Three Things that Acually Motivate Employees

At the core of Talent Management is the understanding about what motivates employees and how to attract and retain a positive, motivated workforce.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter writes in the Harvard Business review that motivation comes down to "three Ms — mastery, membership, and meaning. Money is a distant fourth. Money can even be an irritant if compensation is not adequate or fair, and compensation runs out of steam quickly as a source of sustained performance. Instead, people happy in their work are often found in mission-driven organizations where people feel they have positive impact on social needs."

Mastery: Help people develop deep skills. Stretch goals show faith that people can shape the future rather than being victimized by it, and find pride in constant learning. Even in the most seemingly routine areas, when people are given difficult problems to tackle, with appropriate and tools and support, they can do things faster, smarter, and better.

Membership: Create community by honoring individuality. Community solidarity comes from allowing the whole person to surface, which means going beyond superficial conformity to know what else people care about. Encourage employees to bring outside interests to work. Given them frequent opportunities to meet people across the organization to help them get to know one another more deeply.

Meaning: Repeat and reinforce a larger purpose. Emphasize the positive impact of the work they do. Clarity about how your products or services can improve the world provides guideposts for employees’ priorities and decisions. As part of the daily conversation, mission and purpose can make even mundane tasks a means to a larger end.

Read more in,
Three Things that Actually Motivate Employees   Harvard Business School |  Rosabeth Moss Kanter, professor and author

Hire Quality provides Executive Coaching, Talent Management consulting, and Executive Recruiting services. Call us to discuss your organizations needs, 705.734.2698

Improve Your Talent Management Score

Corporations face a myriad of pressing issues, from competitive threats to risk management, debt to the regulatory environment, but a recent comprehensive survey by Harvard Business Review, of over 1,000 board members around the globe, found that a corporations single greatest strategic challenge is talent management.

The survey, conducted in partnership with WomenCorporateDirectors and Heidrick & Struggles, rated nine dimensions of talent management: attracting top talent; hiring top talent; assessing talent; developing talent; rewarding talent; retaining talent; firing; aligning talent strategy with business strategy; and leveraging workforce diversity.

Although the survey identified that talent management is now top of mind, most organizations gave themselves a failing grade.

Lou Adler, Author of Hire with Your Head, offers 8 tips to improve your organization's talent management score in his recent blog post.

1.) develop a talent acquisition strategy, that is understood, supported, and tracked
2.) include performance measures for how well a manager improves their team
3.) increase management input into hiring decisions
4.) recognize different approaches are necessary depending on scarcity of talent for a position
5.) workforce planning expands the view 2-3 quarters ahead
6.) quality of hire is the primary metric, not speed or low cost
7.) hire the best person available, not the best person who applied - involve a skilled recruiter
8.) offer career opportunities - make sure you communicate this in the job description

HireQuality provides Recruitment, Talent Management, and Management Coaching services to meet your organizations needs. Call us at 416.413.1177 or visit our website for more information.

CEO's Can Transform HR into a Revenue Driver

The Talent Gap is presenting organizations around the globe with challenges in innovation and meeting strategic initiatives.

Mark Hurd, President Oracle, writes about how CEO's can transform HR into a revenue driver. The article is a good read, so I've quoted it below, or you can read it on LinkedIn by clicking through on the title.

If your organization needs help with Talent Management and Executive Recruiting, call Hire Quality to discuss your challenges and opportunities., 705.734.2698

How CEOs Can Transform HR into a Revenue Driver  |  Mark V. Hurd , President Oracle

As I visit with big companies and organizations all over the world, it’s clear that most CEOs realize they need to make some dramatic changes in how they recruit people, align and manage performance, make compensation decisions, and optimize talent.

What’s not so clear to them is how they make that happen. While HR leaders and their teams are supposed to bring alive the cliché that “people are our most valuable asset,” many CEOs are not yet leading the way in giving those HR leaders the tools, authority, and organizational opportunity they need to unlock the value of the organizations’ talent pools.

Paradoxically, that lack of support from top executives is occurring even as 60 percent of CEOs surveyed by PwC say they’re concerned about not having enough talent, and/or the right mix of talent. As a result, those CEOs say, that talent gap is presenting them with some significant challenges:

• 31 percent said they couldn’t innovate effectively;
• 29 percent couldn’t pursue attractive market opportunities; and
• 24 percent had to cancel or delay a strategic initiative.

In many companies, a lack of CEO-level support for the HR organization and its mission keeps the HR team walled off from the ultimate sources of value in a company—revenue generation and customer engagement. This prevents HR executives from joining the rest of the company in using modern technology to gain new insights, make data-driven decisions, and engage with employees and customers more intimately and productively.

And that tricky situation will surely be compounded over the next few years as rapidly shifting demographics lead to a surge in millenials among your workforce: while millenials will comprise 36 percent of the workforce in 2014, they’ll make up almost half of it—46 percent—by 2020, according to a study conducted by the business school at the University of North Carolina.

The impact these young digital natives will have on your company isn’t limited to their sheer numbers. In fact, the biggest influence they’ll have is their demand—not their request, mind you, but their requirement—that the technology they use at work provides them with the same degree of social immersion, accessibility, and collaboration as the technology they use in their personal lives.

So the simple truth is that unless your company is offering these sorts of tools—indeed, these sorts of “workstyles”—then you’ll be sending a clear signal to recruits and new employees that you’re really not interested in hiring or keeping them.

For those companies that are willing to embrace the new social and mobile imperatives, you’ll find that modern HCM systems will improve employee engagement, productivity, and collaboration across the organization. By having social and mobile capabilities embedded in the key context of HR processes—from social sourcing, performance, and learning goal-setting and career management—these millennial-friendly companies will create engaging, two-way environments that don’t just allow but help people connect with each other and build mutually beneficial work relationships.

These are significant changes, and they require full support from the very top of the company. CEOs have to take ownership of this issue to ensure the ongoing viability of their companies. Otherwise:

• If your HR team lacks the tools to exploit social technologies to find excellent new recruits, how can your company find and hire the best people?
• If your HR team lacks the tools to identify high-potential stars within your organization and help create new high-impact opportunities for them, how will you retain top talent?
• If your HR team lacks the tools to tie compensation decisions to business strategy and real-world results, how will you be able to keep up in today’s ultracompetitive marketplace?

Let me offer a before-and-after example.

Let’s say Company XYZ has 100,000 employees, with annual compensation and benefits costing about $10 billion. At the annual budget meeting, everyone turns to the head of HR as the CEO asks, “What’s our plan for raises for next year?”
The HR leader squirms and looks a bit uncomfortable and says, “Our consultant says we should give 4 percent raises across the board.”
The CEO asks, “Why 4 percent?”
“Uh, well, because that’s what the consultant recommended, and we’ve used this consultant for the past five years.”
“I get that,” says the CEO, “but why 4 percent?”
And the head of HR swallows hard and says, “Because the consultant thinks 5 percent is too high and 3 percent is too low.”

Believe me, even if that conversation seems a bit silly, it’s pretty darn close to what’s happening within a lot of companies. And what they need to understand is that the HR leader doesn’t want to give such a vague answer—rather, the HR leader simply lacks the business insights and data-driven analysis to offer a more precise and relevant response.

Remember, in most big companies, compensation and benefits are the single biggest expense in the entire cost structure—by far! For company XYZ, we said its compensation costs are about $10 billion—so the 4 percent raise would equate to a new cost to the company of $400 million. That’s a significant cost to the business. Yet, the HR leader doesn’t have the modern technology necessary to make an insightful and business-driven decision on whether or not that level of spend is correct or will have the desired outcome on the business!

In the “after” scenario, an HR leader equipped with a modern HCM system could have answered that question about raises very differently by saying, “Let’s step back one second and look at the overall situation that will eventually include what type of raise pool we want for next year.

“Our attrition rate for the past 18 months has been 10 percent, which means we had to replace 10,000 people this year. But because of our rapid growth, we also had to hire an additional 4,000 people to handle that growth and sustain our momentum. So this year, we had to add 14,000 new people.
“And I’m pleased to be able to tell you that with our new recruitment and onboarding system, we were able to bring on 14,000 terrific new people—more on that in a moment—and with our new talent management system, we were able to create more than 1,500 growth opportunities for our brightest people. All in one year.

“On top of that, our performance management system tells us that those 14,000 new employees are not only costing us less than average—they come in at a cumulative 93 percent of midpoint—but more than two-thirds of them are performing in the top 20 percent quintile. We’re bringing in better performers while spending less money—and because of that, I’d like to recommend that we completely rethink our old concepts of ‘annual raises’ and use our data-driven analytics to find a better way.”

Hey, it sounds great—but that type of insight simply will not come to pass if HR leaders are left behind with an old, brittle, and incompatible hodgepodge of inflexible systems that make it impossible for the HR to deliver quantitative insights, forward-looking analyses, and revenue-driving decisions.

Those insights are absolutely essential for companies to be able to unleash the full potential of their people and begin to deliver employee experiences that parallel the terrific new customer experiences that today’s business environment demands: socially driven, optimized for mobile, and seamlessly consistent across smartphones, tablets, and PCs.

As an example of great business leadership and HCM strategy, let me mention what our friends at British Telecom (BT) are doing. One of the world leaders in communications services and solutions, BT has just decided to install a full suite of Oracle HCM Cloud applications to support the company’s growth agenda and help deliver its business strategy to more than 87,000 employees in 170 countries.
BT believes that its new HCM applications – with everything from recruiting and talent management to workforce-deployment optimization – will help the company increase productivity, accelerate business performance, and empower its people to innovate, grow, and delight customers.

Yes, those are lofty ambitions, but they’re also essential in today’s consumer-driven global marketplace where social-mobile lifestyles are disrupting not only how people shop and consume, but also their decisions about where they’ll work and why they’ll work there.

So it’s up to the CEO to drive HR transformation and help HR leaders become business-centric and data-driven enablers of revenue, innovation, and superb employee experiences.

How CEOs Can Transform HR into a Revenue Driver

When to let a Top Performer Walk

Even with Talent Management successfully implemented in your organization, there are times when a star performer needs to move on to new opportunties.  Of course the effect of this can be managed by having an effective succession planning strategy in place.

In the article below, John Welch, gives his perspective on this situation.

If your business needs help with Talent Management, Succession Planning, or Executive Recruiting contact Hire Quality 705.734.2698.


Star Wars: When to Let a Top Performer Walk

How far should you go to keep a star performer who has an offer to work at a competitor? It's a question every leader has to face into. After all, the team with the best players wins and the care and feeding of top performers has more to do with a company’s success than virtually any other factor.

But our answer is, you shouldn't go as far as you’re probably considering, given the panic mode most managers enter when a star threatens to shoot out the door. Under normal circumstances, to keep stars happy, you just need to give them what they crave: outsize compensation; effusive recognition; enjoyable, challenging work; and the feeling that they’re not being micro-managed. All that changes in a split second, however, when a star asks to see you, closes your office door, and says: “I’ve gotten an offer I think I just can’t refuse.”

Your first instinct will be to match the offer financially. Usually, though, that won’t be enough. The competitor luring your star has been smart enough to make the deal richer in other ways with, say, more job responsibility or a bigger title. You can match those, too. And that’s where the trouble starts. Because promoting stars just to keep them can incite a little riot, especially if the promotion is over people who feel they deserve the same kind of treatment but just haven’t threatened to leave.

Before you know it, other stars will be insulted by your accommodation, and even some midrange performers will feel resentful. And at the end, the only contented person left in the place might be your overperformer, who has decided to stay, now feeling more indispensable than ever.

Sounds deadly? It is. Which is why we would recommend another, more proactive approach. During normal times, make the management of your stars a top priority. Never take them for granted, and be sure all of your managers do the same by making star retention a key measure of performance.

But at the same time, remember that stars sometimes leave for the simple reason that they have outgrown the opportunities at a company. By consistently overdelivering, they have earned the chance to reach for horizons beyond what you can offer them over the long haul. And because of that reality, you must always be prepared to fill the wing tips of any key person who departs, no matter what the size of the business. That’s the beauty of a rigorous human resource program, with frequent reviews, consistent coaching, and backup planning for every key position that can readily answer the question: “Who replaces George or Carol if they leave?”

Such backup planning, by the way, must happen at least annually and can never become a rote, fill-in-the-blanks exercise. Instead, it must be conducted with the gritty intensity of a war game. Only then will your organization be able to replace a departing star within eight hours—yes, eight. Only then will your organization be able to send the important message that no star is bigger than the organization.

Now, we realize it is natural to fight for a star, especially since a competitor is involved. But experience also tells us that once a top performer gets the bug to leave, heroic rescue efforts are of limited use. You can come up with a fancy title, add an awful extra layer, and in the short term persuade someone to stay.

But when people go, and they usually do in time, you’re left with a cobbled-up org chart and a bunch of confused employees. Better to keep your house in order and send your star off with good wishes. If you’ve done your job, another star will soon be born.

Jack Welch is Executive Chairman at the Jack Welch Management Institute at Strayer University. Through its executive education and Welch Way management training programs, the Jack Welch Management Institute provides students and organizations with the proven methodologies, immediately actionable practices, and respected credentials needed to win in the most demanding global business environments.

Suzy Welch is a best-selling author, popular television commentator, and noted business journalist. Her New York Times bestselling book, 10-10-10: A Life Transforming Idea, presents a powerful decision-making strategy for success at work and in parenting, love and friendship.

Source: LinkedIn Post

Five Top Tips for Hiring Quality Talent

Here's an article from the Globe and Mail that I thought was worthwhile sharing with you.

A firm’s biggest asset is the people behind their product or service. Great employees are the foundation of a competitive organization and the best companies go to great lengths to locate and procure these individuals.

Top Tips For Hiring Talent

For startups, recruiting top talent is easier said than done. Potential employees want stability and high compensation packages – variables that not every entrepreneur can provide.

Recruiting the right people is a task too important to be overlooked or not taken with the utmost priority. Effective staffing comes with experience, and everyone makes mistakes; however, it’s never too late to improve your recruiting skills.

We’ve based the below five tips on some great hiring insight from Jenn Hanley, who is the chief operating officer and co-creator of Fizziology, which has brilliantly correlated social media interaction to determine real-world human behaviour. Ms. Hanley and her partner are proof that a great product, intelligent people and a passionate environment, regardless of size, wins the best talent.

Here are five steps to staying competitive in entrepreneurial recruiting, even for the one-person company:

1. Start to market your company in a better light

There are only so many desirable employees who exist. Since every company wants to hire these individuals, you must formulate a compelling reason as to why your organization is special.

Think in terms of the benefits that the job seeker will receive by being employed at your firm and what type of future they should expect.

Remain ethical. Don’t promise things that you can’t deliver. However, make sure that you are set up to provide: employment stability, competitive benefits, an enjoyable working environment and career potential.

2. Making requirements more flexible

The No. 1 that prevents companies from procuring the most talented people is overly stringent requirements. The more specific the needs of an employer, the less applicant choices they’re going to have, the more expensive the employee is going to be and the longer the job search is take.

No employee is ever going to be perfect and the ones who appear so on paper can be far from ideal.

Rather than knowledge, focus on personality and future potential first. As the owner of the business, be confident in your ability to lead and train the employee, rather then rely on the employee to change your company.

3. Adjust compensation rates  and don’t rely on equity

The most effective way for a small company to be competitive in recruiting experienced talent is to pay the right amount and offer great benefits.

In a rush to obtain employees, many entrepreneurial companies attempt to bypass a competitive salary, benefits and bonus package, and instead offer company equity. While stock is alluring to some employees, it will not be at the forefront of their priorities.

Recognize that employees are not entrepreneurs. They don’t want to own a business; rather, they want to be paid by one and, the higher the pay, the more demand for that position.

4. Use additional avenues to find employees

Often, job postings come up empty; they are overly passive ways to staffing and, if your firm doesn’t have a reputable name in your industry, it could prove to be a waste of $500 plus.

To get the word out that you’re hiring and express exactly what you’re looking for, supplement this by subscribing to résumé databases, using LinkedIn and other social media avenues, posting the open position on your blog, listing it on your website and turning to local universities for typically free or highly discounted posting abilities.

Like I said, recruiting takes work.

5. Confidence when interviewing

Remember, when you narrow down the people whom you want to interview, be confident in your abilities to interview these individuals and to do your due hiring diligence. Don’t hire someone simply because they are interested; hire based on mutual respect and passion.

Know that you deserve great talent and let that confidence come through when both pitching the job and asking the questions to obtain the information you need to in order to procure the right person.

Practice your pitch; know what you’re going to say and constantly fine-tune your message until it shouts benefits, confidence and future ambitions. If you don’t believe in your product or service, don’t expect others to.

In the end

As an entrepreneurial company, each hire you make is going to impact your firm either positively or negatively more than it would a larger organization. One rotten apple can make or break your fiscal goals while one motivated employee can exceed all your expectations.

Source: The Globe And Mail 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-managing/human-resources/five-top-tips-for-hiring-top-talent/article10773129/

About Hire Quality Hire Quality partners with clients to build high performance teams by recruiting and selecting new talent and by upgrading current staff through training and development. For more information go to www.hirequality.ca or call 705.734.2698

Talent Management is a Critical Ingredient to Achieving Excellence

Like most business leaders we work with at Hire Quality, a CEO was frustrated by not having a high-performance, cross-functional team capable of developing real business solutions.

One of the most difficult talent management challenges today is how to make collaboration work and reward the team appropriately. Every team member needs individual skills, to be sure, but unless they work together harmoniously, the game or the sales will be lost.

The good news is that there are specific talent management methodologies available as a way of getting to the answers you need and to help you begin the process of restructuring your performance management and leadership development systems.

Talent management is a critical ingredient to achieving excellence. The ability to strategically assess the talent you have and properly manage team collaboration, is integral to meet and exceed the goals of your organization.

We can help develop, we are specialists in Talent Management and can align and integrate the appropriate talent with your specific business needs.

Our talent assessment solutions range from providing assessment and actionable feedback on current talent, to forecasting for your future needs. The process includes recommendations on sourcing, on-boarding, developing and accelerating talent, and aligning performance with your business direction.

Hire Quality partners with clients to build high performance teams by recruiting and selecting new talent and by upgrading current staff through training and development. For more information go to www.hirequality.ca or call 705.734.2698

Become a Better Leader With These Tips

Dave Kerpen, CEO, Likeable Local, NY Times Best-Selling Author & Keynote Speaker, wrote in a popular LinkedIn post,

"Being likeable will help you in your job, business, relationships, and life. I interviewed dozens of successful business leaders for my last book, to determine what made them so likeable and their companies so successful. All of the concepts are simple, and yet, perhaps in the name of revenues or the bottom line, we often lose sight of the simple things - things that not only make us human, but can actually help us become more successful. Below are the eleven most important principles to integrate to become a better leader:"

1. Listening
2. Storytelling
3. Passion
4. Team Playing
5. Surprise & Delight
6. Responsiveness
7. Simplicity
8. Authenticity / Transparency
9. Adaptability
10. Gratefulness
11. Likeable Business

To lean more about these principles visit - 11 Simple Concepts to Become a Better Leader  by Dave Kerpen.

Hire Quality provides business leaders with Executive Coaching, Executive Recruiting and Talent Management services. Call us to discuss your needs,. 705.734.2698

Studies Show ROI's Over 500% For Executive Coaching!

Would your organization benefit from Executive Coaching? A survey of 100 executives of Fortune 1000 companies reported corporate benefits such as; improvements to customer service and bottom line results, as well as individual benefits; improved working relationships and increased job satisfaction. Studies estimate an expected ROI of 500 - 600%.

With high ROIs and other inter-personal communication benefits, difficult to quantify but essential to a healthy corporate work environment, it is something to think about and consider for your company. HireQuality provides exceptional consulting services for Executive Coaching. Call us at 705.734.2698 or contact us through our website.


source: PR Wire

"Many studies have been conducted in an attempt to determine a definitive ROI gained from executive coaching. While the studies seek objective data, the process by which the data is captured contains a subjective element. This has made it extremely difficult to quantify the results. Consequently, many observers perceive any attempt to reach a consensus has been invalid due to a faulty model.

However, most studies, no matter what criteria and metrics are employed, arrive at the same conclusion: executive coaching produces an ROI between 500% and 600%. Many different studies have been conducted since 1999, from sources such as Fortune Magazine, Chemistry Business Magazine, the International Coach Federation, and Linkage, Inc. Despite dissimilar methodologies, the studies yielded strikingly similar numbers. They all reported an average ROI between five and seven times the amount of the initial investment.

The study that is still considered to be the definitive study in the field, even today was conducted by MetrixGlobal in 2001. MetrixGlobal surveyed 100 executives of Fortune 1000 companies who had received executive coaching for a period between six months and one year. The survey questioned the executives about a wide range of different metrics concerning the ROI of executive coaching. The executives reported that their companies benefited from improvement in customer service, development of potential successors, improved individual performance, and better bottom line results. The executives also reported individual benefits, citing improvements in their working relationships with direct reports, immediate supervisors, peers, and clients. They also reported improvements in job satisfaction and teamwork.

read full article..

Hire Quality provides large and small organization with Executive Coaching services and consulting. Call us to discuss your needs 705.734.2698

Fired Again? What did you learn?

The response to getting fired can range from happiness or relief to out-right depression. It's important to take the time to review not only what went wrong, but what worked and what you can apply to future situations.

Linkedin Influencer Salley Krawcheck wrote that her exprience with re-structuring and losing her position involved seven lessons.

Lesson Number 1: If it feels too good to be true, it probably is. 
Lesson Number 2: The power of culture.
Lesson Number 3: Face time still matters.
Lesson Number 4: A sponsor matters even more.
Lesson Number 5: Business results are not everything
Lesson Number 6: The Good News: A strong outside network helps a lot.
Lesson Number 7: The Best News: Gratitude helps even more

Lesson 6 is of particular importance. Your network can not only help you analyze your situation and be a sounding board, but could be the source of new positions and opportunities.

Read more about Salley Krawcheck's lesson in,
Seven things I learned when I got fired again..

Hire Quality provides organizations with executive recruiting services. Our expertise in Talent Management and Executive Coaching can help your business retain talent and develop high performance management teams. Call us to discuss your needs,. 705.734.2698

The Up Side of Losing Talent

Having a star performer or company leader depart for another company can be devastating for a business and can pose a huge set-back. Project work can stall, the culture can be disrupted, and it can take time to find the right replacement.

How can there possibly be an Up Side to having talent walk out the door?

Andrew Shipilov, writes in the HBR Blog that losing talent is not always bad.

He noted that a recent study about the Fashion Industry found that when designers leave a fashion house they tend to stay in touch with friends and former colleagues from the old job. "These ties act as communication bridges through which former colleagues can learn what the designer is up to in the new job. And when several designers leave to work for different fashion houses, the colleagues staying behind build bridges to lots of companies."

McKinsey consultants use this principle to keep contact with former co-workers, which may end up being future clients. Shipilov adds, "To be sure, we are not talking about industrial espionage here. The positive effects of communication bridges on creativity come from friends catching up with friends in very general terms about what is going on in their professional lives."

I suppose one way of looking at it is bridges between companies, but I think this is just an example of business networking. As people move around in their careers they build their professional networks with former colleagues.

Can your organization benefit from being better connected to a high quality business network? Of course it can, and so, this "Networking Effect", could be considered an Up Side to losing talent from your organization.

quoted source:
Is losing talent always bad? by Andrew Shipilov

Seven Ways Talent Management Connects to HR

 

Talent Management

Talent Management is not a commonly used term outside of the human resources world, so it may be new to many of you.

You might first think of the entertainment industry and the job of managing stage acts, but in business the term is widely used to describe the overall HR strategy around managing people in the workplace.

 

And here's the reason to sit up and take notice of Talent Management in HR - As it's now a best practice process and is being used to gain a competitive advantage. It's also a key component of a business strategy to differentiate organizations from the competition and can be directly used to achieve desired corporate goals.

 

According to Wikipedia, Talent management refers to the anticipation of required human capital the organization needs at the time then setting a plan to meet those needs.  The field dramatically increased in popularity after McKinsey's research and subsequent book on The War for Talent.

Talent Management is defined as the science of using strategic HR to improve business value and make it possible for companies and organisations to reach their goals.

Everything that is done to recruit, retain, develop, reward and make people perform is part of Talent Management as well as strategic workforce planning.

A Talent Management strategy needs to be linked to the business strategy to make sense. and it encompasses seven main areas of HR:

1) Recruitment and selection: Using the best processes to hire the “right” talent for your organization.

2) Performance management and coaching:  Managing the performance of your talent and providing the coaching needed to improve individual and team performance.

3) Employee development and training: Developing your employees and helping them identify their skill sets to maximize their potential.

4) Compensation, rewards and benefits: Rewarding employees with the proper structures in place to ensure they meet their financial needs.

5) Success planning and leadership development: Planning ahead for emergencies and creating new leaders.

6) Compliance, policy and procedures: Meeting corporate legal obligations and correctly handling employee relations.

 

7) Cultural and Corporate identity: Managing the desired corporate culture and making sure employees understand the vision, mission, core values and beliefs.
 

In conclusion, think of Talent Management as a strategic system and process and another component of an overall corporate strategy.

 

 

Hire Quality partners with clients to build high performance teams by recruiting and selecting new talent and by upgrading current staff through training and development. For more information go to www.hirequality.ca or call 705.734.2698



 

Reason You'll Lose Your Best Employees

Change - some employees go with it and some won't. Losing a good employee, a valued member of the team, sometimes happens because of salary issues, and sometimes it is just because the organization has changed in a way that doesn't appeal to the employee.

Jeff Haden, writing for CEO.com lists six reasons employees will leave. They all involve change and growth. The culture and climate of a start-up can be very different than an established mid-sized business.

Here are Jeff's six of the top (non-salary) reasons your best employees will leave:
1. The business has grown—and so has your ego.
2. A boutique turned into a corporation.
3. The sky no longer seems the limit.
4. Exceptional skill resulted in handcuffs.
5. Flat became multi-layered.
6. Major League Baseball turned into Little League.

To find out the details read Six Reasons You'll Lose Your Best Employees

CEO.com | Six Reasons You'll Lose Your Best Employees

Do you think any of these could be mitigated with change or talent management practices?

HireQuality provides Recruitment, Talent Management, and Management Coaching services to meet your organizations needs. Call us at 416.413.1177 or visit our website for more information

The Power of Going Off Grid - could you do it?

Tony Schwartz wrote in his recent CEO.com blog post, "I am the chief executive of my company, with responsibility for 30 people in the United States and another two offices overseas. As part of my vacation last month, I took two weeks when I was completely offline and didn’t check in to my office at all. Was this a wise move? Was it responsible?"

Tempting - isn't it. Anyone in a high profile, demanding position - must surely entertain the idea of unplugging and going off grid for a period of time.

Do you think it's a good idea, or more to the point, do you think you could actually do it?

Tony's experience was positive.

"I returned to the office this week feeling re-energized and inspired by the opportunity to reflect, read and relax. A couple of significant client issues had arisen in my absence, but they didn’t require my involvement. The most common reason many of us feel compelled to answer e-mail constantly is that we are addicted to feeling connected. And by the end of two weeks, I couldn’t resist checking e-mail any longer, even knowing that if anything critical arose, my office would find me."

His experience inspired him to implement 2 experiments at work. Read about those in The Power of Stepping Back.

CEO.com | The Power of Stepping Back

HireQuality provides Recruitment, Talent Management, and Management Coaching services to meet your organizations needs. Call us at 416.413.1177 or visit our website for more information

Does Your Business Need the Innovative and Dynamic Role of an Intrapreneur?

The dynamic skills of an entrepreneur doesn't always reside in an organization's CEO or other top manager. Organizations seeking to add that component to their management mix are coaching an employee or recruiting an individual with specific entrepreneurial skills for an in-house role.

The position can be termed intrapreneur, meaning a person in a company who takes responsibility for turning an idea into a profitable finished product through risk-taking and innovation.  The intrapreneur focuses on innovation and creativity while following the goals of the organization they work in. Rewards and motivational techniques can be different for this role, for example company shares and bonuses.

Intrapreneurship is an example of motivation through job design - encouraging individuals to behave as entrepreneurs with the resources, capabilities and security of the larger organization behind them. Candidates must be willing to learn from failures, conserve resources, and have the drive to move ideas forward, often independently.

"Intrapreneurship has been around since 3M developed Post-It notes back in 1977 and is even more popular today as companies leverage their employees to innovate and stay competitive in the marketplace. Some examples include DreamWorks, where employees take free classes to learn how to pitch their ideas and are then able to pitch them directly to executives." Dan Schawbel, in his recent Entrepreneur blog post, "3 Things You Don't Know About Intrapreneurship", identified 3 trends in workplace.

1. Managers are actually willing to support intrapreneurial employees. In a new study in partnership with American Express, we found that 58 percent of managers are either very willing or extremely willing to support employees who want to chase business opportunities.

2. The majority of workers still don't believe they can become an intrapreneur. In a study with Monster.com, we found that less than one third of workers feel they have the freedom, flexibility and resources to be an intrapreneur.

3. Intrapreneurship is a stepping stone to entrepreneurship. Some 94 percent of intrapreneurs think they have the required skills and knowledge to start a firm of their own, and 76 percent say that fear of failure would not prevent them from starting a business, reports the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor.

If you can see a role for an intrapreneur within your organization, consider the help of a Talent Manager or Executive Recruiter to build the position and identify candidates. Once the person is in place they may benefit from Management Coaching to build confidence and grown in the position.


HireQuality provides Recruitment, Talent Management, and Management Coaching services to meet your organizations needs. Call us at 416.413.1177 or visit our website for more information

Alternative Ways to Bridge the Skills Gap

Productivity and competitiveness are critical business factors in today's global markets. Organizations are finding that they can improve both by making sure there is a solid match between workforce demographics and the skills needed on the shop floor.

 

According to McKinsey, almost 9 out of 10 companies are experiencing a talent shortage, and three-quarters say that the inability to hire skilled workers is having a negative impact on their business.

 

With unemployment figures at record high levels, especially in Europe, and many employees feeling under-employed, at first glance it would seem that employment opportunities are limited. But critical skills for many industries are in short supply and keeping talent in your organization can make the difference between success and failure.

 

The key challenges for employers are to:

• Fill critical skill gaps in a timely and efficient way
• Manage flexible, contingent workers without raising the organization’s risk profile
• Move work to the worker rather than the other way around
• Keep talent engaged and retained wherever possible, even across borders

 

More companies are looking to alternative ways to meet the talent gap.

 

1. Provide flexible work options

Giving employees flexible work options with opportunities to up-grade skills can be offered instead of higher salaries and promises of advancement.

 

2. Respect the need for improved balance between work and life

Work-life balance can be a key issue in retaining talented staff, especially with workforce demographics changing with an aging population. One German manufacturer has implemented a policy to reduce the number of cell phone calls and employee could receive outside of normal working hours.

 

3. Talent Supply Chain Approach

By taking the approach of supply chain management, HR can better integrate supply and demand of skilled employees to fit business cycles. This helps to identify pivotal skills for their organization and factor in how long it would take to find the right employee with those skills.

 

source: SAP Business Innovation

 

HireQuality provides Recruitment, Talent Management, and Management Coaching services to meet your organizations needs. Call us at 416.413.1177 or visit our website for more information.

Prepare to Make Tough Decisions

Decision making skills are one of the key success factors for senior executives. You  may assume that as managers progress through organizations these skills are honed for the day when they are in a senior decision making position.  Often, a new leader finds that in taking over the helm, they feel least prepared to make the tough decisions necessary to guide their business through a difficult situation.

Tim Bowler, BBC News Reporter, writing in CEO Guru about taking decisions, answers the question, "What makes a good leader?".

"In essence, a chief executive will need to know what their mission is and why their company exists, they will need to have a vision for where their firm should go, and know how progress towards that goal will be measured. Many bosses say that most important part of their job is in dealing with a handful of really important issues, and taking tough decisions which may upset others."

 The process that an executive uses to make decisions can be greatly influenced by their leadership style. Most top CEO's will use a consultative approach, but who they choose to consult with, whether they use a small circle of inner managers, external organizations, or approach the grassroots of their employee base, will depend upon the type of issue, the time involved, and their leadership style.

The more experience one has, the more likely the executive is to easily recognize the best consultative process for the situation. The intent is to balance factors with others, who may have additional information, what option is strongest for the business. The executive however, must not loose sight of the companies true vision, and remember that the opinions of others may be clouded with different biases.

"While no decision is easy, if a CEO does not make the right choices then ultimately they may find things being taken out of their hands - as shareholders pressure the company management board to replace them," concludes Tim.

Source: CEO Guru - Taking decisions can be tough at the top | Tom Bowler | BBC News

HireQuality provides Recruitment, Talent Management, and Management Coaching services to meet your organizations needs. Call us at 416.413.1177 or visit our website for more information.

Allow Top Candidates to Show-off With These 12 Interview Questions

Top candidates require a top notch interview to show-off their abilities and exceptional skills. Standard interview questions won't bring out the real performers and will not excite a quality new hire.

Dr. John Sullivan, writing for ere.net, explained;

"Instead of dwelling on the past, a superior alternative is to ask them to solve real problems, and to demonstrate that they are forward-looking and that they have solutions for the future. Top candidates routinely dislike standard interviews because they find them tedious and predictable. Most interviews are simply not designed to allow a top candidate to show off their capabilities, ideas, and innovativeness."

In his blog post, Dr. Sullivan suggests 12 questions that will encourage top candidates to showcase their skills in problem solving, innovation, forward thinking, and motivation. I've summarized them below. These type of questions require a deeper understanding of the position and the industry but are well worth the preparation time to find the best talent for your client.

 Questions about identifying and solving real problems:
1.) How will you identify problems and opportunities on the job?
What steps will you take on the job during your first few weeks to identify the most important issues and opportunities in your new position?
2.) Can you identify the likely problems in this process? Give candidate a process diagram that contains flaws.
3.) Solve a real problem you will face - Give candidate a bullet point outline of an existing problem.
Questions that show a candidate is forward looking:
4.) Forecast the evolution of this job - What are some of the ways this job could evolve over time with changes in technology or business environment?
5.) Forecast the evolution of this industry - What are the trends you see in this industry over the  next 5 years?

Questions that show a candidate's ability to innovate and learn:
6.) Show us how you would be a continuous learning expert - what area in this job do you need to be a leading edge expert and how would you keep on top of things.
7.) Show us your adaptability when dramatic change is required - give us an example of a situation in this new job or a previous job where you see a need to adapt or show your team adapted.
8.) Show us how you will innovate - walk us through how you would innovate over the first year of your position.

Questions to help us better understand the candidate: (questions relating to an individuals competencies or preferences
9.) List and rank your job acceptance factors - pay, job duties, fit with your manager, level of responsibility, opportunities - 5 factors you would use to compare jobs
10.) List and rank your job motivators - factors that motivate you on the job
11.) Tell us the most effective approaches for managing you - feedback, rewards, closeness of supervision, communications approach, leadership styles
12.) List and rank the capabilities that you bring to this job - e.g. knowledge, experience, education, skills

source: ere.net | 12 High Impact Interview Questions for Top Candidates | Dr. John Sullivan

HireQuality provides Recruitment, Talent Management, and Management Coaching services to meet your organizations needs. Call us at 416.413.1177 or visit our website for more information.

Smart Hiring Strategies - avoid making a bad hire

During the recruitment process how to you gauge 'the right-fit', and measure the understanding the candidate has of your core values, communication style and work ethic? How do you avoid making a mistake when it comes down to selecting the final candidate?

"One of the most costly, time-consuming blunders a business can make is picking the wrong person for the job.", Ryan Holmes, CEO HootSuite.

Holmes, who ran his own business for over two decades, wrote a blog post recently, "The Unexpectedly High Cost of a Bad Hire". In it he references the US Department of Labor estimate that the average cost of a bad hiring decision can equal 30% of the individual's first-year earnings.

Lou Adler, another LinkedIn Influence, and author of Hire With Your Head, recommends overcoming the visual impact of first impressions by conducting a phone interview prior to the face-to-face meeting.

In his blog post "Performance Matters, First Impressions Don't", he suggest using MSA (most significant accomplishment) e.g. “Can you describe your most significant accomplishment?”? Another is: “How would you solve this problem?”

 “I’ve worked with thousands of candidates, and tracked hundreds of them over the past 30+ years. The only common trait among the best is their track record of solid performance, not the quality of their first impression,” wrote Adler. “Judge them instead on their performance. You won’t be disappointed.”

At Hire Quality we offer services such as workView JobSimulations™ which allow employers to see candidates in action performing the critical tasks that drive job success. This unique hiring tool will dramatically increase your hiring accuracy and reduce your risk of making a hiring mistake.

Our proven job simulation process allows clients and candidates to interact and engage each other over authentic work related issues. By assessing real on-the-job performance, we remove personal bias and emotion-based decisions from the selection process. The good workers are quickly separated from the good interviewers.

In a traditional interview, candidates tell you what they've done for others. In our simulation process, candidates show you what they can do for you. Hire Quality's job simulations help answer the key hiring question: Can the candidate successfully do the job?

Research shows that well designed and professionally facilitated job simulations are 4xs times more reliable than traditional job interviews at predicting success. The use of job simulations as a validated hiring tool has experienced double digit growth in the last five years.

More companies are looking for practical and objective ways to improve their hiring process. Hire Quality's optional service, workView JobSimulations™ has proven to be a win - win for both clients and candidates as they are mutually protected from the associated risks of poor hiring decisions or bad career moves.

Source: BBC Capital Blog Post | July 19, 2013

HireQuality provides Recruitment, Talent Management, and Management Coaching services to meet your organizations needs. Call us at 416.413.1177 or visit our website for more information.

Surround Yourself With Talent - Building Your A-Team

There are very few successful businesses running on the talent of one. While your business may start off that way, as soon as you need to scale up and hire, you'll need to make the best decisions about the people who will share your vision and grow your company.

Building a team is not just about individual player stats and accomplishments, but how that individual can adapt and fit with the rest of the group. A well motivate and cohesive team will not only execute projects and routine tasks with ease but will bring new ideas to the group and see around the next corner.

As a business owner you need to identify new roles needed in your organization and understand the team dynamics of your group. Certainly teams can be forged with incentives and the influence of corporate culture, but if you can put together an A-Team that clicks and naturally supports its members, you have much less people management to do.

Invest the time to get it right and the rewards will follow.

HireQuality provides Recruitment, Talent Management, and Management Coaching services to meet your organizations needs. Call us at 416.413.1177 or visit our website for more information.

Building Your A-Team |  source: LinkedIn Influencer Post, James Caan

The real skill of recruitment is all about getting that blend of disparate talents and qualities which mix together to make a functioning unit.

Any good leader or manager will tell you that the key to success is all about the quality, skills and experience of the people they surround themselves with.

And all great entrepreneurs understand that the skills needed to launch and grow a successful business are very different to the ones needed to manage and run an established operation

From this perspective, my inspiration is (fellow Influencer) Richard Branson, who personifies having the right team around him. He has some of the best people and it’s fair to say the impact is obvious. He has one of the most recognised businesses in the world and I put this down to having an A-Team.
It’s not just naïve, but also foolish to think that just one individual is capable of running a large organization on their own.

Anyone who does not have a decent team or management structure in place will sooner or later see aspects of the business start to suffer.

It is a fact of life that individuals are not talented at every discipline and sometimes it makes perfect sense to let the experts do the job they have been trained and are paid to do.

But running a team is not just about letting people get on with their designated roles. It’s also about creating the right mix of individuals and fostering the right spirit.

If you get your recruitment process wrong, things will quickly start to go astray much like a dysfunctional family

read more on LinkedIn..

HireQuality provides Recruitment, Talent Management, and Management Coaching services to meet your organizations needs. Call us at 416.413.1177 or visit our website for more information.

Using Infographics for Business Reporting

Last week we looked at Big Data, and how important analytical and communications skills are to businesses trying to turn numbers into useful information. A current trend is the use of Infographics, a visual communication method that represents key facts with statistics and graphic images to tell a story or make a point.

David Beckman, Executive Director, Pisces Foundation, in writing about Infographics said;

"It is hard to miss the rise of the infographic as a form of communication. Infographics are part of a broader trend toward greater data visualization, which has many forms connected by a shared desire to translate data into usable information that can be digested quickly. They are all over the place. Virtually all major news outlets use them. They are the subject of blogs, including one devoted to "cool" infographics and one that features a new infographic every day, titled not unsurprisingly, The Daily Infographic. There is even a website that uses an infographic to chart the rise and use of, you guessed it, infographics."

Certainly governments use Infographics, newspapers and special interests groups, but don't be surprised to see them turn up in the boardroom. Brenda Van Camp, International Head of Marketing Strategy & Client Insight, Christie's, commented, "Breaking away from the standard presentation tools we have used in the past really helps everyone engage with, and be excited about what we are doing."

One idea is to use an Infographic at the beginning of a report instead of an Executive Summary. Make sure the graphics you choose are suitable for your corporate culture, otherwise you may reduce the impact of your presentation.  Here is a blog about DYI Infographics if you decide to design in-house.

Learn more about using Infographics in Business - SlideShare presentation below by Zabisco - it may give you some ideas on using Infographics to communicate your business data or proposal.

Infographics - A Business Tool, by Marcus Marritt, Zabisco from Zabisco Digital


HireQuality provides Recruitment, Talent Management, and Management Coaching services to meet your organizations needs. Call us at 416.413.1177 or visit our website for more information.