game. Team practice is not about coaching the fundamentals; it is about adjusting their game plan. Teams use the visual feedback from film to spot weaknesses of their opponents to exploit. All of the practice and film work is so they can do the right things, make adjustments, and win the game.
Employee training should serve the same purpose. Building a high performance corporate team requires ongoing improvement because business is a world of ongoing change. Companies must articulate and value a culture of continuous employee development. Employees should be encouraged through programs like tuition assistance and in-house training to take charge of their own professional development.
Training, however, just for the sake of training, is wrong! Employee training must support the core business mission and strategy. The training companies develop, offer, and support must also prepare employees for the future. Few corporate leaders believe that today’s talent needs will be the same in the future. Therefore companies must create a culture and partnership with employees to prepare for what it ahead. Just as high performance sports team practice and develop to win the next game, corporate teams train and develop to accomplish their mission and beat tomorrow’s competition.
Leave a Comment » | Top talent | Tagged: competitiion, Education and Training, employee engagement, employee motivation, Human Resources, keeping good people, performance base hiring, retention, strategic employer | Permalink
Posted by Richard Yadon
August 9, 2011
Now that football season is underway we will be hearing a lot about high performance teams. The time, resources, expense, stress, planning, and practice that NFL teams use to build a winning season is frankly amazing. Millions of dollars are on the line. Jobs are on the line. The health of some of the most physically fit athletes in the world is on the line. Teams go to great effort to build a high performance unit to take them to the “big show”.
Businesses have no less at risk than NFL franchises. They might not have the same players or the same resources, but they have to build high performance teams. Fortunately you don’t need the resources of an NFL organization! Here are four easy steps any company can take to get huge pay-offs from their corporate team.
1) Make recruiting a process that is structure and tracked.
2) Be extremely selective with who you hire.
3) Align training with business priorities and coming trends.
4) Give employees a career instead of a job.
Over the next several weeks I’ll expand on each of these steps. In the meantime, start examining the way you attract employees and how you can improve that process. That alone might get you to the playoffs!
Leave a Comment » | hiring process, Top talent | Tagged: employee engagement, employee motivation, employee retention, employee turnover, hiring best practices, HR, keeping good people, performance base hiring, selection | Permalink
Posted by Richard Yadon
February 14, 2011
In the link below the Mississippi Hospital Association offers great insight about the impact Boomers will have on hospitals.
In addition to how hospitals provide care to the Boomers, there is also an employment implication that hospitals must recognize. Just because Boomers retire it doesn’t mean they want to quick working. They will rapidly become an important part of hospital staffing as temporary and contract employees. Over the next ten years more than a half million nurses and almost 160,000 physicians will retire. The current nurse and physician shortages will only increase over this time. In fact, the BLS forecasts more jobs in health care than willing and able workers. Hospitals will not be able to maintain acceptable staffing levels with full-time employees.
Contract and temporary assignments are highly desired by outgoing Boomers. They have the skill, knowledge and expertise that hospitals need. By incorporating this talent pool into their overall strategy, hospitals will enjoy advantages such as:
- Reduced overhead
- Higher levels of job satisfaction
- Less start-up training
- Increased quality of care and patient satisfaction
For this to be successful organizations need to throw out their traditional view of temporary staffing. This is no longer a situation of just “filling in” until a full-time person is hired. Contract Boomers should be a permanent part of hospitals long-term strategy.
http://mhanewsnow.typepad.com/executive/2011/02/six-thoughts-on-the-impact-of-the-baby-boomer-generation-on-hospitals.html
Leave a Comment » | hiring process, Top talent | Tagged: boomers, employee motivation, employee turnover, Employment, hiring best practices, strategic employer | Permalink
Posted by Richard Yadon
December 1, 2010
Today I’m contining the second and final post in my series about Company Culture. In an AMA study it was revealed that 70% of change initiatives fail because your culture rejects them! That one statistic is enough for anyone to realize the importance of this topic.
If you want to gauge the culture of your organization and your effectiveness as a leader, you should read Break all the Rules by Marcus Buckingham and survey your employees with these questions:
- Do I know what is expected of me at work?
- Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
- At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best everyday?
- In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?
- Does my supervisor or someone at work seem to care about me as a person?
- Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
- At work, do my opinions seem to count?
- Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel my job is important?
- Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?
- Do I have a best friend at work?
- In the last six months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?
- This last year, have I had the opportunity at work to learn and grow?
Follow the three C’s of hiring…Character – Compatibility – Competence. You need to hire individuals who will align with your culture and core values as a company. When you build a dynamic team, top talent is drawn in by your team members, referrals dramatically increase and you become a preferred employer. Positive word of mouth advertising in the job market is priceless.
Imagine what you could do with the survey results to improve employee morale and retention? Most employees complain that are not in the loop. In fact, most of them don’t even know how to find the loop! Right now when things are turbulent, your employees don’t want you fixing the motor, they want you steering the ship and they want to know where the ship is headed, and they want their role defined!
If you want to attract top talent, discard your policies and procedures and replace them with expectations. Let your employees know what they can expect from you and be clear about what you expect from them. Give them the ability to make a difference and feel that they play an important role in your organization.
If you follow some of the suggestions in this program you will retain your superstars, attract top talent to your organization, communicate more effectively and improve company morale and of course improve retention.
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Posted by Richard Yadon
November 30, 2010
Why are some companies known as great places to work and others are known as places to avoid? Some of it has to do with the company’s industry and some of it has to do with senior leadership’s personality extension. The great companies, those that attract the top talent, all have something in common; they have created a corporate culture that draws the best people to them. Companies don’t have to be large multi-national organizations to create a great culture. Following these simple tips will build a culture that attracts high performance employees.
Start by asking these basic questions:
- How would you define your company culture?
- What are your core values?
- What does your company truly represent?
Your Company Culture is your company’s “way of life.” It is your DNA, it’s what makes you unique. A strong, positive company culture can become a magnet for Top Talent. When an employee goes to work for Zappos, an online shoe and clothing store, they are trained on the company culture and core values for five weeks! It’s no surprise they are one of Fortune’s Top 100 companies to work for and have a 99% retention rate! Who does that?
Here are four quick steps to building a dynamic, talent attracting culture:
- Know your culture – senior leadership often has no idea how employees define their company’s culture. Take time to find out or have an outside source interview employees to define it for you.
- Hire tough – Manage easy – the people who make up a company have the most impact on culture. Leadership has to have a system that makes hiring an effective process.
- Communicate – don’t leave employees in the dark. Frequent, but appropriate, communication about company objectives, performance, results, etc… is highly desired by employees.
- Rethink outside the box – don’t let status quo rule your organization.
As you think about the next quarter, choose one of these steps to increase the attractiveness of your company culture. Tomorrow I’ll add part two; questions to ask employees about company culture.
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Posted by Richard Yadon
November 18, 2010
This past weekend my son and I traveled to New Hampshire for a college lacrosse recruiting showcase. High school lacrosse players from around the country gathered to show their stuff to some forty college lacrosse coaches. The stakes don’t get much higher for a high school player. Scholarships and bragging rights are all on the line. This is the big game and they have to “bring it”.
My son played on a team composed of many different high schools. Not only had his team never played together, they had never met each other until twenty minutes before the first game. Yet once the whistle blew you would have thought they had grown up with each other. It was exciting and amazing to watch each player move to their usual position. They instinctively knew what the other players were going to do. Within the first few minutes of the game the ball moved down the field and their first goal was scored. They went on to win.
This happened because they were all ‘A’ players. Although they had never met, never played together, never practiced as a unit, they were successful. ‘A’ players just know what they have to do to achieve their objective. They have a passion for their role on the team and they are perfectly matched for the job they must do. When this combination exists it becomes a winning formula.
Businesses can use this same formula as well. Put an ‘A’ level employee in the role he or she was made to fill and get out of their way. Productivity and bottom line results will soar if this idea becomes a strategic focus. Sadly almost 50% of workers in the US are in the wrong job. Most a ‘C’ players who were placed in ‘A’ player jobs our out of expediency or through ineffective hiring processes.
Employee productivity, effectiveness, and bottom line impact is more important now than ever before. Businesses have to learn to do more with less. Over the next 15 years the labor force will start to contract and the “war for talent” will rage once again. With fewer people to choose from, businesses must be more strategic in how the attract, hire, and retain key contributors. Not doing so means eroded profitability and the dulling of your competitive edge. It is just too expensive to put ‘C’ or ‘B’ level players in key contributor roles.
The first place to start is redefining how a business attracts these ‘A’ level employees. If your recruiting plan is to cut and paste a job description into an online job board then you’ve already lost the game. These people don’t respond to online job ads, especially the dull and uninspiring ads most companies post. You have to learn what makes an ‘A’ player tick, find out where they gather and who they associate with, and communicate your job as being tailor made for them. These employees are looking for new challenges, they want to learn new things, and they want an environment that allows them to grow and excel.
Do you want winning players on your team? Then start by identifying what that player looks like and start attracting them to your organization. If you make this a strategic part of your business plan you’ll start scoring goals a lot earlier in your game.
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Posted by Richard Yadon
October 21, 2010
| Retention of key employees is one of the greatest challenges faced by corporate leaders. This issue has more to do with maintaining and growing profitability than any issue facing businesses today. There are a few simple ways to make your employees feel important. It is also crucial that you attempt to keep them happy! A happy employee is an employee who will remain loyal to you even when another opportunity presents itself. One way to keep a strong solid relationship with your employees is to celebrate anniversaries! The following are companies who have implemented programs to let their employees know that they are valued.
LEO BURNETT COMPANY
At the Leo Burnett Company in Chicago, Illinois, every employee receives a gift on Anniversary Day. Some of the gifts given were jams and jellies, a model train, statues and customized bottles of wine. In addition, they gave one dollar for every year of the agency’s life.
NISSAN
At Nissan in Smyrna, Tennessee, any employee with 12 months of service qualifies to lease a Nissan car for $160 per month. This also includes maintenance, tax, license and insurance.
WESTIN HOTEL
Every Westin Hotel has an Annual Banquet honoring employees with more than five years of service.
MARY KAY COSMETICS
Mary Kay Cosmetics employees receive 20 shares of stock on their 5th Anniversary, on their 10th they receive 80 shares and on their 15th they receive 120 shares.
WALT DISNEY COMPANY
The Walt Disney Company plans service recognition awards, peer recognition programs, attendance awards and milestone banquets for 10, 15 and 20 years of service.
HALLMARK
At Hallmark Cards in Kansas City, Missouri, employees can invite any and all of their friends throughout the company to share their 25th Anniversary Cake. Typically, 200 to 1,000 people show up for each celebration.
PITNEY BOWES
Pitney Bowes, headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, has an Anniversary Vacation Policy that gives an employee with 25 years of service an extra month of vacation. The same benefit is then offered to the employee every 5th year.
JCPENNEY
The JCPenney store in Laurel, Montana, had a 25th Anniversary Sale to honor Pat Mullaney, who had managed the store for 25 years.
RYDER SYSTEM
Ryder System’s 50th Anniversary Celebration was celebrated with a cake that was shaped like a truck and covered with yellow icing.
RAYCHEM CORPORATION
At Raychem Corporation in Menlo Park, California, celebrated their 25th Anniversary, it held a gigantic community party to which it invited all of its employees, their families and special guests. The maker of high-tech industrial products held a daylong celebration at its 140-acre plant site. Everyone was served a steak dinner. There was continuous entertainment for seven hours, featuring headline acts and 15 carnival rides, including a ferris wheel and a merry-go-round.
These examples are of companies who have gone above and beyond to ensure that their employees remain loyal to them. Of course there are other ways to recognize your employees. One idea is to simply have a plaque engraved with your employee’s name on it when they reach 5, 10 or 15 years of employment with your company. Everyone likes to be recognized and appreciated for the work they do. Implement a program that is right for your Company Culture.
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Posted by Richard Yadon
