Demote, re-train or fire poor managers now as they are costing your company a lot of money. Ask any employee why they are leaving a company to pursue other opportunities and the reason can usually be traced back to their immediate supervisor. If it’s related to compensation, poor direction, difficult working conditions, work life balance, training, etc. the manager in many ways can improve or shape the direction of these key attributes. One call center that I worked with had a 120% year over year attrition rate. Can you imagine trying to keep your customers happy with this type of turn over! The company was in constant recruiting and training mode costing the company hordes of money and tons of lost productivity.
Stop the constant recruiting cycles and stop your lip service to “employees are our #1 resource” by putting in place a program that works. With the cost of attrition pegged on average at 150% of the individual’s average salary, people exiting your company will leave your business in the dumps and at a severe disadvantage to your competitors. Believe me any CEO will listen to you when you translate retention of employees back to the bottom line.
Once I started working with the client listed above and put a Retention Assessment Program (RAP) in place, attrition dropped 35% in the first year, resulting in a net savings of approximately 2.5 million dollars. A RAP is a series of weighted questions that employees answer, that when compiled provide a manager with a RAP score. This score when married to the actual unit attrition rate allows HR to work with the manager to put concrete actions in place to lower attrition. The RAP summary sheet allows executives to also work with HR to make staffing and promotion decisions around its management.
Putting a RAP in place is all about changing the culture of the organization and putting in place a management of change program. Executives must be engaged and participate with active communication and by providing clear rewards for managers that show reduced attrition rates and by providing disciplinary measures to those that continue to demonstrate high attrition.
If you’re interested in finding out more send me an email at fguay@rogers.com
Monday, August 20, 2007
Friday, August 17, 2007
HR’s Most Powerful Tool – The Workforce Plan
Yep, you heard right! The workforce plan is exactly what human resource management needs if it wants to move forward its agenda with executive support and funds. Knowing what skills and competencies the organization has or lacks, how much hiring is actually planned, potential attrition, etc. all can be translated into business speak.
The language executives want to hear is: Are we ahead or behind schedule on product development? How many new salespeople have been hired? Are we going to be first or last to market? Is division X overspending or under spending? Are division Y achieving profit margins or not? Workforce plans allow human resources to take raw numbers and trends and translate them into concrete business results that executives cannot ignore. Done right, workforce plans become an executive power tool and the HR advisor a key resource to the CEO or CFO. The smart HR professional not only puts a workforce plan in place but then builds the company’s entire talent management strategy around it, building it’s recruiting, retention, succession planning strategy around it. This will be a subject for the near future.
Workforce planning and strategy is my passion and you can expect to hear more in the future.
For more information contact me at fguay@rogers.com
The language executives want to hear is: Are we ahead or behind schedule on product development? How many new salespeople have been hired? Are we going to be first or last to market? Is division X overspending or under spending? Are division Y achieving profit margins or not? Workforce plans allow human resources to take raw numbers and trends and translate them into concrete business results that executives cannot ignore. Done right, workforce plans become an executive power tool and the HR advisor a key resource to the CEO or CFO. The smart HR professional not only puts a workforce plan in place but then builds the company’s entire talent management strategy around it, building it’s recruiting, retention, succession planning strategy around it. This will be a subject for the near future.
Workforce planning and strategy is my passion and you can expect to hear more in the future.
For more information contact me at fguay@rogers.com
Thursday, August 16, 2007
If you Cannot Hire the Best then Give them Away
In yesterday’s blog I discussed some of the advantages of setting up a network composed of your suppliers, customers and non-competitors for talent management purposes (co-petition). Well today I want to share one of my past strategies for using this network.
Over the years when my team and I sourced key talent on behalf of my employers, I came across many great candidates who worked for our biggest competitors. These candidates were always a phenomenal challenge as they were in high demand, heavily compensated and usually working on leading edge projects. Many of them were also working with highly financed start up’s or with mid sized companies with media buzz. My team and I won many of the battles for some of these candidates but we also lost our share. At the end of these exchanges my team and I reviewed the odds of being able to hire these candidates in the future and if we could potentially hire them we would tag them in our system for future recruiting purposes and for candidate management. If on the other hand our odds were low, we would identify whom from our client, customer or non-competitor base was in the best position to hire these candidates away from our competitors.
The loss of key resources at our competitors created some great opportunities for the companies I worked with, while putting our competitors at a severe disadvantage due to knowledge loss and the long cycle to recruit key resources. The good will created with our customers and suppliers also helped cement long standing relationships.
Note that all candidates acknowledged upfront in the recruitment process that they would be willing to be considered by other companies in their job search. In this way we respected the various privacy and legal policies in different countries and jurisdictions. Do not do this on the cheap, get proper legal and branding advice and always involve your account teams when dealing with clients and suppliers.
If you would like to know more send me an email at fguay@rogers.com
Over the years when my team and I sourced key talent on behalf of my employers, I came across many great candidates who worked for our biggest competitors. These candidates were always a phenomenal challenge as they were in high demand, heavily compensated and usually working on leading edge projects. Many of them were also working with highly financed start up’s or with mid sized companies with media buzz. My team and I won many of the battles for some of these candidates but we also lost our share. At the end of these exchanges my team and I reviewed the odds of being able to hire these candidates in the future and if we could potentially hire them we would tag them in our system for future recruiting purposes and for candidate management. If on the other hand our odds were low, we would identify whom from our client, customer or non-competitor base was in the best position to hire these candidates away from our competitors.
The loss of key resources at our competitors created some great opportunities for the companies I worked with, while putting our competitors at a severe disadvantage due to knowledge loss and the long cycle to recruit key resources. The good will created with our customers and suppliers also helped cement long standing relationships.
Note that all candidates acknowledged upfront in the recruitment process that they would be willing to be considered by other companies in their job search. In this way we respected the various privacy and legal policies in different countries and jurisdictions. Do not do this on the cheap, get proper legal and branding advice and always involve your account teams when dealing with clients and suppliers.
If you would like to know more send me an email at fguay@rogers.com
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Co-petition vs. Competition – A Key Building Block to Winning the Talent Wars
Everyone wants to win the talent wars but no one is thinking smart. Companies are competing hard against each other for candidates, by raising salaries, offering signing bonuses and by sinking more and more money into recruiting events and fairs. When will the insanity stop!
There is a better way and that way is called co-petition. Co-petition is all about leveraging your customers, suppliers and anyone who is not your competitor (what I call the US Network) in a direct market to win talent market share. Your competitors I will call the THEM Network. Here’s how you can leverage this tactic.
1. To Recruit
All companies spend heavily on recruitment but only hire a small percentage of the candidates, due either to poor fit, current unavailability and or their inability to convince the candidate that their opportunity is the best fit for them. But imagine if instead of spending heavily on recruiting events and strategies you could leverage from the US network immediately. Now there is just in time recruiting.
2. To Retain
Let’s face it, losing good employees is a fact of life, it’s going to happen no matter what brilliant strategies you put in place. So why not try to keep all this good talent away from competitors by having them take opportunities within the US network. Not only does this make good business sense i.e.: ensuring top talent does not work with your key competitors but it’s also a great opportunity to increase your organizations sales by having former employees who are knowledgeable about your company and products now sitting with current or potential customers and suppliers.
3. To Hurt your Competition
Well someone has to lose and I would rather it’s someone other than my clients. Developing the US network hurts the competition by providing you with quicker access to talent than they can recruit it. It also eliminates potential talent sources that were once more easily available to them. By reducing your costs related to recruiting, retention and retraining your company can compete more effectively. And more importantly by cementing stronger business relationships with your suppliers and clients your competitors are less appealing to them.
It’s all about increasing the odds of winning. And co-petition goes a long way in re-defining how to win the talent wars. This is just an early primer and co-petition should form a large building block for your overall business and talent strategy. I look forward to sharing more of my thinking with you in my next blog.
Want to know more about how to put this in place for your company, send me an email at fguay@rogers.com
Let me know what you think about this post, post a reply.
There is a better way and that way is called co-petition. Co-petition is all about leveraging your customers, suppliers and anyone who is not your competitor (what I call the US Network) in a direct market to win talent market share. Your competitors I will call the THEM Network. Here’s how you can leverage this tactic.
1. To Recruit
All companies spend heavily on recruitment but only hire a small percentage of the candidates, due either to poor fit, current unavailability and or their inability to convince the candidate that their opportunity is the best fit for them. But imagine if instead of spending heavily on recruiting events and strategies you could leverage from the US network immediately. Now there is just in time recruiting.
2. To Retain
Let’s face it, losing good employees is a fact of life, it’s going to happen no matter what brilliant strategies you put in place. So why not try to keep all this good talent away from competitors by having them take opportunities within the US network. Not only does this make good business sense i.e.: ensuring top talent does not work with your key competitors but it’s also a great opportunity to increase your organizations sales by having former employees who are knowledgeable about your company and products now sitting with current or potential customers and suppliers.
3. To Hurt your Competition
Well someone has to lose and I would rather it’s someone other than my clients. Developing the US network hurts the competition by providing you with quicker access to talent than they can recruit it. It also eliminates potential talent sources that were once more easily available to them. By reducing your costs related to recruiting, retention and retraining your company can compete more effectively. And more importantly by cementing stronger business relationships with your suppliers and clients your competitors are less appealing to them.
It’s all about increasing the odds of winning. And co-petition goes a long way in re-defining how to win the talent wars. This is just an early primer and co-petition should form a large building block for your overall business and talent strategy. I look forward to sharing more of my thinking with you in my next blog.
Want to know more about how to put this in place for your company, send me an email at fguay@rogers.com
Let me know what you think about this post, post a reply.
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