Are You Ready To Quit?

Apparently, almost half of Canadian workers are ready to leave their current employer - not for a better offer, but for a comparable job with someone else!

According to an article on CTV.ca, in a recent survey of 3000 Canadian employees, Watson Wyatt found that 46 percent are so unhappy they are ready to change jobs.

Ouch! For most employers, that's a slap in the face - and a wake-up call. If you are an employer, imagine what life would be like if next week 46% of your workforce packed up their gear and took jobs with your competition. It seems that the enlightened age of employee relations, motivation and good leadership isn't turning out the way we expected.

You might be thinking it is a betrayal: you are a good employer, you are striving to get on the list of the 100 best companies to work for. You've even sent your people to workshops and seminars, given them benefit packages, bonuses, Christmas parties, flexible hours, free coffee and donuts, and the list goes on. What more do they want?

There's a model that we've been using for years that may help to spark some ideas for a solution. There are 4 key areas that make a difference and help our clients to get results:

1. Getting the Right People with "The Right Stuff". The survey reported that only 49% of respondents said their company hired people with the ability to perform in their jobs. I've often remarked, "You can't turn cabbages into oak trees." As Jim Collins says in his book Good To Great, "if you don't get the right people on the bus, you're fighting a losing game."

2. Skills Training, especially the "soft people skills" that enable employees, sales people and leaders at all levels to communicate, work in teams and take personal responsibility for results. Only 52% of respondents said they have the skills and training to do what they're paid to do. Excuse me? Does that mean 48% of employees don't know how to do the job they are collecting a paycheque for? No wonder they think working for another company would be better.

3. Great Leadership. As indicated in Caroline Rowan's articles in this newsletter, leadership is a complex subject. It's not something a one-day workshop or a few articles will develop. Obviously you can get good ideas from many places. But to become a great leader requires a lifelong commitment to learning, practicing, reflecting, measuring results and making adjustments. Many of our clients are committing themselves to a lifelong leadership development process.

4. Clearly Defined Mission, Vision and Goals. While 76% of respondents to the survey indicated that they were aware of their company's goals, only 40% knew what they had to do to reach them. The vision was not connected to employees' activities. This disparity, in itself, is de-motivating for employees. If they don't know how what they do helps the company to reach its goals, then their engagement, motivation and purpose are diminished.

This is a simple model. It makes sense. Get a vision of where you are going, develop strong leaders who can lead and translate the vision into the required basic activities, hire the right people with the potential to do the job well, and train them to be excellent at what they do.

It sounds simple, but not easy. That's why many companies are beginning to seek help from people who truly understand these concepts and are able to bring ideas, processes and changes over time to counter the factors that cause employees to leave. If you are concerned that 46% of your employees may walk, it would be worthwhile for you to talk with Bill Robinson. He have ideas that can help.

Recently, I noticed that every sports channel on cable TV has a program called “The Business of Sports”, or something similar. In the program, they uncover stories behind the scores and statistics. I like to look at it the other way: let’s call it “The Sport of Business”.

Sports teams have people who spend every day evaluating talent. Scouts look for talent in the minor leagues; coaches and analysts track every statistic possible. A team of people tape every practice and game for the sole purpose of understanding talent and potential talent!

Sports teams know where the gaps are and have a General Manager who is responsible for finding talent and integrating it into the team. They don’t limit themselves to what they have. They don’t wait till the end of the season. They certainly don’t wait for the player to retire. They look over the field and go after the ones they want!

Do you evaluate your talent like a sports team? How does your performance appraisal system work? Does it work to improve the team, or is it just something endured to get an annual raise?

Imagine this: My daughter plays on a hockey team. Their rink does not have a scoreboard, just a clock. When the buzzer sounds, you know the game is over. The players return to the dressing room, and about twenty minutes later the referee comes in and tells them who won and who lost. Doesn’t this sound silly?

How is this different than your appraisal system?

Are you having problems attracting talent? In baseball, the top performers want to play with the best. Consider the New York Yankees: who would not want to play for the Yankees, a team that is competitive every year and has won more championships than any sports team in any sport? Top performers enjoy playing with other top performers!

What is your team’s goal? Win a championship, or finish and go home?

Why are top performers top performers? There are many theories...but I am not a big fan of theories. I like action! Here is my action plan: profile top performers in your organization, profile your middle group and finally examine some of your poor performers.

What characteristics are different between these three groups? In each business where we use this process, we find different combinations of important characteristics. This explains why someone can be a marginal player on one team, then move to another team, fit in better, and have a career season!

What about training in your organization? Sports teams spend more time training than they do playing the game. Sometimes a player is sent to a farm team in the system for future coaching and development. Sports teams recognize that it is a good investment to spend dollars on training raw talent, if he or she has the right attitudes and characteristics to fit in with the future team.

Have you ever noticed that the top players are not the coaches? Phil Jackson, coach of the Chicago Bulls (eight championships in 12 years), had it figured out. Phil understood his players better than they knew themselves. He knew the “whole person,” and he knew each player needed to be coached on individual terms. After the championship season of 2001, Jackson was quoted as having said, “Coaching is winning people over.” He understood winning them over, one player at a time.

What is each player’s role on your team? Coach? Star forward? Fourth-line grinder trying to hold on to the last spot on the roster, hoping someone with more talent is not just around the corner to take their job? If you are not sure, maybe now is the time to find out.

In the early years of the new century, the bank’s success led it to open new branches. By the end of 2002, it had doubled its employee count. In this process, the bank hired at virtually every level, from vice president to teller. To compete as a bank, management endeavored to hire in a different model from what was described as a “credit union mentality”, looking for new hires who were more driven by sales success and profit than by the warmer and less competitive values of their old organization.

Near the end of 2003, the bank reviewed its successes and failures in making these changes. The review revealed a rash of job failures toward the end of 2003, concentrated in the employees who had been new hires during their expansion. Examining the failures, the bank identified three major contributing causes, in order of declining frequency:

Overall turnover rate in 2003 was 29 percent, unacceptably high for a business which spends a great deal of money and effort on intensive training of every employee. (The bank’s internal estimate of their cost of hiring and training approaches five figures per employee.)

Working with their Profiles representative, the bank developed a Strategic Hiring System, based on data collected from employees who had succeeded in their positions in 2003. Launched in January 2004, this system is a “hiring funnel” in which every applicant considered for interview completes the Step One Survey II™ (SOSII).

They are then interviewed, using the SOSII as a guide. If selected for continuation in the process, based on the assessment, the interview, and their application information, candidates complete either the Profiles Customer Service Perspective™ (CSP) or the Profiles Sales Indicator™ (PSI).

If they score above a criterion match to the success pattern for their prospective job, they complete the Profile XT™ assessment (PXT). Finalists are selected and interviewed based on the information from all of these inputs and an offer is made to those selected. Average elapsed time from receipt of application to hire is 27 days, which usually includes two weeks notice to the previous employer. Assessment sequence cost per hire is $350 to $380.

Results of the initiative for 2004 are in. The employment market generally saw more job opportunities and higher turnover over the year, but this bank’s turnover rate dropped from 29 percent to seven percent year-to-year!

In addition to the obvious reduction in costs of failure, the bank has experienced increased customer satisfaction, reduced absenteeism, better adherence to required banking procedures and reduced personnel actions.

With one challenge under control, the bank has now turned to the next step, insuring their managers are up to the task of getting the best from their job-matched employees. The CEO and his management team have all enrolled in the Checkpoint 360°™ /Skillbuilder™ management development program!