7 Essential Elements for Managing Your Greatest Asset – Your People

YOU can have an amazing business plan and strategy, but if there are issues with recruiting and keeping your people, your strategy will fail. Finding the right people and incorporating essential elements so that they will stay, are key to managing your organization’s greatest asset — your people.

It starts with hiring for fit. Let’s say, hypothetically, that you could have two companies in the same industry in adjacent buildings. They may have very similar business models and customer bases; however, the two owners have very different values and personal philosophies — which lead to very different cultures and, therefore, very different strategies and plans.

The target candidates for each company will be very different given the values and cultural differences. The way candidates are sourced, hired, trained, deployed, engaged, and evaluated might be very different. I know of two competing companies in which one has a strict uniform policy, and the other doesn’t. Can you see how that would affect everything?

Looking back at my career, I can remember working for companies where I didn’t fit in. I can also recall places where I felt fully engaged. From a talent management perspective, it’s necessary to clearly define — and relay as early in the recruiting process as possible — what it means to “fit in” with your company. Strategies and plans can then be formulated to increase the company’s chances of attracting and hiring the candidates that fit that definition.

Some organizations think that fitting in somehow happens by chance. Nothing could be further from the truth. When you successfully define the criteria and apply it in the selection process, employee retention will go up. As a result, all the associated time, effort, and costs of employee turnover will evaporate.

This is how you begin to build your amazing culture based on sincerity and integrity.

One way to define the culture fit for your organization is to ask employees their top three reasons why they work here. In one organization where we asked the question of the employees, one word, “community,” came up in every response even though they hadn’t discussed the assignment with each other.

We then crafted an employer brand with the word “community” as the centerpiece. From the top to the bottom of the organization, everyone agreed that the employer brand was them. From that point forward, candidates could review the employer brand and know whether they’d fit in. If not, they knew not to bother applying.

Aligning the 7 Elements for Success

From my years of experience, I’ve identified seven elements associated with exceptional talent management: plan, attract, invest, deploy, engage, reward, and retain.

Each of the seven elements must have a strategy that fits with the other six to provide the needed talent results. Too many organizations try to implement strategies for each element as if they were silos and essentially end up canceling each other out. Whenever conflicts exist among the seven elements, you won’t get the overall talent results you want and need.

As you examine the seven elements, think about how each connects to the others.

1. Plan: This involves creating tactical plans that define what skills are needed, when, where, and their associated cost. This is a huge area of opportunity in most companies. Many organizations trade planning for fighting fires. Don’t overcomplicate it —keep it simple.

2. Attract: What avenues or sources will you use to attract talent? I’ve found that many companies have no idea about the variety of avenues available. They don’t understand or use their employer brand, or know how to recognize their target candidates when they walk in the door.

3. Deploy: Onboard employees in the organization, establishing employee connections and maximizing the opportunity for success. It’s critical that organizations do this on a consistent basis over time and across departments.

4. Engage: Define the norms, principles, and behaviors that your company embodies and reinforce them within the organization.

5. Invest: Analyze new skills and competencies you must develop in your people and know how they’ll be delivered. Your greatest asset is made even greater when you invest in them. Knowing what needs to be taught and the best way to do so provides personal and professional development — a key component in reducing turnover.

6. Reward: Establish how you will measure and reward success, alongside identifying future leaders. This, when combined with the earlier elements, enables your organization to realize infinite advantages.

7. Retain: Finally, agree on the strategies and processes used to retain employees who perform at the desired level. This element is the final scorecard of the other six elements. The more you can get each element to work well and work together with the other elements, the more your employee turnover rate and associated costs will nosedive.

Together, the seven elements provide the formula for effectively managing your greatest asset — your people. And the end result: your people are as invested as you in building your business.

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Clark A. Ingram is the Founder and President of People Profits, LLC, which focuses on the three greatest human capital problems affecting organizations: employee turnover, chronically open positions, and skills gap. He consults with a spectrum of companies and has consistently reduced turnover by more than 40 percent in the first year and achieved staffing at more than 90 percent. His new book is Churn: Proven Strategies to Overcome Failing Conventional Talent Management and Achieve Zero Turnover. Learn more at peopleprofits.com.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:50 PM
Permalink | Comments (0) | This post is about Human Resources