talent management

What it Takes to Build a Team

Posted on by Seniye Groff

Team?  What is it really?  There are thousands of articles, books, seminars and courses on team but Talent Management (August 2012) has a great article of what it really takes.  Anderson argues that “high-performance teams regularly challenge each other for their best thinking.”  How often have you seen that everyone goes with the flow or is afraid of asking a tough question?  Afterall, if you ask a tough question and your team-mate cannot answer it, you run the risk of making them look stupid or incompetent.  So how do you ask the tough questions without putting people on the defensive?

Anderson states that the first step is to change the rewards and recognition.  “To build any team, members must understand what’s in it for them and be able to tie that to their own rewards and recognition.  Once they are convinced their own needs are going to be met, most can begin to think more as “we” rather than I.'”  The next step is to work in facilitated dialogue sessions.  In these session shared goals are identified.  There also must be a thought and action shift (and lots of trust) to move to the next phase.  We are talking about a serious cultural shift in the way teams, and companies, do business.  Ultimately, “teaming in new ways, collaborating across organizational boundaries and sharing resources in new ways”  are the path to nirvana when it comes to the future of teamwork. 

Check out the article and tell me what you think!

How to Boost Employee Career Satisfaction

Posted on by Seniye Groff

An article is this month’s Talent Management caught my eye.  Probably because employee satisfaction is at the top of my mind right now since someone I recently sat down with to do some career coaching asked me, “I am 60% satisfied with my job.  Is that enough?”  First of all, being able to distill it to such an exact percentage was impressive to me.  But more importantly, was the fact that he was willing to settle…in other words being 40% dissatisfied is okay.  But is it really?  And how much can we change or put up with depending on what is truly important to us?  Granted, humans are adaptable creatures, but the ever elusive “happiness” can really make or break the experience, as well as, what we are willing to do to get it.

Taylor’s article states that “employees want to be informed about goals and expectations and how their roles fit within them.”  Obviously if employees feel like they know what they are “shooting for” and feel that the work they are required to get there uses their skills and abilities and is truly interesting to them, you bet they will help leadership get to the end goal!  Taylor suggests there are nine ways companies can boost career satisfaction:

  • “Place people in the right roles according to strengths, skills and interests.
  • Tap into talent in the cloud.
  • Use a pool of pre-screened, reliable talent.
  • Create an employee loan initiative.
  • Cross-skill people so they can use different skills on demand.
  • Create a dedicated pool of flexible, just-in-time talent.
  • Create a demand-driven talent marketplace.
  • Restructure work in terms of smaller, discrete, skill-based projects.
  • Define jobs more broadly.”

Read the full article to get more detail on the bullet points and then drop me a line and tell me what you think.  I am pretty sure you will agree, if companies tried some of these strategies, 40% dissatisfaction wouldn’t even be in the picture!

10 Forces Shaping the Workplace of the Future

Posted on by Seniye Groff

Given the time of the year, I thought it might be interesting to share what I am reading regarding the future.  In the October 2011 Talent Management Magazine, David Rasmus wrote an article titled “10 Forces Shaping the Workplace of the Future.”  Read on to see if you are experiencing any of these trends.  First of all, fluid models and the ability to adapt are paramount. 

Rasmus explains that the first concept is Transparency and Trust.  Call me crazy, but I thought trust was a constant (not a new model!)  Out-tasking is the second concept.  In other words, outsourcing is dead.  Managing various resources takes a lot of effort and organization on the company’s part.  They will need to figure out how to manage external resources more effectively.  Needless to say, online reputations are increasingly important.  In the same vane, contractors will be seen as extensions of the organization, rather than independents.

Contract-to-Hire might be the happy medium between renting talent and filling a full-time employee position.  This is an effective way for an organization to “test a new market, experiment with a new technology or evaluate the difference between insourcing and outsourcing.”

Another concept set to evolve is On-boarding.  With increased distributed and global employees, organizations are going to have to reconsider how they onboard new hires.  Other changing concepts are:  Parallel promotions, Hire-to-automate, Business continuity, as well as, Demographic shifts.

 Finally, another huge force is Virtual Work.  As the standard becomes more and more virtual work, location will not be as important.  People will be hired based on knowledge and skills rather than where they are located.  Virtual work also will change how performance management is addressed.  Lots of things to think about as we progress in the working world!