Fast Tracker

Identifying High Potential Diamonds

noreply@blogger.com (The Vantage Group, Inc.) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 14:36:00 +0000

Can you spot a diamond in the rough? They exist inside every organization, but most managers fail to identify them. Meanwhile, research indicates these diamonds will never reach their potential because they are in the wrong job. Or worse still, they’re in the right job, inside your very own company, but are being mismanaged.

“If hiring managers are allowed to interview candidates who have an 80% to 90% job match, most performance and retention issues go away.”

Why are so many people in the wrong job?

- Experience and education do not a superior performer make. Yet, management bases their hiring decisions on education and experience. There is no research to support that hiring based on education or experience leads to successful job performance. If there was, then all educated and experienced people would be top performers.

- They were a perfect fit – for the job description, not the work. Hiring managers fail to understand the job. A job description does not provide a basis from which to interview and hire. Instead, the job must be defined by key accountabilities; usually not more than three to five for most jobs. Once these are identified, they provide a basis for specifying the knowledge, certifications, behavior, motivators, experience, personal skills and education required to fit the job.

- The hiring manager loved them. Hiring managers tend to hire with their heart, not their head. But they need to look for the chemistry between the person and the job, not the chemistry they feel toward the applicant.

Finding Diamonds

Finding those diamonds in the rough starts with clearly defining the job with key accountabilities. Once the job has been defined, a system to qualify and screen candidates can be established.

For more information on finding diamonds, contact Vantage for a demonstration of our benchmarking, leadership development and recruitment process.

What is Your Customer Experience Strategy?

noreply@blogger.com (The Vantage Group, Inc.) — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 00:22:00 +0000

Do you know what your differentiating factor is when it comes to customer loyalty? What is the deciding factor that makes them buy from you time and time again? Having good salespeople, outstanding discounts and unforgettable advertising are nice but what draws customers in?

The overall experience is what keeps customers loyal and continuing to darken the doorstep of your establishment. Having a strategy in place and empowering your employees to execute that strategy is of the utmost importance.

How do you stand out from the guy around the corner that offers the same products and services you do? Customer experiences, the value you bring to the transaction.

In "Customer Experience Strategy", Lior Arussy talks about three steps for keeping your customer experience strategy fresh, timely and effective.

Deliver: "Execute your customer experience strategy. How do you perform at the moment of truth? Do you succeed? If you fail, why? And what will you do differently? Compliant resolution will be a big component of this discussion."

Be proactive, Not reactive.

When you truly execute your customer experience strategy, you will find yourself in a proactive situation instead of a defensive reactive response pattern. Customers will be spreading positive comments about your organization through word of mouth, social media and other likely outlets. Having satisfied customers that sing your praises is the single best marketing advantage an organization can have in today’s marketplace.

The proactive approach allows for your message to be consistent and delivered with purpose. It allows for a strategic viewpoint to the changes in the marketplace and therefore the changing demands of your customers.

"40% of loyal customers are willing to pay a premium of 10%  or more when they receive great experiences."

But is it too late? If the customer has already complained in a public form like Twitter, Facebook or a blog...could it be too late to resolve the issue? According to companies like Southwest, Ikea and Boingo, it’s not. All of these companies consistently reach out to unhappy customers via social media and offer to resolve the unpleasant experience. Nobody wants to be associated with a hashtag fail! That can haunt you on Twitter for years to come. In other media outlets, taking a transparent and sincere approach with customers and employees is a win-win.

Measure: "Measure the progress and the impact of the customer experience strategy on loyalty. What are the right metrics not only for your organization as a whole, but also for departments and individuals? How do you determine which metrics to pay attention to? You’ll examine which metrics to ignore, and which to highlight, both internally and externally."

Customer care surveys are key! Companies like Old Navy, Wal-Mart and Ulta appreciate feedback so much that they offer discounts just for calling in or going online and answering a few questions as follow up for a recent trip to one of their retail locations. Not only do they gather information on their products but they ask about location and staff as well.

Change with the times...AND your customers.

Redefine: "Continue an on-going reinvention process. How do you put continuing experience governance in place and make it effective? Changes in technology and in taste dictate a constantly evolving set of experiences to delight customers."

Redefining is pretty self explanatory, but think about it for just a minute. How do companies stay successful and in the forefront of their industry? They evolve! They change! And so do your customers and what they want from each and every interaction with your company.

And now you might be wondering, is a customer experience strategy worth it? Absolutely!

What is your customer experience strategy?

For more information on gathering customer feedback on the experience you provide, your staff and your products, contact Vantage today about a Customer Care Survey today!

The Emotional State of Team Spirit

noreply@blogger.com (The Vantage Group, Inc.) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 01:29:00 +0000

Every day, employees show up at your company in some kind of emotional state. They may slide into their seats still humming a tune from the car radio, or they may walk in gnashing their teeth after a near disaster in traffic; but they show up feeling something, and so do you. Like them, you’ll need to be productive regardless of how you feel. And sometimes, that can be hard.

Imagine meeting a deadline so serious that it absolutely, positively has to happen today, or your company will suffer huge loses and you’ll lose your job—when you’ve just discovered that you’ve won your state’s million dollar lottery. Could you do it? How about making that crucial deadline if you just got a phone call that your latest health test results came back with very bad news? Think of the flood of emotion you would feel with either of these phone calls. How difficult would it be to focus on the business at hand?

Even at work, your coworkers, your direct reports and you experience a range of emotions from sadness to joy, from mild, momentary feelings to the ones with heart-pounding intensity. How they (and you) control your emotions to accomplish what needs to be done each day makes all the difference to your company’s performance.

In the past, concentrating on helping your team develop technical skills and doing some occasional team building was considered good, because that’s all that was available. But knowing what we now know about how emotional intelligence affects performance, that’s not enough.

The emerging science of emotional and social intelligence is defining the conditions that bring out people’s power to create and collaborate at work. When you’re a leader or manager at any level in your organization, it’s extremely important that you are able to control your own emotions and lead your employees to do so as well, so everyone on the team is able to come to work motivated and energized. If your company isn’t using knowledge of Emotional Quotient to build an emotionally intelligent, high performance culture, you can bet that the leading organizations in your industry are. Their ability to keep innovating depends on it, and so does yours.

How does your organization look at the emotional side of your team?

Groundbreaking Research: What’s Inside of Top Sales Performers in the United States and Europe

noreply@blogger.com (The Vantage Group, Inc.) — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 14:35:00 +0000

Research studies of top sales people in both the United States and Europe confirm that top sales performance can be predicted. The most successful organizations in the world already know that hiring the right people has the potential of becoming the most powerful “secret weapon” in their arsenal of competitive strategies. What they don’t know is that hiring the right sales people can be as simple as following a recipe based on recent findings from an international study conducted by Frank Scheelen of The Scheelen Institut, Waldshut-Tiengen, Germany and, Bill J. Bonnstetter of Target Training International, Ltd. in Scottsdale, Arizona.

As a result of their twenty years of research, development and distribution of assessment tools to measure performance, they have been telling organizations that it is what’s on the inside, not the outside, that counts, especially in sales performance. What the research is fighting is the myth that hiring people who look and sound good leads to good performance. As global competition forces organizations to greater heights in key performance arenas such as customer service, quality and customization, aggressive organizations must be ever vigilant in the identification, acquisition, development and integration of innovative technology. This type of innovative technology is now available from Vantage for top performers, using Talent Management Plus assessments.

Much of the research conducted in the past on top salespeople has been focused on behavior. Behavioral research has been popular because, like looking good and sounding good, behavior can be observed. Little, if any significant study has been focused on what goes on inside a top salesperson. This groundbreaking research in the United States and Europe now confirms that attitudes far outweigh looking good, sounding good or behavior in distinguishing top salespeople. Two of the most significant assumptions were confirmed by the two studies. (1) Top performing salespeople around the world are similar and, (2) Attitudes or values are more important than behavior in sales performance.

In both studies, only top performing salespeople responded. In the United States study and a separate German study, top performing salespeople responded to two of TTI’s internationally validated assessments. One was based on the DISC behavioral model and the other was based on the Personal Interests, Attitudes and Values model.

Note that in the United States study, 178 top sales performers tended to be spread across four behavioral dimensions. In the German study, top sales performers tended to be spread across the same four behavioral dimensions. In view of these results, it is reasonable to conclude that salespeople can sell in most, if not all, behavioral dimensions.

However, when it comes to what is on the inside of top performing salespeople, both the United States study as well as the German study confirm it is hands-down, a Utilitarian Attitude. In the U.S., 72% had Utilitarian as their top value. In Germany, 71% had the same Utilitarian value as their number one value. Every study conducted in the last 30 years confirms the importance of a Utilitarian attitude in superior performance in sales.

For more information about this study, and assessments available for hiring sales professionals, contact Vantage.

Are you wasting your resources?

noreply@blogger.com (The Vantage Group, Inc.) — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 15:34:00 +0000

No one intentionally wastes their own time, money or opportunities. Yet it’s common knowledge that a lot of new gym memberships will languish unused, despite the spectacular success stories of those who make good use of them. For many people, good intentions are overwhelmed in the day-to-day flow of activities and information, and the result is that something with a tremendous potential for success gets lost in the shuffle.

We would never willingly let this happen in our business. But we know that from social networking options and innovative technology products to the latest marketing tools, somewhere in the flow of new information we encounter every day there are great business ideas that we could be taking advantage of. Sooner or later, we’ll read that they were the key to a business success, and we’d prefer that the success be in our business.

The resource that could be the key to a new growth phase for your business may have already crossed your radar recently. When you think about increasing productivity and profits in the coming year, consider the resources you have access to but haven’t taken advantage of yet. Are there products and services that you’ve been telling yourself you will investigate further when you have time? A terrific opportunity for building your business may be waiting for your attention.

If you have a good working relationship with someone who has been suggesting that you consider a new product or service, it’s time to follow up. Your prospects for the coming year go up exponentially when you build on previous successes and relationships of trust.

"If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astonish ourselves."
Thomas Edison

People—whether they are the hidden talents of those already in your ranks or the ones you have yet to hire—are at the top of the list of resources you can’t afford to miss out on. When you make the most of the resources you’ve got, you make this a stand out year for your organization.

Identify the best opportunities for your business with the help of a trusted Vantage Associate who can bring expertise to bear on your company’s specific needs.

Ten Steps for Creating Spectacular Results with Your Employees

noreply@blogger.com (The Vantage Group, Inc.) — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 01:21:00 +0000

1.) Communicate to everyone that accountability and commitment are important!

2.) Align every job description to your company’s strategy and goals for the coming year. Ask everyone to commit to a shared vision of results.

3.) Make accountabilities clear for everyone by using the benchmark for their job to start a discussion about how their individual contributions matter.

4.) When you onboard new employees, have job-related professional development planning already in place to help them reach their full potential.

5.) Build accountability into your company culture using “what & by when” goal and task planning. Project management can be very sophisticated, but the bottom line is “who, what, and by when?”

6.) Offer ways for employees to communicate obstacles and request the help or resources they need to achieve their goals. When you listen to them, recognize that what you’re listening to is someone who is committed to producing results.

7.) Involve employees in an ongoing dialogue about how they can identify process improvements or otherwise increase the quality of their work and the team’s productivity.

8.) Use small “course corrections” on a monthly or as-needed basis to guide employees toward behaviors and practices that are effective for meeting goals. Don’t wait for the annual performance review. You wouldn’t wait until arrival at a destination to notice a wrong turn along the way, would you?

9.) “Catch” people doing something right: Give frequent, honest and positive feedback. As a general rule of thumb, a ratio of five positive interactions to one critical interaction will help managers build an open communication channel with direct reports.

10.) Identify ways to recognize and acknowledge employees company-wide when their actions exemplify an “above and beyond” commitment to company objectives. Success breeds success!

If you’re serious about achieving spectacular results next year, get everyone involved. Call your Vantage for help benchmarking jobs, onboarding new employees and creating development plans for everyone on the team.

Serial Entrepreneurs Driven by Need for Practical Return on Effort

noreply@blogger.com (The Vantage Group, Inc.) — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 19:48:00 +0000

Featured in the Harvard Business Review's - The Daily Stat

62% of serial entrepreneurs see it as a top priority to get a practical return on time or money spent, a value that is viewed as primary by only 38% of U.S. adults, according to a study by TTI Performance Systems. Only 10% of repeat entrepreneurs rank the desire for personal power number 1, about the same proportion as the rest of the population, says the firm, a developer of assessment tools for job matching and other functions.

Generational Differences in the Workforce

noreply@blogger.com (The Vantage Group, Inc.) — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 19:45:00 +0000

“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished by how much he'd learned in seven years.” American humorist Mark Twain, who turned 21 in 1856.

Remember when you thought your parents were behind the times? Would your kids say this about you? There’s an old saying, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Technology changes at warp speed, but human nature is fairly consistent. Lately there’s been so much written about Boomers, Gen Xers and Millennials that it’s hard to know what’s really true and what just seems true because we hear it so often in the media.

People are working longer, so you may have coworkers in your office who range in age from aged 18 to 70 or more. But sizing up a co-worker according to their generation is a waste of time. It won’t tell you what they’re really like, and it won’t help you understand how to work well together. One thing is for sure: if you want your team to work together like the rock stars they can be, you’re going to need to give them some information they can really use to communicate better.

There is a reliable way to understand someone very quickly: If you want to work well together, take a look at their assessment report and let them have a look at yours. Be sure it’s an assessment that shows the values they hold dear, because these are the inner motivations that move them into action. It should include their behaviors and the personal skill competencies they bring to the job, too. Are they talkative, friendly and optimistic? Detail-oriented and conscientious? Can you count on them to put their head down and get the job done like clockwork? Is this someone who will move full speed ahead to make decisions? With one look at a comprehensive assessment, you’ll see who is high in personal accountability, who embraces learning new skills, and who is a natural team-builder.

Knowing a co-worker’s assessment profile tells you how they are going to operate on the job, and that’s what you really need to know. It will tell you about their behavior, what motivates them and the personal skills they excel at on the job. With this information, you’ll understand them based on their own specific characteristics, not just some generalization. You can find common ground, understand each other’s preferred communication style and adjust the way you approach each other. And if you’re a manager, a job-related assessment will tell you exactly how closely they fit what you need from them on the job. It will even tell you specifically how you can help them boost their performance by using professional development only in the areas where they really need it. Like Mark Twain, you may be astonished by how much more they have to offer than you ever guessed.

How do you leverage all of the talent and potential within your organization to build market competitiveness? It starts by identifying each individual’s current strengths and helping them to develop more.

Create a Climate of Truth

noreply@blogger.com (The Vantage Group, Inc.) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 17:26:00 +0000

The hardest thing about strategic planning seems to be finding the direction that a company should take. In Good to Great Collins suggests creating a climate of truth throughout the organization so that voices can be heard and facts can be confronted. If you’ve gathered the right people and allow them to be heard, the right decisions for the organization will become self-evident. Collins says that creating a climate of truth can be achieved through these practices:

1)   Lead with questions, not answers. It seems that the greatest leaders didn’t walk in trying to solve problems. Rather they gathered bright minds together and posed questions that would lead the organization to a sound decision.

2)   Engage in dialogue and debate, not coercion. Along a similar line as the statement above, encourage discourse among members of the organization in order to bring about a positive change rather than making top down decisions and expecting people to “buy-in.”

3)   Conduct autopsies, without blame. This is the cornerstone of “confronting the brutal facts.” In order to find out what works and what doesn’t work, a company must scrutinize and examine every move it makes. If it works, seek to understand why it worked and what can be learned from this. If it doesn’t work, don’t place blame, rather seek to understand and learn from these mistakes. This process of conducting autopsies will go a long way towards creating a winning strategic plan.

Creating a climate of truth can be easier said than done. You can allow people the freedom to voice their opinions, but will they? If people voice their opinions, how do you prevent conflicting opinions from becoming outright arguments? Our assessments can help in this process and provide answers to these questions.

Using Assessments to Create a Climate of Truth
Using (and understanding the theories behind) an assessment like DISC and Meyers-Briggs can aid in creating a climate of truth and provide a more cohesive environment where expression and opinion are welcomed. In assessing a team with behavior based assessments, team members will start to understand themselves and the other members of their team in a way they never have before. In terms of the behaviors, each team member will see their own communication style and the strengths and weakness that their style has in communicating with the styles of other team members. In terms of motivators, members will see what drives their passion as well as the passion of their fellow team members and how that may affect the way in which they relate to one another. The understanding and awareness of these factors alone will improve the team dynamic by leaps and bounds, yielding a true climate of truth.

Building An Atmosphere of Trust

noreply@blogger.com (The Vantage Group, Inc.) — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 17:57:00 +0000

Like many of the best things in life, trust really is free. Doing without it, however, will cost you dearly, especially in business. What’s at stake is productivity, innovation, and ultimately, profits.
High functioning teams share goals that drive day-to-day activities. Their mutual self-interest greases the wheels of collaboration, but trust is the solid ground they ride on. Capitalizing on their energy and motivation so your team is productive requires that they collaborate freely, and for that, people need to trust each other.

Trust is based on a history of honest relationships. Teams are subtly strengthened or gradually divided by the way simple, everyday differences are communicated. Unified teams have integrity, demonstrating honesty through actions. Having integrity means that what an individual says and what they actually do are consistent with each other. Can your team count on one another to do what they say they will do?

Teams that operate in the absence of trust are guarded, and by necessity more cautious about everything they say and do. Communication becomes a way to defend and protect oneself, avoiding risk rather than reaching for results. The consequence for your business is more of the status quo, instead of the collaborative risk-taking that exemplifies off-the-charts growth.

Harnessing their inspiration and creativity depends on employees being able to trust each other and their managers. Groups innovate when they are comfortable sharing ideas, exploring “What if…?” and can rely on each other to keep the process moving. They need to feel safe discussing “what’s not working” in the context of exploring ways to make it better. If ideas are often met with cynicism and viewed as a waste of time (“Don’t bother, it’ll never be considered”), you may be missing out on great contributions. Are individuals viewed with respect for taking the initiative to pitch ideas, regardless of the outcome?

The answers to these questions are a good indicator of whether your company is already recognized as a creative industry leader or one that follows trends set by more innovative competitors. When trust levels are high, so is the potential that the talented people you’ve hired will coalesce to become a powerful team.

You can discover and measure the level of trust in your team with our Team Performance Survey. This tool and many more are designed to find out what is needed to improve, insight to understand the issues at an interpersonal level, and on-demand resources to take action. And, importantly, the ability to measure progress.

Employment Myths Busted

noreply@blogger.com (The Vantage Group, Inc.) — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 23:11:00 +0000

In case you haven’t noticed, a lot of what we used to know even two years ago isn’t necessarily true in today’s changed business climate. How many outdated ideas do you have about the employment world? Read each question in bold to decide if you think it’s true or false before reading the answer below.

1. Employees always leave managers, not jobs. Wrong. Employees leave jobs even when they like and respect their manager because the fit between their talents, interests and skills isn’t good enough to give them quality of life on the job. In fact, struggling in a job where you spend Sunday night dreading going to work on Monday morning is a dead giveaway of a poor job fit. All jobs have a unique profile of distinct skills, attitudes and behaviors that are required for best performance, just as people have their own unique profile, too. When a person is matched to a job that requires the combination of behaviors, skills and attitudes that come naturally to them, achieving superior performance isn’t a struggle, it’s a challenge they can win.

2. Our superior performing employees may secretly be waiting for the economy to open up more jobs, so they can find another job with more money and opportunity than we can offer them right now. In the present economy with budgets so tight that raises and incentives have been cut almost across the board, employee surveys show that this is absolutely true. But it doesn’t mean you can’t deepen your superior performers’ bond to your company. Savvy employers are investing in professional development that helps them develop talent from within. By doing this, they help current employees improve their performance now, while preparing them for upcoming leadership roles. People understand that budgets are tight right now, but when they see their company’s willingness to develop their skills, they recognize it as a vote of confidence in their potential and their value to the organization. Nothing says “We’ll give you a raise when we can” like investing in an employee’s career development now.

3. If my company asks me to take an assessment, it must mean they think I’m not good enough to do my job and they want an excuse to fire me. If you said that nothing could be further from the truth, you’re right. Just as employees are slow to leave a good job right now, employers are realizing that it’s much more cost effective to mine the talent they already have rather than to start from scratch with someone new. Using assessment reports is a strategy that smart companies are using to build bench strength so they are ready when business picks up. If your employer has asked you to take an assessment, congratulations! You’ve been identified as an employee with high potential to become a superior performer or next-generation manager.

4. Behavioral and values assessments are NOT like personality tests. If you agree with this statement, you’re right. Behavior and values assessments are statistically validated ways to see what a person’s natural style is for communicating on the job, how they like to manage their workflow, how they respond to a changing work environment, and what aspects of the job can make it deeply satisfying beyond the paycheck. Using assessment reports to identify a person’s strengths is a great way to make sure the company is deploying an employee in the right job to play to their strengths and develop more.

5. Managing other people to achieve peak performance is only possible if you’re a really accomplished, experienced manager with a long track record of success, or a manager with too much time on your hands. If you recognized this thought as so outdated that it’s last millennium, you’re right. In the age of research validated job benchmarks and assessments, it’s possible to pinpoint exactly what a person’s workplace strengths and weaknesses are. Smart companies are using the latest technology, available online, to not only generate an assessment they can review with the employee, but to ‘prescribe’ professional development modules that the employee can use anywhere they have access to the internet. Managers can review performance goals and contribute suggestions online, too, without having to micromanage either performance or professional development.

For more information on how assessments can help strengthen your organization, contact Vantage today.

Only 27% of large organizations are Transferring Knowledge from retiring baby boomers to younger employees.

-Novations Inc.

Building Trust in Your Team

noreply@blogger.com (The Vantage Group, Inc.) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:16:00 +0000

Like many of the best things in life, trust really is free. Doing without it, however, will cost you dearly, especially in business. What’s at stake is productivity, innovation, and ultimately, profits.

High functioning teams share goals that drive day-to-day activities. Their mutual self-interest greases the wheels of collaboration, but trust is the solid ground they ride on. Capitalizing on their energy and motivation so your team is productive requires that they collaborate freely, and for that, people need to trust each other.

Trust is based on a history of honest relationships. Do people at your company talk directly to a person when they have an issue with them or just complain about that person to someone else? Teams are subtly strengthened or gradually divided by the way simple, everyday differences are communicated.

Unified teams have integrity, demonstrating honesty through actions. Having integrity means that what an individual says and what they actually do are consistent with each other. Can your team count on one another to do what they say they will do?

Teams that operate in the absence of trust are guarded, and by necessity more cautious about everything they say and do. Communication becomes a way to defend and protect oneself, avoiding risk rather than reaching for results. The consequence for your business is more of the status quo, instead of the collaborative risk-taking that exemplifies off-the-charts growth.

Harnessing their inspiration and creativity depends on employees being able to trust each other and their managers. Groups innovate when they are comfortable sharing ideas, exploring “What if…?” and can rely on each other to keep the process moving. They need to feel safe discussing “what’s not working” in the context of exploring ways to make it better. If ideas are often met with cynicism and viewed as a waste of time (“Don’t bother, it’ll never be considered”), you may be missing out on great contributions. Are individuals viewed with respect for taking the initiative to pitch ideas, regardless of the outcome?

The answers to these questions are a good indicator of whether your company is already recognized as a creative industry leader or one that follows trends set by more innovative competitors. When trust levels are high, so is the potential that the talented people you’ve hired will coalesce to become a powerful team.

Crucial team skills such as trust and innovation are enhanced with Vantage's Team Performance Tools, and the team’s true potential comes into focus when you use team behavior and motivator reports. For more information, contact a Vantage and request our free Team Performance Survey.

Improve Retention with Better On-Boarding

noreply@blogger.com (The Vantage Group, Inc.) — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 02:07:00 +0000

Forward-thinking companies are taking on-boarding of new employees seriously, because it’s one of the best ideas to be refined in recent years. A superior on-boarding process initiates success in two areas: retention and performance. However, reaping the rewards of a comprehensive on-boarding program requires that you absolutely must make sure you use a selection system that only allows you to hire people who truly fit the job and the corporate culture. Imagine the consequences if you mistakenly hired an inferior performer and then implemented a process that will make sure they don’t quit!

A proper selection process starts with identifying subject matter experts (SMEs) who really understand the job in question. The SME’s first task is to identify the key accountabilities for the job. This process requires a facilitator to assure that key accountabilities are real and void of any individual biases. If the job could talk, it would identify the key accountabilities objectively and without bias.

Key accountabilities do a better job of demonstrating the reason the job exists than old-style job descriptions do, and they are a much more clear way to identify expectations to an employee, too. Once a manager sees how effectively they communicate the job to a new employee, they will see how obsolete job descriptions have become. In fact, since key accountabilities make it easy to recognize the skills, behavior, knowledge and motivators required to accomplish the job results, they make it easier to hire and train for superior performance, too.

This process empowers a company to define the ideal candidate for the job, including:
Education
Certifications
Experience
Ideal behavior, skills and intrinsic motivators

With a process in place to promote longevity within your company, you can once again address an on-boarding system. The best practice is to have the new employee complete all payroll, insurance, and company policy information prior to the actual start date. The new employee’s work station must be ready on Day 1, with equipment such as their desk, chair, computer and phone in place. As much as possible, the work station should be prepared with access to the initial set up information they will need for tools such as voice mail, computer log in, and phone and email distribution lists. This assures that you get your new employee off to a positive and fast start, and the first day can be spent focused on establishing a foundation for performance.

The key components of the on-boarding process for their first day will be:

Introduction to management and colleagues
Manager and new employee discussion:
Key job accountabilities
Skills and behavior required by the job
Corporate culture
New employee’s current skills and any skills that must be developed to do the job
How best to communicate and manage the new employee
Creating and prioritizing a personalized development plan
A plan to hold the new employee accountable for building necessary skills
Assign a mentor to the new employee to assist the on-boarding process
Schedule a meeting between the new employee and senior management

This on-boarding process was developed and refined over a period of years. It not only ensures a company’s ability to select and keep superior performers, it also contributes to attracting top talent by helping to brand the company as the best place to work in its city or industry. Over a 24-month period, tracking the use of this system demonstrated impressive results: it filled 96% of open positions and retained 98% of those hired and on-boarded with this process.

Are You Running Around in Circles?

noreply@blogger.com (The Vantage Group, Inc.) — Wed, 19 May 2010 01:02:00 +0000

Are you tired of moving at high speed, trying to get more and more done? Thankfully, economic indicators show us headed toward blue skies again.

Have you been running around the same bases week after week, assuring that the essentials are under control? The urge to concentrate exclusively on crucial, immediate concerns can be overwhelming, but it’s a mistake that can hinder growth. No matter how busy you are, strategy matters.

The economic slowdown compelled organizations to reverse the gradual creep of costly, unnecessary complexity, and that’s good. But it has also meant weathering the storm with a smaller staff, and that’s been a challenge. To drive results going forward, leaders must be equipped to keep every employee on track. With all the re-sizing, restructuring and belt tightening, it’s very possible that many, if not all, of the roles at your company have changed. Make sure that the opportunities on the horizon don’t dissipate into chaos because of cloudy communication and altered roles.

This is an opportunity for clarification, one that can improve your team’s performance and lend momentum to achieving goals. There are day-to-day tasks and projects required to meet those goals. Use a patented process to benchmark jobs at your company and establish the key accountabilities for each position. It’s the best way to communicate revised performance expectations to everyone on the team and ensure that nothing critical gets lost in the shuffle.

The simplified version of strategic planning is knowing what results you need to accomplish and having an action plan to produce them. Benchmarking jobs, identifying key accountabilities and defining priorities is a good foundation for your leadership plan. Getting through the recession requires a unique recovery plan for each business. There are already signs that some companies are doing a better job of rebounding than others.

If you need to be strategic without spending a lot of time, contact Vantage for help getting and keeping everyone moving in the right direction.

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

noreply@blogger.com (The Vantage Group, Inc.) — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:11:00 +0000

How have the economy and cost cutting measures affected your employer brand?

Keeping a firm grip on every budget dollar continues to be crucial in the challenging business landscape of 2010. Until recent glimmers of improvement in the economy become a reliable upward trend, employers must produce more with fewer staff. Being part of a strong recovery will require three crucial accomplishments: retention of superior performers who can help your business achieve goals this year, strategies for bringing out the best in everyone on the team, and eventually, a careful selection of new talent as you ramp back up.

When your business is ready to grow, will your employee value proposition motivate star performers to join your staff and convince the ones you have now to stay on board? High turnover is equated to low stock value, with a proven connection (up or down) of 30%, so losing key staff now is a costly mistake. It’s vital to create an employment experience that inspires talented employees to stay on board long after the downturn has passed, and you can manage this without breaking the bank.

If your staff is like many others, widespread job losses and other economic fallout has deeply affected their personal and professional lives in ways they can’t control. Now more than ever, leaders must clearly communicate the plan for moving the company from a survival to a growth mode in the post-recession economy. Staff need to understand in very specific terms how their own individual actions in the coming months can lend momentum to the company’s financial turnaround.

Guide employees to access new levels of performance in a supportive, energizing environment. It starts by maximizing productivity and minimizing potential loss of talent with the use of behavioral and values assessments. Validated assessment tools insure that you have each staff member working in the position where they can make their best contribution to the bottom line.

Next, offer opportunities for professional development that move them through specific steps to the next level of effectiveness. In addition to boosting earnings, it gives employees a much-needed shot of optimism. Staff recognize that professional development offerings are a concrete ‘vote of confidence’ from the employer. With budgets for raises and bonuses curtailed, they are acutely aware that this is evidence of an employer’s will to provide professional advancement despite a down economy.

Current employees are the backbone of your employer brand. Inspire them to spread good word of mouth about the company by examining your employer brand appeal from their perspective. Access to superior performers outside your company will also require a strategy that appeals across generations, leveraging all the communication channels available.

Having a great employer brand needs to be an ongoing HR focus. It calls for a mind set of awareness about how your business is perceived from inside and outside, and a commitment to improve and maintain a favorable brand. To learn more about the factors that create and influence your employer brand download our white paper, "A Tale of Two Companies."

Have you already made mistakes by cutting costs like staff development? If so, contact us for an evaluation. See how you can position your organization as THE employer of choice in your area.

Re-engaging the Workforce

noreply@blogger.com (The Vantage Group, Inc.) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:57:00 +0000

For many organizations it is critical that top management focus on re-engaging their employees. The past five or six years of negative attitudes have taken their toll on our employees.

The workforce has been bombarded by the media with many value-based issues, such as healthcare, taxes, the war in Iraq, unemployment, the recession, etc., etc. These issues have created an environment that has been carried to work by many employees. In some cases, even management has contributed to these issues.

So, no matter what the size of your company is, you need a highly motivated workforce to compete in today’s economy. Here are ten useful ideas:

Organizational chart – Does your current chart actually reflect today’s lines of authority? If not, revise it so your employees know it, understand it and can follow it.
Look at all your key jobs to see if they need to be re-engineered. Many jobs have changed to the point that they require the employee to be all things to all people.
Replace job descriptions with key accountabilities, which do a much better job of helping people understand what they really need to do.
Analyze each key job and determine if continuous learning is required for superior performance. If so, do you have a plan and budget to help them keep current?
Engage them in decision making. Think about how our children and grandchildren have helped the older generations with their email, cell phones and computers. They want to be involved; and to be engaged, you must let them be a part of decision making.
On a regular basis, give them credit for their contribution.
Walk your talk and live up to your promises.
Match talent to the task or job.
Create a positive environment by making sure that everyone’s intrinsic motivators are satisfied on the job.
Support their ideas about going green and encourage their involvement in community activities.

For more information on how to re-engage your workforce, contact Vantage to complete a complimentary Team Performance Survey.

What does it take to stay on the cutting edge?

noreply@blogger.com (The Vantage Group, Inc.) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 21:02:00 +0000

Continuous Learning Required
Over the last several years, we have observed changes in jobs. One of the more obvious changes has been moving from tangible work to intangible activities. Building a brick wall is much different from checking your email. The brick wall can be viewed and valued by many, while checking your email is an intangible that is difficult to see and value.

Another change has been the need for Continuous Learning. Today over 50 percent of all jobs require the employee to have mastered the art of Continuous Learning. It is critical not only in the areas of science and technology, but also in a myriad of many other careers to keep up with the latest advancements and stay competitive in product offerings and services.

The biggest challenge with Continuous Learning is that not all people can master it. Continuous Learning is just as much an attitude as it is a skill. In fact, people who have a negative attitude toward Continuous Learning will never master it. They will have other passions that will override the need to stay current.

I challenge you to look at all your company’s jobs to see how critical Continuous Learning is to superior performance. If it is required, what is management doing to support this requirement, such as providing time for social networking and web searches, attending seminars, and purchasing books and magazines? We have a solution that works great for busy schedules through our ThinkBox online tools.

What is your organization doing to identify, develop and maximize personal skills?

noreply@blogger.com (The Vantage Group, Inc.) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:03:00 +0000

Organizations across the globe are trying to determine how to deliver more with fewer employees and resources to customers who demand more for less. The answer is personal skills. This is what sets the great companies apart: identifying, developing and maximizing every employee’s unique personal skills. But how?

Let the job talk. Start with identifying the key accountabilities of all key positions within the organization, combine these with a job assessment, and you will have a complete job benchmark for each position. Then talk to the employees within the positions about the key accountabilities. If possible, assess the individuals and compare them to the benchmark. Then review the information for gaps or misplaced employees. Develop those with gaps and realign those who are misplaced. This shows employees that the organization is concerned about making sure stress levels are as low as possible and that it is looking to maximize resources, not cut headcount.

Once your organization achieves employee-job fit, you will see that those personal skills that have been identified are being developed and maximized. This will lead to a more efficient, productive and engaged workforce.

All I Want for Christmas is to Ditch Performance Reviews

noreply@blogger.com (The Vantage Group, Inc.) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:02:00 +0000

It's that time of year. Business owners, managers and their teams are gearing up for a familiar holiday tradition: end-of-year performance appraisals. While this is the most hated activity in companies, management still slogs through this process with little enthusiasm, accuracy or dedication. With performance appraisals being greeted with such animosity, we need to ask, "Is the performance appraisal as we know it really worth it?"

There are a few fundamental flaws with annual performance reviews. For one, no matter how good a manager is at documenting things, it's often too late to do anything about it. Having reviews just once a year hardly helps employees improve their performance.

Human Resource data shows that people change very little–if at all. The same issues appear in their performance reviews every year. This may indicate that either people are not taking the appraisals seriously, or they're not making the improvements required by management. We have to ask, "Is the system broken?"

The trend today, encouraged by the Generation X and Y workers, proposes organizations ditch the annual reviews and replace them with a different kind of system in which employees are more likely to be productive.

For example, meetings could occur on a monthly basis, giving a manager and an employee the opportunity to sit down and talk about the employee's performance the previous month. In terms of content, the meeting should generally focus on their accomplishments — what they've done, what they've done well, what improvements they've made. It also should focus on what they might be able to do better. The manager's job is to come up with a couple of things that would help the employee perform better. Managers will need to get away from the judgment aspect of performance appraisals and move more toward the coaching aspect. We have a client whose manager has a monthly "one-on-one" session with her team members to discuss issues important to their job.

Similarly, a key outcome of the meeting should be that the employee knows exactly what he or she needs to do to improve performance.

In any session with a manager and an employee, the latter should always come out of the meeting feeling energized and have tangible information that can help enhance his or her job performance. A manager might meet with a salesperson and say, "You need to be more aggressive." Well, what does that mean?. Managers will need to spell it out in terms of precisely what they want an employee to do. For example, they may need to say, "Make more calls every day." That might not be the critical behavior in terms of sales, but assuming it was, that is much more helpful than saying "be more aggressive."

This type of feedback can lead to improved on-the-job performance, which in turn yields bottom-line impact. The most rewarding job an employee can have is where they know at the end of every day how well they've done. Behavior change without feedback is almost impossible, so the more formal and the more frequent the feedback, the more improvement will be realized.

Job Based Coaching

noreply@blogger.com (The Vantage Group, Inc.) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:02:00 +0000

Job-based coaching starts with identifying the key accountabilities of the job with input from the manager to confirm that these key accountabilities truly identify why the job exists. Once they are written and prioritized, you are ready to identify the development issues that lead to job-based coaching.

So let’s look at a typical key accountability for a sales job: To effectively prospect, qualify, demonstrate and close the sale according to company guidelines to ensure sales goals are met while maintaining the company’s integrity and brand image.

Now let’s look at this key accountability and ask:

What is the behavior that needs to be exhibited to successfully deliver on this key accountability?
What knowledge is required for prospecting and qualifying potential customers?
What knowledge is required about customers that will lead to successful demonstrations?
What are the competencies required to be a superior performer as it relates to just this key accountability?
What is the intrinsic reward that the person will receive when they accomplish this key accountability?
What positive attitude will assist in meeting this key accountability?
What knowledge must be mastered with regard to integrity and brand image?
What knowledge and activities are needed to prospect effectively?

You may think these are tough questions; however, they are critical to job-based coaching. Most coaches are not trained to be focused on the job’s key accountabilities. For example, the answer to question No. 4 should lead to identifying skills such as persuasion, presenting, personal accountability, time management, self management, goal orientation, customer service and interpersonal skills.

Some may argue that personal development coaching will lead to improved job performance. That may be true in some cases. However, starting with job-based coaching will return a better ROI. Also job-based coaching will hold people accountable to build the skills necessary for superior performance.

It's Not Just Gen Y, 65 and Older Workers is the Next Trend

noreply@blogger.com (The Vantage Group, Inc.) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:43:00 +0000

There’s another trend besides Gen Y out there. Several industry reports show that the 65 and older group is the fastest growing category of job changers. (Newest buzzword: “re-careering.”) Interesting finding according to Trend Letter: they care less about pay and prestige. Growing fields in nursing, education, and social services already have an above average percentage of these folks.

Later-life career change appears to be an important part of the retirement process. Many older workers who change jobs, and especially those who change careers, downshift into part-time work that involves less stress and responsibility and more flexible work schedules than their previous jobs. More older job changers say they enjoy their new jobs than say they enjoyed their former positions, despite the fact that the new jobs do not pay as well and are less likely to offer benefits such as health insurance. Many older workers appear to place a high premium on escaping from the 9-to-5 grind that their flexible new positions often provide, even if it means a pay cut.

Additionally, many late-life career changers appear to be pushed into new lines of work involuntarily following job layoffs or business closings. Many older displaced workers who become reemployed suffer substantial pay losses and benefit cuts on their new jobs.

What does this mean for employers? This demographic offers a great deal of experience and productivity to the economy along with a willingness to learn and adapt to career changes. Employers need to be aware, however, that the 65 and older workforce wants flexibility for schedules and a work environment that encourages self management. For older adults with limited skills or little workforce experience, expanding public workforce development initiatives could improve their employment options. More training for older adults with limited education could give them the skills and confidence they need to move into new careers, enabling them to extend their working years, increase their retirement income security, and improve the quality of their lives.

Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y—Where to Start and What to Do

noreply@blogger.com (The Vantage Group, Inc.) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:58:00 +0000

Today’s world is filled with labels from political groups, religious preferences and generations to low performers, high potentials and star performers. What does this mean? More importantly, when did we start becoming labeled groups instead of human beings?

Every week articles are published about what to do with certain groups of people. How do we change them; how do we minimize their damage? I challenge each of you to start asking this:

How can I understand people who don’t think the way I think, act the way I act or value the way I value?
What makes me right and them wrong?
What can the different groups bring together to make a better organization?

People are complex and cannot be described by one group or label. As humans, we bring more to our careers than our political or religious views, generational stereotypes and current level of performance category.

So where does a business begin when trying to determine job fit, development plans and succession planning? How can a company be strategic in times that don’t allow for thinking and planning? It starts with understanding a company’s most valuable asset, their people. In order to truly value your team, you need to understand people beyond their typical labels.

How do they think?
What drives them?
How do they prefer to get things done?

What could removing labels and re-engaging your workforce do to your bottom line and your most valuable asset—people?

Myth: Assessment tools are not necessary or cost-effective for all positions.

Perhaps many of you have heard the argument that assessment tools are only useful for top-level positions. Or that it is cost prohibitive to assess the entire organization. So are assessments important in every level of your organization? We’re often asked this question, and the answer is YES.

Any building is only as robust as its foundation. And so any organization is only as strong as its foundational workforce. Regardless of the position, all organizations benefit from understanding every role. A person’s assessment identifies strengths and weaknesses in the individual and the team. We often learn of organizations that identify undiscovered talent hidden within their organization as a result of utilizing assessments. This initial discovery leads to tapping the potential of future leaders and getting them started on the right development path.

When employees are in positions that are not a fit with their skills, the entire organization suffers. The benchmarking process uncovers the key performance indicators that drive results in the job critical to success. By understanding what the job needs and rewards, you should understand the best way to manage people, develop training and implement strategies.

Best of all, benchmarking is a simple, cost-effective way to set the foundation for the leaders of any organization to increase morale, improve retention and enhance overall employee satisfaction.

Hell hath no fury like an employee...ignored.

noreply@blogger.com (The Vantage Group, Inc.) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 18:54:00 +0000

A book detailing the follies of the Bush Administration from an insider’s perspective came out this week. Matt Latimer, former speechwriter for George Dubya, has written Speech-less, forcing the ex Administration to shudder and call the author a traitor. What prompted yet another "tell all" from an employee in the Bush administration? Did Latimer and Dubya have an argument? Did Dubya not like the speeches Latimer wrote?

On the contrary, Bush never had any interaction with Latimer at all. He was basically ignored.

A recent survey published by Talent Management indicates that only one-quarter of workers are less likely to be looking for another job in today’s tightening labor market. Why the rush out of their cubicles? According to survey findings, companies seeking to retain their employees when the recovery begins should start by addressing three key areas of dissatisfaction: compensation, career growth paths and retention efforts.

The survey, conducted by Harris Interactive, showed that two-thirds (66 percent) of American workers are not currently satisfied with their compensation. Additionally, 78 percent of American workers are not satisfied with their company’s overall retention efforts and 76 percent are not satisfied about future career growth opportunities at their company.

Other key findings of the survey included:

Relationships are strained: Almost half (48 percent) of workers are not satisfied with the relationship they have with their boss and the majority (59 percent) of workers are not satisfied with the level of support they receive from their colleagues.
Company vision and leadership is lacking: The majority of workers (77 percent) are not satisfied with the strategy and vision of the company and its leadership.
Retirement contributions: 68 percent of workers are not satisfied with their company’s contribution to their retirement plans.

As we move closer to an economic recovery, managers should remember that career development begins with communication. What workers are telling us is that even during a recession, just having a job does not equate to job satisfaction. Employers need to be conscious of the concerns their staff is managing through on a daily basis and proactively come up with the appropriate solutions to improve retention and reduce the current and future high cost of turnover. Ignoring employees and their concerns will only incur their future wrath...and cost your organization.

Here are some tips to help to reduce feelings of dissatisfaction among your employees.

Make retention efforts more visible: Behind the scenes, managers may be doing what they can to retain their employees, but staff won’t feel valued if these efforts aren’t visible to them. Retention efforts begin through mutual dialogue and building trust. Managers should engage their employees in the realities of the business challenges to foster employees’ understanding of the market and competition.
Reward and provide reason: If increasing compensation due to the current economic climate is not possible, look to reward employees through an awards program or team contest. Improving morale just by recognizing good work can help ease compensation complaints. As the survey found, dollars and cents are not the only way to improve satisfaction, so be sure you are putting in the extra effort where extra investment is not available. In addition, employees benefit greatly by understanding the reasons behind lower compensation and how these short-term adjustments will help them and the company in the long run.
Communicate a growth path for employees: Managers should map out a growth plan for employees and communicate it to their teams. Employees will then understand that managers are invested in their future, and they’ll be more confident in investing their time and career with the organization.

Don't ignore your employees, and you can reap the benefits of retaining your top performers when the economy improves.

Health Care Managers and Poor Performers

noreply@blogger.com (The Vantage Group, Inc.) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:33:00 +0000

With all the challenges the health care industry faces these days, why do leaders and managers tolerate poor performers in the workplace? We have observed several incidences of hospital managers putting up with disruptive behavior, low productivity or lack of professionalism—sometimes at the cost of top performers who leave because they have had enough of the negative work environment. And sometimes, these managers have lost their jobs because they would not take the steps necessary to correct the employee issues.

We interviewed some leaders in health care to find out why it is so difficult to deal with poor performers. Here is just a few of the most common problems:

Believing that the manager can change the person's behavior.
The fear of loss of a specific skill.
Discounting the bad behavior, and not analyzing the broader implications such as retention of top performers.
A lack of control over the hiring process to replace the problem employee. Many managers find their internal HR processes take too long to fill positions.
Managers not properly trained to deal with confrontation of poor performance.

There is a broad belief that people can be fixed. Resources and dollars are spent on trying to change behaviors of people who were never a good fit for the job in the first place. The reality is health care managers need to recognize that there are specific predictors, critical success factors, behaviors and evidence-based business practices that contribute to high performance. Focusing on a better hiring process can go a long way to increasing productivity and saving money in health care, and alleviate many of the problems managers face with employees.

Select the right person

Now that we know WHAT the issues are when it comes to managers and poor performers, much of this can be corrected by looking at the behaviors needed to fit the job and decide WHO is best to do the job. Most traditional hiring processes stop with hard skills (for example, working knowledge of various medicines and their interactions, ability to read and analyze cardiac data)
and experience needed, but you must also take the time to determine what PERSONAL SKILLS (sometimes referred to as soft skills) an employee needs to be able to do the job. Some examples of the dozens of possible personal skills are:

Ability to manage stress
Ability to be accountable for others
Leading others
Planning and organization
Results-orientation
Ability to pay attention to detail
Problem solving ability
Teamwork
Self-starting

Most people do not fail in their jobs because they lack hard skills; they fail because they don’t have the personal skills necessary to do that specific job in that specific environment. To learn a better hiring process go to http://vantagegroupinc.com/hirefasttrack.html

Soft Skills - Can They be Taught in the Classroom?

noreply@blogger.com (The Vantage Group, Inc.) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:00:00 +0000

More and more companies are measuring soft skills in their work force and evaluating their impact on performance. Only recently do we have evidence that soft skills may be age- and occupation-related. This is based on four different studies. The first two studies were conducted in the fall of 2008 (Target Training International). Nine hundred college freshmen from two Midwest universities were asked to respond to an assessment that measures 23 specific soft skills. The results from both groups (business and engineering majors) indicated that, as a group, they have almost no mastery in these 23 soft skills. In fact, their lowest scores were in decision making.

In the spring of 2009, a small group of seniors were given the same survey. The results showed only a slight improvement.

Curriculum or Practice?

Looking at the numbers, it is becoming more and more apparent that certain soft skills cannot be taught in the classroom. To mention a few:

Interpersonal Skills
Personal Effectiveness
Futuristic Thinking
Self-Management
Diplomacy
Goal Orientation
Flexibility

To support this hypothesis, a group of employed adults (1632) were given the same assessments. Specifically, the research was looking for correlations among people who are passionate about knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Many Ph.D.s fall into this category. The evidence was very clear on all 23 soft skills: There were no correlations strong enough to predict a person will actually develop soft skills based on curriculum knowledge. The assessment used did not measure their knowledge of the skills; it measured their mastery of the skills and the use of these skills in their work. In other words, Do they walk their talk?

Only 27% of large organizations are Transferring Knowledge from retiring baby boomers to younger employees.

-Novations Inc.

The bookstores are full of self-help books that would lead you to think that buying a book can lead to developing and mastering certain soft skills. Merely reading a book on how to persuade others will not make you a successful sales person.

So what are we to do? The knowledge needs to be incorporated into activities, experiences and games. Practicing what you preach is the most promising method of developing soft skills. Our ThinkBox tools keep these activities and experiences at the forefront of an employee's personal development through easy to access online tools and self-coaching guides.