Do you know what is important to your prospective and current employees? Do you work hard to meet those needs? If you answered yes to both questions, then you probably have a low employee turnover rate. However, this is not the case for all employers and many companies struggle with the issue of employee turnover.

The average employee tenure at a company is approximately 4 years. This is barely enough, or not enough, time for a company to fully recoup hiring and training costs. Companies cannot eliminate turnover; however, there are some items to consider when trying to retain quality people.

The following are 6 steps that an employer can take to attract and retain top talent:

1) Evaluate Your Managers

Measure employee turnover by manager; this pinpoints the real problem. Poor managers cancel out all the good things that employers do to attract and retain the right people. Once the problem managers have been identified, help them! Use assessments or other tools to discover what these managers are doing to drive employees away and then provide training to develop them into better leaders. Good management is crucial to employee retention.

2) Create a Recognition Culture

Give your managers the responsibility for seeking out ways that employees go above and beyond. Create awards for excellent performance; this gives everyone an opportunity to be in the spotlight for doing a good job. Great examples of employee recognition include: thank you notes, employee of the month awards, newsletter recognition, service awards, etc. Positive recognition will lead to a more productive work environment.

3) Create a Healthy Work Environment

Create an environment where positive recognition seems normal. In order to achieve this there must be open communication, an attitude of cooperation, and an atmosphere of trust. Communicate with your employees; let them know where the company is going, how it plans to get there, how their jobs play a part in the grand scheme of things, and why they are the key to your success. Look for ways to show that you are willing to meet them halfway in balancing their personal and professional lives- flexible hours, childcare facilities, birthday leave, etc. Last, but definitely not least, trust your employees. If you want people to trust you, then you have to trust them. Give people a good reputation to live up to and they won’t let you down.

4) Create an Atmosphere of Continual Self-Improvement

Today’s job candidates want the opportunity to develop themselves and to continually polish their skills, abilities, and experience. Invest heavily in training and employee development and encourage employees to take advantage of the programs offered. Give everyone access to training that will enhance their self-esteem, their value, and their skills. Prove to your employees that there is no reason to leave when they can receive training and development from within the organization.

5) Put Your Best Foot Forward

This next statement may definitely throw some employers for a loop; pay employees as much salary and provide as many benefits as you can afford from day one. The goal is to reduce turnover and retain the right people, so if you scale back the initial offer by 15%, will the savings be enough to retain the employee when another company offers more money? Probably not. Put your best foot forward from the start and let everyone know that you are paying as much as you can afford for each position. As a person moves up the ladder, their pay should be adjusted accordingly. Know what each job is worth, and pay it early.

6) Match People to Jobs

Ensure people are matched to their jobs in terms of their abilities, interests, and personalities. When people are placed in positions where job demand and abilities match, where job stimulation and interest match, and where cultural demands and personalities match, turnover decreases and productivity increases. Employers can use assessments to determine the requirements of each position in terms of abilities, interests, and personalities and then use the information to match people to jobs where they will excel.

In most cases we want the quick, easy, and inexpensive fix, but unfortunately that is not always possible. Attracting and retaining the highest quality people may take time, effort, and money. By applying the 6 steps from above, companies can eliminate a large percentage of why people leave and keep the people that are essential to their success.

That’s why investing in a welcoming and structured onboarding process will help reduce such turnover and increase new-hire effectiveness. An effective onboarding process isn’t just a routine checklist; it should be a comprehensive
process that makes the new employee feel comfortable and acquainted. When a
new-hire anxiously walks in the door, they need an extra boost of confidence –
and a structured, friendly introduction will help. A successful onboard leads to
a successful organization! Here are five factors your onboarding process should
have:

1. Team involvement. Onboarding a new employee should involve the
entire team. It’s not just the HR department or the hiring manager’s concern,
but all team members should be involved in welcoming new hires. Taking new
employees to lunch or assigning a mentor will help build relationships and show
the newbie that the company values them.

2. Consistent structure. Whether you’re onboarding a new secretary,
associate or top manager, the process needs to be consistent for all employees
and reflect the company values. A set structure helps the employee as well as
the team and administration. Remember, it’s all about making the transition as
smooth as possible.

3. Prepared desk and equipment. In addition to structure, make sure
that everything – from the desk, office supplies, security badges, computer
passwords, phone numbers and access keys – are prepared for the new hire. You
want them to feel at home!

4. Information. The most important part of the onboarding process is
making sure the new employee has access to all the information they need to
succeed in their position and know the company. It’s a good idea to set up
meetings with subject-matter experts so the new employee can grasp the
organization’s goals, policies and practices.

5. Check-ups. The onboarding process doesn’t stop after the first day
or the first week. It’s important to have regular “check-ups” with your new
employee, ensuring they are comfortable and offering them the support they need
to be successful.

At the end of the day, the onboarding process is the employee’s first
impression of the company culture and it should introduce the organization
values. Now that you have a successful onboarding process in place, it’s time to
focus on training and developing these new employees to succeed! Call us to access a free report
“Training and Developing Employees to Succeed”. 415-456-1990 or email us at assess@smartmovesinc.com

A consciously developed customer-centered culture is a business advantage that will serve you for years — and inoculate you against competitive inroads. Consider for a minute Southwest Airlines and the lengthy list of would-be category killers that have tried to imitate it: United Airlines’ United Shuttle, Continental Airlines’ Continental Lite, Delta’s Delta Express and US Airways’ Metro-Jet.

What did these companies lack: Money? Name recognition? Hardly. They lacked Southwest’s relentless focus on culture, which none of its pop-up competitors was willing to slow down to emulate. And all are now bust.
This is why someone leading a business today — preparing a bright future for your organization and perhaps for the world — needs to focus not just on nuts andbolts, techniques and standards, but on culture.

Without a consciously created culture, your leadership won’t last beyond the moment you leave the building. Any vacation — or even lunch break — you take is an invitation for disaster: The inevitable complaint I hear from consulting
clients and at my engagements as a speaker is this: “Employees act differently when there aren’t any managers around.” But with a great company culture, employees will be motivated, regardless of management’s presence or absence.

Culture matters because:

●The number of interactions in a business between customers and staff is nearly infinite, and only a strong, clear pro-customer culture gives you a fighting chance of getting the preponderance of these interactions right.

●The current technological revolution amplifies the problems of not having the correct culture: Employees not acting in their customers’ best interest will end up having their actions broadcast over Twitter within minutes.

●Business realities are continually changing, and only a strong culture is going to help you respond to, capitalize on and drive forward these changes in order to serve customers and show your business in the best light.

Here’s how you can start leading through culture:

●Articulate your central philosophy, in just a few words if possible — a few meaningful
words. That’s right: A company’s culture can begin with words, but those
words need to represent a decision — something you actually stand for, a
decision then expressed in the clearest, and ideally fewest, words. Find a
central operating principle. Think of the Ritz-Carlton’s “We are Ladies and
Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen,” or Mayo Clinic’s “The needs of the
patient come first.”

●Elaborate on your central philosophy with a brief list of core values — a list short enough
that every employee can understand, memorize and internalize, yet long enough
to be meaningful. Your core values should cover how customers, employees and
vendors should be treated at all times.

●Include the wider world: Your people want a sense of purpose that goes beyond an ability to
exercise stock options at a favorable moment. More inspirational: a version of
the “triple bottom line,” such as Southwest’s “Performance – People – Planet”
commitment and annual report card.

●Reinforce  your commitment to these values continually. You may want to go as far as to devote five
minutes every morning to stress one value, or an aspect of one value, at your
departmental meeting. (This is what the Ritz-Carlton does.) If that’s too often
for your business reality or sensibilities, do it weekly. But don’t save it for
the annual company picnic. Annual anything is the enemy of ‘‘core.”

●Make it visual. The Ritz-Carlton has ‘‘credo cards’’— laminated accordion-fold cards
that each employee carries during work hours. The brand’s entire core beliefs,
plus shared basics of guest and employee interactions, fit on that card.

Zappos highlights one of its core values on each box it ships out. And sometimes ‘‘visual’’ doesn’t mean words at all. One way that FedEx shows that safety is a core value is via the orange shoulder belts in its vans: Everyone can see — from 25 yards away — that the driver’s wearing a belt.

● Make them the focus of orientation. That way, if safety is one of your core values and you
stress this at orientation, on day two, when the new employee’s coworker tells
him, ‘‘In this restaurant, we stack the high chairs in front of the emergency
exit when we need more room to do our prep work’’ (this is a real-life example,
unfortunately), the new employee will experience cognitive dissonance and work
on a way to align the actions of the company with the core values they’re
supposed to reflect.

●Most of all,
train, support, hire, and, if necessary, use discipline to enforce what’s
important to you. A core values statement is two-dimensional until you bring it
to life — with the right people and energetic guidance.

‘‘Maintaining a culture is like raising a teenager,’’ says Ray Davis, president and CEO of Umpqua Bank. ‘‘You’re constantly checking in. What are you doing? Where are you going? Who are you hanging out with?’’

And, sometimes, you have to use some tough love when that teenager is acting up in ways that
don’t support the culture you’re working to build.

You’re the boss, but you still spend too much time on the day-to-day.

Here’s how to become the strategic leader your company needs.

shutterstock images

In the beginning, there was just you and your partners. You did every job. You coded, you met with investors, you emptied the trash and phoned in the midnight pizza. Now you have others to do all that and it’s time for you to “be strategic.”

Whatever that means.

If you find yourself resisting “being strategic,” because it sounds like a fast track to irrelevance, or vaguely like an excuse to slack off, you’re not alone. Every leader’s temptation is to deal with what’s directly in front, because it always seems more urgent and concrete. Unfortunately, if you do that, you put your company at risk. While you concentrate on steering around potholes, you’ll miss windfall opportunities, not to mention any signals that the road you’re on is leading off a cliff.

This is a tough job, make no mistake. “We need strategic leaders!” is a pretty constant refrain at every company, large and small. One reason the job is so tough: no one really understands what it entails. It’s hard to be a strategic leader if you don’t know what strategic leaders are supposed to do.

After two decades of advising organizations large and small, my colleagues and I have formed a clear idea of what’s required of you in this role. Adaptive strategic leaders — the kind who thrive in today’s uncertain environment – do six things well:

Anticipate

Most of the focus at most companies is on what’s directly ahead. The leaders lack “peripheral vision.” This can leave your company vulnerable to rivals who detect and act on ambiguous signals. To anticipate well, you must:

• Look for game-changing information at the periphery of your industry
• Search beyond the current boundaries of your business
• Build wide external networks to help you scan the horizon better

Think Critically

“Conventional wisdom” opens you to fewer raised eyebrows and second guessing. But if you swallow every management fad, herdlike belief, and safe opinion at face value, your company loses all competitive advantage. Critical thinkers question everything. To master this skill you must force yourself to:

• Reframe problems to get to the bottom of things, in terms of root causes
• Challenge current beliefs and mindsets, including your own
• Uncover hypocrisy, manipulation, and bias in organizational decisions

Interpret

Ambiguity is unsettling. Faced with it, the temptation is to reach for a fast (and potentially wrongheaded) solution.  A good strategic leader holds steady, synthesizing information from many sources before developing a viewpoint. To get good at this, you have to:

• Seek patterns in multiple sources of data
• Encourage others to do the same
• Question prevailing assumptions and test multiple hypotheses simultaneously

Decide

Many leaders fall prey to “analysis paralysis.” You have to develop processes and enforce them, so that you arrive at a “good enough” position. To do that well, you have to:

• Carefully frame the decision to get to the crux of the matter
• Balance speed, rigor, quality and agility. Leave perfection to higher powers
• Take a stand even with incomplete information and amid diverse views

Align

Total consensus is rare. A strategic leader must foster open dialogue, build trust and engage key stakeholders, especially when views diverge.  To pull that off, you need to:

• Understand what drives other people’s agendas, including what remains hidden
• Bring tough issues to the surface, even when it’s uncomfortable
• Assess risk tolerance and follow through to build the necessary support

Learn

As your company grows, honest feedback is harder and harder to come by.  You have to do what you can to keep it coming. This is crucial because success and failure–especially failure–are valuable sources of organizational learning.  Here’s what you need to do:

• Encourage and exemplify honest, rigorous debriefs to extract lessons
• Shift course quickly if you realize you’re off track
• Celebrate both success and (well-intentioned) failures that provide insight

Do you have what it takes?

Obviously, this is a daunting list of tasks, and frankly, no one is born a black belt in all these different skills. But they can be taught and whatever gaps exist in your skill set can be filled in. You can begin by getting feedback from your peers and direct reports.  Be willing to listen to their perceptions and assuming they have your best interest at heart, acknowledge their input and take the necessary action to improve your strategic thinking.

One analogy for managing talent and optimizing job fit could be that of a car’s gears: you can’t have everyone operating only in low/first gear or high/fifth gear (and you certainly don’t want them going in reverse!). But perhaps a better analogy I recently heard described a team by saying “We need less ‘deer in the headlights’ and more ‘eye of the tiger.’” It paints a vivid picture and makes you wonder which animal your staff resembles more.

• Tigers are aggressive and focused on their goal. They are predators and don’t hesitate to target, stalk, and attack their prey. They are lean and muscular, not bulky or clumsy. They are territorial yet also sociable.
• Deer are more placid, timid, and easily spooked. They are typically
  non-threatening, although they can do serious damage if you run into one, or if they stumble into an unfamiliar environment. However, be careful not to prejudge this group too quickly, for the antlers on large bucks are reminders of their experience, wisdom, and grandeur.

• Skill Level: Does the person possess the right technical skills,
  experience, and critical thinking to be able to perform the job successfully?
  Can they be trained to learn, or are they so far over their head that finding them a new role (or firing them) is the better option?
• Job Fit: Did you take a successful individual performer and move them prematurely into a managerial or supervisory role? Is the person talented, but outside their level of capability?
• Communication: Message sent does not equal message received. How clearly was the assignment communicated and explained? Is this a new task in which all are finding their way, or are there examples to reference or incumbents to consult for getting back on track?
• Manager Effectiveness: When you see your employees struggling, don’t be quick to blame them. Consider how effectively you have assigned tasks (are their gaps or overlaps among employees?), communicated the job (what might sound
  simple to you might not be to them) and how it fits in with the objectives of the department and company. Have you issued conflicting directives?

If a stranger asks you to rank your management team on a scale of one to ten in areas such as communication, delegation, etc, what would you say? Most people would rank them unrealistically high for fear that their answers would get back to their boss. How many of you can say that you would answer 100 percent truthfully in your own opinion?

Despite all the trainings and coaching that management personnel can put employees through, a true manager also knows that they themselves are not perfect and they can always improve their management skills. Most of us work with a variety of people, and all people require different levels and amounts of coaching and mentoring from their superiors.

Everybody cares about what others think of them, it’s human nature. But what if you could find out exactly how you were perceived as a manager in your organization? Think how you could use that information to motivate and engage your employees better.

Feedback programs can be a sensitive subject for all parties involved because of fear. Managers fear they are not doing a sufficient job and employees fear if they are honest, they will get in trouble for any negative feedback toward their manager.

As a manager, you may think you are an outstanding communicator, but how do you rank in the eyes of the people in which you are communicating? How are you perceived as a manager?

The Checkpoint360™ is a tool that looks at how a manager thinks he conducts work on a daily basis and how the employee perceives the work of this manager. Both parties (manager and employees) carry out the assessment and reports two important factors:

1. Strengths – The areas you and your employees consider you to have a strength. The ‘keep doing’ items.

2. Perception by others - This outlines the areas that you may not be as strong. This could be one of two things: A performance gap is when you may think you delegate work effectively on a day-to-day basis, however, your people may be unsatisfied with your method for doing so. It could also be a perception gap. You may be delegating work effectively each day, but employees perceive that you are not. With these types of results, depending on the issue, the Checkpoint360™ report will provide you with a positive direction on how to change that and raise your game.

Either way, once you know how your people are thinking, you can modify behavior, change the way you manage, work on your skills, and immediately raise your game as a superior manager. In the example of delegating work effectively, perhaps you need a weekly meeting where employees outline the work that was appointed to them so all employees can see how you are delegating the work load. The team will have a clear outline of what is required of them and possibly notice ways that they can help each other work more effectively.

The Checkpoint360™ is only focused on strengths and development areas, not weaknesses. It is not about attacking managers; it is about helping them develop skills by means of strength analysis report.

Equipping your organization with the Checkpoint360™ solution has numerous benefits, but one in particular is priceless and one that most managers will never have in their career: A view of yourself in a working environment through the eyes of the people you are trying to motivate that work for you!

So you hired a new sales rep. He seems highly qualified: great resume, very personable, relevant work experience, and he nailed the interview. Now months go by and he just isn’t delivering the numbers. What’s going on? Is it time to let him go? Or can he be coached?

Recent research from CSO Insights‘ sales survey shows that coaching sales reps is the number one key to helping them rev up their sales. So, a greater emphasis on coaching is a necessity that will help your new sales hires become fully productive faster and more efficient.

Once you notice a potential problem with a sales rep, you want to be proactive about it before the problem gets worse. It’s important to coach early and coach often!

How do you go about effectively coaching an underperformer? Here are three fundamental steps managers must take to coach and develop underperforming sales reps:

1. Assess. Before you begin coaching, you need to know and understand the individual as best as you can. You need to know their specific strengths and weaknesses, skills and attributes, and personality and behavioral traits. Most of this information isn’t found in a single job interview or resume. To fully understand them, you need to assess them! SmartMoves offers the Profiles Sales Assessment that specifically measures how well a person fits sales jobs and includes seven critical sales behaviors: prospecting, call reluctance, closing the sale, self-starting, working with a team, building and maintaining relationships, and compensation preference.
2. Compare with Top Performers. After the underperformer takes an assessment, then you can compare their results to those of a top performer. In doing this you will be able to see the areas where the individual is struggling. The differences will show where the underperformer needs to improve to succeed.
3. Train and develop. Once you know the areas the individual is struggling in, you can give them appropriate sales training aimed to improving those traits or behaviors. Let’s say an individual scored lower in the area of assertiveness, then the sales manager can cater training to specifically improve the sales rep’s ability to not take no for an answer.

When sales managers “A.C.T.” they can effectively coach their sales reps to improve their numbers and reach their full potential.

In ‘The Rare Find,’ George Anders looks at how the U.S. Special Forces, Silicon Valley venture capitalists, basketball scouts and others identify and hire exceptional talent.

Originally printed in the LA Times, December 4, 2011

10 Important Questions to Help Identify High Potential Leaders

Submitted by our colleague Dario Priolo

According to research from the Corporate Executive Board, 40% of internal job moves made by people identified by their companies as “high potentials” end in failure. Many organizations make the mistake of looking simply at ability when assessing an employee for a management job. Think of the hot-shot sales rep or the genius software engineer. It is incredible how often high producing individuals get promoted into management jobs that require a totally different mindset to be successful.

The reason these people fail often comes down to three critical factors: leadership behaviors, aspiration and engagement. Aspiration entails whether the candidate really wants the position and is willing to make the sacrifices it may require. Engagement involves the employee’s commitment to the company and its mission. In focusing on whether an employee potentially can do a job, many organizations neglect the question, “Does he want to do this?”

Defining the characteristics can be a tricky proposition, particularly with young employees. The characteristics people develop through training, experience and progress in their activity are not necessarily apparent from who they are when they start. Moreover, many managers have beliefs about leadership that look like something out of a movie — loud, aggressive, in-your-face types of guys.

Organizations should develop leadership competency models based on a set of traits and behaviors associated with success in the company and then measure employees on how well they do relative to those traits. Organizations need to be sure they are assessing employees not just for the present but for the future, looking at not only what has made people successful, but also what is likely to be important and what shortages they have.

The 10 questions below, along with an effective assessment program, will help you more effectively identify high potential managers:

1. Does this person have a proven track record for accomplishing impressive results – not just meeting expectations?
2. Does this person take charge and make things happen? Or sit back and let things happen before producing?
3. Does this person inspire confidence in his or her decision making?
4. Can this person lead through persuasion and influence? Can he or she serve as an effective sounding board to others who are struggling with complex issues?
5. Do others trust this person to lead projects and teams, even though he or she doesn’t have a leadership title?
6. Does this person have an understanding of how to separate “what” from “how”? An awareness that establishing the destination before deciding on the mode of transportation is essential?
7. Can this person keep a global perspective? Are priorities apparent, or does she or he become mired in the details and tactics?
8. Do obstacles stop this person? Or do they represent challenges, not threats?
9. What success has this person had with multitasking?
10. How do unexpected changes affect this person’s performance?