Moving beyond training- Performance consulting

IF not us, WHO? If not now, WHEN?

When the global economy is slowing crawling back to its original form, this situation offers a tremendous opportunity to those in training & development to rise up to this occasion. Management today seeks out those people who can partner them to install the performance required by organizations to win back the lost ground.

We must evolve from training to performance perspective. Performance consulting is the process by which we can work with the management to identify and achieve performance excellence linked to business goals.

Role of Performance Consultant

Following points can describe the role of a Performance Consultant

1. Focus: Identify and address performance needs of people
2. Output: Provide services to assist in changing or improving performance
3. Accountability: Held accountable for establishing and maintaining partnership with business leaders.
4. Measures: The results of training and non training actions are measured for performance change & cost benefit.
5. Assessment: Assessments are completed to determine performance gaps and reasons for these gaps.
6. Relationship to organizational goals: The function is viewed as producing measurable results like cost savings, increase in productivity etc.

Skills required for being a successful Performane Consultant

Four key areas of skill and knowledge is required by performance consultants to be successful

1. Business Knowledge
2. Knowledge of Human Performance Technology
3. Partnering skills
4. Consulting skills

Performance consultants are business people who specialize in Human performance.

How Performance Consulting moves beyond training

· Identify the primary forces, outside the control of the organization that will challenge the organizations ability to meet its business goals.
· Discuss the strategies and actions being taken by competitors and the implications of those actions for the organization.
· Skillfully use the business language- the language which is spoken throughout the organization.

Performance Consultant is a role and not a job. Its is distinguished from the role of a traiditional trainer by its focus on what people must do rather than on what they must learn

Transitioning from Traditional training to Performance Consulting

“Remember, training is not what is ultimately important …….performance is”

– Marc Rosenberg

One of my friends working as a trainer with an MNC financial services firm gets a call from his operations manager telling her that the training she conducted for his team has done nothing to the falling customer satisfaction scores. The statement clearly said “whatever you did certainly didn’t work”. This leaves my friend very perplexed.

Scenarios like this are a common feature in many organizations. What these scenarios have in common is today training is being looked at as a tool to enhance performance.

Most of the expenditure on training & development is wasted as skills and knowledge gained during training sessions are not appropriately applied by employee on the shop floor. Only about 10% of these expenditures are transferred to the job. This makes it imperative for training to move from traditional approach to the performance approach.

Bob Mager and Peter Pipe have advocated that trainers differentiate between skill and knowledge deficiencies and other work environment factors that affect performance. For over three decades , Tom Gilbert has advocated performance analysis based upon rigorous examination of exemplary performers. He has argued that this is not enough to ask exemplary performers what they do; instead analyst must observe their performance.

There is no doubt that our economy is changing in fundamental and many far reaching ways. The performance demands placed on employees are demanding and their work is changing every day. The competitive advantage and survival of any organization demands that its employees perform at high level.

This brings in a tremendous opportunity for professionals in “training & development” space, as in their quest to achieve high employee performance & productivity, Management and others will seek out these people who can partner them to install the performance required by the organization.

Thus trainers today must be able to do:
1. Develop collaborative working relationships with key managers and other stake holders
2. Clearly understand the Vision and mission of the management
3. Identify the performance levels required by employees to survive
4. Work with people in and outside the management to determine all interventions required to be a “High Performance Organization”

These activities are clearly outside the preview of traditional training processes. Hence trainers today have to transition themselves from being trainers to Performance Consultants who can help employee to identify and achieve performance excellence linked to business goals. The theme that comes out of this discussion is “think performance, not training”

Keep The Faith! - People Management

Key learnings:
Staying committed to corporate talent management in a downturn is the only way to ensure better future
In addition, setting up EAPs can help organisations address fears of lay-offs and job cuts and keep employee morale high

Premise

Hold ground and hang around! This is what Mc Donald’s, Caterpillar and Coca-Coal HR chiefs are telling their people. The three giants are not giving up yet on their talent management initiatives. When other corporate houses are packing up their talent plans, the trio is going all out to give their talent management initiatives a facelift.

According to Cynthia McCague, HR chief at Coca-Cola, there has been no change at all in their hiring intent. The company plans to stay course and do everything it can to hold and attract talent for future business needs. The soft drinks giant employs more than 90,000 employees and has a focused framework for employee development.

Ditto at McDonald’s. The company is going ahead with its million dollars programme for talent management. At Caterpillar too economic downturn has done little to dampen its talent plans The Company plans to spend a whopping USD1.5 billion for its training and talent management initiatives. The figures are staggering because of the changes happening around.

Lessons from corporate Gullivers

The talent management story at the world’s most celebrated corporations is surely worth admiring. However it is also worthwhile to spend time and mind in understanding how and what is it the companies are doing differently that is shielding them from the economic wrath.

An analysis of the talent management practices at the three corporations revealed that the three of them were doing the same. The little differences that figured were mainly because of the differences in their industry practices.

At McDonald’s...

McDonalds’ has had a cushy time despite the downturn, since the footfalls in the restaurants‘ global locations have only increased with recession; considering that restaurants offer affordable fast foods. Thus the rod was spared for restaurateurs. This apart the company stands out because of its relentless efforts to boost its workforce abilities, providing the best possible growth opportunities by aiming for talent management initiatives that strengthen employee engagement and also build commitment and loyalty. Further the company has also started certain talent management programmes at the stores with competent training and development initiatives. The Company has also started commitment surveys at the stores including the franchisee stores. This has helped the company learn about the way employees feel about serving for the fast food giant.

An interesting change witnessed by the McDonalds store managers is that since recession set in, the number of job applications at McDonalds has doubled. People are pouring in with their resumes like never before. “This is a mark of the relationship quality that we share with our employees,“ says Floersch, the HR chief at McDonalds.

At Coca-Cola...

Coca-Cola is shielded from the rough weather like McDonald’s.The company is doing rather well for itself while giving others “simple moments of pleasure”! Apart from the regular talent management initiatives, Coca-Cola has set up employee assistance posts (EAPs) to help employees address their fears and concerns about the future of the company and their growth in it. According to McCague, family and friends of employees talk about their concerns and help address their fears about people lain-off around them. The EAPs aim to ease the fears and concerns of the employees and their families by spending time with them and letting them know with exactness the real picture.

At Caterpillar. ..

No shield, yet there! Manufacturers of earth movers are not shaken by the tremours around it. The giant continues to stand tall and how! The company plans to infuse USD 1.5 billion in its talent management drive. The company is clear about keeping its workforce intact. Caterpillar announced a 35 per cent pay cut for senior executives and 15 percent pay cut for other employees but they discussed with the employees about pay cut before communicating their purpose to them.. According to Sid Banwart, the firm’s chief HR officer taking employees into confidence is the only way to move forward in a crisis.

The company has also rebuffed its internal employee development programme. When asked about poaching competitor talent Sid was blatant in stating the organisation relies heavily on its internal talent pool and therefore does not feel the need to look outside.

Final thoughts

The common denominator underlying the three success stories is their commitment to nurturing talent and believing in spirit that man and not machine is supreme. Leaders of the three corporations have also showed that talent management and employee recognition are not mechanical that can be turned on or off based on the external environment. Following it with great seriousness and sincerity since corporate success is all about winning people and not robots. Thus, organisations irrespective of the external environment should hold stead and stay committed to its people and make the most from the crisis!

Reference: TheManageMentor.

Recruitment & Retention- Mistaken Identity

Poor hiring is not always about what one does, it’s also about what one doesn’t!

Key learnings:

1. A mistake-free hiring process is a rarity
2. This however does not mean organisations do little to prevent typical hiring mistakes
   

It is surprising how many organisations rave and rant about showing the importance of ROI of recruiting while indulging in actions that eat into the returns. But let’s cut them some slack. Most are ignorant of how they damage their recruiting efforts. This week’s mailer reveals a few common damaging activities that ail most recruiting processes. The hope is that once aware, organisations will tread the recruiting path with more caution than before.

What really happens?

In a recent finger-pointing research, analysts confirmed how the high-handedness of hiring managers and supervisors affect most recruiting functions. The objective to improve the recruiting returns is to target the hiring managers and supervisors since final hiring decisions lie in their kitty.

Here are a few mistakes that can easily be avoided with little awareness and effort.

Mistake: Rebuking recruiters about candidate quality only to reject the qualified based on gut feelings or resume information

Complaints on how only a few candidates match are rampant. But what hiring managers and supervisors overlook is the number of qualified candidates they reject citing reasons such as, “I don’t think he’ll like the job”, “I’m sure he’ll get bored with the job profile soon” and “He is overqualified for what we have to offer”. Maybe these reasons are not flippant but how many organisations ask their hiring managers to confirm their reasons for rejecting a candidate. Once this stipulation is in place, hiring managers and supervisors will be wary of rejecting candidates for unjustified reasons.

Mistake: Failing to make it to the interview

There have been instances when critical positions have been vacant for long and when ‘right’ candidates finally show up, hiring managers have done the disappearing act on the day of the interview. Good fits are always a rarity and competition for them is always on. Therefore, not showing up for scheduled interviews is the biggest mistake some hiring managers make. Most candidates are unwilling to reschedule their interviews or make reappearances. While their unwillingness has all to do with their market worth, hiring managers are quick to say, “The fact that he cannot reschedule or come on another day shows his reluctance to work for us”. It may not be true. Start pulling up hiring managers and supervisors for not showing up on scheduled interviews.

Mistake: Turning up ill-prepared for interviews

There have been instances when recruiters have had to resend candidates details while the candidate is seated across the interview table. Recruiters have not only resent resumes but have also attended those urgent; “Hey, quick tell me something about this guy” calls. A hiring manager or supervisor’s lack of interview readiness speaks volumes of how serious he is about hiring the best. Getting hiring managers and supervisors to share their interviewing schedules a week in advance and asking them to clarify their concerns about shortlisted candidates in advance should help hiring managers and supervisors get serious about their roles.

Mistake: Turning up late for interviews

Asking candidates to wait beyond their scheduled time gives them the impression the organisation is unorganised, ill-prepared or could not careless about them. Though most candidates would wait for the interview, only the desperate would wait to accept an offer. Typically, the desperate are not always the best. Hold hiring managers and supervisors accountable for sticking to their interviewing timetable.

Mistake: Getting to the interview only to ask dimwitted questions!

Asking interviewing questions is not akin to being a quizmaster! Questions asked should help hiring managers and supervisors make the right hiring decisions. However, most hiring managers and supervisors ask irrelevant, inappropriate and wrong questions. Interviewing questions have to be to-the-point and information generating. Blaming those in-charges of interviewing is unfair when they have had no formal interviewing skills training. Here is where more organisations falter. All organizations do not make artists out of their interviewers, interviewing skills is a recognized art. Hiring managers and supervisors must be trained with the dos and don’ts of interviewing and exposed to questioning skills.

Mistake: Delaying decision making Delayed decision is refuted decision.

Although not yet recognised as an idiom, it holds true in recruiting circles. Hiring managers and supervisors who delay hiring decisions stating, “We are yet to hear from our team” or “I am waiting for the green from my boss” are doing a disservice to recruiting. Although some have the courtesy to tell candidates about the delay, undue time lags between interviewing and hiring are the banes of recruiting. Most top candidates are lost during this time. Justifying their time lags is a must for hiring managers and supervisors. Also, penalising them for keeping critical positions unfulfilled even after interviewing.

As some experts rightly say, the success of most actions lie in not what is being done but what is not, in hiring too, success lies in avoiding the preceding mistakes. Hoping this week’s mailer will enable organisations to indulge in a mistake-free hiring process - happy hiring.

Ref: TheManageMentor.

Organisational Behaviour - Poach Reproach

The not-so-good side of recruiting off competitors.

Key learnings:

1. Poaching has its advantages
2. But recruiting off competitors is not always a good idea

There are reasons why poaching is a successful way of filling critical vacancies. And there are also reasons, other than legal, why recruiting from one’s competitor is a huge mistake. This is particularly true when salespeople are poached or snared away from one’s archrivals, as this approach to filling vacancies is ridden with land mines. Unless organisations know how to avoid them, the best thing to do would be to avoid such recruiting! This mailer tries to expose a few recruit-from- competitors myths, so that organisations can tread cautiously.

Why snatch or snare?

Good salespeople are as rare as snakes in Ireland! The pressure to cover a large ground and numbers is so immense that organisations would not be bothered about orienting or training those who are new and inexperienced in a particular type of selling. Other than paying lip service to training and encouraging salespeople to refer to bulky and shoddily documented sales guides, there is little that most organisations do to equip their sales force. But this does not mean organisations do not understand how detrimental poor sales teams can be to business.

Therefore, it appears that the quickest and the most ‘logical’ approach to building a good sales team is to recruit someone who is already doing the job well. However, this approach of bringing rivals’ men across will not do much good for organisations because many of their assumptions are only myths.

Myth 1 The more insular and complex the industry, the better it is to recruit insiders.
As one analyst rightly says, “No one came out of the womb mastering your industry.” Recruiters need to understand that such a belief is only shaky. However, there are certain specialised skills and knowledge that salespeople require to serve in a particular industry. Instead of taking newcomers through the entire gamut of training, equipping them with those special skills and knowledge is a better approach than recruiting salespeople ‘with similar experience’, only to realise they are worse mismatches than freshers.

Organisations bent upon recruiting individuals with relevant industry experience should understand the challenge of scalability. Organisations cannot fit in all or could afford all! This inward recruiting trend can keep talent pipelines dry and make referral programmes a waste of time.

Myth 2 They will bring their clientele across.
Given the ‘rolling stones’ trend, no one raises an eyebrow when people jump jobs. In fact, employees with 3–5 years of tenures have become an oddity! Even customers understand that employee loyalty has a changed definition these days. Therefore, assuming they will follow their ‘trusted advisor and friend’ is unrealistic. As marketing observations go, customers once hooked to a brand or product, are likely to remain more loyal to it than a salesperson to his organisation! Moreover, someone who could bring in his clientele could also take them away when he leaves the organisation.

Myth 3 Recruiting someone who works for the big guys is a good thing for small enterprises.
This only works when both enterprises are identical in their operations. And even if they do, a fact worth considering is that no two organisations have analogous sales cultures. Therefore, the assumption that someone who has done a similar job well in a bigger organisation will also be successful in a smaller set up is incorrect. An expert says, “A synergistic match between your company and the candidate is needed to put together a long-lasting sales marriage.”

Another incorrect assumption is that salespeople will carry forward their passion into the new job. While passionate salespeople are a driving force, those who jump jobs frequently do not remember what to be passionate about! “Salespeople who bounce from company to company in the industry become ‘vanilla’,” says an observer.

Even when full-fledged training isn’t a possibility, infusing newcomers with passion should be a primary objective of on-boarding. Some will argue that the surest way to infuse passion is to train well. However, there a few other things that can trigger passion when there is no training.

They include:

1. Telling a salesperson that he has been chosen specially for a product launch
2. Asking a salesperson to become a role-model for others
3. Making a salesperson in-charge of a team soon after on-boarding
   

Myth 4 Those recruited from big companies will blend into their new roles with ease.
Sometimes, the real reasons for recruiting from competitors are laziness and the inability to train. While the latter is understandable, laziness is not. The lack of drive to scout for and select the right talent leads organisations into believing that recruiting experienced hands from one’s competitors will give them ready-made salespersons. But the truth is that when someone comes on board, he needs to be trained in ‘the organisation’ s way of selling’, no matter where he worked before, and for how long.

The above beliefs are common in organisations. Being a little worldly-wise should help them steer clear of the myths that affect their recruiting.

Ref: TheManageMentor.

Customer Satisfaction and HR - HR practices.

HR is crucial to improve customer satisfaction-surprising but true.

The adage 'customer is king ', signifies the importance and value of customers. Customers are crucial for a business and a customer friendly culture drives a company's profitability. No longer is the sales team alone expected to determine customer satisfaction. HR too plays a major part in ensuring customer satisfaction by hiring the best talent and training them to serve customers effectively. An analysis on 800 Sears Roebuck stores in 1999 revealed that an increase of 5% in employee attitudes increased customer satisfaction by 1.3%.

The Workforce Optimas Award winner, NCCI Holdings trained its customer service representatives in insurance data software products because a survey conducted by them revealed that its customers wanted assistance to use their products. Consequently, there was a significant increase of 33% in the customer satisfaction rating.

Customer satisfaction and loyalty can take the company ahead even during a downturn. Southwest Airlines boasted of profit in the fourth quarter of 2001 despite the sudden decrease in air traffic due to the September 11 attacks. Kmart on the contrary was declared bankrupt because it could not provide a customer friendly environment like Walmart.

According to Michael DeSanto, a consultant for Walker Information, the cost of acquiring a new customer is equal to 5 times the expenses incurred for serving an existing customer. All these instances reiterate the need to build a strong customer relationship.

HR's Initiative

In order to drive customer satisfaction to an enviable level HR should concentrate on smart hiring practices and employee development.

Hiring the budding star performers

To build a customer friendly culture HR should hire only such employees who are capable to reinforce customer satisfaction. According to Ron Zemke, president of Performance Research Associates, a consulting firm, a successful customer service representative is one who is an optimist, flexible and able to manage stress and criticism. He should be able to strike a balance between his interests and that of the company and the customer.

Scrutinising a potential candidate should begin from the time he appears for the interview. The candidate's body language and attitude before and during the interview might give some cues about his capabilities.

Probing situations the candidate may have encountered during his earlier work experience during the interview helps to identify the candidate's abilities and attitude. Patrick Wright director of the Centre suggested this probing technique for Advanced HR Studies at Cornell University to Whirlpool.

Talent+ Inc, another HR consulting firm helped Ritz-Carlton in restructuring their hiring system. Previously, their customer complaints reached an all time high of 27%. After the new system was introduced, the complaints dropped to an amazing 1% in the year 2000.

According to the company's managing director Lisa French, the new system appraises the prospective candidate's traits. This is done through open-ended questions in the interview and a comparison of their traits with those of well-known personalities in the same field.

Training the budding stars

On being recruited, a candidate should be trained to establish customer relationships. To serve the customer better one needs to understand his needs. For this the employee should be aware of the different personality traits and their behavioural patterns. The Meyers Briggs Type Indicator questionnaire is an effective tool in identifying personality types.

Effective communication skills need to be imparted. Further developing the voice tone of the employee and his body language take the lead here. Research shows that 55% of the total impact of an employee's interaction with the customers is by body language and 38% by his tone. In particular, employees serving customers telephonically need to improve their listening skills, as it is difficult to comprehend the same over the phone. Listening to the customer attentively and restating it concisely shows the kind of attention a customer is given.

The people at Rosenbluth differ here also. They insist that their employees speak in an amicable manner to customers. Words like 'certainly', 'it's been my pleasure' put the customer at ease and display the employee's zeal to serve.

Building customer loyalty through employee loyalty

Employee allegiance is crucial to build customer satisfaction and loyalty, because customer and employee satisfaction run parallel.

According to Michael DeSanto, new employees feel good about their company when they have the opportunity to acquire new skills and move up the corporate ladder. Once an employee stays with the company for about 3 years he gets restless if nothing new is happening.

Similarly, new customers feel thrilled by the attention showered on them by the company. Over the years, regular customers used to attention, however begin to feel neglected and explore new avenues.

An organisation that does not acquire the loyalty of the customer or employees might be left in lurch. The two are interdependent. If the employee is happy then the customer satisfaction is also high.

One touch solutions at Captain D's

Captain D's proves that HR's role is detrimental in the restaurant industry where customer service is crucial.The HR initiatives taken by Captain D's to lower their staff turnover, increase customer service and thereby increase their profitability is commendable. Shoney's Inc, started in 1947, provides family dining at Shoneys' and Captain D's chain of restaurants spread over 20 states with 550 franchises.

According to Matt Gloster, vice president of administration for Captain D's, around 8000 employees are trained in all the aspects of restaurant business every year. An uphill task because employees are spread over 20 states and training them from recipes to business operations is an arduous task. The wide geographical spread made a simple thing like communicating a change in the recipe of a dish a complicated process during training sessions. The problem was that the changes have to be communicated to all the branches and thereby requiring to reproduce the same data a number of times.

OneTouch solution, an application software that has a video and two way voice and data application was introduced to allow the employees to communicate with the trainer.

The solution can be applied to PC or non- PC environments so Captain D's and Shoneys used it at all places in the restaurant. This ensures that groups or individual employees attend the training sessions. The training programmes introduced the employees to different topics and a quiz ensured that the trainees comprehend the programme.

Top managements know the developments in the restaurants when they access the data stored by Matt Gloster. Moreover, they can easily update the training programmes by downloading them. OneTouch also helped the restaurants to maintain a productive workforce by training the employees to multitask.

Captain D's thus improved its productivity and customer satisfaction and decreased turnover. Glowing over the restaurant's success Matt Gloster recalls the phrase coined by the chairman 30 years ago, ' show and tell '. The approach states ' tell me, and I'll forget. Show me, and I'll try to remember. Do it with me, and I'll always know how '.

The case of Captain D's shows the importance of an effective training programme to improve customer satisfaction. It also establishes the need to hire potential employees, train them and keep them happy.

Reference:The ManageMentor

Training & Development- Orchestrating Orientations

Orientations are orchestrated by the HR manager and follow a checklist. This ensures that all aspects are covered and gives new employees a sense of where they are in the process. Three phases are suggested for an orientation programme.

Phase I: The Basics
The first phase of orientation should take place at the start of the first day on the job or, even better, a day or more before the job starts.

The basics include what people need to know right away in an unfamiliar workplace. This will allay anxieties about how their kids can reach them in an emergency, the location of washrooms or where and when they will get lunch. Phase I also involves starting personal files. Safety information that is not job-specific can also be covered here.

Phase II: Personnel Policies

This phase should happen within the first week on the job, if not on the first day. It consists of a review of the personnel policies in the employee handbook. Employees can be asked to read it in advance and tested on the contents in the form of a short written quiz with multiple-choice and true/false answers. There need not be any penalties for wrong answers, but employees are more likely to take the policy handbook seriously if they know they will be tested.

Phase III: The Business

In this phase the mission, history and internal structure of the business, its products and its customers can be covered. This could involve several sessions, from the first month before the new employee's impressions begin to strengthen.

Mission: This part of the orientation process provides new employees the vision of the company. The HR Manager can tell the new employees how he started working or acquired the business, what it means to him and what he hopes to accomplish. Only a HR Manager can convey this sincerely.

History: A scrapbook with local newspaper articles and photos of former and present buildings, customers, products, and before-and-after pictures of re-sets can be displayed.

Internal structure: An organisational chart is a good visual aid. Also an indication of where the new employee fits in should be given.

Customers: Discuss expectations for customer relations, thereby giving a sense of who the customers are, and how the company serves them. Role-play scenarios with new employees give a vivid picture of what customer service means at the company.

Products: Beyond the training that each employee receives in his specific job, the orientation should cover the company's product standards, where to find products and answers to customer questions. Purchasers could give short presentations featuring actual products, preferably with samples for trial.

Ref: TheManageMentor

Perfect the Art of Sharing- People Management

"What separate those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one's ability to ask for help". - Donald Keough, former President of Coco-Cola

Who determines the management skills imperative for success, the managers, the management or an individual's inherent talent and abilities? History and the experience of great leaders show it's the skills and talent of an individual.

A critical issue often ignored when calculating success is delegation. Delegation is rightly called the fundamental of management skills, a prerequisite to lead a successful personal and professional life.

Delegation
Delegation is the ability to effectively assign the responsibility and authority of a task to another person or group of people. It defines the fundamental skill of a manager, the ability to get work done.

It's fait accompli that managers rarely understand this 'critical skill' or practice it. This 'delegation deficiency' must be cured if managers wish to succeed.

Why delegate?
Business owners or managers are responsible for various activities related to their business. These activities may require a lot more time than they can afford, hindering professional growth. Hence, the need to delegate.

For instance, Brad a recently promoted accounts manager of a company was well versed in all account related tasks and considered a master of all work. This actually proved a disadvantageous. Brad never found time to perform his new managerial tasks. He was always engrossed in resolving the less important issues of his subordinates, his earlier peers.

The key...
Only after a coaching session with his senior did Brad realise that his ready acceptance of his subordinates' duties stunted both his and their growth.

Effective delegation
To be efficient managers must cure the deficiency of delegation.

Right fit!
Before delegating, the manager must ensure that the employee is trained for the task. For appropriate training, the strengths and weakness of the person and the personality need consideration. Thus, managers should be sensitive to the talents and skills of the person.

Information: The basic guidelines while delegating work is the information necessary for the delegatee to execute the work. The resources necessary must be planned. Managers must provide their delegatees (the person accepting the work) the basic guidelines and necessary information to execute the work.

All yours!
Empowerment is necessary for effective delegation. Once the work is delegated, the delegatee must be given the autonomy to execute the job. This will heighten not only the interest of the employee and realisation of satisfaction but also success.

Spotlight!
Delegation relates to the responsibility of the work not the work itself. 'Too many cooks spoil the broth', so does delegation of the same work to too many people. In delegation the results accomplished and the not the process followed are important.

However, tasks that depend heavily on intricate technologies, may stress on the approach adopted to accomplish them. The delegatee must have the liberty to exercise his initiatives.

Two-way road:
Lack of dialogue between the managers and the delegatee may lead to confusion and waste of resources. A frank discussion of the problem / task may help formulate a quick and better plan for the execution.

I am there!
The delegatee may come up with his own way of work and get confused at times. The manager's support is crucial at such times. This boosts the employee's confidence in himself and in the superior.

During the discussions, managers must help resolve the problems and encourage the delegatee to share his views.

Update!
Ensuring the employee's accountability is manager's responsibility. He must get a regular update of the progress of the work delegated.

Returns!
The delegatee may be empowered when the manager is able to execute the work perfectly. Manager's guidance should not prove to be a roadblock in the execution of the work. Interference may hinder progress of the work and may not yield the desired outcomes.

Recognition!
Rewards and recognition ought to be given to the person for achieving the set goal. The credit of an unsuccessful project ought to be shared by the manager. They must consider mistakes as an investment.

Taking the credit...
Dr. Abdul Kalam was the Mission director for India's first satellite launch vehicle project. But the project was a failure in its first attempt. Prof.Satish Dhawan of ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) organised a press meet and announced " Friends, today we had our first Satellite launch vehicle to put satellite in the orbit, we could not succeed. It is our first mission of proving multiple technologies in satellite and satellite launch vehicles. In many technologies we have succeeded and a few more we have to succeed, above all I realise my team members have to be given all the technological support. I am going to do that and the next mission will succeed".

After the success of the mission in the second attempt a similar press conference was organised and Dr. Abdul Kalam addressed the conference to announce the mission's success. Dr Kalam rightly pointed out that-

"When success comes in after hard work the leader should give the credit for the success to the team members. When failure comes the leaders should absorb the failures and protect the team members".

"There will be failure in a system, failure in a project, failure in the procurement action or failure in the administrative action even failure in the political system. It is vital to protect the team immediately after a failure from the onslaught effect of failures. We should celebrate the success of individuals and team equally".

Win-win situation
A win -win situation provides better scope for learning, helps the delegatee acquire new skills and explore new avenues and solutions. Above all it saves time and resources.

Hurdles
Resistance to change is a common phenomenon. Resistance could arise from:

Culture:
Organisations' culture is built over years of effort. Lack of a proactive culture hinders effective delegation. The manager should install a culture that appreciates the significance of delegation. Employees must realise that delegation of work is both a learning experience and a growth opportunity.

Reverse delegation may take place where the employee may intelligently pass on the job sighting ignorance as a reason. Subordinates' rejection of responsibility may be due to lack of trust in the superior, lack of confidence in himself and the superior or lack of interest in the activity assigned besides lack of understanding of the process.

Remedy ...
Managers can avert such situations by building a friendly and informal rapport with their subordinates. Regular interaction and building up employee confidence by acknowledging their contribution to various activities other than his basic duties. This installs confidence in the employee and encourages him. Tough tasks could be delegated upon successful completion of simple tasks. The step-by-step process builds employee creativity and enthusiasm.

Thought process
Employees must be encouraged to think positively. With superiors' support and skills and knowledge combined with rewards and recognition employees can develop positive thinking.

Further... The process of delegation thus requires managers to understand the need for it and master the art and foster professional growth. Through effective delegation managers can cultivate a work environment that develops future leaders, time essential for execution of critical tasks and for planning of new projects. Above all it creates a motivated workforce.

Ref: TheManageMentor

Learning in a Tough Economy

Although there seems to be no shortage of bad news in the business world these days, there is a bright spot for learning leaders: Economic downturns often present opportunities to make learning more effective, thereby making organizations more competitive.

When the economy slows, corporations are forced to respond. It's a simple financial matter: Less money coming in means less money available to spend. Common fiscal belt-tightening techniques include budget cuts, spending and hiring freezes, and reducing the size of the employment base through buyouts, attrition or layoffs.
As organizational leaders weigh tough decisions on where to cut costs, they should ask themselves one simple question: "Do we still want to be in business after the downturn?" If the answer is "yes," one area in which spending should not be cut without some serious strategic thought is employee learning and development.

True, adjustments may be needed. The learning and development department probably should reduce spending just like everyone else. Instead of cutting all initiatives in equal fashion, smart organizations retain initiatives that are critical to business success and cut back on those that may simply be "nice to do." Think of it this way: It wouldn't be prudent for a restaurant kitchen to eliminate fire extinguishers to save costs in lean times, would it?

Canceling an arbitrary portion of training initiatives across the board creates the illusion of savings - some real via eliminated travel expenses and some potential under the assumption that freed-up staff time is put to good use. But without strategic thinking about where cuts should be made, such moves could end up damaging the differentiators responsible for competitive advantage.

Planning to Outlive a Recession

Development is a key factor in ensuring people stay engaged in the organization and continue to have an impact on the company's bottom line. Giving current and potential leaders the development they need helps a company weather the storm and continue to excel. So how can necessary cuts be made with minimal long-term damage? What can be cut, and what should remain?

To guide the decision-making process, company leaders should sit down with line managers and talent professionals to examine the key factors to business success and which training and development initiatives enhance these factors. Smart companies proceed strategically so that reduced learning and development spending won't blunt long-term corporate success.

Look at Talent Management as a Response to Economic Downturn

Don't spread reduced training dollars as if they were peanut butter and you were trying to make 10 sandwiches with only enough available for five. Such a nonstrategic approach simply reduces effectiveness across the board - including in the areas responsible for a firm's competitive advantages.

Instead, choose more carefully who you need to invest in and which types of behavior you need to impact. This means you have to determine which offerings have the most immediate and direct effect on the business and on customer experience. It also may mean you have to be more selective about who is invited to participate.

Take the example of Company X, which has a significant development initiative for high-potential leaders. This program has shown visible impact for participants and their managers. As the economy enters a soft period, Company X opts to cut spending for the coming year. How will this initiative be changed to compensate for this cut? Should the program be eliminated for a year or two? Should it be adjusted so it's less intensive? In the end, a decision is made to retain the initiative as its current level of intensity, but to offer it to fewer individuals.

Let's look at the impact of this decision:

a) The nomination criteria for the program are strengthened. This results in more in-depth discussions by senior leaders and managers about who should attend and increases the value of this initiative in the minds of these influential individuals.

b) Chosen participants benefit from the same high-quality program as participants from previous years, and any feelings of being cheated by having to settle for a second-rate version are avoided.

c) Management takes the opportunity to communicate to those who didn't make the cut. They're told of the reduction in slots this year and are reassured they will be reconsidered for participation the following year. They are disappointed they won't get to attend this year, but are glad that when their turn comes they will not get a second-rate version of a program that has become well-respected.

d) Those who did make the cut are told they were among a smaller group chosen, leading to a clear understanding of the company's desire to retain them over the long term and even more accountability to put what they learn into visible practice.
In this way, a spending cut ends up positioning the company to reinforce its commitment to a development program that really makes a difference. Most companies tell their employees that they are the firm's most important asset. Company X found a way to walk that talk.

Ensure All Training Efforts Are Critical to Continued Business Success

The key issue here is deciding what behaviors, industry gatherings and activities are truly critical to business success. When budgets are cut, learning and development managers need to ensure a clear line of sight exists between training efforts and the value they provide for the business and its customers. A good example comes from the manufacturing sector: A downturn is not the time to scale back training on quality or safety technique. Any refinery manager will tell you the same thing in a heartbeat.
On the other hand, an economic downturn probably is a good time for a company expanding in Latin America to limit Spanish-language instruction to only those being deployed there in the near future. Broader training across the talent pipeline in this area can be resumed once the economic storm has passed.

In truth, a time of universal economic contraction may even be a time when expanded training efforts become necessary. Key customer relationships may cool due to less frequent in-person visits and increased reliance on voicemail and e-mail. This may happen at precisely the moment when the customer is looking for its own ways to cut spending.

Companies in this situation would be wise to invest in new or enhanced targeted sales training to ensure confidence and credibility in dealing with nervous clients. It's human nature. We all want to affiliate ourselves with the strong, the confident and those who will survive. Customers of organizations are no different. They want to know that the entities they outsource to or buy products from will still be there after an economic downturn has run its course. Such a strategy not only serves an immediate business need but also positions the company well for when the economy regains its health.

Leverage Learning From Work Experience

An economic downturn is a great time for companies to think beyond the traditional workshop format. Much can be learned on the job and in collaborative groups. Simulation-based learning, increased coaching and mentoring, and looking to company leaders to teach others based on their own experiences all can have a deeply positive impact on the leadership pipeline.

Whether the format looks like a community of practice, an action learning team or simply a facilitated discussion group, learning and development leaders can help get people talking with each other about their own experiences and what they have learned.

Look to Technology

Technology-enabled learning can extend development investment when economic times are tight. Similar program content can be delivered without the associated travel costs, and if done well, an atmosphere of engaged group learning can be maintained.
Let's look at another example, this time from a firm we'll call Company Y. This organization has professionals based in locations around the globe. These individuals gather in person twice each year to review case studies, swap notes and discuss the latest trends. Company Y anticipates a slowing economy and makes a decision to eliminate these twice-yearly gatherings to save travel and accommodation costs.

But Company Y doesn't stop there. In fact, its corporate leaders have been researching lower-cost alternatives ever since the meetings' costs were tagged for discussion. After all, the value of these best-practice exchanges are tangible and are one reason why Company Y's people are so clued in to the needs of their clients. Although Company Y eliminates the twice-yearly in-person gatherings, a quarterly webinar is instituted in its place to cover the same topics. The employees experience continuity of best-practice information flow. True, employees miss the face time with colleagues, but at least they know their needs for connection and development still matter as Company Y realizes cost savings.

Companies should look to intranets, online chat rooms, SharePoint technology or other existing resources to enable collaboration and idea exchange between teams and colleagues geographically separated from one another.

Move From 'Training' to 'Development That Makes a Difference'

Learning professionals know that, as engaging as any training event can be, the lessons learned quickly can dissipate and fail to translate into meaningful changes on the job without an effort to make the learning "stick."

To reap full the benefit from resources spent on learning and development, companies need to effectively communicate expectations to the individuals who will be taking part, as well as to their managers. Success is more than just showing up at a training event. Insights must lead to action, and action must translate into practical improvements in performance.

Taking a realistic approach to learning and development means ensuring people know what needs to be improved, they are motivated to improve and they get useful knowledge and tools to address their targeted areas. They also need opportunities to apply what they have learned, and they need to be held accountable for improvement. These strategies can help drive effective integration of new skills. They're also another example of a reaction to an economic downturn that can have a lasting positive effect on the company long after the economy has improved. Learning professionals can seize the moment to drive best practices into place.

Foster Dialogue About How Competitive Advantage Can Be Maintained or Enhanced

An economic recession is like any other type of organizational change, only this one is imposed from the outside. Employees and management can't hide their heads in the sand waiting for the recession to pass or for the "other shoe to drop." The challenge needs to be faced head-on.

Learning and development leaders can help foster dialogue among employees about what the business needs to do to be more competitive than the next company. After all, the whole industry is in the same situation. Issues need to be addressed with emotional engagement, not just a set of dispassionate adjustments. This is the time to increase communication in all directions and encourage employees to respond thoughtfully. Ask them to help prioritize how development dollars get spent. Such discussions often yield surprising and valuable insights.

Set the Stage for Increased Competitive Advantage

Recently, Personal Decisions International conducted a survey of human resources professionals and other business leaders around the globe to uncover organizational approaches to retention of key employees in the slowed economy and what tactics they have found to be most successful. Among the 530 respondents, 93 percent said retaining key employees is even more important during an economic downturn.

Perhaps counter intuitively, the survey found "accelerating the development of key employees" to be a more effective tactic to retain these individuals than "competitive pay and benefits." These responses offer real-world evidence that employees want development opportunities and will stay with the company that offers them.

Skillful learning and development leaders can foster a common vision of what it looks like to be successful, even in a recession. Those who do so will mobilize and focus energy across their organizations, both for today and tomorrow, as they become catalysts for action and learning.

Author: Marc Sokol
[About the Author: Marc Sokol is the senior vice president and global practice leader of development solutions at Personnel Decisions International. ]

Performance Appraisal - Management by Objectives

Once an employee has been selected, trained and embarked on his duties, it is time for performance appraisal. What is performance appraisal? Why do companies need to take up this task?

According to Heyel, “it is the process of evaluating the performance and qualifications of the employees in terms of job requirements, for administrative purposes such as placement, selection and promotions, to provide financial rewards and other actions which require differential treatment among the members of a group as distinguished from actions affecting all members equally”.

This concept dates back to the First World War and was then called “Merit rating programme”. Over a period of time, this concept has been through an ocean of change. The areas of evaluation have also changed.

Importance and objectives: Performance appraisals have been considered to be the most significant and indispensable tool for the management as it,

1. Provides useful information for decision making in areas of promotion and merit rating and compensation reviews.
2. Links information gathering and decision making process, which are the basis for judging the effectiveness of personnel subfunctions such as recruiting, selecting and compensation.
3. Helps pinpoint areas of concerns in the primary systems like marketing, finance and production.
4. Enhances understanding for training and counselling needs.
   

Methods of performance appraisal

There are several methods for evaluating performance. Management by objectives is the most popular one.

Management by objectives is primarily to change the behaviour and attitude towards getting an activity or assignment completed in a manner that it is beneficial for the organisation. Management by objectives is a result-oriented process. In this system, emphasis is on results and goals rather than a prescribed method.

For instance, the number of quality articles to be churned out in a week, at a publishing house is, let’s say, five. This is the goal of the organisation. This goal has to be set in coordination with the writers. The emphasis here again would be on accomplishing this task flawlessly over the week rather than the setting of a method to accomplish the same. You are giving them a free hand to decide as to how they want to work in order to accomplish target. This gives the employee both responsibility as well as authority to do a job. The employees are now responsible for its success and failure and it is their baby. It is a VERY SMART MANAGEMENT TOOL where the employee is involved in the decision making process.

The fives magic sutras

The mystery of management of objectives has the following basic steps.

Set organisational goals. This envisages that organisational goals and business strategies are expressed clearly, concisely and accurately. They are periodically reviewed. They should be challenging enough to motivate the employee. Clear and attainable goals help channel energies towards desired behaviour and let the employee know the basis on which he will be rewarded.

Joint goal setting. This step establishes short-term goals, which are performance oriented, between the management and the employee. The responsibilities are clarified to the employees through organisational charts and job description. The goals decided by the employee need to complement the goals of the management. They also need to be flexible to accommodate new ideas without losing individual responsibilities. Moreover they should be easily quantifiable. For example,

To prepare, process and transfer to the office superintended, all account payable vouchers within three working days from the receipt of the voucher.

To hold weekly meetings with all employee.To use program evaluation and review technique (pert) for all new plant layouts.

Performance reviews. This step suggests frequent performance review between the manager and the employees. During the initial stages the meetings be held once a month and later could be quarterly. For maximum benefit these meetings should be scheduled for more than once a year.

Set check posts: Establishment of major check posts to measure progress. This is merely to check that the employee surges towards his premeditated goal without any disruptions. These check levels should be higher in the initial stages and then gradually reduce. This demands that the manager should be on constant alert and exercise sound judgment.

Feedback: The employees who receive frequent feedback about their performance are highly motivated than those who do not. However, one has to ensure that the feedback is relevant and specific. This helps the employee and the manager understand where they stand.

The five-sutra process of management by objectives ensures that the manager and the employee define and establish goals and objectives for an employee to be achieved within a prescribed period of time. The employee is to be supervised and evaluated, periodically. To this extent, a frequent feedback and superior-employee interaction model must be evolved.

Reference: TheManageMentor

Exit Interview - A Tool

Employees who intend to leave their present company are by and large satisfied with their jobs. They, often leave only because they feel they are not valued. A majority of the employees who feel this way say it is demonstrated by the fact that management fails to either ask for or listen to their opinions.

There are a variety of ways that management can choose to convince employees that they are genuinely listening and most importantly responding. However, the critical factor is that management must actually use this information.

Many companies use exit surveys and interviews as a tool to enhance organisational effectiveness. Robert Hoffman, the principal, chief executive officer of HR Advice, which helps guide employees and employers on HR issues, says several factors influence the positive impact of exit information. These include:

Goal of the process - Companies should have a clear idea of what they hope to accomplish by implementing a formalised exit assessment process. The primary objective should be to foster an environment of open communications, which will continually improve behaviours within an organisation. Secondary agendas, including identification of performance issues, reasons for poor morale or changes needed in job content, should be recognised before the employee leaves the organisation.

Organisational readiness - The best HR tools are wasted, if introduced at the wrong time in an organisation. Employers should be aware of the receptivity of the company when introducing the exit process. Environments with mistrust, changing cultures or excessive management turnover may strain the usefulness of exit information. Departing employees may be unwilling to disclose information, or provide misleading information as an attempt to disguise true feelings about the company.

Timing, documentation and responsibility - Companies should decide how to conduct the exit interviews. Should you conduct an in-person interview or just hand out a form? When should the information be collected? When it is fresh in the minds of the departing employee or weeks later when they have reflected on their experience? Should an outside firm be used to maintain confidentiality or can the HR department be trusted with the information? The answers to these questions should be based upon your objectives and the resources available within the company.

Application of results - Possibly the most critical factor in the assessment of exit information is the use of the results. A mechanism to communicate and summarise the results to managers and key employees is recommended. The company should use the information to influence job content, policies, training programmes, feedback mechanisms and operating structure consistent with the objective of continuous improvement.

The positive impact of these factors can be seen when organisations implement them for better performance.

Ref: TheManageMentor

Downsizing: 7 Steps to Help Employees Cope

The November 2008 U.S. job loss report was staggering. More than 500,000 jobs shed in one month, the worst one-month job loss since December 1974. That brings the 2008 job loss total to 1.9 million.And according to a New York Times report on the job loss situation, deeper cuts will probably happen in 2009.

The HR department isn't always involved in making the decision to downsize; however, HR is in the driver's seat when it comes to orchestrating a smooth transition for everyone who's affected. And although you may not make the layoff announcement, there are many things to consider as you prepare to deal with the anger, grief, and stress often associated with downsizing.

Emotionally prepare yourself. Recognize the fact that you may grieve along with the employees. Part of this step means getting ready for the psychological effect the layoff will have on everyone, including the "survivors." Employees who are left behind are often sad and anxious because they have lost friends and are concerned about their own job security. Some feel guilty that they are still with the organization when others are gone. In addition, they will be required to do more with less, a challenge that may initially seem impossible.

Prepare for the downsizing announcement. You may not actually make it, but you will be asked to explain to the employees what to expect. Always focus on layoffs with respect and dignity. Write down what you plan to say in describing your roll in assisting the employees who will lose their jobs. Then practice out loud until you feel confident. Expect anger and sadness in response to your message. The more prepared you are, the easier your job will be, and the more helpful you can be to the employees.

Consider how you can help. In-house outplacement services can assist those who must find other work. Find out what is available in your community to meet the needs of the unemployed. Be empathetic and willing to go the extra mile in helping your laid-off population. Keep in mind that your "survivors" are watching you and the way you handle those who are leaving.

Minimize the effect of downsizing. Do whatever it takes to win back the trust and commitment of your remaining employees. Show the "survivors" how to be change-resilient; it's essential to overcoming the obstacles. Define exactly what is changing and what isn't. It's not uncommon for your "survivors" to believe that everything is changing when, in reality, most everything is staying the same. You need the "survivors" on your side more than ever now that you are, in many cases, short-staffed.

Communicate early and often. Honesty should play a major role in everything you do and say. These are the people you depend on to keep you in business. Tell them what you know and what you can share. If you aren't allowed to tell them some of what you know, try to explain why.

Be accessible to those who are left. As busy as you are, if employees feel they can't get your attention, you are in trouble. Commit to returning e-mails and phone calls, and make sure employees know when that will happen. During the time of uncertainty, the more accessible you are, the easier it will be for everyone to adjust to the changes.

Be a cheerleader. HR has a major responsibility in redesigning, training, and employee engagement, especially after a major layoff. Employees are looking to HR for guidance in filling in the gaps and getting the right people in place to do so while managing the social pressures that are inevitable with layoffs. Remain positive, set goals, and help others who are struggling with what they are being asked to do.

About the Author: Carol Hacker is an HR consultant and seminar leader who ranks among the experts in the field of recruiting and retention issues. She's the author of 13 highly acclaimed business books. Carol can be reached at (770) 410-0517 or carol@carolhacker.com.

How to Coach Your Boss

At the core of every toxic working environment is the toxic boss, manager or supervisor that breeds it. All roads go back to the manager. And if the manager isn't willing to change, then it's a safe bet that nothing will.

That's why to impact long lasting change, managers need to upgrade their style and approach to managing their people.The toxic boss is still alive and thriving. Sure, no breakthrough news here but what if you, as the recipient of this type of management style, could actually do something about it?

Knowing the type of boss you have, their limitations, their management style, their priorities, what drives them and how they communicate, helps you determine exactly where you stand, and what you can expect from them. After all, if you're looking for more individualized attention, support and training it may not be realistic to expect that from your current boss or even possible for that boss to provide you the support and training you need. And if that's the case, at least you now have the evidence to make a more educated and informed decision regarding whether or not to stay in your current position.

So, what can you do to turn around your boss's style of managing and how they communicate with you? Here's a twist. Start by coaching and supporting them using these three simple steps.

First: Coach Up. What can you to do support your boss? Most are used to their employees coming to them with problems and complaints. It's an interesting reaction you get when you approach them with, "Hi Mary. Listen I know how much we're all under the same pressure to produce and for you I can only imaging that it's even more intense. So, I just wanted to ask you what I might be able to do for you to possibly take some of that burden off, or if there's anything you see in my production or performance that I could be doing better which in turn we'd all win."

Next: Create the Opportunity to Discuss Expectations: The law of reciprocity applies. After you've determined how you can make his life a little easier, eventually, your manager can ask what he can do for you, which is your opportunity to ask if you can discuss the management style that you best respond to and how you want to be managed.

Finally: Set Your Boundaries: Bosses don’t know boundaries. Like it or not, through many managers eyes, their #1 responsibility is to run the company, not worry about your feelings. So stand up for yourself and establish your role, but always give 100%. While most of the time not premeditated, people, especially your boss will continually test you, over and over again, in the sense of what they can and cannot get away with when it comes to making requests and demands of you and how they can treat you. While a large percentage of people might initially be scared or intimidated to say something to their boss, in fear of some type of consequence or fallout, most of the time, managers are clueless about how they treat people and often don't even know they're doing it! Don't be surprised when you drop off this article on their desk, and they in turn, thank you for it. So, re-train all the people around you, including your boss, how they can respond to you in a healthier, non-toxic way.

(About the author: Keith Rosen is the Executive Sales Coach™ that top salespeople and managers call first to develop a team of champion performers and boost their sales. A best selling author, Keith has written several books including the award winning Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions. Inc. magazine and Fast Company named Keith one of the five most influential executive coaches. He's been featured in Entrepreneur, Inc., Fortune, TheStreet.com, Hoovers.com, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Keith is a frequent guest correspondent on News 12 and has appeared on Fox Business )

Attracting Top Talent: Do You Have What It Takes?

Today's employees are attracted by a hiring package with both extrinsic (pay and benefits) and intrinsic (motivation, training opportunities, etc.) elements. But does your organization have the right mix?

There's really only one way to find out: Ask them. Hold focus groups or distribute questionnaires to your employees with the purpose of determining what they think of your present pay and benefits program and also the work environment. Which benefits do they rate the highest? Which are least important to them? What do they find most and least desirable about their jobs and the workplace?

Studies have been done by numerous compensation organizations and they have identified the following as the most important benefits:

• RRSP or other matched employee retirement plans
• Dental plan
• Pension plan
• Pay for performance compensation
• Flexible working hours
• Childcare
• Tuition reimbursement

Ideally, say the experts, you should be offering each of these. But if you can't offer them all, determine which you should be offering based upon your employee focus groups and survey findings.

Likewise, examine employees' opinions about their jobs and the workplace. The ideal company offers:

• Job security
• Employee participation in decision-making
• Work/family balance
• Increased employability through training and development opportunities

Of the elements above, which are missing in your organization? If they aren't there, they should be. Whereas the elements in your benefits package most important to your workforce will vary with the nature of the group (e.g., younger employees will be interested in childcare or tuition reimbursement, or funds to finance a new home), all, regardless of their place in their careers, want job security, involvement in decision-making, training opportunities, and time to enjoy their families along with their jobs.

Once you have retooled your package to attract those employees your firm needs, your next step is to determine how to market your revised package. If you have a website, and you are looking for technical people, make sure that you advertise on it. Visit the websites of competitive firms to determine how they use their site to prospect for job candidates. Job search sites should be part of your marketing plans, of course. But you shouldn't limit yourself to them. Don't forget newspaper classifieds.

Classifieds aren't as effective as they once were, especially if you are recruiting from among those who are still employed. But you can increase their usefulness if you highlight in the ad what candidates would find most attractive about the job (e.g., good pay, great benefits, childcare, and employability). Actually, you should do this in all ads you run.

Here's another avenue for marketing your job openings: direct mail.

Send out mailings to those individuals who match the profile of recruits you want. Associations or magazines targeted to your industry or the necessary discipline can provide the mailing list and names of candidates with the general background you want.This provides a new avenue for the top talent you want.

Ref: http://www.hr.com

Training: A Measured Response

Global-market forces and innovation related to technology are beginning to force HR leaders to redefine their training and development agendas and the skill sets needed to succeed.

Millennials -- the youngest generation of four currently in the workforce -- were recently featured in a CBS 60 Minutes segment. The TV broadcast focused on how different these workers are from the departing baby boomer leaders. Many of the challenges created by this generational chasm fall on training-and- development departments to solve, as organizations scramble to address the pending leadership gap that demographic data suggest is inevitable.

To prepare for this future, training and learning efforts must accelerate the development of leaders who can innovate in the face of rapid change. What's more, e-learning needs to become a motivational strategy, not just a cost-reduction tactic.

The only way to prepare for the uncertain future is to manage expenditures targeted at human capital as investments -- not merely current-period expenses -- something that will require the measurement of the value being created by training and e-learning programs.

Global-market forces and innovation related to technology are reshaping the worlds of training and development. What's needed in the future is dramatically different from what worked in the past. Efficiency will continue to be required, but cost reduction alone will not be sufficient. The challenge will be to demonstrate the value training and e-learning creates while simultaneously managing human-capital risk related to that change.

Uncertain Times

One force that will define the future priorities for training and e-learning professionals is the demand by senior leaders for the entire organization to embrace innovation in the face of the unpredictable future. The uncertainty is represented by a March 2007 Standard and Poor's forecast indicating the price of oil in 2008 would be $65 a barrel. It actually reached $130 a barrel in May 2008, only 14 months later.

In the face of such uncertainty, the role of training and development will shift from responding to training demands from within the firm to becoming the operation that prepares leaders to innovate in the face of external forces. Calibration of how well the training organization is developing leaders and innovators is going to require new measurements.

The most predictable of the forces that will define the agendas of training and e-learning leaders are those rooted in demographics. These forces have two certain features. First, the supply of leaders will inevitably shrink. In the next decade, almost 40 percent of the workforce will retire, including many of businesses' most experienced senior leaders. The only uncertainty is the exact timing of their departure.

The challenge for training and development is to recommend the size and focus of the human capital investments organizations must make to replenish the skills, knowledge and experience certain to walk out the door. In this case, it will require an inventory of what skills and knowledge are leaving and a financial plan for implementing the training-and- development programs needed to replace the critical capabilities of the departing human assets.

A second implication of the demographic shifts was captured in the 60 Minutes segment. The accelerating rate of change makes the values and experiences of those on the two ends of the generational continuum dramatically different. It is as if the boomers and the millennials came from different planets, not merely different decades. Nowhere is the implication greater than in e-learning.

In the past, e-learning was managed as a cost-reducing alternative to expensive classroom delivery. Potential savings for the firm still exist. In the coming months and years, however, the shift to e-learning will increasingly be driven by the preferences of the learners, not by the financial priorities of the accountants.

If you'd like proof, visit the lecture halls of any major American university. Chances are you'll find young learners only reluctantly sitting in a classroom so familiar to the departing boomer leaders.

There's no question millennial prefer the technology world. They want to learn in the same medium they use to socialize and interact with their peers. They want content delivered to their mobile devices.

This shifts the priority of e-learning from the firm's focus on cost savings to the learner's need to be motivated. The absence of motivation radically dilutes the value of even the best content. Fulfilling the potential of training and development requires the engagement of the learner.

People as Assets

So, if these are the major factors that will define the priorities for C-suite executives, what steps do HR leaders need to take to respond to a future in which innovation and leadership are key to creating value?

First, they need to ensure their organizations act on the near-mantra expression, "Our people are our most important asset." This requires that people be managed like an asset.

The pivotal feature of an asset is that it has future value. Assets are not merely treated as an expense on the current income statement. Unfortunately, CFOs don't contribute much to the effort of managing human capital as an asset. GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) leaves accountants with no choice but to record training and e-learning expenditures as a current period expense, not as an investment.

Consequently, HR leaders are going to have to step up and play a pivotal role for their respective organizations, deploying the methods of investment decision-making when it comes to human capital.

To manage our human capital as assets, the future will require that HR leaders develop and deploy capital investment decision-making methods not currently a part of the professional capabilities of learning executives. By demonstrating the future value that can be created, HR will be able to justify the increased budgets required to reposition their organizations for the future.

What will it require for HR leaders to lead their own organizations in the future? Among other things, they need to be prepared to answer the following three critical questions:

1. What business outcomes should be measured to demonstrate the value created by a particular training or e-learning program?

2. How do we convince those leaders with the authority to approve or deny human capital investment budgets that the business impact measured is the result of our training/learning programs and not the result of other forces?

3. How do we organize the conclusions of our analyses so top management can understand their future implications?

Among the skills HR leaders need in order to deal with their list of priorities are those of communications, business acumen and statistical multi-variant analysis. The business acumen is necessary for the critical communication that needs to happen between themselves and their CFOs as a part of the human capital investment and budgeting processes.

Measuring the value that's created is necessary for arriving at executive decisions that impact the future and is essential in justifying budget and resource allocations -- strategic decisions that lead the organization in the face of accelerating change. The challenge for the profession is to champion the methods for measuring the value that's created and educate the training organization in how to make those methods an integral part of every training and e-learning initiative.

Multi-variant statistics is a required part of the value-creation analysis. Without explicitly dealing with the noise from all of the other changes going on around training and e-learning programs, HR leaders will never be able to convince their CFOs that the results are compelling and justify the increased human capital investment required. (Organizations such as Chrysler, ACS, Sun Microsystems and US Bank are already using statistical methods to measure training and e-learning value creation in research being done at Bellevue University's Human Capital Lab.)

In the end, the highest priority for training is to be able to document the compelling value-creation arguments. The challenge for all of us is to develop and deploy the skills needed to make the investment case to other C-suite executives.While we are justified in debating the particulars of the future changes, what is not debatable is that human capital will play an increasingly important role in the creation of value in the future.The HR profession sits at the eye of this storm. How well the profession responds to the challenges will play a key role in determining how well the organization performs as the uncertain future unfolds.

Ref: Michael E. Echols

[About the Author: Micheal E. Echols was educated as physicist and mathematical modeler with a Ph.D from the University of California at Berkeley. A former senior profit-and-loss executive at the General Electric Co., Echols is the author of three books on human capital investment and wrote dozens of articles and presentations on managing human capital. He is executive vice president and director of the Human Capital Lab at Bellevue University in Omaha, Neb.]

Rewards & Recognition: Time to Pay Up...And Fast

Given today's economic and demographic challenges, HR practitioners will be narrowing the focus of recognition while expanding the scope.The nation is in an economic downturn that experts believe will be with us for the next few years, if not longer. No matter the industry or the region of the country, more and more companies are being forced to do more with less.

Consumers are buying fewer products and services and putting off nonessential purchases. Capital expenditures by businesses are being reined in and, in some cases, cut altogether. Every expense is being scrutinized, because savings go right to the bottom line.

Organizations are changing their business strategies to align with the new marketplace realities. In the "old days," when customers requested "better, cheaper, and faster," companies would respond with "pick two." Today, it's a business requirement for these same companies to accomplish all three.

There has been an unexpected positive consequence of this new reality: A greater number of business leaders outside human resources better understand that customers buy products from companies, but form relationships with people.

And it's these same people -- the employees -- who have the ability to create and enhance the kind of customer loyalty and retention required for survival in today's rocky economic times. Most CEOs understand how the Pareto Principal relates to their bottom line -- 80 percent of sales come from 20 percent of the customers.

More of these same senior leaders realize a new truth; that 80 percent of business outcomes can be directly traced to the efforts of 20 percent of the employees. These "A & B players" and "high performers" are being counted on more than ever to meet and exceed customer expectation.

Narrowing the Focus

The ultimate goal of reward-and-recognition approaches is to find, keep and motivate employees through a variety of organizational interventions. These can include tangible and intangible rewards, cash compensation, benefits, recognition approaches and employee-involvement and motivation strategies. But when it comes to allocating resources to fund these rewards programs in 2009, companies will need to narrow the focus while, at the same time, expand the scope of recognition.

All employees want to be rewarded for their performance, no matter how much, or how little, they actually contribute to the success of their organization. But "C" players (who can make up as much as 75 percent of the employee base) often do acceptable -- or minimally expectable -- work and are often happy to have and keep their job, let alone receive additional rewards.

Pay-for-performance requires companies to differentiate between their superstars and their under-performers. And based on recent national research on employee satisfaction, engagement and retention, most companies have a long way to go.

According to the 2008-09 Employee Hold'em National Workforce Engagement Benchmark, 50 percent of self-identified "superstar" employees are fully engaged with their organizations. These hard-working employees are ready, willing and able to go above and beyond customer requirements and plan to stay with the company if they're offered a little more money to go somewhere else.

Why? Because they are more likely to believe they are fairly rewarded and recognized for their contributions to the company's success, feel that excellent performance gets rewarded in their organization and believe their manager ensures the best employees receive the greatest rewards. Another study recently conducted by Leadership IQ indicated that 47 percent of high performers are actively looking for new jobs by posting and submitting their resumes and even going on job interviews. Companies need to "pay up" with alternative forms of rewards and recognition.

Finding Alternatives

Employers cannot afford to lose their best workers, who get the job done on time, on target and on budget. The best workers are given the toughest assignments because they have shown an ability to get the job done. They work on the hardest accounts due to their abilities in handling difficult clients. And they're often asked to "learn on the job" due to their ability to swim while others sink.

How do most companies reward these vital resources, these assets with feet? By giving them a performance increase that is only 2 percent or 3 percent bigger than the marginal employee sitting in the cubicle next to them received. Seniority pay, merit pay, incentive pay, team-based pay, skill-based pay and outcomes-oriented pay just don't cut it, especially when companies can barely afford their cost-of-living increases.

That's why more and more companies are going to be looking at alternatives to compensation and spot bonuses to reward their best and most dependable workers. Providing training and development, work/life balance and opportunities for advancement are three of the effective rewards for today's and tomorrow's hardest-working employees.

Going forward, consider this: You should be training the best employees so they can leave, or else they'll leave. That's right. Train them so they can leave, or else they'll leave. They're going to leave anyway. The average employee has 13 to 15 jobs over the course of his or her career, seven by the time they are 30 years of age.

However, when companies provide training and development opportunities on a consistent basis, these superstars will stay longer, work harder and recommend the organization as a great place to work. And aren't those exactly the kinds of behaviors that a pay-for-performance system is supposed to elicit from top employees?

Whether it's a result of the expectations of their managers or the demands they put on themselves, high performers in an organization know through experience that they won't be working only 40 hours in a week. They show up when they are needed, and stay until the job is completed. They're willing to give up some personal time in order to satisfy the needs of the job. But they expect payback as well.

Managers who want to keep their top performers retained and engaged will need to recognize the importance of their personal and family life and be flexible when the pendulum swings to the family side of the question. Managers will need to ensure that top performers are given the freedom to balance work and family responsibilities without hindering their career progression. And they'll need to be sensitive to the needs and problems of these employees when they arise.

Employees will continue to want the ability to move up and move over or they're going to move out. Many front-line supervisors and managers are reticent to let their best employees transfer to another division or department. The reason is understandable; the supervisor's performance review (and pay) is often based on the productivity or throughput of their direct reports.

More and more companies will be training their supervisors to be "engagement agents" for these top performers, providing career mentors throughout their employment. In the past, companies have pigeon-holed their best employees into the jobs they were "hired to do." When half of these workers are open to job offers from other companies, or are actively looking for them, this practice has to end. It's time to pay up. And fast.

Expanding the Scope

And finally, a few words about expanding the scope of recognition. Believe it or not, many companies still think about recognition in terms of the anniversary card hand-signed and delivered by the senior executive, the "five-year pin" given out at the annual awards luncheon or the gift catalogue the 10-year employee chooses from as acknowledgment of his or her continued tenure. Granted, these are worthwhile endeavors that all employees share in, even the three-quarters who are "C" players in the typical organization.

So, how are the best companies taking this one step further? They're doing it by recognizing the importance of daily satisfaction and ethics, diversity and safety. Companies that understand employees quit a boss and not a company are working hard to ensure that employees have a good relationship with their immediate supervisor. They're attracting talent by making certain there is a good fit between the applicant's skills and interests, and their job. And they are making sure that each job provides a feeling of personal accomplishment.

Today, companies better understand the critical nature of ensuring an ethical environment for their workers. Employees are less willing to cut ethical corners for short-term profits or modest improvements in a company's stock price. They are less willing to look the other way regarding issues of favoritism or unfair treatment of employees.

And today, providing a safe and secure workplace is no longer a "nice to have," but is more like a standard table stake in poker. Employees understand that, although compliance and ethics may lead you to the same place, compliance is based on things you have to do, while ethics are things you want to do. The difference in one verb makes all the difference in the world.

The year 2009 is going to be a difficult one for an increasing number of businesses. Decreasing revenues, shrinking profits, pressure from shareholders and competition from new and emerging markets are going to test the mettle of even the most solid companies.

Companies must continue to narrow the focus of their rewards programs to target the employees they count on most while expanding them beyond the typical merit-pay and spot-bonus programs many used to rely on. And by recognizing the importance of daily satisfaction and ethics to all employees, companies can improve the performance of all employees.

It's the old Fram Oil Filter commercial, with a twist: "Pay me now or pay up later."You make the choice ... or your employees will make it for you.

Ref: Marc Drizin
[About the Author: Marc Drizin is founder and chief instigator of Noblesville, Ind.-based Employee Hold'em, which provides talent-retention solutions and corporate training services. He is the author of Workforce Engagement: Strategies to Attract, Motivate, and Retain Talent, and a second book, Employee Engagement Fundamentals: A Guide for Managers and Supervisors. ]