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Ten Tips to Enhance Your Talent Development Strategies

by Mindy McCorkle

Developing talent is one of the most important pieces of being a successful business. If we aren’t continually developing the talent within our organization, we’ll be faced with performance, recruitment, and retention challenges. I believe Talent Development can be defined as guiding employees to reach their full potential and feel self-fulfilled while contributing to the company’s success and growth. The key to continued success lies not only in the ability to attract and retain talented employees but also in understanding, managing and developing their talents in the best possible way. So here are the 10 tips to help your organization enhance your talent development strategies.

  1. Know your culture. I mean really know what it is, not what you think it is, and use it to find the right candidates. Most of us have a mission and vision statement, and core values that are written down. But our culture is a bit more difficult to define. It can change if we don’t pay attention, and maybe should change as the organization evolves and grows. We have to watch out for the 20/80 trap here. In property management, property associates tend to believe they know their resident profile. But many times what they think they know about their residents is what they know about the 20% of the residents that they interact with on a regular basis. They forget about the other 80% that they never see – those residents that moved in and became invisible – thank goodness their rent check miraculously shows up each month. A company’s culture can be like that. Top executives may think they know what the culture is, or what they’ve tried to make it, or what they hope it is, but it’s the perception of the masses that count. How do the associates feel about the organization? What do your employees believe the culture is? What would they say about the culture? Those are the critical questions. Once we really know our culture as it is lived and believed by our associates, we have to tie that to the interviewing process.

Not letting our culture come through loud and clear during the interviewing process can lead to hiring candidates that don’t fit our organization, and thus higher turnover because it can mean we hire the wrong people over and over again. So how do we do that? Ask culture questions during the interview process. You’ve heard of Zappos, I’m sure. Lots of hub-bub about their culture and how they maintain it. They’ve done a fantastic job of honing a well-oiled culture of exceptional customer service, embracing change, adventure and creativity. How do they make sure they hire people that can fit that culture? Their interviews consist of questions like:

What type of company culture fits best with how you like to work?

What is your theme song?

If you could be a super hero, what would you be and why?

What is something weird that makes you happy?

What is your favorite curse word?

Why do they ask questions like these? To learn more about the candidate than just their work experience and technical knowledge. They KNOW their Culture and they USE IT to find the right people.

  1. Stop thinking of your employees as assets or human capital. An asset is a useful or valuable thing, person, or quality; true. But we typically depreciate our assets. Capital is wealth in the form of money or other assets owned by a person or organization but we don’t own our employees. So stop thinking of your employees as assets or human capital and think of them as people. Living, breathing, thinking individual people with individual strengths, skills, desires, and needs. It may sound like I’m splitting hairs here but it’s a mindset issue. A quote by Katherine Patterson comes to mind here: “The name we give to something shapes our attitude towards it.’ So let’s think of our employees as people, not assets or human capital.
  1. Evidence based decisions: Hire and promote based on evidence, not gut.
  2. Hiring right: when we have an open position, we often feel pressure to fill it quickly. If we let ourselves get desperate, we may hire the first person to pass the mirror test and the pre-employment screening. Hopefully, we are not letting ourselves get desperate too often though. We’ve all heard the ‘hire slow, fire fast’ concept. But as the workforce and talent pool continues to evolve, it’s going to become more and more critical that we hire right. Unfortunately, there are a lot of professional interviewees out there. You may have experienced that. Someone has all the right answers to the interview questions, passes the pre-employment screening, we get them in place, and then we’re disappointed with their performance. Often it’s because we’ve given them the answers to the interview questions in advance. If we’ve posted the position with a description that says something like ‘must be good with people, be very organized, and have good computer skills’, when we ask the interview to tell us about themselves or why they think they will be a good fit for the job, they will say what? I’m good with people, I’m very organized, and I’m good with computers. Gosh, we gave them the answers in the job ad! Try asking different questions.
  3. What gets you fired up?
  4. What do you think is the most important aspect of the position you are applying for?
  5. If we're sitting here a year from now celebrating what a great year it's been for you in this role, what did we achieve together?
  6. If you got hired, loved everything about this job, and are paid the salary you asked for, what kind of offer from another company would you consider?
  7. Tell me about a project or accomplishment that you consider to be the most significant in your career.
  8. Discuss a specific accomplishment you've achieved in a previous position that indicates you will thrive inthisposition.

Or use the Google approach: ask questions that show how innovative and quickly they can respond. Have you seen the movie “The Internship” with Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson? When applying for an internship, they are asked: If you were shrunken down to the size of a dime, put in a blender, the blender is turned on and will never stop, what do you do? The answers can help you learn how they would react to unusual situations, how quickly they react to problems, and how innovative they can be. Pretty genius right?

Review your current interview questions and see what you may want to adjust to make more evidence based decisions.

  1. Promotions. Let’s take a 3 level organization for example. You’ve got a manager, an assistant manager, and leasing or sales associate. Those 3 roles require some distinctively different skills and characteristics. But all too often, we promote a sales associate to an assistant manager position, or an assistant manager to a manager position because it’s ‘their turn’ or they’ve been with you for a long time, or they’ve expressed a desire to be promoted – or worse yet, it’s the easy solution. But are they right for the new position? In some cases, they may be. But in other cases, maybe not. And if we promote someone without proper evidence that they can excel in the new role, we may be setting them up to fail. That’s not fair to them or the organization. One of the most heartbreaking moments in my career was the day I had to separate with a property manager that I had hired as an assistant manager. This young lady was a phenomenal assistant manager, won every award she was eligible for in our company, consistently did an outstanding job, and every manager in the portfolio wanted to steal her. And then I promoted her to manager. I struggled with her performance, she struggled and wasn’t fulfilled, and ultimately I had to help her move on. And it wasn’t her fault. It was mine. Looking back on it, I had no evidence that she would make a good manager; I just knew she was good at being an assistant. Make sure you’re looking at required skills and making evidence based decisions before promoting an associate.
  1. Be aware of available talent. I believe the main aspect in truly developing talent is to be fully aware of what talent is there to develop. What talent do we have to work with? Are there skills or talents in our midst that we aren’t utilizing? Finding untapped talent is not only good for the organization but helps build loyalty with associates while inspiring them to go beyond your expectations and theirs. Too often, we only evaluate associates based on the duties and tasks on their specific job description. Doing that keeps us from really tapping talent. Think broader when looking at your associate’s performance. Ask your team members what they are really good at, what their hobbies are, what they do for fun. Questions that will help you really get to know them. You may discover that there are people on your team that can add real value in ways that may be outside their current job description. For instance, I worked with a client earlier this year who was spending a ton of money on having an outside firm create marketing flyers. We discovered that there was a young man working as a leasing associate at one of the client’s properties that was really good at creating wonderful flyers and marketing collateral and had a real passion for it. While they didn’t need someone to do that sort of thing full time, they were able to adjust his property schedule, provide him with some tools/software, and let him create the flyers, etc. for the organization. This guy was thrilled with the opportunity, the company saved a good bit of money by tapping into his talent, and other associates were more supportive of the marketing initiatives because they were created by one of them. Tap into talent you may already have and…….
  1. Let people do what they love. If one of your accounting associates loves to plan parties and entertains a lot in her personal life, let her plan for your next company event. If your service engineer loves woodworking, let him build the bookcases you need for the conference room. You can set ground rules regarding their job responsibilities but be flexible. If we don’t know what your team members love to do, shame on us. ASK them. People LOVE what they love – let them love it – let them do it.
  1. Tailored training. Tribal learning. Many of us have an LMS or list of annually required training courses – maybe for each position or each department. Consider relinquishing the traditional long list of required training in lieu of focusing on the needs of your individual associates. Truly innovative companies are moving away from the traditional ‘mandatory training for everyone’ concept. Those companies are also incorporating a social component or ‘tribal learning’ into their training programs. Traditional Learning Management Systems are going to have to become more flexible in how they allow managers assign course requirements so that training can be easily adapted to an individual’s needs and so that the social aspect can be included. Many of them have already started. For example, John logs into the company LMS and sees that Randall just took an advanced business writing course. Randall posted that it was a great course and that he aced it. John reaches out to Randall to ask for advice on how he can improve because business writing is an area he knows he needs to work on – and BAM! You’ve got enhanced learning in conjunction with increased associate interaction. Win-Win! That’s why “Tribal Learning” important.

Today’s talent wants to know what others are learning, they want to hear their peers feedback, they want to be able to publish or post about their learning experiences – and to be able to do that within their organization and within the company’s LMS can help associates incentivize and challenge each other. Think about this – if you need to know how to do something new – make fresh pasta for instance – you go online, right? You look on Pinterest or Facebook; or perhaps you just google it – which will probably take you to YouTube. There, you not only find a video but you also find ratings and comments from others who’ve watched the video, you have the option to “share” the video on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc…That’s the learning concept we’ll see being embraced in innovative companies in the very near future. Sure, there may be some standard training that everyone needs, maybe even annually, to protect the company. Like fair housing, sexual harassment, and workplace diversity. If you have a high performing associate who consistently meets goals and deadlines, why force them to take time management just to check the box? Tailored training and tribal learning takes courage, a bit more time, and likely even some investment dollars but the results are far more productive and that’s the future of internal training programs in successful companies.

  1. Invest in the talent you have. Define a dollar amount for training. This dollar amount could include the cost of internal required training programs, but should also allow for position specific training such as certification classes, CECs required for existing designations and certifications, refreshers, etc. If you aren’t willing to spend $800-1,000 for ongoing training for an existing employee, you may want to rethink your business strategy. Several of the companies on Glassdoor’s list of Employee’s Choice Award Winners are companies who have begun to include discretionary dollars in their training budgets. Several companies on the list that normally budgeted $1,000/employee each year for training, added an additional $300 - 500 per associate for discretionary training. This amount is for the employee to use for any training they choose. It doesn’t have to be relevant to their current position or even their career path. In fact, in some cases it doesn’t even have to be business related training. In one organization, an administrative employee used it to learn how to make stained glass. An engineer used it to take a PowerPoint class. Another associate took a First Aid /CPR class with his discretionary training money. Why would the company spend money on things like this when these dollars likely won’t benefit the company directly? Because they are focused on developing talent, not just developing the organization. And they understand the value of keeping employees happy, creating loyalty, and giving back in ways other than traditional bonuses and incentives. Develop more than just the talent you need. Develop talent. Period.
  1. Create Opportunities and Challenges. If you have associates who are proven ready for a new or additional challenge, create one for them. Just because there isn’t an open position to promote someone doesn’t mean we can’t help them feel like they’ve got an opportunity to grow. Find a project, create a committee, or let them champion a company initiative. Create opportunities. Create challenges. If you don’t, they may find it somewhere else.
  2. Create an inspirational work environment. An environment where associates are allowed to explore ideas and try new things is critical to building a happy workforce but it’s also a great way to find the untapped talent we’ve been talking about. Allow for out-of-box thinking; get out of the ‘how we’ve always done it’ tunnel, let your associates help drive change. You’ve probably heard of Googles 20 percent rule. Associates are allowed to spend 20 percent of their time doing whatever they like – researching, thinking, napping, playing….anything. Now that might not work in some industries, but what if we spin that to allow associates to spend some portion of their workday in some similar way. One of the organizations I’m working with has an interactive blog on their intranet. Associates are allowed 20 minutes of each work shift to participate and are encouraged to share ideas, suggestions, anything they want on the blog – and it doesn’t have to be business related. They can share recipes, craft ideas, hobbies, photos of their families or pets, post info about something they are selling, anything. It’s not regulated, posts aren’t removed, and each associate is encouraged to ‘like’ or comment on others posts. And when someone does post an idea or suggestion related to the organization, there is a committee of front-line associates that help implement those suggestions. Even if upper management doesn’t think it will work, the associates are allowed to give it a try. Encouraging this type of interaction is a great way to build camaraderie, helps the organization encourage ingenuity, aids in identifying talent, enhances morale, encourages creativity, increases loyalty and self-fulfillment, and can help improve performance more than just about anything else you can do.
  1. Change your approach to PerformancesReviews.Ninety-eight percent of human resources executives say yearly evaluations aren't useful, according to a recent survey by Fortune Magazine. Everyone dreads them, we are almost never fully prepared, and they become perfunctory…or worse, get skipped altogether. If you ask your managers and staff to invest time and money in a process, it'd better be worth it. And in many cases, the traditional quarterly and annual performance review process isn’t. At least not in its traditional format. Consider forgoing the typical quarterly and possibly even the annual performance review. Atlassian, an Australian based software company that is 10 years young and already one of the most innovative, fast growing software companies in the world replaced the traditional performance review structure with a more lightweight, continuous model. They incorporated the constructive aspects of reviews in to their existing one-on-one meetings. Their managers already have weekly one-on-ones with their team members. Now, every month, one of these meetings is dedicated to a discussion on how the person can enhance their own performance and play to their strengths. They removed the unconstructive focus on ratings and scores, which were really nothing more than fodder for disputes and disagreements anyway. Unless there is some aspect of the associates behavior or performance that is causing major performance issues or prohibiting others from reaching their goals, they spend little time discussing weaknesses. They don’t have to; they’ve hired very well, they have the right people in the right roles, and they allow associates to utilize their strengths. Microsoft also recently eliminated the ranking system previously used in their performance evaluation process. They are finding that managers are more apt to provide regular feedback to their associates if they aren’t bogged down with a scoring system; and associates are more open and receptive to feedback in the absence of scores. Adobe, Juniper, Kelly Services, and a variety of other international companies have also discontinued formalized reviews, in particular the annual review. Think about it:
  • Employees need and want regular feedback (daily, weekly), so a once-a-year review is not only too late but it’s often a surprise. Regular coaching is the key to alignment and performance.
  • Managers cannot typically “judge” an entire year of work from an individual at one time (or even quarterly), so the review is awkward and uncomfortable for both manager and employee.
  • As we said earlier, some employees are a poor fit and may be poor performers, but these issues should be addressed immediately, not at the end of the year or at the next quarterly review.
  • Some companies really do have a lot of high performers, so forced ranking or scores can eliminate great people, demotivate existing team members, and damage the culture.

INSTEAD: