Talent Maximiser

Employee engagement, Pan Am style

Recently, there has been a flurry of coverage around the collapsed airline, Pan Am. First with a documentary of its rise, innovative contribution to the airline industry (use of jet aircraft, jumbo jets and computerised reservation system) and then its eventual collapse.  This was followed by  a TV series.  So what does this have to do with employee engagement?

A recent article in the FT magazine (November 26/27 2011) about a previous Pan Am employee, illustrated what an engaged employee would look like. Alieen Gauntlett an original Pan Am air hostess was quoted saying "it wasn't about the glamour.  It was the privilege of working for Pan Am". 

Having watched the recent shows on Pan Am (and seen to Catch a thief), it is clear that there was glamour working at Pan Am, but Alieen, like so many of her colleagues, was not just rationally engaged but most importantly, emotionally engaged with her employer.  She was proud to work there. 

At a time when many people are not feeling happy about wearing their uniform/corporate attire, how different would it be for an organisation who could get staff advocating their company, as Pan Am did...On September 23, 1974, a group of Pan Am employees published an advertisement in The New York Times to register their disagreement over federal policies which they felt were harming the financial viability of their employer.

Managers need the right tools to engage with employees

The online version of HR Magazine recently posted an interesting article about the lack of action Managers undertake following an annual engagement surveys, and what organisation can do to ensure action. 

I agreed with many of the points made in the article, principally around the importance of line managers being involved and responsible for employee engagement. But I question the overall existence of annual engagement surveys as we have come to know them.  They are typically long and increasingly over engineered, and as such outdated. The reams and reams of charts and statistics that are produced do not encourage the fundamental behaviour that drives engagement, talking to people, and this (along with a lack of time and confidence in how to discuss engagement) is why many line mangers typically fail to act on them.

The challenge then for organisations is how to collect timely data, and how to engage managers in their pivotal role.  To start, engagement surveys need to be adapted for the times.  Annual surveys, by their very name can not keep up with the fast paced world we live in, and therefore can only provide a rear view image of what has happended in the organisation and not what is happening.  Increasingly, people are asked for and expect to give immediate feedback on a situation, they don't want to wait months to give feedback.  With advances in technology, the arrival of social media and the embracing of concepts such as gamification, nowcasting and crowd sourcing, organisations no longer need to push annual surveys and hope managers act on the findings. Instead its now possible that organisations can motivate employees to provide regular, timely feedback on their engagement levels, and then create an empowering environment where it is easy for employees and managers to jointly discuss and solve the engagement issues that are current.  Along the way, organisation can also identify who are the most influential people at driving and delivering improved engagement levels.

We want to see needless complexity and time-lage removed from engagement surveys and have been developing a product, Employee Chatter that will help organisations engage with their employees in today's work environment and make use of the latest technology to make it quick, simple and easy to collect engagement data and engage everyone in solving the engage challenges.

The power of an engagement conversation

Here is a comment I found by a women who wrote in response to a blog, detailing 6 reasons employees leave an organisation (@expresspros) that I really wanted to share with you.


"The above are all reasons that I am walking after 18 years - particularly the immediate supervisor. I have been rated in the high 90s consistently, receive national recognition and ignored recruitment attempts until this past year. I never thought I would leave my home but I can hardly wait."

She sounds like a talented individual who will be missed by her organisation.  Harvard Business Review's article (May 2010) 'how to keep your top talent' identified regular and open dialogues as being one critical component of a talent development programme, in order to monitor star employees' development and satisfaction. 

In the many years of working with managers on how they engage with their talent, I believe that many managers know the importance of having regular and open dialogue with their employees, but many don't.  Why not?

A key challenge is having a credible and purposeful reason for meeting with talent on a regular basis to discuss their engagement without it simply degenerating into a 'how are you getting on conversation' or worse 'what training do you want/need'.  Enquiring about the wellbeing of an individual and their development needs is important and needs to be asked, but not to the exclusion of a broader set of questions.  Such as the areas an individual rates as important for their workplace satisfaction vs how well the business is delivering them.  Managers often need the core skills, some hand holding, and a little push before they fully embraces the subtleties of holding an engagement conversation.  If not, then their employees are much more tempted to listen to the recruiters. 

Providing your managers with the skills and focal points to have an 'engagement' conversation with your employees is a simple process that is often underrated and under used but provides a real opportunity to maximise value from the managing of your talent.

Everyone can benefit:

• The act of having an engagement conversations in itself, helps an individual to feel more engaged
• Employees are waiting (and wanting) to have these conversations and once done they will be willing to give more of their discretionary effort
• Managers will be given insights that only come from showing a genuine interest and focusing on areas that the individual flags as important
• Employees feel valued and are more likely to stay, which frees everyone from the grind and expense of constantly recruiting

Tips - to maximise talent management - part 4

Following on from my previous posts, explaining how to go about maximising the value from talent management initiatives, here is the fourth and final 2.5 areas to consider:

Confirm the development delivers - does the development initiatives stretch or cosset? Tip - give identified talent real business issues to address and or put into critical roles, even if they are operating in a shadow capacity.  Often the talent pool are given additional responsibilities or projects to help them grow and profile their talent, but they are overly engineered to ensure very little chance of failure.  They need to experience a challenge first hand and embed the learning to carry the lesson.  It is a fine and difficult tight rope to walk, in terms of getting the right amount of feedback and on-going coaching and mentoring support.  But if they are given too much when they come off the 'spoon fed' programme, if it is not replaced with something else they feel abandoned and they are actually not able to think for themselves in any significantly different way, leading to demotivation and probably departure.  If the development is not up to the job then it is unlikely that internal talent will be promoted.

Define measures of success - are there clearly defined measures of success?  Tip - measures of success can be simple, such as the level of recruitment spending, the number of internal promotions, the size of the talent pool for future leadership positions, the levels of talent engagement and the number of talented employees departing over the past year.  Setting goals will keep the focus on what is important and ensure tracking against the strategic objectives.

Bonus thought - Deliver value over complexity - is the process more complicated than it needs to be?  Tip - At each stage of the process consider what value will be delivered to the business from the implementation of choosen models, tools, technology etc.  Often we can get caught up with creating a (perfect) process that is does not meet the business needs.

Tips - to maximise talent management - part 3

Following on from my first and second post, explaining how to go about maximising the value from talent management initiatives, here are the third 2 areas to consider:

Identify the owners - who is running the show?  Tip - there are a number of key stakeholder and they all have an important role to play.  It is important to define the responsibilities of each.  Typically the role of HR/Talent Manager is to tease out the objectives, provide the framework to achieve the desired outcomes, oversee the process and support implementation. The leaders' role is to reinforce the importance of the process, to act as the role models for the behaviours they want and need the rest of the organisation to demonstrate, while the line have the vital role of helping to deliver the talent management initiatives and manage the talent on a day to day basis.  Whatever the final allocation of roles and responsibilities, the most important thing to maximise the value from your talent management process is to ensure that everyone is clear about their role and the critical part they play in engaging, developing and retain talent.

Ensure useable technology -  is there useful intelligence being produced?  Tip - consider your needs, how complex is your process going to be in the outset?  As you evolve your talent management process you will undoubtably need more technology.  Technology can enhance the process but too much technology is likely to remove richness from the insight and make it a tick book activity that simply has to get done. In the first instance, many companies can still get by using the basics such as a spreadsheet to gather and display the information they need to make decisions. Beware of wasting valuable resources on creating a 'white elephant' that the business does not want to use.

Tips - to maximise talent management - part 2

Following on from my first post, explaining how to go about maximising the value from talent management initiatives, here are the second 2 areas to consider:

Determine eligibility for inclusion - is it open to everyone and can people put themselves, others forward, or is it shrouded in secrecy?  Tip - open nomination sends out more positive messages, is preferred by talent and acts as safety net for picking up potentials.  Not everyone wants or is ready to put themselves forward for a talent programme, so it is unlikely that you will be inundated, but employees report that it is important for them to know that it could be open to them.  If you go down the open route, then having a clear selection and participation criteria is critical for helping people to decide their eligibility. And for those who make it into the talent pool it is also important that they know they have been selected.  Talent often report to being told they are part of the succession plan only when they depart.  Note - participation criteria for being in a talent pool can make clear it is not a life committment.  If employees do not feel they are being given a fair chance to develop and be recognised they are more likely to leave to pursue a career elsewhere.

Decide on the implementation - is it 'done to' employees and are they told what to do and expect, with little opportunity to say whether they actual want to be included?  Tip - engaging all stakeholders in the creation process and putting talent at the heart of the process will ensure it is not just a 'best in class model' but is something that is embraced and made to successfully work within the organisation's culture.  Otherwise it becomes a costly investment that goes nowwhere.

Tips - to maximise talent management - part 1

For my first post, I figured I should start by explaining just how to go about maximising talent management initiatives. Then over the coming posts I will talk more about each area and how they have and may change in the future through evolution or innovations.  I will also pepper the subsequent posts with commentary about how to maximise talent potential and how you not only retain talent, but also keep talent engaged.

So here is my list...

(On settling down to write my list, I found there was a lot to say, so I am going to spilt it over four posts, so please come back for more if you like what I say!)

Here are the first 2 areas to consider to ensure you are maximising the value from your talent management initiatives:

Be clear as to your definition of talent - is talent a concept applied to a percentage of employees or everyone?  Tip - you ultimately decide and programmes can be developed to account for either definition, although it is worth considering that the top 16% of employees generate 60% of revenues, while the bottom 16% of employees cost the company 20% in revenues Source: HiringSmart. In the same way that not everyone wants to be a leader, employee are motivated by knowing that people will be recognised if they put in added effort to attain a level of achievement.

Clarify the scope of your talent management programme - will it cover the whole of the organisation, just the leadership team, or pockets or levels of your organisation?  Tip - focusing only on the leadership team makes it more of a succession planning exercise.  Depending on the need of organisation, this may be the place to start, but if your challenge is say, hard to recruit technical experts then the talent programme will probably look very different. Knowing where you are going to start and how it may evolve will ensure clearer communications.