Recruiting and hiring the right people has always been a major challenge for employers. Even one hiring mistake can be very costly to an organization. Talent management serves to ensure that businesses stay competitive.

Today, timing is a critical issue. Some forecasters predict that in the next 10 years, we may see three out of 10 employees retiring from the workforce.

So organizations must learn now how to recruit, engage and connect with those from the Gen Y population. These are the young professionals, generally speaking, born after the year 1980.

Therefore, talent management today also involves succession planning. This awareness is crucial, because potential leadership gaps can jeopardize a company’s competitive capabilities—and, sooner or later, the baby boomers will start retiring.

So the successful companies are the ones to recognize what those employees value from the remaining two workplace generations (Gen Y and Gen X); and, these companies will develop their talent management strategies correspondingly around these groups.

Also, I have seen a number of studies indicating that the Gen X workforce does not have the necessary numbers of people ready to assume business leadership responsibilities. Consequently, companies are beginning to look to those younger professionals from Gen Y to fill this leadership gap, and it’s a huge challenge.

Mistakes can be made. Based on my experience, and in order to stay competitive, here are a few talent management playbook tips that can help businesses ready their benches for when the baby boomers start retiring: 

1. Utilize professional assessments in the hiring process. One of the biggest mistakes I see companies make is not using assessments to aid in hiring and promotional decisions. 

If an organization does not hire the right people in the first place, then it can also end up wasting all of its training and development dollars. Instead, I’ll see companies investing huge amounts of money in things such as an applicant tracking system, in order to streamline the resume management and client management processes. 

But, at the same time, they’re not investing in things such as skills testing and behavioral assessments. Again, the goal is to hire the right people in the first place. 

Every company should use skills testing, behavioral assessments and behaviorally-based interviews to ensure that the candidates are qualified, and that they are a good fit, not only for the job, but also with the company’s culture. Companies should use assessments in all phases of recruiting, hiring, training and developing their workforces. 

2. Understand that talent management technology is not a magic bullet. Some companies make the mistake of investing in expensive Talent Management technology prematurely and long before they’re ready to utilize it. 

Before a company invests in this type of technology, they really need to take the time to develop talent management strategies. Such strategies can take between one to five years or more to implement; and, once in place, these strategies will guide a company toward selecting a system that makes sense and can grow with their business. 

Another consideration is that technology improves and changes very rapidly. Whatever is today’s flashiest system may be tomorrow’s dinosaur. 

So better yet: Consult with your professional and experienced HR professionals and organizational development staff to help create and manage your company’s talent management strategies before investing in expensive technology. 

3. Begin planning now for any potential leadership gaps within the organization. As described in the beginning of this Insight, many organizations will soon be facing the exodus of the baby boomer generation, many of whom will be retiring within in the next 10 years. 

Following this exodus is a much smaller pipeline of younger professionals, and companies will be forced to do something quickly. Of course, the good news is, younger generations are much more technically savvy, so companies can utilize technology more efficiently and cost effectively. 

For example, online learning is growing very rapidly as the primary method for delivering critical training to younger employees. Learning Management Systems (LMS) are a great way to manage and track online learning and development. A good LMS should include the capability to develop performance evaluations, 360s, succession planning tools and dashboard reporting and metrics. These capabilities will with analyzing, growing and developing the next generations of leaders. 

4. Recognize the importance of re-examining or re-adjusting the company or organizational culture. The reality is that companies must ensure that they connect with the workforces represented by Gen X and Gen Y. 

For example, their communication styles can be very different. 

Gen Y generally expects frequent feedback and communication about their performances. Sometimes, they’ve been identified as the pampered generation, so this trait can also mean that they expect not only frequent feedback, but they also want open, honest dialogue—in other words, no spinning. 

This generation typically expects career development plans with opportunities to do new and challenging work. Even a practice of giving a Gen Y employee a raise without providing new or challenging responsibilities can backfire. This generation is also looking for flexible work environments that can include remote-working arrangements and leveraging technology.   

I would recommend a great book by a colleague of mine named Sherri Elliott called Ties to Tattoos: Turning Generational Differences into a Competitive Advantage.

Again, a company’s talent management objectives should always align with the business goals and strategies.

A sound talent management strategy will not only help ensure better hiring and development, but it will also help the company develop an effective succession planning model.

When that day comes, you don’t want to come up short or with an empty leadership bench!

My first HRTools.com Insight discussed reasons why organizations conduct employee opinion surveys and how these surveys generally help a business plan for success. 

Now let’s get more specific and outline the steps a business can take to implement an employee opinion survey. When a management team or an executive group decides to gain a better understanding of employee viewpoints, they look to employee surveys. 

Before outlining the implementation steps, I ask my clients to consider a couple points. First, employers want to avoid making a common mistake, which is to conduct a survey just for the sake of conducting a survey. Second, if you go to all the trouble of asking employees for their feedback, it is critically important that you are prepared to: 

• Communicate the results of the survey to employees.
• Take action to address the opportunities for improvement identified by the survey. 

In order for a survey to be successful, the project must have clearly defined objectives.  Although they may seem like ‘no-brainers,’ see how you would answer the following: 

1. Can you identify what you want to accomplish with a survey?
2. Can you identify your survey goals?
3. Can you acknowledge that you are prepared to make appropriate changes, if employees tell you they want to see changes made? 

If your organization can answer the above questions with confidence, you are ready to invest in an employee survey. 

First, Find a Reliable and Trusted Professional Partner

As you might know, the Internet can often overwhelm us with marketing pitches for various sophisticated software products, tools and resources. Where employee surveys are concerned, an organization is better served by knowing that a survey has been developed by a trusted consulting group or by a behavioral or organizational psychologist with an advanced degree in his/her field. 

You want survey questions, for instance, that are written well and are psychometrically sound with a commonly used response scale. If you plan to benchmark your survey results against external sources, these factors become much more critical. Therefore, I strongly recommend that you partner with an expert to make sure your question development is sound in order to get quality results. 

Second, Determine the Best Methods for Administering the Survey

As you consider how to administer your survey, you have multiple options. Obviously Web-based surveys are popular. This method is also very attractive because it represents the most cost-effective method of conducting a survey. If you choose this option, make sure that all employees have access to the Web. If some do not, you will need to accommodate those employees. This can be done, for example, by providing temporary kiosks that also ensure privacy. Or, you can provide paper-based or phone-based administration options. 

Third, Prepare for the Analysis and Reporting Phases

These critical phases require extensive specialization and companies are best served by hiring consultants, statisticians or behavioral psychologists who have special training in statistical analysis. These professionals are trained to get the most out of your survey data. You want an in-depth analysis of your data, and they know how to “slice and dice” the data in different ways to provide the most accurate picture. 

Fourth, Gear Up for the Feedback and Action Planning Phases

Again, I take you back to what was discussed at the beginning of this Insight. If the organization isn’t willing to do something with the survey data, there can be a few unintended consequences. For one, by ignoring the feedback, a message is effectively sent to the employees that, “Hey, we heard you, but we do not care.” You also run the risk of losing credibility should you ask for their feedback again at a later date. 

So it’s really critical that the feedback and action planning phases take place. It’s also important to get employees involved, as you want their buy-in and help in implementing changes which improves employee engagement. If they are vested in the process, they are more likely to actively participate in any change efforts you want to later implement. Research also shows that engaged employees are usually more productive. 

The Bottom Line

With proper preparation and effective implementation, an employee survey is a valuable tool for soliciting employee feedback and can help your organization become more successful. 

Your Employees Represent You and Your Image
Companies use employee surveys to learn how employees feel about issues such as working conditions, pay, benefits, co-worker and team dynamics, quality of supervision, etc.

In order to plan ahead and strengthen a company’s image, strategic-minded business leaders need to understand their employees’ views. Employee surveys will help a business gain perspective about where they have been, where they are today and where they need to go tomorrow. In this respect, employee surveys are an effective communication tool.

Strategically Plan Employee Surveys
The Internet is broadening and increasing the extent to which companies survey not only employees, but customers as well. This medium, and related technology, has significantly reduced survey costs in the last 10 years.  In fact, we see a trend of “over-surveying” because numerous online survey tools make it inexpensive to gather data from employees and customers. I absolutely believe that in order to keep its value, surveys should be thought of and used as a strategic business tool.

Employee Engagement or Employee Climate Surveys
Employee surveys help management gather feedback about the company’s business environment. The most common type of employee survey is an employee engagement or employee climate survey.

Feedback from this survey tells management if employees are:

1. engaged in the organization;
2. committed to the organization; and
3. equipped with the resources necessary to be successful and help the organization achieve its goals.

Many situations can determine why organizations gather feedback from their employees:

• Training needs assessments: information is gathered about current and future training needs; including measurable gaps around which training programs can be developed and implemented.
• Topic-specific surveys: companies frequently survey employees about their benefits—are they working for them and their families? Do changes need to be made in the benefits program or package?
• Customer-oriented surveys: for employees working in customer-facing positions; for instance, e-mailing employees about the extent to which good customer service is provided is as important as surveying customers about whether the business is providing good customer service.

Success Story
To give you an idea of how a well-planned, strategic employee-engagement survey leads to success, I will share this recent professional experience:

We are working with a national medical organization that runs specialty hospitals. We wanted to learn if there is a relationship between employee engagement and patient satisfaction.  We found that over several years, hospitals with higher employee engagement had patients who were more satisfied and more likely to recommend the hospital to friends and family.  The hospitals with higher employee engagement and patient satisfaction also had higher year-over-year net revenue growth. 

There is quite a bit of research showing that organizations with more highly engaged employees perform better. This research also demonstrates that there are positive correlations between employee engagement and a company’s financial performance and customer satisfaction.  

This is a great example because sometimes management has no idea what will be revealed. Our results confirmed to the executive group that employee engagement, and the survey process in general, is a really important way to measure success in an organization.  The relationship between employee engagement, patient satisfaction and financial performance was demonstrated; so it is a gratifying success story. 

Most organizations report turnover as a simple percentage within a job, department, division or the entire organization.  However, HR should realize that providing only a simple percentage provides little information to executives regarding the impact of turnover throughout the organization.

Throughout my work with many organizations struggling with turnover issues, I have recommended additional metrics to measure turnover that provide much more useful information and help drive the action necessary to reduce turnover.    A comprehensive "turnover dashboard" is the best method for reporting turnover within your organization.

Some of the key metrics we would recommend including on a turnover dashboard include:  

Critical Position Turnover:  This means measuring turnover that occurs within key positions, as identified by executive leadership.

Weighted Performance Turnover: This involves weighting voluntary turnover using the latest performance ratings for the employee.

High-Performer Turnover:  This means tracking turnover among the number of well-known employees who are considered high-performers.

Turnover by Manager: Because turnover issues may be localized to a few managers, it is important to identify exactly who in the organization is responsible for turnover.  The organization should also examine the correlations between employee engagement or organizational climate scores and turnover by manager.

Turnover by Division, Department, Functional Area:  Because turnover in high-profit, high-growth units may have a bigger impact on organization performance, it is critical to identify benchmark turnover across these key units.

Competitor Turnover: Although sometimes more difficult to measure, turnover rates for both average performers and top-performing competitors in your industry should be reported to put your organization’s turnover rates in perspective.

Internal “Cross-Lines” Turnover:  Even though employees may not be leaving the organization, high or low internal transfers between departments, divisions or functional areas can indicate serious problems with individual managers or the requisition system within the organization.

In addition to the critical measures listed above, additional turnover metrics that are beneficial to monitor include: 

• The correlation between turnover rates and organization profitability (division, business unit, etc.)
• The hard-costs associated with losing an average performer
• The hard-costs associated with losing a high performer in a key position
• What companies or competitors your organization is losing key employees to
• Exit interview data should be collected from voluntary terminations in order to identify any internal management or organizational issues
• Employee engagement or organizational climate survey data should be regularly correlated with turnover data by manager, department, division, organization, etc. 

Stay tuned: Part 2 of this series will address how to Reduce Turnover in Your Organization

Reliability and validity are two fundamental concepts associated with the use of tests or assessments for pre-employment screening. Unfortunately, these concepts can be quite difficult to understand and are not widely addressed by many tests and assessment vendors.

Measuring Reliability

In general, there are three ways to measure or understand the reliability of a test or assessment.

1. The first, internal consistency, refers to whether the questions in a test or assessment measure the same attribute in the same way. For example, a math test would not reliably measure math ability if it also includes geography questions. 
2. A second way to understand reliability is the degree to which a test or assessment is consistent across time, or test-retest reliability. The most common way to estimate a test’s reliability over time is to use the test-retest method, where an assessment is administered twice to the same group of people. 
3. The third way to understand reliability is referred to as inter-rater reliability. In this sense, reliability is about the relative level of agreement between raters or with one rater over time.

Understanding Validity

In addition to reliability, it is important to understand validity in your test and assessment. Validity is generally defined as the extent to which a test measures what it claims to measure. Validity can also refer to a process of finding evidence that allows us to interpret the results of a test over time. Estimating the validity of a test helps us to understand what the results mean.

Much like reliability, there are three different strategies for collecting evidence of validity on a test or assessment.

1. The first, content-related validity, refers to evidence that questions on the test or questionnaire actually reflect aspects of the attribute being measured. Evidence of content-related validity can be built into the test by creating a process for test construction, whereby one can document that an effort was made to find out about the attribute and to include only those questions that measured the attribute. 
2.  The second method, criterion-related validity is assessed when the test or questionnaire is used to predict something else, such as job performance. Evidence of criterion-related validity is gathered in two ways: predictive validation, or that the test in question is administered and the criterion is assessed at a later point in time, and concurrent validation, or that the test and criterion are assessed at the same time. 
3.  And finally, construct-related validity can be thought of as the “big picture” validity. Evidence of construct-related validity is accumulated over time, and is demonstrated through convergent validity, or the degree to which the test in question is correlated with other things, and by divergent validity, or the degree to which the test results are not correlated with events, behaviors or other tests that should not be related.

Understanding how reliability and validity relate to your assessment or test can greatly improve the effectiveness of their results.

Chris Wright is the founder, President and CEO of Reliant (www.reliantlive.com). Dr. Wright leads the development of Reliant's Strategic Talent Management products and content.

First, identify key abilities

The key to talent management begins with hiring the right people. However, before an organization searches for these candidates, it must first identify those key abilities needed to achieve the business goals and objectives of the organization. Developing a competency model for your organization that defines these key abilities is the best method for identifying qualified candidates. 

We recommend that organizations adopt competency models that are based on scientific research that has been published in peer-reviewed journals. Using such models ensures that you are utilizing quality definitions and that the competencies demonstrate a high degree of specificity. 

Here are a few tips that will help you evaluate the competency models that are commercially available. 

Leadership is an outcome

For example, Leadership is not a competency. Effective leadership is an outcome. To be an effective leader, one must possess many core competencies including, but not limited to motivating intrinsically, strategic planning, initiation, decisiveness, people reading, public presentation, information integration, and industry knowledge.

Good competency models will contain definitions and behavioral elements that are highly specific and well defined. If a competency model is based on scientific research, the vendor can provide you with the corresponding articles.

You may also find it useful to create a competency model based on your specific organization. Below is a step-by-step process for creating a competency model and utilizing that model within your organization.

1.  Identify the high-impact jobs or positions within your organization.
2.  Determine the outcomes expected as a result of successful performance within this position. These outcomes should be directly linked to the organizational objectives.
3.  Identify the technical and behavior competencies necessary in achieving the desired outcomes.
4.  Assess the candidate using behavioral assessments that have been validated against your competency model.
5.  Create and utilize behaviorally-based interview questions that compliment the behavioral assessments and are mapped directly to the competencies.
6.  Develop learning opportunities to foster growth in the core competencies necessary for success.
7.  Institute performance management and developmental processes around the competency model.
8.  Integrate the competency model within your succession planning strategies to identify and develop candidates for succession into your critical jobs.

Competency modeling is an important step in the development of an effective talent management strategy. It can greatly increase the hiring manager’s success rates in finding and developing the talent needed to keep their organizations competitive.

Chris Wright is the founder, President and CEO of Reliant (www.reliantlive.com). Dr. Wright leads the development of Reliant's Strategic Talent Management products and content.

HR challenges

It is not surprising to learn that few CEO or sales executives are completely satisfied with the performance of his or her sales organization. An increase in global competition and new technologies are just two of the many dynamics which have contributed in reshaping the role of the salesperson within organizations. This has presented a new challenge for HR in terms of selecting, developing and retaining high-performing sales professionals.

Organizations have found that it is necessary to rely on real-time market data in order to customize products and service offerings that meet the ever-changing requirements of the customer. Consumers have become savvier shoppers and are much more interested in their return-on-investment for any purchase. So, how does a sales executive handle these challenges: by re-inventing their sales organization. 

The first step in effectively shifting your sales strategy is to analyze your competition, markets and sales opportunities. However, it is equally important to identify whether or not your current sales leaders and salespeople have the abilities necessary for your organization. Understanding the core competencies for your sales force is critical in carrying out your particular sales strategy. 

Creating and identifying sales leaders 

We recommend four building blocks for creating and identifying the ideal sales force for your organization. 

1. Clearly defining your organizations sales and the competencies necessary to carry out the sales strategy will help you hire and maintain a more effective sales force. 
2. By conducting a competency assessment of the current strengths and gaps among your existing sales force, you can more easily identify and employ those candidates who will best support your sales strategies. 
3. Utilizing assessments to measure key performance indicators will help you identify candidates with the highest likelihood for success. 
4. It is important to implement training, performance management and employee development strategies to maintain the core competencies necessary for success. 

The bottom-line, regardless of your organization’s sales strategy, is that success depends upon identifying, hiring and developing the right sales leaders and salespeople. The organizations that have created the ideal sales force have implemented these four building blocks as their foundation for success. Utilizing these building blocks can help your organization move forward with a successful, effective strategy.