BCA

How your employees can make—or break—a brand relationship

By Roland Smith

With today’s stale job market limiting employees’ mobility, executives have a unique opportunity to boost the motivation and productivity of their top talent without spending lots of money. Unfortunately, many companies are missing the mark – especially when it comes to managing their emerging leaders, or “high potentials.” Here are the five biggest mistakes companies are making with high-potential talent:

.1. Ignoring the view from the pipeline. This is the first big mistake – and it fuels the others. Talent managers and executives tend to discuss the leadership pipeline as if it is theirs to define and control. But talented people inside the leadership pipeline bring their perspectives and experiences to the process. Do you know what they think? Have you asked what they want? Are expectations on both sides understood? Is your relationship with your talent transactional or a mutual and reciprocal relationship?

High-potential talent can always go somewhere else. Center for Creative Leadership research shows that even though 95 percent of high potentials say they are committed to their organizations, 21 percent are still actively looking for another job. In a down economy, they are weighing trade-offs. On the plus side: staying in their current role means greater responsibility, highly visible assignments, good money in a recession. On the negative side: brutal hours, no support from senior team, uncertainty as to what’s next. If you could move “senior team support” to the pro column, for example, you’ve boosted your chances of retaining a valued employee.

2. Treating all high potentials the same. If you aren’t considering the view from the pipeline, chances are you have a one-size-fits-all approach to dealing with top talent. High potentials expect (and usually get) greater visibility and access to senior managers, special assignments and training, and greater responsibility. But they also want some say in how these perks and assignments play out. If relocating every few years is the primary way for high potentials to increase their value, you automatically lose when a manager needs to stay put for a spouse’s career or family commitments. Don’t wait to find this out during an exit interview. Have “stay conversations” with your top talent before it’s too late.

3. Leaving high-potentials on their own. It’s a mistake to give high potentials free rein to direct their careers. While they want to influence their direction, they are also more committed and engaged when they have a clear career path. High potentials want to know what the next steps are in terms of development, experience and movement. Plus, companies need to be sure the talent they have is the talent they need and that it’s deployed well. You need to intervene, redirect or coach if a high potential is staying in a position too long, not building needed skills, or is in danger of derailing (and yes, high potentials can derail).

4. Not using high-potentials to develop others. While high potentials receive increased opportunities and investment, they are also powerful talent developers in the organization. They have insight and experience needed for developing the next layer of high potentials as well as the larger talent pool. To multiply the impact of your top talent, train them to coach others and have effective developmental conversations. You should not only hold them accountable for doing it, you should reward them as well.

5. Being unclear about high-potential status. Using your high potentials well means knowing who they are – and ensuring they know it, too. Organizations that do not formally identify their top talent (or keep it under wraps) are undermining their performance – and run the risk of losing valuable people. CCL research found that formal identification as a high potential is important to 77 percent of managers. Not being formally identified as a high potential keeps the door open for doubt, lessens engagement and weakens commitment. Only 14 percent of formally identified high potentials are seeking other employment. That figure jumps to 33 percent for employees who are informally identified as high potentials.

Loyalty may be dead – for both employers and employees. The best strategy for growing and maintaining top talent in today’s workplace is to understand it’s all about mutuality and reciprocity. When you think about your talent from their point of view, the relationship becomes less transactional – and organizations and high potentials will benefit.

Printed with permission of Center for Creative Leadership

About the Author
Roland Smith is a senior faculty member at the Center for Creative Leadership, a Greensboro, N.C.-based provider of leadership education to companies, government agencies, nonprofits and educational institutions.

 By John Riley

 After months of a wrenching economy, the generally accepted philosophy is that employees have hunkered down and  put any notions of changing jobs on the back burner, at least until economic conditions improve. A study by Salary.Com, a payroll and compensation consulting firm, earlier this year reveals exactly the opposite is true.

 The study reports 80% of employers believe it will be a few months before employees start a job search, however 65% of the employees have already started searching passively or actively and say they will be intensifying their efforts.  Over 7,000 employees and 363 human relations professionals were covered by the survey.

 According to Nicholas Camelio, senior vice president, Salary.com, “Employers were out of touch with their employee’s satisfaction levels and were over estimating the tough economic environment as a deterrent to job seeking. Consequently, many employers have not placed enough emphasis on important retention strategies. This could lead to their best employees defecting during the next year, just when this talent will be most needed to help turn  businesses around.”

 When employees were asked about various industries, financial services, construction and retail were at the top of the list of extremely dissatisfied employees.  The Internet, education/government, non-profit and software and networking came out on top with extremely satisfied employees.

 In another study, this one by Career Systems International  in 2005, over 7,400 employees from diverse industries were asked about things available in organizations that engendered commitment and a willingness to stay.  The most influential factors:

1)      exciting work/challenge(48.4%)                                       

2)      career growth/learning (42.6%)

3)       relationships/working with great people (41.8%)

4)       fair pay (31.8).

With the economic and employment uncertainty, it is no longer easy to plan a career path. As a result, employees, especially the top performers, may rely on mobility as the solution to increased compensation and a better title. Recognizing the situation, many employers are starting to focus on professional growth and skill development as retention tools.

 However, that may not be enough and policies may be incorrectly implemented.  For example, an employer may interpret the employees’ desire for exciting work/challenge as an opportunity for management to reassign a laid off worker’s responsibilities to the employee. For management, it is a logical step in several to help the business survive.

 Then the employee learns that the work isn’t sufficiently different from what he is already doing and neither his compensation nor his title will be changed. So rather than motivate the employee, the transfer of responsibilities becomes a millstone.

 Employee retention is the most critical element in the future success of the business and a strategy to survive should not conflict with a strategy to retain the company’s most important asset. It’s not too soon to revisit your strategies for the future and make sure employee retention is not only on your list, but at the top.

By John Riley

 When an employee raises this issue in a performance review, it’s usually not a surprise because the boss  is thinking the same thing about her career. But, for both the timing isn’t right. Faced with an uncertain economy, executives at companies  large and small have reduced staff and heaped more responsibilities on surviving managers at all levels, frequently without compensating them financially or with a new title. In the process, managers seek to cope by working longer and harder.

 However, there is a better way.  Deliver a performance the executive management  can’t ignore.

When that happens, you will break out of the pack and be on the fast track to promotion.

 What I am suggesting is that you concentrate on mastering four skills: organization and planning, communications, managing people and problem solving.  Working within the company culture and on work teams are two high profile venues management uses to evaluate managers effectiveness. So that’s where you need to showcase your skills. While other skills are important too, they aren’t nearly as likely to get you promoted as mastering these four.

 Company culture is an amalgam of many things. Most often, it is strongly reflective of the CEO and his or her vision and values. Cultural habits and norms are powerful reinforcements of the status quo so it is vitally important that you aware of and understand the culture.  That’s because, at one time or another , you will want to execute an idea or project and find out some aspect or element of the culture has become a barrier to your success.  To be effective, you have to know how to change or get around that barrier.

 Working on teams, particularly as team lead, demands great people skills. And here I would suggest you insist on receiving some training before taking on a team lead position. Conflict resolution is one ingredient of that training that is essential.  As team lead, there will be negotiation and discussion upwards, sideways and downward in the organizational chain which will give you the opportunity to show how to get things done through others among other things.

 Organization and planning is ever present in any manager’s job.  One of the fundamental precepts managers need to keep in mind is, what got our company here today, isn’t what will get us where we want to be in the future.  You have to overcome the fact that It’s always more comfortable to do what you’ve been doing than to change.

 Managers spend over 70% of their time communicating.  Unfortunately, the message we usually  hear is completely different than the one that was sent.  According to recent studies, approximately 90% of our understanding of personal communication comes from non-verbal things  such as body language. However, the biggest problem in communicating  is poor listening skills; active listening is considered a learned behavior.

 Companies that have success year after year characteristically have core values that remain fixed. These values play a vital role in managing people so know them well.  Motivating employees helps maintain and exceed performance levels. Whether by incentive programs or introducing new and more difficult tasks, the manager’s role is to make it happen.

 Problem solving and making decisions is at the core of a manager’s responsibilities.  Prioritize your problems first. You don’t want to react to a problem, you want to understand it. Then, if it’s a complex problem, break it down into parts and begin to deal with it one part at a time.  There are excellent analytical tools to help and you should know what they are.  If it’s a decision your boss has to make, take it to him, but with your recommendations on what should be done.  

 There are a variety of ways to master the four skills, i.e. books, community college courses, company training programs, or watching how other managers have progressed up the promotion ladder. Whatever avenue you choose, start now and then you can tell your boss, “Promote Me! I’m ready.”