How to Use Staffing Strategies to Boost Your Competitive Advantage
Competitive advantages come from many sources: innovation, cost, service, quality, branding, distribution, speed and convenience are perhaps the most prominent.
But this masks their true origin.
The reality is that workers are the root of any competitive advantage. Consider this: they're the ones who come up with more efficient processes, develop innovative products, and deliver exceptional customer service.
Companies that recognize this fact learn how to tailor staffing strategies to leverage what they do best - aligning business objectives with the right competencies, all the way from the C-Suite to the frontlines.
That's good not just for the company, but also for its people, teams, customers, shareholders, and society as a whole. It creates coherency, purpose and growth.
So how can you maximize your competitive advantages through staffing strategies? That depends on the advantage itself. Below are a few examples:
Innovation - Does your company excel at product development? Then fostering innovation and accelerating time-to-market are musts. That puts a premium on creative workers with research skills, entrepreneurial drive and innate curiosity.
Low Cost - If your focus is on cost and convenience, then you need to recruit talent that enables efficient production and delivery. Hires that are adaptable, trainable, efficiency-oriented and willing to follow standardized procedures can best serve these goals.
Customization - Companies that thrive by molding their offerings to each customer's needs can readily earn long-lasting loyalty and repeat business. Achieving those goals requires a high level of customer service, adaptability and willingness to learn.
Growth - If you're rapidly expanding (either as a start-up or to reach economies of scale), you have to recruit employees that are on board for what that takes. Future-oriented, flexible risk-takers that gel well with your company culture are likely to stay along for the ride and grow as your company does.
Of course, this is all easier said than done. Identifying the competencies that matter, crafting success profiles and creating an acquisition process that works are each difficult unto themselves.
If you're looking to align your staffing efforts with what your company does best, don't hesitate to reach out. We're always happy to help aspiring businesses find the right path.
Change Management for Humans: How to Turn Critics Into Advocates
Why do change management projects fail?
We all start out with the best intentions - an ambitious vision for the future, innovative strategies for getting there, detailed plans for managing change. But even the best laid plans fall flat if they lose sight of what really drives change: people.
Your employees can be your most powerful advocates, but you have to earn their support. The key is recognizing that resistance is our de facto attitude toward change. It's hardwired into us.
When you structure your programs around that assumption, you make them thoroughly human. Instead of forcing change on people, you learn to inspire change in them. This ability to encourage change from the bottom-up is what makes or breaks a change project.
1. Tell a compelling story about the future. Everything starts with your vision. Turning your strategic goals into an inspiring narrative should be priority number one. Be aspirational, but also be real. Employees care about more than just company outcomes. They want to know how this change will impact them, their team, the customer, the company, and society at large.
2. Listen. This is a critical step - and the most often neglected. Change is a dialogue. Leave room for employees to express their fears, concerns and motivations and listen carefully. The feedback they will volunteer is priceless. Involving them early will not only help tailor your program to their needs, it will also earn their commitment in the process.
3. Clearly define goals and roles. Showing employees how their responsibilities align with long-term goals fosters engagement and buy-in. When the connections aren't clear, they become apathetic or even resistant.
4. "Be the change you wish to see in the world." Leading by example is always a good approach, but it's essential when you try to change entrenched behaviors. Saying one thing and doing another is a quick way to sabatoge employee engagement. Get leadership on-board before and provide consistent feedback throughout the process to help them model the behaviors you want to see.
5. Provide both technical and emotional training. Reaching your intended future state requires more than changing practices; it requires changing the beliefs and attitudes that underpin them. If some people aren't readily adopting the desired behaviors, find out why and address those issues. It's okay to admit when things aren't going as planned and work to rebuild trust. Glossing over reality only undermines the process.
True transformation comes from the bottom-up, not the top-down. Respect this fact and your vision is already within reach. And of course, if you need help, please reach out to us. We're more than happy to help.
What Makes an Executive Onboarding Plan Successful?
Hiring the right executive is just the first step. Integrating that executive into the rest of the company is critically important. The process is complex, difficult, and can take over a year to complete.
If it's done right, it empowers new leadership to get the results that company hired them to get. If not, it can undermine their efficacy and eventually lead to their resignation.
That's a costly proposition. So how can you ensure success? Design a system that incorporates the following 5 steps:
1. Planning
2. Orientation
3. Socialization
4. Development
5. Monitoring
Why Socialization Is The Most Challenging Step - And How To Approach It
Out of these steps, the most important and complex is socialization. It goes beyond just getting to know everyone. Socialization has teach cultural norms, establish credibility and earn buy-in from the rest of the company.
At Generator, we take a multi-phase approach to socialization, bringing together four steps into a coherent and effective process:
1. Personality Knowledge - The first phase involves understanding the individual personality of the executive. Much of that can be gleaned from the acquisition process if it was rigorous and thoroughly documented.
2. Teambuilding - Phase two is formal teambuilding.
3. Short-Term Outcomes - The third phase is setting short-term outcomes. What does success look like in the first 3 months? The first 6 months? Establishing explicit performance goals will guide the executive's actions and keep them accountable to all stakeholders.
4. Long-Term Outcomes - Fourth and finally, long-term outcomes need to be clearly outlined. This helps new executives keep their eyes on the prize. Perhaps the most difficult part of executive integration is finding the right balance between fitting in and leading.
Executives are usually expected to engineer long-term changes in an organization. Finding a place within an organization's cultural norms while keeping enough distance to stay objective and be able to change them when necessary is essential.
Learning a new company is difficult work and that responsibility should be shared. By developing an executive onboarding plan you can demonstrate commitment to new leadership, help them thrive, and ensure a successful integration.
Why Turnover Is Key To Your Business Strategy
Do you think about turnover as a strategic variable? As something to be manipulated to achieve your business goals?
We typically counsel businesses on how to reduce turnover rates and costs, but some degree of turnover is inevitable and even desirable.
Of course, how much turnover is desirable depends on your business model.
High Turnover In High Performance Businesses
Netflix is a prime example of an organization that encourages a high rate of turnover. Their HR policy dictates that if you're just doing your job, you're gone.
That’s a mandate for high turnover, but there’s a business case for it. The intent is to drive innovation by keeping only top performers and opening up other positions for more promising employees.
While Netflix takes it to an extreme, culling the best while letting disengaged or unproductive employees go is just common sense. It’s good for the company and it’s good for employees who might be happier elsewhere.
High Turnover In Cost-Focused Businesses
There are also cases where lower operational costs outweigh higher turnover costs. Think about call centers, fast food restaurants, or budget grocery stores, for example.
Should you improve your company culture, implement performance management tactics and offer opportunities for growth to reduce turnover? Obvious ethical issues aside, you can see how the expense might override the benefits.
High Turnover for the Rest of Us
Of course, high turnover is a costly proposition. Separation, replacement and training can all be expensive and time-consuming, but turnover also negatively impacts customer service and employee commitment.
Most companies can’t afford to continually replace staff or lose business from poor performance. For most of us, keeping turnover as low as possible is essential to staying cost-effective and competitive.
No matter which boat you’re in, you should explicitly consider turnover in your business strategy. What do you do to influence it?
21st Century Core Leadership Competencies: Conquering the Brave New World
The Information Revolution has radically changed work environments and the marketplace. The ability to adapt is now what divides outstanding organizations from the rest of the pack.
Core leadership competencies need to evolve too. Organizations need to take a long, hard look at how they choose leadership if they want to stay ahead of the competition.
That's why we've developed a universal leadership success profile for the 21st century. It aligns core leadership competencies with new business needs based on rigorous job and market analysis.
If you're looking for an executive to launch your business to the next level, make sure they've got the right stuff to lead in today's brave new world.
5 Universal Core Leadership Competencies for the 21st Century
External Awareness - This gets the top post in our list of core leadership competencies with good reason. Successful leaders build a strong network within their industry, giving them a better understanding of the changing market. By staying engaged, leaders with this competency more effectively leverage new trends, tactics and tools to gain a competitive edge.
Talent Management - Creating a culture focused on talent is critical for organizations in the 21st century. Our knowledge-based economy thrives on innovation. Top performers no longer outstrip average workers by two-to-one - that ratio is closer to ten-to-one when it comes to creative tasks. Leaders that take a hands-on approach to acquiring and developing the best talent can provide more value to their organizations than ever before.
Self-Awareness - Self-aware leaders don't believe they can do it all. Instead, they rely on the support of individuals around them to complement their strengths and shortcomings. By embracing feedback, self-aware leaders learn what they do well - and what they don't. That allows them to focus their efforts where they can add the most value, and to delegate more effectively, which brings us to our next point.
Delegation - Great leaders are not afraid to delegate. Leaders with this core competency have a good understanding of the strengths of their colleagues and rely on them to make the best decisions for the organization. After delegating, successful leaders also remain accessible to address problems.
Decision Making - Effective leaders know how to elevate information and use structured decision decision-making processes. Making critical business decisions rationally and analytically (rather than making emotional decisions and "shooting from the hip") is an essential characteristic of successful leaders. They also avoid complicating situations and know when to refrain from inserting themselves where their expertise is not needed.
What core leadership competencies does your organization find most valuable in today's economy. Let us know in the comments below!
Organizational Culture 101
By: Talya N. Bauer and Berrin Erdogan, Portland State University
There’s a lot of talk about organizational culture but how are cultures really maintained? As academics, we’ve researched the topic and found that as a company matures, its cultural values are refined and strengthened. In this short article, we’d like to share some of what we’ve learned. We call this article “Organizational Culture 101” because for many of you, this will be a review of the basics. However, we feel there’s value in going over these concepts and perhaps prompting folks to take a fresh look at a well-established topic.
The early values of a company’s culture exert influence over its future values. It is possible to think of organizational culture as an organism that protects itself from external forces. Organizational culture determines what types of people are hired by an organization and what types are left out. Moreover, once new employees are hired, the company assimilates new employees and teaches them the way things are done in the organization. These processes are termed attraction-selection-attrition and onboarding. Let’s discuss each of these in turn.
Attraction-Selection-Attrition (ASA)
Organizational culture is maintained through a process known as attraction-selection-attrition. First, employees are attracted to organizations where they will fit in. In other words, different job applicants will find different cultures to be attractive. Someone who has a competitive nature may feel comfortable and prefer to work in a company where interpersonal competition is the norm. Others may prefer to work in a team-oriented workplace. Research shows that employees with different personality traits find different cultures attractive. For example, employees who demonstrate neurotic personalities were less likely to be attracted to innovative cultures, whereas those who were more open to new experiences were more likely to be attracted to innovative cultures. As a result, individuals self-select the companies they work for and may stay away from companies that have core values that are radically different from their own.
As you’ve probably observed, this process is imperfect, and value similarity is only one reason a candidate might be attracted to a company. There may be other, more powerful attractions such as good benefits. For example, candidates who are potential misfits may still be attracted to Google because of the cool perks associated with being a Google employee. At this point in the process, the second component of the ASA framework prevents them from getting in: Selection. Just as candidates are looking for places where they will fit in, companies are also looking for people who will fit into their current corporate culture. Many companies are hiring people for fit with their culture, as opposed to fit with a certain job. For example, Southwest Airlines prides itself for hiring employees based on personality and attitude rather than specific job-related skills, which are learned after being hired. This is important for job applicants to know, because in addition to highlighting your job-relevant skills, you will need to discuss why your personality and values match those of the company. Companies use different techniques to weed out candidates who do not fit with corporate values. For example, Google relies on multiple interviews with future peers. By introducing the candidate to several future coworkers and learning what these coworkers think of the candidate, it becomes easier to assess the level of fit. The Container Store Inc. ensures culture fit by hiring customers. This way, they can make sure that job candidates are already interested in organizing their lives and understand the company’s commitment to helping customers organize theirs. Companies may also use employee referrals in their recruitment process. By using their current employees as a source of future employees, companies may make sure that the newly hired employees go through a screening process to avoid potential person-culture mismatch.
Even after a company selects people for person-organization fit, there may be new employees who do not fit in. Some candidates may be skillful in impressing recruiters and signal high levels of culture fit even though they do not necessarily share the company’s values. Moreover, recruiters may suffer from perceptual biases and hire some candidates thinking that they fit with the culture even though the actual fit is low. In any event, the organization is going to eventually eliminate candidates who do not fit in through attrition. Attrition refers to the natural process in which the candidates who do not fit in will leave the company. Research indicates that person-organization misfit is one of the important reasons for employee turnover.
As a result of the ASA process, the company attracts, selects, and retains people who share its core values. On the other hand, those people who are different in core values will be excluded from the organization either during the hiring process or later on through naturally occurring turnover. Thus, organizational culture will act as a self-defending organism where intrusive elements are kept out. Supporting the existence of such self-protective mechanisms, research shows that organizations demonstrate a certain level of homogeneity regarding personalities and values of organizational members.
New Employee Onboarding
Another way in which an organization’s values, norms, and behavioral patterns are transmitted to employees is through new employee onboarding. Onboarding refers to the process through which new employees learn the attitudes, knowledge, skills, and behaviors required to function effectively within an organization. If an organization can successfully socialize new employees into becoming organizational insiders, new employees feel confident regarding their ability to perform, sense that they will feel accepted by their peers, and understand and share the assumptions, norms, and values that are part of the organization’s culture. This understanding and confidence in turn translate into more effective new employees who perform better and have higher job satisfaction, stronger organizational commitment, and longer tenure within the company.
What Can Organizations Do During Onboarding?
Many organizations take a structured and systematic approach to new employee onboarding, while others follow a “sink or swim” approach in which new employees struggle to figure out what is expected of them and what the norms are.
A formal orientation program indoctrinates new employees to the company culture, as well as introduces them to their new jobs and colleagues. An orientation program is important, because it has a role in making new employees feel welcome in addition to imparting information that may help new employees be successful on their new jobs. Many large organizations have formal orientation programs consisting of lectures, videotapes, and written material, while some may follow more unusual approaches. According to one estimate, most orientations last anywhere from one to five days, and some companies are currently switching to a computer-based orientation. Ritz-Carlton uses a very systematic approach to employee orientation and views orientation as the key to retention. In the two-day classroom orientation, employees spend time with management, dine in the hotel’s finest restaurant, and witness the attention to customer service detail firsthand. For example, they receive hand-written welcome notes and their favorite snacks during the break. During these two days, they are introduced to the company’s intensive service standards, team orientation, and its own language. Later, on their 21st day, they are tested on the company’s service standards and are certified. Research shows that formal orientation programs are helpful in teaching employees about the goals and history of the company, as well as communicating the power structure. Moreover, these programs may also help with a new employee’s integration into the team. In conclusion, we know culture matters and understanding the ASA framework and the power of onboarding are two ways you can help to maintain or reimagine your organization’s culture.
Author Biographies
Talya N. Bauer (PhD, Purdue University) is an award-winning teacher and was awarded the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology Distinguished Teacher Career Achievement Award. She conducts research about relationships at work. More specifically, she works in the areas of recruitment and selection and new employee onboarding which have resulted in dozens of research grants, journal publications, and book chapters. She has been studying the onboarding process for over 20 years and she has acted as a consultant for dozens of government, Fortune 1,000, and start-up organizations. Her work has been covered in the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, USA Today, the Oregonian, Portland Business Journal, and Businessweek as well as appearing on NPR and KGW News. She has been a Visiting Professor in France, Spain, and most recently at Google Inc. She serves as the Program Director for the Onboarding Council for The Conference Board.
Berrin Erdogan (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Chicago) a faculty member at Portland State University. Prior to joining academia, she worked as a corporate trainer. She is a regular visiting faculty member at Athens Laboratory of Business Administration in Athens, Greece, and at Koc University in Istanbul, Turkey. Berrin’s research focuses on leadership and fit in the workplace. Specifically, she investigates how leaders motivate and retain talent through the nature of the relationships they develop with employees, and how fit and misfit in the form of over qualification can be managed in the workplace. She studied and built relationships with organizations in industries including retail, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, education, health care, and high tech. Her work in these organizations formed the basis of dozens of academic journal publications, book chapters, as well as two textbooks used in undergraduate and graduate courses around the world. Her studies have been cited in media outlets including Harvard Business Review, Bloomberg Businessweek, the New York Times, and the Oregonian.
This article is based on information included in Bauer, T. N., & Erdogan, B. (2010). Organizational Behavior (Version 1.1). Nyack,NY: Flat World Knowledge.
Best Practices in Strategic Human Resource Planning
What is human resources planning?
Human resources planning (or HRP) is aimed at ensuring the best use of personnel. That means making sure there are sufficient staff with the right skills in the right jobs at the right places performing their jobs when needed.
It’s easy to see there are lots of possible points of failure in any HR system: lack of fit between employees and jobs, too few workers, the wrong mix of skills…
On the most basic level, human resource planning is supposed to prevent those issues. What elevates HRP from maintenance to a strategic process is taking a proactive (rather than a reactive) approach.
In that context, it’s aimed at identifying and aligning the human resources needed to achieve business objectives. At its best, strategic human resource planning can not only help meet business goals, but also provide a competitive advantage.
Strategic Human Resource Planning Process in 5 Simple Steps
1. Determine Business Objectives
First and foremost, you need to know what you’re setting out to accomplish. Coming to a consensus with key stakeholders will pave the path to HR success.
Does your organization need to cut the costs of turnover? Increase worker productivity? Boost net profits? Everything that follows hinges on concretely defining your goals at this stage.
2. Survey Available Human Resources
Analyzing current labor supply can help reveal how it might be better allocated to meet business goals. That requires taking inventory of not just people, but also skills, competencies and experience.
This survey will likely need to go beyond internal personnel. You may need to consider external resources (like potential new hires, temps or vendors) and competition in the labor market. Looking outside the organization and towards future needs helps prioritize HR efforts where they’ll be most effective.
3. Use Gap Analysis to Identify Areas of Need
“Gap analysis” focuses on the differences between the business in its current state and where it needs to go. The prior steps will do a lot to reveal these discrepancies, but it’s important to make them explicit and map out exactly where they are in the organization.
Focusing on areas with the biggest disconnect between current and needed human resources can help you find areas where investment will be most beneficial.
4. Design and Launch Programs
HR programs are not a one-size-fits-all solution. Depending on the distinctive goals, needs and features of your organization, some may be much more relevant and effective than others.
They’re generally lumped into recruitment, engagement, performance management, and retention strategies. Which of these you choose to pursue and how to go about implementing them is truly contingent upon your unique situation.
5. Measure, Monitor and Evaluate Programs
It’s impossible to determine program success without measurement, monitoring and evaluation. Making sure there’s a measurement and monitoring strategy in place is critical. Otherwise, you’re flying blind.
Properly measuring and evaluating programs will further help meet business objectives by revealing where resources yield the best investment – and what other programs still need work.
Do you have regular HR planning sessions? What goals do you set and what programs do you use to meet them? Let us know in the comments below!
Beyond Compensation: What Really Drives Employee Engagement
It takes more than financial compensation to drive genuine employee engagement.
A study funded by the Federal Reserve Bank drew surprising conclusions about the effect of employee incentive programs.
It found that while offering larger rewards boosted performance for manual labor, it actually led to poorer performance when even basic cognitive tasks were involved. Replicating the experiment in India yielded the same results.
Performance, then, seems to be linked to something other than pay.
Are Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose Better Drivers of Employee Engagement?
In a compelling TED talk, author Daniel Pink uses these findings to ground a reevaluation of what really motivates employees.
Pink deemphasizes compensation’s role in motivating workers. He contends that “autonomy, mastery and purpose” are far better performance drivers than money is.
All of these contribute heavily to employee engagement:
- License to manage projects and make decisions independently
- Opportunities to face challenging problems and learn or hone skills
- Feelings of purpose, valuation and self-efficacy
But are they really better than simply paying people more? That assertion seems to fly in the face of basic market principles. It also seems to contradict to a 2008 SHRM survey that found job security, pay and benefits to be the three most important aspects of job satisfaction.
However, it does help us see the distinction between satisfaction and engagement. Money is very useful for recruiting, retaining and satisfying employees, but it’s not the best way to keep them engaged.
7 Drivers of Employee Engagement Pink’s Model Leaves Out
Independent research by Kenexa spanning 19 countries found seven additional factors that consistently correlated with high levels of employee engagement:
- Leadership communicates an inspiring vision
- Confidence in the organization’s future
- Promising future for one’s self
- Active support of work-life balance
- Corporate social responsibility efforts
- Managers make quality and improvement top priorities
- Safety is a priority
These factors illustrate that while job complexity, independence and valuation are important for employee engagement, they are only part of the picture.
What motivates you? Which of these have inspired or dulled your engagement? I’ve certainly experienced at least half of these factors for better and for worse. Let me know in the comments below!
What Gets Measured Gets Done: 5 Proven Performance Management Strategies
Have you ever been subjected to the dreaded "annual performance review" or had a "one-on-one" feedback session with your manager? These basic, ubiquitous practices are the limited extent of most workers' familiarity with performance management strategies.
They're also probably some of the least effective.
That's because reviews and feedback are often removed from the performance management process as a whole. The result is that they tend to be oriented towards day-to-day responsibilities rather than meaningful, long-term goals.
"What Gets Measured Gets Done"
On the broadest level, performance management is a system for setting and achieving long-term organizational goals.
Those goals can be earning more revenue, reducing costs, improving service delivery, increasing employee retention, or anything that serves the organization's mission. No matter what goals an organization has, the key is to first clearly define them and then to measure them.
Setting objectives provides direction. Measuring them creates accountability. Together, these allow for better alignment of resources, inspire employee engagement and commitment, and directly impact organizational outcomes.
Performance Management is a Process
Performance management is more than just academic HR-speak for "setting business goals and managing your employees." It's actually a very practical, evidence-based approach that can help organizations meet their strategic goals.
Performance management strategies are most effective when they're integrated into a systemic, on-going process. That keeps them relevant, timely, and consistent.
It also requires revisiting everything from goal setting and measurements to actual employee performance and improvement on at least a quarterly basis.
Fortunately, we've systematized key performance management strategies so you can readily reiterate them to meet your goals with increasing efficiency.
5 Proven Performance Management Strategies
1. Define and prioritize goals. Take the broad view and consider the full array of business drivers; then, emphasize the most important to your organization's long-term success. Involving employees in this process can increase employee commitment by building trust through transparency and earning buy-in through consensus.
2. Develop a measurement strategy. This involves identifying relevant metrics that will allow you to measure the achievement of long-term objectives. Typically, those metrics get honed down to a set (or several sets) of key performance indicators (KPIs) as well as shorter-term milestones that contribute to their achievement.
3. Tie each position to goals and metrics. Make sure you clearly communicate how each employee contributes to organizational success. That ensures that they understand their role and value in the organization, enhancing engagement and feelings of self-efficacy.
4. Monitor employee performance. Use the assigned KPIs to monitor and assess employee performance. Sticking to the same metrics over time offers consistency, fairness, and more meaningful evaluations.
5. Provide regular opportunities for feedback. This goes both ways. Employees need to receive constructive feedback to improve their performance. They also need to be able to give feedback to managers to improve organizational efficiency and build more effective relationships.
While you might dismiss these performance management strategies as only applicable to large organizations with dedicated HR departments, they're actually even more important for small ones.
Limited resources and budget need to go further to meet goals, maintain operations and grow an organization. Don't hold off - performance management is well worth the investment.
Does your organization have built-in performance management systems? How do you feel about the feedback you get from managers? Is it meaningful and inspiring? Or inaccurate and dread-inducing? Let us know in the comments below! We can help.
5 Talent Development Strategies to Enhance Long-Term Employee Engagement and Commitment
While effective job design and talent acquisition strategies can encourage employee engagement for new hires, what can you do with existing employees?
If you don't integrate employee engagement considerations into your on-going talent management process, you risk eroding employees' interest and commitment over time.
Improving long-term outcomes requires investing in talent development. A well-executed talent development strategy can maximize person-job fit, increase job satisfaction and engagement, and secure enduring employee commitment.
Since talent development is essentially continuous, it provides perhaps the best single avenue for fostering employee engagement. The benefits of employee engagement should be enough to convince any executive to invest in these critical talent development strategies.
1. Talent Development Starts on Day One
Training and development begins with the onboarding process.
Orientation is often the first substantive touch point for new hires. It provides a great opportunity for getting employees acquainted with the organization - its structure, culture, values, policies, and so on.
This is equally an opportunity for fostering employee engagement and commitment by explaining how their position contributes to the organization's overall mission and business goals.
2. Invest in Training to Encourage Long-Term Commitment
Training adds value to employees and to your organization. Aside from the benefits of more skilled labor, it also fosters long-term employee engagement and commitment.
Employees who receive training get the satisfaction of mastering new skills and increasing their employability. Training demonstrates your organization's commitment to employees, makes them feel valued, and fosters reciprocal commitment.
3. Use Performance Reviews to Optimize Job-Person Fit
Regular performance reviews can help optimize job-person fit. Reviews can help reveal an employee's strengths and weaknesses. They are also a chance to get to know what that person enjoys about their job and learn about their long-term aspirations.
Using that information to tailor job responsibilities and promote people into suitable positions enhances fit, engagement, commitment, and business outcomes.
4. Set challenging Goals to Keep Employees Engaged
Feedback sessions also provide an opportunity to link employees' job objectives to organizational objectives. Doing so helps employees keep broader objectives in mind, shows that you recognize their value, and encourage commitment.
Including employees in the goal-setting process is a great way to enlighten commitment and engagement. When employees have input, they're more likely to identify with and actively work towards organizational goals.
5. Learn to Recognize and Rely on Experience
Experienced employees are your most valuable assets. Not only do they have useful skills, they can also function autonomously, manage projects, and train other employees.
Learning to recognize, acknowledge, and rely on their expertise boosts their feelings of value and self-efficacy.
It also increases organizational efficiency. Some workers know what they do better than their managers. Leverage that. Give them more autonomy and allow them to oversee projects.
If they intend to leave or retire at some point, make sure they pass on their deep knowledge to others so you don't lose the benefits of their expertise.
What talent development strategies does your organization use to keep employees engaged and committed? Are you able to keep employees around and active in the long-term? Let us know in the comments below!