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Robert Cordray

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HR Leaders: How Decisions Actually Affect Talent Retention in a Real Way

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Talent Retention

It isn’t uncommon for the human resources department to be viewed as one having little impact on a company’s profitability, finances, or sales. However, is this consensus a fair one?

After giving it some thought, which department in the business is responsible for the talent driving the finance and sales sectors?

Developing Your Business Infrastructure

Once all the layers of a business are peeled back, it is safe to say that it is truly only as first-rate as the talent working within each department. Without those individuals, the business wouldn’t exist, and the human resource department is responsible for each of these employees.

They not only attract them, but they also help develop them and organize them strategically throughout the company, so they perform at their best.

Giving further thought to this subject, it makes no sense not to give credence to the critical factor that HR plays in a company’s profitability and decision-making process. The real question is, though, how this department’s decisions impact the company’s bottom line, where their value lies, and how their decisions affect the retention of talent in a real way.

Decision-Making and Talent Management

The most obvious point of contention regarding HR is the decisions the make regarding talent management, and its impact on retention. The driving force behind every successful company is a solid talent. Therefore, it’s up to the HR department to have a thorough understanding of the business’s talent requirements, how to attract them, and the requirements necessary to develop that talent to enable them to assist the company strategically, so goals are met.

Because it’s so difficult for organizations to attract and retain experienced leaders currently, those holding these management leadership roles deserve separate mentioning.

A business is a “make or break” situation if strong leadership isn’t in place, especially when times are tough, or during periods of transition.

Attracting the Right People

The HR department can have a huge impact on an organization when they attract the right leadership and develop them effectively. They don’t just advertise for a particular leadership role and fill that slot.

Instead, they will assess the needs of that leadership position for a particular department, first attracting an individual fitting that specific need, and following through by developing their behaviors and skills based on particular requirements.

When each of these decisions is made, and all of these goals are accomplished by the HR department, how the company’s bottom line and the retention of talent are evident. Companies not only have the correct people serving in the right positions, but they are working at their highest level that, in turn, will inevitably have a positive effect on the company’s performance and profitability.

HR Strategy Alignment and Decision-Making

Every department in a business is an important one and, with every strategy and decision, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Therefore, when it comes to HR activities, some of these decisions truly impact employee retention in a real way. Integrated HR software helps management hire and retain employees.

These organizational tools assist the HR department to organize hire dates, compile data, and track every employee’s career path. The importance of this data includes making a determination for future leadership roles, as well as identifying where employees can serve in various departments in the company.

When strategies are intrinsically linked to the goals of the business, as a whole, then there is greater success for talent retention. This is because when employees know that companies are willing to invest money into developing them and increasing their skills, then they’ll be more willing to stay with the company.

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———————
Robert Cordray

Robert Cordray is a freelance writer with over 20 years of business experience
He does the occasional business consult to help increase employee morale
Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Web

Image Sources: octanner.com

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L2L Broad View: Creating New Working Environments

5 Tips and Best Practices for Moving Into New Offices

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Moving Day

Every organization’s success is always related directly to their people, and what they do, and how they do it. When you have the right people, in the right places, doing the right things, in the right environment, then you have a formula for success.

But when an organization must uproot their physical location to move to another, leaders need to be on top of the emotional, physical, and psychological aspects of a move and make sure that things run smoothly during this kind of potentially turbulent transition.

Relocating Challenges

Relocating to a new office setting need not be stressful or overly time-consuming. The key to a smooth transition is effective strategic planning that neutralizes and minimizes lost hours and costly downtime. If you are planning an office move soon, you will appreciate the following tips that will reduce the stress of relocation while hitting your budget targets.

1) Create an Address System

Your new office location will likely be configured differently than your present environment. This will make it impossible for personnel to know where all their “stuff” is once the movers do their job. Solve this problem by creating an address system that informs movers exactly where they need to position each item, packed box or piece of furniture.

You can set this system up by creating two sets of floor plans. One set for your existing office and one for the new. With a ruler, pencil in a grid system using letters to represent one axis and numbers for the other.

Every intersection on the grid represents a unique address consisting of one letter and a number. For instance, if you are in NYC, instruct your New York city movers to relocate every item based on its assigned “from” and “to” address. This system will cause every item moved to gravitate closer to where it needs to end up.

2) Label Everything

It is difficult to attempt to comprehend the sheer quantity of office furniture and equipment we have that consists of identical copies of the same item.

Knowing where all these things belong is the responsibility of the office move coordinator who should place labels on everything whose ownership could possibly be subject to dispute later on. Labels should be easily seen by movers and by all means, they should have item relocation addresses clearly marked on them.

3) Allocate Resources Accordingly

If temporary workers that you can hire to pack for you cost less per hour than your existing staff, then you need to think twice about having regular staffers pack and clean up.

The budgeting of resources for your move should take into account lost productivity resulting from using your staff as a moving company. Just double-check to make sure that you are putting all your resources in the right places.

4) Start With the IT Department

Owing to the risks associated with security breaches and network outages, every commercial office relocation plan should begin with the IT department’s needs. There will be telephone system issues, data cabling installation issues, wi-fi issues, and possibly air-conditioning issues that need to be addressed.

Ideally, you will have an IT relocation checklist prepared by, or at least approved by a network engineer. The process of coordinating a move with your data carriers, ISPs, and technology vendors can take two months or more. Be sure that you plan well in advance for every contingency.

Transporting office technology equipment requires special handling and expertise. Your data and high-end equipment will require transit protection. Make yourself aware of your special IT needs and allow yourself time to thoroughly test all your systems and equipment once your systems are reconstituted.

5) Update Your Website, Business Cards and Stationery

Moving an office can induce minor trauma. Settling down and getting down to business once relocated is paramount. You don’t want to wait until the last moment to think about updating your business communication tools.

This includes the company website, management’s business cards and the company stationary. You will want to know how much lead time is required in order to complete these updates so you can plan accordingly.

Leading Success

The difference between a hectic relocation nightmare and a smooth transition into new digs is nothing more than a solid effort in planning. The investment in time that you make drawing up your plans will pay off handsomely when you observe that your employees are spending their time serving customers rather than adjusting to their new environment.

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Learn, Grow & Develop Other Leaders™

———————
Robert Cordray

Robert Cordray is a freelance writer with over 20 years of business experience
He does the occasional business consult to help increase employee morale
Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Web

Image Sources: mokbeltorontomoving.ca

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On Leadership, Threats and Operational Security

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Hacking Threats

A few years ago, a small business in San Diego was hit my malicious cyber attacks over the internet that were launched from local IP addresses.

As they were protected as much as they felt they could be, they contacted the national carrier to deal with the denial-of-service component of the problem.

Too Small to Service

After going through several levels of management, the answer that they heard was that the carrier gets about 10 million threats per day on their network and it is pretty difficult to assume that they would be given some kind of priority as a small business to have your problem explored.

Understanding that type of threat, which was simply a script being run through several zombie computers, can escalate to actual specialists trying to actively access your Internet information was enough to drive the owners towards looking at specialized business insurance that could keep them safe from liability.

What is Cyber Insurance?

The most common way for small businesses to get protection is to first ensure that they have an industry security compliance on their cloud presence and to ensure they use the right cyber security solutions like the use of a SWG. After they have done so, they can look at cyber insurance. Cyber insurance is a form of insurance that covers almost any type of business attack from hacking to data breaches.

If you lose a client’s data or valuable data of your own, you can recover some of your losses or offset the liability with an insurance claim. Some forms of coverage also cover the loss of work time due to denial of service attacks.

Small companies are fortunate that almost 90 percent of the policies that are available provide coverage to companies inside the United States. Another nice feature is that the bulk of the policies can be priced by getting insurance quotes online.

Preparing to Get a Policy

As mentioned, upgrading or validating that you have industry standard security compliance is an important part of qualifying for cyber insurance. If you have an online e-commerce site, you should have encryption, a good hosting provider, and potentially a third-party service that verifies your site security.

The cost of preparing for cyber insurance can be a consideration for small businesses, so if you are just starting you might consider talking to cyber insurance representatives about the requirements that they have so that you can focus on meeting their criteria.

Another area that comes into play is knowing the type of coverage that you think you will need. If you store client credit cards online in a database, you will likely focus on a different type of coverage than if you are a company that uses a third-party payment processor’s site to process transactions for published material that carries copyrights.

Are They Really Out There?

A lot of smaller companies have not formerly had too many problems that they know of when it comes to the information that they keep online. Two trends are changing that picture. The first trend is one that has more businesses relying exclusively on computing in the cloud.

The second is that security researchers are finding pieces of data from every size company imaginable online in what is known as the Internet ‘dark’, or an area that people use to store information that may be for sale. Gone are the days when hackers were exclusively interested in finding ways to beat security or promoting a cause. With billions of people online, the focus has shifted to money and information.

New Operational Threats

As far as attacks are concerned, in addition to outright hacking and employee theft, there are a couple other types of attack that are growing in popularity.

  • One is stealing the anonymity from people and putting together a trail of behavior that can be used as business intelligence.
  • The other is creating boiler rooms that are information clearinghouses of stolen data that goes on the market to whichever organization or person that will pay for it.

The net result for small businesses is a competitive disadvantage for their online offerings unless they have adequate security- and potentially some insurance protection in place. For the small business owner who hasn’t recently checked their security arrangements, 2016 is a great time to start looking at turning a disadvantage into a sales advantage by validating the notion that your client and internal data is secure.

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Never miss an issue of Linked 2 Leadership, subscribe today!
Learn, Grow & Develop Other Leaders™

———————
Robert Cordray

Robert Cordray is a freelance writer with over 20 years of business experience
He does the occasional business consult to help increase employee morale
Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Web

Image Sources: twinsystems.com

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8 Quick Tips Every Startup Should Know

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Success and Failure

According to the United States Small Business Association, there are over 28 million small businesses operating in the US. These small businesses are responsible for 54 percent of domestic market share.

If you are launching a startup and want to make sure you’re putting your best foot forward, here are eight tips you’ll want to keep in mind.

8 Quick Tips Every Startup Should Know

1. Carefully Consider the Competition

No matter what type of business you’re launching, you need to be aware of the competition and the industry standards. For example, you may feel it’s reasonable to charge by the hour only to discover others are charging piecework or by project.

Learn about standard deposits, pricing, turnaround times, promotions and accepted unwritten rules before you embarrass yourself or drive away potential clients.

2. Define the Scope of Your Business

New businesses often struggle to define their parameters at the start, especially if clients are asking for services you may not have considered. If you launch a venture that offers printing for brochures, business cards, and training materials, clients may also start asking about billboards, banners, web and graphic design services and other related products.

Know where your scope ends and where to direct clients if you can’t meet all of their needs. Resist the urge to say yes to every requested job or you may find yourself mired in projects you are wholly unprepared to handle.

3. Enumerate What Makes Your Venture Attractive to Prospective Employees

The Wall Street Journal lists broad job categories, a customized position, more flexibility, opportunities for growth, and better employee treatment as ways to lure quality talent away from huge corporations. New startups often make the mistake of only worrying about attracting clients, but you also need to think long and hard about how to entice the best employees to your door.

Put together a list of potential benefits you’re willing to negotiate. Some, like flexible hours, may cost you nothing at all. Others, like offering quality health insurance and short-term disability insurance, may be worth the cost if they get you top talent.

4. Define Short and Long-Term Goals

Entrepreneur Magazine recommends setting goals of varying time frames so you are able to judge your progress with your own yardstick. For example, if you simply want to run a small side business from your home with perhaps one part-time employee to help you during the holiday season, there’s little sense comparing yourself to a startup venture where the owners are pushing to go public in five years. Know where you are going and where you want to be.

5. Organize Your Finances

Your startup may not make a profit for a while and you may also want to reinvest any profit back into the business. Make sure you have an adequate emergency fund and startup capital so you won’t be juggling your office lease with your mortgage. You may get a financial help for housing.

If you will be doing your own bookkeeping, learn the software before you go live to avoid costly and time-consuming errors.

6. Know Where to Find Assistance, if You Need it

If you have an accident, get sick or need surgery, having someone you can trust to step in for a while can save your business. You also need to consider if you’ve networked enough to get professional assistance when you need it, especially if you anticipate large projects in the future.

Consider the “what if” scenarios now before they happen.

7. Keep a Reasonable Schedule

Launching a business can easily eat up your every waking hour. Exercise, time with loved ones, meals and even sleep can start to take a back seat to the demands of your startup. From the beginning, define your schedule and keep to it as much as possible. If you want to shut off your business phone at five each evening, do it. If you won’t respond to emails on weekends, make that clear from the beginning. Don’t allow your ambition to overrun all other facets of your life.

8. Make Certain You’re Properly Insured

The Small Business Association enumerates the various types of business insurance available, and the options are broad indeed. General liability insurance can cover everything from slip-and-fall accidents at your shop to legal fees for libel or slander.

If you produce a consumable product, you may want to consider product liability insurance. Meet with your insurance agent early to discuss your venture’s details before a situation arises where you should have already been insured. A single lawsuit could put you out of business, so it pays to explore all options.

Launching your own business is an exciting time. By keeping these tips in mind, you’ll be better prepared for the process and can avoid costly, frustrating errors.

Do you have any other additional tips on how to be successful in a startup business? I would love to hear your thoughts!

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Never miss an issue of Linked 2 Leadership, subscribe today!
Learn, Grow & Develop Other Leaders™

———————
Robert Cordray

Robert Cordray is a freelance writer with over 20 years of business experience
He does the occasional business consult to help increase employee morale
Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Web

Image Sources: cloudfront.net

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How to Ensure Motivation Trickles From the Top Down

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Water Trickle

Motivation is considered to be one of the most important contributing factors to high levels of employee engagement and satisfaction.

However, as illustrated below, motivation must start from the top in order to be most effective.

Executive Engagement

Research shows that the modern work environment has drastically changed. To illustrate, workplaces are more complex, markets are more volatile and younger generations are more demanding. Therefore, executives must carefully manage their company culture.

Industry icons, such as Apple’s Steve Jobs, were famous for their charismatic ability to inspire employees and customers alike to seek excellence and pursue their dreams. Consequently, executives must play a regular, proactive role in communicating with employees.

Visionary executives who non-invasive methods to appeal to their employee’s emotions will enjoy higher levels of teamwork, production and employee satisfaction. Thus, executives must make constructive motivation a top priority for management.

Motivation from Management

Research from Gallup clearly shows that managers influence almost 70 percent of critical business variables such as productivity, performance and profitability. Even more disheartening, approximately 70 percent of employees are not engaged at work.

This means that the majority of employers are disengaged and indifferent to their work.

Managers play a key role in determining employee engagement and satisfaction levels. Gallup’s research shows that accurate and meaningful communication is extremely important to employees. A healthy business relationship will include daily face-to-face communication, not randomly vague emails.

Clearly, executives must set the expectation that management will invest time and energy into daily interaction with their subordinates. This will identify and resolve many problems before they become serious issues.

Proper Performance Management

Members of upper management rarely receive formal performance reviews like regular employees. Therefore, they often fail to understand how annual performance reviews can affect an employee’s motivation and job satisfaction. Annual performance reviews can create intense emotional pressure and apprehension.

Managers tend to view performance reviews as just another task to complete.

However, performance reviews are an important opportunity to review progress, set goals and get excited about work. Executives should model engaging and productive performance reviews through formally meeting with management and helping them to set their own goals.

Nevertheless, performance reviews are of little worth without quarterly follow-ups with employees. Regularly meeting with employees will reinforce their commitment to growth and the company.

Data Analytics

Executives need factual data in order to better understand their employees. Fortunately, there are excellent ways to glean insightful data about employees. For example, HR software programs can create customized reports that detail important employee metrics.

First, there are financial reports such as:

  • Cost per hire
  • Turnover cost
  • Training investment
  • Recruiting cost ratios

Turnover costs equal the total amount accrued through separation, vacancy, replacement and training. High turnover and hiring costs can financially weaken a company because every hire may cost between five to 10 thousand dollars.

There are other important metrics, such as turnover, absence and vacancy rates. Turnover rates exemplify the state of employee engagement and satisfaction. Executives should consider also performing quarterly employee satisfaction surveys.

Public Perks

Executives should consider unique employee appreciation ideas. While they do not have to be expensive, perks are an excellent way for upper management to demonstrate their commitment to employees.

For instance, flexibility is an abstract concept that matters a lot to employees, who may be single-parents or returning to school. Management should embrace flexible scheduling as a way to motivate employees to increase efficiency and production.

Once employees understand that they are empowered to manage their workload, they will be more responsible and willing to go the extra mile.

Motivation is a deciding factor between high employee engagement and high turnover rates. In order to properly increase motivation, executives should use customized reports created through HR software.

So, how are you as a leader allowing your strengths in motivating your followers work to influence them to motivate others? What are some of the steps you can take today or tomorrow to step back from your daily routine and think about how you can better increase you motivation for others to follow? I would love to hear your thoughts!

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Never miss an issue of Linked 2 Leadership, subscribe today!
Learn, Grow & Develop Other Leaders™

———————
Robert Cordray

Robert Cordray is a freelance writer with over 20 years of business experience
He does the occasional business consult to help increase employee morale
Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Web

Image Sources: mediaassets.knoxnews.com

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6 Steps to Creating a Leader-Focused Growth Plan

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Growth Arrow

Getting a new member on your staff can be extremely exciting. This new staff member can bring needed energy and enthusiasm to your team.

When you get a new staff member or employee, it is extremely important for you and the staff member to establish a growth plan within the company.

Engineering Success

Your company works hard to actively recruit people who want to grow and managers want to see that growth help the company, as well as the talent you have recruited. In order to ensure that your new employee is able to grow their talent and become better at their job, consider establishing a growth plan with him or her.

Establishing and following through on a high quality growth plan are critical not only for your retention rate, but for the success of your employee as well.

Creating a Winning Growth Plan

Here are simple steps to creating a winning growth plan.

1. Get to know your new team member

The first step should take place during the first week the employee is hired. You should meet with your new team member. Ask them why they want to be here and what they are hoping to accomplish with their time here.

Find out what goals they have for their future life, both professional and personal goals. This early conference is very much about finding out what your new employee values and finding out how you can both help each other.

2. Create goals

After the first meeting you should take about two weeks to think about what you learned from this meeting. Tell your new employee to think about some short and long-term goals that they would like to set. Prod them to open up about what they are truly interested in, if pay drives them, coach them on what’s a reasonable payroll.

You should also take some time to think about some potential goals for your employee as well. After the right amount of time you should sit down with your new employee and talk about the goals that you each want for the employee. Be sure to listen carefully for what the employee wants for themselves.

During this meeting, you will set up some goals for the coming months and for the next year. These goals will help you and your employee focus on his or her growth and give you something to work towards.

3. Observe what skills they already have

The next thing you need to do is to assess what skills your employee has. You have some data on your employee from his or her resume. Take some time to pay attention to the way your employee performs in the office. Develop a list of skills that you notice that your employee has. You should also develop a list of skills that your employee needs to develop as they continues to grow.

4. Take advantage of performance reviews

After about a month of observing your employee, you should sit down with your employee. Give them some time to reflect on how they have performed in the last month. Ask your employee what they feel their strengths and weaknesses are.

Based on your observations and your employees strengths and weaknesses, you should be able to set a list of skills you would like for your employee to work on. List out three different skills you feel that your employee could get better at and tell your employee that you plan on supporting him or her in their quest to become better at what they do.

5. Offer training

Next, support your employee in their ability to get more skills. Arrange some professional development and training for your employee. This may require you to schedule video conferencing for your employee with experts in each of these skills, or maybe send them to a conference.

Skill development is extremely important for your employee, so you should take your time to invest in professional development for your employee. Most importantly, be transparent with your employee. Tell them that you send them to training activities and conferences because you value them and want them to get as much out of it as they want to.

6. Reflection

The final step in developing your employee as a professional is to reflect. After a year, you and your employee should conference. Reflect on the goals you set a year ago and decide to what extent the employee was able to meet those goals.

If your employee was not able to meet the goals, then you should ask the employee what they felt kept them from meeting their goal. This will form the base of next years goals. You should also reflect on the professional development the employee has received over the last year.

Continued Development

This is also a great time to talk about new strengths and weaknesses. At the end of the meeting, discuss with your employee and establish new goals for the next year as well as new skills. This will allow your employee to develop continually.

Investing in the development of your employees is critical to the success of your business in the long-term as well as the success of your recruitment efforts. Start developing your employees today!

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Never miss an issue of Linked 2 Leadership, subscribe today!
Learn, Grow & Develop Other Leaders™
———————
Robert Cordray

Robert Cordray is a freelance writer with over 20 years of business experience
He does the occasional business consult to help increase employee morale
Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Web

Image Sources: nethr.net