Bridges Newsletter: June/July 2007

Stand Up – Stand Out
for change for tomorrow

By Richard W. Cronen & Angela C. Gonzalez

The workplace is a complex web of interdependent relationships, and a constantly changing, organizational system that must be flexible, encourage learning through information sharing, and generate the full and authentic participation of its workforce.

Are your strategic initiatives creating a stable and sustainable environment that
 both attracts new talent and retains the valuable human assets you have already developed?

This can be accomplished with an integrated Talent Management Strategy that incorporates Succession Planning, Strategic Recruitment, and Employee Engagement.

Succession Planning:
Succession Planning is more than training and more than a personnel evaluation system.  It is an ongoing strategy designed to supply well-trained, broadly experienced, and highly motivated people who are ready and able to step into key positions.  To do it effectively, ensures that your organization has a continuous flow of qualified people to move up and take over when the current generation of managers and key people retire or leave your organization.  You can evaluate your readiness for sustained success by answering the following questions: 

• Can you readily fill key positions with well-trained and experienced people from within your organization if the need arises, or are you forced to conduct extensive external searches?
• Have you identified well-defined career paths for key positions?
• Have succession strategies been integrated into the corporate strategic plan?
• Is there an alignment of future needs and the competencies needed to achieve it?
• Does your plan include backfilling for positions being vacated due to promotion?

Strategic Recruitment:
Are you able to attract the talent you will need to compete effectively in the future?  Current data indicates that an effective talent management strategy focused on the future will be more important than ever before as Baby Boomers currently represent 47% of today’s workforce, and all of them will retire between 2011 and 2029, taking with them an accumulation of skills and experience. 

Not being prepared to attract and quickly integrate the next generation of employees can put your organization at a significant strategic disadvantage.

• Is your Human Resource function strategically engaged?
• Do you maintain significant bench strength?
• Are you able to move beyond the job description to identify the skills and abilities you will need to be effective in the more collaborative workplace of tomorrow?
• Are your employees actively engaged in recruitment?

In the 2006 CEO Briefing prepared by The Economist, an amazing 68% of the CEO respondents rated their HR department as fair to poor, in terms of performance and contribution to the strategic direction of the company.  This can change, make your HR function a strategic asset.  You can evaluate your readiness for being a strategic partner by answering the following questions: 

• Is there an HR strategy in place to continuously scan the external environment for potential talent that aligns with the strategic objectives of the organization?
• Does your HR role extend beyond skill development, comp packages and compliance, to include building the competencies that will be needed in an increasingly collaborative work environment?
• Have surveys been executed to determine employee satisfaction, and do you have a plan to help partner in developing strategies to improve it?
• What strategies do you have in place to engage and shape organizational culture?

Employee Engagement:
As organizations become flatter, faster and more open, you must have the strategic involvement and dedication of every person.  More than ever before, your business results are a reflection of the collective capability of individuals and their interdependent relationships with each other.  The ability to build and sustain effective relationships with others is founded upon their ability to manage themselves and their relationships in ways that are situationally appropriate.  The soft stuff has become the hard stuff.

Even though numbers still drive the business, it is increasingly apparent that it is the people who drive the numbers, and to behave "strategically" organizations must now focus internally and learn how to create business environments in which your people are engaged and have the opportunity to succeed.

"If each individual does not make a personal decision to be
accountable for the success of the organization,
no amount of automation, appraisal, or pay will produce what we require."
Peter Block, forward to The Age of Participation

When people are fully engaged, they enthusiastically participate in the business of their organization, they are more productive, have higher levels of job satisfaction, and take personal responsibility for the reputation of their organization.  This establishes a distinct competitive advantage.

In order to leverage the soft stuff, your organization and its leaders must consciously develop their ability to fully engage the heads, the hearts and the hands of your workforce. 

• Intellectual Level:  Develop strategies and plans that build the intellectual muscles.  In order to make good decisions, people need to know what is going on.
• Are they involved in making decisions about the things that impact their daily routines?
• Does your organization promote continuous learning?
• To what extent does your organization challenge old assumptions about how to organize and manage work?
• Emotional Level:  Help people build the emotional muscles that enable them to establish and sustain effective collaborative relationships. 
• Do your employees have a sense of pride about their organization and their contribution to it? 
• Do your leaders promote a sense of shared ownership that favors membership over mere employment?
• Do your people care about one another and are they actively involved in building the skills to enable them to manage themselves in ways that are situationally appropriate, manage their relationships with others effectively, and resolve differences?
• Action Level:  Give employees the opportunity to make a difference, enabling them to create and add value for your customers. 
• Are the activities of your employees focused on creating value for your customers or meeting the procedural requirements of your system?
• Do your employees take pride in where they work and what they do?
• Does your organization create policies and procedures to facilitate involvement or do your policies and procedures seek to manage risk? 

Business is a uniquely human endeavor; it exists for people, is conducted by people, and it occurs between people.  Your organization’s success depends on the constructive interactions and interdependence of individuals AND your people depend on your organizational systems to facilitate their efforts.  When these two critical variables are synchronized, you create commitment, accountability and a sense of shared ownership among your people—this is the essence of Employee Engagement. 

In order to stand out – it is time to stand up.  Stand up and challenge old assumptions about how work should be organized and managed.  It is time to focus your strategic energies internally and build strategic advantage today, for a more successful tomorrow.

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