If you’re a business leader, and you know your company productivity is falling, and you know your company culture is lacking morale, you have no time to waste getting started with a talent management strategy.
A big part of being a good leader and a good manager is talent management — your ability to inspire, motivate and engage your people to achieve great things.
If you are having retention issues and hiring is tough, then it is time to face you have major issues. At the same time, it is important you do not take this personally. A bad seed in your organisation can spread a negative tone on corporate or company culture, often without you even knowing.
Implementing a talent management strategy means changing the situation. This requires consideration and the cooperation of a number of departments.
Here are 5 areas I would start with immediately:
1. Employee Recognition
People like to be told when they have done something well. Many managers simply forget to give compliments on a job well done. Recognition comes in many forms. Recognition doesn’t always have to be in the form of financial reward. There are many ways to give recognition a reward. For example, you can give a certain amount of (paid) time to employees to work on their own pet project. This is actually a requirement of Google employees. They need to work at least 10% of their time on their own projects.
2. Performance Reviews
Performance reviews need to be a positive experience. Many companies use performance reviews that crush many an employee’s hopes for promotion. Are you implementing performance reviews to build on their strengths. Does your performance review enhance your employees’ abilities and motivation.
Today’s professionals are learning faster and with an amazing array of tools available online, they can enhance and specialise very fast. Does your performance review give recognition for their efforts at improvement?
3. Social Communication Tools
If your company is not making the most of social media software you’re probably not getting the most out of your team either. Social software communication tools allow everyone to know everyone, which makes it easier to communicate face to face. Social communication tools give transparency and clarity to your organization as a whole, helping to level the playing field for all levels of seniority.
Collaboration and sharing of tasks has also been found to be more productive than the traditional factory model in modern office workplaces. Social media tools are inexpensive and allow your people to help each other, share ideas, and build better relations. As a leader you may quickly identify the really talented people, often natural team builders as well, within your organisation simply by watching conversation feeds.
4. Set Goals & Support Them
When employees are unsure what is expected of them they become uncomfortable and unsure of themselves. This leads to poor performance. By giving goals, setting them high, and supporting them in their work to achieve those goals, employees will feel that they are valued. People who feel valued and supported produce results. It’s that simple.
Tracking progress (again with social networking tools) employees can participate, feel engaged and confident as they visually watch their goals being achieved and know they are meeting their job requirements. The sooner they can meet their requirements, the sooner they will want to exceed them. And that’s a big win for everyone.
5. Employee Team Building Activities
Teams are often made up of people from widely different cultures and demographics. Good mentoring and team driven relationships between young and old, rookie employees and seasoned managers require nurturing. And that is best done away from the workplace.
Rethink traditional-type strategies of office get-togethers, free lunches and the like are not always as effective as they once were. Team building activities outside of the workplace once a month for a half a day, may appear as lost work time and productivity, but that is not the case when they are well thought out to appeal to all members of your team. Activities that bring teams together will build stronger relationships that increase productivity across the workplace. All highly productive and progressive organisations are already doing this.
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This post has been approved for public release by Barbara Ashton. All certified posts carry this Google Authorship link to Google
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