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How Talent Development Makes a Positive Impact on Your Business

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The success of any business is not just reliant upon the efforts of leadership. To truly thrive, companies need skilled and committed employees. This certainly means that human resources and management need to apply resources to discovering and attracting the best possible talent. But their attention shouldn’t stop once onboarding is complete. Those efforts must include deliberate talent development. 

Talent development is the process through which companies continue to invest in their employees beyond base salary payments and benefits. As one recent study shows, a company culture that nurtures employees directly impacts the bottom line. Not least of which regards the costs of turnover: that 94% of employees would stay with a company if it were willing to invest in their learning and development. 

Let’s explore some areas an effective talent development process directly impacts, and methods you can use to capitalize on them.  

Performance

Talent development is not only the key to retaining employees; it can also be instrumental in improving performance. This doesn’t just mean that your attention to their growth results in greater productivity — although that certainly occurs by acquiring new skills and understanding of productivity techniques. However, when your employees see you’re making efforts to support their growth, they tend to be more engaged with the efficient operation of the business. 

As a result, performance should be a guiding element of your talent development program. This begins with a commitment to meaningful performance reviews. We don’t mean a simple analysis of how the employee has functioned that year. Instead, there need to be discussions in which the aim is to guide employee growth. Direct the dialogue, not toward areas of failure, but identifying training opportunities. Don’t just dictate your needs; work with them to discover what they would like to learn, too. Discuss opportunities for promotion, and how you can plot a road map together that can get them there. These conversations strengthen relationships and naturally lead to more opportunities for talent development. 

Performance targeted talent development is also not necessarily an individual act. It also presents opportunities for employees to work together to create a positive working environment, resulting in improved overall performance. Encourage departments to learn what motivates them as a team and as individuals. Understand how to adjust the workplace and its practices to be more mutually beneficial. Provide them with responsibility here, approaching it as a project with requisite planning and analysis. Not only will they feel more connected to the business, but they also gain in-demand project management skills. 

Innovation

One of the main errors a business can make is becoming stagnant. In the digital age, the world frequently changes. That often means that to retain the competitive edge, we must innovate. Talent development can introduce employees to new skills and new ways of thinking about the challenges they face – and overcoming them. As such, it is an essential element in building a sustainable culture of innovation within your company.

So, how do you approach the talent development process with innovation in mind?

Company Insight

Provide them with opportunities to better understand the company; what it’s good at, and the not so good. This can include shadowing leadership, attending meetings, and being encouraged to ask questions (and being given honest answers). This helps the growth of new corporate operations skills and incentivizes deeper engagement within the company. 

Diversity

Innovation requires access to multiple perspectives and experiences. Studies show that companies that prioritize diversity tend to perform better than their more monocultural competitors. So your talent development program must commit to nurturing diversity. Undoubtedly, part of this approach is ensuring a range of voices has opportunities to work with you. However, it’s also about encouraging those in the program to value diverse perspectives and adjust their own viewpoints accordingly. 

Curiosity 

Helping employees follow their curiosity, both within and outside of the business, is a cornerstone of talent development. Give employees opportunities to train with other departments and company time to work on personal projects. Add coaching to ensure employees feel guided and supported. By giving them space to explore and experiment, and encourage them even when they fail, you provide the tools necessary to contribute to innovation — and the confidence to experiment.

Loyalty

One of the greatest assets for any business is loyalty. Employees who feel connected to and supported by their company are more likely to stick with them in the long run. Loyalty isn’t about simple retention, though; it also means a dedication to the company’s ideals and becoming leaders who embody them. Employee development helps to both guide this process and reinforces the reasons why they should maintain their commitment. So your talent development program must begin at onboarding. 

Use the tools of the process to set expectations. For instance, in your employee handbook, make it clear there is a commitment to engaging in talent development, and why it is essential. Outline the support methods — mentoring, coaching, reviews — and how this affects the potential for progression. By emphasizing your company cares about them and their growth early, it immediately plants the seed that there are incentives to mutual commitment. 

This same attention has to be consistent throughout their time with the company. Not in an overbearing, micromanaging sense. Instead, talent development must be about the company and the employee working together to ensure the growth of each. Make continued efforts to understand what they need, and they will be more likely to do the same for your company. 

What’s Your Approach to Talent Development?

Talent development goes further than talent management. It demonstrates a commitment to helping employees grow in directions that they are also keen to explore. 

Design your program to empower workers to improve their performance, become innovative thinkers and loyal contributors. Though this often takes a significant investment of time and capital, the long-term returns are culturally and economically significant. 

 

Photo: Berkeley Communications

The Contact Center Evolution Will be Remote

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The pandemic has thrown nearly every industry into a state of rapid-fire transformation, and that includes contact centers. Chances are, nearly everyone reading this has reached a contact center and talked to an agent; during the pandemic, agents have become a direct and human — and welcome — point of contact. And if you’re an employee at a contact center, you’re likely experiencing a whole different way of working right now, on the virtual front lines, in some cases, and I have to say this directly: thank you for being there.  

Nearly overnight, as we launched into lockdown and work-from-home orders, the on-site call center had to be replaced by remote locations with agents and managers working from their homes. Given the high-touch, fast-moving, highly managed nature of call center work, would such a shift be successful? Given the traditional model of a call center workspace, would it work for agents to operate from home? 

According to a new report by Calabrio in collaboration with Ravel Research, the answer to both questions is yes. The just-released study surveyed contact center managers from a broad range of industries, in both the U.S and U.K., to find out what major changes the pandemic has caused for contact centers. Among the factors investigated: how the pandemic has created changing customer expectations, how it changes the dynamic of employee management, how viable remote working is for contact centers, and how business intelligence plays a role in customer-centricity, innovation and operations. 

Such are the issues we all need to focus on as we collectively make the leap from the way we used to work to the way we work now — and beyond. And the study found that overall, the shift to remote working has been good — it’s had a positive impact on engagement, performance and results among agents, as managers note. What’s so compelling to me is that this new, transformed landscape wasn’t hard to navigate at all. In fact, it’s made the job easier and the experience better for call center agents and managers in no less than five key areas:

 1. Remote Improves Performance and Satisfaction

It’s worth noting that pre-pandemic, some contact centers already had a remote component: 36% of contact centers had at least half of their employees working remotely. But with the onset of the pandemic, that number soared, with 89% of contact centers having at least 50% of their employees working remotely. While the shift was triggered by necessity, there has been a groundswell of approval on the part of agents. Necessity triggered the shift, but once agents settle into their remote roles, what’s clear is that many see it as an advantage. Call center managers believe 72% of agents are happy working remotely. 

As far as the positive impact on productivity, again, the numbers are in remote’s favor: 73% of managers surveyed express satisfaction with the productivity of employees now working remotely, and 85% are satisfied with employee productivity on account of flexible hours. Moreover, this is not just a passing fad: the adjustment is expected to stick. Citing remote’s benefits for employee satisfaction, service flexibility, and overall employee performance, 72% of managers say a remote environment is likely to continue in the long-term. It’s a clear sign that to many in this workforce, the changes were not only welcome, they may have been overdue. That’s a relief considering that across the country, reopening plans aren’t exactly going as, well, planned. We may have to shutter those back-to-the-workplace goals in favor of maintaining remote arrangements for everyone’s safety. The good news is that in terms of contact centers, that should not have a negative impact on how well agents are doing, or how they feel about their jobs.

2. An Emphasis on New Skills 

For countless employees, shifting to remote (as well as to flexible schedules) has also shifted the emphasis to new skills; the same is true for contact center agents. Managers in the study report that 49% of their employees are better at self-management, 42% have improved their problem-solving abilities, and 42% are better at both technology set-up and security awareness. 

Being a contact center agent has always required excellent soft skills — ask an agent what he or she thinks and I’d bet the answer is that these are hard-won, carefully developed, and endlessly practiced; they’re not really “soft” at all. But now add these three critical skills to the toolbox of abilities — soft or not — that call center agents need, such as clear communication, empathy, patience, attention to detail, and the ability to maintain a positive attitude, and you have the new paradigm for recruiting. It’s not just about being able to ‘give good phone,’ as they used to say, but now also about being able to stay on track no matter where an agent is working from. And again, this reflects the overall trend in remote working: we’re all learning how to balance, integrate, and think on our feet in a new context. The difference is that we don’t always have a customer on the other line, with urgency, possibly stress, and an increased need for our empathy, responsiveness and great service. 

 3. Evolved Training and Coaching

The Calabrio/Ravel survey also reveals that while training and coaching have been able to continue without too much interruption, there will be a greater need to develop new methods and leverage the shift to a virtual workspace. As their top three training resources, managers name video calls and web conferencing (53%); live online training classes (44%); and recorded online training classes (35%). More than half of managers anticipate that moving forward, they will inevitably be able to do less in-person, one-on-one training. 

From a talent development perspective, this is an immense possibility — to harness the remote environment to bring new modes of training and coaching to contact center hires. Virtual Reality could provide new hires with an experiential and impactful way to learn. Digital resources, such as mock scenarios that reflect larger social and behavioral changes, and other “walk in their shoes” approaches may help to mitigate concerns such as unconscious bias or help raise the threshold in terms of patience. By carefully crafting these to begin with, employees have a holistic but modern tool at their disposal. Another option: on-demand and self-service modules, speaking to people’s need for greater flexibility.  

4. Quality Evaluations and Predictive Analytics

Working in a vacuum is a common lament for remote employees. But there are certainly ways to counteract that sense of isolation — and an opportunity to increase feedback and coaching with digital tools. To improve brand impact and with a sense of increased customer urgency (a byproduct of life during a pandemic), managers have ramped up evaluations. According to the study: 1 in 3 contact centers have increased the number of quality evaluations of customer interactions. And while it’s true that evaluations can be a thorn in a manager’s side if done entirely manually, in this case managers are getting smart, leveraging digital tools to ease the heavier load. 44% of managers are using predictive analytics and/or automated quality monitoring. These tools are boosting their effectiveness when it comes to agent coaching, speeding up the process and promoting responsiveness in real time. Being able to spot key trends for the full 100% of interactions means that manual evaluations can be far more targeted. And managers are freed from the traditional reliance of “walking the floor” in favor of a smoother and more fluid agent development process.  

Is this the wave of the future? Managers’ responses on this may be an indication: only 30% think quality evaluations will be the same as they were before and 27% believe they will be doing more evaluations. Yet clearly, some are more forward-thinking than others: 20% believe they will be seeing more automated quality monitoring, and 19% say they will be using more analytics. What this speaks to, from my perspective, is that these tools are on the horizon for some, and already in use for others. And instead of seeing tools like automation or predictive analytics as a norm, managers may see it as a stopgap, envisioning a point when things get “back to normal,” and they can go back to how they conducted evaluations before. That may indicate a gap in perception: these are the same managers who believe remote contact centers will continue into the future; and sentiment around predictive analytics and automation will likely grow. We’ll see how this plays out.

5. New Technologies Offer New Opportunities

The new technologies coming to contact centers are having a profound impact on employee as well as manager experience, and offering new opportunities for support as well as growth. The old adage: If you build it, they will come, applies to a call center — and as we’ve seen as we pivot to remote, instead of agents and managers coming to a physical workspace, now remote innovations are coming to them. The survey asked its respondents: How have your contact center’s investments changed in the following areas, because of the pandemic? Not surprisingly, the biggest investments are in remote working solutions (65%); video conferencing tools (62%); and then, expanded channels for customer communication (52%). All are helping to modernize the manager and agent experience. And it may or may not be a kind of workplace irony to have a human call agent aided by a chatbot or virtual assistance, but these are not as high on the list. 

What is markedly on the rise is business intelligence (BI). A full 90% of respondents say they are maintaining or increasing their investment in BI solutions. And contact managers expect a higher demand for contact analytics to come from every department. We’re going to see call centers increasingly rely on data and more accurate reporting to better assess performance and set strategy — yet another sign that digital tools are leading the evolution. For a remote workforce, BI knits together people, interactions and operations in real time, allowing for a far greater sense of the big picture, elevated flexibility when it comes to key questions asked, and an increased sense of connection between individual effort and overall results.

None of these developments are going to take the place of human connection, however. The rationale behind grabbing the brass ring of better and better technologies is as a means to improve the interactions between agents and customers — by enabling agents to better do their job, from training to maintaining their performance. That includes the interactive dashboards being used by some call centers to provide agents with real-time data on how they’re doing. Designed to answer the questions an individual agent might ask, these provide a graphic as well as numeric scoreboard they can continue to monitor to track their own improvements. 

Self-accountability and a sense of personal stake in excellence may turn out to be our best asset of all. For agents and managers in call centers, these traits are clearly driving the evolution as much as any external forces — and pointing to an overall growth in workplace culture we may not have expected, but as the Calabrio/Ravel survey shows, it’s happening right now.

To find out more, download the study.

This post is sponsored by Calabrio.

Photo: Kevin Ku

#WorkTrends: The Human Impact of Data Literacy

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Jordan Morrow joined Meghan M. Biro for this #WorkTrends podcast sponsored by Qlik. The topic: data literacy. It may sound simple enough, but it’s far from it.

Meghan notes that 60% to 73% of all enterprise data is never analyzed. “Data remains a value that’s trapped by our own lack of understanding,” she said as she introduced Jordan. As global head of Data Literacy at Qlik and Chair of the Advisory Board for the Data Literacy Project, Jordan has long been involved in studying data literacy and had a lot to say about why we aren’t using data the way we could — or should.

Citing recent findings from a Qlik/Accenture report on the human impact of data literacy, Jordan explained why organizations around the globe miss countless opportunities because their employees aren’t trained to better use data. The report found that just 21% of the global working population are fully confident in their data literacy skills. In other words, the data on data literacy is pretty clear. There’s a huge productivity gap caused by our lack of data literacy.

In part, Jordan pointed out, we don’t know how to use data because we either think it needs to be isolated from any human experience, or we’d rather just go with the human experience and leave out the data. The truth is, we need both, he said. “To realize true potential with data, you need to combine the human element with the data and technology element.” 

“We’ve got a long way to go,” Meghan said, and asked Jordan if our current state of data illiteracy surprises him. He said it doesn’t. He’s been watching this evolution for years, and he believes that we’re way behind in terms of how we educate our young talent, not to mention students in schools. And of course, both agreed that data literacy should be taught in schools.

In general, we need to stop worrying about people making mistakes as they learn to use data. Curiosity, creativity and critical thinking all have to be developed from a young age, Jordan said, and then we’ll be on our way.

“Let them muddy the puddle,” he says. It’s all part of embracing technology, embracing change, and becoming comfortable with this new way of approaching information. And it will certainly get us to the future of work faster.

What’s at stake?
[23:19] Data and analytics is not going to slow down. So companies that want to succeed in the future have to embrace data literacy. They have to, so you have to have those skills.

Listen to the full conversation. And don’t forget to subscribe to the #WorkTrends podcast, so you don’t miss an episode!

 

You can find Jordan Morrow on Linkedin and Twitter

#WorkTrends:How to Make 2020 a Transformational Year

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We talk often about the future of work here at #WorkTrends — and this week’s guest says the future will be arriving pretty soon. Brent Colescott is the senior director of business strategy and transformation for SumTotal, and he says 2020 is going to be a transformational year for the workplace. When a man whose job is literally transformation tells you that transformation is on the way, you tend to listen.

Colescott shared with us why he sees talent and development as the leading drivers of change in the workplace, and how you can prepare your organization for the coming revolution.

Listen to the full conversation or read the recap below. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.

‘The Inflection Point’ Is Here

We’re all expecting transformational changes in the workplace, particularly with regard to HR. Many of our guests — and myself — have been beating the drum for more focus on talent development, retention and the employee experience. Colescott says this thinking is about to hit the mainstream in a big way.

Colescott has traveled throughout the world over the past year, going to conferences and meeting with businesses. He says he has noticed that many organizations are truly beginning to see the importance of investing in talent development. “They realized that they can’t just kind of give this lip service anymore,” he says. “They realized the impact of what talent development from a broader sense means for their organizations.”

To Colescott, this means 2019 is the year for organizations to begin changing their processes and platforms to focus more on the employee experience, particularly in regard to skill development. “If they’re not doing that in 2019, 2020 is going to be a very difficult year,” he says. “I really think that this is now the inflection point of change that’s going to start happening.”

How to Transform Your Organization

Transforming your workplace for 2020 begins with a simple mantra: “It’s all about the employee experience,” Colescott says. And he says one of the primary focuses of the employee experience needs to be talent development.

To assess your organization’s focus in this area, he suggests a simple litmus test: If you’re working on a continuing education course and your boss walks past, do you minimize your screen or do you proudly own it? If you minimize your screen, your organization has a lot of work to do, and it’s highly likely that you or others in similar situations will look for jobs elsewhere — because talent development is not prioritized at your organization.

To create a development culture, Colescott advises organizations to encourage continuing education during working hours, and to provide guidance on development opportunities. He also says HR must ensure that there is a close relationship between training and performance management. If an employee wants to check on either, it should be as easy as using an Apple Watch to track the number of steps they’ve taken that day. “The approach that we take to our talent needs to align with the expectations that they’re having from everywhere else in the world,” he says.

Looking Beyond 2020

2020 is just the beginning of transformation, Colescott says. As organizations invest more in the employee experience, they’ll also be able to get better data to analyze and improve it. Colescott has a surprising analogy: “I think when we look at how HR is going to be dealing with things in the next five to 10 years, we’re going to start treating our employees like athletes,” he says.

The data-driven approach will drive the future of HR, just as “Moneyball” has driven the future of baseball. “We’re going to start measuring our employees in how they support our organization in the same manner,” he says. This data will help HR devise more innovative approaches to employee engagement, one of the most important factors in organizational success — no matter the year.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

This episode is sponsored by SumTotal.

Finding the Qualified and Passionate Candidate

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Passion will never quit being a buzzword. Candidates often like to refer to themselves as passionate and employers often ask for the “passionate go-getter” in job postings. Passion will be important in just every field if candidates want to be happy at work and employers want to have the most productive employees possible.  But is passion developed on the job or is it something that you can interview for? At my company, we’re interviewing experts, many of whom consider themselves a passionate candidate. We’ve conducted hundreds of interviews and enabled thousands. Here’s how to interview for passion.

The Value of Caring

Pride in one’s job can help employees work through the more difficult times. Passion motivates one to push past a problem with energetic determination. Where others may quit to go find something else, passionate employees will stick around and do the work that needs to get done. Often times, this is developed over time in one’s career path.  The key is to finding the passionate candidate in your search.

As Daniel Barber (@gaijindan), Director of Sales Development and Operations at ToutApp explains, this attitude is essential in determining success.

“Why passion? You can determine a candidate’s desire to succeed in thirty minutes or less. Simply, you’re looking for those who care versus those who do not . . . Finding people who possess hyper-performance attributes will lead to long-term value creation.”

As technical skill is important in many industries (as someone who works with video interview technology, I understand this better than most), passion is proving just as important, and employers are catching on. In a recent survey, 31% of employers reported that being passionate about work and the business’ values is important to their hiring process. If you’re not looking for passion in your hires, now might be a good time to start.

Identify a Passionate Candidate In An Interview

How do you find passionate employees? Create an honest dialogue with your candidate about what it’s like to work at your company. While your transparency won’t resonate with every candidate, it will attract the right ones. Don’t just talk about the job though! Talking about outside interests can reveal someone’s work ethic, enthusiasm, and energy.  A key attribute of passionate employees is they often exhibit passion in other areas as well. These are the candidates who can tell you excitedly about their judo contests, nature hikes, and more.  Listen intently because you may discover you’re interviewing a passionate candidate.

Whether you interview via video, at a coffee shop, or through the telephone, look or listen for cues that the person is truly interested in what you do. In industries that are less than glamorous, this can be tricky. Instead, convey your values and see if you can find alignment there. Outside of Hank Hill, nobody grows up saying they want to be a propane salesman.  But the successful candidate may be someone with passion for helping others, closing the deal, and getting out in the field.

Building a Culture of Passion

“Culture” is another buzzword in recruiting, and fortunately, culture is only a stone’s throw away from passion. Culture is creating an environment in which employees thrive, feel comfortable with one another, and produce great, innovative work on a regular basis. Culture can be so important to the workplace, in fact, that 43% of hiring managers ranked culture fit as the most important factor in their hiring decisions.

A good culture follows passionate employees, and in interviewing for passion, you’ll build a better culture. Let’s take an emerging market, for example. In Vietnam, information technology is a burgeoning market and companies there are looking for passion. Four-fifths of Vietnamese IT employees work in their field not because it makes them more money, but because they love working with computers.  They gain an introduction to the medium as early as the second grade and maintain a life long passion for computers.

Hiring for passion, though it may be an eye-rolling buzzword for some, is important to building more productive workers, can lead to better cultures and building up industries, and with video interviewing finding it in your potential hires is easier than ever.

 

Gaining Strength Through Diversity and Inclusion

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Corporate culture is all about the attitude a company takes. Nowhere do you define your business more clearly and publicly than in your attitude toward diversity and inclusion. It’s not just a matter of taking a public stance, though that helps. It’s about the way you engage with and motivate both employees and customers.

A Stronger Business Through Diversity

It’s a truth we’re not all comfortable facing, but business is still dominated by the same small elite it has been for hundreds of years – a group that is white and male, and that tends to recruit more of the same. Deloitte research shows that we’re struggling to change this – while 71% of businesses aspire to be inclusive, only 11% manage it.

But recent research has shown that a more diverse business isn’t just good for the people being hired or for society at large – it’s good for the business doing the hiring. Research by the National Centre for Women & Information Technology has shown that the presence of women within a team increases the group’s collective intelligence, while Gallup research has shown that teams are often happier and better engaged under a female leader.

There’s also a more directly obvious factor to consider. Without a wide range of perspectives, varying with gender, race and background, you will never understand customers from different backgrounds. Without a diverse workforce to provide diverse insight, you are limiting the scope of your customer base. Embracing diversity within your business lets you reach more people beyond it.

Values on Parade

A strong sense of values and purpose are essential tools in galvanizing your workforce and drawing strong customer support. Focusing on diversity and inclusion gives you a chance to not just talk about your values but live them, and in an area that matters to millions of people.

It’s something that Gap and Levi Strauss showed in taking a stance over Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act. By standing up for LGBT rights they took a firm stance on diversity and inclusion. It was an act that could have affected their profits, making the stance more substantial and meaningful. And because it was reaching out to an often oppressed group, it highlighted their values.

By standing by their values, Gap and Levi Strauss gained a lot of public praise, motivated the parts of their workforce who shared their values, and galvanized customers in support of their brands.

How to Encourage Diversity and Inclusion

It’s not enough just to say that you support diversity and inclusion, as shown by the gap between 71% aspiring to it and 11% achieving it in the Deloitte survey. So what can you do to make a more diverse and inclusive business culture a reality?

An important step is to vary your recruitment pools. If you always advertise in the same places then you’ll always get the same people. Consider advertising jobs in newspapers, magazines and websites that target different readerships, such as women, Hispanics, and the LGBT community.

Take time to listen to diverse voices. What are the challenges facing different groups within your business? What stands between them and joining your company? Don’t just listen passively but seek out those opinions so that you can gain insight into how to improve.

If we act passively, waiting for employees from different communities to come to us, staying silent as we wait for them to speak up, then may never take the chance. Many have been shown again and again that employers aren’t interested. We must be the ones to reach out if we want to make our companies more diverse and inclusive, and to reap the benefits that brings.

#TChat Recap: Brand Ingredients: Are You Fascinating?

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Brand Ingredients: Are You Fascinating?

I’ll admit it. I’m a little jaded about the topic of branding. Does it still matter?

For successful branding, how you see the world used to be enough. Today, a thriving “Brand You” requires knowing how the world sees you: a fascinating new perspective.

Knowing what makes your brand fascinating helps us stand out and show others our unique value proposition. I see this topic from two unique POVS – personal and employer brand. Cowbell, anyone?

This week, our community was joined by Sally Hogshead, creator of The Fascination Advantage™, and expert on personality assessments & branding. Sally helped our community understand what makes branding a fascinating skill for winning talent management strategies.

We must shift our focus from talent skills and experience, to their unique values:

Discovering what someone does best is how you’ll find their passion. So why not take a similar approach with job ads?

Instead of writing a boring job description, why not answer one of the most important questions a candidate has to ask? After all…

If you know your brand is fascinating, you must communicate it to others. Tell people about your mission and goals. Show candidates inspiration is on the menu and it’s there if they want to have it. Don’t forget…

We’re all working to achieve personal and professional goals, but that doesn’t mean we can’t bridge the two together and create a fascinating workplace.

Maybe branding matters after all. 

See What #TChat-ters Said About Branding 

 

What’s Up Next? #TChat Returns Next Wed., Feb. 18th!

TChatRadio_logo_020813-300x300#TChat Radio Kicks Off at 7pm ET / 4pm PT — Our weekly radio show runs 30 minutes. Usually, our social community joins us on Twitter as well. The topic: This Year We’re Gonna Recruit Like It’s 1999.

#TChat Twitter Kicks Off at 7:30pm ET / 4:30pm PT — Our halfway point begins with our highly engaging Twitter discussion. We take a social inside look at our weekly topic. Everyone is welcome to share their social insights #TChat.

Join Our Social Community & Stay Up-to-Date! 

The TalentCulture conversation continues daily on Twitter, in our LinkedIn group, and on our Google+ community. Engage with us anytime on our social networks or stay current with trending World of Work topics through our weekly email newsletter. Signing up is just a click away!

Passive-Recruiting

Photo credit: Todd Quackenbush via Unsplash cc

What Talent Management, Engagement And Culture Share

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Company success links directly to what talent management, employee engagement and organizational culture have in common. The causal link among the three elements is powerful. It’s much like a rowing crew’s connection among rowers, oars, and scull.

Previously defined, talent management is an organization’s commitment to recruit, retain, and develop the most talented and superior employees available.

That commitment is enhanced by effective employee engagement, a buzz-phrase for the past several years. Employee engagement is the individual’s investment of her/his time, energy, skills, knowledge, and creativity in the efforts and directions set by the organization.

Organizational culture contributes to a business’s employee engagement. We define organizational culture as the values and behaviors that contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of an organization.

Your company’s culture offers critical engagement factors. These factors impact the three talent management components: recruitment, retention and development.

Talent Management: Recruitment

Recruitment currently targets those in Generation Y, the Millennial generation. Recruitment is a talent candidate’s first contact with your company. Recruitment should positively engage that candidate from the get-go. Organizational culture has a say in how you recruit, and therefore in how (well) you engage. Consider this about Millennials:

  • They seek work that is social. They are technologically savvy. They want jobs that motivate by time off and job satisfaction, rather than just by compensation.
  • They appreciate recruitment via use of social media. They expect personalized attention. They anticipate internet-speed responsiveness.

How does your company’s recruitment process and procedure measure up?

Talent Management: Retention

Retention remains the money-saver to talent management. It is costly to hire, onboard, and bring a new hire up to speed. Strong employee engagement delivers stronger employee retention.

The SilkRoad Talent Talk Report 2014 states: “…in an unpredictable financial climate, companies need loyal, productive, and engaged employees more than ever. Employee engagement emerged as the most pressing concern…” Indeed, 53% of the 3,700 survey respondents indicated their company lacked an attractive culture to engage employees.

A company culture that offers, encourages, and maintains engagement by employees impacts every individual. Baby Boomers savor a workplace in which they can engage their energies and values. Gen Y workers relish a company that recognizes their independent skills. Generations in between approve of the chance to engage for their own reasons.

What salient employee engagement factors does your business culture provide?

Talent Management: Development

Development is significant action played by talent management. Developing employees from Day 1 throughout their time of service demonstrates company commitment. That commitment, perhaps greater than any other offering, stimulates employee engagement. The commitment to such development can be a cornerstone value of a company’s culture.

Employees have always requested, accepted and appreciated training, education, mentoring and development. They have asked welcomed opportunities to engage in personal and professional improvement. Consider the variety of ways an organization may satisfy that engagement:

  • Training that is job-specific or professionally generic.
  • Coaching and/or mentoring.
  • Formal education through university partnerships, tuition reimbursement, and online credits.
  • Professional associations and conferences.

Does your company offer developmental opportunities in each of these categories?

The connection is clear. Organizational culture can generate employee engagement. Employee engagement can support the three legs of talent management. They have in common a shared contribution to your business’s successful competition.

About the Author: Tim Wright is a professional speaker/coach/facilitator with expertise in employee engagement and culture improvement.

photo credit: rexboggs5 via photopin cc

#TChat Preview: How To Avoid The Business Leadership Cliff

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The TalentCulture #TChat Show is back live on Wednesday, October 29, 2014, from 7-8 pm ET (4-5 pm PT). The #TChat radio portion runs the first 30 minutes from 7-7:30 pm ET, followed by the #TChat Twitter chat from 7:30-8 pm ET.

Last week we talked about employee engagement and the culture control panel, and this week we’re going to talk about the business leadership cliff and how to avoid it.

Even with a continued annual investment in leadership development, leadership overall is falling short in business today. Even worse, enterprises are doing a poor job developing leadership talent and aren’t investing in succession planning, so these issues are unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.

According to a new global study of more than 5,500 executives and employees across 27 countries, conducted by Oxford Economics and commissioned by SAP SuccessFactors, barely half of the executives surveyed said their companies possess the skills to effectively manage talent, and only 44% have faith that their leaders are capable of driving and effectively managing change.

The good news is that some companies are doing something about developing future leaders, working hard to make them multi-faceted, multi-functional and multi-conversational by giving them the cross-functional training and experience. By developing the talent and skills they need, companies doing this can position themselves to thrive around the 2020 workforce.

Join TalentCulture #TChat Show co-creator and host Meghan M. Biro as we learn about how steep the leadership cliff is and how we can avoid it with this week’s guest: Mary Haskins, Vice President of Leadership Experience at SAP.

To learn more about the Oxford Economics research for SAP, click here. 

Related Reading:

Mitchell Levy: The Thought Leadership Funnel

Meghan M. Biro: Listen Up Leaders: We Are All Millennials

Graham Winfrey: 7 Keys To Creating The Best Work Environment (Infographic)

Anita Bruzzese: How Leaders Can Keep A Team Engaged After Telling Them “No”

Lydia Dishman: 7 Inspiring Women On How They’ve Become Better Leaders With Age

Lolly Daskal: Take A Hard Look In The Mirror

We hope you’ll join the #TChat conversation this week and share your questions, opinions and ideas with our guest and the TalentCulture Community.

#TChat Events: How To Avoid The Business Leadership Cliff

TChatRadio_logo_020813#TChat Radio — Wed, October 29th — 7 pm ET / 4 pm PT Tune in to the #TChat Radio show with our host, Meghan M. Biro, as she talks with our guest: Mary Haskins.

Tune in LIVE online this Wednesday!

#TChat Twitter Chat — Wed, October 29th — 7:30 pm ET / 4:30 pm PT Immediately following the radio show, Meghan and Mary will move to the #TChat Twitter stream, where we’ll continue the discussion with the entire TalentCulture community. Everyone with a Twitter account is invited to participate, as we gather for a dynamic live chat, focused on these related questions:

Q1: Why do so many companies struggle with leadership development? #TChat (Tweet this Question)

Q2: How do generational differences impact delivery and adoption of leadership development? #TChat (Tweet this Question)

Q3: What are progressive companies doing to avoid the leadership cliff? #TChat (Tweet this Question)

Throughout the week, we’ll keep the discussion going on the #TChat Twitter feed, our TalentCulture World of Work Community LinkedIn group, and in our new TalentCulture G+ community. So feel free to drop by anytime and share your questions, ideas and opinions. See you there!!

photo credit: Bods via photopincc

Nobody Does It Better, But You Still Need to Delegate

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As a new manager, one of the critical skills that must be learned and embraced is delegation. Many new managers struggle with letting go of tasks and responsibilities that they are proficient in because they think these skills are what set them apart from their team members and got them their first management position.

When working with newly minted managers, Carly Simon’s famous song “Nobody Does it Better” often comes to my mind. Many new managers struggle with delegating because they have been performing the task so well for so long.  Letting go of comfortable tasks, though, is part of your role as a manager.

Learning To Let Go

Does this sound familiar to you? Are there tasks and responsibilities that you are currently doing that should be delegated?

I recently was working with a young and new manager who had recently been promoted to Operations Manager. Overnight he was given the responsibility to lead a team of seven. From the minute I started working with him, I would hear the phrase “I’m so busy” come out of his mouth often.

The question I always start with when coaching “reluctant delegators” is, “What do you want your role to be in 12 months?” And the obvious follow-up is, “What responsibilities will you need to change and additional knowledge gained to be successful in that new role?”

These two questions started him thinking into the future for the first time since he had taken on his new role. And as we got further into the conversation he started to identify tasks that he was currently doing that he should and could delegate. That was the easy part of the process.  The difficult part was identifying whom he could delegate to and what training was required before the task was delegated.

During the next coaching session he had identified whom each of the tasks was going to be given to, what training they were going to get, when he would know that they were ready to completely take on their new tasks, and when they were officially going to be responsible for the activity.

At the end of the process, he had identified enough responsibilities and tasks to delegate to free up an entire 12 hours a week. And what was he going to do with this “extra” time? Spend it leading and not doing. Now he had time to meet with his team members each month to review their progress and help with their development. He also had time to take on some significant projects that he had been reluctant to start because of his past time constraints. He was now truly leading and managing, and getting things done through others.

Five Steps to Effective Delegation

If you are in this position and want to be spending more time managing versus doing, I suggest you take these steps:
1.    Spend some time self-reflecting about those things you should stop doing, start doing, and doing more of in order to be a more effective and productive manager. If you’re unsure, ask your manager for feedback.
2.    Those stop items should then be prioritized.
3.    Determine whom you could delegate the responsibility to. Why do you think they are ready?
4.    Train those employees who aren’t ready before handing tasks over to them.
5.    Track and measure their progress, and provide them with the necessary feedback to make any necessary adjustments.

Remember, nobody does it better than you, but as a manager you need to delegate and start getting things done through others.

About the Author: Beth Armknecht Miller is CEO of Executive Velocity, a talent and leadership development advisory firm. Beth is also a Vistage Chair. She is a graduate of Babson College and Harvard Business School’s OPM program. Beth is certified in Myers Briggs, Hogan, and Business DNA and is a Certified Managerial Coach. Her expertise has made her a sought-after speaker, and she has been featured in numerous industry blogs and publications. Beth’s latest book on executive leadership, “Are You Talent Obsessed? Unlocking the secrets to a workplace team of raving high performers” was released in 2014. Read Beth’s blog at Executive-Velocity.com.

 
photo credit: Nguyen Vu Hung (vuhung) via photopin cc

Bring Your "Genius" To Work #TChat Recap

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(Editor’s Note: Looking for details of this week’s #TChat Events? See the Storify slideshow and resource links at the end of this post.)

“The whims and vagaries of team life sometimes are not so much fun, but more often than not, there’s a great feeling of brotherhood amongst everybody that works together.”  –Geddy Lee, Rush

Have you felt that kind of harmonic convergence in the workplace? Brotherhood and sisterhood. A deep sense of interconnectedness and shared purpose that moves you forward. Participation in a team whose members continually learn from one another and push one another to contribute their best.

Collaborative energy can be a powerful creative force — just as it has been for more than 40 years with my favorite band, Rush. Geddy, Alex, Neil. Each has lived, lost and loved his work, with every fiber of his being.

OK, I’m a fan. I romanticize. But the proof is in the music. They take their craft very seriously — blending bass, keyboards, guitar, drums and evocative lyrics. They also have fun. Lots of serious fun. And failure. They’ve seen their share of failure, too.

They’ve pushed themselves individually — and as a team — with a kinetic energy that knows no bounds. To me, this is refreshing, because I constantly hear the world of work cliché about how easy it is to find your passion and be happy with what you do.

It’s not that easy. It takes introspection and homework, plus a lot of practice and perseverance. But the good news is that the investment that pays off in ways that you can apply in your life. It’s not about becoming a big-time rock star. It’s about understanding your particular brand of “genius” — something you can get your heart around, and rev over and over again, until the vibe is right for you. It’s the full measure of your unique skills, experiences, passions, interests, talents, abilities, and attitude that you possess.

This week at #TChat Events with guests Maggie Mistal and Laura Rolands, the TalentCulture community examined this “core genius” in all of us. And I learned a two-step lesson:

1) Choosing Incremental Steps  Big leaps aren’t in most people’s risk-adverse DNA. For many of us, discovering what we can do (and what we’re here to do that only we can do) naturally unfolds one small step at a time. It’s like learning to play as a team, but internally, and with continuous refinement. My first step came as a child, when I began connecting words into honey-laced phrases. I’ve covered a lot of territory since then (with multiple side trips), but I’ve never looked back.

2) Can Lead to Monumental Outcomes  The operative word, here is “can” — but the point is that legitimate breakthroughs are possible from incremental steps. Finding your core genius is a very personal, soul-searching endeavor that requires self awareness, reflection and prioritization. Before you brainstorm life-changing career possibilities, you have to start with a meaningful decision framework. You need to learn what’s important for you, first.

How can TalentCulture support this process? Wherever you are in pursuit of professional bliss, we hope you’ll keep sharing your experiences with us here and on social channels. This is a safe place to test ideas, find resources, and exchange information. Your #TChat brothers and sisters are with you on this journey. We’re all in this world of work together. So let’s rock on.

#TChat Week-In-Review: Bring Your “Genius” To Work

Maggie Laura

Watch the #TChat Preview hangout now

SAT 2/1:
#TChat Preview: TalentCulture Community Manager, Tim McDonald, framed the week’s topic in a post featuring a “sneak peek” hangout with guests, Maggie Mistal and Laura Rolands. See the #TChat Preview now: “Careers: Better Choices Mean Better Business.”

SUN 2/2:
Forbes.com Post: In her weekly Forbes column, TalentCulture CEO, Meghan M. Biro, offered her perspective on why and how business leaders should encourage employees to develop their unique talents. Read “Unleash Your Employees’ Super Powers.“

RELATED POSTS:
“Managing Your Career: What Would Richard Branson Do?” — by James Clear
“Shifting Focus: Aptitudes Instead of Attitudes“ — by Dr. Nancy Rubin
“Soul Search — Then Job Search“ — by Maggie Mistal

TChatRadio_logo_020813

Listen to the #TChat Radio replay now

WED 2/5:
#TChat Radio: Host Meghan M. Biro and I talked with Maggie Mistal and Laura Rolands about what it takes to tap into your career “genius.” Listen to the #TChat Radio replay now…

#TChat Twitter: Immediately following the radio show, Meghan, Maggie, Laura and I moved over to the #TChat Twitter stream, for a dynamic open conversation with the entire TalentCulture community. Moderator Dr. Nancy Rubin led hundreds of participants through a discussion focused on 5 related questions.

See highlights in the Storify slideshow below:

#TChat Insights: Better Career Choices Mean Better Business

[javascript src=”//storify.com/TalentCulture/careers-better-choices-mean-better-business.js?template=slideshow”]

Closing Notes & What’s Ahead

GRATITUDE: Thanks again to Maggie Mistal and Laura Rolands for sharing your perspectives on how each of us can find our core genius and apply it to our career. Your enthusiasm and expertise are infectious!

NOTE TO BLOGGERS: Did this week’s events prompt you to write about career strategy or professional development? We welcome your thoughts. Post a link on Twitter (include #TChat or @TalentCulture), or insert a comment below, and we’ll pass it along.

WHAT’S AHEAD: Next week at #TChat Events, we’ll look at how employers can be more proactive in forging employee relationships. Our guests are Chris Boyce, CEO of Virgin Pulse, and Kevin Herman, Director of Worksite Wellness at The Horton Group. It’s a discussion that speaks to the heart of talent-minded professionals everywhere, so save the date for this very special Valentine’s Week Event — Wednesday, February 12!

Meanwhile, the TalentCulture conversation continues daily on the #TChat Twitter stream, on our NEW Google+ community, and elsewhere on social media. So stop by anytime.

We’ll see you on the stream!

Image Credit: MenfiS at Flickr

Bring Your “Genius” To Work #TChat Recap

/2 Comments/ /by

(Editor’s Note: Looking for details of this week’s #TChat Events? See the Storify slideshow and resource links at the end of this post.)

“The whims and vagaries of team life sometimes are not so much fun, but more often than not, there’s a great feeling of brotherhood amongst everybody that works together.”  –Geddy Lee, Rush

Have you felt that kind of harmonic convergence in the workplace? Brotherhood and sisterhood. A deep sense of interconnectedness and shared purpose that moves you forward. Participation in a team whose members continually learn from one another and push one another to contribute their best.

Collaborative energy can be a powerful creative force — just as it has been for more than 40 years with my favorite band, Rush. Geddy, Alex, Neil. Each has lived, lost and loved his work, with every fiber of his being.

OK, I’m a fan. I romanticize. But the proof is in the music. They take their craft very seriously — blending bass, keyboards, guitar, drums and evocative lyrics. They also have fun. Lots of serious fun. And failure. They’ve seen their share of failure, too.

They’ve pushed themselves individually — and as a team — with a kinetic energy that knows no bounds. To me, this is refreshing, because I constantly hear the world of work cliché about how easy it is to find your passion and be happy with what you do.

It’s not that easy. It takes introspection and homework, plus a lot of practice and perseverance. But the good news is that the investment that pays off in ways that you can apply in your life. It’s not about becoming a big-time rock star. It’s about understanding your particular brand of “genius” — something you can get your heart around, and rev over and over again, until the vibe is right for you. It’s the full measure of your unique skills, experiences, passions, interests, talents, abilities, and attitude that you possess.

This week at #TChat Events with guests Maggie Mistal and Laura Rolands, the TalentCulture community examined this “core genius” in all of us. And I learned a two-step lesson:

1) Choosing Incremental Steps  Big leaps aren’t in most people’s risk-adverse DNA. For many of us, discovering what we can do (and what we’re here to do that only we can do) naturally unfolds one small step at a time. It’s like learning to play as a team, but internally, and with continuous refinement. My first step came as a child, when I began connecting words into honey-laced phrases. I’ve covered a lot of territory since then (with multiple side trips), but I’ve never looked back.

2) Can Lead to Monumental Outcomes  The operative word, here is “can” — but the point is that legitimate breakthroughs are possible from incremental steps. Finding your core genius is a very personal, soul-searching endeavor that requires self awareness, reflection and prioritization. Before you brainstorm life-changing career possibilities, you have to start with a meaningful decision framework. You need to learn what’s important for you, first.

How can TalentCulture support this process? Wherever you are in pursuit of professional bliss, we hope you’ll keep sharing your experiences with us here and on social channels. This is a safe place to test ideas, find resources, and exchange information. Your #TChat brothers and sisters are with you on this journey. We’re all in this world of work together. So let’s rock on.

#TChat Week-In-Review: Bring Your “Genius” To Work

Maggie Laura

Watch the #TChat Preview hangout now

SAT 2/1:
#TChat Preview: TalentCulture Community Manager, Tim McDonald, framed the week’s topic in a post featuring a “sneak peek” hangout with guests, Maggie Mistal and Laura Rolands. See the #TChat Preview now: “Careers: Better Choices Mean Better Business.”

SUN 2/2:
Forbes.com Post: In her weekly Forbes column, TalentCulture CEO, Meghan M. Biro, offered her perspective on why and how business leaders should encourage employees to develop their unique talents. Read “Unleash Your Employees’ Super Powers.“

RELATED POSTS:
“Managing Your Career: What Would Richard Branson Do?” — by James Clear
“Shifting Focus: Aptitudes Instead of Attitudes“ — by Dr. Nancy Rubin
“Soul Search — Then Job Search“ — by Maggie Mistal

TChatRadio_logo_020813

Listen to the #TChat Radio replay now

WED 2/5:
#TChat Radio: Host Meghan M. Biro and I talked with Maggie Mistal and Laura Rolands about what it takes to tap into your career “genius.” Listen to the #TChat Radio replay now…

#TChat Twitter: Immediately following the radio show, Meghan, Maggie, Laura and I moved over to the #TChat Twitter stream, for a dynamic open conversation with the entire TalentCulture community. Moderator Dr. Nancy Rubin led hundreds of participants through a discussion focused on 5 related questions.

See highlights in the Storify slideshow below:

#TChat Insights: Better Career Choices Mean Better Business

[javascript src=”//storify.com/TalentCulture/careers-better-choices-mean-better-business.js?template=slideshow”]

Closing Notes & What’s Ahead

GRATITUDE: Thanks again to Maggie Mistal and Laura Rolands for sharing your perspectives on how each of us can find our core genius and apply it to our career. Your enthusiasm and expertise are infectious!

NOTE TO BLOGGERS: Did this week’s events prompt you to write about career strategy or professional development? We welcome your thoughts. Post a link on Twitter (include #TChat or @TalentCulture), or insert a comment below, and we’ll pass it along.

WHAT’S AHEAD: Next week at #TChat Events, we’ll look at how employers can be more proactive in forging employee relationships. Our guests are Chris Boyce, CEO of Virgin Pulse, and Kevin Herman, Director of Worksite Wellness at The Horton Group. It’s a discussion that speaks to the heart of talent-minded professionals everywhere, so save the date for this very special Valentine’s Week Event — Wednesday, February 12!

Meanwhile, the TalentCulture conversation continues daily on the #TChat Twitter stream, on our NEW Google+ community, and elsewhere on social media. So stop by anytime.

We’ll see you on the stream!

Image Credit: MenfiS at Flickr

Igniting Social Learning: #TChat Preview

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(Editorial Note: Want to read the RECAP of this week’s events? See Digging Deep into Social Learning #TChat Recap)

Social learning. Two simple words with so many meanings.

The TalentCulture community understands one meaning very well. After all, we exist is to encourage social learning among talent-minded professionals. But this week, we want to look more expansively at the role of learning in today’s social business environment.

Our mission is to unpack this concept collaboratively – sharing ideas and information about how and why social learning can make a meaningful difference for individual careers, as well as organizations.

We even have some heavy-hitter experts to help us see how leading-edge learning tools and techniques can transform business.

MichaelClarkWhat’s Your Learning Goal?

Yesterday, I started the conversation on Forbes.com by thinking aloud about 5 ways anyone can jump-start social learning. As I fleshed-out these thoughts, a key question kept coming to mind: When you pursue learning, what’s your purpose?

  • Are you learning, so you can teach?
  • Are you teaching so you can learn?
  • Are you learning for learning’s sake?
  • Or do you have other intentions?

What’s more, does your goal really matter? I think it does. Arguably, the most powerful learning experiences are fueled by purpose-driven passion.

Truth is, learning should propel us not just through school, not just through work, but through life. And when our personal quest for knowledge, skill and competence aligns with business goals, the results can make a meaningful difference.

#TChat Focus Topic: Let’s Get Social About Learning

Life is a continuous process of learning and skill development. And by nature, learning is a social activity. Throughout our lives we look to others – parents, teachers, mentors, managers, experts, peers and others – for information, instruction, insight, guidance and validation. It’s all part of the learning process.

So, what does it mean to apply emerging social tools and techniques to the process of continuous learning? And why does it matter? Let’s talk about it!

TChatRadio_logo_020813#TChat Radio

#TChat Radio – Tuesday, March 26 at 7:30pm ET / 4:30pm PT

Tune-in online and discover new ways to ignite professional and organization learning, as we interview Michael Clark, CEO of ReCenter, and Justin Mass, Sr. Manager of Learning Technology & Design at Adobe.

#TChat Twitter

#TChat Twitter – Wednesday, March 27 at 7pm ET / 4pm PT. Join our weekly online forum, and share your thoughts with others about these key questions:

Q1: How & why should we define social learning & talent development in the world of work?
Q2: How can we bridge today’s skills gap by connecting business with education?
Q3: We equate social learning with online learning, but is that view complete? Why/why not?
Q4: What are the most important technology platforms for social learning today?
Q5: What critical metrics should leaders should use to measure social learning & talent development?

Want to see more about this week’s topic? Watch Michael Clark, talk with TalentCulture community manager, Tim McDonald in this preview video on YouTube, or read Tim’s “Sneak Peek” blog post now.

Throughout the week, we’ll keep the discussion going on the #TChat Twitter stream and on our new LinkedIn Discussion Group. So please join us share your ideas and opinions.

We’ll see you on the stream!

Image credit: Pixabay