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| |
articles & white papers on
Talent Retention Team
Building
& Turnover
http://www.hospitalitynet.org
Hospitality Net
By John Hendrie
The
Grass Is Always Greener – Good Retention Strategies Can
Break The Myth
There have been a
slew of articles recently about the crisis of Human Capital. Advisory Boards,
Associations, pundits all decry the turnover figures within Hospitality (50%),
point to the changing and contracting labor pool, note the Unions cranking up
enlistment activities, and government on the local, state and national stage
legislating “living” wage and benefits.
Much has been touted
about Retention Strategies, Cost Containment and Talent Management. Some
companies are at the forefront of change and enlightenment; most are not,
accepting the “revolving door” of staff as the cost of doing business. Will this
picture change? Probably not, for the subject has a redundancy and a long
history. When business is good and growth is booming, few really ever take a
long, strategic look. Turnover at an unearthly rate takes place during upturn as
well as downturn. Sadly, it is part of our Hospitality psyche.
But, to affect
change, one needs to consider three factors, which should dictate a retention
strategy:
-
The cost of Turnover
-
The Labor Pool realities
-
What your Brand represents
THE COST OF TURNOVER
| Time is money, and your costs accelerate, based upon the level of the open
position and the size of the organization. Let’s just start with the basics. For
recruitment, there is the cost of advertising to begin an applicant flow. The
selection process includes culling through applications, several “cuts” to
decide who will be interviewed, often two to four interviews for the hire
decision, processing time, new hire orientation, and then sufficient on the job
training (which is also down time for the trainer and the operation). The higher
up in the organization the vacancy is, the greater the cost for the process. For
the sake of this example, let’s use $300 for entry level, $2,500 for
Salaried/Middle Management, and $10,000 for Senior/Executive Management. Do the
math on your own operation, appreciating that the above costing assumption is
very conservative. That is money walking out the door!
LABOR POOL REALITIES
| Consider first the Generational Differences. There are the Matures
(1909-1945), who used to believe in “cradle to grave” employment, now totally
disillusioned. Then the Boomers (1946-1964), beaten up by the marketplace,
transitioned, downsized, darkly skeptical. Next, the Generation X’ers
(1965-1978), who want a balance in their lives, crave good communications, and
approach work like 1099’ers. Lastly, there are the Millenials (1979-1988), who
want it their way, now. The “onion” layers are just beginning, for a hard look
at the further demographics show, for the bulk of the Hospitality Workforce, a
heavily female population, mostly immigrant with different cultures and
languages, less educated, feeling quite disenfranchised. What a tough market
from which to draw!
WHAT YOUR BRAND
REPRESENTS | Well, we are in the Experience Era, and we know that our Guests and
patrons look for value, uniqueness, high level service, a quality product and
exceptional delivery. Our Brand is our story, and we promote ourselves like
crazy to entice that wary Consumer. And, we depend upon our Ambassadors, our
worthy staff, to make the Experience memorable. They represent our interests and
dictate our success. But, wait a moment, there is a disconnect. Fifty percent of
our people are leaving, their departure is costing us money, and the replacement
effort is ever more challenging. If this does not move Hospitality Businesses to
establish a forthright Retention Strategy for 2006 and beyond, we deserve the
reputations we invite and the devaluation of our product and service. Most
bemoan the obvious; few take the initiative. But, for those who see the
situation as critical, consider some of the following components for a
successful Retention Approach.
RETENTION STRATEGY |
“A fair days work…” This simple phrase has immense implications. To perform, our
employees need the tools, the direction, the encouragement, and the environment
in which to achieve.
-
Why are people leaving?
Your Human Resources offices should be
doing Exit Interviews. The information gleaned from these exercises often
demonstrates problems and reasons with an easy fix apparent.
-
What do your current employees feel
about the organization?
Employee Surveys do surface information about the organization and items which
are actionable. Do not survey if you are not prepared to address the issues.
-
Communication.
Your workforce is diverse, and your communication systems and mechanisms must
recognize the audience.
-
Work environment.
A quick look at your employee locker room is often indicative the value you
place on the staff. Your employees want and deserve respect, involvement and
particularly leadership.
-
Training and Development. We must
provide the necessary tools to perform the current job and opportunity to
improve the skill set and ability to move onward in the organization.
“…for a fair days pay”.
-
Retention is impacted by reward,
and this starts with a meaningful compensation package, both wage/salary and
benefits. You get what you pay for! Additionally, there is a requirement for
recognizing and rewarding performance excellence.
CONCLUSION
This is not rocket
science or even Best Practices – this is just common sense. The answers have
been around for generations, however, the impetus, always hovering, was seldom
grasped. Your employees are just as discerning as your Guests. We have been
smacking crocodiles, and the swamp becomes deeper, murkier and more deadly. The
numbers do not lie; matter of fact, a good Retention Strategy is more than
supported by the money saved on Turnover. We all tend to look over that fence,
admire the landscaping and the greener grass we assume is the better
alternative. Tend to your own yard properly, and you can put the neighborhood to
shame!
The author believes that Remarkable Hospitality is the Portal to the Guest
Experience. You are welcome to visit the web site and sign-up for the Newsletter
at:
www.hospitalityperformance.com
http://www.saipantribune.com
Saipan Tribune - West Orange,NJ,USA
By Rik and Janel Villegas
October 13, 2005
The high price
of turnover
So you lost another employee. She found a better job offer somewhere else and
you couldn't hang onto her. Oh well, no one's irreplaceable and there are plenty
of other people looking for a job-right?
This attitude is easy to adopt when people are looked at as a commodity or a
replaceable resource. In fact, this attitude is fostered by the name we give to
the department that usually takes care of people issues. You know, the "human
resource" department. If people are not valued for their worth, productivity,
creativity, or other contribution they make to the organization, they will leave
to work for a place that does value them. In the eight years Rik has been at the
college, he has seen a 160-percent turnover in his department; which averages
about 20 percent per year. The positions are not easy to fill, even though the
starting salary is higher than average. Most of them did find higher paying
jobs; however, Rik's informal exit interview revealed that the increased pay was
rarely the issue for wanting to leave. In fact, it's possible that the turnover
rate could have been less than 10 percent per year if certain elements would
have been in place.
Give yourself this quick test: How many of the following five questions would
you give a "yes" response?
Is your turnover greater than 20 percent per year? Have you had a large number
of terminations for just cause in the last twelve months? Are employees
complaining about having to train new employees? Do you experience excessive
accuracy, quality, or customer service problems? Did you exceed your recruiting
advertising budget? If you answered "yes" to more than two of the questions, you
may be suffering from employee retention problems, which manifests itself
through low productivity, low morale, high tardiness, and high turnover of both
employees and customers. Customer loyalty expert Frederick Reichheld concludes:
"[The] fact is that employee retention is key to customer retention." So, when
employee turnover increases, a company's customer defection rate will likely
rise.
Towers Perrin, a human resources research and consulting firm, states:
"Companies that have practices that create or maintain a highly loyal workforce
have superior customer retention."
High-quality employees that remain with the company tend to produce high-quality
products and services that attract high-quality customers. This becomes a value
cycle where the relationship between the three elements continues to create
greater value. If any one of these fails, the other two will suffer as well. In
the early 90s, Marriott Hotel Corp. attempted to measure the correlation between
employee turnover and customer retention. They used conservative numbers, and
calculated that if they avoided a 10-percent reduction in staff turnover in two
of its divisions, the savings from just rehiring costs would yield profits
greater than the operating profits of both of the divisions they considered.
How can you calculate turnover costs? J. Douglas Phillips did some research and
he believes that all the costs associated with turnover are rarely considered.
Besides the typical costs associated with turnover, such as advertising, hiring,
and training; the other costs include things like inefficiency of incoming
personnel, inefficiency of coworkers closely associated with incoming employees,
relocation costs, and costs associated with processing the human and non-human
resources.
In one of Phillips' studies, costs averaged 150 percent of the annual wages for
the position being filled, and in another study about eight years later, costs
were 75 percent of the annual wages for the position. Phillips estimates that
costs may run as low as 50 percent of wages for less skilled, hourly workers,
and as high as 200 percent of annual wages at the other extreme. These costs
completely ignore the cost of poor customer service delivered to the customer
because the new or inexperienced employees are generally not as good at serving
customers as those with years of experience. Poor service may translate into
lower satisfaction and return visits. Taco Bell discovered that its stores with
the lowest turnover rates have sales that are 100 percent higher and profits 50
percent greater than Taco Bells with higher turnover rates.
The emotional and financial costs of turnover are high. Service is interrupted,
training costs are lost, projects are put on hold, competitive information may
walk out the door, and customers may switch their patronage to where former
employees are now working. Whatever your actual cost of turnover, the bottom
line is that turnover is significantly more expensive than you may realize. Any
effort to reduce turnover, and keep good employees will be money well spent.
Eliminating turnover completely is not possible, but keeping it as low as
possible is achievable and important. Southwest Airlines has one of the lowest
turnover rates in the airline industry, about 4.5 percent per year. They are
also the only U.S. airline that has shown a profit every year since 1973. In
addition, they do not have a human resource department. Instead, they call it
their People Department.
(Rik is a business instructor at NMC and Janel is the owner of Positively
Outrageous Results. They can be contacted at: biz_results@yahoo.com
http://www.theglobeandmail.com
By VIRGINIA GALT
September 10, 2005
WORKPLACE REPORTER
"Shock": The
No. 1 reason people leave their jobs
Unexpected outside events are more
often the spark that causes staff turnover, rather than job dissatisfaction,
VIRGINIA GALT finds.
Earlier this year, David
Ain was happily employed as vice-president of corporate development at Indigo
Books & Music Inc.
"It was a phenomenally
exciting space, I'd been given a series of intriguing strategic roles," he says.
Then, out of the blue, he was approached to join the Toronto
practice of executive recruitment firm Egon Zehnder International. Until that
moment, Mr. Ain says, such a career switch had never occurred to him. "I was
monogamous . . . but they had me on hello."
Mr. Ain had worked in
a series of consulting and management roles, but never as an executive
recruiter. So the offer to join Egon Zehnder came as a shock, "a good shock" --
or, what Georgetown University described in a study this week as one of those
"unsolicited-job-offer shocks."
Mr. Ain says the
opportunity to work as an executive recruiter, "getting high-quality people into
strategic roles," combines all the elements of planning and team building that
he loved in his previous positions with Indigo and, prior to that, as an
executive in the warehousing business and a Toronto-based consultant with Boston
Consulting Group.
He was not unhappy, he
says, "but no other offer could compete."
Indeed, more good
people leave their jobs because of shocks -- either positive or negative ones --
than because of dissatisfaction with their employers, Georgetown University
professor Brooks Holtom says in a study published in the United States this week
in the fall issue of Human Resource Management Journal.
"Contrary to
conventional wisdom, accumulated job dissatisfaction is not the immediate cause
of most voluntary turnover. Job dissatisfaction is a factor, but to focus on it
as the dominant cause of most turnover is incomplete and limited," Prof. Holtom
writes.
"Instead . . . turnover is
often triggered by a precipitating event (for example a fight with the boss or
an unexpected job offer) that we call a 'shock' to the system."
Talented employees
are experiencing more of those positive jolts these days in the current robust
hiring climate, says Ralph Shedletsky, managing director of Toronto-based career
consulting firm Knightsbridge GSW.
"When a recruiter
calls and the market is more robust, a whole bunch of factors play in: If I can
earn more money, why not? If the environment is going to be better, for sure,"
Mr. Shedletsky says.
Prof. Holtom says
that, as employees feel more confident about leaving, employers will have to
fight harder to keep them. But it is not always competing job offers that have
them heading for the doors, he says. Other events also precipitate
"shock-induced turnover" -- for instance, a spouse is transferred, an
application to adopt a child comes through, an elderly parent falls ill, or a
company is in the midst of a merger or acquisition that leaves employees
uncertain about their futures, Prof. Holtom says.
Toronto-based
industrial psychologist Guy Beaudin says there is often little an employer can
do once a valued worker is seriously considering another job offer. If it has
gone that far, "there is something that has broken in the psychological contract
between the employer and the employee," he says.
From a career
management standpoint, he says, employees should try to establish the type of
relationship in which they can have a steady dialogue with their employers about
what is working and what could be working better for them. A strong relationship
between employees and managers also makes it easier to manage those external
shocks that come along.
"If you don't have
that kind of relationship, it's very difficult to have an honest discussion when
these shocks occur and you have 24 hours, 48 hours, a week or two to make up
your mind," says Dr. Beaudin of RHR International, a firm of organizational
psychologists.
In the current job market,
good employees have more leverage and should realize they may be able to
negotiate accommodations with their employers rather than quit a job they enjoy,
Prof. Holtom says.
For instance,
employees with unexpectedly heavy child care or parent care responsibilities
might be able to negotiate more flexible hours, he says. Employees whose spouses
have been transferred might be able to retain their jobs by telecommuting. Those
whose jobs are affected by a merger or takeover are within their rights to ask
where they will fit into the restructured organization. And employees who have
received a competing offer might be able to negotiate a counteroffer to make
them stay, he says.
"The primary
prescription for managers," he says, "would be to stay close enough to their
employees so that when a shock like the spouse being transferred comes up,
hopefully the organization could intervene positively."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com
September 7, 2005
Nearly third of
Canadian workers see job loss ahead
Despite a year of
solid job growth and lower unemployment, 30 per cent of Canadian workers expect
to lose their jobs over the next couple of years, according to the Canadian
Labour Congress's Is Your Work Working for You? report card.
The poll of unionized
workers found that, while unemployment is at its lowest level since 2000, the
number of people insecure about their jobs is up 8 per cent from last year. And
18 per cent of workers say that their income does not meet their basic needs.
One of the main
factors behind the uncertainty is the trend toward contract work, the poll
found. Two-thirds of all jobs created this year have come in the form of
temporary contracts, part-time work or self-employment -- the categories that
tend to have the most precarious work and low income.
http://www.management-issues.com
Management-Issues -
London,UK
by
Nic Paton
16 May 2005
Switch
jobs now before it's too late, job hunters warned
Workers thinking of
changing jobs would be well advised to do so now, as the latest snapshot of the
UK recruitment market predicts tougher times ahead. The quarterly Labour Market
Outlook by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has found that
while the immediate jobs outlook remains bright, almost half of UK employers
expect to be employing fewer people this time next year.
The finding is just
the latest in a raft of economic forecasts predicting tougher times ahead. Last
week, the Recruitment and Employment Confederation warned that April had been
one of the worst months for British Industry in recent years, with the
manufacturing sector struggling with largest drop in staffing levels for two
years.
And earlier in May,
Dutch bank ABN Amro warned that half a million jobs will be lost in over the
next three years as Britain is squeezed by a combination of crumbing consumer
spending, falling house prices and excessive household debt. The CIPD's
survey has found that UK employers as a whole have become much more pessimistic
about employment prospects.
The negative balance
of employers expecting to employ more staff by spring 2006 over those expecting
to employ fewer (-23 per cent), is at odds with all four previous CIPD quarterly
surveys, which have all shown a positive balance of employers expecting to
employ more staff, it added. The reversal is particularly marked in the public
sector – a sector where recruitment has been relatively buoyant in recent years.
CIPD chief economist
John Philpott said: "Given the recent spate of job cut announcements and the
pre-election emphasis on cutting public sector waste, it is perhaps not
surprising that recruitment confidence has dropped. "But with the
labour-intensive, consumer services sector experiencing tougher times, and with
public sector employers looking to make efficiency savings, the survey might be
signalling more than an end of the jobs boom," he added.
The survey has also
revealed that short-term jobs market pressures remain, with UK organisations
actively recruiting from all corners of the globe to fill skills shortages. More
than a quarter of UK organisations planned to recruit migrant workers, with one
in three public sector organisations intending to do so. UK organisations were
recruiting migrant workers for their skills and experience and not for
cost-cutting reasons, the CIPD added.
Employers appeared
particularly keen to recruit from the new European Union accession countries,
with around one in five UK organisations planning to do so. As many as 14 per
cent of employers planned to recruit from outside the EU and Commonwealth.
Philpott said: "The vast majority of UK organisations are recruiting migrant
workers to obtain skills and experience in short supply, not to get staff on the
cheap.
"Migration is
helping to prevent wage inflation – as our survey finds most employers are
expecting pay pressures to remain subdued. It is not however generally being
used to cut pay rates." The issue is particularly topical ahead of tomorrow's
[Tuesday's] Queen's Speech, in which the Government is expected to include an
Immigration and Asylum Bill.
http://www.optimizemag.com
Business Stragegy
& Execution for CIOs
February 2005, Issue 40
by Leigh Branham
Common reasons why staff retention efforts fail
After almost five years of
reduced expectations, it looks like the job market is bouncing back for IT
professionals. More companies say they'll add staff in 2005, and many IT
departments are advertising openings that they were reluctant to fill just a few
months ago. Having noticed this trend, many companies are recalling the
mid-1990s when the first rumblings of the Great War for Talent started. Worried
that we may be on the cusp of a major labor shortage, some IT leaders and their
human-resources counterparts are discussing employee-retention plans for the new
year, in the hopes of keeping employees from jumping ship for newly created and
greener opportunities.
An
informal study of failed retention initiatives can help companies shape
effective programs. Here are the most common reasons that corporate retention
initiatives fail:
As the IT job
market bounces back, three issues warrant attention.
After almost five years of reduced expectations, it looks like
the job market is bouncing back for IT professionals. More companies say they'll
add staff in 2005, and many IT departments are advertising openings that they
were reluctant to fill just a few months ago.
Having noticed
this trend, many companies are recalling the mid-1990s when the first rumblings
of the Great War for Talent started. Worried that we may be on the cusp of a
major labor shortage, some IT leaders and their human-resources counterparts are
discussing employee-retention plans for the new year, in the hopes of keeping
employees from jumping ship for newly created and greener opportunities.
An informal study
of failed retention initiatives can help companies shape effective programs.
Here are the most common reasons that corporate retention initiatives fail:
Too much emphasis on pay, benefits, and perks: Pay is as
important to IT professionals as to professionals in other fields. Yet, the
Saratoga Institute, which compiles exit-interview results, among other staffing
information, reports that 88% of employees voluntarily leave their jobs for
other reasons, such as misalignment of mutual expectations, person-job mismatch,
insufficient coaching and feedback, perception of poor career-advancement
prospects, work-life imbalance, and both distrust toward and low confidence in
senior leadership. Still, most managers refuse to acknowledge the "push"
factors, preferring to see the "pull" factor of more money as the prime
motivator.
The truth is,
both push and pull factors come into play, but companies make a big mistake by
hanging their employee-retention strategies solely on the easier-to-manipulate
tangible factors of more pay, better benefits, and flashier perks. It's not that
these factors are unimportant; they're very important. In fact, most employers
of choice typically offer better pay and benefits than their competitors. But
what sets them apart are positive, caring cultures where most managers know how
to provide the everyday coaching, feedback, and recognition that keep employees
engaged.
Blindly following other companies' best practices: One of the
disadvantages of reading Fortune magazine's "100 Best Places to Work in
America" list each year is that we become so enamored of great employers that we
think their best practices will work equally well for our companies. Sometimes
they do, but often they don't.
The best
employers thoughtfully match their cultures, benefits, and management practices
to the needs and desires of their workers. FedEx gears its workplace to the
short-term work-experience needs of younger part-timers, while American Express
focuses on long-term career development with a strong emphasis on gender equity.
SAS Institute has created an employment brand that says, "Come to work for us
and enjoy a campus-like environment, and have a life outside of work." This
software-development company is famous for its 3% turnover rate in an industry
where 20% is the norm.
Most companies
can't—or won't—invest the up-front dollars to do what SAS has done. The good
news is they don't have to. But by asking their particular workforce what they
most want and need, companies can usually provide what it takes to keep
employees—and keep them engaged.
The danger of
benchmarking against others in your industry is that it may keep you from
tailoring an innovative benefit or practice to meet the needs of the 20% of the
talent that's creating 80% of the value in your company or department.
Failure to train managers and hold them accountable: Studies of
employee turnover consistently show that the direct supervisor builds or
destroys employee commitment. Yet, how many companies select executives for
their ability to manage people, train them in effective people-management
skills, and then hold them accountable? You could probably count those on the
fingers of one hand.
Many employers of
choice carefully monitor their managers' voluntary-turnover rates, new-hire
retention rates, and employee-engagement survey scores, and reward those who
score highly with bigger bonuses. Managers with low scores get lower bonuses and
are called into meeting with their superiors, which may lead to more training,
coaching, reassignment, or termination.
In other words,
smart companies know that as the competition for talent heats up, they can no
longer afford the luxury of another bad manager.
April 27, 2005
By LEIGH BRANHAM
Why employees leave: Reasons 'hiding in plain sight'
There is a huge difference between what managers believe and what really
motivates workers to stay or quit, consultant and author LEIGH BRANHAM writes:
I
remember how shocked I was when I read about a survey cited in a 1998 Harvard
Management Update reporting that 89 per cent of managers believe employees leave
mainly for more money.
"How could this be?" I wondered. I had spent most of my working life coaching
individuals in search of new jobs, and I knew that they were looking for more
than a paycheque -- things like meaningful work, a caring manager and
acknowledgment of their contributions.
And
then I realized what was happening: These managers were simply accepting at face
value what their employees were saying in exit interviews. Why risk alienating a
former manager by describing how big a jerk he was when they might need a good
reference some day?
What employers frequently don't ask, and employees usually don't tell, is why
they start thinking about leaving in the first place. This is the truly
revealing question.
Why?
Research conducted by Dr. Thomas Lee at the University of Washington has shown
that 63 per cent of all turnovers begin with disillusioning events that cause
employees to start questioning their decisions to remain in an organization.
It
could be the day they realized that others in the same position were making more
money, or the moment they realized their manager was doing all the interesting
work instead of delegating it, or even something as simple as expecting an
office and getting a cubicle.
Whatever the root cause, there is usually a moment of "disengagement," which may
or may not be followed by an employee's immediate departure. Whether it takes
weeks, months or years for an employee to finally go, from that moment on, the
employee is less committed, less enthusiastic and less likely to be bringing a
top game to work.
Intrigued by the gaping disconnect between what managers believe and what really
motivates employees to stay or leave, I looked for authoritative data on the
true root causes of employee disengagement and turnover. That led me to the
Saratoga Institute, a consulting firm in San Jose, Calif., that kept a database
of 19,700 third-party exit surveys it had conducted between 1998 and 2003 with
departed employees from companies in 17 industries.
With
that material, I identified seven fundamental reasons employees disengage.
Most people say those seven reasons should be self-evident to anyone with common
sense. If that is so, then common sense is not as common as we think.
Good, caring managers would know that the real reasons for employee
disengagement and turnover are hiding in plain sight. The unfortunate truth is
that there are simply not enough good managers to go around.
And
so, here are the seven hidden reasons:
1. The
job or workplace was not what the employee expected
This
is the No. 1 reason for turnover in the first six months and happens because
employees have unrealistic expectations when they are hired, have misconceptions
about the work or are sometimes misled during the interview process.
Employees share the blame for not checking out a job or workplace before signing
on, but employers are also guilty. They are often in too big a hurry to hire, or
so eager to sign on a new recruit that they oversell the company, failing to
describe the everyday job realities or give prehire tours of the workplace. As a
result, new hires feel betrayed or quickly realize they don't fit the job or
work environment.
To
prevent this from becoming a common reason for turnover, smart employers should
implement the following practices:
During
hiring interviews, candidly and openly discuss the aspects of the job that new
hires sometimes find disappointing or distasteful. United Parcel Service Inc.,
for example, realized it was losing many newly hired part-time warehouse workers
who expected to move into a full-time position within a couple of years. The
fact was that relatively few part-timers ever did, and those that did typically
took six years. When the company finally pointed that out in interviews, its
turnover rate dropped to 6 per cent from 50 per cent.
Provide applicants with a realistic preview of the actual work. Wells Fargo
Bank, for example, has applicants watch a CD-ROM showing an angry customer
complaining about an account imbalance, then freezes the frame and has
applicants answer multiple-choice questions about how they would respond to the
customer. This tests customer service aptitude while also giving a prehire
glimpse into the challenges applicants will face in the daily work, which causes
many to drop out of the application process -- an outcome the bank considers
positive.
Increase hiring among temps, interns, part-timers, and contract workers who get
to try out the job and the workplace before committing to full-time positions.
2. The
mismatch between job and person
Again,
the main culprit is the pressure to hire in a hurry, which leads to grabbing
warm bodies just to fill slots.
Those
who hire often assume that because a job is at a lower level, anyone can do it,
forgetting that excellence can be found in all jobs and that it is worth taking
time to assess who has the right stuff to succeed, in every job in an
organization.
Another contributing issue is that managers assign and promote workers into the
wrong jobs, erroneously thinking that anyone can be trained to do anything, or
overlooking the fact that job satisfaction may be more important to an employee
than getting a promotion.
To
prevent and correct this problem:
-
Analyze the talents and personality factors of the best workers, then assess
applicants for those traits to get the best match.
- Use
behaviour-based interviewing to make applicants prove they have demonstrated
desired talents.
-
Have several employees interview serious candidates.
-
Check references without fail before making offers.
- If
you cannot find the right person, postpone hiring until you can.
3. Too
little coaching or feedback
Even
with all the recent emphasis on managers becoming better coaches, a survey of
1,149 people at 79 companies reported by Training magazine found that manager
feedback and coaching skills were consistently rated as mediocre. This is a
major reason Gen-Xers leave in their first year on the job.
Way
too many managers still practise once-a-year coaching at the annual performance
appraisal. Many old-school managers adopt a parent-to-child mindset with their
employees, sometimes leading to behaviour that motivates compliance but not
commitment. Other managers fear the confrontations that arise from giving
corrective coaching.
To
counter these problems, progressive organizations:
-
Train all managers in effective, adult-to-adult coaching techniques to replace
the ineffective parent-to-child model that frequently results in yelling,
screaming and threatening, making employees defensive and even more
disengaged.
-
Allow employees to anonymously complete surveys rating their managers as
coaches and people managers. Such upward evaluations help companies identify
managers who need training or coaching in people management skills, or need
reassignment into altogether different positions.
-
Carefully assess the people management aptitudes of all managerial candidates.
FedEx Corp., for example, conducts personality profiles of all internal
managerial candidates before promoting them. This helps weed out those with
excessive control needs, or more interest in pay and status than in being a
good manager.
4. Too
few advancement and growth opportunities
This
is the No. 1 frustration of younger top performers. When employees rate today's
managers on leadership competencies, the ability to develop direct reports ranks
near the bottom.
While
85 per cent of employees say career growth is a key reward, according to a
Towers-Perrin study, only 49 per cent say their organizations provide it.
Employers of choice provide growth and advancement by:
-
Providing self-assessment and take-charge-of-your-career workshops for
employees, supported by career coaching for managers.
-
Eliminating rigid time policies that restrict employees from advancing when
ready.
-
Communicating clearly to all managers that the organization, not the manager,
owns the talent, and that talent hoarding and blocking of internal employee
movement will not be tolerated.
-
Requiring that all managers have developmental discussions with all employees
at least yearly and conduct them separately from performance discussions.
5.
Feeling devalued and unrecognized
This
reason for leaving encompasses a world of sins.
These
include not being paid fairly, not receiving a simple thank you for a job well
done, being treated with disrespect, being ignored, being put down instead of
valued for being different, not getting the right tools and resources to do the
job, and having to work in an unacceptable work environment.
Great
employers realize that the desire for recognition is our deepest craving and do
the following:
-
Build a culture of recognition by training managers to sincerely acknowledge
employee contributions on a more frequent basis.
-
Solicit employee input face-to-face and through surveys, then listen and take
workers' ideas and perspectives seriously.
- Be
open with information that may have an impact on employees.
-
Clearly communicate how pay decisions are made and work hard to link pay to
performance.
-
Provide the necessary tools, training and other resources to do the job.
-
Maintain a no-tolerance policy for managers who make the numbers but
disrespect and disparage their people.
6. Stress
from overwork and work-life imbalance
A
family and work survey conducted by True Careers reported that 70 per cent of
all workers don't think there is a healthy balance between their work lives and
their professional lives.
Doing
more with less has taken its toll: a Radcliffe Public Policy Center research
study found that 61 per cent of all workers are now willing to sacrifice pay in
exchange for more personal and family time. Generation X and Y workers, in
particular, are insisting on more time outside of work to live their lives.
Smart
companies see these trends and respond with practices friendly to the work
force, such as:
-
Surveying employees to find out what new benefits would help them achieve a
healthier balance.
-
Tailoring benefits and best practices to the needs of workers, such as
flexible schedules and job sharing for parents with school-age children, free
cell phones for on-call employees or on-site massages in workplaces with
particularly high stress levels.
-
Documenting the cost-benefit of such practices. SAS Institute Inc., for
example, is recognized for creating a sane and relaxed environment, but is
well aware of the business payoff: the company saves $67-million (U.S.) a year
in avoided turnover costs.
7. Loss
of trust and confidence in senior leaders
Human
resources consultancy Watson-Wyatt Worldwide, which evaluates a company's
employment brand by its stock-growth performance, found that companies with high
trust levels outperform companies with low trust levels by 186 per cent. And
yet, less than half of workers trust their senior leaders.
Why?
Because employees in too many companies see their senior executives as
self-interested, short-term focused, ego-driven and greedy.
It's a simple equation: When employees don't feel their leaders are interested
in their welfare, they are generally not interested in giving their best effort.
But when employees feel that senior leaders are committed to their well-being,
they tend to return that commitment by staying, and becoming more engaged and
productive.
Here's
what some senior leaders are doing to inspire commitment from their workers:
-
Adopt a give-and-get-back mindset that is typical of servant leaders. This
means they see their mission as serving the employees who serve the customers.
-
U.S. discount airline JetBlue Airways Corp. chief executive officer David
Neeleman helps clean the cabins and pitches in to pass out snacks to
passengers when he flies. He is a servant leader prototype.
-
Create and communicate a clear and credible business strategy and vision that
inspires confidence that the organization is on the right track.
-
Maintain the highest standards of ethics and integrity. This means making
clear to all employees what the company is willing and not willing to do.
The
responsibility for making organizations employers of choice falls on managers
who need to understand that turnover is avoidable if only they care enough to
read the signs before it happens and take action.
U.S. management consultant Leigh Branham is the author of The 7 Hidden Reasons
Employees Leave: How to Read the Subtle Signs and Act Before It's Too Late.
Signs to
watch for
Organizational behaviour that disengages employees
- The
last time employee received performance feedback was six or more months ago.
-
Career advancement is stifled: Employees start applying for a succession of
internal positions for which they may be unsuited or unqualified, indicating
frustration.
-
Unfair pay levels relative to others in a comparable position.
-
Management behaviour that makes employees feel unrecognized or devalued.
-
Employees are overworked -- consistently working late, working through
sickness, taking work home -- and may eventually appear increasingly cynical,
forgetful or irritable. These are signs they are burned out and ready to move
on to a saner work environment.
Employees' role
Responsibility for keeping employees engaged is not a manager's alone. In fact,
the first obligation of all employees is to keep themselves engaged by bringing
their best efforts to work each day.
Here
are some ways employees can do their part to guard against the seven hidden
reasons for disengagement:
-
Before taking any job, ask lots of questions about the position and working
conditions. Always ask to meet with and spend time questioning several other
employees. Take a thorough tour of the workplace. Work part-time or as a
consultant before going full-time.
- If
you feel your job is not making good use of your talents, look for unmet needs
in your work unit that would make better use of your talents and approach your
manager about changing your job accordingly.
- If
your manager is not giving you the feedback you feel you need, ask for it.
Also develop the habit of asking for feedback from peers, customers and other
co-workers.
-
When no promotion seems likely, seek skill-building assignments that allow you
to grow in place, or pursue cross-functional projects or lateral movement.
- Ask
your manager what you can do to make yourself more valuable to the
organization.
-
Instead of feeling victimized by your workload, ask for a flexible schedule,
part-time work, job-sharing or whatever will make your life less complicated
and stressful.
-
Respond honestly on employee surveys, describing any instances of leader
behaviour that has created distrust or caused you to lose confidence.
Business Week Online
www.businessweek.com
FEBRUARY 2, 2005
The
Right Bait for Keeping Staff
TalentKeepers' COO says employers often have necessary but insufficient programs
to cut turnover, and he addresses what's missing.
For the last few years,
companies haven't had to worry too much about keeping their employees. With
businesses looking to cut costs in the economic downturn, employees worried
about keeping their jobs. But that's starting to change.
Voluntary turnover inched up in 2004, and hiring managers are concerned that it
will pick up in 2005, according to several surveys of human resource
professionals. Christopher Mulligan, chief operating officer of Orlando-based
TalentKeepers, a global employee-retention research organization, discussed
employers' concerns and what they can do to combat turnover with BusinessWeek
B-Schools Dept. Editor
Jennifer Merritt. Edited excerpts of their conversation follow:
Q: A year ago, you
barely heard a word about retention. Why has that changed in recent months?
A: Our turnover trends research report (October, 2004) covered 251
organizations, and 84% of the companies [said] that employee retention was
increasing in importance. It's going to become a bigger issue as the economy
continues to improve. [In the last few months] turnover has been growing --
though not at the pace it will in the future.
Q: What's the impact on
companies when they lose top talent?
A: Executives are becoming very aware that attrition is impacting business --
[and not just] because companies have to replace the people that have left.
Companies say turnover affects issues such as shareholder value and
profitability. Seventy-six of the [respondents] reported that employee turnover
significantly impacts shareholder value. Reduced profits were cited by 54% [of
the respondents]. And even though 52% of respondents had developed specific
programs [to increase retention], of those, 68% reported that their efforts had
been ineffective.
Q: Why are so many
companies finding their efforts to be ineffective?
A: The traditional approach many companies take to reduce turnover is through
programs -- better pay, different benefits, or letting an employee change their
schedule. Those programs are attractive to the organization because they
uniformly impact all employees. But our research has shown that programs, while
necessary, are insufficient to drive turnover down. The missing component is
[the] people part of the equation.
Q: But aren't some
industries just prone to high turnover?
A: In some high-turnover industries like call centers and retail, executives
have thought of attrition like rush-hour traffic -- it's unpleasant and costly,
but every one else in industry is sitting here with me.
But [what] we're finding is that the bulk of attrition is controllable -- about
two-thirds. People are leaving for reasons an organization can control.
Q: What, then, can
executives and managers do to control that two-thirds?
A: Executives need to set goals for attrition and hold leaders accountable.
Traditionally, retention has been human resource's problem. But the data is very
clear that...the direct supervisor is most influential [in the decision about
whether] the employee will stay or leave. This is a people piece of the
equation, not a program piece.
Q: But isn't there a
place for the traditional programs -- like competitive pay?
A: Programs aren't to be ignored. If you're underpaying, you aren't going to
keep an employee. But just because you pay them well doesn't mean the employee
will stay, either.
When they're considering staying at a job vs. changing jobs, top performers are
very concerned about challenging work and opportunities to advance. The
organization may have excellent career-development programs and may offer all
sorts of assistance for employees to improve their skills -- [but that's]
insufficient.
Does the individual's leader or supervisor talk to that employee to understand
his aspirations, educate him to help him meet those aspirations, and encourage
him to do so? The more successful companies are finding ways to keep talented
people engaged.
Q: The job market keeps
improving, but plenty of workers are still looking. Why focus on turnover now?
A: Smart companies aren't satisfied with relatively low levels of attrition,
even relative to their industries. What we find is that smart companies parse
their turnover into particular types: controllable or not, desirable or not.
Because of baby boomers retiring [and other demographic issues] we will face a
worker shortage. Your ability to retain talent may become your most important
skill as a manager. So organizations have to deliver training to their leaders
that will help them be more effective in retaining talent. [In our recent
survey] only 28% [of companies] said they believe their leaders have the skills
to keep talent.
Business Week Online
www.businessweek.com
FEBRUARY 2, 2005
By Jennifer Merritt
and Louis Lavelle
It's Time to Plug Talent Leaks
With the
job market suddenly perking up, star employees are finding alternatives --
unless employers give them good reasons to stay
Nothing gets managers
sweating these days like a little uptick in the job market. With employment
prospects improving, lots of folks who weren't thinking about moving on a year
ago now find themselves juggling calls from headhunters. Voluntary turnover
began creeping upward last year, and worried managers are now scrambling to find
ways to stem the brain drain. "It's no longer a buyer's market for talent," says
Laura Sejen, director of Watson Wyatt Worldwide's (WW
) strategic rewards practice.
Companies have every reason to be concerned. Monthly voluntary turnover at U.S.
companies exceeded year-ago levels for all but one month in 2004, hitting a
seasonally adjusted 2.1% in November, according to U.S. Labor Dept. projections.
For the 11 months from January to November, 2004, cumulative turnover was 20.4%,
the first time since 2001 that voluntary quits topped 20%.
And one recent survey by the Society for Human Resource Management put the share
of gainfully employed who are actively looking for new work at 35%, with 47% of
workers saying they were "very likely" to kick their job searches into high gear
as the economy improves. And some hiring managers say they already have a
problem: 38% say they saw turnover increase in 2004.
PENT-UP DEMAND. At
Container Store, voluntary turnover, while still low by retail standards, surged
to 14% in 2004, up from 9% a year earlier. CEO Kip Tindell says its huge
investment in new store employees -- which includes 240 hours of training for
employees at every level -- makes any increase in turnover extremely expensive.
Last year he changed procedures, adding a new level of management at each store,
designed to improve employee career development and help plug the talent leak.
Says Tindell: "You can't afford to ever lose anybody."
But avoiding that is harder than ever. After four years of cost-cutting and
job-market stagnation, throwing a big bonus at must-keep employees isn't enough
to keep them away from the exits. A raise always helps, of course, but job
dissatisfaction and pent-up demand for a change are not so easily overcome.
To keep their top performers, companies should embark on an all-hands-on-deck
strategy that includes identifying job candidates with long-term potential,
cultivating better boss-worker relations, and shoveling cash in a way that
treats the best talent like stars, not also-rans. If they don't, companies risk
losing their best talent.
Here are some tips on
retaining talent from the front lines:
It's
the boss, stupid
Obviously, one of the biggest factors in whether you want to bolt is your
relationship with your current supervisor. But few companies hold supervisors
accountable for retention of top producers, says Christopher Mulligan, chief
operating officer at TalentKeepers, an employee-retention research firm. One
exception is Texas Instruments (TXN
), which pushes managers to make sure employees are challenged and appreciated.
In quarterly performance discussions and career-planning sessions with workers,
managers are urged to consider assignment changes that make the best use of
their direct reports' skills. Since supervisors are judged on how successful
they are at getting top performers to stay, "you cannot fall asleep at the
wheel," says Steve Lyle, TI's director of worldwide staffing. The result: zero
turnover in a calendar year at some TI units.
Giving managers plenty of leeway to do their jobs can go a long way toward
keeping them. At Enterprise Rent-A-Car, branch manager promotions are linked to
customer-satisfaction ratings, and employees have broad authority to do whatever
it takes to make customers happy -- a combination Enterprise says improves
retention. "It's about creating enthusiastic and happy employees," says Bain &
Co. partner Robert G. Markey Jr. "That's how you retain your employees in a
growing economy where they have lots of opportunities."
Pick 'em right
One of the best ways of ensuring that employees won't get itchy feet is to make
sure they're a good fit from Day One. To do that, Marriott International (MAR
) periodically identifies its top performers at different levels and surveys
them to find out what makes them tick. Then it uses the information to determine
which job applicants have similar personality traits.
The extra effort pays off in one of the lodging industry's lowest employee
turnover rates -- about 20% for hourly employees and 5% for management. Says
Kathy Smith, Marriott's senior vice-president for human resources: "You have to
get the right person to start with." American Express (AXP
) started doing something similar in 2003 at its financial advisers unit, which
had been plagued by high turnover. It says turnover declined as a result but
declined to give specifics.
Pay for the best
Replacing one-size-fits-all pay schemes with outsize cash incentives for top
performance not only encourages employees to work harder but also makes stars
more inclined to stay. At companies like KeySpan (KSE
) and Yahoo! (YHOO
), managers are working hard to differentiate between the best and the laggards,
and they're passing out rewards accordingly, in the hope that the best
performers will decided it's worth their while to stay.
Experts say such pay schemes should reduce turnover at the high end of the
performance scale -- especially when combined with other methods. Yahoo Senior
Vice-President for Human Resources Libby Sartain says this less-egalitarian,
performance-based compensation structure has also given the company an
opportunity to identify the people it wants to retain and give them good career
guidance. Says Sartain: "We're making sure we're nurturing them."
Stay in touch
Even when best efforts and intentions fail, and the top talent heads for the
exits, hope is not lost. Rather than slamming the door on a top performer, some
companies have done just the opposite, creating alumni networks for
ex-employees, says Monica C. Higgins, an associate professor of organizational
behavior at Harvard Business School. Bain & Co., for instance, mines those
relationships for employee referrals. New hires found this way tend to be a
better fit with the company's culture and needs, and they frequently stay longer
than other employees.
However they do it, companies have to make retention a priority. "Employers need
to pay attention to this now," says Barry Gerhart, director of the strategic
human-resources-management program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. If
they don't, they may find themselves waving goodbye to their most important
asset.
SHRMOnLine
HR Magazine, March 2005, Vol
50, No. 3
http://www.shrm.org/hrmagazine
Neglecting to help new executives get into the swim of things quickly can incur
enormous organizational costs.
By
Susan J. Wells
Eight years ago, Bristol-Myers Squibb, the global pharmaceutical
manufacturer, studied the retention rates of its recently hired executives. The
“survivor analysis,” as it was called, revealed that the New York-based company
was losing promising new executives because it was not taking steps to ensure
their success.
So the company went looking for ways to remedy the costly problem
that experts refer to as executive failure—the departure of an executive within
a year and a half of taking the job. According to Ben Dowell, vice president of
executive staffing and talent management, the company responded by retooling its
executive assessment, integration and assimilation processes.
For example, Bristol-Myers bolstered executive selection by
requiring candidates for any position at the level of vice president or above to
go through a three-hour interview aimed at better gauging their leadership
ability and organizational fit.
It also made new executives the object of a laserlike focus
during the first 30 to 60 days of their employment, providing guidelines,
clarifying roles, setting up meetings with influential colleagues and fostering
each newcomer’s understanding of the company’s cultural norms. Follow-up
meetings are held during the executive’s first year to check progress and
resolve problems. Although consultants carry out the bulk of the process, the
company’s HR function is also involved.
These changes exemplify the increased attention some companies
are devoting to the process commonly called onboarding—helping executives
through the critical early days on the new job so they can get up to speed as
quickly as possible.
Onboarding
by any Other Name
Over the years, onboarding has had various names—alignment,
assimilation, integration, orientation and transition, to name a few.
Does it really matter what you call the process? It might, say
experts, especially when you try to get buy-in for the idea with top-level
management.
“If HR continues to use the word ‘onboarding,’ they may have more
difficulty selling the idea up,” says Brenda Hampel, partner of Executive
OnBoarding, a consulting firm in
Worthington,
Ohio.
“That’s where terminology becomes important.”
Jeff Durocher, director of market development at RHR
International, a leadership assessment, development and integration firm in Wood
Dale, Ill., notes that many companies and consultants alike “see ‘onboarding’ as
more the orientation phase, whereas ‘integration’ is addressing the
more-strategic issues with a focus on retention.”
As the definitions evolve and the discussions continue, HR
professionals should pay attention to the nuances. For example, Hampel likes
“alignment” better than “assimilation.” Alignment, she says, suggests an
executive acquiring an organization’s overall vision and objectives, while
assimilation suggests executives in a process “to morph themselves; that’s not
the goal.”
Michael Watkins, founder of Genesis Advisers LLC, a leadership
strategy consultancy in West Newton, Mass., proposes “transitions” as a more
appropriate term. “Ask yourself what types of transitions are being made in your
organization and how frequently they occur,” he says. “Once you’ve identified
them, you can address them and analyze what type of support each one requires.”
Whatever descriptive term prevails, it must refer to a focused,
clear-cut process for helping newly hired executives hit their stride as soon as
possible and become successful in their new role.
Many experts, and executives themselves, say it’s about time
companies paid more attention to executive onboarding—especially since the costs
of executive failure are steep and are likely to rise as a rebounding economy
spurs companies to increase executive-level hiring and transfers.
A Big Bill
Many experts say losing a newly hired executive can incur direct
costs (including recruitment, relocation, compensation, training and severance)
that total two or three times the executive’s salary. But factoring in indirect
costs—such as lost opportunities, business delays, and damage to relationships
with staff and customers—can push the total to nearly 24 times base salary, says
Michael Watkins, founder of Genesis Advisers LLC, a leadership strategy
consultancy in West Newton, Mass., and author of The First 90 Days: Critical
Success Strategies for New Leaders at all Levels (Harvard Business School Press,
2003).
Moreover, the price of neglecting to bring a new executive up to
speed can encompass more than the costs of early departure, says Ron Bossert,
senior vice president, transition leadership services, for Applied Research
Corp., a consulting firm in Metuchen, N.J. New leaders who struggle in the job
can drag down the bottom line, as one of Bossert’s client companies discovered
the hard way: When one of its new executives was having a difficult time in his
new post, “growth slowed by half in one region,” Bossert says.
What’s more, he says, “when newly appointed leaders don’t work
out, valuable business knowledge can leave the organization—even to the
competition—and the grueling recruiting process and costs start over again.”
Watkins, a former associate professor of business management at
Harvard Business School who conducted research on executive onboarding, says
companies’ onboarding approach should be “not just about failure prevention but
also about how to reduce the time to real performance.” On the basis of his
research, he estimates that it takes a midsenior manager an average of 6.2
months to reach a break-even point—the point at which a new leader’s
contribution to the organization begins to surpass the company’s costs of
bringing the person on board, from hiring expenses to salary and the costs
attributable to the person’s learning curve in the organization.
“Anything you can do to shave the transition time is going to
make a difference,” he says. “The value of reducing that ‘ramp up’ by even one
month can mean a bundle.”
Bristol-Myers’ example certainly proves the point. The changes in
the company’s processes have led to a substantial improvement in the retention
rate for executives, Dowell says, which in turn “literally represents millions
and millions of dollars” in avoided expenses. The company estimates that the
direct costs alone of losing an executive amount to about $500,000.
Despite the potential savings and boosts to corporate
performance, Watkins believes that surprisingly few managers receive any
training in how to transition into a new organization, diagnose the company and
align strategy with skills. He estimates that 40 percent of senior managers
hired from outside the company fail within their first 18 months in the
position.
A recent study by RHR International, a leadership assessment,
development and integration firm in Wood
Dale,
Ill.,
appears to underscore that belief. Of more than 100 executives—from senior
managers to CEOs—interviewed over a two-year period, only 39 percent were
satisfied with their organization’s efforts to integrate them.
HR’s Role
If companies are to efficiently maximize the potential of new
executives, HR will have to play a prominent role.
Companies discover they can improve their chances of retaining
executives if they involve HR leaders in creating and supporting the onboarding
process, says Bossert. “HR professionals are typically the ones assigned to both
orientation and onboarding processes, but it’s important that they are seen as
partners with line executives in the process. Actually, supporting leadership
transitions should be viewed as any other business imperative—because it is
one.”
Dante Capitano, managing director of the Philadelphia office of
RHR, says HR “can really provide the road map for new executives—to help them
slow down so that the foundation is built and typical problems [are] avoided,
which ultimately leads to contributions being made sooner.”
Although newly hired executives are expected to make a difference
quickly, Capitano says, they’re sometimes hampered because they’re not well
versed in the culture and politics of the new company—insights HR can provide.
Among the common derailers that HR can help new executives avoid:
-
Failure to establish key
connections and build strong relationships. “I’ve seen executives who’ve spent
the first six months on the job in front of the computer screen instead of
getting to know the key people they need to be aligned with,” Capitano says.
-
Overconfidence in skills
and experience. Capitano calls it “the feeling that they can immediately use
their old skills in new situations.” He points out that “what worked at the
last company may not work in the new environment.”
-
Significant, unexpected
change. An example would be where job responsibilities turn out to be
different from what had been advertised—the sense of “I didn’t sign up for
this,” Capitano says. “Or perhaps the executive got the red-carpet treatment
during recruitment but then gets nothing once on board.”
-
Negative credibility.
Capitano describes this phenomenon as engendering damaging perceptions by
others. “Once you start off in a negative vein with stakeholders,” he says,
“it’s very hard to turn that around.”
The Incoming
Tide
As executives and recruiters alike share optimism about an
improving economy, HR professionals will likely be called upon more frequently
this year to assist executives as they transition into new positions.
A survey of 112 U.S. executives conducted in December 2004 by
ExecuNet, an executive job search network, showed that 39 percent were
“confident” or “very confident” that the executive employment market would
improve in the first half of this year, up from 31 percent who thought so last
November.
On average, executives polled held 3.6 jobs in the past 10 years,
working for three companies and two different industries, ExecuNet reports.
New opportunities and job changes aren’t just for outside
candidates, however. Internal moves within companies’ management ranks are also
a force in the onboarding trend. Each year, for example, about 25 percent of
managers in large organizations take on new roles, and each move affects about a
dozen people, says Michael Watkins, founder of Genesis Advisers LLC, a
leadership strategy consultancy in West Newton, Mass. Watkins, who has
researched executive transitions, says that because moving within a company can
be just as challenging as coming in from the outside, new executives who come
from within an organization can benefit from onboarding help.
“At some organizations, there can be 200 to 300 moves to other
jobs or functions going on a year,” says Jeff Durocher, director of market
development at RHR International, a leadership assessment, development and
integration firm in Wood Dale, Ill. “And a focus for HR and key leadership is
the fact that each of these moves requires ongoing support, orientation and
integration.”
In each of
these situations, Capitano says, HR can be a turnaround force, perhaps by
setting up meetings between the new executive and key people, such as other
executives and his team, and by serving as internal counselor and facilitator.
Easier Said
Than Done?
Despite the benefits, onboarding “can be a tough sell” to
executives, says Larry Stybel, founder of Stybel Peabody & Associates Ltd., a
Boston-based consulting firm that provides outplacement, career management and
transition services for C-suite executives. “Not only are companies reluctant to
offer transition programs to high-level executives for fear of insulting them,
but it can be enormously difficult for the leaders themselves to accept it.”
Organizations typically hire highly self-confident leaders,
Stybel continues. “So they often have a ‘been there, done that’ mentality with
respect to leadership transitions. That’s when any outside assistance in
managing such transitions might be perceived as undercutting them.
“On the other hand, many leaders do accept the idea that winners
are always looking for a better performance edge—just like in your golf game. So
we recommend to our clients that they talk about the first-100-days transition
as a way of getting an extra edge, rather than ‘You need this; it is good for
you.’ ”
Indeed, newly hired executives generally don’t ask for help,
Capitano notes. “They don’t want to show a chink in the armor or give away any
vulnerability. But the fact is, 80 percent of folks need help.” And although
companies may tend to leave new executives alone—“the assumption is that here’s
a very experienced executive who is confident and ready to go”—he says just the
opposite is often true. “Don’t assume that they don’t need anything. Take the
initiative to transition them.”
Other experts say HR, like other leaders, must be proactive—and
direct.
Stybel notes the forthright approach of a major hospital system’s
CEO, who gave a newly hired vice president an “owner’s manual” as a kind of
primer on “how to manage him.” The one-page document, based on a self-assessment
and input from associates, included the CEO’s expectations, goals and methods of
working. It was designed to offer tips to the VP on how to get acclimated to his
new job and new boss.
This approach “reassured him by giving some of the candid
guidance needed to get on track faster and manage his own success on the job,”
Stybel says.
Multiple
Approaches
Another style of onboarding is the tailored approach that Johnson
& Johnson of
New Brunswick,
N.J., has developed for its incoming executives. Its orientation and
onboarding assistance is geared to the type of professional transition the new
executive is making as well as the executive’s personality.
The approach grew out of a study conducted several years ago in
which company executives around the world were interviewed about their job
transition experiences. “What we found was that we had somewhat of a
sink-or-swim approach,” says Mary Lauria, director of education and development.
“And too many were failing—either by leaving us or by not succeeding.”
The company took the feedback seriously and initiated a strategy
to reach out to all new executives, ideally within their first six months. It
was no small undertaking: With 200 operating companies and more than 110,000
employees in 57 countries, “we’re not the easiest company to navigate,” Lauria
says. “The key was to enable our executives to quickly learn about our company,
their role in it and navigate within it successfully.”
The company launched three approaches, which can be used for both
executives making internal moves and those coming in from outside the company.
The New Business Leader program is for senior executives who are moving from a
functional responsibility to a more-complex job. The Transitions Leadership
Forum is for vice presidents and executive vice presidents who are taking on new
functional roles. The Transitions Coaching program works closely with executives
in new roles on a one-on-one basis and involves HR directly. “Individuals are
individuals, and HR can help us pick the right approach,” Lauria says. “We feel
it’s critical to provide a number of different learning methods that fit
different personalities.”
A recent study of the experiences of more than 125 “transitioned”
leaders at Johnson & Johnson showed dramatic improvements. When asked if they
felt they were “better prepared” after attending one or more of the offerings,
the response was overwhelmingly positive, Lauria says. Specifically, 95 percent
of the new leaders said they were able to focus on appropriate priorities; 83
percent built new partnerships; and 82 percent clarified expectations with their
new boss.
“In their own self-assessments, these leaders felt that they
performed 30 percent to 40 percent better during their transition as a direct
result of participating in one or more of the programs available,” Lauria says.
HR in the
Partnership
For onboarding to be successful, HR must be a central part of the
process, says Brenda Hampel, a partner at Executive OnBoarding, a consulting
firm in
Worthington,
Ohio. Because HR is in a unique position to provide tools, training
and feedback, it must be involved in all stages—from before the selection
process begins through the onboarding process and beyond.
“If this process isn’t owned and facilitated by the HR function,
it’s much less likely to happen; pieces and parts might happen, but there’ll be
no consistency,” Hampel says. “HR is an integral component for making onboarding
truly systemic.”
Clearly, new executives’ actions during the first few months in a
new role can have a significant impact on their own success and the company’s.
With proactive involvement, experts say, HR and the leadership team can improve
the chances that everyone will succeed.
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Sudden
outbursts of anger or impatience with co-workers.