HR Article :- Promote From Within to Create Employees Loyalty

November 15, 2008 at 2:30 pm (HR Articles, TD and OB)
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A company can generate increased employee loyalty by always looking first to promoting from within, rather than hiring from the outside. The advantages are clear: when employees realize that they are valued, and that they have long-term potential for advancement within their company, their loyalty and commitment will be strengthened.

In many small businesses, a few key employees keep the ball rolling. These individuals are usually highly dedicated, intelligent and experts at their jobs. But human nature is such that few people remain comfortable doing the same thing repeatedly. Dedicated employees often feel the need to expand their scope of responsibility. They want to learn new skills. And they want to feel that they are growing. One of the best ways to meet these needs is to give employees the opportunity to move upward in the company, achieving greater respect, increased salary and expanded responsibility.

Consider these tips before placing a want ad:

When a new position opens up, always evaluate in-house talent first before looking outside. Seldom will a current employee fully possess the experience and qualifications that could be found in a new hire. But by closely examining the abilities and desire of current employees, you may find someone who can be trained easily for the new position. This will save you time and money — and you’ll end up with an employee who already knows the ins and outs of the company. When you can promote in this way, you’ll create an exceptionally dedicated employee — and send a ripple of dedication through all other employees as well.

Establish pre-designated career paths. When employees know from their first days of interviewing with the company that they can achieve their career goals without changing jobs, you’ll have loyal workers.

When searching for people to promote, take suggestions from other employees. You may not be able to spot the hidden talent under your nose, but employees in the trenches know who has what it takes to move upward in the company.

Create relationships with trade groups, seminar companies, local schools and colleges, and other educational organizations to provide ongoing training for your employees. Offer to pay, or at least partially pay, for this training. Successful small businesses usually have employees who are able to multi-task.

If you contract work to outside vendors, see if these tasks can be assigned to current employees. This will help them expand their responsibilities, and could provide an avenue for in-house career advancement.

During routine employee performance evaluations, ask employees if they are interested in taking on additional responsibility. Doing this makes it easy for employees to discuss their goals.

Stick with your career-path commitments. If you waver, hiring from outside when a qualified employee was already on staff, you’ll undo all your efforts along this line. Exceptions are, of course, when a highly specialized or top executive position needs to be filled. Even so, explanations should be given to current employees so they understand and accept the decision to hire from outside.

Regards,

Pinal Mehta

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HR Survey – Why Employees leaves organization ?

October 17, 2008 at 9:28 am (HR Articles)
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Every company faces the problem of people leaving the company for better pay or profile.

Early this year, Mark, a senior software designer, got an offer from a prestigious international firm to work in its India operations developing specialized software. He was thrilled by the offer.

He had heard a lot about the CEO. The salary was great. The company had all the right systems in place employee-friendly human resources (HR) policies, a spanking new office, and the very best technology, even a canteen that served superb food.

Twice Mark was sent abroad for training. “My learning curve is the sharpest it’s ever been,” he said soon after he joined.

Last week, less than eight months after he joined, Mark walked out of the job.

Why did this talented employee leave?

Arun quit for the same reason that drives many good people away.

The answer lies in one of the largest studies undertaken by the Gallup Organization. The study surveyed over a million employees and 80,000 managers and was published in a book called “First Break All the Rules”. It came up with this surprising finding:

If you’re losing good people, look to their immediate boss…Immediate boss is the reason people stay and thrive in an organization. And he’s the reason why people leave. When people leave they take knowledge, experience and contacts with them, straight to the competition.

“People leave managers not companies,” write the authors Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman.

Mostly manager drives people away?

HR experts say that of all the abuses, employees find humiliation the most intolerable. The first time, an employee may not leave, but a thought has been planted. The second time that thought gets strengthened, the third time, he looks for another job.

When people cannot retort openly in anger, they do so by passive aggression. By digging their heels in and slowing down. By doing only what they are told to do and no more. By omitting to give the boss crucial information, Dev says: “If you work for a jerk, you basically want to get him into trouble. You don’t have your heart and soul in the job.”

Different managers can stress out employees in different ways – by being too controlling, too suspicious, too pushy, too critical, but they forget that workers are not fixed assets, they are free agents. When this goes on too long, an employee will quit – often over a trivial issue.

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Pinal Mehta

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Seven Ways of Employee ROI

October 14, 2008 at 3:48 pm (HR Articles, TD and OB)
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It’s no secret that the economy isn’t exactly booming right now. More people may be looking for work, but that doesn’t mean that they are the right people for your company. Instead of viewing employees as expendable, businesses should focus on getting the best return possible on the workforce they already have.

Employee retention is a very big issue and it always will be, regardless of the state of the economy. After all, the key to long-term growth and productivity is a workforce that’s familiar with your company and in sync with its goals. A workplace should excite and motivate employees, so they’ll want to stay around. And that means creating an environment that challenges people and helps them grow not just as employees, but as people.

Here are some ways organizations can foster the kind of growth-oriented workplace that will survive and thrive, even during a downturn:

* Forget Monetary Incentives: Focus On Relationships. Even if you can offer them, fat salaries and bonuses, more vacation time, and other perks will not increase employee loyalty. Instead, they tend to tie people to your company in the same manner that one trains a dog to stay in the yard—until, the people across the street offer a bigger, juicier bone. Creating a culture in which good relationships are valued gives employees a profound and rewarding reason to come to work every day. Only through relationships can people change and grow…and personal growth is a requirement for survival in our increasingly complex world.
* Help Employees Find their “Familiars.” What is a familiar? Simply put, it’s an emotional state we return to again and again. It is a feeling that holds tremendous power over our choices, relationships, and careers. Rooted in our families and our upbringing, the familiar is a feeling that we unconsciously reproduce, sometimes to our benefit, but often to our detriment. For instance, the eldest child of a large family might have grown up having to subrogate her needs to the needs of the younger children. Perhaps she was told she was selfish for asking for things for herself. It is no mystery that as an adult she is frustrated at work and has trouble communicating her needs to her boss. Her familiar—the feeling that she doesn’t really deserve to ask for anything—is reproduced in her work environment, where she is unable to assert herself.  You can help your employees tremendously by learning about familiars and encouraging them to identify—and subsequently diminish—their own.
* Seek Employee Input. A big part of creating a growth-oriented workplace is to constantly question your employees. “Did you notice what you did there?” “Why do you think you said that?” “I noticed that when your position was challenged in the meeting, you didn’t defend it—why do you think you backed down?” Creating a “question culture” will help employees identify their familiars. It will raise performance expectations throughout the company. It will train employees to think carefully about how they do their jobs and ensure that they have sound reasons for every decision they make.
* Encourage Conflict and Confrontation. Yes, you read that right. Conflict and confrontation are rarely pleasant, but they are the very definition of teamwork. They are also necessary to create growth relationships. The purpose of the workplace is not to make everyone happy—it is to grow people to their maximum potential. The enormous popularity of consensus decision making/negotiation, participatory management, and self-directed work teams is a sign of our unhealthy quest for comfort above all.
* Provide Honest, Caring Feedback. Keep the lines of communication open by continually telling your employees how they are doing. A relationship without honest feedback is a “mutual toleration society.” Unconditional acceptance—in both personal and professional relationships—is actually a form of abandonment, because it robs the other party of the most important catalysts for growth and change. (Hence the reason the feedback is labeled “caring”).
* Practice the Art of Self-Disclosure. Feedback cuts both ways; you want your employees to provide it to you as well. One way to do so is through self-disclosure. If you want to turn a stagnant employee relationship into a growth-oriented one—or start a new relationship out on the right foot—share your feelings first. This is a big risk because you don’t know how the other person will respond; you must be prepared to deal with any type of reaction you receive. But it’s a risk worth taking because you can learn a lot from your employees. Self-disclose often and you’ll model the kind of relationships you want to encourage in your company.
* Form An Accountability Group. Many people fear receiving or giving feedback because they don’t want to show weakness or cause discomfort to someone else. Put them in the right setting, however, and they may be willing to become involved. In an accountability group people give and receive feedback, create action plans based on that feedback, and hold group members accountable for implementing their plans. I have found accountability groups to be amazingly effective in helping clients overcome debilitating work and personal problems. Done correctly, they can lead individuals and organizations to transform themselves from the inside out.

I am certain that the actions detailed here will increase your company’s productivity. People who are personally and professionally fulfilled make better employees—it’s that simple. But the big reason to implement these strategies has more to do with tomorrow than today. Creating a work environment rich with opportunities for self-discovery is an investment in the future of your company. Begin now, and when the economy rebounds, your employees won’t leave you for greener pastures. Why would they? Your organization will be meeting needs far more compelling than a weekly paycheck.

[ An abstract from an article publish by Joan McCarthey, CPO - Human Consultancy Inc, in Human Capital Magazine]

-Pinal Mehta

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Inspiring Employees through Recognition

October 13, 2008 at 3:08 pm (HR Articles)
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As McDonald’s Founder Ray Kroc knew, there is no better way to inspire a team than with recognition. From the chairman of the board to the receptionist, we all have a deep-down craving for it. Build your company’s culture on the foundation of rewarding and recognizing hard workers, and you’ll create a fertile work environment where resiliency, high standards, high retention, loyalty, innovation, positive risk taking and high morale are present.

A Gallup poll revealed 65 percent of Americans haven’t received recognition in the past year. A United States Department of Labor study found the No. 1 reason why people leave organizations is they don’t feel appreciated. As American psychologist Abraham Maslow stated in his theory of motivation, people thrive on recognition as a form of self-value when they feel their contributions make a difference.

Consider the rewards that are most important to your organization. Jot down the kind of effort needed to bring those values from the abstract to the concrete. Build those efforts into job descriptions so employees become accountable for the action steps. Recognize those who achieve the best results, whether by praising them in public or giving a keepsake at the company celebration, complete with a speech about the employee’s commitment to excellence and the results it brought to the organization as a whole. Others will see what excellence is all about.

Let’s look at some time-tested ways leaders can inspire employees to do their best:

1. Make recognition a policy, not a perk.
Take time to develop a system of rewards for everyone at your company. Include pinnacle rewards for high lifetime achievers, such as McDonald’s coveted President’s Award, as well as more ordinary incentives, such as bonuses. Educate the entire staff about the program, post it for all to see, and promote it frequently.

2. Little things mean a lot.
A handshake is the least expensive way talent managers can recognize top performers – and perhaps the most effective. Look them in the eye and say thanks. Be specific about what the employee did that you appreciated so much, and why.

3. Recognize them with fanfare.
When bestowing an honor on a high-achieving employee, make it a celebration. That could mean inviting family members to be at an awards dinner, or stopping the workday early to hold a company-wide ceremony.

4. Remember the spouse.
For marathon efforts – such as large-scale projects or regional sales turnarounds – remember to recognize the employee’s significant other. After all, without the support of the employee’s partner, he or she wouldn’t have delivered such terrific results.

5. Respect your frontline.
Remember the little guys: the cashiers, customer-service people and maintenance staff. They are the face of your operation and will boost your brand better than anyone else if you make them feel appreciated.

6. Boost team spirit.
Recognizing teams or departments also is important. It binds employees together in pride. A plaque, a magnum of champagne and a Friday afternoon off are all ways you can tell a group of employees: “You did this together, and you excelled.”

7. Make rewards meaningful.
Don’t give front-row stadium seats to an employee who could care less about baseball. Find out employees’ favorite restaurants, for example, or whether they like theatre or music, and give them a night out they will really enjoy.

8. Recognition from the top means the most.
A personal phone call or thank-you note from the CEO often has more impact on an employee than anything else.

9. Don’t forget suppliers and clients.
When you create a culture steeped in recognition, your gratitude and appreciate should spread past your company walls. Don’t forget to thank loyal vendors and clients for their excellent contributions with a letter, a paperweight or even a charitable gift in their name.

[About the Author: Paul Facella is CEO of Inside Management, a consulting group. A 34-year veteran and former executive at McDonald's Corp., he is author of Everything I Know about Business I Learned at McDonald's.]

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